John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Position of Poverty” is one of the most straight forward readings I have read thus far in this text book. Since it was so clearly written I was able to get a lot from this piece. In this piece for instance, he discusses two cases of poverty which he labels case poverty and insular property. He gives a fairly good description of what he means by each, but the one best described, in my opinion, is his description of case poverty.
Galbraith describes case poverty as a type of poverty that is the condition of an individual. It is when a person (not a large group of people) is living in poverty. This person may be living in poverty for one or more of several reasons that he lists, “-mental deficiency, bad health, inability to adapt to the discipline of industrial life, uncontrollable procreation, alcohol, discrimination involving a very limit minority, some educational handicap unrelated to community shortcoming, or perhaps a combination of several of these handicaps[…]” (Jacobus 407).
He also describes case poverties as not being society’s fault and is the result of that particular person’s deficiency (Jacobus 408). He talks about how this type of problem can be dealt with fairly simply through charity as well (Jacobus 408). So what he appears to be saying is that case poverty is a single case of poverty that is limited to that individual and is not referring to an individual who lives in poverty as does their entire community.
Works Cited
Galbraith, John. “The Position of Poverty.” A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers .Ed. Lee A Jacobus. 7th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006. pp.406-413.
2 comments:
It seems like you did get a lot out of the reading. I really liked this reading a lot. I can't think of a new solution for case poverty, like you said, it seems like charity and understanding are the only things that could help.
I really like the way you you layed out everything, it actually helped me better understand the reading.
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