Poverty in America today is an unrecognized social dilemma that exists everywhere from the nation's largest cities to the rural back country. As Galbraith noted, "People are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the community" (251). By this definition, a substantial number of people in America live outside categories regarded as acceptable by the community. Although it remains largely unnoticed, some attention is being paid to this problem, and some solutions are being offered.
Galbraith divided poverty into two basic categories. Case poverty is related to an individual and his inability to master his environment. Galbraith described case poverty as "the poor farm family with the junk-filled yard and the dirty children playing in the bare dirt" (251). In order for this to be true case poverty, this farmer's yard would have to be in sharp contrast to the well-groomed, cared-for yards of his community. On the contrary, insular poverty is caused, not by the individual, but an external force effecting all who live in that community. Galbraith believed that "most modern poverty is insular in character" (252). .
Although inner-city ghettos are the most common examples of insular poverty, rural slums are still a problem in America. In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Malcolm Margolin described King's County in the San Joaquin Valley of California in such bleak terms as "deserted, shops vacant, many of the houses woefully dilapidated. A quarter of the population lives below the poverty level; the official unemployment rate has hovered intractably at sixteen percent for a decade; the incidence of teenage pregnancy surpasses that of such Third World countries as Namibia and Haiti." According to Margolin, King's County has the richest farming land the world has ever seen, yet the people live in abject poverty. Galbraith discussed similar circumstances, noting that, "West Virginia is well-watered with rich mines and forests and the people are very poor" (252).
