Michael Lissack of the people they purport to represent. Poor people of our inner cities, small towns, and rural countryside exist in a sprawling banana republic where fighting factions of outsidersinstitutionalized poverty pimps-battle over which issue, which treatment, what cabal will dominate at any given point in time. Those who live in poverty are the means for the charities to acquire foreign aid from dozens of sources, including the U.S. government. The social worker is presumed to have a level of moral superiority sim- ply because he works in the nonprofit sector. He is good because he says he will do good. The sector itself has achieved a chimera of sanctity that puts it above the scrutiny normally accorded government contractors. Politicians and those who get the contracts have taken full advantage. The really bad news is the social regression from the mid-seventies to the present has been long and deep. With remarkable creativity, every time the social welfare institutions discover a need of poor people or redefine an already perceived one, they find a way to get money for themselves, knowing there’s little they can do about it as long as people remain so very poor. A major impediment to dismantling the existing social welfare pro- grams is the extent to which they have degenerated into patronage troughs. The government contracts to “help” are first and foremost political tools to strengthen the base of elected officials at all levels of government. Often it is said that government budgets are balanced on the backs of the poor. Certainly over the last quarter of a century, that has happened. There has been an observable redistribution scheme under way-the most dis- turbing one this country has ever seen-from poor women and children to middle-class social welfare professionals. We need to reverse the process, redirecting resources from the coffers of stagnant social service agencies to the pockets of poor families, to those with no other source of income as well as those who live in wage poverty. How would poor people remedy poverty? Ensure that jobs are available and improve their quality. Raise benefit levels and relax eligibility rules for government safety net programs thereby stretching poor people’s in- come by helping them obtain necessary goods and services such as housing, health care, food, and child care and raising poor people’s income directly
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