11 ms·

The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

151 points by cr1895 9y ago

balthasar 9y ago
Americans are slowly becoming more radical as a reaction to economic pressures. With each side's policies alien to the other, compromise becomes impossible. Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get very interesting.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get very interesting. Well things are pretty violent already, with the deadly class war the police is fighting against the population (~1k in 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...) plus the countless arrests, macing, tasering and other violent actions of police against peaceful demonstrators, plus all the violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism). Add in the huge number of weapons circulating in the US... when the poor people (or the armed rednecks) finally feel desperate enough that will be quite a bloodbath.
  - marcoperaza 9y ago
    Police fighting a class war? The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are unambiguously from the justified use of force, in self-defense and the defense of others. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of violent and bad people out there.
    - brohee 9y ago
      There are countless youtube videos of police arresting violent individuals in Europe where they would just be gunned down in the US. If you want another comparaison, look up dog shooting in the US and in Europe, unless you really believe dogs are somewhat more dangerous in the US, the inescapable conclusion is that American cops enjoy the power trip of gunning down living creatures... And why shouldn't they, it's almost risk free for them, which is the root of the issue.
      - xya3453 9y ago
        Or taking Hanlon's razor, Americian cops have been institutionalised to use force, almost as if they're operating in a country with more guns than citizens (unlike anywhere in Europe, or the world for that matter).
      - raguuu 9y ago
        It's because we don't have guns. It's absurd to think police could act like that there knowing there are so many armed people. The gun thing is a chicken and egg problem, of course.
    - gambiting 9y ago
      >>The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are unambiguously from the justified use of force There's two problems with this. 1) if you define "justified use of force" like Americans do, then yeah, of course it's justified, a guy pulling up his pants while being dragged on the ground is now "reaching for a weapon" so an officer is fully justified to shoot him dead. He was practically asking for it, and it shows up as such in all official statistics. 2) It doesn't explain how is it that other countries can get through the entire year without police murdering a single person, despite having the same or worse crime rates as US.
      - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
        A significant difference is, that American police are arresting Americans. They are likely armed, while in other countries that may not be the case.
        sidlls 9y ago
        They are not likely armed. Fewer than half of all households have even a single gun. Most of those aren't households where the gun owners carry in public: they're the kind of household where the "responsible gun owner" leaves his kit where the two year old can get it and accidentally shoot his 6 month old sister to death.
        mschuster91 9y ago
        > They are not likely armed. But definitely way, way more likely than in any other civilized country in the world, and that's the problem.
        sidlls 9y ago
        It's a problem, agreed. It's not "the" problem. Police in other countries don't have the same problem with individuals they apprehend that are armed. So I'd argue the prevalence of firearms is problematic, but the militarization of our police forces is much more so.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    Could we not exaggerate? It doesn't help the discussion. plus all the violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism) "all of the violence", you listed one death. One death is a tragedy, but it's not a massively systematic problem unless we act like it is and turn it into one. You also act like there isn't such a thing as left-wing domestic terrorism. That terrorism killed more people in a single event, 7/7/16, than that nutjob running someone over did. What about the mob of nazis and anti-facists getting into fights in Berkeley? If you're not committed to one of those groups, it's just as bad. It's mob violence either way. Nazis suck, but please try to be objective. When you frame the argument as you are, you are setting up flamebait. Some nazi will use your exaggerations against you.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > One death is a tragedy, but it's not a massively systematic problem unless we act like it is and turn it into one. It is a systematic problem. 150 incidents between 1993 and 2017, an average of 6 terrorist incidents a year or once every two months. 255 people died, 603 people were injured. Source: https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constan... Note: this is just the violence that got counted as terrorist violence, not your ordinary Nazi running around and slapping PoC.
      - aaron-lebo 9y ago
        It is a problem, but not the way you are exaggerating it to be. You act as if there is a nazi army ready to march on the nation, but that's not happening. We do have pockets of bigots and racists and god knows what else, but they don't have huge bases of support unless we act like they do. Nazis want to feel important, they want people to get riled up and fight them. That's what the actual nazis did. ordinary Nazi running around and slapping PoC There are a lot of bigots and racists doing thaT, but unless we're being really loose with the term nazi, we don't actually have that many nazis running around. Their worst acts were in the mid 1990s (OKC). Hell, in 1999 in Jasper, some racists lynched a man. 1999! Those people have always been around, they always will be around. There's always going to be some number of incidents. That does not mean they have real power nor should people act like they do. This is a decent read: https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255619/fact-check-is-left-wing-violence-rising https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255619/fact-check-is-left-...
- mikejb 9y ago
  Interesting isn't the word I'd use, but I understand what you mean. I really hope that a third party will start to grow. Whilst it may have benefits, I think the two-party-system feeds a lot into the "with me or against me" concept.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    > I really hope that a third party will start to grow. Third parties don’t thrive in countries with first-past-the-post voting and without a tradition of coalition-making. In order for the USA to reach a point where it could have more than a two-party system, it would have to completely remake its governmental structure, and “very interesting” is an appropriate euphemism for what things would be like if it ever came to that.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      And it would have to get rid of money in politics.
  - balthasar 9y ago
    A third party is not necessary. Both of the current U.S. political parties are very easily co-opted.
- lumberjack 9y ago
  >With each side's policies alien to the other This is just an symptom of economic inequality. If you do not belong to the same economic class anymore, then what might make the country better for you, might make the country worst for the other person. There is no way to avoid this.
xstartup 9y ago
I think in a few years, American will write off all debt. Quantitative Amnesia.
- PacketPaul 9y ago
  No we will just devalue the currency. There is no reason to default if you can just print more.
  - maze-le 9y ago
    >> There is no reason to default if you can just print more. Sure there is a reason, it is called hyperinflation.
aluhut 9y ago
I don't see a reason why the U.S. can't in this article. Or did I miss something? It worked pretty good even when they've been in the open. Recently we had a topic here where people were reporting about homeless people being carried out of the cities. It seems to me that the U.S. got quite comfortable with their poor. Probably even working as an negative incentive for the (still) employed. Don't forget the American Dream too. I mean according to that: it's just their fault...they COULD have been rich!
- sbarre 9y ago
  I think the end of the article is where the author(s) make the case for looking to help at home as much or more than abroad. "The U.S." in this case is not the government or institutions, but rather the people who are willing and able to help others, and how the traditional "help poor countries" wisdom should be revisited and perhaps changed to "help poor people".
obeardly 9y ago
Poverty is not a problem. It is the default state. Instead of asking what causes poverty, we need to ask what causes wealth. We also need to realize that being poor is not a good/bad thing. Again, it's the default state.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Being the default doesn't make it not a problem. In fact, poverty being the default is a problem in itself. I'd prefer it if the default were not having to worry about the future, and I think most poor people would agree.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    I think being not poor and not worrying about the future is a bit contradictory for everyone except the very small part of top 1% who are independently wealthy. Probably under 0.1%. Poverty is a stable, default state, everything else requires constant effort and standing the competition.
    - dictum 9y ago
      > standing the competition I'm not sure what you meant by standing, but while competition may be a requirement for generating and amassing greater wealth, it's not a requirement to keep people from poverty.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  The default state is that of a subsistence farmer being regularly preyed on by bandits. Without society, without the apparatus and knowledge bequeathed to us by those who came before us, that would be the fate of everybody, including Bill Gates. We get our wealth by standing on the shoulders of giants. The poor deserve the fruits of the labors of those giants just as much as the rest of us do.
  - oreo81 9y ago
    > The poor deserve the fruits of the labors of those giants just as much as the rest of us do. Who's stopping them?
jamesblonde 9y ago
This video from Anaheim (California) is reminiscent of travelling around Dehli (from 39' in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk). The level/amount of poverty in this video is shocking.
- odonnellryan 9y ago
  Probably worse in CA, but this exists on some level in every state. Here in NJ we have the same exact thing, just not along a bike path.
  - wahsd 9y ago
    Funny enough, it only exists in places that are led by Democrats and liberals or are affected by Democrat and Liberal policies. But please prove me wrong. I just need one indisputable example and I will eat crow regardless of whether one exception doesn't make the rule.
  - mrarjen 9y ago
    Yea, I read that most homeless seem to head to CA because it's where the money is... Here in NL we have some homeless, but also lots of government systems in place to offer housing and incentives to possibly work or get schooling. In the end this is actually cheaper, as to prevent crime and what not. Not sure how this would work in the US.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      About 60 million Americans receive some federal assistance. A slightly larger number get healthcare from Medicaid. The assistance is not a large amount per month, but it is there.
      - ckinnan 9y ago
        Medicaid covers around 80 million people, at roughly $7,000 a year per recipient, which is double what the UK spends per patient. https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/distribution-of-medicaid-enrollees-by-enrollment-group/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/distribution-of...
fredgrott 9y ago
probably a direct result of money in politics...
bcatanzaro 9y ago
I don’t understand how this is possible. We have a lot of programs to help people - food assistance, housing and health care assistance, disability... Are these benefits being counted when we say they live on $4/day?
- jschwartzi 9y ago
  These benefits are inaccessible without a long trip through some really Byzantine application processes where nobody is actually incentivized to help you. These processes ostensibly exist to block freeloaders but they also serve to prevent the needy from accessing the resource too.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    It also exists to give indolent, illiterate, innumerate people 'do-good' jobs to get entrenched in, and suck up all the resources, with no accountability. It's one of the things that has befallen SF, where an industry funded by the city to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars a year, fails to keep a few thousand people off the street. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-million-budget-sf-still-struggles-with-homelessness/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-mill... http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-poor-accounting-at-SF-nonprofit-12114309.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-... http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money...
  - guihvvv 9y ago
    I readily critize our grotesque engorged bureaucracy, but getting food stamps isn't difficult, as exibited by the 40+ million people who take advantage of them, and by personal anecdotal evidence.
    - dbingham 9y ago
      I think it depends on where you are and how used to using bureaucracy you are. I know people who really struggled to wend their way through the bureaucracy that protects food stamps in order to get them.
wahsd 9y ago
The most bizarre aspect of it is that the very same people that lament that fact, are also the ones who support all its causes and throw the most violent tantrums to scuttle improving the situation. We have tried it their way for decade after decade after decade, and the astronomical cost has only led to barely measurable improvements at wild cost/benefit ratios, while being unsustainable on their own essentially everywhere those measures are not artificially scaffolded and have heavy layers of spin and blatant propaganda lies applied to it. Maybe the worst part of it is that those very people don't even understand that they are doing any of that because they have been manipulated and lied to about both the causes and solutions as they have ever increasingly been drawn into a cult in which up is down, left is right, and only the con job leaders benefit from it. When you have fixed, preconceived notions about outcomes, don't be surprised that you cannot achieve them with the existing variables. You end up having to bend and manipulate and rig and patch things ever increasingly and more bizarrely in order to maintain the desired end state or outcome that the system becomes ever more unstable and fragile. See the mid aughts housing fraud, aka, housing bubble for reference. The conclusion was that house prices can only go up, so everything was subsequently rigged through self-perpetuating incentives to support that fixed assumed outcome. Precisely what keeps us repeatedly doing the things that have no effect on the desired outcome. But at least it supports a huge non-profit industry complex that perpetuates itself under the guise of "helping" .... itself to your money. It's quite frustrating that in spite of the truth and solution being right before our eyes, because truth and reality is too inconvenient and difficult and uncomfortable because it does not fit with preconceived conclusions and assumptions, we simply want to ignore reality and substituted our own. And so goes the perpetual poverty "problem" that we are seeking "solutions" for. Organizations can't even move away from Microsoft products simply because they get money from the Gates foundation ... and we want to solve poverty? It's a bad joke. As someone has said, our "help" and development money is taking money from poor American children, in order to give it to rich Africans ... who then scurry it away into offshore bank accounts. I know this may make some arteries pop, but the President of Uganda puts it well: http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-president-i-love-trump-because-he-tells-africans-frankly http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-presi...
xorfish 9y ago
So what do Switzerland, Germany and Iceland better than the rest of the developed nations?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Education on all skill levels, better redistribution, people understanding that is in your interest to eradicate poverty.
- oreo81 9y ago
  Germany?
  - xorfish 9y ago
    Hartz IV? That is more than 4$/day
  - surreptitious00 9y ago
    The Master Place.
- 11_4_time 9y ago
  They haven't had decades of sustained mass immigration of low-skilled workers.
  - pmyteh 9y ago
    Germany, at least, has: several million people, just counting those of Turkish descent.
  - xorfish 9y ago
    I know, not all immigrants are low skill. But nearly 25% of Swiss residents do not have a Swiss passport. (Even if you account for the difficulty of the naturalization process, that is a lot)
  - theonewhocanfly 9y ago
    What a bogus , Switzerland has 40% foreigners which have immigrated , 30% of those have nowadays a citizenship and passport , read Swiss history before posting such crap!!!
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
https://outline.com/STFZAv https://outline.com/STFZAv paywall bypass
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
This is the other side of globalization. Globalization is super nice when you're secure in your job, "hey everything is getting cheaper!" but when your job is the one in the crosshairs what you're feeling is a pressure that is pushing the living standard of the third world and yours together. That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical. And before I get jumped on, no I'm not against all trade. What I'm for however is noting that people don't live in the long-term, economically we are firmly short-term creatures. Good policy won't give everything up for the long-term, it will also protect people in the short-term, we don't need an end to trade, we need a curtailing of some trade.
- paganel 9y ago
  > That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical. This forum is not composed of US users only. For example I live in one of those countries who benefited from opening up to foreign trade (I live in Eastern Europe) so it would be pretty hypocritical of me to complain about open markets.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    This is one of the things I like about HN however. There are plenty of smart people all over the world (Eastern Europe included!). It is great to be capable of having civilized discussions with different viewpoints. If you open yourself to it, it is easy to learn something new from someone with an entirely different worldview and life context than you.
- Retric 9y ago
  I am for immigration, it's just the pseudo indentured servitude that is H1B that I have a problem with. As to factory outsourcing, I think it's overall a net gain for humanity. Long term there is a finite number of countries and barring societal collapse eventually they will all end up 'developed'. It simply exposes other problems in the US like our horrible social safety net and endemic corruption. So, a small ~2-5% import tax is probably a net gain for US society.
natecavanaugh 9y ago
It seems it can, from behind it's gated content community In all honesty, though, I'd love to hear some stories from any social workers here as to their beliefs are regarding the extreme lows of poverty and maybe fix it. I think we've all heard that we should change drug policy, expand government service for mental health and treatment, but does anyone have any other we don't normally hear about?
ivankirigin 9y ago
I welcome an absolute definition of poverty. We talk about the richest and poorest quintiles much more often, which is worse than a moving target. There will always be a lowest quintile. The cynic in me thinks this is a job protection program for those working in poverty reduction. I wish we had more science here. The linked research points to the 1995 welfare reforms as causing a change. The way to prove effectiveness is with a well run trial - one that changes in federal policy make impossible. Economic growth (or stagnation) is also crucial here to lower poverty rates. But all of macroeconomics suffers from the same basic measurement problem. Restated: what anti poverty program did hundreds of millions of Indian and Chinese families since 1995 participate in?
11_4_time 9y ago
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the U.S. immigration policy (or lack thereof) bears a signification part of the blame here. Why in the face of globalization (and now increased automation) the U.S. continues to have an effectively open-door policy to low-skill workers makes no sense at all. As a U.S. citizen, I'd like to see a return to the temporary moratorium that existed until the mid 1960s (say 10 to 15 years) on most immigration beyond high-skill (however that is defined) and an end to "chain migration" in which entire families are allowed to immigrate regardless of most other factors.
- orf 9y ago
  > Give me your tired, your poor, > Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, > The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. > Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me I think it would be hypocritical at best, given America's history and current position to take such a stance. Surely the right thing to do is not to be scared of the immigration bogeyman and take some concrete steps towards the future, rather than closing the door and pretending things will get better by itself. It won't. If you want to comfort yourself in a nice blanket of blame, go ahead and blame the immigrants rather than the people in power who have actually caused this.
  - 11_4_time 9y ago
    That's from a poem tacked onto the Statue of Liberty in 1903, not U.S. law or policy. People quote that as if it's from the preamble to the constitution or something... Mass immigration made sense when the U.S. was a manufacturing colossus, no longer. Immigration should be targeted and far lower than it is now.
    - orf 9y ago
      Well it was also written specifically for the statue of liberty, and was 'tacked on' to it, not even 20 years after it was dedicated for a reason. Because that's literally what the statue represents. It's kind of sad to see a nation built by, from and for poor immigrants completely forget their origins.
bradleyjg 9y ago
According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain). I tried to track down this factoid. First I went to the world bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=U... which does show 1% for the US. In the notes it says " Data for high-income economies are from the Luxembourg Income Study database." My next stop was there. From http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home I found that the source of their data was Current Population Survey (CPS) - Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) (United States). The Current Population survey has a table creator here: https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html Although there is nothing that quite matches the 3.2 million figure cited, the LIS did some harmonization so the most likely ultimate source is the 3.446 million people living in households that were categorized as having "no income" in 2013. This is separate from the 2.775 million people that were categorized as living in households that have "$1 to $2,499 or loss" in income. I'm very skeptical that this is an appropriate use of this data. The world bank poverty number is supposed to be about consumption--it has to do with people consuming very little in the way of goods and services. But no one at all can live on no goods and services. They'd die of hunger and thirst in far less than a year. It could in theory be the case that millions of Americans were living on less than $1.90/day in consumption but it cannot possibly be the case that millions of Americans are living on $0/day. To the extent that the figure cited for "no income" means anything (and isn't just noise in the data), it doesn't mean what the world bank means when it says living on $1.90/day.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  If the consumption comes from a market, then sure. But during the Depression, millions of rural Americans lived on $0 for years. Kitchen garden, a cow, a pig, some chickens and there you are. So point is, maybe dollars aren't tracking what we think they're tracking?
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
xya3453 9y ago
> Beyond that, many Americans, especially whites with no more than a high school education, have seen worsening health: As my research with my wife, the Princeton economist Anne Case, has demonstrated, for this group life expectancy is falling; mortality rates from drugs, alcohol and suicide are rising Yet in 2018, most diversity initiatives still focus on race regardless of socio-economic background.
- gcb0 9y ago
  you wish. in california high paying companies and universities the talk is still gender. when even rich white woman need a movement, and they do, you realize how behind schedule the US is.
  - badwulf 9y ago
    > when even rich white woman need a movement, and they do They don't, they just need to learn a highly valued skill like everybody else.
- kevingadd 9y ago
  Diversity is a completely different subject from poverty. They're both subjects worth addressing. Poor black people in the deep south and poor white people in the deep south still live different experiences even if they're both having a hard time. Rich african americans get treated differently from rich white people. This isn't a contest. We need to fix everything.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    >This isn't a contest. Isn't it though? I mean to a certain extent policy and even corporate 'diversity initiatives' are a matter of priority - first we even the ground for women, then minorities, then maybe gender id is next? I don't see the Ivy League rushing to ensure that their campus maintains wealth-diversity in the same way they ensure racial diversity. Maybe we really do need an Oppression Olympics, then we can sort out which group is most in need of help and prioritize them (I'm biased, I think it's going to be the poor.)
ThomPete 9y ago
It's not a poverty problem it's a cost of living problem. Those are two very different things (and becomes more and more severe the poorer you are) You can't outsource your home to China. Globalization does not make every day cheaper it just provides more choices and will in aggregate always increase the cost of living. So as long as your job/income is on the right side of the rise of the cost of living you are fine but if you are on the other side with either no job or poorly paid job or as a freelancer (with no healthcare) then you are in trouble no matter how cheap flatscreen TV become.
- kingraoul3 9y ago
  And with a wave of her magic wand and the enunciation of the magic words "Ceteris Paribus", the Free Market Fairy made hookworm in Alabama disappear.
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    There is a big difference between just saying deep poverty and then qualifying what leads to this deep poverty. Just saying poverty is the cop out here trying to qualify what drives this problem offers at least a way to look at the problem that doesn't end in tax the rich as that will not solve the deep poverty problem.
    - kingraoul3 9y ago
      Meanwhile, in the real world, it is the demand of Capital to grow at %6 a year regardless of the health of the overall economy that is fueling the attacks on the social safety net.
      - ThomPete 9y ago
        That demand is by design and is the price of a stable economy and is followed by more or less every country in the developed world. Even in countries like Denmark (which is where I am originally from) and who have high taxes and a high degree of redistribution of wealth, you will find people who are poor and homeless. Add to that the discussion about relative poverty and you will have a problem that can never be solved unless you give everyone one exactly the same.
d--b 9y ago
Mmmh, they say they adjust the poverty threshold based on actual needs, yet they use a single $4 threshold for the whole of the US, and the whole of Europe... And then they're not critical about their methodology when it consistently shows that warmer countries have a larger chunk of the population that is very poor. Perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in Spain than it is in Denmark. And perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in California than it is in Michigan... When it comes to extreme poverty anyway, we're looking at the very tail of the bell curves, so the stats are somewhat shady there. It's not very clean to compare tail stats between countries. The thing that can be compared is the evolution of these numbers over time. If in the US more and more people are living with less than $4 a day, that is concerning.
Roland1245 9y ago
That's a nice bike

151 points by cr1895 9y ago

Americans are slowly becoming more radical as a reaction to economic pressures. With each side's policies alien to the other, compromise becomes impossible. Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get very interesting.

mschuster91 9y ago
> Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get very interesting. Well things are pretty violent already, with the deadly class war the police is fighting against the population (~1k in 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...) plus the countless arrests, macing, tasering and other violent actions of police against peaceful demonstrators, plus all the violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism). Add in the huge number of weapons circulating in the US... when the poor people (or the armed rednecks) finally feel desperate enough that will be quite a bloodbath.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
  Police fighting a class war? The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are unambiguously from the justified use of force, in self-defense and the defense of others. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of violent and bad people out there.
  - brohee 9y ago
    There are countless youtube videos of police arresting violent individuals in Europe where they would just be gunned down in the US. If you want another comparaison, look up dog shooting in the US and in Europe, unless you really believe dogs are somewhat more dangerous in the US, the inescapable conclusion is that American cops enjoy the power trip of gunning down living creatures... And why shouldn't they, it's almost risk free for them, which is the root of the issue.
    - xya3453 9y ago
      Or taking Hanlon's razor, Americian cops have been institutionalised to use force, almost as if they're operating in a country with more guns than citizens (unlike anywhere in Europe, or the world for that matter).
    - raguuu 9y ago
      It's because we don't have guns. It's absurd to think police could act like that there knowing there are so many armed people. The gun thing is a chicken and egg problem, of course.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    >>The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are unambiguously from the justified use of force There's two problems with this. 1) if you define "justified use of force" like Americans do, then yeah, of course it's justified, a guy pulling up his pants while being dragged on the ground is now "reaching for a weapon" so an officer is fully justified to shoot him dead. He was practically asking for it, and it shows up as such in all official statistics. 2) It doesn't explain how is it that other countries can get through the entire year without police murdering a single person, despite having the same or worse crime rates as US.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      A significant difference is, that American police are arresting Americans. They are likely armed, while in other countries that may not be the case.
      - sidlls 9y ago
        They are not likely armed. Fewer than half of all households have even a single gun. Most of those aren't households where the gun owners carry in public: they're the kind of household where the "responsible gun owner" leaves his kit where the two year old can get it and accidentally shoot his 6 month old sister to death.
        mschuster91 9y ago
        > They are not likely armed. But definitely way, way more likely than in any other civilized country in the world, and that's the problem.
        sidlls 9y ago
        It's a problem, agreed. It's not "the" problem. Police in other countries don't have the same problem with individuals they apprehend that are armed. So I'd argue the prevalence of firearms is problematic, but the militarization of our police forces is much more so.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Could we not exaggerate? It doesn't help the discussion. plus all the violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism) "all of the violence", you listed one death. One death is a tragedy, but it's not a massively systematic problem unless we act like it is and turn it into one. You also act like there isn't such a thing as left-wing domestic terrorism. That terrorism killed more people in a single event, 7/7/16, than that nutjob running someone over did. What about the mob of nazis and anti-facists getting into fights in Berkeley? If you're not committed to one of those groups, it's just as bad. It's mob violence either way. Nazis suck, but please try to be objective. When you frame the argument as you are, you are setting up flamebait. Some nazi will use your exaggerations against you.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > One death is a tragedy, but it's not a massively systematic problem unless we act like it is and turn it into one. It is a systematic problem. 150 incidents between 1993 and 2017, an average of 6 terrorist incidents a year or once every two months. 255 people died, 603 people were injured. Source: https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constan... Note: this is just the violence that got counted as terrorist violence, not your ordinary Nazi running around and slapping PoC.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      It is a problem, but not the way you are exaggerating it to be. You act as if there is a nazi army ready to march on the nation, but that's not happening. We do have pockets of bigots and racists and god knows what else, but they don't have huge bases of support unless we act like they do. Nazis want to feel important, they want people to get riled up and fight them. That's what the actual nazis did. ordinary Nazi running around and slapping PoC There are a lot of bigots and racists doing thaT, but unless we're being really loose with the term nazi, we don't actually have that many nazis running around. Their worst acts were in the mid 1990s (OKC). Hell, in 1999 in Jasper, some racists lynched a man. 1999! Those people have always been around, they always will be around. There's always going to be some number of incidents. That does not mean they have real power nor should people act like they do. This is a decent read: https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255619/fact-check-is-left-wing-violence-rising https://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/533255619/fact-check-is-left-...
mikejb 9y ago
Interesting isn't the word I'd use, but I understand what you mean. I really hope that a third party will start to grow. Whilst it may have benefits, I think the two-party-system feeds a lot into the "with me or against me" concept.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > I really hope that a third party will start to grow. Third parties don’t thrive in countries with first-past-the-post voting and without a tradition of coalition-making. In order for the USA to reach a point where it could have more than a two-party system, it would have to completely remake its governmental structure, and “very interesting” is an appropriate euphemism for what things would be like if it ever came to that.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    And it would have to get rid of money in politics.
- balthasar 9y ago
  A third party is not necessary. Both of the current U.S. political parties are very easily co-opted.
lumberjack 9y ago
>With each side's policies alien to the other This is just an symptom of economic inequality. If you do not belong to the same economic class anymore, then what might make the country better for you, might make the country worst for the other person. There is no way to avoid this.

xstartup 9y ago

I think in a few years, American will write off all debt. Quantitative Amnesia.

PacketPaul 9y ago
No we will just devalue the currency. There is no reason to default if you can just print more.
- maze-le 9y ago
  >> There is no reason to default if you can just print more. Sure there is a reason, it is called hyperinflation.

aluhut 9y ago

I don't see a reason why the U.S. can't in this article. Or did I miss something? It worked pretty good even when they've been in the open. Recently we had a topic here where people were reporting about homeless people being carried out of the cities. It seems to me that the U.S. got quite comfortable with their poor. Probably even working as an negative incentive for the (still) employed. Don't forget the American Dream too. I mean according to that: it's just their fault...they COULD have been rich!

sbarre 9y ago
I think the end of the article is where the author(s) make the case for looking to help at home as much or more than abroad. "The U.S." in this case is not the government or institutions, but rather the people who are willing and able to help others, and how the traditional "help poor countries" wisdom should be revisited and perhaps changed to "help poor people".

obeardly 9y ago

Poverty is not a problem. It is the default state. Instead of asking what causes poverty, we need to ask what causes wealth. We also need to realize that being poor is not a good/bad thing. Again, it's the default state.

yorwba 9y ago
Being the default doesn't make it not a problem. In fact, poverty being the default is a problem in itself. I'd prefer it if the default were not having to worry about the future, and I think most poor people would agree.
- anovikov 9y ago
  I think being not poor and not worrying about the future is a bit contradictory for everyone except the very small part of top 1% who are independently wealthy. Probably under 0.1%. Poverty is a stable, default state, everything else requires constant effort and standing the competition.
  - dictum 9y ago
    > standing the competition I'm not sure what you meant by standing, but while competition may be a requirement for generating and amassing greater wealth, it's not a requirement to keep people from poverty.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
The default state is that of a subsistence farmer being regularly preyed on by bandits. Without society, without the apparatus and knowledge bequeathed to us by those who came before us, that would be the fate of everybody, including Bill Gates. We get our wealth by standing on the shoulders of giants. The poor deserve the fruits of the labors of those giants just as much as the rest of us do.
- oreo81 9y ago
  > The poor deserve the fruits of the labors of those giants just as much as the rest of us do. Who's stopping them?

jamesblonde 9y ago

This video from Anaheim (California) is reminiscent of travelling around Dehli (from 39' in - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk). The level/amount of poverty in this video is shocking.

odonnellryan 9y ago
Probably worse in CA, but this exists on some level in every state. Here in NJ we have the same exact thing, just not along a bike path.
- wahsd 9y ago
  Funny enough, it only exists in places that are led by Democrats and liberals or are affected by Democrat and Liberal policies. But please prove me wrong. I just need one indisputable example and I will eat crow regardless of whether one exception doesn't make the rule.
- mrarjen 9y ago
  Yea, I read that most homeless seem to head to CA because it's where the money is... Here in NL we have some homeless, but also lots of government systems in place to offer housing and incentives to possibly work or get schooling. In the end this is actually cheaper, as to prevent crime and what not. Not sure how this would work in the US.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    About 60 million Americans receive some federal assistance. A slightly larger number get healthcare from Medicaid. The assistance is not a large amount per month, but it is there.
    - ckinnan 9y ago
      Medicaid covers around 80 million people, at roughly $7,000 a year per recipient, which is double what the UK spends per patient. https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/distribution-of-medicaid-enrollees-by-enrollment-group/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/distribution-of...

fredgrott 9y ago

probably a direct result of money in politics...

bcatanzaro 9y ago

I don’t understand how this is possible. We have a lot of programs to help people - food assistance, housing and health care assistance, disability... Are these benefits being counted when we say they live on $4/day?

jschwartzi 9y ago
These benefits are inaccessible without a long trip through some really Byzantine application processes where nobody is actually incentivized to help you. These processes ostensibly exist to block freeloaders but they also serve to prevent the needy from accessing the resource too.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  It also exists to give indolent, illiterate, innumerate people 'do-good' jobs to get entrenched in, and suck up all the resources, with no accountability. It's one of the things that has befallen SF, where an industry funded by the city to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars a year, fails to keep a few thousand people off the street. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-million-budget-sf-still-struggles-with-homelessness/ http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/27/despite-241-mill... http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-poor-accounting-at-SF-nonprofit-12114309.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/City-audit-finds-... http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money...
- guihvvv 9y ago
  I readily critize our grotesque engorged bureaucracy, but getting food stamps isn't difficult, as exibited by the 40+ million people who take advantage of them, and by personal anecdotal evidence.
  - dbingham 9y ago
    I think it depends on where you are and how used to using bureaucracy you are. I know people who really struggled to wend their way through the bureaucracy that protects food stamps in order to get them.

wahsd 9y ago

The most bizarre aspect of it is that the very same people that lament that fact, are also the ones who support all its causes and throw the most violent tantrums to scuttle improving the situation. We have tried it their way for decade after decade after decade, and the astronomical cost has only led to barely measurable improvements at wild cost/benefit ratios, while being unsustainable on their own essentially everywhere those measures are not artificially scaffolded and have heavy layers of spin and blatant propaganda lies applied to it. Maybe the worst part of it is that those very people don't even understand that they are doing any of that because they have been manipulated and lied to about both the causes and solutions as they have ever increasingly been drawn into a cult in which up is down, left is right, and only the con job leaders benefit from it. When you have fixed, preconceived notions about outcomes, don't be surprised that you cannot achieve them with the existing variables. You end up having to bend and manipulate and rig and patch things ever increasingly and more bizarrely in order to maintain the desired end state or outcome that the system becomes ever more unstable and fragile. See the mid aughts housing fraud, aka, housing bubble for reference. The conclusion was that house prices can only go up, so everything was subsequently rigged through self-perpetuating incentives to support that fixed assumed outcome. Precisely what keeps us repeatedly doing the things that have no effect on the desired outcome. But at least it supports a huge non-profit industry complex that perpetuates itself under the guise of "helping" .... itself to your money. It's quite frustrating that in spite of the truth and solution being right before our eyes, because truth and reality is too inconvenient and difficult and uncomfortable because it does not fit with preconceived conclusions and assumptions, we simply want to ignore reality and substituted our own. And so goes the perpetual poverty "problem" that we are seeking "solutions" for. Organizations can't even move away from Microsoft products simply because they get money from the Gates foundation ... and we want to solve poverty? It's a bad joke. As someone has said, our "help" and development money is taking money from poor American children, in order to give it to rich Africans ... who then scurry it away into offshore bank accounts. I know this may make some arteries pop, but the President of Uganda puts it well: http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-president-i-love-trump-because-he-tells-africans-frankly http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-presi...

xorfish 9y ago

So what do Switzerland, Germany and Iceland better than the rest of the developed nations?

adamnemecek 9y ago
Education on all skill levels, better redistribution, people understanding that is in your interest to eradicate poverty.
oreo81 9y ago
Germany?
- xorfish 9y ago
  Hartz IV? That is more than 4$/day
- surreptitious00 9y ago
  The Master Place.
11_4_time 9y ago
They haven't had decades of sustained mass immigration of low-skilled workers.
- pmyteh 9y ago
  Germany, at least, has: several million people, just counting those of Turkish descent.
- xorfish 9y ago
  I know, not all immigrants are low skill. But nearly 25% of Swiss residents do not have a Swiss passport. (Even if you account for the difficulty of the naturalization process, that is a lot)
- theonewhocanfly 9y ago
  What a bogus , Switzerland has 40% foreigners which have immigrated , 30% of those have nowadays a citizenship and passport , read Swiss history before posting such crap!!!

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

https://outline.com/STFZAv https://outline.com/STFZAv paywall bypass

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago

This is the other side of globalization. Globalization is super nice when you're secure in your job, "hey everything is getting cheaper!" but when your job is the one in the crosshairs what you're feeling is a pressure that is pushing the living standard of the third world and yours together. That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical. And before I get jumped on, no I'm not against all trade. What I'm for however is noting that people don't live in the long-term, economically we are firmly short-term creatures. Good policy won't give everything up for the long-term, it will also protect people in the short-term, we don't need an end to trade, we need a curtailing of some trade.

paganel 9y ago
> That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical. This forum is not composed of US users only. For example I live in one of those countries who benefited from opening up to foreign trade (I live in Eastern Europe) so it would be pretty hypocritical of me to complain about open markets.
- SEJeff 9y ago
  This is one of the things I like about HN however. There are plenty of smart people all over the world (Eastern Europe included!). It is great to be capable of having civilized discussions with different viewpoints. If you open yourself to it, it is easy to learn something new from someone with an entirely different worldview and life context than you.
Retric 9y ago
I am for immigration, it's just the pseudo indentured servitude that is H1B that I have a problem with. As to factory outsourcing, I think it's overall a net gain for humanity. Long term there is a finite number of countries and barring societal collapse eventually they will all end up 'developed'. It simply exposes other problems in the US like our horrible social safety net and endemic corruption. So, a small ~2-5% import tax is probably a net gain for US society.

natecavanaugh 9y ago

It seems it can, from behind it's gated content community In all honesty, though, I'd love to hear some stories from any social workers here as to their beliefs are regarding the extreme lows of poverty and maybe fix it. I think we've all heard that we should change drug policy, expand government service for mental health and treatment, but does anyone have any other we don't normally hear about?

ivankirigin 9y ago

I welcome an absolute definition of poverty. We talk about the richest and poorest quintiles much more often, which is worse than a moving target. There will always be a lowest quintile. The cynic in me thinks this is a job protection program for those working in poverty reduction. I wish we had more science here. The linked research points to the 1995 welfare reforms as causing a change. The way to prove effectiveness is with a well run trial - one that changes in federal policy make impossible. Economic growth (or stagnation) is also crucial here to lower poverty rates. But all of macroeconomics suffers from the same basic measurement problem. Restated: what anti poverty program did hundreds of millions of Indian and Chinese families since 1995 participate in?

11_4_time 9y ago

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the U.S. immigration policy (or lack thereof) bears a signification part of the blame here. Why in the face of globalization (and now increased automation) the U.S. continues to have an effectively open-door policy to low-skill workers makes no sense at all. As a U.S. citizen, I'd like to see a return to the temporary moratorium that existed until the mid 1960s (say 10 to 15 years) on most immigration beyond high-skill (however that is defined) and an end to "chain migration" in which entire families are allowed to immigrate regardless of most other factors.

orf 9y ago
> Give me your tired, your poor, > Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, > The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. > Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me I think it would be hypocritical at best, given America's history and current position to take such a stance. Surely the right thing to do is not to be scared of the immigration bogeyman and take some concrete steps towards the future, rather than closing the door and pretending things will get better by itself. It won't. If you want to comfort yourself in a nice blanket of blame, go ahead and blame the immigrants rather than the people in power who have actually caused this.
- 11_4_time 9y ago
  That's from a poem tacked onto the Statue of Liberty in 1903, not U.S. law or policy. People quote that as if it's from the preamble to the constitution or something... Mass immigration made sense when the U.S. was a manufacturing colossus, no longer. Immigration should be targeted and far lower than it is now.
  - orf 9y ago
    Well it was also written specifically for the statue of liberty, and was 'tacked on' to it, not even 20 years after it was dedicated for a reason. Because that's literally what the statue represents. It's kind of sad to see a nation built by, from and for poor immigrants completely forget their origins.

bradleyjg 9y ago

According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain). I tried to track down this factoid. First I went to the world bank: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=U... which does show 1% for the US. In the notes it says " Data for high-income economies are from the Luxembourg Income Study database." My next stop was there. From http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home I found that the source of their data was Current Population Survey (CPS) - Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) (United States). The Current Population survey has a table creator here: https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html Although there is nothing that quite matches the 3.2 million figure cited, the LIS did some harmonization so the most likely ultimate source is the 3.446 million people living in households that were categorized as having "no income" in 2013. This is separate from the 2.775 million people that were categorized as living in households that have "$1 to $2,499 or loss" in income. I'm very skeptical that this is an appropriate use of this data. The world bank poverty number is supposed to be about consumption--it has to do with people consuming very little in the way of goods and services. But no one at all can live on no goods and services. They'd die of hunger and thirst in far less than a year. It could in theory be the case that millions of Americans were living on less than $1.90/day in consumption but it cannot possibly be the case that millions of Americans are living on $0/day. To the extent that the figure cited for "no income" means anything (and isn't just noise in the data), it doesn't mean what the world bank means when it says living on $1.90/day.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
If the consumption comes from a market, then sure. But during the Depression, millions of rural Americans lived on $0 for years. Kitchen garden, a cow, a pig, some chickens and there you are. So point is, maybe dollars aren't tracking what we think they're tracking?
- bradleyjg 9y ago

xya3453 9y ago

> Beyond that, many Americans, especially whites with no more than a high school education, have seen worsening health: As my research with my wife, the Princeton economist Anne Case, has demonstrated, for this group life expectancy is falling; mortality rates from drugs, alcohol and suicide are rising Yet in 2018, most diversity initiatives still focus on race regardless of socio-economic background.

gcb0 9y ago
you wish. in california high paying companies and universities the talk is still gender. when even rich white woman need a movement, and they do, you realize how behind schedule the US is.
- badwulf 9y ago
  > when even rich white woman need a movement, and they do They don't, they just need to learn a highly valued skill like everybody else.
kevingadd 9y ago
Diversity is a completely different subject from poverty. They're both subjects worth addressing. Poor black people in the deep south and poor white people in the deep south still live different experiences even if they're both having a hard time. Rich african americans get treated differently from rich white people. This isn't a contest. We need to fix everything.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >This isn't a contest. Isn't it though? I mean to a certain extent policy and even corporate 'diversity initiatives' are a matter of priority - first we even the ground for women, then minorities, then maybe gender id is next? I don't see the Ivy League rushing to ensure that their campus maintains wealth-diversity in the same way they ensure racial diversity. Maybe we really do need an Oppression Olympics, then we can sort out which group is most in need of help and prioritize them (I'm biased, I think it's going to be the poor.)

ThomPete 9y ago

It's not a poverty problem it's a cost of living problem. Those are two very different things (and becomes more and more severe the poorer you are) You can't outsource your home to China. Globalization does not make every day cheaper it just provides more choices and will in aggregate always increase the cost of living. So as long as your job/income is on the right side of the rise of the cost of living you are fine but if you are on the other side with either no job or poorly paid job or as a freelancer (with no healthcare) then you are in trouble no matter how cheap flatscreen TV become.

kingraoul3 9y ago
And with a wave of her magic wand and the enunciation of the magic words "Ceteris Paribus", the Free Market Fairy made hookworm in Alabama disappear.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  There is a big difference between just saying deep poverty and then qualifying what leads to this deep poverty. Just saying poverty is the cop out here trying to qualify what drives this problem offers at least a way to look at the problem that doesn't end in tax the rich as that will not solve the deep poverty problem.
  - kingraoul3 9y ago
    Meanwhile, in the real world, it is the demand of Capital to grow at %6 a year regardless of the health of the overall economy that is fueling the attacks on the social safety net.
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      That demand is by design and is the price of a stable economy and is followed by more or less every country in the developed world. Even in countries like Denmark (which is where I am originally from) and who have high taxes and a high degree of redistribution of wealth, you will find people who are poor and homeless. Add to that the discussion about relative poverty and you will have a problem that can never be solved unless you give everyone one exactly the same.

d--b 9y ago

Mmmh, they say they adjust the poverty threshold based on actual needs, yet they use a single $4 threshold for the whole of the US, and the whole of Europe... And then they're not critical about their methodology when it consistently shows that warmer countries have a larger chunk of the population that is very poor. Perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in Spain than it is in Denmark. And perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in California than it is in Michigan... When it comes to extreme poverty anyway, we're looking at the very tail of the bell curves, so the stats are somewhat shady there. It's not very clean to compare tail stats between countries. The thing that can be compared is the evolution of these numbers over time. If in the US more and more people are living with less than $4 a day, that is concerning.

Roland1245 9y ago

That's a nice bike