TO UNMAKE THE MADE

Less than two weeks ago, the Census Bureau released a report that provides further confirmation that COVID is contributing to a further erosion in the economic security of millions of citizens. The data in the report reflects some of the economic damage wreaked by the first ten months or so of the pandemic. For instance, between 2019 and 2020, median household income drop from $69,560 bucks to $67,521 or about 4%, and the total number people gigging full-time, year round plummeted by 13.7 million. As alarming as these numbers are, the one that really gripped me was this one:

37.2 million.

That's the number of people whose income is so meager that they fall below the official poverty line-- currently pegged at $26, 695 for a family of four. And that number---37.2 mil-- is 3.3 million higher than the 2019 figure of 33.9. That translates into a 2020 poverty rate of 11.4%, a full percentage point higher than 2019's 10.5%.

To get a grasp on the magnitude of that 37.2 million, consider this: If all the people falling below the government's official definition of poverty were a state, they'd be the second largest in the nation. Right behind Cali's population of 39.5 million.

Or, try this comparison offered by William P. Quigley: That 37.2 mil stat exceeds the total combined populations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon. South Dakota, and Tennessee.

But the truth of the matter is that there's always tens of millions of poor folks within our midst. Even when the economy is growing and "the market" is rocking. Even when consumer confidence is up and home sales are banging. Even when 401(k)'s are killing. Even when retail registers are ringing.

Even when....

Sure, depending on the overall trajectory of the economy, the number of poor people will fluctuate. Sometimes up, sometimes time. But the poor are perennially present. They're perennially present because there is nothing embedded in the logic of the market that ensures that human dignity is protected and that everyone can access and enjoy basic economic rights, including the right to be free from poverty. They're perennially present because far too many of us swallow the myth that the poor are poor because they're poor at decision-making. That they're poor because they've been gripped by a so-called "poverty mind set" and fail to "think like a millionaire." Or that they ain't mastered the art of the hustle and are just plain trifling. Or that they're not pressing the right buttons that'll move the Divine to run them some coins.

But poverty is largely made by the operation of the economy and the ways in which we respond to the distress that accompanies economic downturns. It's made and maintained in part by an explosion of low-wage jobs with no benefits, de-unionization, decreases in economic mobility, a widening of income inequality, and policy elites who are more attuned to satisfying plutocrats than pulling regular folk out of economic ditches. In the most recent period, all of this was exacerbated by the naked racism, authoritarianism, and anti-science embodied in Trumpism.

But there's nothing "natural" about poverty. There's nothing that binds us to acting like we have no other choice but to accept that which is. No other choice but to accept as fact that millions--even in so-called "normal" times-- must eke out an existence in poverty. To do so, to function as if it's all up to the market, is to grant markets a depth of dominion over our lives that they do not deserve.

Poverty is made, and that which is made can be unmade.