letter to the editor

86 points of light

Mon, 06/18/2018 - 4:30pm

Dear Editor:

There is a persistent myth that poverty can be eliminated by voluntary charity alone. If this were so, would we not have already dealt with this problem? Imagine the impact on poverty if the good patrons of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and other cultural venues were dedicated to alleviating poverty on this peninsula instead. 

The nature of poverty is that it is involuntary and has been institutionalized culturally, politically and economically. The paths to poverty are many. The problem is so deep-rooted that it defies the solutions of simple charity. Here are a few examples:

Families descend into poverty when overwhelmed by medical expenses not covered by insurance. A substantial proportion of all bankruptcies are a result of crushing medical debt. This is unheard of in countries that have universal medical coverage.

Many retirees find themselves in poverty because they do not have adequate pensions to cover their living expenses. These are people who have worked hard all their lives to earn an honest living and now find themselves dependent on the meager sums paid by social security. One might suppose that the problem is that they had not saved enough, but this is impossible when wages for hard honest work are inadequate to meet daily living expenses.

Women who find themselves raising a child alone, or divorced or widowed late in life often end up living on the fringes of society, with little hope for relief.

Children growing up in impoverished areas have opportunity denied when their schools are overcrowded, teachers overworked and resources stretched thin.  For those unlucky to be arrested for minor infractions that are tolerated or ignored in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin a descent into the bowels of a system of incarceration.

Just as our society sets traps for people to fall into poverty we have a moral duty to make changes to prevent good honest folk from becoming victims of our own shortsightedness. The answer is not with more welfare, but with the re-enfranchisement of those segments of our society that suffer under the yoke of systematic deprivation.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay