Being broke is a financial problem, and being poor is a social one. They're clearly related, but they're not the same thing. People learn from the older people around them, and if you're born into a place where all the older people are getting into trouble or going nowhere, then someday when you're older, you'll probably be a lot like they were. You will probably be poor, and so will the newest batch of neighborhood kids, who like you, won't have any better ideas. Poor people have poor options, so they make poor decisions, and their kids end up poor too. Even if you shower poor people in cash, most of it won't really change things. It's the cycle of poverty, and like most things cyclical, it's nothing new, and it's not so easy to end.
Among people who think about the broke-poor relationship, there are two main schools of thought. On one hand, there are many examples of people who were broke and ended up making millions. Immigrants, hard workers, and the odd genius. We all love these stories. Conservatives tend to think that they prove that any poor person can achieve if they just put their mind to it. By extension, anyone who doesn't is lazy and not worth their time. On the other hand, there's the story of the poor sap who never quite has enough money to make things work and ends up in jail for posession. We all feel for these guys. Liberals tend to think that they prove that it's because he was broke that he didn't succeed. They ignore his crappy upbringing, or think that it's just a matter of money and everything will change and he'll raise kids better.
Conservatives often think that if people's mindsets will change, they will be able to work out their finances and prosper under the rules of the game. Liberals think it's a matter of material deficiency, and that the rules are stacked against the poor. Both have a point, but both are missing something essential. For conservatives, culture is an excuse for people's bad behaviors, and a means of absolution from their fates. For liberals, money and programs are all that's up for negotiation. Culture is a taboo subject. For all of us, we misunderstand, excuse, or ignore society's cultural pathologies at our peril.
What can be done?
There's aid from the government or charity. It can help people who are broke. When done right, like when it pays for school, keeps people healthy, or helps them along into a career with some dignity and decent pay, it can be really effective. This is where society organizes its social and economic goods. But it's not very good at changing the communities that young people grow up in. Even if people are given all the money, resources, and opportunity society can provide, their culture will remain mostly unchanged. Some people even say it will be made worse.
There's community activism. It can help people who are poor. Local leaders, church pastors, hometown-kids-done-good, and others can make good role models and maybe change the lives of a few others coming up. This is where culture and behavior can be modified. But it is limited in scope by money, subject to personality, midguided ideas, and plain old corruption. We hear stories about someone making a difference in their communities, but we rarely hear about those communities changing, and too often, we hear about someone taking whatever money there is, and running. Or worse, running for city council.
There's business. Most people would gladly take a decent-paying job with a chance at advancement over a monthly welfare check or a wad of cash from standing on the corner all day. This is where people can get real, sustainable material help. The problem is that usually there are few of these jobs in poor areas. It's not because business is evil or people are lazy. This is because the workforce of poor (but not necessarily broke) people is often uneducated and unreliable, so only the worst jobs become available to them. There's plenty of wealth out there. It's well-organized and even today still leads to prosperity for most people who can get into a career. But that's probably not going to happen if you're poor, and business has little to say about how to change the cycle of poverty.
For the first time in a while, I have real hope, even if it's from somewhere weird. Last night I caught an episode of Undercover Boss. It was on TV while we ate dinner; something to pass the time. At first I thought it was just another mindless reality show meant to distract the audience between commercial breaks, and maybe it is, but I saw something I'd never seen before.
The "Undercover Boss" was an executive from Subway posing as a Sandwich Artist. One of the places he went was to a church in a poor part of Buffalo which had its own Subway franchise on the premises. The church got people working there at the same time as providing all the services, mentoring, and social exposure that you get out of a good church. The employees got good jobs and more training, the church owns the franchise and makes a little money, and people work with a chance of becoming someone. The government provides incentives to businesses who want to affiliate with a social organization, and uses the organization as a conduit for aid programs. It doesn't have to be a Subway, and it doesn't have to be a church. This idea could be replicated in 10,000 different ways with 100,000 social institutions and millions of young workers as beneficiaries.
Entrepreneurs, corporations, franchise holders, and others can work with churches and local governments to expand into new markets, paying people more, profiting, increasing aggregate demand for the products they sell, changing people's lives, and making our country the place it can and should be. But we'll all need to work together and be honest about the nature of our nation's social and material shortcomings.
Being poor and being broke are not the same thing, but poverty is some synergy of the two. To really change poverty, we need the engines of government, civil society, and business working synergistically too. American ingenuity can fix these problems. All the pieces are there. We just need to rethink how we put them together. We need to stop confusing poor with broke.
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