- Dirty work gets done. Low wage employment
- Domestic work gets done. Not just hotels, but among the upper income classes.
- Professional and business niches get created. Pawn shops, liquor stores, video poker establishments, payday loans, collection agencies, lawyers on contingency hotels/motels with weekly/monthly rates, even the social work profession, professors who study poverty, etc.
- Recycling contributions. Poverty helps with the recycling of goods and incompetent professionals. Where are these people likely to operate? In Beverly Hills or Harlem?
- A population of poor helps uphold conventional norms. The poor more often get 'caught' in criminal activity, and most studies deal with crimes committed by the poor.
- Moral distancing. Poor people are perceived as morally deviant, at the least irresponsible and insufficiently motivated
- Cultural contributions. Blues, jazz, country western, even rap and hip hop, have their roots in underclasses.
- Security of social location. Poor serve as reference points--guaranteeing status of those who aren't poor.
- Helping others achieve. The poor aid in upward mobility of other groups. Dirty work, immigration ...
- Supply of charity balls. It takes tens of thousands to raise hundreds of thousands.
- Bearing the brunt of disruptive change. Poor people are often asked to absorb costs of change. Some examples include:
- urban renewal
- volunteer army. Opportunity, yet obviously risk
- 'risk society.' environmental racism--who can least resist having a landfill sited in their neighborhood?
- Recession/depression--when people lose jobs, they may take others that push the less-qualified further down the socioeconomic ladder
- Keeping American politics stable. Poor less likely to register, to vote, when they do, they vote for Democrats (as more conservative religious groups vote for republicans, yet neither group gets much besides campaign promises)
- Finally, if the poor are morally deviant, there is less pressure on other groups to alleviate poverty.
- The poor pay out a lot in regressive tax revenue. Payroll tax, 'sin taxes.' 'A lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.'
- Low-wage work gets done. It's not just the 'dirty work.' Welfare reform' is increasingly designed to push welfare recipients into the workforce.
Gans, Herbert. 1971. The uses of poverty: The poor pay all. Social Policy 2:21-23. |