Poorly Understood

you have to make that time. And so for me, dear friends here on woke F, I am going to be taking a much needed vacation so that I can rest and recharge as we head into what I believe is going to be one of the craziest falls we've

ever seen. I have left you with eight amazing episodes that we have recorded back in twenty twenty one with some of the most thoughtful, engaging and insightful commentary that looks at our politics, our spiritual nature, our emotional well being, and a look inside frankly with some of the guests

that we are bringing to all of you. These conversations have been heard by our amazing Patreon supporters who get video episodes every single day because of their belief and financial support of woke F throughout the years, and so I'm really excited to bring all of you across all the platforms that you listen to woke F daily on these episodes and these interviews that I think will be

enticing to all of you. They hit on all of the major topics that we consistently discuss here on woke F, from racism to gender inequality, to police misconduct to wealth inequality, which my God and the need and the need and the need upmost for spiritual connection and wellness practices that allow us to successfully maneuver all of the things that have been thrown at us over the past couple of years.

And so, friends, while I will be out from the show, I will not be out of sight for the next several days, and so you can continue to follow me on Instagram and on Twitter at D two Cents, D E two c E n TF. Of course, I will be dropping in with my two cents and you can check me out on TikTok, where I'm sure certain that I will drop a few videos in the next couple of days, and there you can find me at Danielle Moody Underscore. I hope that you all enjoy these next

fantastic episodes that we have. Do drop your thoughts in the comments section, do hit me up in the socials. Just don't draw my attention to anything that is terrible because I'm taking a break from the news. But dear friends, I really do hope that you enjoy these next eight episodes and I will see you with brand new episodes after Labor Day. Hey there, I want to tell you

about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Goehler, the president of Emerge BGG, is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world of politics. Join a Shanty this season as she talks to incredible women of color who are changing the face of politics and tackling some of the most important issues facing the United States, from reproductive justice to voting rights,

to climate change and more. Tune in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm David Plots of Slith Political Gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all the noise and the news. Each week on the gap Fest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathalona and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree, We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver

thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slates Political Gapfest new episodes every Thursday, folks. I'm so excited to be joined on woke Affiddaily with the Professor Social Scientists and Herbert S. Hadley, Professor of Social Welfare at Brown School at Washington University in Saint Louis, Mark Rank, who is also the co author of Poorly Understood What America Gets Wrong About Poverty. Mark, thank you so much for making the time to join us. I

think that your book is incredibly important. I have always thought, and I've always discussed the fact that we don't have the right conversations with regard to poverty in this country. We never have, and I frankly believe it's because we have set up our government in a way that we

reinforce white supremacy. So if we tell the tale about black and brown people being on the margins of society, not deserving, not part of the mainstream, and they are the ones that require welfare and require public assistance, then we can perpetuate the lie. Right. Your book with your co authors kind of blast that wide open. And so I want to start off with what are some of the common misconceptions and myths that we share as a country around poverty. Yeah, well, first, thanks Daniel for having

me on. There are obviously a lot of different myths out there, but I think one to start with is this idea that well, poverty is going to affect somebody else but not me, that it's an issue of them rather than an issue of us. And one of the ways we start out in the book is to say, actually, if you look across people's lifetimes, majority of Americans at some point will experience a year below the official poverty line.

So between the ages of twenty and seventy five, sixty percent of folks will find themselves in poverty, and three quarters of Americans will find themselves either in poverty or near poverty for at least a year. And this really puts a different perspective on it because it says, you know, actually, poverty is an issue that affects most of us us in one way or another. So that's that's one sort of variation on this idea that the myth of poverty

being an issue of them rather than an issue of us. Um. There are many others as well. For example, we often our image of poverty is often that of folks of color in inner city areas that have been in poverty for long periods of time and that are using social safety net programs. It turns out, it turns out that that's that image is not correct. Actually, most people in poverty do not live in high poverty inner city neighborhoods. They live in a variety of places. They live in suburbs,

they live in rural America. So I guess the point of this is to say that the reach of poverty is very wide, and it affects a lot of folks at some point in their lives. Why do you think that we, I mean, from your research and the work that you've done throughout your career. Is it just the storytelling aspect that needs to shift because we've perpetuated the lie the media And when I say we, I mean the media has perpetuated the lie with regard to poverty

and what we're seeing, you know. But it's while we have this image right of black and brown people in the inner city, in these dilapidated communities as being impoverished. What we know to be true is that if a four hundred dollars bill were to come due in most American household, seventy five percent of those households would be

unable to pay that bill. Right. We know that healthcare continues to bankrupt families, which is why we had the push for the Affordable Care Act so that you're, regardless of your economics suation, you could still get healthcare outside of an emergency room. So we know we hold those facts while we still perpetuate the lie. And so how

do you think that we disrupt that? Well, I think you know, one thing is is addressing that and addressing that with you know, good solid evidence and facts and research, which is what I've tried to do throughout my career. But I think you know, an interesting question here is to step back and to say, look, so we go we in the book, we go through all kinds of miss and basically show that those myths are not true. So the question is, if that's the case, how come

we continue to hold those myths? Which I think one of the things you're asking here, and we can step back and say, well, who's benefiting from these myths? Who's benefiting from the perpetuation of these miss and I think we can point to several different groups. One would be political actors and politicians. Politicians have used the issue of the undeserving for the lazy person on welfare to score

political points over and over and over again. So Ronald Reagan was infamous in terms of his use of the welfare Queen Bill Clinton talked about we want to end welfare as we know it. Donald Trump railed against welfare recipients. And what that's done is it's scored them political points in the American population, and so they've had a vested interests.

But there's also we could step back and say, you know, actually, these myths that the poor are deserving of their situation really benefits those on the top because what it says is that I don't have any responsibility. It's not my problem if you're poor. Whereas if we say, actually, these problems are structural. It has to do with our economic policies, it has to do with our political and policy programs.

If we do that, then we have to say, you know what, we all have a responsibility in terms of this. So I think that's a really important question to ask. You know, who's benefiting from these myths? And I would argue that the folks that have benefited have been basically the folks in power, who are who are content with the status quo of widening inequality and more of the

gains going to those at the top. But doesn't that then, Mark, isn't that going to stress our systems even more by not looking at the gap that is purposefully being widened.

I mean, so I want to look at this now in the context of the current moment that we're in with COVID nineteen, which has created, which has not created, but I will say, revealed the inequities that we have always known that have existed, right, and we know who is bearing the brunt both economically as it pertains to business closures, school closures, and all of the kind of um points of of of of business and wealth creation around these systems that are now shut shuttered right to

some extent um. But we're seeing through this, through this revelation, exactly how broken our system is. And so how do you look now at these food lines right at people being one paycheck away at the desire of one political party not to provide relief because they don't think it's needed. Um, how do how do we use this moment to kind of to to to as a war shed moment around

how we look at poverty. Yeah, you know, if you look in the past and look at whenever we had changes in policies, they've usually come at times of economic turmoil. So the nineteen thirties saw the Great Depression, the rise of the New Deal, that's when Social Security began, unemployment insurance. There was a feeling that there's a structural failing here and we need to address it on a federal level,

and that's what FDR did. We're at a point now where we're seeing the same kinds of things because of the pandemic. It's kind of pulling the bandage off of the scar and um and is showing us just what you're saying that you know, there are you know, forty fifty percent of folks in this country who don't have four hundred dollars to cover an emergency. So so yes, I think that you know, we're at a moment in time where we can use this to really say, let's

start thinking about some of these structural issues. But let me throw in another thing here that to this, and that is, you know, people often will say, well, you know, I feel bad about folks in poverty, but again, it doesn't really affect me, and I don't really have to pay for that. Well, I did a study a couple of years ago, and what we tried, and what we did in that study was we estimated how much childhood poverty in the United States costs us on an annual basis.

We know that childhood poverty is associated with higher healthcare costs, we know it's associated with less economic productivity when children become adults, and we know it's related to higher criminal justice costs. And so we factored all all those elements in and what we found was that childhood poverty costs the United States on an annual basis around one trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, in twenty fifteen, that was twenty eight percent of the entire budget of the entire

federal budget. And so the point of this is to say, it's not like we aren't paying for poverty. What we're doing, right is we're paying for it on the back end of the problem rather than on the front end of the problem. And it's always more effective to deal with the problem on the front end. And that's what we need to think about here in this moment of the pandemic and seeing these kinds of structural failings that are

going on. We need to invest in our people and by doing that, we'll save money in the long run. Part of the investment, though, is believing that people are worthy of that investment. And I think that we have set up a political system where you have one party that believes that government can provide abundance living wages, safety nets, security, and then you have another party that's like, no, these people are undeserving, they want to hand out and we're

not going to give it to them. And were we are the holders of the purse strings, right, And so that is a shift in in thinking that needs to happen in order to create a shift in policy. How does this shift in thinking happen? Yeah, great, great question. Here's a way I like to think about this, because I think you're exactly right. We need a shift in thinking. We need to think about poverty on a different level.

Here's the example. Let's take the analogy of musical chairs, and let's say we've got eight chairs and we have ten people playing. They're circling around music stops. Two people are going to lose out, and so we ask the question who's going to lose out? Well, if we just focus on the two folks that lost out, we'll say, well, they weren't fast enough, or they were in a bad position when the music stopped, and those are all reasons

for why they lost out. But if we step back and we say, wait a minute, the structure of the game ensures that two people are going to lose out, and therefore those individual characteristics only explain who loses out at the game, not why the game produces losers in the first place. And what we need to do in this country is step back and look at the structure of the game and saying why are people losing out. They're losing out because we don't have enough jobs that

can support families at a decent wage. People are losing out because we don't have national healthcare, we don't have childcare that's available, we don't have programs to protect folks. So what we need to do is, instead of saying who loses out at the game, let's focus on the question of why the game is producing losers in the first place. And that's a real paradigm shift that you know, I want to sort of promote. Certainly our book is

advocating for that kind of change. I mean, that is a massive That is a massive shift, because essentially what you're calling for are the writers of the rules of that game to recognize that they created a game purposefully so that people would lose out, so that there could be winners and losers. And it's and I think about this, and again I always go back to there are two ways to look at the world. You look at it

in terms of scarcity. There is not enough, and so I need to hoard and have and have mind mind mind, or that the world is in fact abundant, and that there is more than enough, and we need to create structures and so that everything is equitably shared. And I just you know, when I think about that, and I think, oh, well,

that's easy. We just have to make this shift. But if that shift means that in some people's mind, the politicians, the one percent, that they are losing out, yeah, right, that they no longer will benefit from the crooked game that they've created, right, but they are the ones that are in charge of the game. It's like, how do you shift that? Well, you know, yes, you raise really good points here, but it's still true that we live

in a democracy and we do. Now I'm I'm the last person to sort of be pie in the sky, but we do elect officials to represent the people and what we need to do. I mean, things like the Black Lives Matter movement is a great example of people coming together to say, hey, this needs to change, and it's and there has been changed and we're moving towards change. We need to do the same thing here with thinking about poverty and economic inequality. We need folks to start saying, hey,

we need to change here. We need to have our elected officials pay attention to this. Now, again, that's hard to do, but I think you know what we're talking you know, democracy really begins with discussions and conversations and you talking to people and me talking to people and

talking on the air to folks. You know, because again, as I said, you know, eighty eighty percent of the population if you look at what's happened in America over the last since really the early nineteen seventies, the bottom eighty percent has completely stagnated in terms of economic gains. All of those gains have been focused on the top, particularly to the top five and one percent. So it's like there are a lot of people that this is that this should be a key issue, and we should

think about organizing and getting people to recognize that. Yes, um, you know, as you point out that this is a rich country. We do have a lot of resources, and we certainly can afford to start thinking about some of

these policies that we don't have. I mean, that's the other thing here is that you have to ask yourself, why is the United States the only country, the only high economy country that does not provide universal healthcare yep, that does not provide childcare assistance, that that does not provide affordable housing and and I think one of the reasons is, you know, our history has been steeped in

the idea of the rugged individual of reliance. You do it on your own, you don't depend on other people, and you know, and we need to confront that, and we need to say, actually that that is not working. That is not working anymore, and we need a new way of thinking. You know that one of the last questions that I want to ask you by because I find this topic. I've always found this topic really fascinating.

Is this you know I'm looking at it was, I think the Global Finance magazine, right, And in twenty twenty they put out their list of the top twenty richest countries, as they do every single year, America is not in the top ten. America is actually number eleven according to

them and the metrics that they use. Could it be that, instead of let's say, trying to convince politicians and the one percent to do the right thing for the right thing's sake, do we shift a discussion that is about America losing right its ability to provide its standing as one of the wealthiest nations because of the ways in which we have purposefully caught our nose to spite our face, meaning that if we were to actually invest in the

marginalized communities that we demonize right, then we could propel our GDP, We could propel our offerings to the world. Is that a conversation that we need to have instead of you, instead of airing on the side of better angels when we know clearly not everyone has better angels. Absolutely, I mean yes, we should argue about better angels. But there's no question that what you're saying is absolutely on target.

That our economy is dependent on our workforce and investing in our human capital, and what we've been doing for so long in this country is writing off a significant percentage of our population. So what we need to do is we need to invest in our people. That means

providing healthcare, childcare. It also means providing that every American child should get a hop quality education, which is not the case when you look at I live in Saint Louis, and you go to any metropolitan area and you go to a poor neighborhood and you look at the schools and the resources available versus a rich community, there's a world of difference. That's wrong. That's wrong morally, but that's also wrong economically because we're not investing in all of

our people. And if you look at those countries that are doing really well, they do invest in everyone. And so I think that's exactly the kind of argument, along with these other arguments we've been making, that need that that we need to do, we need to make in the future. Yeah, I think that you know, we we have a tendency to want to appeal to people's moral standing.

And what we have to understand is that everyone doesn't have the same set of morals and the same set of values, and that if we are truly going to make a difference, it's kind of you know, it's the way that you run various media campaigns. It's a way that you do target marketing, right. Different people are moved by different energies. Yeah, and that's why you know. I mentioned earlier the cost of childhood poverty study that I did.

But here's another thing that came out of that study, which is which is a very hard nosed economic argument. For every dollar we spend in this country to reduce childhood poverty, we would save between seven and twelve dollars down the road in saved costs. That's a huge bang for your buck. And so by investing in people we are more productive economically, we will do better, we will save a lot of money down the road, and so

I think that's a very powerful argument. Mark, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us on woke a f I think that this is an incredibly complex issue that needs to be unpacked and discussed more. Because I do think that we are very distant, very arms length between this seriousness of the poverty situation that is unfolding in America, and I think is getting worse and was already on track to be

worse than you know, generations prior. But COVID nineteen has really illuminated the discrepancies that we have in wealth creation, in wealth building, and access to education, healthcare, all of these different things. Who we consider essential, who is not right, who is getting vaccinated right now that is on the front lines versus those that are just well connected. I think that it's an important conversation to have, and I'm really glad that you came on Woke a f folks.

The book is poorly understood what America gets wrong about poverty. Mark Rank, thank you so much for making the time for us today. Oh you're very welcome. Dan, y'all, thanks a lot, as always, dear friends, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. See after Labor Day