7 ms·

What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor

57 points by ciconia 5y ago

dgb23 5y ago
Cannot read the article.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  I found that the article was loading in full, and only afterward the paywall overlay would appear. Hitting Firefox's reader mode button at just the right time allows me to keep the article content on-screen.
pydry 5y ago
https://archive.is/wbqrm https://archive.is/wbqrm
minikites 5y ago
>This is the conversation about poverty that we don’t like to have: We discuss the poor as a pity or a blight, but we rarely admit that America’s high rate of poverty is a policy choice, and there are reasons we choose it over and over again. This is true of many of society's problems. They're a choice, a choice we can stop making at any point. We're just made to be afraid of the consequences by powerful people who benefit from the status quo.
- Grim-444 5y ago
  Until we live in a post-scarcity world how is it a choice? There simply are not enough resources. You can forcefully confiscate and redistribute every penny the "rich" have and nothing would change.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Not everyone is going to be a billionaire, but that doesn't have to mean some people can't access basics like housing. Our high rates of homelessness are rooted in housing policy and most people don't want to hear that. The narrative that gets promoted is that it's their fault and homeless people get labeled as "junkies and crazies." Which doesn't even hold water, logically speaking, because most addicts don't want to be addicts and trying to break an addiction is quite challenging and if insanity boiled down to a personal choice, people would choose to be sane. People don't want to be mentally ill. That's not how that works.
  - makomk 5y ago
    That's one of the more interesting things about this article: although it starts out along the same tired, bogus blame-the-super-wealthy lines as a lot of these arguments, it does kind of admit that the cost of what it's calling for will come out of the quality of life of relatively ordinary people: "But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. ... Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor... ... Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power." “Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”
  - michael1999 5y ago
    There are degrees of solidarity, and state redistribution. France is not North Korea.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dalbasal 5y ago
I think the social, rather than economic aspect is the most ardent. Whether it's ubi or some other policy, a lot of people's immediate concern is that it'll engage poor people's laziness. Reminds me of all those "how to run a household" manuals from the 19th century. Very classist instinct,imo. Burrito price inflation or even government costs are secondary. The suspicion that the poor are lazy and must be kept in line is primary.. often.
- rektide 5y ago
  To me, I really look forward to the higher order effects of not being forced into terrible jobs. I look forward very very much to seeing what emerges, what is innate in us, what we opt do for our own sake, when a little bit of laziness is a possibility. It's incredibly exciting to me to think of a society that has some time and space and safety for people to figure out what are good worthwhile ways to engage themselves. Oh yes, a lot of the people will waste away their time, wrap themselves around being gabbing social animals at each other 100%. I don't mind this. Especially after the domination of work culture I think this will be a bit prevalent, as escape finally becomes an option. But I expect a lot of people will be able to, for the first time, think about what they want to do, what might be meaningful or valuable to them, will try to contribute to society, culturally or with labor. I think we'll re-socialize "value" & our sense of human worth with incredible, vast diversification. There will emerge all manners of new role models, of new ways to engage the world, and especially over time, we'll see so much incredible value arise, such a better sense of what real, meaningful effort & work are, & that we'll grow enormously. Only because we decided to stop our pernicious economic exploitation of the poor. Because we made life no longer a perpetual ongoing terrifying crisis.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  > The suspicion that the poor are lazy. Yeah, the idea/ideology that "If you work hard, you'll be successful" has the flip side that "If you're not successful, you haven't worked hard enough, i.e. you're lazy.": https://youtu.be/bTDGdKaMDhQ https://youtu.be/bTDGdKaMDhQ Most people who are successful got lucky once or twice along the way too...
nextstep 5y ago
On the front page for a few minutes and then presumably flagged? (It’s now gone.) Seems like maybe these are things HN also doesn’t want to admit about the poor.
- RileyJames 5y ago
  Maybe, but there’s also a strong “anti-paywall” culture here, which may be the cause. It is hard to have a discussion about an article when a portion of the audience is unable to read said article. https://archive.is/2021.06.13-195750/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/stimulus-unemployment-republicans-poverty.html https://archive.is/2021.06.13-195750/https://www.nytimes.com...
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    HN also abhors poor quality writing and a variety of other "sins" that are routinely mistaken for an objection to the subject matter even though there is plenty of evidence that HN is happy to hear about the topic in question, but only if it's done well.
axiolite 5y ago
I have yet to hear a plan to end poverty which might work. UBI and "negative income tax" will fail the drug addicted and mentally ill, most of whom will continue to make bad choices and remain homeless. Raising minimum wage shows some promise at improving things, but it seems rents for in-demand cities simply increase to match the median income of workers in the area. Re-shaping tax laws has a much better chance of improving matters for low-income workers. If capital gains wasn't so low, running business would again become better investments than stock markets. If dividend stocks were tax-advantaged and became more common, then stock-holders would have a much greater interest in long-term stability of a company rather than short-term returns. If the taxes on property weren't so low, the ultra-wealthy wouldn't be buying up every cheap bit of it and holding onto it for decades, perhaps renting it out rather than ever selling it. If there weren't so many tax law loopholes, huge corporations wouldn't have as much of an economic advantage over smaller businesses. I don't subscribe to the notion that impoverished workers are required by our economy, either. While the Wal-marts and Sam's Clubs keep people barely surviving, the Targets and Costcos out there give their workers a reasonable standard of living and don't need to sell lots of expensive luxury goods to pay for it.
- boredprograming 5y ago
  Poverty in the US certainly isn't new, but in many ways it's worse than it used to be. Labor unions were very effective at increasing wages for blue collar jobs. Particularly ones not easily outsourced, like construction. Businesses have lobbied to systematically attack organized labor for around 100 years. The few unions left are relics from an earlier time. Businesses have made it neigh impossible to form new ones. The "gig economy" is a new form of exploitation. Technology has enabled a new breed of job that barely skirts employee regulations. This has undone decades of worker protections. Importation of foreign workers has been good for foreign workers, but in the US is mostly a tool to suppress wages. You can get away with more law breaking when your employees are wholly dependant on you. Job Visas are indentured servitude. The US has regressed in every income inequality metric over the last 50 years. To out it simply, the ultra rich own half the country. You don't see this same wealth concentration happening in Europe. If wages kept pace with worker productivity, the average worker would make something like $150,000 a year. The productivity gains are real, but all this money has gone to the people at the top. Tax law is just a small part of why the median American is getting poorer while the average American gets richer
CheezeIt 5y ago
You’re going to have a hard time eliminating poverty when the poverty line is defined as a fraction of median income.
- jjj123 5y ago
  I think you’re being a little too literal. I can’t speak for the author, but when I think of poverty in the US I think of the inability to pay for or access basic needs: housing, food, healthcare, education, free time, etc
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    The thing is, even when it’s defined as some absolute measure, it ends up being a moving target. Defining adequate healthcare is one example. Food has continually gotten cheaper, relative to poverty lines. Education — we have public schools, and most impoverished kids, being stupid, spend way more time in education than is useful for them. Really it’s all housing. There is a tenement shortage. But let’s suppose we free up the housing market and make rent cheap again, such that only the absolutely nonproductive lack a place to stay. NYT will still be talking about how there’s so much poverty.
    - me_me_me 5y ago
      > The thing is, even when it’s defined as some absolute measure, it ends up being a moving target. Even if, that's better then doing nothing. At least it would help people. I'd rather be a 'poverty' person with safe housing and full stomach, than a today's 'poverty' person.

57 points by ciconia 5y ago

dgb23 5y ago

Cannot read the article.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
I found that the article was loading in full, and only afterward the paywall overlay would appear. Hitting Firefox's reader mode button at just the right time allows me to keep the article content on-screen.

pydry 5y ago

https://archive.is/wbqrm https://archive.is/wbqrm

minikites 5y ago

>This is the conversation about poverty that we don’t like to have: We discuss the poor as a pity or a blight, but we rarely admit that America’s high rate of poverty is a policy choice, and there are reasons we choose it over and over again. This is true of many of society's problems. They're a choice, a choice we can stop making at any point. We're just made to be afraid of the consequences by powerful people who benefit from the status quo.

Grim-444 5y ago
Until we live in a post-scarcity world how is it a choice? There simply are not enough resources. You can forcefully confiscate and redistribute every penny the "rich" have and nothing would change.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Not everyone is going to be a billionaire, but that doesn't have to mean some people can't access basics like housing. Our high rates of homelessness are rooted in housing policy and most people don't want to hear that. The narrative that gets promoted is that it's their fault and homeless people get labeled as "junkies and crazies." Which doesn't even hold water, logically speaking, because most addicts don't want to be addicts and trying to break an addiction is quite challenging and if insanity boiled down to a personal choice, people would choose to be sane. People don't want to be mentally ill. That's not how that works.
- makomk 5y ago
  That's one of the more interesting things about this article: although it starts out along the same tired, bogus blame-the-super-wealthy lines as a lot of these arguments, it does kind of admit that the cost of what it's calling for will come out of the quality of life of relatively ordinary people: "But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. ... Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor... ... Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power." “Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”
- michael1999 5y ago
  There are degrees of solidarity, and state redistribution. France is not North Korea.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dalbasal 5y ago

I think the social, rather than economic aspect is the most ardent. Whether it's ubi or some other policy, a lot of people's immediate concern is that it'll engage poor people's laziness. Reminds me of all those "how to run a household" manuals from the 19th century. Very classist instinct,imo. Burrito price inflation or even government costs are secondary. The suspicion that the poor are lazy and must be kept in line is primary.. often.

rektide 5y ago
To me, I really look forward to the higher order effects of not being forced into terrible jobs. I look forward very very much to seeing what emerges, what is innate in us, what we opt do for our own sake, when a little bit of laziness is a possibility. It's incredibly exciting to me to think of a society that has some time and space and safety for people to figure out what are good worthwhile ways to engage themselves. Oh yes, a lot of the people will waste away their time, wrap themselves around being gabbing social animals at each other 100%. I don't mind this. Especially after the domination of work culture I think this will be a bit prevalent, as escape finally becomes an option. But I expect a lot of people will be able to, for the first time, think about what they want to do, what might be meaningful or valuable to them, will try to contribute to society, culturally or with labor. I think we'll re-socialize "value" & our sense of human worth with incredible, vast diversification. There will emerge all manners of new role models, of new ways to engage the world, and especially over time, we'll see so much incredible value arise, such a better sense of what real, meaningful effort & work are, & that we'll grow enormously. Only because we decided to stop our pernicious economic exploitation of the poor. Because we made life no longer a perpetual ongoing terrifying crisis.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
> The suspicion that the poor are lazy. Yeah, the idea/ideology that "If you work hard, you'll be successful" has the flip side that "If you're not successful, you haven't worked hard enough, i.e. you're lazy.": https://youtu.be/bTDGdKaMDhQ https://youtu.be/bTDGdKaMDhQ Most people who are successful got lucky once or twice along the way too...

nextstep 5y ago

On the front page for a few minutes and then presumably flagged? (It’s now gone.) Seems like maybe these are things HN also doesn’t want to admit about the poor.

RileyJames 5y ago
Maybe, but there’s also a strong “anti-paywall” culture here, which may be the cause. It is hard to have a discussion about an article when a portion of the audience is unable to read said article. https://archive.is/2021.06.13-195750/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/stimulus-unemployment-republicans-poverty.html https://archive.is/2021.06.13-195750/https://www.nytimes.com...
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  HN also abhors poor quality writing and a variety of other "sins" that are routinely mistaken for an objection to the subject matter even though there is plenty of evidence that HN is happy to hear about the topic in question, but only if it's done well.

axiolite 5y ago

I have yet to hear a plan to end poverty which might work. UBI and "negative income tax" will fail the drug addicted and mentally ill, most of whom will continue to make bad choices and remain homeless. Raising minimum wage shows some promise at improving things, but it seems rents for in-demand cities simply increase to match the median income of workers in the area. Re-shaping tax laws has a much better chance of improving matters for low-income workers. If capital gains wasn't so low, running business would again become better investments than stock markets. If dividend stocks were tax-advantaged and became more common, then stock-holders would have a much greater interest in long-term stability of a company rather than short-term returns. If the taxes on property weren't so low, the ultra-wealthy wouldn't be buying up every cheap bit of it and holding onto it for decades, perhaps renting it out rather than ever selling it. If there weren't so many tax law loopholes, huge corporations wouldn't have as much of an economic advantage over smaller businesses. I don't subscribe to the notion that impoverished workers are required by our economy, either. While the Wal-marts and Sam's Clubs keep people barely surviving, the Targets and Costcos out there give their workers a reasonable standard of living and don't need to sell lots of expensive luxury goods to pay for it.

boredprograming 5y ago
Poverty in the US certainly isn't new, but in many ways it's worse than it used to be. Labor unions were very effective at increasing wages for blue collar jobs. Particularly ones not easily outsourced, like construction. Businesses have lobbied to systematically attack organized labor for around 100 years. The few unions left are relics from an earlier time. Businesses have made it neigh impossible to form new ones. The "gig economy" is a new form of exploitation. Technology has enabled a new breed of job that barely skirts employee regulations. This has undone decades of worker protections. Importation of foreign workers has been good for foreign workers, but in the US is mostly a tool to suppress wages. You can get away with more law breaking when your employees are wholly dependant on you. Job Visas are indentured servitude. The US has regressed in every income inequality metric over the last 50 years. To out it simply, the ultra rich own half the country. You don't see this same wealth concentration happening in Europe. If wages kept pace with worker productivity, the average worker would make something like $150,000 a year. The productivity gains are real, but all this money has gone to the people at the top. Tax law is just a small part of why the median American is getting poorer while the average American gets richer

CheezeIt 5y ago

You’re going to have a hard time eliminating poverty when the poverty line is defined as a fraction of median income.

jjj123 5y ago
I think you’re being a little too literal. I can’t speak for the author, but when I think of poverty in the US I think of the inability to pay for or access basic needs: housing, food, healthcare, education, free time, etc
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  The thing is, even when it’s defined as some absolute measure, it ends up being a moving target. Defining adequate healthcare is one example. Food has continually gotten cheaper, relative to poverty lines. Education — we have public schools, and most impoverished kids, being stupid, spend way more time in education than is useful for them. Really it’s all housing. There is a tenement shortage. But let’s suppose we free up the housing market and make rent cheap again, such that only the absolutely nonproductive lack a place to stay. NYT will still be talking about how there’s so much poverty.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    > The thing is, even when it’s defined as some absolute measure, it ends up being a moving target. Even if, that's better then doing nothing. At least it would help people. I'd rather be a 'poverty' person with safe housing and full stomach, than a today's 'poverty' person.