What planet does Rich Lowry live on? National Review‘s editor–someone I’ve sparred with on TV many times–recently weighed in on the causes of poverty. It “has nothing to do with corporations,” he argued, “and little to do with other, more-relevant economic factors, such as wage rates.”
In fact, Lowry lives in New York City, where hundreds of thousands of hardworking people–dish-washers, clerks, factory workers, security guards, salespeople–live in poverty. As Andrew Friedman of the Drum Major Institute recently noted in New York’s Daily News, “New York is full of people who face the daily indignity of struggling to survive.”
More than thirty million Americans currently earn less than $8.70 an hour, the official US poverty level for a family of four. (And most experts estimate that it takes at least double this level for a family to provide for its basic needs.) But for Lowry, “Poverty in America is primarily a cultural phenomenon, driven by a shattered work ethic and sexual irresponsibility.”
Forget the low wage, no-benefit jobs which translate into billions of dollars in profits for the corporations Lowry holds blameless. Forget that the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen by 40 percent since 1968. For Lowry, poverty is a “cultural phenomenon.”
Fortunately, not everyone reads National Review and legislation pending in the New York State Assembly would raise New York’s minimum wage by almost $2 an hour. Such a change would help more than 500,000 New Yorkers. Lowry should stop whining about sexual irresponsibility, get a conscience and support efforts to improve the lives of his fellow New Yorkers–several of whom keep his office digs clean and secure.
