5 ms·

The architects of the economic system in the United States don't want to eliminate poverty - it's kept around as a threat, something to point to - see, grunts,

The architects of the economic system in the United States don't want to eliminate poverty - it's kept around as a threat, something to point to - see, grunts, that's where you'll end up if you're not an obedient drone. This is also a main reason why there's no reliable public health care system, instead it's tied to employment. The general concept is "discipline of the labor force."

mistermann 4y ago
Arguably, if our culture didn't offload essentially all responsibility for running society off to "democracy" (a magical term that no one really considers the precise, real world manifestation of...another cultural norm/shortcoming, that is strongly culturally enforced, often using conveniently existent memes/psychological-exploits) people may be more interested in problems and insist that they are addressed one way or another. But alas, this seems to be the equilibrium we're satisfied with (or insist upon) for now.
- stevenwoo 4y ago
  Also, any of the programs addressing the issues are often associated with the catchall terms "socialism" and "communism" pejoratively.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    Magical words on top of magical words, yielding a magical reality. Strangely, it seems to be almost an unassailable phenomenon, like there is an intuition in people to defend the perspective. Granted, there is substantial propaganda in play, but one would think that at least some people would be able to transcend it.
- Aunche 4y ago
  Civics and government ought to be mandatory subjects in American schools. In school, we learn about the Civil Rights protests, and we learn about laws that made in response to these protests. What's completely neglected is are the lobbying and legislative process that lead to the creation of these laws. Nowadays, lobbying is a dirty word which for the average person means literal political bribery, which only leads to more political apathy.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    There is a massive and extremely wide variety of things that occur that people either do not know of, or have an incorrect understanding of (which they do not realize). I wonder if holding conversations haphazardly across various social media platforms with essentially zero coordination or teaching/enforcement of skilful thinking and speech is an optimal way to run a planet. I've never encountered it in a corporation (at least not to the same degree), which suggests that it is not optimal. Oh well, I guess we will never know!
sokoloff 4y ago
I’m not convinced that healthcare is a Machiavellian planned top-down threat. The origin was in employers competing for labor during a time of wage controls. The continuation is driven more by people who have good health coverage not wanting to lose that and the fear that their doctors visits will feel like DMV visits. That’s a powerful force.
- sdiacom 4y ago
  The vast majority of people who have so-called "good" health coverage in the US are paying one to three orders of magnitude more for it, compared to the price of private health insurance in countries with a public health system. The best thing that could happen to people who currently have private health insurance and wish to keep it is that a public health system appears, forcing the private health insurance oligopoly to actually be competitive.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    > vast majority of people who have so-called "good" health coverage in the US are paying one to three orders of magnitude more for it, compared to the price of private health insurance in countries with a public health system. I pay (employer plus employee amounts) just under $20K/year for a family of four. I doubt anyone in the “vast majority” is paying over $50K/yr. Three orders of magnitude less than that is $50/yr. How can anyone, anywhere provide meaningful private health insurance for an individual (let alone a family of four) for $50/yr?!
    - sdiacom 4y ago
      Six hundred euros a year gets you a no-copay plan for one person, all emergencies included. This is the top of the line, the most expensive individual plan available at this insurer. A regular no-frills, some-copay insurance plan would probably cost around one to two hundred euros a year. So, yeah, two-ish orders of magnitude.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      You pay $20k per year in premiums for a family of four to avoid paying more than the out of pocket maximum in a calendar year, and to have to an agent negotiate prices and appropriate services with the healthcare seller. The likely amounts owed below your out of pocket maximum also have to be incorporated. Also, my gold metal level BCBS network PPO plan is near $30k per year for a family of 4, so $20k seems like it might be sacrificing quantity/quality of in network providers.
Eleison23 4y ago
Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently. There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions and mental health, so they don't really fit in anywhere. So you really only manage to be poor by becoming an utter social outcast first. If you can hold down the fort and navigate a bureaucracy, you can get on SNAP, Section 8, Voc. Rehab. and all sorts of programs that will get you back on your feet, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and that's not even counting the faith-based charities you could avail yourself of.
- squaredot 4y ago
  I agree on this. Poverty, in this sense has, more to do with being than with having. A friend of me recommended to me on this subject the book: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom).
- 11101010001100 4y ago
  What version of the US are you talking about? Perhaps the shame that the author discusses makes a sizeable amount of poverty not visible.
  - stevenwoo 4y ago
    The one that exists in libertarian's minds when arguing about capitalism. Just for one thing, Section 8 housing is not nearly as easy to get as that comment makes out, getting off the waiting list famously can take decades. SNAP also famously punishes you for making too much. https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff Famous is somewhat facetious because the poster is unaware of what they are talking about.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently. You have a lot to learn. Start by reading the article, and understand that the effects of growing up that way are hard to overcome - psychologically. The author has a Ph.D and still suffers from it. You may also want to look around at low cost of subsidized housing. It's often closer and more common than we think. I know a person living it, and I can look at the situation and think about how I might handle things better. But that ignores a huge part of the reality of what it's like to be that person, or live that life.
m348e912 4y ago
One thing that confuses me is that people talk about lack of healthcare for the poor like Medicaid is not a thing. I have a friend getting a hip replacement in three weeks, after getting an appt with a specialist in one week, and it's getting covered under Medicaid. Will she have co-pays and out of pocket costs? I don't know. But I can't imagine it will be worse than with the shitty insurance I have.
- PopAlongKid 4y ago
  And also Affordable Care Act (U.S.) which is not tied to employment. It's been around for over 10 years.
  - TeaDrunk 4y ago
    Multiple states have declined to expand medicaid that the affordable care act provides.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  You have to be really poor for Medicaid. Back when I relied on it via income qualification (before I qualified through an obscure loophole that I found via figuring out the website page structure of MDHHS and manually searching every single posted BEM manual (social work manual) - totally a normal and cool thing that most people would think of and know how to do /s), I had to make under 1100/mo. GROSS income. So basically I had to choose between healthcare for MS and the other basics in my life.
rolisz 4y ago
What about all the other countries in the world, where poor still exist, even if there is a public health care system?

mistermann 4y ago

Arguably, if our culture didn't offload essentially all responsibility for running society off to "democracy" (a magical term that no one really considers the precise, real world manifestation of...another cultural norm/shortcoming, that is strongly culturally enforced, often using conveniently existent memes/psychological-exploits) people may be more interested in problems and insist that they are addressed one way or another. But alas, this seems to be the equilibrium we're satisfied with (or insist upon) for now.

stevenwoo 4y ago
Also, any of the programs addressing the issues are often associated with the catchall terms "socialism" and "communism" pejoratively.
- mistermann 4y ago
  Magical words on top of magical words, yielding a magical reality. Strangely, it seems to be almost an unassailable phenomenon, like there is an intuition in people to defend the perspective. Granted, there is substantial propaganda in play, but one would think that at least some people would be able to transcend it.
Aunche 4y ago
Civics and government ought to be mandatory subjects in American schools. In school, we learn about the Civil Rights protests, and we learn about laws that made in response to these protests. What's completely neglected is are the lobbying and legislative process that lead to the creation of these laws. Nowadays, lobbying is a dirty word which for the average person means literal political bribery, which only leads to more political apathy.
- mistermann 4y ago
  There is a massive and extremely wide variety of things that occur that people either do not know of, or have an incorrect understanding of (which they do not realize). I wonder if holding conversations haphazardly across various social media platforms with essentially zero coordination or teaching/enforcement of skilful thinking and speech is an optimal way to run a planet. I've never encountered it in a corporation (at least not to the same degree), which suggests that it is not optimal. Oh well, I guess we will never know!

sokoloff 4y ago

I’m not convinced that healthcare is a Machiavellian planned top-down threat. The origin was in employers competing for labor during a time of wage controls. The continuation is driven more by people who have good health coverage not wanting to lose that and the fear that their doctors visits will feel like DMV visits. That’s a powerful force.

sdiacom 4y ago
The vast majority of people who have so-called "good" health coverage in the US are paying one to three orders of magnitude more for it, compared to the price of private health insurance in countries with a public health system. The best thing that could happen to people who currently have private health insurance and wish to keep it is that a public health system appears, forcing the private health insurance oligopoly to actually be competitive.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  > vast majority of people who have so-called "good" health coverage in the US are paying one to three orders of magnitude more for it, compared to the price of private health insurance in countries with a public health system. I pay (employer plus employee amounts) just under $20K/year for a family of four. I doubt anyone in the “vast majority” is paying over $50K/yr. Three orders of magnitude less than that is $50/yr. How can anyone, anywhere provide meaningful private health insurance for an individual (let alone a family of four) for $50/yr?!
  - sdiacom 4y ago
    Six hundred euros a year gets you a no-copay plan for one person, all emergencies included. This is the top of the line, the most expensive individual plan available at this insurer. A regular no-frills, some-copay insurance plan would probably cost around one to two hundred euros a year. So, yeah, two-ish orders of magnitude.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    You pay $20k per year in premiums for a family of four to avoid paying more than the out of pocket maximum in a calendar year, and to have to an agent negotiate prices and appropriate services with the healthcare seller. The likely amounts owed below your out of pocket maximum also have to be incorporated. Also, my gold metal level BCBS network PPO plan is near $30k per year for a family of 4, so $20k seems like it might be sacrificing quantity/quality of in network providers.

Eleison23 4y ago

Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently. There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions and mental health, so they don't really fit in anywhere. So you really only manage to be poor by becoming an utter social outcast first. If you can hold down the fort and navigate a bureaucracy, you can get on SNAP, Section 8, Voc. Rehab. and all sorts of programs that will get you back on your feet, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and that's not even counting the faith-based charities you could avail yourself of.

squaredot 4y ago
I agree on this. Poverty, in this sense has, more to do with being than with having. A friend of me recommended to me on this subject the book: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom).
11101010001100 4y ago
What version of the US are you talking about? Perhaps the shame that the author discusses makes a sizeable amount of poverty not visible.
- stevenwoo 4y ago
  The one that exists in libertarian's minds when arguing about capitalism. Just for one thing, Section 8 housing is not nearly as easy to get as that comment makes out, getting off the waiting list famously can take decades. SNAP also famously punishes you for making too much. https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff Famous is somewhat facetious because the poster is unaware of what they are talking about.
phkahler 4y ago
>> Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently. You have a lot to learn. Start by reading the article, and understand that the effects of growing up that way are hard to overcome - psychologically. The author has a Ph.D and still suffers from it. You may also want to look around at low cost of subsidized housing. It's often closer and more common than we think. I know a person living it, and I can look at the situation and think about how I might handle things better. But that ignores a huge part of the reality of what it's like to be that person, or live that life.

m348e912 4y ago

One thing that confuses me is that people talk about lack of healthcare for the poor like Medicaid is not a thing. I have a friend getting a hip replacement in three weeks, after getting an appt with a specialist in one week, and it's getting covered under Medicaid. Will she have co-pays and out of pocket costs? I don't know. But I can't imagine it will be worse than with the shitty insurance I have.

PopAlongKid 4y ago
And also Affordable Care Act (U.S.) which is not tied to employment. It's been around for over 10 years.
- TeaDrunk 4y ago
  Multiple states have declined to expand medicaid that the affordable care act provides.
Mezzie 4y ago
You have to be really poor for Medicaid. Back when I relied on it via income qualification (before I qualified through an obscure loophole that I found via figuring out the website page structure of MDHHS and manually searching every single posted BEM manual (social work manual) - totally a normal and cool thing that most people would think of and know how to do /s), I had to make under 1100/mo. GROSS income. So basically I had to choose between healthcare for MS and the other basics in my life.

rolisz 4y ago

What about all the other countries in the world, where poor still exist, even if there is a public health care system?