Opinion: Reducing poverty should be N.C.’s primary goal

If there were a disease afflicting one out of every five North Carolinians — an affliction that caused people to go hungry, made learning more difficult, made career advancement a pipe dream for the afflicted and affected generation after generation in the state — then it would be absurd for the state’s elected leaders to ignore it.

But, in effect, this is largely the way public debate over North Carolina’s elected positions has treated one of the most devastating issues facing the state.

Poverty is not a literal disease, but it is just as infectious. And yet, the politicians running for statewide offices display little concern in their rhetoric about the 17.9 percent of North Carolinians who live below the poverty line.

In the first debate between Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and state Speaker of the House Thom Tillis in their race for U.S. Senate, neither used the word “poverty.” The word “poor” was used twice, but the term “middle class” was used five times.

Beyond measures of word usage, Hagan, who is attempting to advance a populist message, made it clear the middle class is the demographic she is most committed to.

“I believe that our middle class and small businesses come first, and the economy should work not just for the wealthy, but for everyone,” she said in the debate.

The middle class, people who work in small businesses and the wealthy do not comprise “everyone.”

The existence of a robust middle class is an essential part of the national character and should also be a goal for North Carolina. But in order to craft an acceptably just society, merely protecting the existing middle class should not be the state’s elected leaders’ first priority.

Eliminating as much poverty as possible should be a prominent goal of any person running for public office in the state, and any doing so should pursue policies designed to accomplish that end.

North Carolina recently saw its poverty rate fall by a tenth of a percent, but this is not sufficient progress, and North Carolina is still more impoverished than the national average.

According to critics including Gene Nichol, the director of the Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity at UNC, the federal poverty line is woefully inadequate in measuring the pervasiveness of poverty.

And in an interview with The Daily Tar Heel, Tazra Mitchell, a policy analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center, said her research indicated that the poverty line for four-person family should be $52,000 a year, which is more than double the current poverty line.

Tillis has not sufficiently addressed the issue of poverty either. He has led the passage of policies in the N.C. General Assembly that have actively hurt the poor.

One such piece of legislation was 2013’s tax reform bill, which instituted a flat income tax and raised sales taxes. Flat income taxes and increased sales taxes are, in effect, regressive, asking more from North Carolina’s already struggling poorer residents, while easing tax burdens on the wealthy.

Both candidates for U.S. Senate — and all other candidates for public office — should outline proposals for how to deal with North Carolina’s crippling poverty, and they should adjust their rhetoric to reflect this needed shift in priorities.