Working-class perceptions of the poor

Much has been said about working-class whites’ support of Trump being driven by poor economic prospects and anxiety about jobs and declining employment opportunities. While working-class whites might be concerned about their own jobs, some data suggests that this concern doesn’t always extend to the very poor or other ethnic groups.

In 2016, the Los Angeles Times ran an update of a survey they originally conducted in 1985 assessing public opinion on poverty and the poor. The study, called Dividing Lines, found that respondents’ attitudes about the poor between 1985 and 2016 remained largely the same, even after significant social and economic change. Most notably, the survey found that criticisms of the poor – that there are “plenty of jobs for those who want them” and that the poor would prefer to “stay on welfare” rather than work – were more commonly held by white blue-collar Americans who supported Donald Trump.

Blue-collar whites were more likely to say that the government wasn’t ultimately responsible for taking care of the poor, and were also more likely than other groups to say that government programs to help the poor had made poverty worse by making more people dependent and encouraging them to stay poor. (Interestingly, those respondents below poverty level were also more likely to say that anti-poverty government programs had made things worse… maybe because they aren’t going far enough?) Finally, blue-collar whites were more likely to see the poor as a “class set apart from the rest of society – trapped in poverty as a more or less permanent condition.”

Perhaps some of these views are rooted in racism. The Huffington post recently put out survey results indicating a majority of Americans have misconceptions of who actually receives welfare and other safety-net benefits in the United States. The word welfare has had long been loaded with racial meaning and associated with the apocryphal figure of a inner-city, black, “welfare-queen”… a lie told by President Reagan in the mid 1970’s that has taken hold in the American psyche ever since. This remains true in 2018. Huffington Post found that most respondents mistakenly believed that black Americans were the primary recipients of safety-net benefits. However, as Huffington Post noted:

The numbers reflect a significant overestimation of the number of black Americans benefiting from the largest programs. Medicaid had more than 70 million beneficiaries in 2016, of whom 43 percent were white, 18 percent black, and 30 percent Hispanic. Of 43 million food stamp recipients that year, 36.2 percent were white, 25.6 percent black, 17.2 percent Hispanic and 15.5 percent unknown.

The other major safety-net program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (the program traditionally associated with the term “welfare”) had roughly equal numbers of black and white recipients.

Another possible explanation is resentment that the very poor and those who aren’t working have access to government assistance that struggling other working-class families do not. Many blue-collar folks may be hurting financially, yet still have incomes that exceed the eligibility limits for government assistance programs. They may see their tax money going to such programs and wonder what’s in it for them. Or, they may be disabled, yet remain committed to working nonetheless. This is the mentality we explored when we read “Disabled and Disdained” and examined the relationship between the working-class and the non-working poor. In it, a man named David Hess, found himself frustrated with what he saw as laziness among the working poor:

Living at the center of an opioid crisis, and in the aftermath of a decades-long surge in the nation’s disability rolls, Hess had long perceived a resistance to work. . . . He would come away thinking he worked 60 hours a week — despite a thyroid condition, despite two bankruptcies, despite the depressed local economy — not because he felt like it but because that was who he was. And now here was another person who didn’t want to work — he wanted a handout.

The social safety net is shrinking (fewer poor families are receiving TANF benefits than ever) and conservatives want to limit it even further. While blue-collar voters may hope that decreased safety-net program expenditures will result in lower taxes and better financial outcomes for them, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Trump’s tax plan is not structured to significantly decrease taxes for the poor and working class. Rather, his newly passed tax plan disproportionately benefits the wealthy who are already doing just fine. As one Washington Post analysis puts it:

Republicans claim the bill is meant to benefit the middle class, but lower– and middle–class taxpayers will receive moderate tax cuts. The wealthy, by contrast, get a massive windfall, and the corporate tax rate would nearly cut in half. The individual tax cuts are expected to lessen over time, since most related provisions expire at the end of 2025, but the rich still do much better than everyone else.

It seems that fomenting class warfare has been very beneficial for those wealthy folks who stand to benefit from huge tax cuts. The working-class have come to resent the poor for being lazy and entitled, but fail to recognize that they have more in common with them than they realize, including a common antagonist – those favoring a reduction in the social safety net, but not passing the savings on to working class folks. This is just further evidence that political candidates looking to capture the working class in 2018 and 2020 should lean into the populist sentiment and focus on messaging that will encourage cooperation and understanding between the poor and the working-class.