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The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

nytimes.com

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Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#231

Post by sidlls »

mschuster91 wrote: post #226
sidlls wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not likely armed. Fewer than half of all households have even a single gun. Most of those aren't households where the gun owners carry in public: they're the kind of household where the "responsible gun owner" leaves his kit where the two year old can get it and accidentally shoot his 6 month old sister to death.

> They are not likely armed. But definitely way, way more likely than in any other civilized country in the world, and that's the problem.

It's a problem, agreed. It's not "the" problem. Police in other countries don't have the same problem with individuals they apprehend that are armed. So I'd argue the prevalence of firearms is problematic, but the militarization of our police forces is much more so.

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#232

Post by 6t6t6t6 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #32

This is the other side of globalization. Globalization is super nice when you're secure in your job, "hey everything is getting cheaper!" but when your job is the one in the crosshairs what you're feeling is a pressure that is pushing the living standard of the third world and yours together. That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completel…

For me, this is a no-brainer. Free-market is an extremely powerful tool, but Free-market itself does not have heart or any respect for Human Rights whatsoever.

If we want to create societies where Human Rights are respected, Free-market need to be operated under constraints. Yes, those constraints will slow growth and, maybe, some rich people will be less rich, but the other option is Neo-Feudalism and Barbarie.

So, the question is: how much injustice are we willing to tolerate for the sake of growth? Every society has a different answer, but you can easily see different models in Japan, US and Europe.

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#233

Post by DrScump »

lambda wrote: post #105
bcatanzaro wrote: post #17

I don’t understand how this is possible. We have a lot of programs to help people - food assistance, housing and health care assistance, disability... Are these benefits being counted when we say they live on $4/day?

Most of these programs require you to be able to clear the bureaucratic hurdles to be eligible for them; welfare reform in the '90s made many welfare programs temporary or added work requirements to them (like TANF, which is "temporary assistance for needy families). This continues today, with the Trump administration allowing states to add a work requirement for Medicaid, which in many cases would then make people i…

  but too little to get Obamacare subsidies
That makes no sense; you can't make "too little" to be subsidized. People making just over the MediCal threshold pay as little as $5/mo in CA, with the other $350-580 being subsidized (they aren't even limited to Bronze policies!).

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#234

Post by acdha »

moreorless wrote: post #127
kevingadd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity is a completely different subject from poverty. They're both subjects worth addressing. Poor black people in the deep south and poor white people in the deep south still live different experiences even if they're both having a hard time. Rich african americans get treated differently from rich white people. This isn't a contest. We need to fix everything.

> Rich african americans get treated differently from rich white people. I am neither a rich white male nor a rich black African American. Can you please elaborate on how they are treated differently?

Ta-Nehisi Coates had a tragic example of a college friend who was casually killed by a police officer:

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461337958/ta-nehisi-coates-on...

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/6967/

The gist is that being a college educated, affluent son of a doctor wasn’t enough to avoid being seen as a dangerous criminal. That simply doesn’t happen to rich white men at anything like the same rates – the average mass shooter is arrested with more care than that!

Sometimes this is national news (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_contr...) but other times it’s just constant low-level stuff. As a white guy, I’ve never had a cab driver avoid picking me up; that’s very much not true for many black men even if they’re much better dressed.

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#235

Post by lambda »

DrScump wrote: post #233
lambda wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these programs require you to be able to clear the bureaucratic hurdles to be eligible for them; welfare reform in the '90s made many welfare programs temporary or added work requirements to them (like TANF, which is "temporary assistance for needy families). This continues today, with the Trump administration allowing states to add a work requirement for Medicaid, which in many cases would then make people i…

but too little to get Obamacare subsidies That makes no sense; you can't make "too little" to be subsidized. People making just over the MediCal threshold pay as little as $5/mo in CA, with the other $350-580 being subsidized (they aren't even limited to Bronze policies!).

That's in CA, which has expanded Medicaid to cover the gap.

In states which haven't, you can make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to qualify for Obamacare subsidies: http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/obamacare-medic...

This happened because the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn't be compelled to expand Medicaid to cover the gap, which the original legislation had depended on to make the plan work. So states which did not expand Medicaid have an income range in which you can't get Medicaid or Obamacare subsidies.

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#236

Post by woodruffw »

simonsarris wrote: post #144
woodruffw wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we go again. Race correlates strongly with socioeconomic background. Insofar as diversity initiatives are actually attempting to improve the lives of disadvantaged people in this country, arguments like yours amount to relative privation. Heart disease kills more people than lung cancer, but there's nothing wrong with raising money to research lung cancer.

> Race correlates strongly with socioeconomic background. Yeah all he's saying is that socioeconomic background correlates even more strongly with socioeconomic background. And keeping it in economic terms has the additional plus of keeping the correlation consistent as times change.

Sorry for the late response.

> Yeah all he's saying is that socioeconomic background correlates even more strongly with socioeconomic background.

This is a reasonable observation, but the ought that's implicit in it is not. Heart disease correlates more strongly with death than lung cancer; does that mean it's wrong in some sense to donate to lung cancer research over heart disease?

To make my opinion more material: individuals have the right to make independent decisions within a broad moral framework. It's not wrong for individuals to personalize the good they do (in this case, in the form of racial justice) so long as what they're doing really is good.

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#237

Post by kthejoker2 »

e40 wrote: post #54
dictum wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To wahsd (dead comment): I get your point, but you should ask if the people are poor because they vote Democrat, or they vote Democrat because they're poor (and see themselves better represented by the Democrat platform)? Maybe not even/just poor, but excluded from local economy/politics due to race, gender, ethnicity, not being a member of the old boys' club, etc.

We've all seen the articles about Republican controlled cities putting homeless people on buses for Berkeley and other destinations in CA. wahsd is clueless.

Yeah, no, it happens in San Francisco, Portland, and New York, too.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

Re: The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

#238

Post by kthejoker2 »

xya3453 wrote: post #192
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You end up making it harder for non diverse candidates and raising their bar. You're right but that's fine. The argument though is that society has already imposed a 'higher bar' on "diverse candidates" (let's just be honest and call them minorities and the poor.) Think of it like this. A poor black girl named Keycia lives at home with her single mother and three siblings. She's studious but attends a bad public sch…

In an alternative universe, Chad is a poor white boy who lives at home with his single mother and three siblings. He's studious but attends a bad public school, he works after school to help out at home, he takes care of his little brothers and sisters. In this universe Keycia is a black girl from an upper middle class family. She's also studious and also attends a public school but a good one with AP/IB classes, dua…

I'm perfectly happy for Stanford to only be allowed to educate poor students with a racial population proportional to the US at large.
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