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Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

• brickcitymang 8y ago
  Poverty in America is a result of American capitalism, at a very high level. At a very very high level, it is caused by human greed, and a lack of love for our neighbors. We can talk about wages and employment rates, and race all day long, but those are just details. It's human greed in the end, and our inability to love others like we love ourselves.
  • whb07 8y ago
    I don't care or need to love you. But I do love my family and myself. So if I need to put on a smile and provide a service or good to you for money to help the people I love I will do it. That's the point of capitalism and free markets. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”
    • paulsutter 8y ago
      Something has really changed. In those days the rewards were fairly linear and available everywhere. But now rewards are nonlinear and highly concentrated. Income inequality (and opportunity inequality) will continue to increase, and we probably need to rethink these pithy little axioms that powered the 1900s.
      • sonnyblarney 8y ago
        My belief is that the non-linearity is not due the lack of opportunity of some, but rather the hyper-opportunity of others. The Silicon Valley isn't really an 'American' centre, it's like a 'Global Centre' where for the first time, indiviuals can have massively disproportionate, global impact. A doctor may earn a big income, but he can only work on so many patients where as some global firms ... the yields are huge. Coupled with some automation and large scale immigration of unskilled labour in North America which hurts labour, and outsourcing as well ... it creates a schism. But remember that on a global basis, billions are being lifted out of utter and abject poverty. It's mostly a good story. We have to figure out the working class in advanced nations. I actually do believe that it's mostly about good jobs, decent services, decent community. That's all there really ever was.
        • wallflower 8y ago
          It's not really hyper opportunity, it is impact. Impact is the reason why an elementary school teacher gets paid in the low-to-mid 5 figures and a professional ball player can get paid 7 figures. Usually, a school teacher has 20-30 kids in their classroom, while a professional ball player can indirectly influence tens of thousands of kids and adults in their "buying" decisions. Impact is why Franz Schubert died poor and why Ozzy Osbourne made millions. Technology can exponentially increase your reach and your impact. Ozzy in the medieval ages would have been just a tale told between towns. If you are a skilled marketer, the Internet is your oyster.
          • sonnyblarney 8y ago
            Yes I agree to all of that except you're missing out on power and market power. The biggest winners will be investors in tech, not employees, who will do well, but not as well as capital FYI.
            • wallflower 8y ago
              Kind of like a modern update on Karl Marx's "those who own the means of production are the capitalist class". A Modern update because "means of production" back when it was written meant non-human assets (e.g. machines) and the tech industry is clearly harnessing the collective effort of human assets now.
    • threatofrain 8y ago
      So we are re-hashing the western academic historical debate on economic models of rationality...
    • bobwaycott 8y ago
      Ah, the old trope of trotting out Adam Smith. It may surprise you to know Smith was concerned about unfettered self-interest and the ways it would damage society. He wasn’t lauding self-interest and praising it as the perfection capitalism claims it to be. Why not include some more of his gems? Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable. In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
      • apatters 8y ago
        I don't see anything in the parent's comment indicating that he supports unfettered self-interest. As far as I can tell almost everyone nowadays supports the idea of having markets which are partially free, but subject to some regulation (which was Smith's position). Hardcore Rand and Marx devotees are on the fringe. We are all just debating the degree and character of the regulation. We debate within Smith's world because he was right and it's easy to see, free markets tend to produce big winners who have so much wealth and power that they eventually find a way to corrupt the market. Regulation should focus on this basic problem: there's no great social upside to a $100B company becoming an $200B company, whereas there's lots of social upside to promoting lots of competition, small firms, and a sense of fairness so that everyone can pursue their self-interest.
        • bobwaycott 8y ago
          > I don't see anything in the parent's comment indicating that he supports unfettered self-interest. I never suggested the parent indicated this.
    • dredmorbius 8y ago
      Karl Marx: As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. ... The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. ... Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. ... A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation. ... No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. ... Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. ... POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of aThe first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. Oh, silly me, that's Adam Smith. So hard to tell them apart. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_8 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/... http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1#lf0206-01_head_052 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-...
      • 8y ago
  • darawk 8y ago
    Is that why hunter gatherer societies didn't have poverty? Is that why communist countries weren't poor? How is that working out for Venezuela? Capitalism is literally the only thing in human history that has ever lifted large numbers of people out of poverty.
    • whatever1 8y ago
      Hi. China is calling.
      • darawk 8y ago
        China is successful now entirely as a result of their conversion to capitalism. This is an extremely well known fact about China. China tried communism, it went absolutely terribly. They changed to capitalism, and things got good. I can't imagine an example that more perfectly agrees with my point.
        • whatever1 8y ago
          How is Facebook doing in capitalist China?
          • whatever1 8y ago
            Also, in which textbook is it stated that capitalism requires joint ventures of the government with every multinational company that tries to operate whithin its borders?
            • darawk 8y ago
              They're not fully capitalist. Their economic success began when they started their slow conversion to capitalism, and has proceeded in lockstep with their loosening of economic regulation. This is not a co-incidence.
          • acchow 8y ago
            Facebook is banned behind the Great Firewall. Regardless, what does this have to do with the discussion?
  • oh_sigh 8y ago
    What is poverty in noncapitalist countries a result of?
    • brickcitymang 8y ago
      Human greed lol or they're poor and nobody wants to help them because they're too busy covering their own asses. Basically there's enough resources in the world for nobody to live in poverty. It doesn't work because nobody's willing to make it work, which is just human nature of selfishness.
      • brickcitymang 8y ago
        And I don't deny this nature in myself
        • apatters 8y ago
          It seems like you're lamenting what is basically an immutable biological trait without proposing any solutions. I don't think this adds much to the discussion.
          • brickcitymang 8y ago
            apatters, a discussion on the internet doesn't need solutions. If we loved everyone like we love ourselves, we would not let people go hungry, or suffer. I believe few people have achieved this level of transcendence, and it starts with knowing yourself. If somehow I could write a comment over the internet that can make you do some self-reflection I would. But I don't know what that comment is.
          • 3x 8y ago
            > immutable biological trait So now your two SUVs and white McMansion with a picket fence are an "immutable biological trait"?
            • apatters 8y ago
  • acchow 8y ago
    There was no poverty before America?
    • brickcitymang 8y ago
      Poverty itself can be caused by many things. But poverty in the most powerful country on Earth is not for a lack of resources.
      • acchow 8y ago
        There was no poverty in Ancient Rome?
        • joesb 8y ago
          There was almost nothing you can consider modern science or technology in Ancient Rome. No matter how powerful Ancient Rome was, it wasn't even comparable to some third world country today.
        • brickcitymang 8y ago
          If poverty exists in a world where resources are plenty for everyone, the root cause is selfishness. Our inability to love others like we love ourselves.
  • skookumchuck 8y ago
    The US went from subsistence farming in 1800 to superpower a hundred years later. Nearly the entire population that made up the US arrived penniless, and moved up into the middle class and higher. To say that American capitalism somehow "caused" poverty is contrary to about every statistic.
    • lasagnaphil 8y ago
      And those people were able to rise by hurting the natives originally living there... no free lunch theorem strikes again
      • skookumchuck 8y ago
        The same thing happened to the South American natives, but the immigrants there did not rise. Now they want to move north to the US. There's something different about the US - capitalism.
• Breefield 8y ago
  Rugged individualism
  • dredmorbius 8y ago
    February 1928 political speech by Herbert Hoover: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rugged%20individualism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Crugged%20individualism%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rugged%20indiv... https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rugged_individualism https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rugged_individualism http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/rugged-individualism/ http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/rugged-i...
• hogwild 8y ago
  The woman in this story is handcuffed by her decision to have 3 kids. Show me the 20 year old dropout. Explain why he/she can't devote themselves to self improvement.
  • nickthemagicman 8y ago
    Seems like the woman needs education and a good job more than just about anyone to take care of those kids
  • noobermin 8y ago
    The article points out this is is a vanishingly small percentage: >That is, among the poor, two in 100 are working-age adults disconnected from the labor market for unknown reasons. The nonworking poor person getting something for nothing is a lot like the cheat committing voter fraud: pariahs who loom far larger in the American imagination than in real life.
    • throwaway2048 8y ago
      But make fantastic deflection ammo for those who benefit heavily from the status quo.
  • diN0bot 8y ago
    are we talking about a middle class 20 year old dropout, or the three kids the woman in this story is raising? not that it should matter, though if you want to help more people, help women with kids. people's lives are complicated in so many ways. it doesn't help to blame the victims (though i prefer to see the folks living tough lives -- especially when that involves also caring for others!! -- as fucking badasses). (a) let women own their own bodies and lives, and stop blaming them for how fucked up our culture and laws are when it comes to sex and pregnancy (b) value kids and mothers. stop underfunding childcare, education, and overprotecting domestic abusers and the patriarchy.
• delbel 8y ago
  Article fails to make a point. Jobs are the solution to poverty, hands down.
  • ProfessorLayton 8y ago
    It's actually educational attainment [1] [1] https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/how-does-level-education-relate-poverty https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/how-does-level-education-rel...
    • harlanji 8y ago
      I live in San Francisco and work in Mountain View, CA, with the lowest sector of society. I showed up for work starving and with only 18 years of programming exp., about a momth ago (ie. No low skill, dish washing/bagging as a teen). None of my classmates or former colleagues would help me more than a few hundred dollars, despite 10+ years of shared history. Now I can at least feed myself, grand totaling like $40/day cash income, ie. Too poor to wait 2 weeks for payroll. 2yr ago I was making over $200k and was wrongly fired, destroying my resume. Lowest rung job is the magic bottom step, humbling but I learned the ropes at 14yo so it’s just time to rebuild now, after months of starving/begging for work. I got a bachelor’s degree in 2011 and had old friends/classmates locally who are still here, too.
      • acchow 8y ago
        Have you written your story somewhere? Would really like to read it. Particularly, I think going from a $200k job to starving must be quite the whirlwind journey.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • nickthemagicman 8y ago
    This is not accurate in my opinion. And as automation puts more and more people out of work we'll see 'jobs' prove to be a legacy mode of gaining resources because jobs won't exist.
• tosser00001 8y ago
  Wage growth would help, but for some reason, these articles never even mention immigration. The scale of immigration both legal and illegal I believe has the greatest impact on the lowest sectors of society. The lack of discussion on the impact so many potential new workers is having on wage growth leads one to think they believe labor cost is the one thing immune to the law of supply and demand.
  • nickthemagicman 8y ago
    Illegal immigrants are 1% of the population in the U.S. It's used as a way to divide people rather than an actual serious issue.
    • tosser00001 8y ago
      Pew Reasearch puts the number at 3.5%, which I think is quite high enough to impact growth. But downward wage pressure at the lowest sectors comes from both legal and illegal immigration. It would be interesting to see what at short term lowering of immigration would have on wage growth.
      • mc32 8y ago
        3.5% is a lot of pressure on housing --which is quite inelastic in demand but also very slow to respond to increased demand.
        • candiodari 8y ago
          Furthermore those 3.5% are not divided randomly. On the lowest rung of society, they're at least 50%. The higher you go the lower the percentage, and it drops off pretty fast.
          • toofy 8y ago
            Sorry, I'm confused by your statement, are you saying "at least" 50% of the lower class are immigrants?
• nickthemagicman 8y ago
  The big questions is automation/A.I. What about when jobs become more and more automated? What about when 2 million truck drivers are put out of work due to self-driving vehicles? Food preparation, Cleaning, Driving, Construction, Science...all of these fields are threatened by automation. Sure there will always be a few jobs to run the machines but what happens as A.I. and Automation take over and we have 80% unemployment? Capitalism will be rendered pretty much obsolete in a post-industrial society. Just like humans gathered resources through hunting and gathering, then farming automated that process, then industrialism automated farming....what happens when 'jobs' are automated as our current method of gaining resources? What's the next stage of society?
  • toofy 8y ago
    > What's the next stage of society? Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, duh.
    • nickthemagicman 8y ago
      Sign me up! I'm a male lesbian so that sounds like heaven!
• noobermin 8y ago
  It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You can always improve your lot, but where you start has a large impact on how much of phase space you can reach, so to say. I think the mentality is shifting a little as millenials and gen z are slowly letting go of the meritocratic myth, but blaming internal motivations more than context is a problem in the American conception of the world we still suffer from as a nation. The inability of us to accept that our actions are not the only determining things in our lives seriously limit our ability to fully comprehend the world and how it really works which leads us to thinking ideas like work requirements are actually sane rather than completely counterproductive.
  • neumann 8y ago
    The slope counts for something, but the y-intercept should not be forgotten. And in the US, the distribution along the y-intercept is huge, but often ignored.
  • skookumchuck 8y ago
    > the meritocratic myth I've been around to see people over decades, and how their decisions affect their lives. Meritocracy is not a myth. Where people wind up is very much a consequence of their choices. This isn't the Soviet Union where one is assigned a career, a job and an apartment. I've seen immigrants arrive here with nothing and become millionaires. That's why everyone wants to come to America. The opportunity is here.
    • bsder 8y ago
      > Where people wind up is very much a consequence of their choices. True. But we also have lots of studies showing that the best of the lowest socioeconomic class almost never do better than the laziest of the uppermost socioeconomic class.
• jjtheblunt 8y ago
  Meanwhile, the NYT desperately wants people to believe the Democrats are the solution to poverty?
• xupybd 8y ago
  >American productivity has increased by 77 percent, while hourly pay has grown by only 12 percent Yes but where has this happened. I suspect it's happened through automation. Meaning that the productivity gains might not be per employee and might not easily translate into the pockets of workers.
  • 2bitmachine 8y ago
    They sure seem to have no problem materializing into the pockets of execs though...
  • _nalply 8y ago
    Probably the gains went to the owners, i. e. shareholders. Or, perhaps, David Graeber wrote in his book «Bullshit Jobs» that at least a part of the gains inflates the bullshit part of businesses, i. e. more bullshit managers are employed. Of course this means that the hourly pay would rise. I don't know.
    • toofy 8y ago
      I really need to pick this book up, I've seen it mentioned so many times since it came out.
• partycoder 8y ago
  Walmart is a profitable corporation. According to trickle-down economics, Walmart employees should be doing very well, but no: many of them get paid minimum wage and are on welfare. Walmart sells products manufactured in places with weak labor laws, including prison and child labor and no American manufacturer can compete with that. On top of that, they evade taxes using tax havens. All remittances sent to Mexico by legals + illegals are lower than the amount of money Walmart saves through tax evasion tricks. By doing all these things, they maximize their profits and tribute fewer taxes. Once in a while, they lobby for a tax holiday so they can bring back that money to the US. They are also not alone, most large corporations are doing exactly the same. On top of that, while the US is #1 in healthcare spending, most of that money does not result in people receiving healthcare. Most of that money stays in endless loops of self-reinforcing bureaucracy and the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry that sells 1 liter bags of "sodium chloride solutions" (saltwater) for as low as $500. The US is also #1 in defense spending. But what does that defense spending gets you? development hells like the F-35 JSF, and million dollar rockets shot at random empty tents in the middle east. That's what is in the best interest of the military industrial complex. I would say that corporations are the ones to blame rather than random guys picking fruit for nothing.
• TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  These articles are quite disingenuous as they constantly focus on hourly pay without giving a any context whatsoever to compensation : bonuses, matched retirement/investment plans, insurance, profit-sharing/equity plans, paid time off, paid sick leave days, etc. This really seems just disingenuous to me since this is a major part of compensation as the figures show. And the worst part is that this measurement of compensation is actively measured and quantified. Here [1] it is. I'll take their word that productivity since 1973 has increased 77%. In that time real hourly compensation has increased 50% and growing. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
  • citation_please 8y ago
    This is probably heavily affected by at least two things: 1. increase in healthcare costs and how health insurance is bound to employment 2. increase in wealth concentration and a shift from cash compensation to asset compensation (Bezos is only absurdly rich if he liquidates his Amazon holding instantly) So, I would say your portrayal of hourly compensation is disingenuous as well. All of these statistics probably need to be calculated as medians instead of means ("compensation per hour" sounds suspiciously like "total compensation / total hours", which is a mean) in order for it to come close to accurately describing the situation of the median American, because wealth concentration has skewed the mean American into something a lot more optimistic than one would think.
    • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      I agree averages can be misleading. As the joke goes when Bill Gates walks into a bar suddenly everybody's a billionaire, on average! At the same time medians can also be misleading. We have 50 people earning $10, 1 earning $100, and 50 earning $200. We swap to a system where we have 50 people earning $90, 1 earning $100, and 50 earning $300. There would have been a major shift upward with nearly everybody seeing major increases in earning, yet the median would not have shifted at all. This [1] is the real median personal income. The data there only starts at 1974 but you once again see a 32% increase in income. Now factor in the change in hours worked. The average American works more than 100 less hours then back then. [2]. These numbers combined along with arguing that most people only saw a real increase in wages of 12% is simply not possible, nor is it possible to simply attribute all growth to the rich. Now there is this [3]. The numbers from that paper are really what made me start digging into all of this stuff. To give the long and short of it - the poor are becoming middle class, and the middle class are becoming rich. With the net effect being a major decline in the number of poor, a major increase in the number of rich, and a small decline in the number of middle class. Probably not coincidentally, not entirely dissimilar to the hypothetical I proposed where the median can end up being misleading. These 'nobody except the rich are seeing more money' articles seem to be simply untrue, but they are click magnets. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N [2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP [3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16952930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16952930
• fzeroracer 8y ago
  I broke out of poverty. Why can't they do it too? It was a simple thing for me, a combination of studying hard, focusing on my future and the death of my father. You see, my parents were both fishermen. It's a grueling, painful job that can destroy your body as you age leaving you with back problems and forcing you to retire early. It also paid poorly and had a lot of risks. Which unfortunately for us, resulted in the loss of his life. His boat had capsized after a routine trip. Turns out there were some issues with the way the boat was built, stuff that should've been caught by the owner. My father and three others died that day. It was because of his death that my mother filed a wrongful death suit with a lawyer that was luckily working pro-bono, winning a small sum of money that she put in an account to be released on my 18th birthday, money that ended up being the only reason why I was able to go to college and become a software engineer. So why do I bring this up? It's not for sympathy, but rather to illustrate that my parents were some of the hardest workers I've ever known. They were rewarded for their efforts with little savings, broken bodies and a life of poverty. For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try. I bring up personal stories like this because I've talked with coworkers and friends who think that grit and hard work is all you need to make it. That jobs will elevate people out of poverty by virtue of existing.
  • xivzgrev 8y ago
    I'm sorry to hear about your parents. However I don't know what your point is. On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. Then you say your parents are an example of where hard work and grit are NOT all you need. Honestly it sounds like you were born with a certain amount of intelligence, got some money to go to college, and you made the most of it. But where would you be if you had neither, I wonder?
    • allendoerfer 8y ago
      I think that is exactly what he is saying.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• anovikov 8y ago
  Why is this a problem? I just can't see any indication of problem here, this is just supply vs demand: world is globalized now and most of what uneducated people could do can be imported from much cheaper places. If we started to look hard for 'fixes' for this we'd end up just breaking the economy. Force businesses to pay them more and even more of these job will evaporate, because there will be no point any longer. And most of these jobs will be automated away anyway. My advice is: invest money into better law enforcement, including ML and AI-based, like crime prediction and drones. Make sure, by a combination of legislative and informal methods, that poor and well to do communities are better separated from each other. Invest more in stuff which gives poor people something to fill their time with, like video games, so they don't do as much crime. And that's it.
  • jmickey 8y ago
    It seems to me your policy would lead to the creation of permanent two-class society, where moving between the classes is difficult. Besides, do you really want to live in a fortress segregated from the rest of the society? Why not invest money in education, training and a social security net that gives poorer individuals the means and space to catapult themselves into wealth?
    • anovikov 8y ago
      Education - sure. The only purpose these masses can serve is acting as genetic pool for picking the best and uplift them through education. A permanent caste-like system is doomed as next generation of it won't be as performing as the previous one. But we have to understand that only a small majority - a few percent - of the poor will be uplifted. The rest has to be kept at bay in one way or the other. As for fortress thing - you are exaggerating. There isn't so much crime around these days, much less than 30-40 years ago when things were still going fine according to the article. In the end, it's just the technology change. 40-50 years ago uneducated masses who were members of solid middle class have been factory workers. They are automated away. There isn't anything which could be done about this. Besides, exactly 40-50 years ago, during Jimmy Carter era, same things were said about farmers who found themselves displaced with great improvements in farming productivity. History just repeats itself. And yes, classes must be sustainable and moving between them should be difficult, only through exceptional personal (genetic) abilities and a lot of effort. Otherwise they are not classes, just people gambling and some of them winning.
• blacksoil 8y ago
  The lady in the example is 33 has a diabetes, 3 kids to support, and presumably also have to support for her disabled mother. To make the matter even more sad she had no higher level education. I can imagine how hard and tough it is for her. But I don't think raising the minimum wage or a mandated salary increase/promotion is the real solution here. The real solutions would be to: 1. Educate parents on the importance of children education. 2. Educate people to not have kids before they're financially and emotionally ready. 3. The importance and responsibilities that come with having kids. Having been born in a developing countries and went to US for university and work sometime there, I can say that US minimum salary and the other related perks are already significantly way better of most of emerging countries.
  • bshoemaker 8y ago
    The US is not a developing country, it's the most wealthy country in the world. This comparison does not seem useful.
    • grecy 8y ago
      While the US is technically listed as a "Developed country", and is of course the most wealthy country in the world, that wealth does not extend to a majority of it's citizens. In fact, the US is at or very near the worst among OECD countries in all of the following, and is much closer to Developing countries than Developed countries: infant mortality, child poverty, child health and safety, life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, rate of obesity, disability-adjusted life years, doctors per 1000 people, deaths from treatable conditions, rate of mental health disorders, rate of drug abuse, rate of prescription drug use, incarceration rate, rate of assaults, rate of homicides, income inequality, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. [1] [1] https://stats.oecd.org/ https://stats.oecd.org/
  • ionised 8y ago
    I would expect US minimums to be far greater than developing countries.
    • 8y ago
• neilwilson 8y ago
  If there are only 19 bones for every 20 dogs, then it doesn't matter how good a bone hunter they all are there will always be one dog disappointed and the other 19 will be grateful for the bone no matter how thin and weedy it is. Systemically the 'interest rate targeting' approach starts to tighten up policy when unemployment gets below 5% - which they consider 'full employment' even though 1 in 20 haven't got jobs. Interest rate targeting uses an unemployment buffer to keep wages and therefore prices under control. Poverty for those in work is entirely part of the plan. To fix the poverty problem you need to fix the structural viewpoint and return to the Beveridge condition - everybody must have an alternative living wage job offer available to them so that job competition works properly in favour of people. There must always be more jobs available than people that want them, not slightly fewer. But that then runs into what Kalecki called "The Political Aspects of Full Employment" - a recommended read if you haven't already: https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-employment/ https://mronline.org/2010/05/22/political-aspects-of-full-em... Truly a 'wicked problem' - tied up with the concept of power
  • candiodari 8y ago
    And, of course you need a way to prevent employers from using various alternatives available to them. * You need very high import taxes, so goods have to be produced with local labour * If truly automation were to become pervasive, that needs taxing * You probably need restrictions to prevent money from crossing borders too easily * You can't have open borders (or) * You have to strongly respond to illegals working (or legalize them, while still killing those illegal jobs), because they'll destroy the bargaining power of others (this is, incidentally, why for 90% of history leftists and communists were strongly against immigration, and the right was pro-immigration. Even today, the right is still in favor of (limited) immigration, that doesn't seem to have changed much. But I sometimes wonder if it isn't the case that Trump won because a significant portion of the left electorate voted for him because of the labour competition due to immigration and tolerating of illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants' labour)
    • PeterStuer 8y ago
      Alternatively, we could ditch the neo-feudalism, embrace automation, and give people a more meaningful live than having to slave 60 hour weeks to be allowed to survive, at meaningless jobs that could easily be done by machines.
• TheMagicHorsey 8y ago
  America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything. And yet we have such terrible poverty. When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simplest thing. Space. Some space to fucking sleep and live. How can such a large country suffer from a bigger housing crisis than we find in jammed up dense countries like Singapore, South Korea, and India? Why hasn't the market solved this problem? Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures. There is space enough in American cities if density is allowed to be increased. In other words if these fake "liberal" NIMBYs in American cities can be persuaded to give up the precious "character" of their neighborhoods, we can make space for everyone. CHEAP space.
  • sanxiyn 8y ago
    Yes, it's all about density. Source: living in South Korea.
    • kijin 8y ago
      Exactly. There are almost no American-style "single-family homes" in South Korean cities, except in very wealthy or very poor neighborhoods. There needs to be a certain amount of communal spirit in your culture in order to make this work, though. People have to be comfortable with spending most of their time in common spaces such as parks, pubs, and Starbucks instead of hanging out in their own backyard. They also need to be willing to spend money (both publicly and privately) to keep those common spaces in good order. This might become a non-issue even in America, though, as more and more people just sit in bed and stare at their phones instead of going out.
  • antocv 8y ago
    Well at least the Americans are not standing in queues. Seriously, I wonder why this scarcity for quite many is not highlighted as failure of capitalism, why the bailout of banks with tax-money is not marked as "capitalism and free market has failed" just like communism is?
• coldtea 8y ago
  Americans tried to other "solutions" peddled by politicians, economists, NYT and other pundits. In fact losing jobs and trying those other solutions is how they got here... Those other solutions suck even more. Except for a close to 10% that does as good as ever and even better, and who are the ones proposing those other "solutions"...
  • ericd 8y ago
    Do you have any constructive suggestions to add, or just cynicism?
    • coldtea 8y ago
      An observation of the situation is more constructive than such thought-stopping questions, even if it doesn't offer a solution. Spotting a problem usually precedes solutions anyway.
      • ericd 8y ago
        Its not a thought stopping question, I'm asking you to put some thought into it and propose some solutions. Or at least make your complaint a little specific, like what was tried, what didn't work, etc. As it stands, it's just whining about the general state of things, which I would say isn't actually very useful, unless the goal is to mope collectively.
• radoslawc 8y ago
  > Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not. But not having 3 kids when you cannot afford having them might be. That is the issue nobody likes to address. For driving a car you have to have driving license, for owning a gun you have to have some kind of permit, to made new human being you can just go ahead. No matter if you can raise it. Would she be better of not having them? Might be, but certainly those kids won't be advancing social ladder, but rather emulating what they see at home: making kids and living on welfare/foodstamps. Key is not giving away tax money from hard working people away, but providing education (also in context that your choices have consequences).
  • Jweb_Guru 8y ago
    So: only the wealthy should have children. Got it.
    • girvo 8y ago
      And only the wealthy can enjoy all experiences, like drinking and drugs, according to some of the other commenters here. These threads always remind me that most of us here don’t have a background of poverty and struggle.
    • pmden 8y ago
      The parent above wants a way to stop people that can't shoulder the financial burden of children intentionally placing that responsibility on society, and suggests removing subsidies that allow that reallocation of burden is a way to achieve it. It isn't clear what part you disagree with. Is it the solution he proposes that you don't think will work? Or the implication the government would have the right to restrict parenthood to those it feels capable? I know I disagree with the latter, but I don't have an alternative to the former. Which is (I think) exactly what the parent means when they say 'That is the issue nobody likes to address'. I think if there's anything in the post I do agree with, it is that education feels like a good starting point, and that personal responsibility is a necessity.
  • joesb 8y ago
    Wrong kind of people don't deserve to procreate.
• Tommek 8y ago
  Why do these articles always start with a story about a person? I see this in nearly all articles from american news papers. It's strange. Seems like a paper from a young student who needs to get his 3000 wordcount. It just bloats the article and makes it difficult to get the information out of it.
  • WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
    Many writers still get paid by the word or they get an assignment that requires X number of words. Some of the worst offenders are magazine writers. I've read articles that go on and on and yet say nothing.
  • noobermin 8y ago
    People are humans, they relate to individual stories more than raw statistics. I think it's great, it shows there's always a human side to trends and large statistics.
    • Tommek 8y ago
      And that's how we get those "vaccines cause autism" mothers. They like stories more than statistics, too.
      • anoncoward111 8y ago
        Polemic. We also get stories like, "despite a strong economic recovery, John, 26, struggles to find a new job after being laid off."
        • Tommek 8y ago
          That's my point.
          • cyborgx7 8y ago
            If you only look at numbers and not individual stories, you miss the blind-spots of your data.
• d--b 8y ago
  It seems simple enough to raise minimum wages: => tap into corporate profits that are through the roof & reduce the working poor problem. Organizing in unions would work too. Minimum wages exist for a reason: the job market does not satisfy the conditions for making it an "equilibrium" market. As long as unions are weak, corporations can and will strong-arm the labor force into cheaper and cheaper work. The fact that it has become a better choice to live on welfare than working with minimum wage is ridiculous.
  • tim333 8y ago
    A problem with raising minimum wages is then marginal businesses will lay off employees. It may be better for the government to subsidise low wages by chipping in a bit on top. eg this kind of thing https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/working-tax-credit https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/working-ta...
    • d--b 8y ago
      Sure, marginal businesses will be a problem. But it's no reason for large corporations not to pay their employees, and for the taxpayers to bare the cost. Higher minimal wages and tax credits for small businesses seems healthier.
  • lr4444lr 8y ago
    Sweden seems to do okay without them.
    • d--b 8y ago
      Sweden has unions though
• tialaramex 8y ago
  Both article and (so far) HN comments manage to avoid the phrase Protestant Work Ethic. The Protestant Work Ethic is a belief that work itself is inherently a good idea, usually because it is in some sense desirable by God, but this idea has outlasted mainstream confidence in the Protestant idea of a personal God. If you reject the PWE then very different possibilities emerge and in particular "full employment" stops looking like a good public policy goal and start looking like you're just trying to waste as much of people's time as possible.
  • Asooka 8y ago
    Protestant work ethic would also absolutely recognise taking care of your family as "work". In fact, it would recognise nearly anything that keeps you non-idle and isn't done purely for pleasure as work. The requirement to be employed in order to receive social help is really weird, it should also factor in any elderly parents and children to take care of. Even from the point of view of complete utilitarianism aiming for maximum workforce, helping parents raise children is a net gain because those children will grow up to be workers, at least until they themselves have children to take care of.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • tomhoward 8y ago
    If you ignore the religious association, how is this concept any different from the notion that society functions better when people are industrious and maximise their efforts to do things that are useful and valuable to others? I hear the PWE invoked (usually with a sneer), and reflect that it seems to be referring to exactly how my parents have operated throughout their adult lives, and that if everyone behaved the way my parents have done (to the extent that they are capable, of course), society would function far more effectively and harmoniously. And then I wonder what I'm missing. My mother spent her career working in hospitals helping to rehabilitate seriously injured and ill people. In her non-work time she cared for her ageing parents until they passed away. Now she helps raise her grandkids. My father helped design and build telecommunications networks then ran a company making electronic gadgets that helped school kids learn about science, and environmental researchers gather data. Both of them have spent much of their non-work time volunteering in the community - at kindergarten, school, church, and more. And they have maintained a healthy social life and done plenty of travel. They've always been busy, but never burnt out or exhausted. Always occupied and fulfilled, never resentful. I don't see how any of their work or volunteering is surplus to society's requirements. I do see that society would be better off if more people were doing the kind of work and volunteering that my parents have always done. What am I missing here?
• known 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility != https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility
• burnmaster 8y ago
  --- ARTICLE FORMULA ---- > Storytelling: 90% A narrative about how one family's poor choices have resulted in negative outcomes and ultimately, suffering. > Argument: 5% Lack of wealth and systemic ethnic persecution result in poor choices by victims. Negative outcomes result. As does suffering. > Solution 5% Give more money to people who are both suffering and poor. Do not address the role that personal choices will or have influenced their own suffering. Do not address personal accountability.
• radoslawc 8y ago
  Oh wow, my post was just removed. One can have opinion here as long as it resonates with HN's echo chamber.
  • tomhoward 8y ago
    What do you mean "removed"? Are you talking about this comment that was downvoted? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17966334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17966334
    • radoslawc 8y ago
      Wierdest thing, I cannot see it in thread, however it is under url you've provided.
      • tomhoward 8y ago
        Did you click on the "More" link at the bottom of the main comments page?
• boulos 8y ago
  A few threads seem to believe that the minimum wage is high enough / need not be increased. I don’t actually want to argue about mechanism, but think that it’s imoortant to note that the math says our (current) minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty. With the Federal minimum wage currently at $7.25/hr, that’s just $15k/year at full-time. That puts many minimum wage workers below many countries’ average wages [1]. But that’s before adjusting for purchasing power parity. Being a single earner on minimum wage effectively guarantees you and your family will be in poverty in the US. That is effectively not true in most countries in Europe, even the poor ones. You don’t get to live well or anything, but you certainly aren’t planning on poverty. [1] California, and San Francisco in particular, have a higher minimum wage but also higher expenses. Worse, many low-education workers are waitresses, which often have a “tipped minimum wage” as low as $2.15/hr before tips (again, San Francisco doesn’t do this, but it’s expensive to live here).
  • weliketocode 8y ago
    - Why or how would the minimum wage be compared to the average wage of another country? It's the minimum. - Agreed on the single earner families on minimum wage guaranteed to be in poverty. But, pointing somewhere else and saying "It's better there!" seems off to me. Pick a specific policy and advocate for it. Higher minimum wage? Guaranteed housing? Universal basic income?
    • boulos 8y ago
      Sorry, my comment started as a reply to the comment about “better than most countries” [1] (hence the comparison). I explicitly didn’t want to make this comment about advocating for a policy, but first to make sure we’re all on the same page: the US minimum wage isn’t enough to get by on. I should have added that a huge portion of the labor force is at or near this rate, except again I’m on my phone, so I couldn’t back that with the precise number. Since you asked, I’m one of the Basic Income folks :). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17966080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17966080
      • rascul 8y ago
• weliketocode 8y ago
  Not to marginalize this, but the number of core financial tenets are very short. - spend less than you earn (2 sides of the equation here) - avoid drugs & illicit activities - avoid debt & long-term financial commitments: unpaid credit cards, mortgage, car lease, children, pets Yes, children who are born into these problems will find it especially difficult to get themselves out of poverty. Yes, i f you show me a single parent on minimum wage supporting multiple kids and family members, it seems guaranteed that they'll be in poverty. However, the cause of their poverty isn't that they aren't making enough money. It's that their expense level is too high relative to their income. Addressing poverty requires reducing the level of expenses relative to earnings. Let's start seeing both sides of that equation addressed.
• goblekitepe 8y ago
  Well jobs absolutely are the solution for the 85% of Americans living above the poverty line. That said... The article completely ignores the major cause of Vanessa's struggles: she is a single parent trying to raise three children. Where is the father of her children? If you are not married, do not have children. Just going by the statistics, I suspect Vanessa's children were born out of wedlock. Also, if you are very young (still in high school) and not on financially sound footing yet, do not have children. Remedying these problems alone would massively reduce poverty. Children are a massive financial and time sink, yet according to the Brookings Institute [1]: "...more than 40 percent of American children, including more than 70 percent of black children and 50 percent of Hispanic children, are born outside marriage." Many of these children are raised by single mothers and fathers. Sure, married people get divorced, but the number of children raised in single parent households is far less among those born to married adults than those who are not. It's been clearly shown that the average child raised in a single parent household has worse outcomes than the average child raised in a two parent household. Cultural issues must be addressed in this country, but everyone seems unwilling to do so because they worry about "blaming the victims". Well in this case, poverty is clearly being perpetuated by poor decision making on the part of individuals and cultures which perpetuate this poor decision making. The "victims" are at fault. Culture can be changed, but we must identify and talk about the problems before that change can occur. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-teens-should-follow-to-join-the-middle-class/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-t...
  • jumbopapa 8y ago
    It's said that you need to do 3 things in America to avoid poverty. 1. Graduate High School 2. Work full-time 3. Don't have a baby out of wedlock It's that easy.
    • goblekitepe 8y ago
      Exactly. Unfortunately many fail at step 1.
      • 8y ago
• ausjke 8y ago
  The IT revolution will leave some behind no matter what. The ones with good education will be at the top of food chain. The ones with enough education will make ends meet. Many of the rest will be left over. There is no fix, not universal welfare, not even overthrow the government and restart over.
• _pmf_ 8y ago
  Funny how this revelation comes at a point where Trump reports record low unemployment for the Afro-American population; it's almost as if the NYT has an agenda.
• guilhas 8y ago
  In Venezuela, housewives or stay-at-home mother is considered a job.
• cirgue 8y ago
  Had everyone in Vanessa's life had stable employment opportunities and the ability to pursue them, then I would imagine that her mother's and father's lives would have been radically different and her situation would be far less pernicious. The point of employment-focused poverty alleviation is not just that individuals having jobs is good, it's that material stability has powerful network effects that are not zero-sum and reinforce themselves over multiple generations.
• craftoman 8y ago
  Most people dont even realize the real problems every poor family experiencing. I mean some people don't even have heat on a winter day. You can't even read a book on these circumstances, your body is under panic and you can't focus. I've been there, best way to survive is your friends and family and what I called reality-escape things like movies, music, art, games, creativity and NOT drugs. Some people prefer drugs or alcohol for the same reason, cause they can't escape using our nature's build-in tools. You may be rich one day but it's all about luck. It's easy to pursue something only if you have a healthy environment.