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I like this guy’s backstory[0]. I grew up in Africa. The poverty I saw, as a child, was foundational in my own personal development. There are some places in
by ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I like this guy’s backstory[0].
I grew up in Africa. The poverty I saw, as a child, was foundational in my own personal development.
There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes.
I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting poverty (with very limited success). They believe that poverty is probably the single biggest problem in the world, today. Almost every major issue we face, can be traced back to poverty.
Income inequality is one thing, but hardcore poverty, as described by the author, is a different beast, and creates a level of desperation that is incredibly dangerous.
[0] https://blog.ctms.me/about/ https://blog.ctms.me/about/
- reaperducer 1y agoThere are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes. Americans are very often blind to the poverty in their own backyards. There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in America who do not have electricity or even running water in their homes. I'm always reminded of a photograph from a few years ago in the Navajo Times showing a handful of children sitting in a little clearing bordered by rocks at the top of a hill, surrounded by endless desert. That was their classroom. No desks or chairs. Not even walls, a roof, or a floor. Just out in the open, sitting in the dirt. According to the photo caption, they had to have their classes there because it was the only place where they could get a cellular signal to do their lessons. Edit: I can't believe I found it - October, 2020. (I took a picture of it, and it was still in iPhoto.) Caption: Milton T. Carroll, left, and Wylean Burbank, center, help their daughter Eziellia H. Carroll, a kindergartener at Cottonwood Day School, with her school work on Monday in Fish Point, Ariz. Carroll said he built the circular rock wall to protect his children from the elements. I was wrong about no desk. The three of them share something that looks like it was nailed together from a discarded wooden palette. There's also a plastic milk crate nearby. These are American citizens. In America. It's hard not to go off about the gilded ballrooms and trillion-dollar bonus packages.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dmd 1y agoIs this the photo? https://navajotimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/dq-no-wifi-for-school16.jpg https://navajotimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/dq-no-wif...
- reaperducer 1y agoNot the exact photo, but it looks like it's another angle from the same photo shoot. Thanks for finding that.
- mlmonkey 1y agoThe other crime in that photo is the lack of cell service, despite billions of dollars that the USG has given ATT/Verizon/T-Mo over the years. But these phone companies just give unfettered access to their networks to the various TLAs and everybody ignores the fact that they are not providing the cell service they are contractually obligated to.
- jandrewrogers 1y agoWhy would you expect there to be cell service there? Large parts of that area of the Mountain West are virtually uninhabited and have no telecom infrastructure to connect the cellular service to. There is literally nothing out in much of it except the occasional building every 10-20 miles which isn't enough to sustain a cellular network. These days satellite would be cheaper in any case.
- sgarland 1y agoThere are Americans who have open sewage in their yards [0], because their counties are predominantly Black or Latino, and their state deprioritizes any infrastructure work. It’s structural racism. Even better, the Trump administration canceled [1] an attempt to right that wrong, citing that it was “DEI.” 0: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sanitation-open-sewers-black-belt_n_5a33baf5e4b040881be99da5 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sanitation-open-sewers-black-... 1: https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-environmental-justice-alabama-dei-1a47e990d804300229206feb01e44e27 https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-environmental-...
- bwhiting2356 1y ago> But, I absolutely hated working in an office. I also hated what digital marketing has done to people’s privacy. I had to get out. So, after 10 years I left and went back to my roots. I founded a sprinkler contracting business with my brother and work outside all day, every day. And I love it. I don't think this person should be putting themselves in the same category as people who are stuck in poverty with no options.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI don't think he is. That's sort of his point.
- bwhiting2356 1y agoam i misreading the article? > I have a van that is falling apart. It needs a lot of work that we cannot afford to do. In the mindset that poor people are unskilled, it appears that I should watch some YouTube videos, get the parts, and do it myself I’m not saying running a small business is easy. But they previously worked a corporate job and chose to start a landscaping business partly for lifestyle reasons.
- otterley 1y agoIt's not as well written as it could be. He's using the first person, but he's not actually referring to himself. It's a hypothetical. Pretend he put the word "Suppose" in front of the first word, as in "Suppose I have a van that's falling apart."
- wagwang 1y agoMy parents grew up poor in manner that is more extreme than anything OP described in the post and they always remind me that its just hard work and grit.
- tekla 1y agoBoth my parents came to America with less than $20 and nothing else but what they wore. I constantly think of how hard they worked to let me live such a leisurely life.
- bombcar 1y agoSadly many kids (college graduates) start out with -250k$ and the clothes they're wearing. Of course, they often have family they can fall back on, and education, but debt creates an entirely new class of 'less than dirt' poor.
- phil21 1y agoYou have to be pretty well off to begin with in order to be in a position to take out $250k of student debt. It’s the kids who can’t even imagine going to college due to living in poverty growing up that are actually “less than dirt poor”. Someone who went to a fancy college enough to get that far into debt is going to be extremely privileged on average.
- slaughtr 1y agoYou do not at all need to be well off to take $250k in student debt. In fact, the worse off you are the easier it is to do so. It’s how the US federal student loan aide works, essentially. The less you have the more they’ll loan.
- phil21 1y agoTotally different from my lived experience. Friends who grew up in middle class to upper middle class suburbs and parenting all took on college debt to varying degrees and varying outcomes 20 years later. Friends who grew up with me in the inner city around poverty and who grew up poor or worse didn’t even consider college as an option due to the costs. Almost no one growing up in actual poverty is going to be considering taking on six figures of college debt. The concept itself is utterly foreign and absurd. You simply already know at a young age it’s out of reach short of a full ride (sports or academic) scholarship. Even if you wanted to, your family doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for you to graduate college before you contribute to helping care for parents or younger siblings. This fact is socially reinforced by both family and your peers. The folks I know who ended up with massive life-ending crippling student debt all grew up insanely privileged compared to the average around me. They all pretended to grow up “lower middle class” but they are outright lying to themselves (and others) about it. It’s been interesting watching the student debt forgiveness debate under this lense. I don’t think a certain class of people understands just how tone deaf they are on the subject. Sure there are outliers, but I’m talking about generalizations here.
- bashmelek 1y agoI live comfortably in the United States. I consider myself middle class. I worry about my job and increasing costs. But I’m okay. I do feel like that we really could end global poverty if we tried, and that people like me ought to contribute.
- badpun 1y agoPoverty is usually (always?) result of politics. I.e. in poor countries you have a highly dysfunctional system and elites which profiting off it. So the only way to to help is to instigate some kind of coup, eliminate warlords etc. But then how do you guarantee that whoever replaces them would be better?
- xg15 1y agoOur own countries could stop actively funding, supporting and even creating that corrupt elite, for a start. See e.g. the Françafrique system in Africa.
- pigpag 1y agoNot all poverty is created equal. Some people had good financial discipline and still fell into poverty due to business catastrophes, accidents or health problems. We need better systems to provide shields for those people, be it bankruptcy laws, universal insurance or healthcare. Others live in unhabitable environments that can never sustain a viable economy. Until humanity finds technologies to address those environmental issues, they can never get out of poverty. Then there are always people who are reckless and irresponsible. They are black holes of resources. Some can be educated while others do deserve to be poor. It's based their own decisions and I don't see a moral issue to leave them alone.
- throwaway173738 1y agoI’d say 99% of the poor are in the first two categories. So I don’t really care if the third category gets some stuff too if it means we help everyone else.
- jay_kyburz 1y ago>and creates a level of desperation that is incredibly dangerous. I came into the comments looking for this sentiment. We have a fairly good safety net here in my country, I've lived on study and unemployment benefits when I was young. But when the author mentions they can't just make $300 appear out of nowhere, I can't help thinking that it _is_ possible, its just dangerous. update: That's why we have good safety nets. Its dangerous for everybody.
- selimthegrim 1y agoI live in New Orleans. I see this sort of thing around me every single day.
- cryptonector 1y ago> I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting poverty (with very limited success). Yes, it's very difficult to defeat poverty. But it has been happening world-wide. Poverty has been going down world-wide for 200 years. It's not so much through the efforts of individuals or even governments, just a network effect of technological advancements and opportunity creation (made possible by those advancements), and perhaps (almost certainly) by credit that makes those advancements go faster.
- torlok 1y agoSounds like the optimism rhetoric of Steven Pinker. I suggest you read up on the numerous criticisms of his work. Most of the optimism is based on a ridiculously low global poverty line conjured out of thin air, and other nonsense like GDP.
- cryptonector 1y agoWhat you're saying is nonsense. I don't even know who Steven Pinker is. Poverty two hundred years ago was way worse than poverty today in most of the world -- this is a self-evident fact to anyone with even a passing knowledge of history. No running water, no water mains, no sewers -- these things meant death from cholera and other diseases for many children, and that's just for starters.
- fajitaforce5 1y agoOdd how you counter claims as fictional with zero evidence just speculation. I realize this is a discussion forum and not a policy office but I pisses me off when feelings is met with feelings and not explanation or examples. Now’s your chance to really prove your point.
- cryptonector 1y agoThat we're all less poor today that our ancestors 200 years ago is absolutely, totally self-evident. No additional evidence needed. Indeed, the inverse claim would require evidence, and extraordinary evidence at that.
- PeaceTed 1y agoSo much of this poverty is hidden because it makes people feel uneasy and yet it needs to be exposed, not as a means to shame them or to give you pity to feel bad about yourself but to realise, there is an imbalance and we are all part of it in a small way. That collectively, as nations, we don't need to give up a little to make a lot of change. Because as it stands there is this notion of person all responsibility, to be Atlus holding the weight of the world. For example, it is estimated that in at lot of poorer counties, the surgery to prevent many forms of vision loss costs $20. That is wild, but it can be a source of self inflicted shame. So you want to buy Mario Kart World, it is $80... Is my enjoyment of this game worth more than the vision of 4 people? That is a wild trip to work through. There is a memorial for Mahatma Gandhi that has an incription, something like "Think of the poorest person you have ever meet and ask yourself how your next action will help them". I wish more folks would ask that. When you see these monstrous fundings for all manner of AI stuff and wonder where we went so wrong. The folk I respect the most are those that give up the trappings of excess in the hopes of advancing others rather than hoarding wealth like dragons. To do the opposite of what many influencers do. We need more folk like that.
- luxpir 1y agoI agree. I also don't know how that could realistically be achieved, with everything nowadays being lowest common denominator, aid budgets being slashed and drawbridges being raised. It would take an extraordinary initiative by an extraordinary person or group.
- abustamam 1y ago> Income inequality is one thing, but hardcore poverty, as described by the author, is a different beast This is something I never thought of but certainly rings true. The left always talks about income inequality and poverty as if they are one and the same. And then rebuttal almost always rebut against income inequality (or being "broke") and not poverty. By conflating the two, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps we need politicians who will accurately define poverty and policies for getting folks out of poverty, and then once everyone can afford to eat, we can talk about income inequality.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoNot sure why that comment got downvoted. I guess that "income inequality" is the Boogeyman Du Jour. I'm unhappy with it, but it is also a lot harder to address, than hardcore poverty. A popular thing for people to do, is wring their hands and complain about problems that can't be solved, while ignoring the ones that can be addressed. Fighting poverty is going to be tough, but fighting income inequality would be orders of magnitude more difficult, because of the entrenched and powerful folks with investment in the status quo. If we split them, we can deal with the "low-hanging fruit" of poverty, maybe even leveraging the vast resources of the very rich, who might be more willing to help, if they didn't see it as a threat.
- quails8mydog 1y agoMaybe splitting them is helpful, but why would you have to do them sequentially? Many of the things that reduce income inequality also help reduce poverty. Poverty isn't "low-hanging fruit" and it's something people have been trying to eradicate longer than we've been alive. Saying "let's not even think about B until we've 100% sorted A" is just a way to ensure B never gets done.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoIs that what I said? I apologize. That was not what I meant. I simply stated they should be decoupled, and approached concurrently.