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Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

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Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#51

Post by EdSharkey »

mikeash wrote: post #19
Consultant32452 wrote: post #4

Staying out of poverty is simple. By in large it takes three things: graduate high school, maintain employment, and don't have children out of wedlock. These three things are important to remember whenever we're discussing social policy. Any policy that subsidizes or encourages people to not do those three things is a social policy that behaves like a poverty factory.

Just get a job! Brilliant! Why don't all these poor people think of that?

Sarcastic, but you willfully lack imagination.

There are urchins who choose not to work and do just fine. It's fairly straightforward to scam Social Security Disability for main income and then collect EBT, food stamps, and get some housing in the projects.

It's not a great life, but it's a living, and there's plenty more help to pay for phone and utilities. If one is wicked, then they can sprinkle in some identity theft or plain old theft to pay for luxuries like a car or the newest iphone!

Work does suck, I can sympathize with wanting to avoid it. And if you're constantly told you'll never make anything of yourself and that you're a perpetual victim from childhood, well that'll beat you down too. I just don't buy the assumption that every impoverished soul is noble.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#52

Post by crpatino »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #4

Staying out of poverty is simple. By in large it takes three things: graduate high school, maintain employment, and don't have children out of wedlock. These three things are important to remember whenever we're discussing social policy. Any policy that subsidizes or encourages people to not do those three things is a social policy that behaves like a poverty factory.

By the same logic, you could reach 100 years old by being scrupulous with your health, avoiding any mistakes while performing risky activities, and fleeing from any violence comming your way. It is kind of neat advice in retrospective, but it fails to address the fact that most people is unable to keep doing it flawlessly for decades.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#53

Post by vixen99 »

tcbawo wrote: post #14
jimmies wrote: post #2

Regarding blaming each other for their misfortune, I have an anecdotal experience I want to share. I don't know if that's just me or this phenomenal happens to everyone else as well: That's the "fuck you/who cares/deal with it" attitude. The "fuck you" attitude can be summarized as people won't go the extra mile to help other people. It is the non-sympathy, non-action I get from everyday people (including the police)…

I grew up in a small town in the Midwest and one thing I've noticed is income stratification has had an impact. It used to be more prevalent for your police officer, postman, waitress, or hairdresser to be able to afford to live in your town. Their kids would go to school with your kids, or you might go to the same church. But a lot more families struggle while others have done very well. I see a huge disparity in in…

Class divergence is the topic of 'Coming Apart' by Charles Murray.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#54

Post by dlwdlw »

I'm not sure the proportion, but there do exist certain people who are self destructive yet also self entitled. It's the state of mind that drives a person to gamble everything they own. Either the universe agrees with then and they do become the greatest person they think they are, or more likely, they fail and wallow in rage. In a way, it's like a child throwing a tantrum, threatening all sorts of things, knowing that their mom will break down and acquisce to the demands. In the real world though, this mom doesn't exist. Some have pity for the child's heart that seaches for meaning and love in a world without a mother, most see the child's tantrum and are just annoyed at the immaturity.

The most institutionalized mother replacement is God, the infallible mother of mother's. A pet theory if mine is that religion served as society's safety net in this manner and was incredibly important when only a minority of people had access to knowledge as opposed to the majority today. Knowledge opens the doors to self actualization through various means. Without it you are limited to blue collar repetitive jobs, non-creative work. Without this self actualization path, it's very easy to fall into a spiral of drugs, alcohol, hookers, etc...

Online Games are the modern day less dangerous replacement for these shallow meaning makers. It's usage as a stabilizer for the poor is especially apparent in the Asian countries.

Note that money in the end will always be spent on meaning regardless of rich or poor. . The poor don't save because they can't see what to do with it. The immediate meaning makers of drugs and alcohol are much more achievable. I save and go to Costco because I know moneys power to transform into different degrees of freedom and creative pursuits. Others desire a family. Some desire an empire, a middle finger to God. (Pop culture is the main stabilizing force for the middle class)

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#55

Post by haberman »

rndmize wrote: post #50
haberman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nov 7, 2016 "fact": Hillary Clinton has a 98.2% chance of winning the presidency: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-wi... There are facts, but it does them no service to overstate what the evidence actually says.

What part of this is a fact? I'd argue this is literally the opposite of a fact - it's a model and a prediction based on it. Those are things that may be based on facts, but that in no way makes the theorized conclusion a fact. https://xkcd.com/605/

Nearly every statistical fact anyone ever cites does exactly the same thing. When a fact says something like "13% of people are poor," they don't investigate every single person and determine whether they are poor. They create what is intended to be a representative sample, then they create a model that extrapolates the sample set to the entire population. They predict that their sample is representative and that a measure of the whole population would match the sample.

The only difference here is that there's no "poverty election day" where the entire population goes to register their poverty level. So we never actually get to see if the prediction was correct!

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#58

Post by jopsen »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #4

Staying out of poverty is simple. By in large it takes three things: graduate high school, maintain employment, and don't have children out of wedlock. These three things are important to remember whenever we're discussing social policy. Any policy that subsidizes or encourages people to not do those three things is a social policy that behaves like a poverty factory.

That's far from enough... But regardless.

The discussion of who is at fault for poverty is pointless. We should never tolerate poverty regardless of how it came to be.

The discussion has to be: Can we afford to have poverty?

We need people to be productive members of society. This can be achieved by making good choices easier to make. Making it easier to get back on your feet when you get down...

Health care, mental health, social security are ways to help people become productive members of society.

You can't afford not to help people! You can't afford to tolerate poverty!

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#59

Post by Dylan16807 »

haberman wrote: post #30
droopyEyelids wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know... there are such things as facts. In 2014, "Vulnerable Populations" made up 80% of the poor in the USA. That essentially means children and the elderly. On top of that, it's like another 7% of people that are in poverty that are fully employed! http://www.demos.org/blog/10/23/15/2014-vulnerable-populatio...

Nov 7, 2016 "fact": Hillary Clinton has a 98.2% chance of winning the presidency: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-wi... There are facts, but it does them no service to overstate what the evidence actually says.

Sure, if you want to ignore that 538 put the odds as a toss-up.

But the types of statistics here are fundamentally different. If you look at the huffington post numbers as how many people will vote for a candidate, then even their prediction is pretty close to correct. A few million votes make the difference between 50% and 99%, but a few million votes is a reasonably tight accuracy range for "how many". Similarly I would expect something like the 80% number to be pretty close to correct, at least based on the definitions chosen.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#60

Post by haberman »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #59
haberman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nov 7, 2016 "fact": Hillary Clinton has a 98.2% chance of winning the presidency: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/polls-hillary-clinton-wi... There are facts, but it does them no service to overstate what the evidence actually says.

Sure, if you want to ignore that 538 put the odds as a toss-up. But the types of statistics here are fundamentally different. If you look at the huffington post numbers as how many people will vote for a candidate, then even their prediction is pretty close to correct. A few million votes make the difference between 50% and 99%, but a few million votes is a reasonably tight accuracy range for "how many". Similarly I…

I don't especially doubt the 80% statistic. I do think it's far overstating the evidence to say that it proves the author's thesis. I think it is far harder to prove the causes of poverty than it is to prove the incidence of poverty. I probably could have been more clear about this. The fault I find with the HuffPo prediction is overconfidence and under-skepticism about the ability of their data to say what they claimed it did.
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