Obstacles for the Poor

Documentary on Social and Material Poverty in the USA, Social Engineering the Poor, Reducing Recidivism, "Benefits Cliffs" + Chris Arnade on his book Dignity, and the erosion of meaning.

I am working on a new documentary on social and material poverty in the United States, and have been traveling, interviewing, and talking to a lot of people - plus doing some speaking on the problem of social engineering the poor - so it has been a while since I’ve posted anything.

We are covering a lot of topics in the film including some of the challenges and obstacles that poor people face. Here are a few of the things we have been researching and working on. I’ll have more detailed updates in the coming weeks and months.

The Big Picture - Social Engineering the Poor

The dominant way we have tried to address poverty in the United States and around the world over the last century has been a top-down, technocratic approach that tries to scientifically manage people and societies. There are a number of sources of this including the success of industrialism, and the optimism of what could be done with social engineering and large-scale industrial plans. This combined with the military victory in World War II led to the idea that we’ve won the war — let’s use social engineering to “win the peace” and fight poverty. These ideas were the inspiration of foreign aid and large-scale projects in the developing world, and urban renewal, welfare states, the Great Society, and the War on Poverty in the US.

Despite great hopes and good intentions, this technocratic approach has not only failed to deliver its promises, it has weakened the natural communities where people flourish. It has led to a decrease in social capital, and it weakened families and communities. State and private charity projects often create dependent relationships that create financial, social, and psychological obstacles to get out of poverty

Family Formation

Urban renewal and state welfare programs have especially had negative impact on lower income families by creating incentives not to make and save more money, and not to get married. Out of wedlock births have increased to the point where 4 out of 10 babies in the United States are not born into intact families.

There are many reasons for the breakdown of marriage that go beyond the welfare state: the sexual revolution, feminism, no fault divorce, party culture, film, television, luxury beliefs and more have played a role in declining marriages. But whatever the causes, the decline of marriage and family has had a negative impact on fatherhood participation in children’s lives - and this has especially harmed the poor. Fathers have been discounted as dispensable. Men have also failed to live up to our responsibilities. It is important to note that there are men who are not married, but involved in their children’s lives - and some married men who neglect their children. But there is no doubt that fatherhood participation is one the most important factors in preventing poverty and creating the condition for children to flourish. This data below from the National Fatherhood Initiative demonstrates the power of a father in a child’s life.

Reducing Recidivism + Obstacles to Work

One of the key problems related to fatherhood participation is incarceration and recidivism (where people end up going back to prison). Over 80% of men in prison had either no relationship or a bad relationship with their father - and 70% of men in prison are fathers. When I was in Atlanta I interviewed Pastor Lee Robbins who is working with formerly incarcerated people to readjust to society and rebuild their lives. I also interviewed Tony Kitchens, who was incarcerated at the age of 16 and now works for the Georgia Department of Corrections and serves on the board of the Georgia Center for Opportunity. Tony is also working on the problem of re-integration. He explained that one of the biggest challenges for formerly incarcerated men and women is what he called a “mental prison”. He said that when he got out of prison in 1985

“the toughest challenge for me was not doing the 11 years that I did in prison. The toughest challenge for me for breaking free from the mental prison I had created myself. And so for me, that's why I focus a lot on reintegration…most of reentry focus[es] a lot on what I call transitional services, which is food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and employment. While those things are important, those things not necessarily help you to move from survival to a state of thrive. And reintegration has to do much more with a mindset to help you move to a space of thriving rather than just survive.”

Another major obstacle faced by formerly incarcerated men and women is the difficulty in getting jobs with a felony record. Most job applications ask if you have ever been convicted of a felony - and if the answer is“yes” - it becomes a major hindrance to finding jobs. One man told me the only place that would hire him was the Golden Corral. He didn’t want to work there his whole life so he ended up starting his own business. In some cases it is impossible to get a job, because the license to work in a specific industry cannot be obtained if one has has a previous felony conviction. For example, Tony Kitchens had originally wanted to become a counselor to help others, but knew he’d be unable to get a license to practice. Institute for Justice is working on a case in California to help formerly incarcerated men who worked as firefighters while in prison, but are unable to become firefighters when they get out, because former felons are prohibited from getting their EMT licenses, which is required to become a firefighter.

“Benefits Cliffs” - It Doesn’t Pay to Strive

Another challenge for low income people if they are receiving welfare benefits is the problem of what is called “Benefits Cliffs.” I had the chance to interviewed Eric Cochling, also of the Georgia Center for Opportunity who has been working on this for years. For people receiving government assistance, just a small increase in income can cause a person trying to get out of poverty to lose a huge portion of their welfare benefits. These “benefits cliffs” create an incentive not to work more hours, not to get a raise and not to get married They keep people trapped in a cycle of dependency on the state. I spoke to a woman in Missouri who is helping mothers and children escape homelessness. She explained to me that when she was working at a gas station and receiving government benefits, when she got a raise and was promoted to manager her rent almost tripled and she was going to lose so many othe benefits that it made no sense for her to take the promotion and work harder. She said: “Either I can go back to barely making any money and know that I have food for my kids and a secure place to live, or I could take the better paying job and not be able to feed my kids or have a place for them to live because I couldn't afford to do it.” The current welfare policies create the incentive to stay in poverty and punishes those who strive.

The Erosion of Meaning and Identity

I later went to DC/Virginia where I met up Chris Arnade, author of the excellent book, Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America and author of the Substack: Chris Arnade Walks the World

We talked about key themes from his work on poverty: how the left can often fail to recognize enough agency in poor people, and the right can ignore some of the obstacles the poor must overcome, and take for granted tools that help people succeed. We talked about how poverty is not simply an economic problem, but a cultural and moral problem, and how the state doesn’t have the tools to solve this. This echoes much of what I have learned in speaking with people who were formerly homeless and help homeless people get back on their feet.

We also talked about the de-valuation of what Chris calls “non-credentialed forms of meaning.” In his book Dignity, Chris used a classroom analogy to divide American society into what he called “Front Row” and “Back Row.” His argument is that that the “biggest division in the U.S. is not race, it's not class, it's education.” And the front row is “extraordinarily highly educated, very geographically mobile, very transactional, very career-oriented, very secular.” He said:

“The ‘front row’ has found its meaning or finds its meaning through careerism and through book learning. The ‘back row’, traditionally, the traditional forms of meaning and community are what I call non-credential forms of meaning - places that you don't need a resume to enter - so the ones gifted to you at birth. So it's family, place, race, ethnic identity, nation, and religion.

These are things that accept you based on simply who you are and your birth order. And they're the naturally occurring ones all throughout the world, all throughout history. These are the communities that societies have bound around for millennia, since we've been civilized. And those are the ones that traditionally provide both regulatory frameworks for people but also moral order.

And I believe that the front row, for the last however many years…has been slowly eroding those forms of meaning, those forms of identity, and replacing them by, again, “you create your own identity.” So it used to be … someone could identify themself by faith, place, race, nation, family, kin. There was kind of a knowable number of variables. That's who I am, that's how I make order of myself. And that's been replaced by whatever. You define your own.

This erosion of meaning has left people untethered, and led to a crisis of meaning which also plays a role in drug use, despair, and increasing poverty.

The “front row” problem can be seen beyond poverty. I think there is an overlap of the “front row” with what Augusto Del Noce calls “pure bourgeois” and how the Hippie became the Yuppie. Yuppie culture - including the ideas: happiness can be acquired or purchases, everything is an object of trade, rejection of tradition, denial of transcendence, “follow your passion,” radical autonomy, and plastic anthropology - have all led to a lack of meaning and alienation among rich and poor. As

Carrie Gress

describes, feminism is also a very “front row” idea that has particularly harmed poor and working class women.

Chris’ book is well worth reading. He writes about his journey from doing a PhD in physics to working on Wall Street where he began to take long walks, which led him into Hunts Point in the Bronx and to building relationships with people living in one of the poorest places in the United States. He writes how he went into Hunts Point an atheist and a vegetarian, and left going to church and eating McDonalds.

I first interviewed Chris in 2019 on my podcast, The Moral Imagination — you can listen to it here.

So far we have done over 100 interviews and have filmed in a number of places including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Mississippi, Patterson New Jersey, Hazard Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio, Colorado Springs, Atlanta, California, and more. I’ll be writing more about some of the people and places, and the many incredible and inspiring people I have met. We are still in production and editing and the film will be done later this year and be released in 2026 and 2027.

Poverty, Inc and Foreign Aid

Finally, this is the 10th Anniversary of a film I directed on poverty in the developing world: Poverty, Inc. It is a critique of global humanitarianism and the foreign aid model that is as relevant today as it was ten years ago. We will be doing screenings in various cities, and our team has been re-activating our social media, which has posted short clips on Instagram critiquing foreign aid a couple of weeks ago that has 2 million views. I will be writing more about foreign aid, charity, and development in the coming weeks as well.

If you are interested in learning more about our film, you can follow us on Instagram at povertyincmovie

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Photo Credits: Wingman Visuals