The Joy of Curmudgeonry - A Rich Vein of Poverty

It is rather odd that people should call for the end of poverty when they define that poverty as being the condition that inheres in a household living on less than sixty percent of the median income; for no matter how rich such households become, such “poverty” can never be ended — except by equalising all incomes. It may well be, as Mr Worstall says, that the concept of relative poverty is “tailor-made for endless work for the bureaucracy”. It certainly suits the bureaucracy, but then it suits the egalitarian ideal uncommonly well too.

.....The call to end poverty in this country sounds so much more decent to the general public than the call to equalise incomes; moreover, saying that millions of people are living in poverty sounds so much more shocking than saying that millions of people are poorer than others. No great intelligence is needed to understand this, but the political manipulators know how to exploit the moral sentiments of the people, and they know too that the spectre of relative poverty is enough to excite the moral indignation of anyone getting by on less than sixty percent of median intelligence.

I feel like that calling what we have in the UK and the US “poverty”, just like calling combat deaths in Iraq “slaughter” does serious harm to our concepts of “poverty” and “slaughter”. How are people supposed to feel for those starving in Africa if their concept of poverty is the morbidly obese with a television set in every council flat/welfare funded home, and how much does it belittle “real” war veterans when 20,000 British soldiers can be killed in one day of the Somme but writers at the Telegraph call 134 over four years in Iraq a “slaughter”?

Anyway, it really upsets me, is all.

Update (3.29):

…of median intelligence for the sake of their moral indignance.

Date: Mar 28th, 2007 · Comments RSS · Tags: People and Current Events