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Despite absolute dollars per person spending increasing since the Reagan years, Americans remain in poverty because: 1. Raising health care costs 2. Very litt
by dfxm12 4y ago
Despite absolute dollars per person spending increasing since the Reagan years, Americans remain in poverty because:
1. Raising health care costs
2. Very little poverty spending actually goes to the recipients' pockets
3. Decline of union membership
4. Home ownership is out of reach and the rent is too damn high
5. Banking is expensive for poor people
Most of these issues can be traced back to corporate lobbying.
The moral of the story is that poverty is a policy choice.
- humanrebar 4y agoEh... you have some valid points, but poverty has existed under every single policy regime so far. Ever. In history. So why should I accept that the root problem is bad policy instead of something else?
- dfxm12 4y agoThe article shows how poverty has gotten worse from certain policy choices (a little financial system deregulation here, a little union busting there, lack of housing almost everywhere, giving money to fund abstinence-only sex ed instead of to the poor, etc.).
- jorts 4y agoI'd say it's exacerbated by policy, it's not the sole source.
- Ozzie_osman 4y agoBecause there are countries with far lower rates of poverty than the US (while the US is one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world). https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-oecd-countries/#:~:text=Out%20of%20all%20OECD%20countries,followed%20by%20Finland%20and%20Denmark https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-....
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yoyohello13 4y agoI think the root cause is pretty clear actually. The vast majority of humans will never willingly reduce their quality of life to make a stranger's quality of life better.
- carapace 4y agoExcept that's not true, there was no poverty in all of North America, for example, up until a couple of hundred years ago. In case this sounds snarky, let me be clear: this is a really important thing to consider (IMO): there are societies without poverty. It's just that most of us (reading this here today) are unfamiliar with them because they were and are actively destroyed by the poverty-having societies. (E.g. the destruction of the free pirates by the imperial navies. Destruction of Amazonians by loggers. I can list examples all day.) By having a poverty-based system, you can force people to go into the armed forces and then use them to attack and destroy other societies to take their resources and expand your system. Without the "stick" of destitution no one will participate voluntarily in these unpleasant and unnatural systems. (E.g. people preferred Native American lifestyles to European American lifestyles. I've got a great quote from Ben Franklin on lock on that point, BTW...) The way it's usually framed is, "But who will pick up the garbage?"
- bryanlarsen 4y agoDeath due to starvation occured in North America prior to Columbus. If that isn't a symptom of poverty I don't know what is.
- carapace 4y agoUnless you will cite something specific it's hard to discuss it?
- aexon 4y agoPoverty in this context is the lack of financial mobility within a given economic body. If some people starve while others don't because they can't afford the food, that's a socially instituted poverty. Starvation that is equally suffered because there IS no food isn't the kind of poverty being discussed in the article. It's a lack of necessary resources suffered equally independent of financial mobility. We can argue all day on the degrees of implementation of primitive economy, "yeah, but one guy traded a shoe horn for a rabbit leg", but the type of extreme (and extremely disparate) poverty that occurs within modern economic systems is not comparable to pre Columbus North America.
- wolverine876 4y agoPeople have died of disease in every policy regime ever; is all health care policy therefore indistinguishable? The same applies to crime, education, potholes in roads, and bugs in software - all software has bugs, so it doesn't matter how you code it or what tools you use.
- jmclnx 4y agoAll True, but I think there is "one item that rules the all" :) Exploitation. Our economic system is based on exploiting other people. We "had" the worst kind, slavery along with colonialism. Then we slowly moved to a combination of "unlivable" Wages and Undocumented Workers. This allows the well off to live the good life. With the issues we are having now, we may need to move to a different system, but witch one ? Unfortunately the only way that has happened in the past is civilization ending wars (or something close to that).
- snapplebobapple 4y ago[flagged]
- wolverine876 4y agoTo be clear, the article's hypothesis (which is buried deep into it): The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets.
- trilbyglens 4y agoThis. Except in america people are so attached to their comfort and convenience that even in the face of shocking levels of poverty, people fight tooth and nail against any single measure that might in any way encroach on that.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhat is the basis for that? The article's hypothesis, which is different from yours, is based on the research they present.