In Katz’s reading, what caught my attention was the categorization of the poor. Katz wrote how Ken Auletta wrote an article about four types of poor: passive, hostile, hustler, and traumatized. Each category of the poor seems to degrade them in general. However, Auletta does not focus on those who are poor because they are immigrants, do not have much education in America, but are still working hard to move upward. Auletta, in my opinion seems to criticize all the poor in general, and saying how lazy, violent, unlawful, and useless they are. But there are many people who are poor that do not deserve that kind of harsh criticism.
What was interesting was the New York City’s Charity Organization Society, which wanted to deal with the issue of poverty. It said poverty must be drained and purified rather than “walling it about.” However, I am not quite sure what this means, though I do agree poverty should be dealt with. I believe there is no way to completely wipe out poverty, but it can be diminished and the negative affects that come with it can be lessened as well. In Peopling of New York City, my class kept mentioning the importance of education, which I also agree is the foundation and support which without can lead to poverty.
Katz finally mentions two categories of poor: undeserving and deserving. What I still do not understand is why are the widows under deserving poor? They do try their best to keep work and raise children. The only Katz mentions is that they failed to save money for possible situations of losing a spouse (“episode of dependence”). If that is true, but the widows are still trying to find a job to have an income and try to raise a family simultaneously, I do not think the widows are deserving of poverty. To me, deserving poor are the ones who choose to not get an education, choose to get involved in drugs and illegal activities, and those who do not work hard.
To continue on about importance of education, Katz even mentions how the War of Poverty targeted schooling rather than helping people in the labor market. This reminds me of the quote “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” If you help provide cheap yet helpful education to people, they can learn and develop skills that can help them in the labor market. Instead of finding them one job, education and skills can help people get multiple of jobs. In addition, this method helps people to not be so dependent on the government. People still have to work hard in school to get where they want to go in life.
With that in mind, I do not think the government today is helping in that way. Tuition rates constantly rise, with no additional benefits. Adding on to that, it is more and more difficult to get a job when one graduates from college, and thus it makes sense that there was and is the constant dilemma of the large economic class gap. More people are falling into the middle and lower class, and some still in the poverty level because of family circumstances, than moving upward. Action truly must be taken by the government to fix this situation, or I believe poverty might worsen.
