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The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

nytimes.com

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Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#121

Post by orangecat »

pen2l wrote: post #98
rayiner wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inner city public schools are some of the most well-funded in the county. Washington DC is almost entirely "inner city" public schools (I.e. Almost all the student population is low income) and has the highest per student spending. The wealthy suburb of DC where I grew up spends $13,500 per student per year. That's a lot less than DC or Baltimore or Chicago, all of which have 70-85% low-income students, and only mode…

So what's going on then? Exactly how are inner cities misusing funds, and what are wealthy suburbs doing right that they're able to get such bang for their buck? Also, are you certain that wealthy suburbs are spending that little? I know some rich families in NYC who are sending their kids in high school to schools that ask above $50k. It's a straight pipeline to Ivy league, and from what I understand there are good…

what are wealthy suburbs doing right that they're able to get such bang for their buck

Teaching students that live in wealthy suburbs.

there are good reasons this high school asks $50k -- they have top of the line 3d printers, souped up computers, etc.

Those things probably account for $5k of value, with the other $45k being the ability to list the school on the kid's Ivy league application.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#122

Post by rdtsc »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #116
rdtsc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it is not that simple. People have opinions about welfare without even interacting with individuals taking advantage of it. Have you directly stopped and talked to those people buying rugs? Or at a restaurant? Are you sure they are not just hipster kids wearing second-hand clothes but who might work at Google or have a rich daddy with a trust fund?. Maybe you did, but I doubt it. So a lot of opinions and "feel…

The OP's post when read carefully was actually a lot more nuanced than you give her credit for.

Can you expand a bit on that?

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#123

Post by Futurebot »

sageikosa wrote: post #113

So why not charity? Why must helping the poor be a government function?

That's because it doesn't work on a large scale. It especially doesn't work during periods of crisis:

http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-voluntarism-fantasy.p...

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/30/business/la-fi-hiltz...

http://www.salon.com/2009/03/16/turse/

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#124

Post by JupiterMoon »

rdtsc wrote: post #122
JupiterMoon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP's post when read carefully was actually a lot more nuanced than you give her credit for.

Can you expand a bit on that?

> Most sensible Americans are also fine with those same forms of "public assistance" being bestowed upon those same sections of the public for even extended durations of their lifetimes. I think sensible Americans get that the ill effects of an impoverished childhood & other social curses can stretch for the better part of a generation, if not more.

This stuck out for me.

I got the impression that she has mixed feelings about assistance programs but recognises their importance whilst wanting them to be applied fairly.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#125

Post by oldmanjay »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #111
dang wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446968 and marked it off-topic.

May I enquire why you censored me? I've noticed you doing this more and more with posts that don't agree with what I can only assume must be your point of view.

you've redefined "censored" there. HN is pretty clear about discouraging unhelpful comments, and your comment was definitely not useful. you can assume HN readers are relatively intelligent and understand that a conservative think tank promotes conservative opinions. you can't assume we all accept that as normatively evil.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#126

Post by spacemanmatt »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #109
delinka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all you'll ever get is anecdote if you look in the U.S. The "welfare professionals" (let's define this term to mean those that know precisely the minimum of effort to maintain the illusion of 'seeking gainful employment' in order to keep their handouts) keep a low-profile and compartmentalize well. Going to the welfare office today? Don't wear new/"in" clothing, don't take the iDevice with. Out and about socially…

Yup, you definitely sound like you have never been poor.

Sorry, that's only my 2nd most anticipated downvote from a parent-poster.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#127

Post by DanBC »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #126
spacemanmatt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, you definitely sound like you have never been poor.

Sorry, that's only my 2nd most anticipated downvote from a parent-poster.

The parent poster cannot downvote your comment, as you cannot downvote this comment.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#128

Post by theworstshill »

err4nt wrote: post #4

I grew up in Canada and went to school with rural kids, military kids, and french kids. My family wasnt in poverty but we didnt have many of the nice things others had. Around grade 5 I began to notice how we never had money for a TV, but all the welfare kids I knew had TVs in their rooms. i noticed how I had to do chores, work, save, and help neighbours to afford to buy a game console and video games, and all my fri…

You're barking up the wrong tree though - iphones and TVs are fixed costs. I'm willing to bed vast majority of the poor spend vast majority of their money on housing, food and clothing, although a small minority might actually spend it on crack. And of course, a small minority will attempt to keep on welfare for as long as possible.

Would you feel better if they do not have iphones? After all, they should know their place in the system, no?

Do you even know the actual figures? How much does a single welfare recipient get per month?

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#129

Post by delinka »

socialist_coder wrote: post #101
delinka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all you'll ever get is anecdote if you look in the U.S. The "welfare professionals" (let's define this term to mean those that know precisely the minimum of effort to maintain the illusion of 'seeking gainful employment' in order to keep their handouts) keep a low-profile and compartmentalize well. Going to the welfare office today? Don't wear new/"in" clothing, don't take the iDevice with. Out and about socially…

LOL, so it's a conspiracy and all the poor people are in on it!

I never said all of them; I said "welfare professionals" for which I don't have a count. If you want a count from my anecdote, let's say 15. I can't even guess a percentage because I didn't sit at the welfare office all day observing and counting people, nor following them around to observe their public lives and behavior. I'm sharing my own anecdote so you can see how it might be impossible to find actual data on this phenomenon.

Certainly there are people who "conspire" to do bad things. Sometimes the "conspiracy" is one guy. Sometimes it's a small group. The only thing I can say with absolutely certainty is that the system will be gamed. How much depends on data that you're just not going to find.

Re: The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor

#130

Post by rdtsc »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #124
rdtsc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand a bit on that?

> Most sensible Americans are also fine with those same forms of "public assistance" being bestowed upon those same sections of the public for even extended durations of their lifetimes. I think sensible Americans get that the ill effects of an impoverished childhood & other social curses can stretch for the better part of a generation, if not more. This stuck out for me. I got the impression that she has mixed feeli…

Thanks JupiterMoon!

Yeah I agree with that point they made. I just didn't explicitly say it. I should have probably.

What I focused on was the idea that it often boils down to a feeling. And I agree with that too, but I wanted to point that it is important how people arrive at those feelings.

GP showed some example, but I didn't find those convincing. I think a lot of what people believe and think gets acquired and filtered through 3rd party sources (media, friends, parents, teacher etc). And even though a lot of people have strong feelings about welfare, they might not have gotten those from their own experiences.

And then of course there are whole industries (marketing, pr, propaganda) whose goal is manage feeling, perceptions and ideas in others.

Anyway, to recap I didn't disagree with their main idea, just wanted to expand on one part of it.

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