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Dr. Wes Browning |
As this great Nation prepares to change,
it’s time for us all to look at the lessons
of the past for inspiration and guidance in
changing. A particularly important part of
history is the economic part.
Usually, when someone proposes to talk
about economic history, they mean the history
of making and spending money. But to
waste space today, I would like to talk about
the opposite, namely the history of not making
and spending money. I want to talk about
the history of poverty.
The poor have always been with us.
According to Amos, a minor prophet, the
going price for a poor person in Israel ca.
750 BC was a cheap pair of sandals. So you
know they had poor people in fairly large
supply. In fact, they had so many poor
people that they made it a practice to talk
of THE poor, as opposed to this poor guy
or that poor guy.
In those days, the poor were mainly used
to determine who was a good person or not. If
you treated the poor justly you were good. But
if you showed favoritism, by, say, not lashing
them when they stole bread, that showed you
were in need of correction. The idea that you
might favor poor people may sound strange
today, but in those times it was the equivalent
of Populism.
The poor were so numerous in Biblical
times that they became the cool people.
Jesus hung with them, and there were
poor-wannabes. To satisfy the people who
wanted to be poor but couldn’t quite go the
extra mile it took, a new category called “the
poor in spirit” was invented. Just like today’s
categories of “middle class” or “Black” or
“Zen”, anybody in those times could say they
were poor in spirit. No one could disprove
it. Especially since they had no surveillance
cameras.
It was the practical Romans who said
“let’s get real” about this and first defined
poverty. They called it paupertas and had
ways to measure it. You had to empty your
pockets and they’d count your cash and
tell you if you qualified. In some cases they
would just take your word for it. That has
come down to us as the rule of “in forma
pauperis” by which you can get some relief
by swearing a “pauper’s oath.” The point was,
they had a definition, so they could always
check if you were lying.
In the Middle Ages there was a period
beginning around the 13th Century when
there was some confusion of beggars
with the poor. Monks would take vows of
poverty and go around begging (the word
“beggar” comes from the name of such
an order) and people would get annoyed
(especially at fakers among them) and take
their annoyance out on all the poor. Things
got so far out of hand that by the 16th century
the Council of Trent had to get behind
the virtues of owning property, to stem the
tide of mendicants.
For many centuries the idea of poverty
was mainly of concern to churches and
courts. It wasn’t until the late 1800s that
sociologists came up with the term “underprivileged.”
To understand this term
you have to know that the word “privilege”
really means “private law.” In other words
to have privilege is to have laws on your
own personal side. So the underprivileged
are people who have less of that. In other
words, it means, “poor in laws.” Recognizing
that there could be such a thing was a great
leap forward which required the invention
of many new college departments and
degrees.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, the
poor divided neatly into three categories.
There was 1) the Salt Of The Earth poor. That
was your basic Appalachian poor, your coal
miners, your sand farmers, and such. There
were 2) the vagabonds and the hobos. And
there were 3) minorities.
Then, Ronald Reagan was elected president,
and invented homelessness. And here
we are. |
