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Why Poverty Persists in America

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#91

Post by carapace »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #81
carapace wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not true, there was no poverty in all of North America, for example, up until a couple of hundred years ago. In case this sounds snarky, let me be clear: this is a really important thing to consider (IMO): there are societies without poverty. It's just that most of us (reading this here today) are unfamiliar with them because they were and are actively destroyed by the poverty-having societies. (E.g. th…

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.

Unless you will cite something specific it's hard to discuss it?

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#92

Post by aexon »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #81
carapace wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not true, there was no poverty in all of North America, for example, up until a couple of hundred years ago. In case this sounds snarky, let me be clear: this is a really important thing to consider (IMO): there are societies without poverty. It's just that most of us (reading this here today) are unfamiliar with them because they were and are actively destroyed by the poverty-having societies. (E.g. th…

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 argue all day on the degrees of implementation of primitive economy, "yeah, but one guy traded a shoe horn for a rabbit leg", but the type of extreme (and extremely disparate) poverty that occurs within modern economic systems is not comparable to pre Columbus North America.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#93

Post by awkward »

tyoma wrote: post #26
newaccount2021 wrote: post #4

Our military budget is substantially larger today than it was when we were actively engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan just a few short years ago Our military budget will soon pass $1 trillion annually Our elected representatives now routinely provide the Pentagon with more money than it even requests Every NYTimes article on Ukraine is riddled with comments suggesting we provide a blank check for weaponry The Wash…

Military spending as a percent of GDP has been steadily declining, especially after Iraq: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?name_... The US government already spends more on healthcare and social security than on the military. Most of that military spending is salaries for US workers. Guess where that $15 billion carrier is getting built? In the US from US parts. Its a jobs programs that conserva…

Fungible, budgetable, money is not spent on social security. Social security is funded by it's own tax, and is it's own account. Measuring it against voluntary expenditures chosen by congress is inaccurate.

Money can be borrowed with interest from social security, and while paying down that interest is closer to a voluntary expense, it is still a much more serious decision than simply deciding not to do so.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#94

Post by wootland »

yucky wrote: post #85
cmh89 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you ask your coworker today, how many shootings were there in Chicago last weekend, unless you live in or near Chicago, they will be shocked that there were 17 shootings and 4 homicides just over the weekend. Would they? Literally everyone who reads the news knows Chicago has a lot of shootings. This sounds like something you made up to drive a narrative rather than basing it in truth. > think if enough money is…

> Can you point to a very poor place that is safe due to the police? Most rural areas are generally quite safe and their police are very powerful in the community.

Most rural areas in the US are ravaged by meth and opioid abuse and the crime that comes along with them.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#95

Post by ryandrake »

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.

How does poverty cause someone to become a parent, and then cause the other parent to leave? Not disagreeing, but I've never been in abject poverty so I can't really understand how the line goes from one to the other.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#96

Post by diordiderot »

ryandrake wrote: post #95
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.

How does poverty cause someone to become a parent, and then cause the other parent to leave? Not disagreeing, but I've never been in abject poverty so I can't really understand how the line goes from one to the other.

Poor people are more likely to make poor choices like unprotected sex, etc and more likely to be religious (no abortion, be fruitful)

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#97

Post by zaphar »

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…

This is a silly distinction. All things being equal most would probably prefer the poverty in modern day America to the "Equal" poverty of preindustrial experience. The real reason people get upset about modern poverty is because it's an example of inequality. So sure, let's try to ameliorate and address inequality where possible. But under no circumstances should we try to do so by reducing total progress and wealth on the planet. Preindustrial poverty is just as much a problem of financial mobility as poverty now is. In fact it's even more a case of that since your immobility is caused by the lack of a position to even move to.u It's a fundamental element of progress that it will be distributed unequally. I have seen no evidence that you can bypass that. You could eliminate all inequality by reducing everyone to extreme poverty but literally no one actually want's that. You can't eliminate inequality by elevating everyone to extreme wealth, however, because there isn't enough wealth to do so. This leaves eliminating inequality by reducing everyone to some definition of just well-off enough with no option to reach slightly more well-off than that since it would mean they were now unequal.

The most effective solution to poverty is to continue to raise the lower bound as much as you can which alleviates suffering and to remove barriers to forward progress for the individual as that increases everyone's chance to improve themselves and their society a little more.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#98

Post by sethrin »

ryandrake wrote: post #95
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.

How does poverty cause someone to become a parent, and then cause the other parent to leave? Not disagreeing, but I've never been in abject poverty so I can't really understand how the line goes from one to the other.

Money stress does terrible things to even the best relationships. It doesn't even have to be abject poverty. Most of the people in the US would have a hard time dealing with an unexpected $500-1000 expense[0]. Which of course is a fantastically plausible outcome from almost any kind of medical issue -- nearly 2/3rds of bankruptcies are because of medical debt[1]. What choices do you make when your partner's difficulties make it so that you can't afford to eat? How long do you keep your kids in a situation where Famine stalks them, hollow-cheeked?

[0] https://www.bankrate.com/banking/savings/emergency-savings-r... [1] https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-93430900525-7/fulltext

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#99

Post by dfxm12 »

ryandrake wrote: post #95
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.

How does poverty cause someone to become a parent, and then cause the other parent to leave? Not disagreeing, but I've never been in abject poverty so I can't really understand how the line goes from one to the other.

In the larger context of the article and how the government is spending money meant for the impoverished: Arizona has used welfare money to pay for abstinence-only sex education. Pennsylvania diverted TANF funds to anti-abortion crisis-pregnancy centers.

Simply put, the impoverished just don't have access to resources that others do, including the ability to take off from work and travel somewhere to get an abortion, if needed.

Add to that the poverty to prison pipeline and it's clear that it's really a systemic issue.

Re: Why Poverty Persists in America

#100

Post by celeritascelery »

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.

It's really a vicious cycle. children raised in a single parent household have worse outcomes on almost every metric when they become adults. That includes their own likelihood of becoming single parents and living in poverty, Essentially repeating the cycle.

Interestingly there has been a lot of research on the "Success Sequence"[1]. This is 3 steps for people living in developed countries to break out of this cycle:

1. Finish high school.

2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children.

To quote the studies, "97% of people who follow these steps do not live in poverty. In contrast, 76% of those that did not adhere to any of these norms were below the poverty line."

[1] https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/report/success-sequence-synthes...

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