4 ms·

I disagree. When I look at chronic poverty, a very common, almost guaranteed symptom is lack of skills/education (dropped out of high school, etc). I'm not sayi

by umvi 3y ago

I disagree. When I look at chronic poverty, a very common, almost guaranteed symptom is lack of skills/education (dropped out of high school, etc). I'm not saying there aren't highly skilled poor people (i.e. starving artists) just that it's more the exception than the rule.

LoganDark 3y ago
Look, my family's in a situation where the living prices are sucking us dry and nearly putting us in debt, all the jobs around here have so many candidates to pick from that we can't get any roles, and because we have no savings we can't afford to move. Maybe what you say can be true for some, but it's hard to survive here if you weren't already born into a privileged position. I finally happen to be in interviews for a potential remote position now, but it took years to get here, it was not easy, and staying in high school for longer would not have helped. Now, I'm still lucky to have access to computers. Try telling someone without that kind of access to just find a remote job if there are no local jobs in their area. All the education and skill in the world still might not help them if they don't have access to employment opportunities at all.
- umvi 3y ago
  In your case then perhaps a cash infusion is what is needed to help. Based on my observations of poverty in the Washington DC/Baltimore regions though, in my opinion cash infusions alone would not be the most effective option for combating poverty in the majority of cases.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    I think I agree. While I'm still not sure if a majority of poverty is a result of lack of skill/education, I do at least very much agree that if you take a random impoverished household and give them a bunch of cash, there's a decent enough chance that they won't know how to make good use of it. In other words, they'll blow it all without managing to significantly improve their situation. I also, however, wonder if maybe government assistance should be available to people who can lay out a clear financial plan, so that at least the households that could make use of that money can have it available to them. That probably could have saved us much earlier - we can afford to do the research on where we can go in order to stretch our money further (to have an acceptable standard of living, but at a less extortionary price), but we'd need a cash injection in order to make it there. Once there, though, our existing rate of income might finally have been able to break even, even if we don't manage to immediately find new jobs. Of course, if I manage to get my upcoming job, that'll save us too. It'll multiply the family income by, what, almost 6 times?
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> almost guaranteed symptom is lack of skills/education (dropped out of high school, etc) This was addressed in my comment by “services”. > help poor people by giving them cash or services, Also, it takes generations for broken families to learn the habits and build relationships of successful families. And it only takes 1 generation to break a successful family.
bombcar 3y ago
We actually have (some) evidence, in that lottery winners are usually "poorish" and apparently go bankrupt pretty frequently. However that doesn't mean we can't help even them, by normalizing certain levels of various things no matter what the wealth. The main issue is tragedy of the commons style issues, like free bathrooms in SF being destroyed or otherwise used improperly, driving costs too high to continue.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > tragedy of the commons style issues, like free bathrooms in SF being destroyed or otherwise used improperly This is only incidentally tragedy of the commons, which refers to publicly-accessible things that if individual actors rationally maximized their own utility would become depleted. Smearing excrement over a public bathroom is not rational utility; it's a crime whose perpetrators should be disincentivized from doing so.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    True, but even without "violent vandalism" you still can have a "not taking care" of common areas that leads them to be run-down and unclean, without direct crimes (unless you start making things like littering strongly punished)

by umvi 3y ago

LoganDark 3y ago

Look, my family's in a situation where the living prices are sucking us dry and nearly putting us in debt, all the jobs around here have so many candidates to pick from that we can't get any roles, and because we have no savings we can't afford to move. Maybe what you say can be true for some, but it's hard to survive here if you weren't already born into a privileged position. I finally happen to be in interviews for a potential remote position now, but it took years to get here, it was not easy, and staying in high school for longer would not have helped. Now, I'm still lucky to have access to computers. Try telling someone without that kind of access to just find a remote job if there are no local jobs in their area. All the education and skill in the world still might not help them if they don't have access to employment opportunities at all.

umvi 3y ago
In your case then perhaps a cash infusion is what is needed to help. Based on my observations of poverty in the Washington DC/Baltimore regions though, in my opinion cash infusions alone would not be the most effective option for combating poverty in the majority of cases.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I think I agree. While I'm still not sure if a majority of poverty is a result of lack of skill/education, I do at least very much agree that if you take a random impoverished household and give them a bunch of cash, there's a decent enough chance that they won't know how to make good use of it. In other words, they'll blow it all without managing to significantly improve their situation. I also, however, wonder if maybe government assistance should be available to people who can lay out a clear financial plan, so that at least the households that could make use of that money can have it available to them. That probably could have saved us much earlier - we can afford to do the research on where we can go in order to stretch our money further (to have an acceptable standard of living, but at a less extortionary price), but we'd need a cash injection in order to make it there. Once there, though, our existing rate of income might finally have been able to break even, even if we don't manage to immediately find new jobs. Of course, if I manage to get my upcoming job, that'll save us too. It'll multiply the family income by, what, almost 6 times?

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> almost guaranteed symptom is lack of skills/education (dropped out of high school, etc) This was addressed in my comment by “services”. > help poor people by giving them cash or services, Also, it takes generations for broken families to learn the habits and build relationships of successful families. And it only takes 1 generation to break a successful family.

bombcar 3y ago

We actually have (some) evidence, in that lottery winners are usually "poorish" and apparently go bankrupt pretty frequently. However that doesn't mean we can't help even them, by normalizing certain levels of various things no matter what the wealth. The main issue is tragedy of the commons style issues, like free bathrooms in SF being destroyed or otherwise used improperly, driving costs too high to continue.

gottorf 3y ago
> tragedy of the commons style issues, like free bathrooms in SF being destroyed or otherwise used improperly This is only incidentally tragedy of the commons, which refers to publicly-accessible things that if individual actors rationally maximized their own utility would become depleted. Smearing excrement over a public bathroom is not rational utility; it's a crime whose perpetrators should be disincentivized from doing so.
- bombcar 3y ago
  True, but even without "violent vandalism" you still can have a "not taking care" of common areas that leads them to be run-down and unclean, without direct crimes (unless you start making things like littering strongly punished)