May 06, 2011
In this interview with Laurie Taylor, Tracy Shildrick describes how Britain’s poor don’t’ regard themselves as poor. “People don’t want to associate with the stigma associated with poverty” she says.
This is not a new phenomenon. In his English Journey, written in 1933, J.B. Priestley described poverty in Blackburn:
First house, an elderly couple. Long, toothless man, just got up and now sitting down to a bowl of sensible soup. This made by jolly woman who said: “Ay, there’s been lots worse off nor us”, and meant it. These two lucky. Man been out of work between four and five years. All savings went. Lived on 10s a week…
Lots worse off than them. They all say that.
Dissociating oneself from poverty, then, seems to be a persistent attitude of the poor - even those who we would regard today as absolutely poor.
This is an example of what Jon Elster called “sour grapes”. Our preferences adapt - partially - to our circumstances with the result that we don’t feel bad about our lives, however awfully they are going. This is a necessary coping mechanism. Counting your blessings is a way of keeping going in the face of adversity.
There is, though, a problem here. If people don’t sufficiently acknowledge that they are poor or are being mistreated by society, the demand for redistributive policies will be low. If this coexists alongside a desire by the rich to bash "scroungers" (via), then there’ll be a systematic bias in public preferences and discourse against the interests of the poor.
In this sense, there’s a conflict between democracy and equality. Social democrats are insufficiently aware of this.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2011/05/dissociating-from-poverty.html
In this interview with Laurie Taylor, Tracy Shildrick describes how Britain’s poor don’t’ regard themselves as poor. “People don’t want to associate with the stigma associated with poverty” she says.
This is not a new phenomenon. In his English Journey, written in 1933, J.B. Priestley described poverty in Blackburn:
First house, an elderly couple. Long, toothless man, just got up and now sitting down to a bowl of sensible soup. This made by jolly woman who said: “Ay, there’s been lots worse off nor us”, and meant it. These two lucky. Man been out of work between four and five years. All savings went. Lived on 10s a week…
Lots worse off than them. They all say that.
Dissociating oneself from poverty, then, seems to be a persistent attitude of the poor - even those who we would regard today as absolutely poor.
This is an example of what Jon Elster called “sour grapes”. Our preferences adapt - partially - to our circumstances with the result that we don’t feel bad about our lives, however awfully they are going. This is a necessary coping mechanism. Counting your blessings is a way of keeping going in the face of adversity.
There is, though, a problem here. If people don’t sufficiently acknowledge that they are poor or are being mistreated by society, the demand for redistributive policies will be low. If this coexists alongside a desire by the rich to bash "scroungers" (via), then there’ll be a systematic bias in public preferences and discourse against the interests of the poor.
In this sense, there’s a conflict between democracy and equality. Social democrats are insufficiently aware of this.
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2011/05/dissociating-from-poverty.html
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