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Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

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Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#71

I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, wa…

A possible explanation for what you've experienced can be found in the just-world hypothesis [0], or in the belief that we live in a meritocracy. It is simply a foundational part of many people's worldview and nothing sort of experiencing similar traumas will make them reconsider.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#72
post #28
post #12

Funny that at the point high quality LED tv's and digital signals come onstream, the world moves from Free-to-Air into pay-to-watch. So the poor can afford amazing TVs but cannot afford to buy the content we rich get to watch. Absolute poverty improves but relative poverty goes backward is a constant. Taxing cigarettes to contain cancer risks is a no brainer, which rich people can buy themselves out from but poor add…

I don't have cable and use on-the-air TV and the image quality is better than before. They work find with digital TVs.

OTA works fine but you can't have a water cooler conversation about PBS the same way you can about boobs-and-dragons.

If you want to talk about dragons-and-boobs you have to pay somebody to let you see 'em.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#73
I think the question should not be "Why are there so many poor in USA", but "Why does it suck so much to be poor in USA". I believe that the urban layout and exorbitant healthcare costs are the main issues. If poor neighborhoods were walkable and had cheap supermarkets with fresh produce then you wouldn't need a car, and the density would mean that you have plenty of potential friends within walking distance so you wont be bored. If healthcare was cheap like in Europe then it could have been government funded so that poor people wouldn't have to worry about getting sick more than anyone else. Also with free healthcare and no car there are basically no big large random expenditures, so you don't have to worry about anything on the economic front.

That style of life is not a dream, that is how most poor people live in Europe and I assume also in Japan. There are therefore a lot of people who could pull themselves out of poverty, but they don't since they are fine with doing a simpler job or work less for less pay since it doesn't suck to be poor. I am one of them, I have lived below the poverty line most of my life. I didn't chase money, but I happened to get a good job and started making loads of it. But I still continued that lifestyle even when I began making lots of money. I see no reason to spend more, I wasn't unhappy when I didn't have money so all it would result in is me having to work more years before I can retire.

Sometimes I wonder if Americans want it to suck to be poor just to ensure that people like me work harder. Neither the left nor the right seems to want to fix this.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#74
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these…

For what it's worth, the ambition on the left over here (in the US) is to eliminate means testing for programs as much as possible. Healthcare problems? Free healthcare for everyone, no forms required. No home? Everyone gets a free / low cost house. We aim to do much more than that (give control of the economy to the people), but a robust welfare state is a good start.

Those are compelling policy handwaves, but they really aren't going to the heart of the issue; which is someone in the broader conversation is basically misrepresenting reality to an astounding degree. The OECD reports that the US already spends more on healthcare per capita than any other nation by a substantial margin [0].

If it were believed that the ambitious left were going to implement free healthcare by bringing actual costs down into line with the rest of the world they could probably muster bipartisan support in a few years. But I bet their plans don't do that - eliminating means testing and more handouts are are just avoiding the real issues.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean relative poverty. Many years ago, I saw a study that indicated that less than 1/2 of 1% of Americans were poor by the standards of India. Even homeless people in the US typically ate better than people classified as poor in India. But we still have homeless people here in the US. They typically have serious personal problems, such as serious medical conditions. Being homeless in the US is a genuine hardshi…

The average social security check is $1461 ( https://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/social-security/ar... ). There are plenty of places in small town USA that you can rent for $600-$700 a month and have money left over.

My wife is disabled. We don't get checks for 17k instead we get 10k+ in premiums + medical expenses + 3k in taxes out of what might be 34k gross 21K net.

You can be in fact disabled but not disabled enough to receive much in the way of help.

You can easily be poor but not poor enough to have your medical needs paid for and be poorer than if you were barely working and sponging off the system.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#76

I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, wa…

Where does this "Europe is awesome place to live" come from?

I live in Germany, I got ear wax, the doctor waiting line was more than a week, so I developed tinnitus problem in a couple of days because of the wax (I don't use any headphone, I don't work in any noisy place so they don't have any effect). Insurance didn't cover medicine cost, so I paid it in cash while I was a student. Then the doctor said, it's too late and now I have to deal with a permanent tinnitus disorder for rest of my life.

Do you see how awesome social security is in Europe? #StopSpreadingBullshit

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What point are you trying to make here? How is the average retiree's income from Social Security relevant to the broader issue of poverty and homelessness among people of all ages?

From the parent post: If you live on Social Security as your only income and can no longer work, we don't have any market based housing for you and many government housing projects have wait lists that are years long.

Maybe all the poor people aren't too stupid to figure this out but have various complicating factors that often tag along with poverty like bad credit or losing their home due to poverty or job loss which is often described as a "poor rental history". It also assumes that one can find housing so cheap in areas where other people in your household can also find work.

Lets be charitable and assume that poor people aren't struggling because they are too stupid to find cheaper places to live.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#78
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, the ambition on the left over here (in the US) is to eliminate means testing for programs as much as possible. Healthcare problems? Free healthcare for everyone, no forms required. No home? Everyone gets a free / low cost house. We aim to do much more than that (give control of the economy to the people), but a robust welfare state is a good start.

Those are compelling policy handwaves, but they really aren't going to the heart of the issue; which is someone in the broader conversation is basically misrepresenting reality to an astounding degree. The OECD reports that the US already spends more on healthcare per capita than any other nation by a substantial margin [0]. If it were believed that the ambitious left were going to implement free healthcare by bringi…

That's exactly what the left wants, but they are facing bipartisan opposition from both Republicans and the majorty of centrist Democracts, both of whom receive large donations from the massive insurance industry that stands to lose everything.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#79
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these…

For what it's worth, the ambition on the left over here (in the US) is to eliminate means testing for programs as much as possible. Healthcare problems? Free healthcare for everyone, no forms required. No home? Everyone gets a free / low cost house. We aim to do much more than that (give control of the economy to the people), but a robust welfare state is a good start.

Imagine there was a button you could push that would give every single person everything you're mentioning - a free house, free healthcare, and all the things you're not mentioning - free education, free sustenance, free childcare, free longterm paid pa/maternal leave, guaranteed high paying jobs, etc. Who wouldn't push this button? I think every single individual, right/left/libertarian/liberal/conservative or whatever other identity would. The reason people are critical of ideas such as you are mentioning is not because they don't want them, but because they do not think they are economically viable.

To get a ballpark for economic factors, let's try to figure out what the total value of absolutely all goods and services transacted, at market value, per year in the US and then divide that by the national population. I think if you asked the average person what they thought this figure would be, most would put it in the hundreds of thousands. Some might even put it in the millions. Fortunately it's really easy to figure out exactly what the answer is. It's precisely what the GDP/capita captures. It's about $62,000. And we're already chopping 27% of that in taxes to fund our current [generally underfunded] programs, so you can drop it down to $45k.

That is, as hard as it is to believe, the entire economic product of the country. Our unimaginable achievements - both social and personal can make it hard to realize how little we actually have. So you need to fund all the grand ideas you have in proportion to this keeping in mind that it doesn't mean you have $45k per person to spend. That is the entire economic product of the country.

This is why it's much easier to have a grand vision than to actually think about implementing it. Taxing the rich is hardly a solution because it again misses out on just how little we really have. If you go and just take 100% of Bezos' wealth from him, all $150 billion, that works out to about $470 per person - for one year. And he is exponentially richer than most rich. By the time you get to stripping the 20th richest person of all his wealth, you're down to $10s of dollars. Not too long after that, you're down to pennies per person. And that is, again, just money for a single year. These grand ideas need neverending annual funding.

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This is why even in places like Norway, which has extensive national wealth due to a mixture of a small population and large sums of nationalized oil money, it's not just free everything for everybody. Solving all of these issues requires much more than just a desire to solve them. The reason I mention this is because I think this shared desire is something that often gets lost in today's increasingly polarized world. We all want the same things; it's just we disagree on how to get there.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#80
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these…

For what it's worth, the ambition on the left over here (in the US) is to eliminate means testing for programs as much as possible. Healthcare problems? Free healthcare for everyone, no forms required. No home? Everyone gets a free / low cost house. We aim to do much more than that (give control of the economy to the people), but a robust welfare state is a good start.

Oh my god, I just read news about some "centrist" Democrats arguing against universal single-payer healthcare on the grounds that some segment of the working population already gets a nice healthcare package as a benefit, and somehow it would be unfair to those people if everyone was eligible to reasonable medical care. I mean, with Democrats like that, why do you even need Republicans?
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