The effects of living in a poor neighborhood

To make that argument you also need to make the argument that UBI is roughly equivalent to section 8 vouchers.

One of the comments I get people who visit India (I'm Indian) is that how is there a slum next to a swanky high rise or classy residential/commercial areas (at least in most big cities). I don't really have an explanation for this (lack of space, cheap labor etc.), but the more I read about economic segregation in the US the more I'm convinced that the inadvertent mixed income neighborhoods in India could be a solution.

If you don't live around people who are less fortunate than you, how can you understand their plight and their point of view? Handing out a few bucks to a homeless guy or cutting a check to a non-profit doesn't create any substantial understanding of the issue.

Obviously there will be opposition to this in the US since people want to live with other people in the same socio-economic strata as themselves. Other reasons: 1) I don't want my property price to depreciate 2) I don't want to live next to "da hood" etc. Until people have a drastic change in attitude this will be ongoing. The article touches on this a bit (section 8 vouchers) but why can't we have neighborhoods with multiple levels of housing options encouraging people with mixed incomes to be around each other.

"Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. (Listen to him) That is what was known as the Populist Movement. (Speak, sir) The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes, sir) and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses (Yeah) into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)."

Dr. King, Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March, 25 March 1965

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...

Huge disclaimer. This is how it was explained to me by my Indian host while I was working in India.

I remarked to someone basically the same thing - not only was it incredible that slums - corrugated-cardboard-house slums - sat right next to the 5 star hotel my company put me up in, but they were relatively safe.

One night we were walking through a slum because an Indian gentleman wanted to expound on my remark, and we came to a square that was decorated with lights and candles and flowers and all sorts of beautiful things. He said the people there had pooled their money, despite having so little. He then told me a lot had to do with the Hindu religion. Most Hindu's believed the position they were born into in life was the place in their spiritual journey they were meant to be, and doing well in that life was fundamental. It's a completely different way of looking at one's poverty.

He remarked that I wouldn't find the same type of sense of community in slums in Muslim parts of India, because their beliefs about their poverty and their lot in life was different.

I don't know if that's true, I didn't travel to any Muslim-dominated areas of India. It may have been true, it may have been his perception, but for that night, he was at least right about this local community, and it was a huge culture shock for a young man in his early 20s who had only seen slums in the US and, potentially more dangerous, Mexico City (and was warned to never, ever go there by my private corporate-sponsored driver).

In that study, does anyone know what the total population was and how they define "poverty"? The numbers reported from the article seem to directly contradict the Census, which reports that less than 30% of Black Americans are in poverty, and that over 50% of Americans in poverty are White.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...