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Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

nytimes.com

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Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#181

Post by coldtea »

skookumchuck wrote: post #110
blub wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've seen is irrelevant, when on the whole the lower and middle classes suffer due to lack of a social safety net and an extreme form of capitalism. There's a large amount of news articles which describe the situation of labour in the US. If things keep going like this, those millionares will soon have to build their own fortress cities to keep all the undesirable and disgruntled poor people away. The fact tha…

I know people who profess to be victims, too. I'll tick off the choices they made that got them where they are. Of course, they get angry with me. Nobody wants to hear the truth. Where I am, the good and the bad, is nearly entirely the sum of my choices. For example, if you floss or not eventually has a large effect on your health. Ditto for the amount you choose to drink, smoke, and exercise. Where you choose to liv…

>I know people who profess to be victims, too. I'll tick off the choices they made that got them where they are. Of course, they get angry with me. Nobody wants to hear the truth.

Who told you poor people are capable of as good choices as richer people?

When you live life in easy mode is easy to make the right choices.

It's also easy to see some people who managed to play in hard mode and win, and extrapolate to everybody (especially if you don't account for lucky breaks and mitigating factors in their course).

But because a handful managed to win in hard mode, it doesn't make it as easy as those who play in easy mode, nor it makes it any more statistically possible for the masses to win the hard mode gameplay they were dealt.

>Where I am, the good and the bad, is nearly entirely the sum of my choices.

LOL. http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

(One is even tempted to wish upon people saying hat a couple some serious accident or decease that kills their savings or takes their job, or puts them into depression, or have them tend to another family member, and such, to see whether their tune will remain the same...)

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#182

Post by Tade0 »

antocv wrote: post #178
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #170

America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything. And yet we have such terrible poverty. When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simple…

Well at least the Americans are not standing in queues. Seriously, I wonder why this scarcity for quite many is not highlighted as failure of capitalism, why the bailout of banks with tax-money is not marked as "capitalism and free market has failed" just like communism is?

Too early. Communism failed relatively fast so it was pretty visible.

Capitalism is failing in a slow, insidious way.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#183

Post by toofy »

candiodari wrote: post #168
mc32 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.5% is a lot of pressure on housing --which is quite inelastic in demand but also very slow to respond to increased demand.

Furthermore those 3.5% are not divided randomly. On the lowest rung of society, they're at least 50%. The higher you go the lower the percentage, and it drops off pretty fast.

Sorry, I'm confused by your statement, are you saying "at least" 50% of the lower class are immigrants?

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#184

Post by ekianjo »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #170

America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything. And yet we have such terrible poverty. When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simple…

Terrible poverty? Well much less poverty than in about 95 percent of the planet so everything is relative.

Now, the market cannot solve a problem that is linked to human nature. Humans like living in dense areas rather than on the top of mountains, so space will be more and more expansive as density increase. Nothing unusual. Density also brings more jobs and more commerce so this is a cycle that goes with it.

This being said if you care nothing about living in a modern civilization it is perfectly possible to live far away from cities with very minimum expenses and a lot of land. Thats just not what people want.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#185

Post by travelbuffoon »

antocv wrote: post #178
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #170

America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything. And yet we have such terrible poverty. When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simple…

Well at least the Americans are not standing in queues. Seriously, I wonder why this scarcity for quite many is not highlighted as failure of capitalism, why the bailout of banks with tax-money is not marked as "capitalism and free market has failed" just like communism is?

Really? SF is the worst place I've seen for queues, but Americans also spend plenty of time in TSA and CBP queues around the country.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#186

Post by badminton1 »

candiodari wrote: post #165
badminton1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of one AGM-114 Hellfire missile is $100,000+. Most likely they will be used to blow up some random guy in the middle east for no reason. The cost of a 1 liter water bag at a hospital is $500. Walmart evaded $70+ billion dollars in tax. They made that money by keeping all their workforce on medicaid. That's where you money is going to, not $6 an hour fruit pickers spending all their money in food.

You say that as if those products are interchangeable. You cannot simply take those missiles away and buy 2000 water bags. The US military, especially, is the largest job and training program anywhere in the world, including the military industrial complex (most of those military contracts, incidentally, do not just come with jobs, but with demands that those companies hire x0000 (3 or 4 zeros) in the states that hav…

It is true that the defense and aerospace sector employs larges amount of people and drives significant amount of R&D. But getting inefficient for them became highly profitable and the F-35 JSF is the prime example of that.

Then, if fruit pickers made $20 an hour, you would be getting all of your fruit from Mexico/Central America, and fruit and all products made from it would be more expensive.

Other jobs like gardening and landscaping would simply either not be done, or get done by property owners themselves. Now they will be tired, be less productive at work and have less time for their kids, or, see their property value drop while their local crime rate goes up.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#187

Post by toofy »

_nalply wrote: post #144
xupybd wrote: post #46

>American productivity has increased by 77 percent, while hourly pay has grown by only 12 percent Yes but where has this happened. I suspect it's happened through automation. Meaning that the productivity gains might not be per employee and might not easily translate into the pockets of workers.

Probably the gains went to the owners, i. e. shareholders. Or, perhaps, David Graeber wrote in his book «Bullshit Jobs» that at least a part of the gains inflates the bullshit part of businesses, i. e. more bullshit managers are employed. Of course this means that the hourly pay would rise. I don't know.

I really need to pick this book up, I've seen it mentioned so many times since it came out.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#188

Post by acchow »

whatever1 wrote: post #94
viraptor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But what does this have to do with poverty levels discussed here?

That you cannot call capitalism any successful economic system. China proved that a protectionist model with colossal government intervention can successfully reduce poverty.

I believe we mean "capitalism" as in capital is held by private owners in search of profit instead of owned by the state. Not necessarily free trade with other countries.

China has a sort of partial capitalism in that some big companies are 50% owned by the state.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#189

Post by ojii »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #170

America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything. And yet we have such terrible poverty. When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simple…

> Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

Maybe "the market" is not a good tool to solve inequality.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#190

Post by acchow »

brickcitymang wrote: post #56
acchow wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no poverty before America?

Poverty itself can be caused by many things. But poverty in the most powerful country on Earth is not for a lack of resources.

There was no poverty in Ancient Rome?
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