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Why Poverty Persists in America

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#121

Post by tptacek »

yucky wrote: post #119
kasey_junk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Detroit has been one of the top cities for murder rate for over 50 years straight How does that relate statistically to urban vs rural crime rates? You didn’t make an argument about Detroit. You made one about rural vs city generally. > where would you rather be caught When I was 13 years old I witnessed 2 teenagers being assaulted by a crowd of adults with firearms in a rural location while working on a farm for t…

[flagged]

I live on the west side of Chicago (I live at Austin and Division) and drive across it every day to my office. I feel safer where I am than I do in rural Illinois.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#122

Post by what-do-I-know »

I’m surprised the article presents an argument that welfare spending has increased from 1980 ($1,015) to 2016 ($3,419) as if that’s a big increase without even mentioning inflation.

Using the BLS CPI calculator:

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1015&year1=198...

$1,015 in 1980 is equivalent to $3,091 in 2016 dollars. So, it’s only a small relative increase, and as the article points out, it was mainly for Medicaid:

> Most of this increase was due to health care spending, and Medicaid in particular. But even if we exclude Medicaid from the calculation, we find that federal investments in means-tested programs increased by 130 percent from 1980 to 2018, from $630 to $1,448 per person.

$630 in 1980 has the same buying power as $2,007 in 2018. So it’s actually a reduction in spending outside of healthcare.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#123

Post by wolverine876 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #30

Despite absolute dollars per person spending increasing since the Reagan years, Americans remain in poverty because: 1. Raising health care costs 2. Very little poverty spending actually goes to the recipients' pockets 3. Decline of union membership 4. Home ownership is out of reach and the rent is too damn high 5. Banking is expensive for poor people Most of these issues can be traced back to corporate lobbying. The…

What is the basis for that? The article's hypothesis, which is different from yours, is based on the research they present.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#124

Post by wolverine876 »

humanrebar wrote: post #44
dfxm12 wrote: post #30

Despite absolute dollars per person spending increasing since the Reagan years, Americans remain in poverty because: 1. Raising health care costs 2. Very little poverty spending actually goes to the recipients' pockets 3. Decline of union membership 4. Home ownership is out of reach and the rent is too damn high 5. Banking is expensive for poor people Most of these issues can be traced back to corporate lobbying. The…

Eh... you have some valid points, but poverty has existed under every single policy regime so far. Ever. In history. So why should I accept that the root problem is bad policy instead of something else?

People have died of disease in every policy regime ever; is all health care policy therefore indistinguishable? The same applies to crime, education, potholes in roads, and bugs in software - all software has bugs, so it doesn't matter how you code it or what tools you use.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#125

Post by wolverine876 »

jmclnx wrote: post #70
dfxm12 wrote: post #30

Despite absolute dollars per person spending increasing since the Reagan years, Americans remain in poverty because: 1. Raising health care costs 2. Very little poverty spending actually goes to the recipients' pockets 3. Decline of union membership 4. Home ownership is out of reach and the rent is too damn high 5. Banking is expensive for poor people Most of these issues can be traced back to corporate lobbying. The…

All True, but I think there is "one item that rules the all" :) Exploitation. Our economic system is based on exploiting other people. We "had" the worst kind, slavery along with colonialism. Then we slowly moved to a combination of "unlivable" Wages and Undocumented Workers. This allows the well off to live the good life. With the issues we are having now, we may need to move to a different system, but witch one ? U…

To be clear, the article's hypothesis (which is buried deep into it):

The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#126

Post by wolverine876 »

Some very interesting data about rent:

We need more housing; no one can deny that. But rents have jumped even in cities with plenty of apartments to go around. At the end of 2021, almost 19 percent of rental units in Birmingham, Ala., sat vacant, as did 12 percent of those in Syracuse, N.Y. Yet rent in those areas increased by roughly 14 percent and 8 percent, respectively, over the previous two years. National data also show that rental revenues have far outpaced property owners’ expenses in recent years, especially for multifamily properties in poor neighborhoods. Rising rents are not simply a reflection of rising operating costs. There’s another dynamic at work, one that has to do with the fact that poor people — and particularly poor Black families — don’t have much choice when it comes to where they can live. Because of that, landlords can overcharge them, and they do.

A study I published with Nathan Wilmers found that after accounting for all costs, landlords operating in poor neighborhoods typically take in profits that are double those of landlords operating in affluent communities. ...

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#127

Post by trilbyglens »

jmclnx wrote: post #70
dfxm12 wrote: post #30

Despite absolute dollars per person spending increasing since the Reagan years, Americans remain in poverty because: 1. Raising health care costs 2. Very little poverty spending actually goes to the recipients' pockets 3. Decline of union membership 4. Home ownership is out of reach and the rent is too damn high 5. Banking is expensive for poor people Most of these issues can be traced back to corporate lobbying. The…

All True, but I think there is "one item that rules the all" :) Exploitation. Our economic system is based on exploiting other people. We "had" the worst kind, slavery along with colonialism. Then we slowly moved to a combination of "unlivable" Wages and Undocumented Workers. This allows the well off to live the good life. With the issues we are having now, we may need to move to a different system, but witch one ? U…

This. Except in america people are so attached to their comfort and convenience that even in the face of shocking levels of poverty, people fight tooth and nail against any single measure that might in any way encroach on that.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#128

Post by trilbyglens »

tomrod wrote: post #72
vanilla_nut wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a kind of monopoly to me! But this time on labor-employer relations. As usual, competition is necessary to encourage constant improvement. Without competition, workers have no way to "vote with their feet" and leave an abusive or incompetent union. I wonder if any countries regulate these kinds of unions as the monopolies that they are?

Yes! A chance to geek out on economics! A "monopoly" refers to supply side, when one supplier is (or practically is) the entire market supply. But on the demand side, the term is "monopsony." For example, the US Department of Defense is (probably) a monopsony for fighter pilots. The classic example is the company-owned coal town. Another term to remember is "regulatory capture." This usually refers to a government's…

Would a union controlling companies' access to labor not be considered supply side?

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#129

Post by tomrod »

trilbyglens wrote: post #128
tomrod wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! A chance to geek out on economics! A "monopoly" refers to supply side, when one supplier is (or practically is) the entire market supply. But on the demand side, the term is "monopsony." For example, the US Department of Defense is (probably) a monopsony for fighter pilots. The classic example is the company-owned coal town. Another term to remember is "regulatory capture." This usually refers to a government's…

Would a union controlling companies' access to labor not be considered supply side?

Your intuition is going in the right direction. Workers, and worker aggregates in the form of unions or other entities, are the supply side for labor. They can be a monopoly (indeed, "better wages" and similar demands are expressions of market power).

If there is only one demander (employer) for the labor, it would be a monopsony. Like a coal company in a company town.

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