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What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

theguardian.com

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Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#341

Post by baq »

brianwawok wrote: post #327
anexprogrammer wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile using housing as much as an investment vehicle as housing (see London, SF, and numerous other cities) promotes the creation of shortages to drive up rents and capital gain. You can't seriously be saying that the housing market is working as intended in places where pushing 70-80% of the wages cannot rent a basic apartment there. The cost of those artificially inflated housing prices are paid for someewhere…

Well a sane person should cap housing expenses at 25% of income at most. If you can't afford a place, time to move. If you can't afford anyplace, minimum wage has a problem.

that for most people means you have to move far into the suburbs.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#342

Post by sickbeard »

tamana wrote: post #210
edko wrote: post #91

Being from a country where we have suffered populist governments who "defend the poor" by increasing their numbers, I am convinced that this is very true. Instead of creating jobs and improving education, they give handouts to the poor, and their number has dramatically increased. These jobless people depend on the handouts, so their vote is guaranteed to go to the populist party. In my country, this technique has be…

If this system worked so effectively to its ends, why is bill gates so wealthy and not taxed away?

Personal income tax isn't based on how wealthy you are. It's based on how much income you earned during the year.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#343

Post by sokoloff »

jacobush wrote: post #335
gradstudent wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until then let them eat cake? Of course not. But neither is it all or nothing; slum or safety net. My point is the root cause needs to be explicitly identified before it can be rectified. The root cause in this case is America's fetishism for small government and smaller taxes.

Sort of. Also that for some reason, the government can print money to bail out banks, but when it comes to fixing housing and actually help people, it has to come from taxes. I don't quite understand this.

ALL of the government spending has to come from taxes eventually. It can come today or tomorrow. It can be raised smartly or stupidly, but it's going to come from taxes one way or another.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#344

Post by NoGravitas »

HillRat wrote: post #182
darawk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? These people aren't forced to live there. If there were a cheaper, better alternative available to them, they'd probably take it. Nobody is 'profiting from poverty' here. These landlords would make much more money if these people were wealthier! I'm sure they'd love to make nicer places and charge higher rents with higher margins, but they can't, because that's all these people can pay.

For some reason I'm reminded of the old joke: a Keynesian and a rat-ex theorist are walking down the street. "Look," says the Keynesian, "A twenty dollar bill!" "Can't be," says the other economist. "If it were there, someone would have picked it up already." Here's the thing: being a slumlord is profitable. Yes, your tenants don't pay much, but if you don't improve your property, ignore complaints, refuse basic main…

Also, you always get to keep the security/cleaning deposit, and if you have a lot of churn, you get to collect an extra month's rent every few months -- another great incentive to evict people.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#345

Post by [deleted] »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #230
duaneb wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethics is not binary. It is ethical to provide shelter. It is more ethical to provide shelter without profiting. The landlord has expenses, including perhaps a vacation, but they should be minimized. I dont have much beef with the trailer park owner in question, but you are simplifying the variables at play. The net win for everyone would be providing shelter at absolute minimum cost, including for the people maintai…

Similarly, employees should accept the bare minimum salary they need to live on(perhaps with a modest vacation). Anything above this is unethical, since they are now profiting off of their employer. In both cases, you are essentially condemning the person to stay in that position forever with no chance of advancement. It reminds me of the parable of the talents[1]; I tend to agree with its conclusion that the guy who…

[deleted]

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#346

Post by crdoconnor »

arethuza wrote: post #313
crdoconnor wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't Communism very similar to your perfect world? All the people were provided for and they worked for everyone and everyone was equal. However, that didn't work out too well. A system where everybody was equal was never tried. A system where the necessities were guaranteed was tried - in the Soviet Union - and it was, by and large, very successful. It was successful enough , in fact, that Western elites responded…

I really don't think the UK NHS was created in response to anything the Soviet Union did - the Labour movement in the UK had a long history long before the Soviets were around. The NHS actually shows the power of democracy over an elite - after all the 1945 election removed Churchill and voted in the socialist Attlee government. Attlee was so effective as a leader that even Thatcher spoke highly of him: 'Quite contra…

On the idea that it was all about Atlee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory

Do you think the fact that the UK NHS funding model closely followed the existing Soviet NHS model was a coincidence?

The Tories fought long and hard in the 40s to make the proposed new 'cover everybody' system insurance based (something like Obamacare I guess) and ultimately didn't prevail. They used all sorts of scare tactics that would seem very familiar today.

A large part of that failure was Labour being able to point to the Soviet Union (not yet enemies of the highest order) and go "look, we can achieve the same success in curing infectious disease that they did".

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#347

Post by Consultant32452 »

vkou wrote: post #206
Consultant32452 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends. Not having access to temporary credit at all is better than pay day loans. Of course, I'm saying that from my proverbial ivory tower. Philosophically I don't support banning those things, but I'll be damned if they're not fucking evil incarnate.

Not having access to temporary credit means that any hiccup in your finances has you facing eviction, late bill penalties, and in the case of unpaid fines, possibly jail time. Having access to temporary credit means that same problem, but next month.

Having access to incredibly high interest temporary credit means having the same problem next month and this new problem of having to pay off the high interest credit bill. You're generally not going to be evicted for a temporary hiccup. Late bill penalties are almost certainly going to be less than the payday loan fees. I have mixed feelings about the making bail bit.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#348

Post by [deleted] »

jahaja wrote: post #339
sokoloff wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the top end is short of "billionaire", I think you get a world without Tesla, Space-X, Blue Origin, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and several other things that I believe are valuable and worthwhile. You may argue that the cost is too high and that we'd be better off without those things.

Maybe in a more equal world were people would not be whipped, I mean "incentivized", into working all the time, a larger portion of the population would be able to contribute their passions to society than just the elites of today? Hence maybe surpassing the results of the current aristocratic version of this.

[deleted]

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#349

Post by Consultant32452 »

morgante wrote: post #276
Consultant32452 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends. Not having access to temporary credit at all is better than pay day loans. Of course, I'm saying that from my proverbial ivory tower. Philosophically I don't support banning those things, but I'll be damned if they're not fucking evil incarnate.

Payday loans serve a purpose. Thinking the poor use them because they're irrational or stupid is just elitist. A payday loan might have an atrocious interest rate, but it's better than getting kicked out of your apartment because you're $30 short on rent or getting thrown in jail for a parking ticket.

Nope, the payday loan is still a raw deal. You're not going to get kicked out of your apartment for being $30 short on your rent. There's a reason states are cracking down on these pay day loan places and it's not because the government hates poor people.

Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?

#350

Post by LoSboccacc »

jacobush wrote: post #330
LoSboccacc wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have those in Italy, as a counter point: it's amazing how fast those got occupied abusively and how local criminals use it to either hide their illegal workers or use it as bargaining chips to gain support and omerta from the population.

Counter counter point - is there much of anything official done in Italy which is not perverted by criminals/mafia? Seriously, not trying to be a dick.

eh, thought about it a lot, and the fact is, it's not the mafia. the whole society is like that. it's a cultural thing, where people expect other people to owe favors back as a natural way of doing business. it works at every level here, from groceries stores keeping freshest bread for friends and giving mellow salami to foreigners upward.

it's easy to identify the issue with the big names, but it starts way, way below that.

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