on correlation vs causation
Contagion is not caused by poverty, but when when the poor can’t afford to go to the doctor, any illness they catch spreads. Likewise, when the poor cannot afford or are not allowed to take time off from work when they or their children are sick, their quality of work suffers, and they make others sick, too. This affects everyone, as contagion is indiscriminate, transmitted by breath and touch, putting a heavier strain on all healthcare systems by letting illnesses fester rather than seeing them dealt with early on. Therefore, by preventing the poor from accessing affordable healthcare - by forcing them to work when sick, and their children to attend school when sick; by pricing them out of the medications they need - you are not only punishing the poor, but weakening the whole community.
Ignorance is not caused by poverty, but when the poor are given a substandard education and barred from accessing the lessons and advantages made freely available to the middle class and the wealthy, ignorance becomes endemic. Likewise, if tertiary education is priced beyond the means of the poor - if poverty becomes a genuine risk for the middle class when they send themselves or their children to university - and there are few or no alternatives to enter a well-paying field otherwise, then you are ensuring that poverty becomes generational. This affects everyone, as the whole of society is handicapped by the struggles of a group who cannot be helped by superficial measures and who cannot institutionally help themselves, no matter their intelligence, their work ethic or their eagerness to learn. Therefore, by preventing the poor and the middle class from accessing the same level of education as the rich, you are not only punishing those groups, but seeding ignorance, generational poverty and dependence in the whole community.
Trauma is not caused by poverty, but when the poor are made more vulnerable to problems of exploitation, disability, mental illness and abuse for want of services to address those problems - or when those who, through their struggle with these issues, are reduced to poverty for lack of help - then a disproportionate duty of self-care is placed on the poor; a duty which, under the circumstances, cannot possibly be fulfilled. If possessing independent wealth is the only way to afford medication, physical therapy and counselling, or to break free from abusive domestic situations, in a context where all these issues make it either difficult or impossible to work independently, and where in any case such services are so expensive as to be priced beyond the means of even the working poor or working middle class, then you are ensuring these issues become entrenched in poor communities. And this, too, affects everyone, as the whole of society is deprived of the positive contributions such people might otherwise make, as well as suffering the effects of these conditions being left unchecked on a large scale. Therefore, by preventing the poor from fulfilling their need for self-care, you are not only punishing them, but actively fostering harm and trauma within the whole community.
When poverty is viewed as a moral failing for which its victims are solely responsible, the systems that contribute to making poverty inescapable are ignored. A child born in poverty, denied healthcare and a good education, can still succeed in life, but this task is made exponentially harder if the jobs they must work to build their wealth do not pay a living wage; if they must go into debt in order to study; if a single accident of trauma, injury, violence or genetic bad luck is enough to negate their every achievement. A healthy society is not some perfect utopia in which nobody ever suffers hardship, but one in which those who do suffer have access to the necessary support and resources to succeed regardless; one where the game is not fundamentally rigged against a large proportion of the populace by an accident of birth.
It is cheaper to cure a single sick person at the onset of an illness than to cure a hundred in its extremis.
It is cheaper to provide birth control and sex education to the population than to support the unwanted children they have no choice but to raise.
It is cheaper to educate a child and to provide them with opportunities than to struggle, over and over again, to inadequately shore up the broken foundations their absence creates.
It is cheaper to provide actual homes for the homeless - to enable them to live and support themselves independently - than to continually provide only the resources necessary to let them live in the moment.
It is cheaper to build schools than prisons.
Stop acting as though demonising the poor is a sound financial choice, one made with an eye to what’s best for the whole of society. It’s not. It’s bullshit. Scrapping social support systems is a short-term financial gain enacted at the price of a massive long-term financial loss. It’s unjustifiable, and it needs to fucking stop.
