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The Unexotic Underclass

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Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#261

Post by lilsunnybee »

jimbokun wrote: post #245
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The propaganda about the poor's lack of access to health care is also overstated for various political reasons. Brit here. Enlighten me as to how not being able to afford to visit a GP is 'overstated'. As I understand it, if you are poor in the USA, there's a real chance you won't be able to pay for the pills you need, or for mental health treatment, etc. That simply doesn't happen here in the UK. > Everybody's boo…

Can't speak for jerf, but the "overstated" part may relate to the definition of "poor". The U.S. government does provide health care programs for people below a certain income threshold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid The trouble comes when you are just over the threshold, but still can't afford health insurance, or just didn't bother to sign up. Or have insurance, but the part it didn't cover bankrupts you an…

Certain US states (the largest ones being Florida and Texas), never underwent this thing called "Medicaid expansion", as a kind of political protest against "Obamacare", and so if you're lucky enough to live in one of these states (very populated states too like Florida and Texas), you're not eligible for Medicaid for merely being in abject poverty. You don't even qualify for healthcare subsidies since the cutoff for those is perversely 133% of the poverty line, or something like that.

SNAP policies (supplemental nutrition assistance ie. food stamps) can vary greatly from state to state too. I've lived in states that provide unconditional benefits to anyone below a certain income level, but my current state (Florida), only provides a few months of benefits at a time, and then after that you have to continually re-qualify, providing proof that you're still looking for work if you're unemployed, things like that. It's incredibly easy to fall through the cracks with these proof requirements though.

Being poor certain places in the US is misery. People do go hungry plenty, and adults and especially children often suffer severe lasting health problems from malnutrition here.

I know this stuff from personal experience.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#262

Post by [deleted] »

wglb wrote: post #250
jerf wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually surprised when I read the summary, because that would be a surprising level of poverty in the US. If anything, we are unnecessarily generous with the food stamps here. (Which I am not necessarily complaining about, just observing that they are relatively easy to get.) And lo, it turns out this was in Britain, so saying they can't afford $44 is sort of deceptive. I well believe she couldn't afford £44.…

I live in the Midwest and I don't know anyone living in abject poverty But if you looked, I am sure you would see it. The organization http://www.embarcchicago.org/ works with kids who live a couple of miles from Lake Michigan, but have never seen it, nor have they seen a supermarket. This is not a political thing.

[deleted]

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#263

Post by trevelyan »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #57
patio11 wrote: post #15

I like parts of this article more than others. For example, while I share a certain sense of frustration that SV seems to spend a disproportionate amount of resources on mobifotosocialgames, smartphones and their downmarket progeny are an enormous quality-of-life improvement for broader America. There's virtually nothing a cash-poor-responsibility-rich person needs to do that having a smartphone does not make them be…

The article resonated with me when it mentioned "(or, because they suspect no one will invest in what they really want to do)." >Many problems have an 80% software solution attached to a 20% "interface with the real world" mandatory bit. My "Big Problem" is Education. I'd almost flip those numbers -- 20% software, 80% "interface with the real world." Throw in non-trivial entrenched interests including existing teache…

I run an education startup and respectfully disagree -- parent poster is correct that the industry is really not welcoming for entrepreneurs, at least for people who have ambitions for things like home ownership or healthcare or relationships.

The major problem is that people who need to learn something are by definition the least able to evaluate what they need. So the dominant incentive is for companies to produce crap and then market the hell out of it, or develop connections and feed off public credit ("you may qualify for state assistance!")... almost anything except for producing stuff people actually need and trying to sell it on its virtues. And then there is the lack of money, because student budgets are often directed elsewhere, such as to their expensive but ineffective accreditation programs and university classes.

This transforms meaningful work in the education space into an uphill struggle against funded businesses with predatory business practices, and while word-of-mouth can benefit you over them in the long-run, the viral loop goes slower in education than in other areas and it is very, very difficult to build effective placement in commercial sales channels like search engines.

More direct connections between education and employment would help, but the connection is often weaker than one would think from the political rhetoric thrown around, especially considering that education is often a proxy term for "credentials" or "signaling" in public rather than knowledge.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#264

Post by lilsunnybee »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #233
km3k wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I donate money to various charities and causes and do use microlending too, but it's not something that I end up talking about with my friends, so they're probably not aware that I do it. Maybe that's the case with your friends too. I probably look like I "don't care about the poor" because I usually don't give money to random people asking me to support causes (like at events or stores) if I'm not familiar with the…

No in my case I've had these conversations and they've always dismissed them. Even my girlfriend who liked the idea hasn't bothered with something like Kiva while she's asked for an invite and I've sent her a few and told her several times, and she's done years of community service and studied international development. Somehow a lot of people dismiss participating outright despite saying it's awesome and saying it's…

Has Kiva gotten better about choosing their lending partner organizations? It was big news a few years ago that Kiva was partnering with in-country lenders charging extortionate interest rates.

http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php?topic=3403.190

This pretty recent article though makes it sound like it's still a big problem.

http://www.nextbillion.net/m/bp.aspx?b=3726

Kiva is a great idea in concept. They just need to take a firm stance against corrupt lending practices, especially since they present themselves as a charity and so no middleman should really be profiting incommensurately in the process.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#265

Post by lilsunnybee »

jonnycowboy wrote: post #239

Why not create a "food stamp" delivery service? Hire ex-cons for delivery & older "unemployable" graduates to manage the whole thing. Deliver in the evening after the parent(s) are back from work. Better yet, try to change the system to allow EBTs to be used to delivery ready-made meals...

SNAP in many cases isn't enough for the whole month already. Adding restaurant and delivery fees into the mix would really just cause more problems for people running short and going hungry at the tail end of the month.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#266

Post by Houshalter »

graeme wrote: post #108
rwallace wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. Maybe the answer is, instead of trying to sell something to the poor, look for a way to enable the poor to sell a service to the rich? I mean, two of the biggest success stories in the recent startup scene are Airbnb and Uber. What do they do? Provide a way for people who don't have much money but do have a useful asset (a spare room, a car, respectively) to make a bit of extra cash selling a service to t…

Unfortunately, this is the future. I say unfortunately, because I think if we could see the final version, we'd recoil. The sharing economy, at heart, is about the monetization of spare capacity. So far it's mostly been physical assets, but spare time is next. Anywhere you find a poor person watching TV (or, god forbid, reading a book) there's spare capacity ready to be monetized. And, why are they sleeping so much?…

I'm not aware of much like this besides mechanical turk. In any case, no one is forcing people to work, it's just an option they otherwise wouldn't have. You can argue their lives won't be any better with it, but I can't see how they would be worse. You make it sound like they are going to be rounded up by slave drivers, and otherwise would be pretty well off.

The worst case would be existing industries that are currently bound by minimum wage and working laws, that then find ways around the regulations. But new industries that didn't exist before mostly add new jobs, not replace existing ones with worse ones.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#267

Post by Houshalter »

chillingeffect wrote: post #244
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! I'm a landowner! I didn't know I was ruling by security/fear. Wow! I should make myself some jackboots or something. No kidding aside, in the USA anybody can own land who wants to. That seems too convenient a variable to tag all the social ills on.

Well are you going to sell your land at a price poor people can afford or only the wealthy? You're going to sell it for the "best" (measured by maximizing dollar amount) price you can. So, read my comment carefully, you're not ruling by security/fear, you're squeezing the poor by playing along with market rules, you big squeezing squeezer.

If you give someone land below market value, they will probably just sell it and pocket the difference. It's functionally equivalent to just giving them cash. If they want land they can go buy it.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#268

Post by Houshalter »

chillingeffect wrote: post #188
tinco wrote: post #76

I would really love to cater to the unexotic underclass, but how? I mean he goes on and on about how much opportunity there is, but I don't see it. I know how to get 500 white liberal suburbanite young males to pay me $10 per month. They have the money and they love to spend it on tech and gadgetry that makes their lives even more comfortable. But single house mothers? Poor Romanians? How would I even get them to pay…

> all these people really want and need is money, In my opinion, all they really want and need is _land_. The real people squeezing everyone else are the landowners, and the landlords. With enough land, anyone can support themselves: chickens, vegetables, hunting and fishing, etc. Mortgages in exchange for housing ("death pledges") exploit the poor, indenturing them to overemployment at insufficient wages. The novelt…

We are talking about the problems of modern America, not feudal Europe. Land is not particularly scarce, and the poor don't really want to become subsistence farmers or even regular farmers. Just owning a plot of land is not enough to support a middle class family, if it ever was. There are also significant political issues like property taxes, estate taxes, etc, that make owning land more complicated and expensive.

Capital in general is what you mean I think. But even then interest rates are not particularly high, and if you give people money/capital, most people will not invest it to live off the interest.

Our entire society is now based upon the idea that you need to find an employer to pay you to do something. If no one wants/needs to pay you to do things, you are screwed.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#269

Post by skybrian »

tsunamifury wrote: post #259
skybrian wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately 40k per person isn't likely to get the attention of the someone trying to maximize the amount of good done per dollar (those of us who follow GiveWell) when the money would go further with the charities they currently recommend. The "exotic underclass" has the "advantage" if you can call it that of benefiting a lot from small amounts of money per person, so you can help more people. We need different ar…

It already costs the city 70k per person per year to go through a recovery program, this reduced it to 40k the first year then 0 the second year -- netting large municipal and state savings.

That's an excellent reason why the city or state should fund it.

For a private charity, net gain is one person helped and 70k / year spent with average efficiency by the government on something else (or spent by taxpayers if it's returned). That's somewhat hard to judge versus alternatives.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#270

Post by chillingeffect »

Houshalter wrote: post #267
chillingeffect wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well are you going to sell your land at a price poor people can afford or only the wealthy? You're going to sell it for the "best" (measured by maximizing dollar amount) price you can. So, read my comment carefully, you're not ruling by security/fear, you're squeezing the poor by playing along with market rules, you big squeezing squeezer.

If you give someone land below market value, they will probably just sell it and pocket the difference. It's functionally equivalent to just giving them cash. If they want land they can go buy it.

If you sell land below market value to someone who already has a place to live they will probably just sell it and pocket the difference.

If you sell land below market value to someone who has no other place to live, they will live on it and use the money to buy books, healthcare, tools, nutritious food and cooking utensils.

Thus stands my statement that landowners squeeze the poor.

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