27 ms·

Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

300 points by stablemap 7y ago

hestipod 7y ago
I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, was somehow responsible for my situation, and needed to "take responsibility" but nobody could describe WHAT that meant or HOW to do it. It was all so soul crushing and and literally ruined my life and future. I didn't do it. It was done to me. But blame and dismissal is easier for people. Contrast that with a former friend who had a similar medical issue in Europe. He wasn't bankrupted by medical costs, had social support for basic living as he was treated and recovered long term, had social education which allowed him to go back to university and obtain useful skills for his new situation. He now has a thriving business and as full a life as anyone could expect. Because he had help and options when he needed them in the beginning. Having that help and those options also made it easier for him to hold into his relationships because he was able to stay IN life and move forward. People can only take so much loss. Yeah I resent it. I resent being born here where I hear how amazing it is every day and how Europe is a socialist dystopia (I've lived there, the people telling me this have not and I'd happily fufill their "get out of you don't like it" wishes if I could) and the usual middle American beliefs, but we don't even have the most basic of social protections. I resent being blamed. I resent that even seeing this happen people still decided just what the Murican culture told them to decide about me because its easier to live with ones own fears that way. I resent having my life end in such a miserable and painful mess when I earned more and did what I was supposed to. America has a real empathy problem. People won't treat others as they wish to be treated when they are in need. Being poor is an infection and they avoid you. It's not a need they reach out to solve. And being poor is very expensive. A society of individualists is no society at all.
- ThJ 7y ago
  I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these clueless people will need to form opinions about how sick you are and how much help you need, and they'll often be wrong, and you'll have to fight them. It's better than the alternative, of course, but it's not anywhere near being the utopia that U.S. liberals like to describe it as. They're just using us to promote their own agenda. With that said, I do find myself thanking heaven that I was born in this country from time to time.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    For what it's worth, the ambition on the left over here (in the US) is to eliminate means testing for programs as much as possible. Healthcare problems? Free healthcare for everyone, no forms required. No home? Everyone gets a free / low cost house. We aim to do much more than that (give control of the economy to the people), but a robust welfare state is a good start.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      Those are compelling policy handwaves, but they really aren't going to the heart of the issue; which is someone in the broader conversation is basically misrepresenting reality to an astounding degree. The OECD reports that the US already spends more on healthcare per capita than any other nation by a substantial margin [0]. If it were believed that the ambitious left were going to implement free healthcare by bringing actual costs down into line with the rest of the world they could probably muster bipartisan support in a few years. But I bet their plans don't do that - eliminating means testing and more handouts are are just avoiding the real issues. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
DoreenMichele 7y ago
There will always be relative poverty. In other words if we "solved poverty" and there were no more hungry people without health insurance sleeping in the streets, you would still have people who had less than others around them. But we can try to solve absolute poverty. We can try to make sure everyone has medical coverage, adequate nutrition etc. An important element of that is we need to design systems where having less than others doesn't close doors in your face and become a trap you can't escape. (I don't think UBI accomplishes that.)
- viraptor 7y ago
  Do you mean inequality? Poverty has a specific meaning. We define poverty thresholds. Middle class is not in "relative poverty" compared to billioners.
  - jessriedel 7y ago
    The threshold at which people use the term "poverty" is very different in different countries (including the official American definition, which changes), even after adjusting for PPP. So whether or not it's officially supposed to be an absolute measure, in practice it's relative.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    No, I mean relative poverty. Many years ago, I saw a study that indicated that less than 1/2 of 1% of Americans were poor by the standards of India. Even homeless people in the US typically ate better than people classified as poor in India. But we still have homeless people here in the US. They typically have serious personal problems, such as serious medical conditions. Being homeless in the US is a genuine hardship and it's partly caused by the lack of cheap, small housing. We've torn down about a million SROs.* There are homeless people in the US who could afford an SRO if they could find market rate SROs. If you live on Social Security as your only income and can no longer work, we don't have any market based housing for you and many government housing projects have wait lists that are years long. We've raised the bar so extremely high in this country that it's a genuine problem for a high percentage of the country. It actively creates hardship and privation in a wealthy country that really ought to be able to virtually eliminate homelessness. But we don't. And after tearing down a lot of very basic housing for literally decades, when someone ends up homeless, we don't blame the lack of housing supply for people with low incomes. We say they have a personal problem and are probably just a junkie. * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy
chrisdhoover 7y ago
When we redline, assign schools without regard to quality, hassle folks for petty infractions to pump revenue, sieze assets without due process, limit entrepreneurship with onerous licensing requirements, and imprison poor folks at higher rates you end up with a perpetual underclass.
- non-entity 7y ago
  > limit entrepreneurship with onerous licensing requirements I work for a government agency that provides professional licensing in my state and was shocked the other day to learn that you need a license to operate as a "hair braider". This seemed a bit excessive to me
  - cglace 7y ago
    In some places you need a license to wash hair.
    - fatbird 7y ago
      Because without minimal standards for sterilizing tools, hair dressers can spread lice. Basic licencing requirements give the municipality a chance to ensure that everyone washing hair has been told about basic hygienic standards for washing hair.
      - fatbird 7y ago
        Leave it to the HN community to view a lice outbreak as an acceptable price to pay for the freedom of the market.
        giancarlostoro 7y ago
        It is not necessarily HNs view but the reason for the license.
        kalleboo 7y ago
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Blaming those without power for the way The System has tilted the game against them is Orwellian. Poverty is not a choice (any more than drug addiction is a choice). But we prefer to blame the victims because it's easier than looking in the mirror and accepting our role in the mess.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  I am not a typical homeless person. I am educated, skilled and I have no addictions, etc. I'm also not living on the street, and am lucky to not have any health problems. But I think my story really can perhaps reveal how incredibly easy it can be for one to have the misfortune to end up in such situations. My own experiences have opened my eyes to how abusive people can be, and perhaps this is a significant aspect of the stories of people who have failed to thrive. I don't know everyone's experience -- this is just mine. Actually, I've often been afraid, or ashamed, to speak about the unfortunate circumstances of my life, and I've never known where to get help. I mentioned it here[1], recently on HN. The discussion there made me wonder if it is better for people like me to share their stories. It's interesting that in the public conciousness, there is such a vocal push back against abuse, tyranny and even victim blaming. Of course it does still happen, even with consensus being against it. Most reasonable people do not appeal to living such a world, but there is an unfortunate hypocritical nature in humanity, where while people don't want to live in such a world, some of the same people are keen to take advantage, and in ways can be submissive to bullies and tyrants. I wonder how many people there are out there with stories like mine, who have survived pscyhopathic aggression and extreme bullying, but with irreperable social or professional lives and nobody to fall back on. I think history is full of examples of people who have been victim to such crazy, immoral things. And of course everyone says in retrospect, "if I had been there, I'd have done something."
  - throwaway3627 7y ago
    I live in a van in the Valley, have an engineering degree from a top school, bankruptcy, student loan debt over me I can never hope to repay but cannot hold a job. No drugs, no smoking, no drinking, no sanitation issues, and no hanging out in the daytime with the locals. As the learning experience of life, I realize that much of what Americans believe is a lie and that they cling to ideas and beliefs that aren't helpful for them in their circumstances: aspirational "rich" people who take up attitudes and political fashions that hurt themselves and let themselves be divided-and-conquered with artificial divisions until we're atomized and estranged from one another into seemingly virtual isolation. Plus, there's American hyper-individualism and anomie of discontent and hopelessness that's degrading the society from a network of communities into a Kafkaesque Lord of the Flies, anarcho-vulture-capitalist nightmare. American "exceptionalism" now seems to mean "If I get mine, screw everyone else."
RickJWagner 7y ago
Wow, that is one pointedly political article. Bloomberg is now solidly in my 'partisan source' category. (Read the article before downvoting, please. Give it a fair read.)
- woodruffw 7y ago
  It appears to be in their "opinion" section.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- astrange 7y ago
  The point of an editorial section is to have an opinion. (But a newspaper with no opinions isn't very useful either.)
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  It seems premature to discount a publication because it once expressed an opinion you disagreed with. If one was a diligent reader then one would quickly conclude that they couldn't trust anyone.
  - guntars 7y ago
    It’s funny how you can say that while the comment you replied to is so pale I can’t even read it. Apparently people will try to bury anything that even has an inkling of something they disagree with.
    - showdeadplease 7y ago
      It's amusing how your account and the one you replied to were created within 2 weeks of each other, but his has 10 times the karma of yours. The hive mind here diligently keeps non-leftist accounts like yours below the "Hacker News poverty line" of 500 karma, so that you can't downvote their comments.
ggm 7y ago
Funny that at the point high quality LED tv's and digital signals come onstream, the world moves from Free-to-Air into pay-to-watch. So the poor can afford amazing TVs but cannot afford to buy the content we rich get to watch. Absolute poverty improves but relative poverty goes backward is a constant. Taxing cigarettes to contain cancer risks is a no brainer, which rich people can buy themselves out from but poor addicted smokers get penalized on, and then have to wear "you are poor because you are sick and make bad choices" pushback, and are denied basic health support.
- pkaye 7y ago
  I don't have cable and use on-the-air TV and the image quality is better than before. They work find with digital TVs.
  - astrange 7y ago
    The funny thing about HDTV is that cable quality is terrible, but OTA quality is amazing. It's got way more bandwidth.
    - pkaye 7y ago
      Good point. I used to have basic cable and they forced me to digital and the quality went down. That is what made me try out OTA. I ended up putting an OTA antenna on the roof and the reception improved 10x.
  - ggm 7y ago
    OTA works fine but you can't have a water cooler conversation about PBS the same way you can about boobs-and-dragons. If you want to talk about dragons-and-boobs you have to pay somebody to let you see 'em.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > the poor can afford amazing TVs but cannot afford to buy the content we rich get to watch. I was surprised to discover the local public library http://kcls.org http://kcls.org seems to have a greater selection of DVDs than Netflix. You can also check out a box set all at once instead of Netflix sending one DVD at a time, which is nice for binge watching.
thdxr 7y ago
Who exactly is blaming the poor for their poverty?
- noicebrewery 7y ago
  Libertarians and conservatives, are we pretending otherwise?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    Plenty of liberals, too. I say that as a liberal.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - m0llusk 7y ago
    That is pretty shallow. There is a loud subset of the Libertarian party that mostly focuses on the desire for minimal taxation. There is also a substantial subset of Libertarians who advocate for a Universal Basic Income in order to make society itself more fair. This does not necessarily change the idea that slackers choose and deserve their fate, but merely provides people with more opportunity to live for themselves.
  - gurkendoktor 7y ago
    I've also met pro-establishment "liberals" who look down on poor people as long as they're white. This sentiment started the whole "learn to code" backlash meme on Twitter, although to be fair I've never seen any journalist directly make that suggestion.
  - kadendogthing 7y ago
mjfl 7y ago
This acts as if it’s presenting an unpopular opinion against a popular opinion, when it’s actually the opposite. Would any of Noah’s colleagues not be horrified if he had written an article stating “blame America’s poor for their poverty”? Where is the signal, if everyone already thinks this way? It’s just masturbation.
sremani 7y ago
It's a complicated issue.. but every person or family that makes a level up transition (without rent-seeking) like. poor -> middle middle -> upper upper -> rich/millionaire millionaire -> billionaire have my respect.
- tremon 7y ago
  Only the first one has my respect. The second one I'm neutral towards, the others fail as human beings in my view.
  - Infinitesimus 7y ago
    Why do they fail? (Unless you assume the money is hoarded and not used for something meaningful)
  - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
    If you provide something society needs and people give you money in exchange then how on earth is that failing as a human being?
    - mcv 7y ago
      It depends a lot on how they make that money. Do they do it by writing a popular, insightful book that everybody wants to read[0], or by running a hedge fund that buy companies, fires half the employees, loads them with debt, and sells them in an IPO? [0] Hasn't this taken JK Rowling straight from poor to billionaire?
- gizmo686 7y ago
  I think "upper" comes after millionaire. Someone in the middle class should be a millionaire by the time they retire.
jxramos 7y ago
I thought I heard it said that poverty needs no explanation. It is the default state of human existence. The real question is why wealth exists.
siphon22 7y ago
I like the spirit of the article, but being poor does not resolve you of personal responsibility. You do not have a pass to commit crime because you make under a certain amount a year. There are definitely a great number of poor people in this world who have no one to blame but themselves or their family/upbringing. I think that a civilized country should have a good safety net for everyone equally, even if their poverty was their own fault. There should be no shame there. People make mistakes. People are sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time. We should still help them even if it was their fault. I dislike this mindset in America that people get what they deserve and if they made a mistake, they should suffer for it.
hcurtiss 7y ago
Are we sure that half the median is a good definition of “poor”? At least hypothetically, in a very wealthy country, that may still be an adequate amount to get by.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  The median individual monthly income in WA state is slightly above 4K monthly. Half of this is 2K monthly or more accurately given how most people actually get paid 923 every 2 weeks. After taxes this is more like 784. After paying for insurance as you are too rich to get free health care you are looking at more like 684. This qualifies you to live virtually nowhere because most places want you to make 3x the rent and start at 700-800 per month. In King County where the lions share of the jobs are you probably will have to move to a street corner. Elsewhere you can perhaps afford to beg someone to rent a bed for 2 weeks wages and afford to eat as long as you have no hobbies and shop exclusively at thrift stores for clothes. It's probably a mostly acceptable definition of poor that only breaks down in a tiny minority of cases where someone adjacent to a very wealthy area makes enough to barely get buy in the wealthy area but enough to survive slightly more comfortably in the poor area wherein jobs are as scarce as the cost of living is low.
  - AdrianB1 7y ago
    Housing as an investment is the problem here. The cost of the houses and the cost of the rent are adjusting to the income, if you double the income in the region you will have triple the rent (because the disposable income will increase much more than the actual income increase). See Silicon Valley for a good demonstration of this.
  - hcurtiss 7y ago
    I’m not sure I’d do the math the same way. First, it seems to me that the median household income is a better number, as most people share expenses and many households have two incomes. That seems to me to better inform ability to get by. In Washington, that’s $70k.[1] Half that is $35k, or just shy of $3k/month. With ACA subsidies, a person in that situation won’t likely be paying $400/month in health insurance. The max for a family of four at $35k is actually $1300 per year, or a little over $100/month, and an individual at $35k is closer to $200.[2] $2800/month is not a great deal of money, but it’s not living in squalor. And, as you say, it depends on location. A high proportion of of those people will not be living in Seattle, but rather rural areas where the cost of living is cheaper. The median household income in Seattle is closer to $85k. Also note that federal after taxes income after accounting for transfers actually goes up for the second quintile.[3] [1] https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/ [2] https://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-limits-for-the-affordable-care-act-obamacare/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-l... [3] https://taxfoundation.org/average-federal-tax-rates-income-group/ https://taxfoundation.org/average-federal-tax-rates-income-g...
refurb 7y ago
This article is kind of all over the place. Do note that according to the chart near the bottom, the US actually spends more of it’s GDP on the social safety net than Canada and Australia, two countries perceived as having better social safety nets. It’s probably even higher in the US since Canada and Australia cover 100% of their citizens for healthcare when the US only covers ~60%.
Causality1 7y ago
>In Japan, people work hard, few abuse drugs, crime is minimal and single mothers are rare. The country still has lots of poverty. Conversely, does that mean we can't blame crime, absent fathers, and drug abuse on poverty?
refurb 7y ago
Many conservatives in the U.S. believe that poverty is mainly a result of bad personal decisions. Is this article arguing that poverty is never a result of bad personal decisions? If so, I have a few anecdotes that would be contrary to that.
- fatbird 7y ago
  No, it's not. But no personal decision is made in a void. Locally rational decisions are often inexplicable to people who've never struggled with money.
- carlob 7y ago
  > Is this article arguing that poverty is never a result of bad personal decisions? No I think this article is arguing that ending bad personal decisions (if at all possible) will not significantly affect poverty, but a safety net will. Another interesting topic, which is not mentioned in the article, is how poverty causes bad personal decisions.
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    I have an analogy. A poor guy lives on a cliff. He is a careful man and watches his steps, being only human, he missteps and falls to his death. A better off guy can afford a house further from the cliff, and can even to put up a fence. Just like the poor man, he makes missteps once in a while, but the cliff is far away, and continues to live. In this wealthy country, there is no reason for anyone to have to live near a financial cliff where ordinary mistakes or bad luck will devastate you. It is not productive. It hurts economic growth and is, in my opinion, immoral. A universal income would allow us all live a little further from the cliff, and not punish you for managing to build your home further away.
Sophistifunk 7y ago
It doesn't matter who's fault it is. What matters is "can we afford to help these people?" and for a lot of definitions of "help" we can, and most people think we should.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  How about the question: "should we force everyone to help these people?" I don't think you are talking about charity in any of the "help" definitions.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    What would your answer be?
jimbob45 7y ago
Not all rich should be praised for their hard work and gumption in getting to the top either...but some still deserve it. Painting these groups as solid black and white maybe isn't the best tool for the job.
- ionised 7y ago
  Over 60% of the wealth in the US is inherited. Most rich certainly did nothing to deserve it.
amthewiz 7y ago
> So Japanese people are doing everything right -- eschewing violence, avoiding drugs, working hard and not having kids out of wedlock. They are following the conservative prescription, as well as or better than any other developed country in the world. And yet still, many of them are poor. This suggests that there is something very wrong with the conservative theory of poverty. No, the author is confused. There is a big difference between - - you cannot be poor if you make good choices, and - you can get out of povery by making good choices The conservative position is the later. There will be cases where it doesn't work, but it is a sound recommendation in general. Now, poverty does make it harder to make good choices. So welfare $s should be spent to make that easier, e.g. free food at school helps kids do better at school.
- esailija 7y ago
  You say there is a "big difference" but logically they are exactly the same claim. Also, no need to "recommend" making "good choices" any more than you need to recommend breathing.
  - ShinTakuya 7y ago
    Not at all. One is saying that it's possible to get out of poverty by making good choices. One is saying that it's impossible to be in poverty if you make good choices. Subtle but big difference. I disagree with both statements regardless, but there is a difference.
    - esailija 7y ago
      If "good choices are likely to lift you out of poverty" like OP claims, it logically follows that "you are unlikely to be poor if you make good choices". "There will be cases where it doesn't work" let's say that means 99%/1%. So the statements become "you would have 99% chance to be lifted out of poverty if you made good choices" and therefore "you have 1% chance of being poor if you make good choices". Whether you believe it's 1% or 0% the behavior will be the same. If a smoker gets lung cancer you will blame their smoking everytime even though there was a 5.8% chance that it was not smoking caused so 0% and 5.8% is not any different, why should 0% and 1% be?.
username90 7y ago
I think the question should not be "Why are there so many poor in USA", but "Why does it suck so much to be poor in USA". I believe that the urban layout and exorbitant healthcare costs are the main issues. If poor neighborhoods were walkable and had cheap supermarkets with fresh produce then you wouldn't need a car, and the density would mean that you have plenty of potential friends within walking distance so you wont be bored. If healthcare was cheap like in Europe then it could have been government funded so that poor people wouldn't have to worry about getting sick more than anyone else. Also with free healthcare and no car there are basically no big large random expenditures, so you don't have to worry about anything on the economic front. That style of life is not a dream, that is how most poor people live in Europe and I assume also in Japan. There are therefore a lot of people who could pull themselves out of poverty, but they don't since they are fine with doing a simpler job or work less for less pay since it doesn't suck to be poor. I am one of them, I have lived below the poverty line most of my life. I didn't chase money, but I happened to get a good job and started making loads of it. But I still continued that lifestyle even when I began making lots of money. I see no reason to spend more, I wasn't unhappy when I didn't have money so all it would result in is me having to work more years before I can retire. Sometimes I wonder if Americans want it to suck to be poor just to ensure that people like me work harder. Neither the left nor the right seems to want to fix this.
- majani 7y ago
  It sucks to be poor because it sucks to be at the bottom of social hierarchies. This is an evolutionary feature of society, not a bug.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Many countries try to decrease the difference between being at the top (or at least in the upper quartile or so) of the social hierarchy and being at the bottom, resulting in less suck for the poor.
  - orwin 7y ago
    My biological grandfather (long story) is considered poor in the US, and is at the very bottom of the social hierarchy (you know, early 70 hippies that got stuck in the past?). Yet he lives way better than at least half the US population imo, and would never trade his place with the other half. He live in a cabin in West Virginia, share 100 acres with two other people, have access to a natural gaz well for 100$ a year (shared with 4 other people). Free food, almost free gaz, free beer, and he make 20 to 50 bucks a month from playing banjo at local jam/bars. Well, winter sucks up there in the hills, but still. I think that the most he have worked in a year was 3 month doing odd construction jobs (I think the town name was Akron). Being poor doesn't suck because you're poor, it sucks because you don't live well enough and you can't really enjoy life. If you're poor but live well enough, it doesn't really matter.
peteretep 7y ago
But if you stopped blaming the poor for their poverty, you’d no longer be able to fête the privileged for their privilege
eikenberry 7y ago
> Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income, I'm not sure I buy their definition of poverty. It speaks more about the income disparity than people living in without basic food and shelter covered, which I think the term implies. It might be more meaningful if it were the mean, but as is a few really high income earners would skew the results. I don't think using the medium makes sense as a calculation of poverty giving modern wealth distribution.
- iguy 7y ago
  Median is the 50th percentile, it's unaffected by Bill Gates. So half the median is a better measure than half the mean. However as you say it's still a measure of disparity, not an absolute level.
  - eikenberry 7y ago
    The median is the 50th percentile including outliers, so the Bill Gates of the world to impact it. The mean normally removes outliers to get a better idea of the real average.
    - iguy 7y ago
      No, I think you may have this backwards. The median really is unaffected by adding a zero (or ten zeros) to Bill's income. All that matters is that if half the population makes less than Joe the plumber, and half more, then Joe is at the median. (There's a chance that if you shot Bill, then Joe's brother who earned 0.1c less would become the median, but this will be tiny, tiny effect.) The mean would however be affected by such things.
jokoon 7y ago
I have been unemployed in a major part of my life, I live in france and am 34 now, and honestly, the fact that we still have welfare here that allows people to live a decent life is a lifesaver. What I'm scared about, is how people often look down on welfare recipients, and how politicians could decide to force me to work somehow. As long as slavery is forbidden, nobody can force me to work. What is weird is that in order to receive welfare, you have to be registered as unemployed, and declare every month that you're looking for work. Of course it is difficult to check if all those people are looking for work and you cannot really cut their welfare if unemployment numbers are what they are. If you're a politician, you understand that welfare policies are buying the "social peace", but it's a paradox because most people will feel guilty for being unemployed, and people who work will accuse the ones who are not working.
- 11235853211 7y ago
  Here in the USA, slavery is still legal under case of incarceration. In Florida, Texas, and Louisianna, prisoners are forced to work without pay. In other states, you are charged "prison rent" that is magnitudes higher than you could ever make working per day. As it has always been, this prison slavery system generates massive profits for the companies that use it, such as Amazon and Walmart. If you are a free worker, it is likely you will be shouldered with student loan and medical debt. Not to mention the debt accrued when financing a home. Our nation was built on free labor, slavery is one of the driving factors of American economic success. Yet the workers do not enjoy first world rights and living conditions, it makes you think about the efficiencies of such an economic system.
ptah 7y ago
solutions to poverty should be compartmentalized separate from moral considerations. they should be pragmatic and divorced from Calvinist puritan views on morals and work ethic
campuscodi 7y ago
The US lifestyle is like playing poker with your life, but only being allowed to go "all in" on every hand. You make it, you're living the American dream. You don't, it's all your fault.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
AdrianB1 7y ago
Poverty is a moving target; no matter what we do, there will always be the bottom 10% that will be considered poor by comparison. Double the income of everyone - bottom 10% will remain there. Triple the income of the lower half of the population: you still have a bottom. So what exactly is the measure of the problem and how to measure it was solved, when it will eventually be solved?
- dmitriid 7y ago
  There's a huge difference between "poor as in can't afford a meal or go to a doctor" and "poor as in can't afford an apartment in the middle of New York".
duxup 7y ago
I can't help but think of how many poor....vote for those who blame them.
jamisteven 7y ago
Is he seriously comparing to Japan to the US? I would say it is far, far easier to get out of poverty in the states (I have and know many who have) than it is in Japan. The two cultures have vast differences in everything from family dynamics to education to politics.
gridlockd 7y ago
> Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income, Japan’s poverty rate is more than 15% Okay, but how bad is that, relatively speaking? Let's imagine income in Japan doubled over night for everyone. You'd still have that same rate of poverty. We need to look at the outcome. As the article says, you don't find drug addicts and petty criminals roaming the streets in Japan. This number also disregards price differences. If you are a young worker, you likely live in the city, paying exorbitant Japanese urban rents, requiring a commensurate salary. If you are old, you likely live outside the urban center on a modest pension, with far lower living expenses. Japan of course has a very large elderly population.
wtdata 7y ago
In keep seeing this devious mixing of 2 different concepts in order to support one's political ideology. The 2 different cases the autor of the article tries to mix here are: 1 - People born poor normally have much more difficulty in reaching the highest economical levels of society. 2 - People born poor cannot reach an economical level above poverty, even if they put a fair amount of effort in it. The author (and many people discussing the subject) usually try to mix no 1 with no 2 in order to write these kind of articles and cause indignation about a false premise.
strikelaserclaw 7y ago
If you have been fortunate in life, then you realize how much of your life is just luck of the draw and you start having more empathy for other people (hopefully) and you realize that we (America) are at a stage where we can afford to give basic social safety nets to people who need it the most. Hell, i think medical insurance is one of the biggest scams. I haven't gone to the doctors in years, yet i pay every month, i would much rather this money go into a pool which can pay for the health care of the poor instead of making insurance company owners rich. Just implementing free healthcare would be enormously beneficial to most Americans.
- 11235853211 7y ago
  And how "free" is it when we pay the taxes for it? Public healthcare is a term that is less likely to trigger red flags, pun intended, in the minds of conservatives who react to "free" or "socialized".
  - mrlala 7y ago
    >And how "free" is it when we pay the taxes for it? It's free as in... when someone needs it, no matter how much money they make or do not make.. whether they are employed or unemployed.. they can use it "FOR FREE". Calling the police for me "IS FREE". My kids going to public school for me "IS FREE". Calling the fire department "IS FREE". Going to the doctor when you are sick should also be "FOR FREE".
    - 11235853211 7y ago
      Right, just pointing out that the media often uses the term "free" when referring to public programs that workers pay for with their tax dollars. It is deceptive.
      - mrlala 7y ago
        I still don't understand why you are pointing this out? You seem to be the one hung up on the word free. It IS FREE when using the public program- and that's what people want. Calling the police when you need help is free- I don't care how it's been funded. When I need it, I don't need to think about a cost whatsoever. If you are a disabled person who has never been able to work in your entire life and has never been able to pay a dime in taxes.. yet you are able to use all of these public programs, that is completely 100% free, right? You say the media is being deceptive when using free.. no, you know what they mean by free, so if anything I would call you the 'deceptive' one because you are intentionally making the discussion more complicated by getting so hung up on semantics. What everyone in this entire planet wants is to be able to get healthcare when they NEED it and not worry about the cost. So they want FREE healthcare. If you still have a hard time with this concept then just think about free as in "use". If using something means you don't have to think about the cost, then using it is free. Was it funded by someone somewhere? Well no shit- you can put a 'cost' on anything no matter what it is. Next you will tell me free healthcare isn't free because you need to drive yourself to the doctor, or take a bus. And that costs money. So it's not free anymore! Scandal!

300 points by stablemap 7y ago

I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, was somehow responsible for my situation, and needed to "take responsibility" but nobody could describe WHAT that meant or HOW to do it. It was all so soul crushing and and literally ruined my life and future. I didn't do it. It was done to me. But blame and dismissal is easier for people. Contrast that with a former friend who had a similar medical issue in Europe. He wasn't bankrupted by medical costs, had social support for basic living as he was treated and recovered long term, had social education which allowed him to go back to university and obtain useful skills for his new situation. He now has a thriving business and as full a life as anyone could expect. Because he had help and options when he needed them in the beginning. Having that help and those options also made it easier for him to hold into his relationships because he was able to stay IN life and move forward. People can only take so much loss. Yeah I resent it. I resent being born here where I hear how amazing it is every day and how Europe is a socialist dystopia (I've lived there, the people telling me this have not and I'd happily fufill their "get out of you don't like it" wishes if I could) and the usual middle American beliefs, but we don't even have the most basic of social protections. I resent being blamed. I resent that even seeing this happen people still decided just what the Murican culture told them to decide about me because its easier to live with ones own fears that way. I resent having my life end in such a miserable and painful mess when I earned more and did what I was supposed to. America has a real empathy problem. People won't treat others as they wish to be treated when they are in need. Being poor is an infection and they avoid you. It's not a need they reach out to solve. And being poor is very expensive. A society of individualists is no society at all.

ThJ 7y ago
I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these clueless people will need to form opinions about how sick you are and how much help you need, and they'll often be wrong, and you'll have to fight them. It's better than the alternative, of course, but it's not anywhere near being the utopia that U.S. liberals like to describe it as. They're just using us to promote their own agenda. With that said, I do find myself thanking heaven that I was born in this country from time to time.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  For what it's worth, the ambition on the left over here (in the US) is to eliminate means testing for programs as much as possible. Healthcare problems? Free healthcare for everyone, no forms required. No home? Everyone gets a free / low cost house. We aim to do much more than that (give control of the economy to the people), but a robust welfare state is a good start.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Those are compelling policy handwaves, but they really aren't going to the heart of the issue; which is someone in the broader conversation is basically misrepresenting reality to an astounding degree. The OECD reports that the US already spends more on healthcare per capita than any other nation by a substantial margin [0]. If it were believed that the ambitious left were going to implement free healthcare by bringing actual costs down into line with the rest of the world they could probably muster bipartisan support in a few years. But I bet their plans don't do that - eliminating means testing and more handouts are are just avoiding the real issues. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

DoreenMichele 7y ago

There will always be relative poverty. In other words if we "solved poverty" and there were no more hungry people without health insurance sleeping in the streets, you would still have people who had less than others around them. But we can try to solve absolute poverty. We can try to make sure everyone has medical coverage, adequate nutrition etc. An important element of that is we need to design systems where having less than others doesn't close doors in your face and become a trap you can't escape. (I don't think UBI accomplishes that.)

viraptor 7y ago
Do you mean inequality? Poverty has a specific meaning. We define poverty thresholds. Middle class is not in "relative poverty" compared to billioners.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  The threshold at which people use the term "poverty" is very different in different countries (including the official American definition, which changes), even after adjusting for PPP. So whether or not it's officially supposed to be an absolute measure, in practice it's relative.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  No, I mean relative poverty. Many years ago, I saw a study that indicated that less than 1/2 of 1% of Americans were poor by the standards of India. Even homeless people in the US typically ate better than people classified as poor in India. But we still have homeless people here in the US. They typically have serious personal problems, such as serious medical conditions. Being homeless in the US is a genuine hardship and it's partly caused by the lack of cheap, small housing. We've torn down about a million SROs.* There are homeless people in the US who could afford an SRO if they could find market rate SROs. If you live on Social Security as your only income and can no longer work, we don't have any market based housing for you and many government housing projects have wait lists that are years long. We've raised the bar so extremely high in this country that it's a genuine problem for a high percentage of the country. It actively creates hardship and privation in a wealthy country that really ought to be able to virtually eliminate homelessness. But we don't. And after tearing down a lot of very basic housing for literally decades, when someone ends up homeless, we don't blame the lack of housing supply for people with low incomes. We say they have a personal problem and are probably just a junkie. * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

chrisdhoover 7y ago

When we redline, assign schools without regard to quality, hassle folks for petty infractions to pump revenue, sieze assets without due process, limit entrepreneurship with onerous licensing requirements, and imprison poor folks at higher rates you end up with a perpetual underclass.

non-entity 7y ago
> limit entrepreneurship with onerous licensing requirements I work for a government agency that provides professional licensing in my state and was shocked the other day to learn that you need a license to operate as a "hair braider". This seemed a bit excessive to me
- cglace 7y ago
  In some places you need a license to wash hair.
  - fatbird 7y ago
    Because without minimal standards for sterilizing tools, hair dressers can spread lice. Basic licencing requirements give the municipality a chance to ensure that everyone washing hair has been told about basic hygienic standards for washing hair.
    - fatbird 7y ago
      Leave it to the HN community to view a lice outbreak as an acceptable price to pay for the freedom of the market.
      - giancarlostoro 7y ago
        It is not necessarily HNs view but the reason for the license.
      - kalleboo 7y ago

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Blaming those without power for the way The System has tilted the game against them is Orwellian. Poverty is not a choice (any more than drug addiction is a choice). But we prefer to blame the victims because it's easier than looking in the mirror and accepting our role in the mess.

wallace_f 7y ago
I am not a typical homeless person. I am educated, skilled and I have no addictions, etc. I'm also not living on the street, and am lucky to not have any health problems. But I think my story really can perhaps reveal how incredibly easy it can be for one to have the misfortune to end up in such situations. My own experiences have opened my eyes to how abusive people can be, and perhaps this is a significant aspect of the stories of people who have failed to thrive. I don't know everyone's experience -- this is just mine. Actually, I've often been afraid, or ashamed, to speak about the unfortunate circumstances of my life, and I've never known where to get help. I mentioned it here[1], recently on HN. The discussion there made me wonder if it is better for people like me to share their stories. It's interesting that in the public conciousness, there is such a vocal push back against abuse, tyranny and even victim blaming. Of course it does still happen, even with consensus being against it. Most reasonable people do not appeal to living such a world, but there is an unfortunate hypocritical nature in humanity, where while people don't want to live in such a world, some of the same people are keen to take advantage, and in ways can be submissive to bullies and tyrants. I wonder how many people there are out there with stories like mine, who have survived pscyhopathic aggression and extreme bullying, but with irreperable social or professional lives and nobody to fall back on. I think history is full of examples of people who have been victim to such crazy, immoral things. And of course everyone says in retrospect, "if I had been there, I'd have done something."
- throwaway3627 7y ago
  I live in a van in the Valley, have an engineering degree from a top school, bankruptcy, student loan debt over me I can never hope to repay but cannot hold a job. No drugs, no smoking, no drinking, no sanitation issues, and no hanging out in the daytime with the locals. As the learning experience of life, I realize that much of what Americans believe is a lie and that they cling to ideas and beliefs that aren't helpful for them in their circumstances: aspirational "rich" people who take up attitudes and political fashions that hurt themselves and let themselves be divided-and-conquered with artificial divisions until we're atomized and estranged from one another into seemingly virtual isolation. Plus, there's American hyper-individualism and anomie of discontent and hopelessness that's degrading the society from a network of communities into a Kafkaesque Lord of the Flies, anarcho-vulture-capitalist nightmare. American "exceptionalism" now seems to mean "If I get mine, screw everyone else."

RickJWagner 7y ago

Wow, that is one pointedly political article. Bloomberg is now solidly in my 'partisan source' category. (Read the article before downvoting, please. Give it a fair read.)

woodruffw 7y ago
It appears to be in their "opinion" section.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
astrange 7y ago
The point of an editorial section is to have an opinion. (But a newspaper with no opinions isn't very useful either.)
michaelmrose 7y ago
It seems premature to discount a publication because it once expressed an opinion you disagreed with. If one was a diligent reader then one would quickly conclude that they couldn't trust anyone.
- guntars 7y ago
  It’s funny how you can say that while the comment you replied to is so pale I can’t even read it. Apparently people will try to bury anything that even has an inkling of something they disagree with.
  - showdeadplease 7y ago
    It's amusing how your account and the one you replied to were created within 2 weeks of each other, but his has 10 times the karma of yours. The hive mind here diligently keeps non-leftist accounts like yours below the "Hacker News poverty line" of 500 karma, so that you can't downvote their comments.

ggm 7y ago

Funny that at the point high quality LED tv's and digital signals come onstream, the world moves from Free-to-Air into pay-to-watch. So the poor can afford amazing TVs but cannot afford to buy the content we rich get to watch. Absolute poverty improves but relative poverty goes backward is a constant. Taxing cigarettes to contain cancer risks is a no brainer, which rich people can buy themselves out from but poor addicted smokers get penalized on, and then have to wear "you are poor because you are sick and make bad choices" pushback, and are denied basic health support.

pkaye 7y ago
I don't have cable and use on-the-air TV and the image quality is better than before. They work find with digital TVs.
- astrange 7y ago
  The funny thing about HDTV is that cable quality is terrible, but OTA quality is amazing. It's got way more bandwidth.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    Good point. I used to have basic cable and they forced me to digital and the quality went down. That is what made me try out OTA. I ended up putting an OTA antenna on the roof and the reception improved 10x.
- ggm 7y ago
  OTA works fine but you can't have a water cooler conversation about PBS the same way you can about boobs-and-dragons. If you want to talk about dragons-and-boobs you have to pay somebody to let you see 'em.
WalterBright 7y ago
> the poor can afford amazing TVs but cannot afford to buy the content we rich get to watch. I was surprised to discover the local public library http://kcls.org http://kcls.org seems to have a greater selection of DVDs than Netflix. You can also check out a box set all at once instead of Netflix sending one DVD at a time, which is nice for binge watching.

thdxr 7y ago

Who exactly is blaming the poor for their poverty?

noicebrewery 7y ago
Libertarians and conservatives, are we pretending otherwise?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  Plenty of liberals, too. I say that as a liberal.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- m0llusk 7y ago
  That is pretty shallow. There is a loud subset of the Libertarian party that mostly focuses on the desire for minimal taxation. There is also a substantial subset of Libertarians who advocate for a Universal Basic Income in order to make society itself more fair. This does not necessarily change the idea that slackers choose and deserve their fate, but merely provides people with more opportunity to live for themselves.
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  I've also met pro-establishment "liberals" who look down on poor people as long as they're white. This sentiment started the whole "learn to code" backlash meme on Twitter, although to be fair I've never seen any journalist directly make that suggestion.
- kadendogthing 7y ago

mjfl 7y ago

This acts as if it’s presenting an unpopular opinion against a popular opinion, when it’s actually the opposite. Would any of Noah’s colleagues not be horrified if he had written an article stating “blame America’s poor for their poverty”? Where is the signal, if everyone already thinks this way? It’s just masturbation.

sremani 7y ago

It's a complicated issue.. but every person or family that makes a level up transition (without rent-seeking) like. poor -> middle middle -> upper upper -> rich/millionaire millionaire -> billionaire have my respect.

tremon 7y ago
Only the first one has my respect. The second one I'm neutral towards, the others fail as human beings in my view.
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
  Why do they fail? (Unless you assume the money is hoarded and not used for something meaningful)
- read_if_gay_ 7y ago
  If you provide something society needs and people give you money in exchange then how on earth is that failing as a human being?
  - mcv 7y ago
    It depends a lot on how they make that money. Do they do it by writing a popular, insightful book that everybody wants to read[0], or by running a hedge fund that buy companies, fires half the employees, loads them with debt, and sells them in an IPO? [0] Hasn't this taken JK Rowling straight from poor to billionaire?
gizmo686 7y ago
I think "upper" comes after millionaire. Someone in the middle class should be a millionaire by the time they retire.

jxramos 7y ago

I thought I heard it said that poverty needs no explanation. It is the default state of human existence. The real question is why wealth exists.

siphon22 7y ago

I like the spirit of the article, but being poor does not resolve you of personal responsibility. You do not have a pass to commit crime because you make under a certain amount a year. There are definitely a great number of poor people in this world who have no one to blame but themselves or their family/upbringing. I think that a civilized country should have a good safety net for everyone equally, even if their poverty was their own fault. There should be no shame there. People make mistakes. People are sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time. We should still help them even if it was their fault. I dislike this mindset in America that people get what they deserve and if they made a mistake, they should suffer for it.

hcurtiss 7y ago

Are we sure that half the median is a good definition of “poor”? At least hypothetically, in a very wealthy country, that may still be an adequate amount to get by.

michaelmrose 7y ago
The median individual monthly income in WA state is slightly above 4K monthly. Half of this is 2K monthly or more accurately given how most people actually get paid 923 every 2 weeks. After taxes this is more like 784. After paying for insurance as you are too rich to get free health care you are looking at more like 684. This qualifies you to live virtually nowhere because most places want you to make 3x the rent and start at 700-800 per month. In King County where the lions share of the jobs are you probably will have to move to a street corner. Elsewhere you can perhaps afford to beg someone to rent a bed for 2 weeks wages and afford to eat as long as you have no hobbies and shop exclusively at thrift stores for clothes. It's probably a mostly acceptable definition of poor that only breaks down in a tiny minority of cases where someone adjacent to a very wealthy area makes enough to barely get buy in the wealthy area but enough to survive slightly more comfortably in the poor area wherein jobs are as scarce as the cost of living is low.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Housing as an investment is the problem here. The cost of the houses and the cost of the rent are adjusting to the income, if you double the income in the region you will have triple the rent (because the disposable income will increase much more than the actual income increase). See Silicon Valley for a good demonstration of this.
- hcurtiss 7y ago
  I’m not sure I’d do the math the same way. First, it seems to me that the median household income is a better number, as most people share expenses and many households have two incomes. That seems to me to better inform ability to get by. In Washington, that’s $70k.[1] Half that is $35k, or just shy of $3k/month. With ACA subsidies, a person in that situation won’t likely be paying $400/month in health insurance. The max for a family of four at $35k is actually $1300 per year, or a little over $100/month, and an individual at $35k is closer to $200.[2] $2800/month is not a great deal of money, but it’s not living in squalor. And, as you say, it depends on location. A high proportion of of those people will not be living in Seattle, but rather rural areas where the cost of living is cheaper. The median household income in Seattle is closer to $85k. Also note that federal after taxes income after accounting for transfers actually goes up for the second quintile.[3] [1] https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/washington/ [2] https://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-limits-for-the-affordable-care-act-obamacare/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-l... [3] https://taxfoundation.org/average-federal-tax-rates-income-group/ https://taxfoundation.org/average-federal-tax-rates-income-g...

refurb 7y ago

This article is kind of all over the place. Do note that according to the chart near the bottom, the US actually spends more of it’s GDP on the social safety net than Canada and Australia, two countries perceived as having better social safety nets. It’s probably even higher in the US since Canada and Australia cover 100% of their citizens for healthcare when the US only covers ~60%.

Causality1 7y ago

>In Japan, people work hard, few abuse drugs, crime is minimal and single mothers are rare. The country still has lots of poverty. Conversely, does that mean we can't blame crime, absent fathers, and drug abuse on poverty?

refurb 7y ago

Many conservatives in the U.S. believe that poverty is mainly a result of bad personal decisions. Is this article arguing that poverty is never a result of bad personal decisions? If so, I have a few anecdotes that would be contrary to that.

fatbird 7y ago
No, it's not. But no personal decision is made in a void. Locally rational decisions are often inexplicable to people who've never struggled with money.
carlob 7y ago
> Is this article arguing that poverty is never a result of bad personal decisions? No I think this article is arguing that ending bad personal decisions (if at all possible) will not significantly affect poverty, but a safety net will. Another interesting topic, which is not mentioned in the article, is how poverty causes bad personal decisions.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  I have an analogy. A poor guy lives on a cliff. He is a careful man and watches his steps, being only human, he missteps and falls to his death. A better off guy can afford a house further from the cliff, and can even to put up a fence. Just like the poor man, he makes missteps once in a while, but the cliff is far away, and continues to live. In this wealthy country, there is no reason for anyone to have to live near a financial cliff where ordinary mistakes or bad luck will devastate you. It is not productive. It hurts economic growth and is, in my opinion, immoral. A universal income would allow us all live a little further from the cliff, and not punish you for managing to build your home further away.

Sophistifunk 7y ago

It doesn't matter who's fault it is. What matters is "can we afford to help these people?" and for a lot of definitions of "help" we can, and most people think we should.

AdrianB1 7y ago
How about the question: "should we force everyone to help these people?" I don't think you are talking about charity in any of the "help" definitions.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago
  What would your answer be?

jimbob45 7y ago

Not all rich should be praised for their hard work and gumption in getting to the top either...but some still deserve it. Painting these groups as solid black and white maybe isn't the best tool for the job.

ionised 7y ago
Over 60% of the wealth in the US is inherited. Most rich certainly did nothing to deserve it.

amthewiz 7y ago

> So Japanese people are doing everything right -- eschewing violence, avoiding drugs, working hard and not having kids out of wedlock. They are following the conservative prescription, as well as or better than any other developed country in the world. And yet still, many of them are poor. This suggests that there is something very wrong with the conservative theory of poverty. No, the author is confused. There is a big difference between - - you cannot be poor if you make good choices, and - you can get out of povery by making good choices The conservative position is the later. There will be cases where it doesn't work, but it is a sound recommendation in general. Now, poverty does make it harder to make good choices. So welfare $s should be spent to make that easier, e.g. free food at school helps kids do better at school.

esailija 7y ago
You say there is a "big difference" but logically they are exactly the same claim. Also, no need to "recommend" making "good choices" any more than you need to recommend breathing.
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  Not at all. One is saying that it's possible to get out of poverty by making good choices. One is saying that it's impossible to be in poverty if you make good choices. Subtle but big difference. I disagree with both statements regardless, but there is a difference.
  - esailija 7y ago
    If "good choices are likely to lift you out of poverty" like OP claims, it logically follows that "you are unlikely to be poor if you make good choices". "There will be cases where it doesn't work" let's say that means 99%/1%. So the statements become "you would have 99% chance to be lifted out of poverty if you made good choices" and therefore "you have 1% chance of being poor if you make good choices". Whether you believe it's 1% or 0% the behavior will be the same. If a smoker gets lung cancer you will blame their smoking everytime even though there was a 5.8% chance that it was not smoking caused so 0% and 5.8% is not any different, why should 0% and 1% be?.

username90 7y ago

I think the question should not be "Why are there so many poor in USA", but "Why does it suck so much to be poor in USA". I believe that the urban layout and exorbitant healthcare costs are the main issues. If poor neighborhoods were walkable and had cheap supermarkets with fresh produce then you wouldn't need a car, and the density would mean that you have plenty of potential friends within walking distance so you wont be bored. If healthcare was cheap like in Europe then it could have been government funded so that poor people wouldn't have to worry about getting sick more than anyone else. Also with free healthcare and no car there are basically no big large random expenditures, so you don't have to worry about anything on the economic front. That style of life is not a dream, that is how most poor people live in Europe and I assume also in Japan. There are therefore a lot of people who could pull themselves out of poverty, but they don't since they are fine with doing a simpler job or work less for less pay since it doesn't suck to be poor. I am one of them, I have lived below the poverty line most of my life. I didn't chase money, but I happened to get a good job and started making loads of it. But I still continued that lifestyle even when I began making lots of money. I see no reason to spend more, I wasn't unhappy when I didn't have money so all it would result in is me having to work more years before I can retire. Sometimes I wonder if Americans want it to suck to be poor just to ensure that people like me work harder. Neither the left nor the right seems to want to fix this.

majani 7y ago
It sucks to be poor because it sucks to be at the bottom of social hierarchies. This is an evolutionary feature of society, not a bug.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Many countries try to decrease the difference between being at the top (or at least in the upper quartile or so) of the social hierarchy and being at the bottom, resulting in less suck for the poor.
- orwin 7y ago
  My biological grandfather (long story) is considered poor in the US, and is at the very bottom of the social hierarchy (you know, early 70 hippies that got stuck in the past?). Yet he lives way better than at least half the US population imo, and would never trade his place with the other half. He live in a cabin in West Virginia, share 100 acres with two other people, have access to a natural gaz well for 100$ a year (shared with 4 other people). Free food, almost free gaz, free beer, and he make 20 to 50 bucks a month from playing banjo at local jam/bars. Well, winter sucks up there in the hills, but still. I think that the most he have worked in a year was 3 month doing odd construction jobs (I think the town name was Akron). Being poor doesn't suck because you're poor, it sucks because you don't live well enough and you can't really enjoy life. If you're poor but live well enough, it doesn't really matter.

peteretep 7y ago

But if you stopped blaming the poor for their poverty, you’d no longer be able to fête the privileged for their privilege

eikenberry 7y ago

> Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income, I'm not sure I buy their definition of poverty. It speaks more about the income disparity than people living in without basic food and shelter covered, which I think the term implies. It might be more meaningful if it were the mean, but as is a few really high income earners would skew the results. I don't think using the medium makes sense as a calculation of poverty giving modern wealth distribution.

iguy 7y ago
Median is the 50th percentile, it's unaffected by Bill Gates. So half the median is a better measure than half the mean. However as you say it's still a measure of disparity, not an absolute level.
- eikenberry 7y ago
  The median is the 50th percentile including outliers, so the Bill Gates of the world to impact it. The mean normally removes outliers to get a better idea of the real average.
  - iguy 7y ago
    No, I think you may have this backwards. The median really is unaffected by adding a zero (or ten zeros) to Bill's income. All that matters is that if half the population makes less than Joe the plumber, and half more, then Joe is at the median. (There's a chance that if you shot Bill, then Joe's brother who earned 0.1c less would become the median, but this will be tiny, tiny effect.) The mean would however be affected by such things.

jokoon 7y ago

I have been unemployed in a major part of my life, I live in france and am 34 now, and honestly, the fact that we still have welfare here that allows people to live a decent life is a lifesaver. What I'm scared about, is how people often look down on welfare recipients, and how politicians could decide to force me to work somehow. As long as slavery is forbidden, nobody can force me to work. What is weird is that in order to receive welfare, you have to be registered as unemployed, and declare every month that you're looking for work. Of course it is difficult to check if all those people are looking for work and you cannot really cut their welfare if unemployment numbers are what they are. If you're a politician, you understand that welfare policies are buying the "social peace", but it's a paradox because most people will feel guilty for being unemployed, and people who work will accuse the ones who are not working.

11235853211 7y ago
Here in the USA, slavery is still legal under case of incarceration. In Florida, Texas, and Louisianna, prisoners are forced to work without pay. In other states, you are charged "prison rent" that is magnitudes higher than you could ever make working per day. As it has always been, this prison slavery system generates massive profits for the companies that use it, such as Amazon and Walmart. If you are a free worker, it is likely you will be shouldered with student loan and medical debt. Not to mention the debt accrued when financing a home. Our nation was built on free labor, slavery is one of the driving factors of American economic success. Yet the workers do not enjoy first world rights and living conditions, it makes you think about the efficiencies of such an economic system.

ptah 7y ago

solutions to poverty should be compartmentalized separate from moral considerations. they should be pragmatic and divorced from Calvinist puritan views on morals and work ethic

campuscodi 7y ago

The US lifestyle is like playing poker with your life, but only being allowed to go "all in" on every hand. You make it, you're living the American dream. You don't, it's all your fault.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

AdrianB1 7y ago

Poverty is a moving target; no matter what we do, there will always be the bottom 10% that will be considered poor by comparison. Double the income of everyone - bottom 10% will remain there. Triple the income of the lower half of the population: you still have a bottom. So what exactly is the measure of the problem and how to measure it was solved, when it will eventually be solved?

dmitriid 7y ago
There's a huge difference between "poor as in can't afford a meal or go to a doctor" and "poor as in can't afford an apartment in the middle of New York".

duxup 7y ago

I can't help but think of how many poor....vote for those who blame them.

jamisteven 7y ago

Is he seriously comparing to Japan to the US? I would say it is far, far easier to get out of poverty in the states (I have and know many who have) than it is in Japan. The two cultures have vast differences in everything from family dynamics to education to politics.

gridlockd 7y ago

> Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income, Japan’s poverty rate is more than 15% Okay, but how bad is that, relatively speaking? Let's imagine income in Japan doubled over night for everyone. You'd still have that same rate of poverty. We need to look at the outcome. As the article says, you don't find drug addicts and petty criminals roaming the streets in Japan. This number also disregards price differences. If you are a young worker, you likely live in the city, paying exorbitant Japanese urban rents, requiring a commensurate salary. If you are old, you likely live outside the urban center on a modest pension, with far lower living expenses. Japan of course has a very large elderly population.

wtdata 7y ago

In keep seeing this devious mixing of 2 different concepts in order to support one's political ideology. The 2 different cases the autor of the article tries to mix here are: 1 - People born poor normally have much more difficulty in reaching the highest economical levels of society. 2 - People born poor cannot reach an economical level above poverty, even if they put a fair amount of effort in it. The author (and many people discussing the subject) usually try to mix no 1 with no 2 in order to write these kind of articles and cause indignation about a false premise.

strikelaserclaw 7y ago

If you have been fortunate in life, then you realize how much of your life is just luck of the draw and you start having more empathy for other people (hopefully) and you realize that we (America) are at a stage where we can afford to give basic social safety nets to people who need it the most. Hell, i think medical insurance is one of the biggest scams. I haven't gone to the doctors in years, yet i pay every month, i would much rather this money go into a pool which can pay for the health care of the poor instead of making insurance company owners rich. Just implementing free healthcare would be enormously beneficial to most Americans.

11235853211 7y ago
And how "free" is it when we pay the taxes for it? Public healthcare is a term that is less likely to trigger red flags, pun intended, in the minds of conservatives who react to "free" or "socialized".
- mrlala 7y ago
  >And how "free" is it when we pay the taxes for it? It's free as in... when someone needs it, no matter how much money they make or do not make.. whether they are employed or unemployed.. they can use it "FOR FREE". Calling the police for me "IS FREE". My kids going to public school for me "IS FREE". Calling the fire department "IS FREE". Going to the doctor when you are sick should also be "FOR FREE".
  - 11235853211 7y ago
    Right, just pointing out that the media often uses the term "free" when referring to public programs that workers pay for with their tax dollars. It is deceptive.
    - mrlala 7y ago
      I still don't understand why you are pointing this out? You seem to be the one hung up on the word free. It IS FREE when using the public program- and that's what people want. Calling the police when you need help is free- I don't care how it's been funded. When I need it, I don't need to think about a cost whatsoever. If you are a disabled person who has never been able to work in your entire life and has never been able to pay a dime in taxes.. yet you are able to use all of these public programs, that is completely 100% free, right? You say the media is being deceptive when using free.. no, you know what they mean by free, so if anything I would call you the 'deceptive' one because you are intentionally making the discussion more complicated by getting so hung up on semantics. What everyone in this entire planet wants is to be able to get healthcare when they NEED it and not worry about the cost. So they want FREE healthcare. If you still have a hard time with this concept then just think about free as in "use". If using something means you don't have to think about the cost, then using it is free. Was it funded by someone somewhere? Well no shit- you can put a 'cost' on anything no matter what it is. Next you will tell me free healthcare isn't free because you need to drive yourself to the doctor, or take a bus. And that costs money. So it's not free anymore! Scandal!