5 ms·

It's sad that you're one of the few who can see this and yet the other replies to your comment seem to give bizarre rationalizations of why it's okay to be poor

by lotusleaf1987 16y ago

It's sad that you're one of the few who can see this and yet the other replies to your comment seem to give bizarre rationalizations of why it's okay to be poor. I don't think there's an excuse at all. Go to Denmark or Canada or a number of other countries and they've all but wiped out poverty. It's a pathetic rationalization that poverty "is relative." The more I read HN the more tired I get reading these over-used libertarian fanatical positions. The poor are not just drug addicts, there are many people who've had much fewer opportunities and never had a chance to go to college or get an education. There are many many people who fall into "the working poor" look at any number of people stuck in dead end jobs but with little to no ability to get out of the situation. Meritocracy is a complete myth. The poor work the hardest and most dangerous jobs and the most hours. If all it took was 'hard work' then these people would be filthy rich by now. But obviously not all work is valued the same.

davidw 16y ago
One thing that gets people in the US is medical problems. Just as an anecdote, I got a couple of sinus infections back to back on my recent trip to the US. Two doctor visits plus antibiotics cost me more than 250 dollars out of pocket. And that's for a relatively trifling problem. Imagine getting hit with serious medical bills at the very same time your ability to work has been seriously diminished.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  I had my appendix out a couple years ago, and it cost me around $2000, and this was with some really fantastic insurance. If uninsured, I would have gotten a bill for around $25,000. Had I been in a different point in my life, I would have been ruined financially.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  This is widely believed, but only due to a deeply flawed study which got a lot of press. New statistics following the publication of that article have shown this pretty conclusively. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/will-health-care-reform-reduce-medical-bankruptcies/68304/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/will-hea...
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    All that shows is that Massachusetts system is flawed. For instance, there are zero medical bankruptcies in Switzerland, France, or Germany.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Even if it were flawed, you'd expect some effect. Also, you are simply wrong with your international comparison. If we apply the standards of Warren's study, any bankrupt citizen of France who spent $1001 or more in taxes on France's national health care system was a "medical bankruptcy".
      - michaelchisari 16y ago
        Even if it were flawed, you'd expect some effect. Why? If you improperly implement a system, you don't have to have any reasonable expectation of success. If I recreate a system incorrectly, I can't say, well, I should expect at least a 5% success rate. Often, poor implementations can cause negative results. any bankrupt citizen of France who spent $1001 or more in taxes That would be incorrect, because medical bankruptcies are the result of medical costs directly. For instance, being in a car accident or being diagnosed with HIV, neither of which directly result in a bankruptcy of any kind due to medical costs in those countries.
        yummyfajitas 16y ago
        Why? If you improperly implement a system, you don't have to have any reasonable expectation of success. So you truly believe that forcing everyone to purchase low deductible medical insurance is so deeply flawed that it will not reduce medical bankruptcies at all? Good to know. That would be incorrect, because medical bankruptcies are the result of medical costs directly. According to Elizabeth Warren's criteria, anyone who spent $1001 on medical expenses in the 2 years prior to their bankruptcy is classified as a medical bankruptcy. So for example, Michael Vick's bankruptcy was a "medical bankruptcy" by the criteria of the study we are discussing. (For those unfamiliar, other contributing factors to Vick's bankruptcy were spending wildly on consumer goods like mansions and boats, going to jail, and losing his job as NFL quarterback as a result. But nevertheless, Elizabeth Warren believes this was a medical bankruptcy.)
rick888 16y ago
Really? They wiped out poverty? http://www.redbarnet.dk/Default.aspx?ID=2208 http://www.redbarnet.dk/Default.aspx?ID=2208 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Canada http://www.economist.com/node/17581844 http://www.economist.com/node/17581844 Poverty exists in every nation in the world. There are a small percentage of people that have mental or physical issues, and they should be helped by the government. The rest need to get jobs. If you are stuck in a dead-end job, I don't feel sorry for you. I was stuck in one. It takes hard work, dedication, and sacrifice to get out. I've know a ton of people stuck in those types of jobs and most of them weren't willing to sacrifice their free time for their career. Instead of sitting at home and watching TV, playing video games, or hanging out with your friends when you get home from work, educate yourself. We are in an age where you can get tons of free information online. MIT even has free courses. Hell, if you want to go the less legal route, you can find almost any college textbook in pdf format, for free. I'm tired of people making excuses for lazy people. It reminds me of when I was in school: we would have group projects where one or two people would do all of the work and the rest (usually 4-5 people) would sit and earn the same amount of credit. I suppose this was a model for real life. "Meritocracy is a complete myth. The poor work the hardest and most dangerous jobs and the most hours." If you have a job that anybody can do, you aren't going to get paid very much..because its value is low. Making money has never been just about working hard. It also takes intelligence, skill, and there needs to be value in it.
- z0r 16y ago
  Making money is about exploiting economic opportunities. "Value" is an almost meaningless word. The garbage men who take the trash off my curb provide more value than a lot of white collar management, in my opinion. If you're either intelligent and skillful, you'll certainly have a better chance of identifying a desirable economic niche to fill and being able to work your way towards it. But is it right that many of the hardest working people in society, doing undesirable jobs, are compensated so much less than "knowledge workers"? Do you really think an 8 hour day sitting at a desk deserves twice as much pay as an 8 hour day digging a ditch? What the fuck is value? The compensation of a ditch digger has more to do with what a ditch digger can be offered to sustain himself than with any intrinsic 'value' of his work. That's true of a lot of shitty jobs, and it's bullshit that the people who have figured out how to exploit these shitty jobs to generate 'value' also somehow deserve respect, while the exploited are denigrated for their moral failures (such as laziness).
duffbeer703 16y ago
Have you ever been to Denmark or Canada? If so, were you tripping on something? I have never been to Denmark, but I have been to several places in Canada, and there are plenty of poor people. Don't criticize people for rationalizing the whether poverty is ok or not if you're living in some fantasy-world.
neworbit 16y ago
Don't know about Canada in general, but Vancouver BC has a lot of homeless on the streets. Do you have a comparison of poverty levels between Canada and the US you can cite?
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  This is pretty useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Unemployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_Amer... I did read an article in either Mother Jones or the Economist a while back about this but I couldn't find it (after googling for a few minutes). Also, Canada has national healthcare and in many ways better access to opportunities such as college, it also has a higher standard of living.
Symmetry 16y ago
But the working poor who suffer only because they haven't had opportunities are the ones who "have life expectancies, security of food and shelter and rates of possession of consumer durables that mark them out as among the blessed of history." All of which isn't to say that we can't afford to do more to help the unfortunate in our country, but comparing the plight of the poor in the US to the plight of the poor in, say, the Congo is ludicrous.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  |All of which isn't to say that we can't afford to do more to help the unfortunate in our country Are you saying it's impossible to help the poor in US? I'm not sure, but I completely think that's a cop-out and that we very easily could. The fact that the top 20% have 85% of the wealth should be all the proof we need. Imagine if the top 20% only have say 60% or even 40%? It would be very easy to imagine a world were the minimum wage were higher ie a living wage and where healthcare is available to all. Go to Germany for instance, they make ~15 euros an hour at Wal-Mart, get 2 months paid vacation, and have free healthcare. To say this is impossible in the US is absolutely just false. It just takes political will.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
The poor work the hardest and most dangerous jobs and the most hours. Utterly wrong. 80% of the poor don't work at all (and are not seeking work), and only 10% work full time (mostly by choice). http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf Please stop repeating propaganda.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  20% are working poor. 35% are children. Of the remaining 45%, half of them are women, almost all with children. Often the issue with working when you have children to take care of is the inability to afford childcare if you take a job. The costs of childcare for two children can easily make a minimum wage job untenable. What's propaganda is the idea that ranks of the poor are populated by low-life do-nothings, and if we only just ripped what little safety net they had out from under them, they'd all be startup entrepreneurs writing Twitter mashups like good citizens.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    The poor have a labor force participation rate of 20% and full time labor force participation rate of 10%. The population overall (which is also 30% children) has a labor force participation rate of 65% and a full time labor force participation rate of 55%. I assumed everyone was roughly aware of this, which is why I didn't bother including it in my prior post. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm And if childcare is the real problem here, there is a very simple solution: one of the unemployed women can care for the children of several of the others (as well as her own). This is what hard working poor people do (outside the US). [edit: before you tell me how hard the poor struggle with non-employment activities, go read the ATUS. The people with earnings in the $0-500/wk category (they don't explicitly break out "in poverty") spend half an hour per day on leisure more than the highest income group. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm ]
    - michaelchisari 16y ago

davidw 16y ago

One thing that gets people in the US is medical problems. Just as an anecdote, I got a couple of sinus infections back to back on my recent trip to the US. Two doctor visits plus antibiotics cost me more than 250 dollars out of pocket. And that's for a relatively trifling problem. Imagine getting hit with serious medical bills at the very same time your ability to work has been seriously diminished.

michaelchisari 16y ago
I had my appendix out a couple years ago, and it cost me around $2000, and this was with some really fantastic insurance. If uninsured, I would have gotten a bill for around $25,000. Had I been in a different point in my life, I would have been ruined financially.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
This is widely believed, but only due to a deeply flawed study which got a lot of press. New statistics following the publication of that article have shown this pretty conclusively. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/will-health-care-reform-reduce-medical-bankruptcies/68304/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/12/will-hea...
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  All that shows is that Massachusetts system is flawed. For instance, there are zero medical bankruptcies in Switzerland, France, or Germany.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Even if it were flawed, you'd expect some effect. Also, you are simply wrong with your international comparison. If we apply the standards of Warren's study, any bankrupt citizen of France who spent $1001 or more in taxes on France's national health care system was a "medical bankruptcy".
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      Even if it were flawed, you'd expect some effect. Why? If you improperly implement a system, you don't have to have any reasonable expectation of success. If I recreate a system incorrectly, I can't say, well, I should expect at least a 5% success rate. Often, poor implementations can cause negative results. any bankrupt citizen of France who spent $1001 or more in taxes That would be incorrect, because medical bankruptcies are the result of medical costs directly. For instance, being in a car accident or being diagnosed with HIV, neither of which directly result in a bankruptcy of any kind due to medical costs in those countries.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        Why? If you improperly implement a system, you don't have to have any reasonable expectation of success. So you truly believe that forcing everyone to purchase low deductible medical insurance is so deeply flawed that it will not reduce medical bankruptcies at all? Good to know. That would be incorrect, because medical bankruptcies are the result of medical costs directly. According to Elizabeth Warren's criteria, anyone who spent $1001 on medical expenses in the 2 years prior to their bankruptcy is classified as a medical bankruptcy. So for example, Michael Vick's bankruptcy was a "medical bankruptcy" by the criteria of the study we are discussing. (For those unfamiliar, other contributing factors to Vick's bankruptcy were spending wildly on consumer goods like mansions and boats, going to jail, and losing his job as NFL quarterback as a result. But nevertheless, Elizabeth Warren believes this was a medical bankruptcy.)

rick888 16y ago

Really? They wiped out poverty? http://www.redbarnet.dk/Default.aspx?ID=2208 http://www.redbarnet.dk/Default.aspx?ID=2208 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Canada http://www.economist.com/node/17581844 http://www.economist.com/node/17581844 Poverty exists in every nation in the world. There are a small percentage of people that have mental or physical issues, and they should be helped by the government. The rest need to get jobs. If you are stuck in a dead-end job, I don't feel sorry for you. I was stuck in one. It takes hard work, dedication, and sacrifice to get out. I've know a ton of people stuck in those types of jobs and most of them weren't willing to sacrifice their free time for their career. Instead of sitting at home and watching TV, playing video games, or hanging out with your friends when you get home from work, educate yourself. We are in an age where you can get tons of free information online. MIT even has free courses. Hell, if you want to go the less legal route, you can find almost any college textbook in pdf format, for free. I'm tired of people making excuses for lazy people. It reminds me of when I was in school: we would have group projects where one or two people would do all of the work and the rest (usually 4-5 people) would sit and earn the same amount of credit. I suppose this was a model for real life. "Meritocracy is a complete myth. The poor work the hardest and most dangerous jobs and the most hours." If you have a job that anybody can do, you aren't going to get paid very much..because its value is low. Making money has never been just about working hard. It also takes intelligence, skill, and there needs to be value in it.

z0r 16y ago
Making money is about exploiting economic opportunities. "Value" is an almost meaningless word. The garbage men who take the trash off my curb provide more value than a lot of white collar management, in my opinion. If you're either intelligent and skillful, you'll certainly have a better chance of identifying a desirable economic niche to fill and being able to work your way towards it. But is it right that many of the hardest working people in society, doing undesirable jobs, are compensated so much less than "knowledge workers"? Do you really think an 8 hour day sitting at a desk deserves twice as much pay as an 8 hour day digging a ditch? What the fuck is value? The compensation of a ditch digger has more to do with what a ditch digger can be offered to sustain himself than with any intrinsic 'value' of his work. That's true of a lot of shitty jobs, and it's bullshit that the people who have figured out how to exploit these shitty jobs to generate 'value' also somehow deserve respect, while the exploited are denigrated for their moral failures (such as laziness).

duffbeer703 16y ago

Have you ever been to Denmark or Canada? If so, were you tripping on something? I have never been to Denmark, but I have been to several places in Canada, and there are plenty of poor people. Don't criticize people for rationalizing the whether poverty is ok or not if you're living in some fantasy-world.

neworbit 16y ago

Don't know about Canada in general, but Vancouver BC has a lot of homeless on the streets. Do you have a comparison of poverty levels between Canada and the US you can cite?

lotusleaf1987 16y ago
This is pretty useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Unemployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_Amer... I did read an article in either Mother Jones or the Economist a while back about this but I couldn't find it (after googling for a few minutes). Also, Canada has national healthcare and in many ways better access to opportunities such as college, it also has a higher standard of living.

Symmetry 16y ago

But the working poor who suffer only because they haven't had opportunities are the ones who "have life expectancies, security of food and shelter and rates of possession of consumer durables that mark them out as among the blessed of history." All of which isn't to say that we can't afford to do more to help the unfortunate in our country, but comparing the plight of the poor in the US to the plight of the poor in, say, the Congo is ludicrous.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago
|All of which isn't to say that we can't afford to do more to help the unfortunate in our country Are you saying it's impossible to help the poor in US? I'm not sure, but I completely think that's a cop-out and that we very easily could. The fact that the top 20% have 85% of the wealth should be all the proof we need. Imagine if the top 20% only have say 60% or even 40%? It would be very easy to imagine a world were the minimum wage were higher ie a living wage and where healthcare is available to all. Go to Germany for instance, they make ~15 euros an hour at Wal-Mart, get 2 months paid vacation, and have free healthcare. To say this is impossible in the US is absolutely just false. It just takes political will.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

The poor work the hardest and most dangerous jobs and the most hours. Utterly wrong. 80% of the poor don't work at all (and are not seeking work), and only 10% work full time (mostly by choice). http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf Please stop repeating propaganda.

michaelchisari 16y ago
20% are working poor. 35% are children. Of the remaining 45%, half of them are women, almost all with children. Often the issue with working when you have children to take care of is the inability to afford childcare if you take a job. The costs of childcare for two children can easily make a minimum wage job untenable. What's propaganda is the idea that ranks of the poor are populated by low-life do-nothings, and if we only just ripped what little safety net they had out from under them, they'd all be startup entrepreneurs writing Twitter mashups like good citizens.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  The poor have a labor force participation rate of 20% and full time labor force participation rate of 10%. The population overall (which is also 30% children) has a labor force participation rate of 65% and a full time labor force participation rate of 55%. I assumed everyone was roughly aware of this, which is why I didn't bother including it in my prior post. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm And if childcare is the real problem here, there is a very simple solution: one of the unemployed women can care for the children of several of the others (as well as her own). This is what hard working poor people do (outside the US). [edit: before you tell me how hard the poor struggle with non-employment activities, go read the ATUS. The people with earnings in the $0-500/wk category (they don't explicitly break out "in poverty") spend half an hour per day on leisure more than the highest income group. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm ]
  - michaelchisari 16y ago