15 ms·

The Despair of Poor White Americans

86 points by SonicSoul 10y ago

nickgrosvenor 10y ago
This is a heady conversation, that's simply categorizing a group of people by race. The only thing that this group has in common are economic status and the color of their skin. They toss in college degree to sound scientific but it's such a large swath of communities and cultures that to organize everyone by being white is literally what everyone is trying to avoid. It's needlessly being racist in the guise of science. Organizing poor Americans by the color of their skin is like categorizing houses by the color that they're painted. It doesn't have to do with anything.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  It does in the sense that they tend to live in different communities with different cultures.
- benjohnson 10y ago
  Poor white people have an interesting issue - society tells them that they're have especially failed (for lack of a better term) as they have white privilege.
  - ajamesm 10y ago
    "white privilege" is the relative advantage conferred by appearing white or having white heritage. Nobody (certainly not society at large) thinks that white people have a birthright to success. actually, lots of people subscribe to the delusion that gov't programs for minorities are so overcorrecting that being born black is now a meal ticket. Insane.
- Eric_WVGG 10y ago
  If you define "white" as "the level of melatonin in a person's skin" or some mishmash of ancestry, sure, being white isn't helpful to describe a group. This article isn't about that. It's about a culture (that is bound by tradition and heredity of which one sign is low melatonin) predicated on the philosophy that all one needs to succeed is a strong work ethic. In a lower-class minority culture, you're taught that success is possible, but needs to be fought for. In lower-class white culture, success is transforming into a stolen birthright.
- twblalock 10y ago
  There is a major difference between poor white people and poor non-white people in America. The poor non-whites have been discriminated against. That discrimination hurt them, and it helped the whites who did not have to compete against them for jobs and government resources.
santaclaus 10y ago
Those kids are rocking some killer up cuts, funny how fashion comes full circle.
cs702 10y ago
So many people in Silicon Valley are preoccupied with developing the next killer application; meanwhile, there are tens of millions of poor Americans, white and otherwise, whose potential goes to waste due to social, cultural, geographic, educational, technological, economic, and other constraints. Within their world, they don't see opportunity; they see economic and social decay; and they despair. It's a huge waste of human capital. Talk about BIG challenges: how could this be fixed, assuming it can be fixed?
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  The main issue is education. its unbelievable that you spend like 8 hours a day for 12 years doing something and in the end you can't really do anything well. The advent of the Internet has really changed things up but we are still wasting people's lives away.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Education is bad for you as a technology person. You're a member of a privileged guild.
  - sverige 10y ago
    I would argue that federalizing education has made the problem worse, not better. Much of what passes for elementary and secondary education is silly fluff compared to what was required two generations ago.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      States have a lot of control over education funding, which is far more determinative of the quality of their education systems than the guidelines the federal government imposes. Every state has to deal with the same federal guidelines, but some have far better education systems than others -- due to funding. Want to see education improved? Have the Feds take over funding, and give each school the same amount of money. The quality of schools in poor neighborhoods would increase dramatically, and the quality of schools in rich neighborhoods would decrease. Maybe then, the rich would be convinced to support increased educational funding. In other countries, people don't think about the quality of the local school district when they buy a home, because the districts are all similar in quality. Again, a matter of funding.
ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
This is the problem with using averages to compare people. You can't take all the poor whites, all the middle class whites, and all the rich whites and dump their incomes into a spreadsheet and average it out and say "White Privilege" like the media has done for 7 years now. All the major new outlets from BBC, ABC, CNN, to MSNBC, CBS, and PBS have run stories that basically ask us to look away from "The Poor" and only look towards "The Minority Poor". The same way "black lives matter" asked us to look away from all the people killed by militant police and only pay attention to blacks killed by police. I find the same people preaching "unity" are the ones that are separating and dividing. When you analyze ethnic or racial groups you need to split up the members of that group into sub-groups to really know what's going on. We need to focus on real social science and not extremist media narratives.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  I think that one of the reasons for this is that many poor whites don't seem to stand up for themselves in any other way than attacking other disadvantaged groups, from racial and sexual minorities to retired people on government pensions. This is of course not the case for all working class and poor whites, many of whom support movements for the minority poor and minorities killed by police, and don't see attention given to minority problems as attention taken away from white problems.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    People bitch about groups of people they have little in common with. The urban poor bitch about the wealthy and the rural poor. The rural poor bitch about the wealthy and the urban poor. The wealthy bitch about the poor. None of those groups are actually bitching about skin color, just using it as a crude grouping mechanism for people that are unlike them.
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  Oh you mean it's better to factor in elementary arithmetic and English into things. ??????
niftich 10y ago
The two most insightful quotes are: "The barely veiled implication, whichever version [for the explanation of the fall in economic fortunes what the article calls 'less privileged white Americans'] of you consider, is that the people undergoing these travails deserve relatively little sympathy—that they maybe, kinda had this reckoning coming. Either they are layabouts drenched in self-pity or they are sad cases consumed with racial status anxiety and animus toward the nonwhites passing them on the ladder. Both interpretations are, in their own ways, strikingly ungenerous toward a huge number of fellow Americans." and: "But far more striking is the general aura of decline that hangs over towns in which medical-supply stores and pawn shops dominate decrepit main streets, and Victorians stand crumbling, unoccupied. Talk with those still sticking it out, the body-shop worker and the dollar-store clerk and the unemployed miner, and the fatalism is clear: Things were much better in an earlier time, and no future awaits in places that have been left behind by polished people in gleaming cities. The most painful comparison is not with supposedly ascendant minorities—it's with the fortunes of one's own parents or, by now, grandparents. The demoralizing effect of decay enveloping the place you live cannot be underestimated." Together, these factors form an unfortunate situation.
Spooky23 10y ago
People don't like talking about this because the "poor brown people" archetype fits with the economic double talk that claims "American industry is better than ever" and that we have meaningful economic growth. The reality is that we've been hollowing out the US for many years and significant portions of the population, regardless of race, are living very poorly.
Animats 10y ago
"Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence—and the incomprehensible malice—of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down." We just don't need that many people to make all the stuff. As I point out occasionally, in 1900, about 90% of the workforce was "making stuff" - agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction. That was down to half by the 1960s. Now it's down to 15%. US manufacturing output is at an all-time high. US manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979. That's what happened to white America. [1] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm
- tdkl 10y ago
  Globalism definitely has nothing to do with it right ?
  - lgieron 10y ago
    US is manufacturing more stuff than ever before, with just a fraction of workers that would be required to achieve the same output 100 years ago. I'd say technological progress has way bigger impact here than shipping jobs overseas.
    - hodgesrm 10y ago
      Depends on the industry and the relative content of labor in the product, to name a couple of variables. US furniture making for example has been decimated by moving manufacturing to low-wage nations. It has not had a lot of success (as far as I can tell) with reshoring as off-shore labor and transport costs go up.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      This is a good point. Increases in productivity mean we can manufacture more goods per worker, which means we need fewer workers. If increased productivity is a worker's enemy, that worker really doesn't have much to offer.
ihaveahadron 10y ago
I consider this to be the fault of the whites. They have become so stupid that they will go to schools where it's in the actual curriculum that white people are inherently bad because of their race. While that isn't true, they currently have become some of the stupidest of races currently existing.
protomyth 10y ago
Not one mention of religion in the article. Not one mention of the 2010 or 2014 elections and what happened in DC. No talk of the difference between the reporting on the Tea Party and what actually happened, No EPA, no school lunch program talk, and no talk about every Atlantic article that demonizes some aspect of the rural areas including farming. Its pretty simple why Trump won the GOP nomination: a lot of folks are not happy with the actions of politicians and want a definite change. If that doesn't work, they'll try someone more radical. or if you keep demonizing a group, expect them to send an actual demon eventually Read this one for the other side of the coin: https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Nation-Country-Youve-Never/dp/0399563881/ https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Nation-Country-Youve-Never/dp...
- csdrane 10y ago
  That book looks interesting but it also seems like it is mostly anecdotal. I'd prefer something similar but with hard numbers behind it. Is my impression mistaken?
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Its mostly anecdotal, but in a lot of ways that's part of the problem. Most of the selected books with stats are by people who haven't lived in rural areas for a while. Its basically archeology by number more than direct study. Plus, we're talking about culture, hard numbers are not the whole story or even the majority of the story. This quantify and categorize everything culture is part of the problems with understanding. Now for my pet peeve from writing grants in the 90's: The federal government is pretty damn lax about getting rural numbers from studies. Its either a nationwide study or urban areas only. The stuff they get from rural areas is the stuff that doesn't require someone in DC to actual do anything beyond taking basic numbers and putting into a spreadsheet.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      This quantify and categorize everything culture is part of the problems with understanding. I don't see how one can claim to understand something without quantifying it. What is often referred to as understanding should IMO be called empathy instead, because it's necessary but not sufficient for finding solutions. Actions can be motivated by empathy, but they need to be supported by quantitative evidence.
coldtea 10y ago
Spoken like a true member of the privileged upper class (wether born or climbed into it -- the former are usually even more crass in such statements).
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  tl;dr; I have no factual objections to anything you've said, but I object to who you are!
  - coldtea 10y ago
    tl;dr I had many factual objections to what you've said, but I didn't felt like a dis on poor people was really worth a refutation. But if you insist, most people are not profit maximizing automata, nor are they totally economically and emotionally free to follow any whim. They have roots, family ties, people to tend to (old parents, little kids, etc), and don't just blow it all of for the off chance on landing another McDonalds gig or strawberry picking job in another state. We're not talking computer scientists here, for what they offer it's a buyers market, or worse, out there. Tons also live month to month (if that), and couldn't afford the move and relocation, they'd just end up homeless in another state. Those immigrants you mention come either are middle class or upper themselves in their countries (so come to the US with a cushion already + college studies etc) or are from piss poor regions fuelled with crime and desperation, so even a McDonalds gig in the US is an improvement. And even them, usually end up just in the same category as those white poor in the US -- the millions of poor latinos, blacks etc. "Move to find some opportunity in another" is not some general plan for tens of millions of those poor people, nor is global immigration any helpful analogy. It's not that different than saying "Those poor people in South Dakota or Alabama think they have it bad? Look at all those Syrians immigrating to a better life". Which is an insensitive thing to say in the first place, doubly so if those who say it don't share either's problems at the moment.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Ok, so according to you people choose to be poor because they value other things more than wealth. It sounds like you view their consumption choices as merely being a different lifestyle, kind of like me having a tiny amount of living space and being very mobile. So I guess the real reason Silicon Valley isn't "solving" the problem is because there is no problem to solve? I wish someone would tell this to Trump and Bernie! Tons also live month to month (if that), and couldn't afford the move and relocation, they'd just end up homeless in another state. This seems unlikely. Illegal Mexican immigrants have far less, yet don't usually end up homeless.
nikcheerla 10y ago
I would argue we could solve this if we had a better education system. It seems that they go through the schooling system for 8 years and learn nothing that helps them get an upwardly mobile job. Maybe part of the problem is that our schooling system is designed for salary class professionals looking to go to college – because those are the people who design curriculum.
gregfjohnson 10y ago
Mike Rowe (of "Dirty Jobs" fame) has set up the Mike Rowe Works Foundation. He is doing great work encouraging and helping working class and impoverished people. He teaches "holding a job 101" lessons that people higher in the socioeconomic scale learn with their mothers' milk. Show up on time in the morning. Be the kind of employee and colleague that others can come to trust and rely on. It doesn't have to be fun or Meaningful: They call it "WORK" and they pay you to do it! This guy is a hero in my book: He is not just talking about this problem. He is actually doing something about it. I wish it had been Mike Rowe instead of Donald Trump that had caught the zeitgeist and ridden it to national prominence.
yusee 10y ago
When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, he was working on the Poor People's Campaign[0], an effort to alleviate poverty for all Americans. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon was campaigning on "Law and Order" (ask yourself: what's the order?) in preparation for the War on Drugs as part of the Southern Strategy[1]: > Republican strategist Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger." Ronald Reagan campaigned heavily against "welfare queens,"[2] associating poverty and government assistance with urban blacks. In so doing, he persuaded working class whites that cutting social programs and tax rates for the wealthy would benefit them. As a resident of West Virginia, I must express the deepest sympathies for the suffering of my neighbors. But I can't help but sigh when I see a Confederate flag or Make America Great Again sign. And I see many every day. Trump offers the poor whites of America nothing but relative status at the expense of others. Hackers should stand firmly against the sowing of tribal division. We understand that the strength of capitalism is that it's not a zero-sum ideology. We are enriched by imagination, creativity, production. We are impoverished by conflicts over the distribution of the pie as it is. Are poor whites worse off than poor blacks than poor hispanics than poor native Americans than poor Asians? What a distraction. This question serves Machiavellian leaders and sensationalist media whose power is dependent on everyone hating each other. How can we make America--and the entire world--prosperous for everyone? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen

86 points by SonicSoul 10y ago

This is a heady conversation, that's simply categorizing a group of people by race. The only thing that this group has in common are economic status and the color of their skin. They toss in college degree to sound scientific but it's such a large swath of communities and cultures that to organize everyone by being white is literally what everyone is trying to avoid. It's needlessly being racist in the guise of science. Organizing poor Americans by the color of their skin is like categorizing houses by the color that they're painted. It doesn't have to do with anything.

jsmith0295 10y ago
It does in the sense that they tend to live in different communities with different cultures.
benjohnson 10y ago
Poor white people have an interesting issue - society tells them that they're have especially failed (for lack of a better term) as they have white privilege.
- ajamesm 10y ago
  "white privilege" is the relative advantage conferred by appearing white or having white heritage. Nobody (certainly not society at large) thinks that white people have a birthright to success. actually, lots of people subscribe to the delusion that gov't programs for minorities are so overcorrecting that being born black is now a meal ticket. Insane.
Eric_WVGG 10y ago
If you define "white" as "the level of melatonin in a person's skin" or some mishmash of ancestry, sure, being white isn't helpful to describe a group. This article isn't about that. It's about a culture (that is bound by tradition and heredity of which one sign is low melatonin) predicated on the philosophy that all one needs to succeed is a strong work ethic. In a lower-class minority culture, you're taught that success is possible, but needs to be fought for. In lower-class white culture, success is transforming into a stolen birthright.
twblalock 10y ago
There is a major difference between poor white people and poor non-white people in America. The poor non-whites have been discriminated against. That discrimination hurt them, and it helped the whites who did not have to compete against them for jobs and government resources.

santaclaus 10y ago

Those kids are rocking some killer up cuts, funny how fashion comes full circle.

cs702 10y ago

So many people in Silicon Valley are preoccupied with developing the next killer application; meanwhile, there are tens of millions of poor Americans, white and otherwise, whose potential goes to waste due to social, cultural, geographic, educational, technological, economic, and other constraints. Within their world, they don't see opportunity; they see economic and social decay; and they despair. It's a huge waste of human capital. Talk about BIG challenges: how could this be fixed, assuming it can be fixed?

adamnemecek 10y ago
The main issue is education. its unbelievable that you spend like 8 hours a day for 12 years doing something and in the end you can't really do anything well. The advent of the Internet has really changed things up but we are still wasting people's lives away.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Education is bad for you as a technology person. You're a member of a privileged guild.
- sverige 10y ago
  I would argue that federalizing education has made the problem worse, not better. Much of what passes for elementary and secondary education is silly fluff compared to what was required two generations ago.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    States have a lot of control over education funding, which is far more determinative of the quality of their education systems than the guidelines the federal government imposes. Every state has to deal with the same federal guidelines, but some have far better education systems than others -- due to funding. Want to see education improved? Have the Feds take over funding, and give each school the same amount of money. The quality of schools in poor neighborhoods would increase dramatically, and the quality of schools in rich neighborhoods would decrease. Maybe then, the rich would be convinced to support increased educational funding. In other countries, people don't think about the quality of the local school district when they buy a home, because the districts are all similar in quality. Again, a matter of funding.

ChrisNorstrom 10y ago

This is the problem with using averages to compare people. You can't take all the poor whites, all the middle class whites, and all the rich whites and dump their incomes into a spreadsheet and average it out and say "White Privilege" like the media has done for 7 years now. All the major new outlets from BBC, ABC, CNN, to MSNBC, CBS, and PBS have run stories that basically ask us to look away from "The Poor" and only look towards "The Minority Poor". The same way "black lives matter" asked us to look away from all the people killed by militant police and only pay attention to blacks killed by police. I find the same people preaching "unity" are the ones that are separating and dividing. When you analyze ethnic or racial groups you need to split up the members of that group into sub-groups to really know what's going on. We need to focus on real social science and not extremist media narratives.

pessimizer 10y ago
I think that one of the reasons for this is that many poor whites don't seem to stand up for themselves in any other way than attacking other disadvantaged groups, from racial and sexual minorities to retired people on government pensions. This is of course not the case for all working class and poor whites, many of whom support movements for the minority poor and minorities killed by police, and don't see attention given to minority problems as attention taken away from white problems.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  People bitch about groups of people they have little in common with. The urban poor bitch about the wealthy and the rural poor. The rural poor bitch about the wealthy and the urban poor. The wealthy bitch about the poor. None of those groups are actually bitching about skin color, just using it as a crude grouping mechanism for people that are unlike them.
ihaveahadron 10y ago
Oh you mean it's better to factor in elementary arithmetic and English into things. ??????

niftich 10y ago

The two most insightful quotes are: "The barely veiled implication, whichever version [for the explanation of the fall in economic fortunes what the article calls 'less privileged white Americans'] of you consider, is that the people undergoing these travails deserve relatively little sympathy—that they maybe, kinda had this reckoning coming. Either they are layabouts drenched in self-pity or they are sad cases consumed with racial status anxiety and animus toward the nonwhites passing them on the ladder. Both interpretations are, in their own ways, strikingly ungenerous toward a huge number of fellow Americans." and: "But far more striking is the general aura of decline that hangs over towns in which medical-supply stores and pawn shops dominate decrepit main streets, and Victorians stand crumbling, unoccupied. Talk with those still sticking it out, the body-shop worker and the dollar-store clerk and the unemployed miner, and the fatalism is clear: Things were much better in an earlier time, and no future awaits in places that have been left behind by polished people in gleaming cities. The most painful comparison is not with supposedly ascendant minorities—it's with the fortunes of one's own parents or, by now, grandparents. The demoralizing effect of decay enveloping the place you live cannot be underestimated." Together, these factors form an unfortunate situation.

Spooky23 10y ago

People don't like talking about this because the "poor brown people" archetype fits with the economic double talk that claims "American industry is better than ever" and that we have meaningful economic growth. The reality is that we've been hollowing out the US for many years and significant portions of the population, regardless of race, are living very poorly.

Animats 10y ago

"Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence—and the incomprehensible malice—of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down." We just don't need that many people to make all the stuff. As I point out occasionally, in 1900, about 90% of the workforce was "making stuff" - agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and construction. That was down to half by the 1960s. Now it's down to 15%. US manufacturing output is at an all-time high. US manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979. That's what happened to white America. [1] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

tdkl 10y ago
Globalism definitely has nothing to do with it right ?
- lgieron 10y ago
  US is manufacturing more stuff than ever before, with just a fraction of workers that would be required to achieve the same output 100 years ago. I'd say technological progress has way bigger impact here than shipping jobs overseas.
  - hodgesrm 10y ago
    Depends on the industry and the relative content of labor in the product, to name a couple of variables. US furniture making for example has been decimated by moving manufacturing to low-wage nations. It has not had a lot of success (as far as I can tell) with reshoring as off-shore labor and transport costs go up.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    This is a good point. Increases in productivity mean we can manufacture more goods per worker, which means we need fewer workers. If increased productivity is a worker's enemy, that worker really doesn't have much to offer.

ihaveahadron 10y ago

I consider this to be the fault of the whites. They have become so stupid that they will go to schools where it's in the actual curriculum that white people are inherently bad because of their race. While that isn't true, they currently have become some of the stupidest of races currently existing.

protomyth 10y ago

Not one mention of religion in the article. Not one mention of the 2010 or 2014 elections and what happened in DC. No talk of the difference between the reporting on the Tea Party and what actually happened, No EPA, no school lunch program talk, and no talk about every Atlantic article that demonizes some aspect of the rural areas including farming. Its pretty simple why Trump won the GOP nomination: a lot of folks are not happy with the actions of politicians and want a definite change. If that doesn't work, they'll try someone more radical. or if you keep demonizing a group, expect them to send an actual demon eventually Read this one for the other side of the coin: https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Nation-Country-Youve-Never/dp/0399563881/ https://www.amazon.com/Flyover-Nation-Country-Youve-Never/dp...

csdrane 10y ago
That book looks interesting but it also seems like it is mostly anecdotal. I'd prefer something similar but with hard numbers behind it. Is my impression mistaken?
- protomyth 10y ago
  Its mostly anecdotal, but in a lot of ways that's part of the problem. Most of the selected books with stats are by people who haven't lived in rural areas for a while. Its basically archeology by number more than direct study. Plus, we're talking about culture, hard numbers are not the whole story or even the majority of the story. This quantify and categorize everything culture is part of the problems with understanding. Now for my pet peeve from writing grants in the 90's: The federal government is pretty damn lax about getting rural numbers from studies. Its either a nationwide study or urban areas only. The stuff they get from rural areas is the stuff that doesn't require someone in DC to actual do anything beyond taking basic numbers and putting into a spreadsheet.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    This quantify and categorize everything culture is part of the problems with understanding. I don't see how one can claim to understand something without quantifying it. What is often referred to as understanding should IMO be called empathy instead, because it's necessary but not sufficient for finding solutions. Actions can be motivated by empathy, but they need to be supported by quantitative evidence.

coldtea 10y ago

Spoken like a true member of the privileged upper class (wether born or climbed into it -- the former are usually even more crass in such statements).

yummyfajitas 10y ago
tl;dr; I have no factual objections to anything you've said, but I object to who you are!
- coldtea 10y ago
  tl;dr I had many factual objections to what you've said, but I didn't felt like a dis on poor people was really worth a refutation. But if you insist, most people are not profit maximizing automata, nor are they totally economically and emotionally free to follow any whim. They have roots, family ties, people to tend to (old parents, little kids, etc), and don't just blow it all of for the off chance on landing another McDonalds gig or strawberry picking job in another state. We're not talking computer scientists here, for what they offer it's a buyers market, or worse, out there. Tons also live month to month (if that), and couldn't afford the move and relocation, they'd just end up homeless in another state. Those immigrants you mention come either are middle class or upper themselves in their countries (so come to the US with a cushion already + college studies etc) or are from piss poor regions fuelled with crime and desperation, so even a McDonalds gig in the US is an improvement. And even them, usually end up just in the same category as those white poor in the US -- the millions of poor latinos, blacks etc. "Move to find some opportunity in another" is not some general plan for tens of millions of those poor people, nor is global immigration any helpful analogy. It's not that different than saying "Those poor people in South Dakota or Alabama think they have it bad? Look at all those Syrians immigrating to a better life". Which is an insensitive thing to say in the first place, doubly so if those who say it don't share either's problems at the moment.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Ok, so according to you people choose to be poor because they value other things more than wealth. It sounds like you view their consumption choices as merely being a different lifestyle, kind of like me having a tiny amount of living space and being very mobile. So I guess the real reason Silicon Valley isn't "solving" the problem is because there is no problem to solve? I wish someone would tell this to Trump and Bernie! Tons also live month to month (if that), and couldn't afford the move and relocation, they'd just end up homeless in another state. This seems unlikely. Illegal Mexican immigrants have far less, yet don't usually end up homeless.

nikcheerla 10y ago

I would argue we could solve this if we had a better education system. It seems that they go through the schooling system for 8 years and learn nothing that helps them get an upwardly mobile job. Maybe part of the problem is that our schooling system is designed for salary class professionals looking to go to college – because those are the people who design curriculum.

gregfjohnson 10y ago

Mike Rowe (of "Dirty Jobs" fame) has set up the Mike Rowe Works Foundation. He is doing great work encouraging and helping working class and impoverished people. He teaches "holding a job 101" lessons that people higher in the socioeconomic scale learn with their mothers' milk. Show up on time in the morning. Be the kind of employee and colleague that others can come to trust and rely on. It doesn't have to be fun or Meaningful: They call it "WORK" and they pay you to do it! This guy is a hero in my book: He is not just talking about this problem. He is actually doing something about it. I wish it had been Mike Rowe instead of Donald Trump that had caught the zeitgeist and ridden it to national prominence.

yusee 10y ago

When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, he was working on the Poor People's Campaign[0], an effort to alleviate poverty for all Americans. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon was campaigning on "Law and Order" (ask yourself: what's the order?) in preparation for the War on Drugs as part of the Southern Strategy[1]: > Republican strategist Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger." Ronald Reagan campaigned heavily against "welfare queens,"[2] associating poverty and government assistance with urban blacks. In so doing, he persuaded working class whites that cutting social programs and tax rates for the wealthy would benefit them. As a resident of West Virginia, I must express the deepest sympathies for the suffering of my neighbors. But I can't help but sigh when I see a Confederate flag or Make America Great Again sign. And I see many every day. Trump offers the poor whites of America nothing but relative status at the expense of others. Hackers should stand firmly against the sowing of tribal division. We understand that the strength of capitalism is that it's not a zero-sum ideology. We are enriched by imagination, creativity, production. We are impoverished by conflicts over the distribution of the pie as it is. Are poor whites worse off than poor blacks than poor hispanics than poor native Americans than poor Asians? What a distraction. This question serves Machiavellian leaders and sensationalist media whose power is dependent on everyone hating each other. How can we make America--and the entire world--prosperous for everyone? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen