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Why Poverty Persists in America

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#101

Post by simonsarris »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #80
celeritascelery wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a strong correlation between poverty and single parent households[1 2 3]. However it is not a popular thing to talk about because it can feel like “blaming the victim”. But if we ignore it we can’t have productive conversations about how to solve poverty. [1] https://post.ca.gov/portals/0/post_docs/publications/Buildin... [2] https://ifstudies.org/blog/less-poverty-less-prison-more-col... [3] https://www.the…

But is the correlation cause or effect? AFAICT, there is strong evidence that poverty is a leading cause of single parent households.

That doesn't remotely pass the sniff test unless you also think poverty has dramatically increased in the US since the 1950's, when the opposite has happened. We're talking about single parent households skyrocketing during 8 decades of reduced poverty.

If poverty were a leading cause, then there must be some other truly enormous even-more-leading cause that's counteracting the reduction in poverty since then.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#102

Post by thomastjeffery »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #2

https://archive.is/m1iai It seems to be the usual things, education, understanding and knowledge of opportunities, risky behavior, and blind trust in the system waiting for it to live a person up rather than them having to lift themselves up.

It is much more straightforward to illustrate that an individual is failing a system than it is to illustrate the system itself failing the individual.

This is because a system sets the very problem domain for a person to "fail". By virtue of being a system, it is trivial to point to it and say "where" and "how" the person is failing inside it.

People are not so easy to describe. A person is not a simple system. Their needs are not so easy to point at and say "where" and "how" a given system has failed them. Each person is unique, and there are hundreds of millions of us all interacting with one system.

But that complexity is in everything you are asking of people here: What's does it mean to "lift yourself up"? What are the circumstances for "risky behavior", and are there really better options? Is the behavior a problem or result? These questions are all fraught with complexity, because people have complicated needs and complicated circumstances.

What we really need is to set a new problem domain: the needs of each person. But suddenly this becomes some vain moral debate: isn't it selfish?

It is. So is a system.

But what if a person's needs are to be taken care of without having to work hard themselves? Isn't that unfair?

It is. So is a system.

Our system demands we ignore such edge cases, and wave them off as moral failings: the person's fault: but what gives our system the right to say so? After all, this is just a system: it isn't God! We made the damn thing! It doesn't get to tell us what is right and what is wrong. Yet we let it do just that with every person every day.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#103

Post by bryanlarsen »

simonsarris wrote: post #101
bryanlarsen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the correlation cause or effect? AFAICT, there is strong evidence that poverty is a leading cause of single parent households.

That doesn't remotely pass the sniff test unless you also think poverty has dramatically increased in the US since the 1950's, when the opposite has happened. We're talking about single parent households skyrocketing during 8 decades of reduced poverty. If poverty were a leading cause, then there must be some other truly enormous even-more-leading cause that's counteracting the reduction in poverty since then.

If you change your start date your sniff test up a few decades then the sniff test passes.

The number of single parent households has dropped and the number of single teen mothers has dropped dramatically in the past couple of decades and it is visible in the child poverty statistics.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#104

Post by bryanlarsen »

giantg2 wrote: post #89
bryanlarsen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Child Tax Credit of 2021 has been massively successful. That's probably why there's massive pressure to let it expire.

Wasn't the child tax credit change just that it was sent monthly instead of with the tax refund?

It also increased from $2000 to $3600. But yes the change from monthly to annual is also a significantly positive change for poor families.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#105

Post by insane_dreamer »

giantg2 wrote: post #58
insane_dreamer wrote: post #25

Reducing the U.S. military budget by 20% and spending it on poverty relief programs could eliminate poverty to a large degree in the U.S. (not entirely, but that's unrealistic). It's not that the government doesn't have the money or that we're not paying enough in taxes. It's that we're spending it on the wrong things (if we want to have a generally prosperous and stable society).

"and spending it on poverty relief programs could eliminate poverty to a large degree in the U.S." No, it won't, assuming you're talking about existing programs. The current programs aren't designed to fix the problems the recipients face. They're merely designed to keep people alive (food, medical care, etc). They have absolutely nothing to do with getting those people jobs with pay high enough to exit the support s…

I didn't mean existing programs.

As others have pointed out, the Child Tax Credit was a huge boon to low income families, but sadly discontinued since "cash handouts is socialism and in America, we believe in capitalism, darn it!" That's the type of program that could make a difference.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#106

Post by insane_dreamer »

blindriver wrote: post #54
insane_dreamer wrote: post #25

Reducing the U.S. military budget by 20% and spending it on poverty relief programs could eliminate poverty to a large degree in the U.S. (not entirely, but that's unrealistic). It's not that the government doesn't have the money or that we're not paying enough in taxes. It's that we're spending it on the wrong things (if we want to have a generally prosperous and stable society).

Giving people living in generational poverty a handout is the BEST way to keep them enslaved on government largesse. You need to take that money and invest in their neighborhoods and lift the entire neighborhood out of poverty by educating them. My God, how many eons is the saying "Give a man a fish..." been around? Yet the best idea we still have is to hand money out to absolve ourselves of collective guilt? Look at…

> Giving people living in generational poverty a handout is the BEST way to keep them enslaved on government largesse.

in some cases that may be true; but UBI trials have also shown that they make a huge difference in people lives. It's not just the jobless/homeless, it's the working poor.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#107

Post by giantg2 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #104
giantg2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the child tax credit change just that it was sent monthly instead of with the tax refund?

It also increased from $2000 to $3600. But yes the change from monthly to annual is also a significantly positive change for poor families.

The amount I can see being a big help. I have trouble understanding how the monthly part is really any better. In theory, if you get it back at the beginning of the year, or nearly so, then you can budget that for needs throughout the year. The only real benefit would be to the people who aren't responsible enough to budget that and splurge on something because they suddenly have more money. If that's the case, there are bigger issues here that this program will only hide.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#108

Post by giantg2 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #105
giantg2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and spending it on poverty relief programs could eliminate poverty to a large degree in the U.S." No, it won't, assuming you're talking about existing programs. The current programs aren't designed to fix the problems the recipients face. They're merely designed to keep people alive (food, medical care, etc). They have absolutely nothing to do with getting those people jobs with pay high enough to exit the support s…

I didn't mean existing programs. As others have pointed out, the Child Tax Credit was a huge boon to low income families, but sadly discontinued since "cash handouts is socialism and in America, we believe in capitalism, darn it!" That's the type of program that could make a difference.

Did it really make a difference? The amount increased and it went to monthly payments instead of yearly. But all the claims I saw about it were linked to necessities like how many children were adequately fed (which the free lunch program could possibly be a confoundingnl factor) and not to any longterm benefit like actually moving up to middle class (which we are discussing here). In fact, middle class and wealthy families benefited the most while poor families recieved the least.

I could be wrong, but one of the biggest deceptions of the program seemed to be how many people were "lifted out of poverty" simply because monthly payments were included as monthly income whereas the lump payment before would not be, thus lifting peoples monthly income above the poverty level even though it was largely the same amount overall.

The program may have been beneficial, but expanding it would mean lining the pockets of the middle class and rich more than the poor without drastic changes. And we have no data to show it truly reducing poverty.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#109

Post by RestlessMind »

aexon wrote: post #92
bryanlarsen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death due to starvation occured in North America prior to Columbus. If that isn't a symptom of poverty I don't know what is.

Poverty in this context is the lack of financial mobility within a given economic body. If some people starve while others don't because they can't afford the food, that's a socially instituted poverty. Starvation that is equally suffered because there IS no food isn't the kind of poverty being discussed in the article. It's a lack of necessary resources suffered equally independent of financial mobility. We can argu…

With that kind of absurd definition, I'd rather take poverty in the contemporary USA where hardly anyone dies of hunger over some egalitarian society in the past where it was common to starve to death.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#110

Post by giantg2 »

giantg2 wrote: post #86
slowmovintarget wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That downward pressure is from outsourcing. Unions can organize all they want. Politicians can raise the minimum wage all they want. Those things don't fix the main problem that the making-things-here jobs that support wage increases across the board are absent.

I've always found it interesting that there are politicians that claim to be pro-union and pro-environment, but then also claim to be free trade. Outsourcing means you lose union jobs and they typically end up in countries with worse environmental protections. I've always found it wild how contradictory those positions have been.

Why disagree?
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