8 ms·

Many years ago, I read of a study that measured poverty not in terms of income but with metrics like "How many meals per day do you get?" and "What kind of shel

Many years ago, I read of a study that measured poverty not in terms of income but with metrics like "How many meals per day do you get?" and "What kind of shelter do you have?" It concluded that less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were poor by standards in India. When I've repeated that online, on at least one occasion someone who lived in India got mad at me for supposedly promoting negative stereotypes and told me my info was out of date. They seemed outraged. I spent some years homeless in America. I'm still quite poor and frustrated with that fact. I don't know what the solution is for trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. I try to focus on how to get the word out in the US that lack of appropriate housing supply is a primary root cause of homelessness in this country. It's shocking how many people insist that lack of affordable housing has nothing to do with homelessness and homeless people are all just crazies and junkies who don't want to get better.

908B64B197 5y ago
> It concluded that less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were poor by standards in India. I have no trouble believing that. Same thing with the software industry really. Source control has been mainstream since the 90's, build pipeline, automation and so on. But there are still shops around where they'll look at you funny for suggesting using git, that swear copy-pasting executables in a GUI is an ok way to upgrade and where the versions of languages used are at least old enough to have a legal drink. Not a lot, but they still exist. You won't find any overlap with what's going on in SV over there.
sombremesa 5y ago
> I don't know what the solution is for trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. I think that's just it: trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. That's something I tried with the GP here, but I could probably write up an article to be linked to in such discussions. > metrics like "How many meals per day do you get?" and "What kind of shelter do you have?" I think this is a good thought, a focus on qualitative differences in lived experience using quantifiable metrics. With that approach you're less likely to offend rather than inform. Might be best to skip the "less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were poor by standards in India" since it seems to suggest that American poverty isn't "real" poverty. I would even go so far as to say that communicating the cultural context is far more important than underlining the economics, the former of which TFA is attempting to do.
- loopz 5y ago
  India has lots of villages, slums and people in between having very poor material standards compared to Western countries. But people are also much more interconnected, rely on each other and find ways to get by. So to get that culture, you have to spend at least 6 months and really get to know what family values are, and how things tend to work out. It's very different than the lonely individualist countries. Many Indians actually move back home to be with family and friends! So superficial analyses may just not be very recognizable to the population, because of very different value systems and nuances.
  - sombremesa 5y ago
    That's very true, but I think it's possible to a) have a fact-based approach without being superficial, and b) communicate cultural context without having to plumb the depths of the human condition. Were it necessary to cover the subtle nuances of Eastern and Western culture, it would be hard to get anywhere with prose. I think it's sufficient to convey enough information to demonstrate that the value systems and lived experiences are fundamentally different. The goal is not to "level the playing field" in terms of where people are coming from, but to foster more meaningful discussions by explicitly taking context into account.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      But it takes the plumbing the depths of the human condition to realize that we're not actually a that different, and that the fundamentals are the SAME. Airy eloquent prose may not have the same effect on the data driven as hard metrics, but comparing $20,000 (US) a year to the equivalent of $1 US a day, without capturing, in prose, that person in the US below the poverty line may be going hungry more days a week, and is more exposed to the elements, and more likely to be harrassed by police/others and more likely to die, is superficial. Prose is what's needed to communicate effectively. Tables and charts simply can't do that by themselves. Even they need a legend and labels to be useful.
  - euske 5y ago
    Personally, that's the biggest lesson that I got from traveling in India. There's no question that people's living standard needs to be improved there, but I saw something that's lacking in a developed country (especially in the country I live): mutual help, or the "love your neighbor" mindset. I hope that tradition last long.
wil421 5y ago
There’s someone on YouTube I sorta watched from time to time when the pandemic hit. He’s located in Venice beach, German in Venice. He was exposing the homeless issue and lack of government response. Fast forward to now. The city offered everyone a free place to go and many took it. There were still a lot of people who refused. Now the garbage trucks and police evicted them. The garbage people packed a lot of stuff and put it into storage. What’s your take? They were offered housing while they get back on their feet and chose not to take it.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  First, some people took it and some did not. Yet you are trying to suggest we judge all homeless based on those who did not without knowing any further details. Damn them all to hell because some were offered housing and said "no." A lot of services offered to the homeless are really terrible. I never stayed in a shelter while homeless. They have rules that make it just shy of being a form of prison, they tend to not be safe and they often have serious mold problems, among other things. They also offered me no option to continue living as a family with my adult sons. Every service I spoke to urged me to take shelter as a single woman and to wait-list my sons for shelter as single adult men. There were zero programs to help us find shelter as a family of three blood relatives who still need each other to make our lives work. I have done a lot of writing about homelessness and housing issues over the years. I could direct you to several of my blogs if you actually are sincerely interested in my take. I doubt that you are. That's likely a rhetorical device. I am doing what I can to continue researching the issue, to provide useful information for small communities to use, etc. I don't know how to get traction and I don't know how to adequately monetize my work which makes it difficult to keep writing about it in hopes of other people benefiting because I need to eat and pay rent too. I'm certainly not independently wealthy.
  - lapsed_pacifist 5y ago
    I'm interested in reading more of your writing. I worked with TANF recipients, many of whom were homeless (although few of them were unsheltered) and would like to hear more of your perspective because I have some exposure personally, and also because there is a serious problem with providing services to a large number of homeless people in my local area.
ramraj07 5y ago
Grew up in india, spent my twenties in the US, and now back in India. I can give you some potential explanation: Even though the poor and lower middle class make abjectly low amounts of money, the upper middle class and the rich actually make money comparable to most developed countries. This is reflected in the real estate prices (Chennai, the fourth largest city, has prices comparable to Brooklyn). I can make 200k UsD a year and call myself upper middle class and no one will bat an eye. While you can kinda isolate yourself from the real poverty, you’re never fully shielded from it. You will see people struggling if you live in India. Then, the only way you can convince yourself you’re not an evil person is by playing some Mental gymnastics. Thus you have people who refuse to accept how outrageous the wealth disparity in India is. Combine this with this misplaced cultural pride that seems comparatively excessive here, and you get people who become belligerent if you mention most Indians are poorer than dirt.
- buu700 5y ago
  Then, the only way you can convince yourself you’re not an evil person is by playing some Mental gymnastics. Does benefiting from severe inequality imply amorality? I don't see any inherent contradiction between personal financial success and supporting policies intended to uplift the poor (similarly to how some uber-wealthy in America publicly advocate for more progressive taxation).
  - austhrow743 5y ago
    What do policies have to do with anything? This isn't global warming where the big deal is only in the aggregate. That there are X million people you cant help even if you do all you can doesn't undermine the fact that if you make hundreds of thousands of dollars you could change the lives of many forever with not much of a lifestyle hit for yourself.
    - buu700 5y ago
      So, just to be clear, your position is that any >=middle-class person who doesn't donate the majority of their wealth to charity is "evil"? What do policies have to do with anything? I can't tell if this is a serious question. Policies are how we effect change at scale. Relying on countless people to each independently make the decision to follow your particular moral values isn't a practical solution for addressing inequality throughout the entire country of India.

908B64B197 5y ago

> It concluded that less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were poor by standards in India. I have no trouble believing that. Same thing with the software industry really. Source control has been mainstream since the 90's, build pipeline, automation and so on. But there are still shops around where they'll look at you funny for suggesting using git, that swear copy-pasting executables in a GUI is an ok way to upgrade and where the versions of languages used are at least old enough to have a legal drink. Not a lot, but they still exist. You won't find any overlap with what's going on in SV over there.

sombremesa 5y ago

> I don't know what the solution is for trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. I think that's just it: trying to promote better cross cultural understanding. That's something I tried with the GP here, but I could probably write up an article to be linked to in such discussions. > metrics like "How many meals per day do you get?" and "What kind of shelter do you have?" I think this is a good thought, a focus on qualitative differences in lived experience using quantifiable metrics. With that approach you're less likely to offend rather than inform. Might be best to skip the "less than 1/2 of one percent of Americans were poor by standards in India" since it seems to suggest that American poverty isn't "real" poverty. I would even go so far as to say that communicating the cultural context is far more important than underlining the economics, the former of which TFA is attempting to do.

loopz 5y ago
India has lots of villages, slums and people in between having very poor material standards compared to Western countries. But people are also much more interconnected, rely on each other and find ways to get by. So to get that culture, you have to spend at least 6 months and really get to know what family values are, and how things tend to work out. It's very different than the lonely individualist countries. Many Indians actually move back home to be with family and friends! So superficial analyses may just not be very recognizable to the population, because of very different value systems and nuances.
- sombremesa 5y ago
  That's very true, but I think it's possible to a) have a fact-based approach without being superficial, and b) communicate cultural context without having to plumb the depths of the human condition. Were it necessary to cover the subtle nuances of Eastern and Western culture, it would be hard to get anywhere with prose. I think it's sufficient to convey enough information to demonstrate that the value systems and lived experiences are fundamentally different. The goal is not to "level the playing field" in terms of where people are coming from, but to foster more meaningful discussions by explicitly taking context into account.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    But it takes the plumbing the depths of the human condition to realize that we're not actually a that different, and that the fundamentals are the SAME. Airy eloquent prose may not have the same effect on the data driven as hard metrics, but comparing $20,000 (US) a year to the equivalent of $1 US a day, without capturing, in prose, that person in the US below the poverty line may be going hungry more days a week, and is more exposed to the elements, and more likely to be harrassed by police/others and more likely to die, is superficial. Prose is what's needed to communicate effectively. Tables and charts simply can't do that by themselves. Even they need a legend and labels to be useful.
- euske 5y ago
  Personally, that's the biggest lesson that I got from traveling in India. There's no question that people's living standard needs to be improved there, but I saw something that's lacking in a developed country (especially in the country I live): mutual help, or the "love your neighbor" mindset. I hope that tradition last long.

wil421 5y ago

There’s someone on YouTube I sorta watched from time to time when the pandemic hit. He’s located in Venice beach, German in Venice. He was exposing the homeless issue and lack of government response. Fast forward to now. The city offered everyone a free place to go and many took it. There were still a lot of people who refused. Now the garbage trucks and police evicted them. The garbage people packed a lot of stuff and put it into storage. What’s your take? They were offered housing while they get back on their feet and chose not to take it.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
First, some people took it and some did not. Yet you are trying to suggest we judge all homeless based on those who did not without knowing any further details. Damn them all to hell because some were offered housing and said "no." A lot of services offered to the homeless are really terrible. I never stayed in a shelter while homeless. They have rules that make it just shy of being a form of prison, they tend to not be safe and they often have serious mold problems, among other things. They also offered me no option to continue living as a family with my adult sons. Every service I spoke to urged me to take shelter as a single woman and to wait-list my sons for shelter as single adult men. There were zero programs to help us find shelter as a family of three blood relatives who still need each other to make our lives work. I have done a lot of writing about homelessness and housing issues over the years. I could direct you to several of my blogs if you actually are sincerely interested in my take. I doubt that you are. That's likely a rhetorical device. I am doing what I can to continue researching the issue, to provide useful information for small communities to use, etc. I don't know how to get traction and I don't know how to adequately monetize my work which makes it difficult to keep writing about it in hopes of other people benefiting because I need to eat and pay rent too. I'm certainly not independently wealthy.
- lapsed_pacifist 5y ago
  I'm interested in reading more of your writing. I worked with TANF recipients, many of whom were homeless (although few of them were unsheltered) and would like to hear more of your perspective because I have some exposure personally, and also because there is a serious problem with providing services to a large number of homeless people in my local area.

ramraj07 5y ago

Grew up in india, spent my twenties in the US, and now back in India. I can give you some potential explanation: Even though the poor and lower middle class make abjectly low amounts of money, the upper middle class and the rich actually make money comparable to most developed countries. This is reflected in the real estate prices (Chennai, the fourth largest city, has prices comparable to Brooklyn). I can make 200k UsD a year and call myself upper middle class and no one will bat an eye. While you can kinda isolate yourself from the real poverty, you’re never fully shielded from it. You will see people struggling if you live in India. Then, the only way you can convince yourself you’re not an evil person is by playing some Mental gymnastics. Thus you have people who refuse to accept how outrageous the wealth disparity in India is. Combine this with this misplaced cultural pride that seems comparatively excessive here, and you get people who become belligerent if you mention most Indians are poorer than dirt.

buu700 5y ago
Then, the only way you can convince yourself you’re not an evil person is by playing some Mental gymnastics. Does benefiting from severe inequality imply amorality? I don't see any inherent contradiction between personal financial success and supporting policies intended to uplift the poor (similarly to how some uber-wealthy in America publicly advocate for more progressive taxation).
- austhrow743 5y ago
  What do policies have to do with anything? This isn't global warming where the big deal is only in the aggregate. That there are X million people you cant help even if you do all you can doesn't undermine the fact that if you make hundreds of thousands of dollars you could change the lives of many forever with not much of a lifestyle hit for yourself.
  - buu700 5y ago
    So, just to be clear, your position is that any >=middle-class person who doesn't donate the majority of their wealth to charity is "evil"? What do policies have to do with anything? I can't tell if this is a serious question. Policies are how we effect change at scale. Relying on countless people to each independently make the decision to follow your particular moral values isn't a practical solution for addressing inequality throughout the entire country of India.