The Position of Poverty

I’m so relieved; this reading was actually in ENGLISH!! In John Galbraith’s The Position of Poverty, he discusses two different types of poverty: case poverty and insular poverty. Case poverty is described as a situation where an individual is poor due to a characteristic directly related to them, such as a mental disability or just plain laziness. Insular poverty, on the other hand, is when poverty is prevalent throughout an entire area. In this case, people that suffer from insular poverty are poor not because of their own doing, but rather because of the area they live in. The environment is so deficient and substandard that they’re not really even given a chance to succeed, or become prosperous.

Galbraith then goes on to explain how a little government intervention in the right areas can help solve poverty and deficiency in any society. He suggests that if the government were to provide better schooling and housing, just to name a few, society would be a much better place with less poverty. Obviously, I agree with him in that if the government did these things there would be less need; however, it’ll always be easier said than done. I also appreciated how he acknowledged the fact that the places that need help the most in America, the places that REALLY suffer from economic depression, are the LEAST likely to get help from the government. In my opinion, this becomes apparent with situations like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Nonetheless, I thought this was a very interesting reading, and it really explained how there’s a difference between poverty in one area, and poverty in another. But the BEST part was the fact that he actually spoke ENGLISH, unlike some of the other authors in recent history!!