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> The popular notion of poverty is that it is a deficit, a state of not having enough material goods nor the means to acquire them. Yet scholars of development

> The popular notion of poverty is that it is a deficit, a state of not having enough material goods nor the means to acquire them. Yet scholars of development have identified for us that poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. How lucky we are that "scholars have identified for us" what poverty is, so that we don't have to think about it for ourselves, not the lack of money, which would be easy to solve by giving money to the poor, but rather a "multi-dimensional phenomenon", which can only mean that it requires more scholarship to address.

mistermann 3y ago
If you have all the dimensions figured out I recommend you write up a white paper of the solution so humanity can get started with enthusiastic implementation.
dmvdoug 3y ago
OTOH, poverty is multidimensional in a way that simply giving money to the poor will not (because it cannot) solve. Which is not an argument against giving money to the poor, of course. My point is only that real scholarship on poverty and its many effects actually is useful for more than just academics’ job security. What the article said about identity and aspirational aspects of poverty rang absolutely true to me (aside from what I think was a too ham-handed attempt to shoehorn it under SIL’s language preservation stuff). Source: teacher in urban Title I public school. Indeed, I had some ninth graders identifying pieces of those very issues in a reflection thing I had them write that I just graded (e.g., one girl writing about seeing a connection between slavery and jokes/tropes that you often hear among black kids today about darker versus lighter skinned folks; like, yeah, those are rooted ultimately in theories and perceptions of the majority white society (beginning in the 1600s) about darkness of skin indexing mental and physical abilities in a fairly straightforward (if absurdly crude) way. And it gets filtered through and rooted in perceptions of fucking 14 year olds in this Year of Our Lord 2023 (though, again, not in some linear way; we’re talking about large-scale social and cultural conceptualizations that work themselves out over generational time-scales)).
- walledstance 3y ago
  Yes, to what you stated. I teach middle school title one, as well. My students express the same perceptions about dark and light skin as indexes for mental and physical abilities in their jokes and language, as you described. I’m going to give your words some thought as I move forward in my curriculum. Thank you for these insights.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    Nice to see a fellow teacher hanging out in these parts!
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> which would be easy to solve by giving money to the poor Nope. What good is money if everyone has it? If you give everyone one million dollars, all you've done is turn one million dollars into the new one dollar bill. And that's being generous, it will probably be worth even less. I have no idea why people think the government is some evil entity which refuses to give money to the poor out of spite. That's not how an economy works. Even worse is the fact people who believe this get to vote into power politicians who put it into practice. It's literally happening in my country right now and the economic distortions are already observable. It can only be sustained if you subtract money from others via taxes. That money's gonna run out eventually because why be productive when you can apply for government benefits? There are little cities in my country where almost everyone is sustained by this.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Rich people needn't exist.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    In a post-scarcity society? Sure. Gotta achieve one first though.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      We don't have scarcity… what we have is uneven distribution of resources.
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        The only reason resouces have to be "allocated" to begin with is because of scarcity. There's not enough for everybody. That's what economies are: a system to decide who gets access to scarce resources. Were it not for scarcity, there would be no need to economize. I oppose fundamentally dystopian stuff like artificial scarcity. Completely made up stuff like intellectual property doesn't belong in the 21st century. However, the same logic cannot be applied to the physical world where everything is finite and therefore truly scarce. That will continue to be true until someone invents Star Trek replicators.
bhpm 3y ago
Who said you don’t have to think about it yourself?

mistermann 3y ago

If you have all the dimensions figured out I recommend you write up a white paper of the solution so humanity can get started with enthusiastic implementation.

dmvdoug 3y ago

OTOH, poverty is multidimensional in a way that simply giving money to the poor will not (because it cannot) solve. Which is not an argument against giving money to the poor, of course. My point is only that real scholarship on poverty and its many effects actually is useful for more than just academics’ job security. What the article said about identity and aspirational aspects of poverty rang absolutely true to me (aside from what I think was a too ham-handed attempt to shoehorn it under SIL’s language preservation stuff). Source: teacher in urban Title I public school. Indeed, I had some ninth graders identifying pieces of those very issues in a reflection thing I had them write that I just graded (e.g., one girl writing about seeing a connection between slavery and jokes/tropes that you often hear among black kids today about darker versus lighter skinned folks; like, yeah, those are rooted ultimately in theories and perceptions of the majority white society (beginning in the 1600s) about darkness of skin indexing mental and physical abilities in a fairly straightforward (if absurdly crude) way. And it gets filtered through and rooted in perceptions of fucking 14 year olds in this Year of Our Lord 2023 (though, again, not in some linear way; we’re talking about large-scale social and cultural conceptualizations that work themselves out over generational time-scales)).

walledstance 3y ago
Yes, to what you stated. I teach middle school title one, as well. My students express the same perceptions about dark and light skin as indexes for mental and physical abilities in their jokes and language, as you described. I’m going to give your words some thought as I move forward in my curriculum. Thank you for these insights.
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  Nice to see a fellow teacher hanging out in these parts!

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> which would be easy to solve by giving money to the poor Nope. What good is money if everyone has it? If you give everyone one million dollars, all you've done is turn one million dollars into the new one dollar bill. And that's being generous, it will probably be worth even less. I have no idea why people think the government is some evil entity which refuses to give money to the poor out of spite. That's not how an economy works. Even worse is the fact people who believe this get to vote into power politicians who put it into practice. It's literally happening in my country right now and the economic distortions are already observable. It can only be sustained if you subtract money from others via taxes. That money's gonna run out eventually because why be productive when you can apply for government benefits? There are little cities in my country where almost everyone is sustained by this.

LtWorf 3y ago
Rich people needn't exist.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  In a post-scarcity society? Sure. Gotta achieve one first though.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    We don't have scarcity… what we have is uneven distribution of resources.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      The only reason resouces have to be "allocated" to begin with is because of scarcity. There's not enough for everybody. That's what economies are: a system to decide who gets access to scarce resources. Were it not for scarcity, there would be no need to economize. I oppose fundamentally dystopian stuff like artificial scarcity. Completely made up stuff like intellectual property doesn't belong in the 21st century. However, the same logic cannot be applied to the physical world where everything is finite and therefore truly scarce. That will continue to be true until someone invents Star Trek replicators.

bhpm 3y ago

Who said you don’t have to think about it yourself?