What is poverty? What does it mean to be poor? Certainly such questions provoke a string of images in the mind of the reader: urban slums, peasant farmers, etc. But for any hope at a solution to the problems of poverty, we must refine our image.

Poverty can initially be described in the negative—as a state of lack. The poor lack money, land, resources and the like. Furthermore, such a lack of resources can be divided into a two-fold schema: a lack of physical assets (fixed wealth) and a lack of funds (liquid wealth). In addition, a word on the notion of capital is in order. Capital is traditionally defines as wealth used to produce more wealth, and such a definition presupposes an economic surplus, which the poor obviously do not possess.

Extreme poverty then can be defined as so acute a lack as to warrant an inability to provide for basic necessities—food, shelter and the like—for one’s self and one’s family.

This working definition certainly rings true when certain areas of the Third World are examined. In many countries, due to political oppression or a lack of natural resources, a majority of the population lives at or near the conditions just described.

But there is another—in some ways more visible— segment of poverty, and that consists of the urban poor. Common in the United States and other developed nations, urban poverty is often synonymous with low levels of education, poor medical care and (ironically) obesity.

But the urban poor in the Western world do not fit the previously established definition—many of them are fed, often overly so, and face no risk of starvation or unusually premature death (compared to the world and historical average). Furthermore, much of the First World’s urban poor can not only sustain themselves, but a family as well. Nonetheless, no thinking person would describe homeless residents of Baltimore or Section-8 tenants in Chicago as anything but poor.

Debates over relative and absolute poverty have become so common as to warrant cliché, and I have no interest to stir the gathering storm. Rather, I wish to demonstrate that poverty in the First World is very much absolute, albeit far more complex than analogous situations in the Third.

For example, an often-ignored aspect of the absolute poverty of the American underclass is safety. The ability to feel safe in one’s person and possessions is a prerequisite for higher modes of life, and the salutary neglect found in urban pockets cannot be ignored in its impact on the formation of personality and lifestyle.

It is an unfortunate fact that much of the debate over relative poverty has made that term synonymous with social poverty. There are some aspects of social marginalization, etc. that are relative, but there are others that are very much absolute.

For example, the inability to find a niche where one is treated with a modicum of dignity and respect is far more important than contemporary sociologists seem to realize. To work for a low wage and under constant harassment by one’s peers, one’s employer or even one’s cultural environment, rather than being a liberal buzzword, is a scandal of great magnitude.

The cultural attitude of our nation towards wage labor is without a doubt degrading (as depicted in the television stigmatization of food service workers, of which America has 30 million), and the deunionization of America plays a tremendous part in that.

I have always had a healthy skepticism towards unionized labor, but it is undeniable that such organizations, along with securing a living wage for average men and women, brought a dignity and respect to labor the likes of which have not been seen since.

I have always found solace in a Papal Encyclical from the turn of the century, as the clash between labor and capital was at its height, where the Pope mentioned the obligations not just of employee to employer, but of employer to employee.

Such obligations do not seem stringent—transparency, respect, and non-harassment. Unfortunately, these were the first workplace characteristics to vanish in the wake of union labor, and cost far more in the long run than lower wages.

And the political positions of state and local governments only encourage such vices. When health insurance is seen as more of a privilege than a right, can one honestly not expect the balance of power to tilt even further towards the employer?

Unfortunately, the American left has been making to-dos about all the wrong issues. 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq, but how many have died from the proliferation of “syndrome x” as much a pathology of urban decay as eating habits. Furthermore, while there are perhaps 3 million homosexuals in America, there are 30 million uninsured. And I can’t help but be revolted by a political party that wishes to glorify the child and his efforts in school while degrading the parent at home and doing nothing to help mothers and fathers keep their houses in order—such phenomena are the definition of perverse.

In an era of material prosperity as great as ours, a more mature approach to poverty is required. The division of labor in the developed world has destroyed the social nexus of village, clan etc. and I don’t mourn that fact. I do, however, bemoan a betrayal of the dignity of both work and the family caused by our present cultural and political attitudes. Rather than giving every child a one percent chance to become a hedonistic millionaire, how about we assure that 100% of Americans are secure both culturally and physically, and have access to the medical resources, retirement funds, and social capital (that is to say, decent neighborhoods and decent neighbors) to live a live worth living.

I’m no Nazi, but a little Volkisch seems to be in order.