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The history of the end of poverty has just begun

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Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#171

Post by guerrilla »

WalterBright wrote: post #148
noahtallen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings. This can’t be true. Just look at the homelessness situation across the US. No shelter, no income, no sanitation. That is certainly worse quality of life than a king. You must starting your definition of poor quite a ways up the income scale. Maybe you could make make an argument for solidly middle class and above? Even then, there are even a l…

The homeless issue in the US is much more of a drug addiction and alcoholism problem than a down on one's luck problem. Something like 90% of the homeless are in that category. > Who needs plumbing when you have a servant to bring you whatever you want? I like hot showers. I bet you do, too. Besides, what do you think happens to kings when they get a toothache? No anesthetic, nothing to be done except an idiot with a…

> The homeless issue in the US is much more of a drug addiction and alcoholism problem than a down on one's luck problem. Something like 90% of the homeless are in that category.

Where'd you hear that? I've been watching a lot of Soft White Underbelly, interviews with people on Skid Row, and that doesn't really seem to be the case in general although there are a few [1]. Invisible People also does interviews with homeless people more widely and it's even rarer there [2]. Most of the time it just comes down to them not being able to afford to not be homeless and not having anyone to turn to. Without a home, they have no way to keep clean, receive mail or do anything else they need to do in order to keep a job. So it's a catch-22 for most. Without security, they are assaulted, get robbed (of even their basics), arrested and never get to rest, so there's a lot of positive feedback loops that can quickly make things even worse.

1. https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly

2. https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#172

Post by AuthorizedCust »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #147
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to your housing costs isn't increased payments, but cheaper housing. Housing prices are spiraling out of control almost everywhere because we refuse to build more of it through asinine zoning restrictions. High housing costs have such ripple effects on the cost of everything else that it's incredibly frustrating to see everything else but cheaper and more available housing be proposed as a means to help…

I kind of agree with your idea that we should work to decrease housing prices, but the problems with housing are not as simple as remove zoning and building restrictions and watch prices fall. One example. Energy prices are the base input to everything including housing, so if you want to make housing cheaper then better energy policy might be a good start.

It’s not just zoning. It’s things like urban growth boundaries, which arbitrarily contain available land and encourage more dense housing, both of which drive up prices. All so that we can “conserve” an extremely plentiful commodity: open land.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#173

Post by aperson_hello »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #163
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to your housing costs isn't increased payments, but cheaper housing. Housing prices are spiraling out of control almost everywhere because we refuse to build more of it through asinine zoning restrictions. High housing costs have such ripple effects on the cost of everything else that it's incredibly frustrating to see everything else but cheaper and more available housing be proposed as a means to help…

> we refuse to build more of it We also refuse to move to cheaper places. I still think from time to time, "what's stopping 10k smart young people from just moving into empty land?"

In one word: Infrastructure. Roads and water and sewer and electrical lines are expensive.

The better question is: What's stopping those same 10k smart young people from moving to Detroit?

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#174

Post by guerrilla »

WalterBright wrote: post #109
coldtea wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings. Only in some very limited aspects. "Oh, they can eat wild strawberries in winter" or "have access to modern technology whereas a medieval king didn't" and such. The don't have the power of medieval kings, the don't have the wealth of medieval kings, they don't have the estates of medieval kings, the servants and free time of medieval kings, th…

Let's see, they're taller (better nutrition), live in heated / air conditioned dwellings, indoor plumbing, flush toilets, clean water, fresh food year round, no smallpox, far fewer diseases, far better educated, infinitely better medical and dental care, better clothing, TV, phones, ... And they live longer, too.

That sounds like a bunch of rich people stuff to me. If you're poor, you're lucky if you have a place (many don't) let alone heating and air conditioning (are you kidding?), what you can afford to eat is terrible nutritionally and obviously you can't afford medical or dental going into without life-ending debt. And this is when we're talking about the US, not even a poor country.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#175

Post by hatchnyc »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #143
BorisTheBrave wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've really thought about how awful the middle ages are. > The Kings had access to much more information than they cared about already. Royals used to have portraits painted and transported just so they could get an idea who the person their arranged marriage with actually looked like. Bet they'd like Facebook. Louis XIV commissioned a more accurate map of france. It took 4 generations to make. The fi…

People really underestimate just how hard life was in prior ages, especially due to disease. An old person my wife once talked to said that "penicillin changed everything ". It certainly did, along with vaccines and other very effective treatments (including hand-washing!) for once-deadly diseases such as dysentery, typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, mumps, even lepros…

I recently received a copy of a letter with some information about my ancestors from the 1700s. Apparently they owned an inn in a small village in France (it is still there and looks like a relatively nice place to me, so…I guess they were doing ok?). They had 10 children, of whom 6 died before the age of 3. The mother died at age 39, in the last 8 months of her life 3 of her children died.

Yeah, no thanks.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#176

Post by greysphere »

dustintrex wrote: post #158
greysphere wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we should not forget that the same system that abolishes poverty also creates enormous inequality Is this true? The post uses Sweden as the exemplar, which has the lowest poverty (on its chart) and also one of the lowest inequalities as measured by the Gini coeffcient (30). This page [1] seems to offer a handful of data, but nothing that outlines a clear 'higher Gini -> less poverty.' If anything it seems pretty unc…

You could argue that the wealth of Swedes comes from the (indirect) exploitation of the poor. IKEA and H&M are household names that give Swedes and the world cheap clothing and furniture, virtually all of which is made by comparatively much poorer people in China, Bangladesh, etc.

That's an interesting point that measuring inequality as a property of a country may be less meaningful with more and more globalization.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#177

Post by aperson_hello »

__john wrote: post #168
sokoloff wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you doubled federal individual income taxes for everyone in the US, you could pay each adult US citizen around $750/mo in UBI with that increase. If you doubled ALL federal income taxes in the US, you could pay each adult US citizen ~$1500/mo in UBI. And of course, the higher you set UBI, the less point there is to work like a chump and pay 2x current tax rates so other people don’t have to, so fewer people would…

I wonder how many businesses could survive doubling the federal income tax?

Given that businesses are taxed on profit rather than gross, probably nearly all of them. But most would move their headquarters to other countries where they can simply dodge those taxes (like many have already).

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#178

Post by guerrilla »

chrisco255 wrote: post #78
coldtea wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings. Only in some very limited aspects. "Oh, they can eat wild strawberries in winter" or "have access to modern technology whereas a medieval king didn't" and such. The don't have the power of medieval kings, the don't have the wealth of medieval kings, they don't have the estates of medieval kings, the servants and free time of medieval kings, th…

They have access to all the world's information. They can travel across continents in a number of hours for less than two weeks wages. They can push a button on their phone to have gourmet food delivered to their house in under an hour. They can press another button on their phone to fetch a personal driver that will deliver them to any destination. They can choose to drive themselves, of course, and can travel hundr…

> If you had to choose between being Louis XVI or Henry VIII and a middle class American in Cleveland, Ohio, what would you choose?

You moved the goalpost from:

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#179

Post by patmcc »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #163
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to your housing costs isn't increased payments, but cheaper housing. Housing prices are spiraling out of control almost everywhere because we refuse to build more of it through asinine zoning restrictions. High housing costs have such ripple effects on the cost of everything else that it's incredibly frustrating to see everything else but cheaper and more available housing be proposed as a means to help…

> we refuse to build more of it We also refuse to move to cheaper places. I still think from time to time, "what's stopping 10k smart young people from just moving into empty land?"

It's easy to be the ten-thousandth, it's hard to be the first.

Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun

#180

Post by cjbgkagh »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #163
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to your housing costs isn't increased payments, but cheaper housing. Housing prices are spiraling out of control almost everywhere because we refuse to build more of it through asinine zoning restrictions. High housing costs have such ripple effects on the cost of everything else that it's incredibly frustrating to see everything else but cheaper and more available housing be proposed as a means to help…

> we refuse to build more of it We also refuse to move to cheaper places. I still think from time to time, "what's stopping 10k smart young people from just moving into empty land?"

I think Madison Avenue style advertising is far more effective than commonly given credit for. Even if you personally avoid the brain washing, it’s not just you, it’s your family, friends, partners etc. All encouraged to live a more expensive lifestyle.
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