Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West have been working hard to bring the issue of poverty into the consciousness of the citizens and political discourse of the United States. As a team, Smiley and West have been touring city to city, speaking to audiences concerned about the increasing wealth gap in this country. Their book, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifeseto, is the culmination of their observations of American citizens throughout these travels.

While the economy is technically in recovery from the Great Recession, a vast slice of Americans have not experienced a real recovery. A “jobless recovery,” where the beneficiaries of an improving economy are the wealthy while the middle class struggles with unemployment, is not a real recovery. Despite this disadvantage, the prevalence and pervasiveness of poverty is still astonishing. According to Smiley and West, 150 million people in this country are in or near poverty. That number represents one out of every two individuals — half the country.

The issue of poverty, affecting this number of individuals, is bigger than poverty itself. The government tallies 46 million Americans living in poverty according to the 2010 census and the government’s own definitions of poverty. Many more individuals are affected by poverty because they are living dangerously close. Many middle class households, particularly those already living in debt or in a paycheck-to-paycheck situation, are one lost paycheck away from a dangerous financial situation, and many families are already experiencing a personal decline due to the inability to find gainful employment.

Poverty has traditionally been a problem classified as urban or rural. Minorities have been and are disproportionately affected by poverty, but poverty is not a suburban problem, too. With white, middle-class families now facing the issue of poverty, whether by losing a job or being dangerously close to not being able to afford their homes, the issue is gaining more attention. While poverty is making life difficult for an increasing number of Americans, those in or seeking office, whether Democrats or Republicans, are not concerned. In order to receive a voice in political discourse, you need money. While the United States may have been founded on the ideals of freedom and liberty, these have generally only been granted to an elite selection of its inhabitants. The distribution of social power is expanded only by revolution among the disenfranchised.

Smiley and West contacted Consumerism Commentary with an interest in speaking to me about these issues — to defend their position, and to open my eyes to the realities faced even by the middle class in this country, many of whom are the “new poor.” We arranged an interview for the Consumerism Commentary Podcast, airing Sunday, May 13. Unfortunately, Dr. West was unable to participate in the interview at the last minutes as he was in New York waiting for a verdict after a conviction related to a political protest in that city. Tavis Smiley was able to participate, but our time together was short. We weren’t able to address all the questions I had prepared, but the discussion was valuable.

Listen to the entire discussion with Tavis Smiley, podcast host Jay Frosting, and myself, Luke Landes, once it is available this weekend. Smiley is the host of Tavis Smiley on PBS and The Tavis Smiley Show on Public Radio International. Update: Listen to the podcast here.

In the interview, Smiley dispelled many of the myths about poverty. One such myth is the idea that those in poverty are entirely to blame for their financial situation.

On Consumerism Commentary, I’ve written that taking personal responsibility for your decisions, financial and otherwise, plays the biggest role in achieving financial security and independence. This is today’s American promise: “Anyone can make it in America.” The media love rags-to-riches stories, even if it doesn’t reflect a reality for the majority of Americans. It’s true that this country’s brand of capitalism is favorable to the situations European immigrants left behind. Religious intolerance, a caste system based on ancestry, and an economic system wherein generally only the first-born male would have rights to any property drove pioneers to create a new society or join a country with a promise to create a better life for yourself. Never mind that doing so displaced others who occupied the land here.

Even in this new society, you had to be a member of the elite to receive the rights as endowed. Not everyone begins on equal footing. The lack of early educational opportunities throughout this country is one of the strongest causes of generational poverty. As Smiley addresses in the podcast, Washington state is the home to large multi-national corporations, providing a huge advantage to those who reside in Washington thanks to the tax these companies pay. The educational opportunities in Washington state far outshine the opportunities in Washington, D.C., for example. Until a quality education for the entire country is given priority, generational poverty will continue to exist.

In the interview, we also address the issue of austerity. The concept of reducing the deficit and national debt is and should be a high priority for policymakers, but the timing of austerity measures, such as reducing funding to societal programs, is just as important. Smiley argues that we cannot cut the budget for these important issues when the economy is not “flowing,” saying that the budget is being balanced on the backs of poor people. Budgets are moral documents, and you can determine a country’s real priorities by evaluating where the money is going. If this country does not address the economy for the 99 percent — those who have seen no benefit from this “jobless recovery” — rather than the “1 percent,” Smiley warns of the downfall of the United States as a world leader.

No empire in the history of the world that at some point did not falter or fail. Every empire had its day. Americans don’t want to think we could be dangerously close to the edge… Poverty is the moral and spiritual issue of our time.

Time did not permit us to explore all the topics I would have liked to cover in the interview with Tavis Smiley. For example, I would have liked to talk more about the Occupy movement and getting a national stage for the issue of poverty. In recent weeks, civil rights are again receiving national attention, from the perspective of same-sex marriage. Not to minimize that issue of equal treatment under the law for all individuals, poverty deserves the same attention from our nation’s leaders.

Be sure to subscribe to the Consumerism Commentary Podcast to hear the interview with Tavis Smiley, where we address more topics related to poverty than are outlined above, as soon as it is available. Be sure also to read The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. Update: The interview is now available as a podcast here.

Photo: DC Central Kitchen

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Over the twelve months ending with March 2012, the increase in the consumer price index (CPI-U) as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, often referred to as the inflation rate, is 2.7 percent (2.3 percent if you exclude food and energy). While these numbers are below the historically-cited norm for inflation, 3 percent, the numbers are still troubling for some people.

Government-reported increases in the consumer price index do not tie to any individual’s experienced increase in the cost of living. No person can assume that if wealth grows by the rate of inflation that life is just as affordable as it was a year ago. For example, if my income was $100,000 in 2011 and $102,700 in 2012, although my salary would be keeping pace with inflation, it’s likely that I still would find that this year’s income would not afford me as much as last year’s income was able to afford me.

With $100,000 in a high-yield savings account, the $750 I would have earned in before-tax interest not only loses to government-reported inflation, it would be pathetic compared to any rate of increase of expenses I experienced personally.

Part of the problem is that the CPI-U is calculated by measuring the change of price of a variety of consumer goods, but each type of good is weighted according to its importance. The level of importance is taken as an average importance across all citizens based in or near cities in the United States. Thus, the weighting may not be appropriate for any one individual. For example, as of the last CPI-U calculation, gasoline for vehicle fuel was weighted 5.7 percent. 5.7 percent of the year-over-year increase in consumer prices can be attributed to the increase in gas prices.

Any one family’s exposure to the cost of gasoline could easily be greater than 5.7 percent. A household with two incomes might involve a husband and wife who both commute an hour or more to, and an hour or more from, their places of work. For a family like this, the effect of an increase in gas prices could be much more devastating to their finances than the CPI-U would indicate. The increase in this category year-over-year is 9.0 percent. So if for any family, gasoline accounts for more than 5.7 percent of all expenses, the real cost of living would have increased more than the reported inflation rate.

We are often concerned with finding investments that provide a return higher than inflation. Financial planners consider inflation one of many benchmarks. If you want to maintain purchasing power with your funds, you’d look for a low-risk investment that meets or stays on par with the rate of inflation. The government even offers inflation-protected securities, whose yields are designed to artificially keep pace with the rate of inflation, thus providing investors a method of investing with a guarantee of not losing “purchasing power.”

The comparison between investment returns as experienced by one individual and a calculation of an average increase of prices is invalid. Financial experts continue to use the average inflation rate as a benchmark for individuals because it’s easy and can seem to apply to an entire population at once — even if it really applies to no one.

The criticism of the CPI-U as a personal rate of inflation doesn’t end with the idea that an average measurement doesn’t apply to any one individual. The method of calculating inflation has changed over time, and modern calculations are criticized for masking the truth. If the rate of inflation were to be calculated the same way it had been four decades ago, the rate would be significantly higher. The public is sensitive to bad economic news, and it’s safer for the government officials who are in power to continue to report subdued numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics should be free from political influence, but that’s an impossible ideal, especially over the course of a generation or two.

As a result of the realities behind criticism of the inflation rate, real inflation in the cost of living is destroying your net worth. Inflation keeps investors chasing returns that, while being better than earning nothing or losing money, are not high enough to continue a standard of living. Fifteen years ago, the most popular television sets might have cost an average of about $500. This was before LCD technology and high-definition became widespread. Today, the average cost of the most popular televisions might be $1,000. Today’s LED-backlit LCD HDTVs, while $1,000 today, would have cost more than $10,000 a few years ago when the technology was new. So in one sense, advancements in technology lower consumer costs, but offsetting that reduction is the consumer demand for better equipment, and that demand outpaces the decline in prices. Nobody’s buying the first generation iPad today.

Photo: Kai Hendry
Bureau of Labor Statistics

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