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No, it's you who is spreading myths. The poor choose not to work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/archive/a-profile-of-the-working-poor-2013.pdf

No, it's you who is spreading myths. The poor choose not to work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/archive/a-profile-of-the-working-poor-2013.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/archive/a-prof... http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Single motherhood is strongly correlated with poverty: http://www3.uakron.edu/schulze/401/readings/singleparfam.htm http://www3.uakron.edu/schulze/401/readings/singleparfam.htm The poor commit lots of crimes, including crimes with no economic motive (wife beating, rape): https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf The poor also disproportionately do drugs: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH-MHDetTabs2013.pdf https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTab...

Retric 10y ago
There is a lot of bias in these numbers. People who have more money are less likely get fought doing drugs, but they are also able to afford to do more drugs. The risks of doing drugs drop when you do one transaction a month, vs trying to feed a daily or even hourly habit.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Too bad the study authors didn't think of that. If they did, they might have decided to use a survey rather than arrest data. Then they might even have titled the study "RESULTS FROM THE 2013 NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND HEALTH: MENTAL HEALTH DETAILED TABLES". Step 1 in making a methodological critique of a study is to actually read the study.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Yes, because the CEO of IBM is going to say they use drugs. Survey does not mean what you think it means. If you read this they are going to defend the method as a means to track tends but not the actual numbers involved.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Unlike last time when you clearly didn't read it, I think that this time you actually read the study and identified a major methodological flaw (in under 11 minutes!!!) that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration didn't notice at all.
      - Retric 10y ago
        No, working with heath data on a regular basis I can tell you that it's not a flaw in the study. It's a flaw in your interpretation of the study. Pill speaking behavior for example is common even amount those who don't consider themselves drug addicts. Surveys are a very useful tool, but because the heath care community and patient don't agree on definitions they don't represent absolute numbers well.
deleted 10y ago
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ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
From the BLS PDF: >Full-time workers continued to be much less likely to be among the working poor than were part- time workers. Among people in the labor force for 27 weeks or more, 4.1 percent of those usually employed full time were classified as working poor, compared with 15.8 percent of part-time workers. That doesn't imply choice. Their clearly can and is a positive correlation between working part time and being unable to find full time work.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  If only the BLS thought of this - then they might have included this data in Table 1. From that table we could then learn that 20% of the working poor (or about 7% of poor adults) are in this situation. The number which implies choice is actually in paragraph 1, however: only 35% of poor adults worked or looked for work for at least 27 weeks/year. The remainder chose to engage in other non-work activities.
gjm11 10y ago
I looked through the 16-page BLS report and 20-page USCB report you linked but didn't see where either said that "the poor choose not to work" or anything close to equivalent to that. The nearest I can find is that people working full-time are less likely to be poor than people working part-time, but if there's anything saying that everyone working part-time does so by choice then I failed to see it. ... I see from another comment you've made that your actual point lies in the background information the BLS report mentions at the start (FFS, would it have killed you to say that at the outset?): 45.3M poor people, of whom only 10.5M are "working poor", from which you conclude that the others have chosen not to work. Well, let's take a look. About 14% of US senior citizens and 18% of US children are in poverty. That's about 14% of about 45M plus 18% of about 70M, or about 19M people. These are not people who have chosen not to work, but people not in a position to do so. So that leaves about 16M people of working age but not in the labour force. What else? There are about 10M people with disabilities in the US who are of working age but not in the labour force. I don't know what fraction of them are not in the labour force because their disability prevents them working, but let's suppose it's only half of those people. (I bet it's more.) That would leave 11M people in the US who are in poverty, of working age, not unable to work because of disability, and yet not in the labour force. Are all those people poor by choice? Well, no; I bet a lot of them are people who have tried and tried to find employment, failed and failed, and eventually given up in despair. But let's suppose I'm wrong and all those people could realistically get a job if they wanted. (I bet at least half of them couldn't.) And let's suppose, optimistically given those working-poor statistics, that all of them could realistically get a job that would stop them being poor. (I bet at least half of those who could get a job couldn't get one that would actually lift them out of poverty.) That would mean that ~11M out of 45M poor people in the US are poor by choice. Less than a quarter of 'em. (My guess, as per my parenthetical comments above, is that the real figure is more like 2-3M out of 45M, but I'm being generous to you here.) Yes, poor people commit more crimes than rich people, even crimes with no direct connection to money. May I suggest that you take five minutes and see what other explanations you can think of for that, besides "poor people are naturally bad people who do bad things"? I can think of several. Here are a few to get you started: (1) Poor people can't afford to live in nice places; in the nasty places, there is more violence for them to get caught up in. (2) Poverty causes stress and people under stress are more likely to commit crimes. (3) The laws that determine what things are crimes are generally made by well-off people, whose characteristic ways of screwing other people over tend not to be criminalized. If a rich person and a poor person do equal amounts of harm to others, the poor person is much more likely to go to jail. Yes, poor people use illegal drugs more than rich people, and (you linked to a 577-page document and gave no indication of exactly what bit of it you had in mind) what may be more to the point is that when poor people use illegal drugs it's more likely to mess up their lives enough that it gets noticed. (Because the worse your situation is, the more likely it is that doing drugs makes it really bad.) Again: I suggest that you spend a few minutes really trying to think of explanations other than "poor people are stupid people who do stupid things"; I can think of several. Rather than suggesting some examples, I'll leave this one up to you completely. None of this justifies the claim that poor people are generally poor because they choose not to do things that would stop them being poor. (It's evidence against a strawman theory that says poverty strikes completely at random and there's nothing at all anyone can do about it. I don't think anyone believes that, though.) My guess, FWIW: There's a whole spectrum from "ample opportunity for a comfortable life, voluntarily did things that screwed that up and became poor as a result" through "difficult initial situation made it much harder to avoid poverty, failed to do so" and "became poor by whatever means, and the circumstances of poverty make it harder to make the sort of decisions that might get you out of it" to "terrible situation from the outset, never really had a chance", and there are people all along it; everyone's situation is the result of interaction between their character and their environment, and the two shape one another in any case; most comfortably off people, if suddenly made poor without other changes to their character and social networks and so forth, would get out of poverty; but most comfortably off people, if they had been dropped into a situation of poverty from childhood onward, would not have escaped; in any case, responding to poverty with "eh, it's their choice, no point trying to fix it" is not only callous and inhumane but also unlikely to be an effective way of reducing poverty.
timr 10y ago
So, did you listen to the podcast, or did you just decide I'm wrong and start arguing?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The transcript is quite long. Can you tell me where they show that the Census, BLS, BJS and other government agencies that I cite are wrong?
  - timr 10y ago
    so, no, you didn't.

Retric 10y ago

There is a lot of bias in these numbers. People who have more money are less likely get fought doing drugs, but they are also able to afford to do more drugs. The risks of doing drugs drop when you do one transaction a month, vs trying to feed a daily or even hourly habit.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Too bad the study authors didn't think of that. If they did, they might have decided to use a survey rather than arrest data. Then they might even have titled the study "RESULTS FROM THE 2013 NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND HEALTH: MENTAL HEALTH DETAILED TABLES". Step 1 in making a methodological critique of a study is to actually read the study.
- Retric 10y ago
  Yes, because the CEO of IBM is going to say they use drugs. Survey does not mean what you think it means. If you read this they are going to defend the method as a means to track tends but not the actual numbers involved.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Unlike last time when you clearly didn't read it, I think that this time you actually read the study and identified a major methodological flaw (in under 11 minutes!!!) that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration didn't notice at all.
    - Retric 10y ago
      No, working with heath data on a regular basis I can tell you that it's not a flaw in the study. It's a flaw in your interpretation of the study. Pill speaking behavior for example is common even amount those who don't consider themselves drug addicts. Surveys are a very useful tool, but because the heath care community and patient don't agree on definitions they don't represent absolute numbers well.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ryan_j_naughton 10y ago

From the BLS PDF: >Full-time workers continued to be much less likely to be among the working poor than were part- time workers. Among people in the labor force for 27 weeks or more, 4.1 percent of those usually employed full time were classified as working poor, compared with 15.8 percent of part-time workers. That doesn't imply choice. Their clearly can and is a positive correlation between working part time and being unable to find full time work.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
If only the BLS thought of this - then they might have included this data in Table 1. From that table we could then learn that 20% of the working poor (or about 7% of poor adults) are in this situation. The number which implies choice is actually in paragraph 1, however: only 35% of poor adults worked or looked for work for at least 27 weeks/year. The remainder chose to engage in other non-work activities.

gjm11 10y ago

I looked through the 16-page BLS report and 20-page USCB report you linked but didn't see where either said that "the poor choose not to work" or anything close to equivalent to that. The nearest I can find is that people working full-time are less likely to be poor than people working part-time, but if there's anything saying that everyone working part-time does so by choice then I failed to see it. ... I see from another comment you've made that your actual point lies in the background information the BLS report mentions at the start (FFS, would it have killed you to say that at the outset?): 45.3M poor people, of whom only 10.5M are "working poor", from which you conclude that the others have chosen not to work. Well, let's take a look. About 14% of US senior citizens and 18% of US children are in poverty. That's about 14% of about 45M plus 18% of about 70M, or about 19M people. These are not people who have chosen not to work, but people not in a position to do so. So that leaves about 16M people of working age but not in the labour force. What else? There are about 10M people with disabilities in the US who are of working age but not in the labour force. I don't know what fraction of them are not in the labour force because their disability prevents them working, but let's suppose it's only half of those people. (I bet it's more.) That would leave 11M people in the US who are in poverty, of working age, not unable to work because of disability, and yet not in the labour force. Are all those people poor by choice? Well, no; I bet a lot of them are people who have tried and tried to find employment, failed and failed, and eventually given up in despair. But let's suppose I'm wrong and all those people could realistically get a job if they wanted. (I bet at least half of them couldn't.) And let's suppose, optimistically given those working-poor statistics, that all of them could realistically get a job that would stop them being poor. (I bet at least half of those who could get a job couldn't get one that would actually lift them out of poverty.) That would mean that ~11M out of 45M poor people in the US are poor by choice. Less than a quarter of 'em. (My guess, as per my parenthetical comments above, is that the real figure is more like 2-3M out of 45M, but I'm being generous to you here.) Yes, poor people commit more crimes than rich people, even crimes with no direct connection to money. May I suggest that you take five minutes and see what other explanations you can think of for that, besides "poor people are naturally bad people who do bad things"? I can think of several. Here are a few to get you started: (1) Poor people can't afford to live in nice places; in the nasty places, there is more violence for them to get caught up in. (2) Poverty causes stress and people under stress are more likely to commit crimes. (3) The laws that determine what things are crimes are generally made by well-off people, whose characteristic ways of screwing other people over tend not to be criminalized. If a rich person and a poor person do equal amounts of harm to others, the poor person is much more likely to go to jail. Yes, poor people use illegal drugs more than rich people, and (you linked to a 577-page document and gave no indication of exactly what bit of it you had in mind) what may be more to the point is that when poor people use illegal drugs it's more likely to mess up their lives enough that it gets noticed. (Because the worse your situation is, the more likely it is that doing drugs makes it really bad.) Again: I suggest that you spend a few minutes really trying to think of explanations other than "poor people are stupid people who do stupid things"; I can think of several. Rather than suggesting some examples, I'll leave this one up to you completely. None of this justifies the claim that poor people are generally poor because they choose not to do things that would stop them being poor. (It's evidence against a strawman theory that says poverty strikes completely at random and there's nothing at all anyone can do about it. I don't think anyone believes that, though.) My guess, FWIW: There's a whole spectrum from "ample opportunity for a comfortable life, voluntarily did things that screwed that up and became poor as a result" through "difficult initial situation made it much harder to avoid poverty, failed to do so" and "became poor by whatever means, and the circumstances of poverty make it harder to make the sort of decisions that might get you out of it" to "terrible situation from the outset, never really had a chance", and there are people all along it; everyone's situation is the result of interaction between their character and their environment, and the two shape one another in any case; most comfortably off people, if suddenly made poor without other changes to their character and social networks and so forth, would get out of poverty; but most comfortably off people, if they had been dropped into a situation of poverty from childhood onward, would not have escaped; in any case, responding to poverty with "eh, it's their choice, no point trying to fix it" is not only callous and inhumane but also unlikely to be an effective way of reducing poverty.

timr 10y ago

So, did you listen to the podcast, or did you just decide I'm wrong and start arguing?

yummyfajitas 10y ago
The transcript is quite long. Can you tell me where they show that the Census, BLS, BJS and other government agencies that I cite are wrong?
- timr 10y ago
  so, no, you didn't.