Don't want to fix poverty

Essayist Terrence Heath takes another look at the way the rich view the poor. I've already shared (but would have a difficult time finding the link) the conservative view that the rich see the poor as a moral issue -- if you are poor it is because you are immoral. Yep, the amount of money equals personal level of morality. In particular, a person is poor because he deserves to be. The matching statement is just as bad: a person is rich because he deserves to be. Heath explores that idea some more, then gets into the why (something I'm always interested in).

Heath starts of by saying all those programs proposed by the GOP to fix poverty won't work -- "because conservatives don't want to fix poverty". Heath continues with a quote from an article by James Thindwa:

Actually, there is a self-serving logic to the Right’s aversion to a systemic approach to poverty mitigation. Really serious anti-poverty strategies would require its corporate benefactors to raise wages, dispense with unionbusting, support minimum-wage hikes, embrace national healthcare, and stop discriminating on the basis of race, gender, age and disability. This burdensome outlook is what angers conservatives. The truth threatens their worldview.

Heath expands on that:

Its easier to ignore that the economy really one big system that we’re all a part of. It’s a system that privileges some of us, and disadvantages other. It’s harder to consider that our status within that system —privileged or disadvantaged —may be partly or wholly unearned. It’s harder to consider that our privilege might result in and even depend on someone else being disadvantaged, because it shifts moral responsibility to us to do something about it. Or not.

If you can rationalize your privilege, and rationalize related inequities on the flip-side, then you don’t have to change how you are in the world; because all is right with the world, no matter how bad it is for somebody else.

In fact, your privilege — whether it stems from your race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, etc. — doesn’t even exit. The whole world is suddenly a meritocracy. What you have, you deserve, basically because you have it. And the “have-nots”? Well, if they deserved it, they’d have it.

I've commented on privilege before (this link is easier to find) and I note (as have others before me) those who have privilege are convinced there is no such thing, yet when their privileges are threatened, the claws come out. Heath agrees:

If you ask why, without settling for simplistic answers, you might conclude that inequity an injustice do not exist in a vacuum and do not persist according to some law of nature, but because they serve as the basis for the privileges of some, and thus the privileged perpetuate them in order to preserve their privileges. You might be inclined to believe, then, that inequities and injustices are not “inevitable” or “natural” and you might also choose to do something about them. Or, even knowing all of this, not to. Either way, it’s a choice.

It’s not that conservatives don’t can’t fix poverty. Conservatives don’t want to fix poverty. Given would require of them a lot of hard work — both intellectual and political — that they just don’t want to do.

An entire worldview based on, "I'm better than you."