In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government. Charles Murray
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of thought experiments.
Thought Experiments about Being Poor
One of the great barriers to a discussion of poverty and social policy in the 1980s is that so few people who talk about poverty have ever been poor. The diminishing supply of the formerly-poor in policy-making and policy-influencing positions is a side effect of progress. The number of poor households dropped dramatically from the beginning of World War II through the end of the 1960s. Despite this happy cause, however, it is a troubling phenomenon. From the beginning of American history through at least the 1950s, the new
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generation moving into positions of influence in politics, business, journalism, and academia was bound to include a large admixture of people who had grown up dirt-poor. People who had grown up in more privileged surroundings did not have to speculate about what being poor was like; someone sitting beside them, or at the head of the table, was likely to be able to tell them. It was easy to acknowledge then, as it is not now, that there is nothing so terrible about poverty per se. Poverty is not equivalent to destitution. Being poor does not necessarily mean being malnourished or ill-clothed. It does not automatically mean joylessness or despair. To be poor is not necessarily to be without dignity, it is not necessarily to be unhappy. When large numbers of people who were running the country had once been poor themselves, poverty could be kept in perspective.
Today, how many graduates of the Kennedy School of Government or of the Harvard Business School have ever been really poor? How many have ever had close friends who were? How many even have parents who were once poor? For those who have never been poor and never even known any people who were once poor, it is difficult to treat poverty as something other than a mystery. It is even more difficult to be detached about the importance of poverty, because to do so smacks of a “let them eat cake” mentality. By the same token, however, it is important that we who have never been poor be able to think about the relationship of poverty to social policy in a much more straightforward way than the nation’s intellectuals and policy-makers have done for the past few decades. To that end, I propose first a thought experiment based on the premise that tomorrow you had to be poor. I do not mean “low-income” by Western standards of affluence, but functioning near the subsistence level, as a very large proportion of the world’s population still does.
In constructing this thought experiment, the first requirement is to divorce yourself from certain reflexive assumptions. Do not think what it would be like to be poor while living in a community of rich people. I do not (yet) want to commingle the notions of absolute poverty and relative poverty, so you should imagine a community in which everyone else is as poor as you are; indeed, a world in which the existence of wealth is so far removed from daily life that it is not real.
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The second requirement is to avoid constructing an imaginary person. The point is not to try to imagine yourself in the shoes of “a poor person” but to imagine what you, with your particular personality, experiences, strengths, and limitations (including your middle-class up-bringing and values), would do if you were suddenly thrust into this position.
VERSION I: BEING POOR IN A THAI VILLAGE
To do all this in the American context is difficult. Any scenario is filled with extraneous factors. Let me suggest one that I used as a way of passing the time when I was a researcher driving on the back roads of rural Thailand many years ago. What if, I would muse, I had to live for the rest of my life in the next village I came to? (Perhaps a nuclear war would have broken out, thereby keeping me indefinitely in Thailand; any rationalization would do.)
In some ways, the prospect was grim. I had never been charmed by sleeping under mosquito netting nor by bathing with a few buckets of cloudy well water. When circumstances permitted, I liked to end a day’s work in a village by driving back to an air-conditioned hotel and a cold beer. But if I were to have no choice . . .
As it happens, Thailand is an example of an attractive peasant culture. Survival itself is not a problem. The weather is always warm, so the requirements for clothes, fuel, and shelter are minimal. Village food is ample, if monotonous. But I would nonetheless be extremely poor, with an effective purchasing power of a few hundred dollars a year. The house I would live in would probably consist of a porch and one or two small, unlit, unfurnished rooms. The walls might be of wood, more probably of woven bamboo or leaf mats. I would have (in those years) no electricity and no running water. Perhaps I would have a bicycle or a transistor radio. Probably the nearest physician would be many kilometers away. In sum: If the criterion for measuring poverty is material goods, it would be difficult to find a community in deepest Appalachia or a neighborhood in the most depressed parts of South Chicago that even approaches the absolute material poverty of the average Thai village in which I would have to make my life.
On the other hand, as I thought about spending the next fifty years in a Thai village, I found myself thinking more about precisely what
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it is that I would lack (compared to my present life) that would cause me great pain. The more I thought about the question, the less likely it became that I would be unhappy.
Since I lacked any useful trade, maybe I could trade the Jeep for a few rai of land and become a farmer. Learning how to farm well enough to survive would occupy my time and attention for several years. After that, I might be able to improve my situation. One of the assets I would bring from my Western upbringing and schooling would be a haphazardly acquired understanding of cash crops, markets, and entrepreneurial possibilities, and perhaps I could parlay that, along with hard work, into some income and more land. It also was clear to me that I probably would enjoy this “career.” I am not saying I would choose it, but rather that I could find satisfaction in learning how to be a competent rice farmer, even though it was not for me the most desired of all possible careers.
What about my personal life? Thais are among the world’s most handsome and charming people, and it was easy to imagine falling in love with a woman from the village, marrying, and having a family with her. I could also anticipate the pleasure of watching my children grow up, probably at closer hand than I would in the United States. The children would not get the same education they would in the States, but I would have it within my power to see that they would be educated. A grade school is near every village. The priests in the local wat could teach them Buddhism. I could also become teacher to my children. A few basic textbooks in mathematics, science, and history; Plato and Shakespeare and the Bible; a dozen other well-chosen classics—all these could be acquired even in up-country Thailand. My children could reach adulthood literate, thoughtful, and civilized.
My children would do well in other ways too. They would grow up in a “positive peer culture,” as the experts say. Their Thai friends in the village would all be raised by their parents to be considerate, hardworking, pious, and honest—that’s the way Thai villagers raise their children. My children would face few of the corrupting influences to be found in an American city.
Other personal pleasures? I knew I would find it easy to make friends, and that some would become close. I would have other good times, too—celebrations on special occasions, but more often
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informal gatherings and jokes and conversation. If I read less, I would also read better. I would have great personal freedom as long as my behavior did not actively interfere with the lives of my neighbors (the tolerance for eccentric behavior in a Thai village is remarkably high). What about the physical condition of poverty? After a few months, I suspect that I would hardly notice.
You may conclude that the thought experiment is a transparent setup. First I ask what it would be like to be poor, then I proceed to outline a near-idyllic environment in which to be poor. I assume that I have a legacy of educational experiences that would help me spend my time getting steadily less poor. And then I announce that poverty isn’t so bad after all. But the point of the thought experiment is not to suggest that all kinds of poverty are tolerable, and even less that all peasant societies are pleasant places to live. When poverty means the inability to get enough food or shelter, it is every bit as bad as usually portrayed.