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Tuesday, April 11, 2006After Katrina
A report from the AP notes that not much has changed in the aftermath of Katrina, in terms of public perceptions or mobilization to reduce poverty.
Jane Knitzer, director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, says it's not so much that Americans don't know that poverty exists. They just don't want to think about it, because it's just too hard.
Here's the full report, as printed in the Sunday April 2nd Edition of The Guardian.
The most important statistic may just be found in the following.
The most important statistic may just be found in the following.
Activists, defined as those who support state intervention to reduce poverty, went from 58 percent of respondents in the 2004 survey to 60 percent post-Katrina; and there were small gains for deniers, who believe poverty and inequality are "neither substantial nor growing'' (from 21 percent to 25), and for moralists, who see poverty as a motivator, not a social problem (from near zero to 1 percent).
The most dramatic gain was among so-called realists, who don't believe in the state's ability to reduce poverty or inequality; their numbers nearly doubled to 11 percent.
Read the News Release on the Stanford Report noted in the AP Story.
Here's one final question to ponder. Why are those "who don't believe in the state's ability to reduce poverty or inequality" labelled "realists?" The overwhelming body of evidence over the last seventy years could not be more to the contrary. Government policy, in particular tax policy, has had a major impact (for better or worse) on the rate and the severity of these social ills.
4:02:30 PM
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