Galbraith Theory Of Poverty

“If you 're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They 're the only ones that 'll help - the only ones” (Steinbeck, 1939). Poverty is most often described as a lack of the ‘socially acceptable’ amount of money or material goods. Over the years, as the economy has experienced its evolution and the common status of wealth in America has changed, the U.S. government has established something known as the ‘poverty threshold’ used to measure whether or not an individual is living within poverty. According to a study taken in 2012 by the U.S. Census Bureau, slightly more than 16% of Americans are living in poverty, including 20% of all American Children. The fact that nearly 1/6 of our population is living in poverty is astonishing, …show more content…
The relationship between Galbraith’s theories on insular poverty and poverty as an issue primarily belonging to the minority is very closely knit. This is due to the fact that the insular nature of the world has caused a natural division between groups that were considered separate even if that consideration occurred for a short time, or a very long time ago. As Galbraith describes within his text, insular poverty is defined by many forces, he goes on to express that, “But the more important characteristic of insular poverty is forces which restrain or prevent participation in economic life at going rates of return. These restraints are several. Race, which acts to locate people by their color…So are poor education facilities…So is the disintegration of family life in the slum” (Position of Poverty, pg. 243). The social issues developed by the fact that the majority of impoverished are minorities are plentiful. Mixing issues like marital status, race, and education into the already controversial issue of poverty has caused a very heated debate over the guilt of the straight white families, and the issues that they have caused by alienating most others. America’s ideal family has always been portrayed as the straight white family in which the man brings home the money, and the woman stays at home to care for the children. The white picket fence ideal is one that all people have been exposed to, no matter what place in American society they come from. Marissa Chappell described this in her analysis on the war over welfare, stating specifically that, “The architects of the nation’s welfare system sought quite explicitly to promote male-breadwinning and female-homemaking in poor immigrant communities…The white