Professor Nall goes on to give a more precise breakdown:
"In fact, 46.6 percent of food stamp recipients are children, and another 7.9 percent are elderly ( USDA op cit . p.23). Add those together and you realize that the 'just get a job' solution is inappropriate for upwards of half of all food benefit recipients. Of course, this figure does not even include those who are not children or elderly but who have a disability that either prevents them from working or limits their work options.
Equally interesting, those who are able to work, but are unemployed and receiving food aid account for less than 20 percent of all recipients. Only the most egregious classist thinking would confidently assume such persons are simply lazy, happily poor freeloaders. (If it is true that few are truly satisfied with the powerlessness and marginalization that comes with poverty, one could hardly assume that the poor, able-to-work, and unemployed do not want to work. With the 2012 unemployment rate at about 10%, and twice that in the black community, it seems naà ¯ve to assume getting a job is as simple as demanding 'a paycheck,' as Gingrich put it. Being jobless is a source of great shame in our society. This is particularly true for men, where dominant masculine norms require 'authentic' men to be bread winners. Psychiatrist James Gilligan contends that the shame of economic failure is so great that it stimulates violence. Gilligan, James. 2001. Preventing Violence . New York: Thames & Hudson, p. 43.)"
It is in his next example that Professor Nall reveals his most important fact:
"5. Education Necessarily Remedies Poverty: Another plutocratic myth suggests that a lack of education is the root of poverty, and that education is the answer to poor people's plight. This is also an assertion many liberals like President Obama regularly make. Joining them are conservatives like Newt Gingrich who, in the lead-up to the South Carolina primaries, defended his earlier remarks about the poor and food stamps, stating: 'I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job and learn some day to own the job .' (Fox News.'Gingrich and Juan Williams Food Stamp Exchange Brings Debate Crowd to Its Feet.' January 17, 2012.)
These ways of thinking legitimize the plight of the poor, effectively blaming victims of exploitation: blaming low-income workers' conditions on their failure to possess a real job, which means a job that requires a degree."
But one of the great secrets of the early Twenty-First Century is that even an advanced degree is no longer a guarantee of a decent paying job.
"But rather than addressing the unethical business practices of extracting wealth from workers' labor with less than subsistence-level wages, the 'get an education' mantra tells the poor that they should only expect to be treated with dignity once they have earned a college-degree. Both ignoring the working poor, and assuming the solution to the working poor's poverty is education, functions to disappear the routine, systematic exploitation of the poor for the benefit of CEO's and investors.
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