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If all the poverty statistics in this article are accurate, in about 10 years we can expect to see a reversal of the decline in US violent crime that's been hap

If all the poverty statistics in this article are accurate, in about 10 years we can expect to see a reversal of the decline in US violent crime that's been happening since the 90s. What can be done- what is the right mix of social policy and tough love? Clearly homeless drug users shouldn't have 8 kids- but how can this be prevented? Should we take away children from all homeless or drug addict parents as soon as they're born? How do other civilized countries handle this situation? It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country.

minikites 13y ago
Minor nitpick, you almost certainly don't pay 40% in taxes, that's not how tax brackets work: http://i.imgur.com/ZYWWn28.gif http://i.imgur.com/ZYWWn28.gif and http://i.imgur.com/gogxtbv.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gogxtbv.jpg And I think the solution is raise the minimum wage and set a long term plan for a sort of guaranteed minimum income / negative income tax. Throwing money at the problem is literally the best way to solve it: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-cut-the-poverty-rate-in-half-its-easy/280971/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-c...
- aestra 13y ago
  Minor nitpick, the parent said they pay 40% in state and federal taxes and social security and you quoted only federal taxes (looks like the last graph includes Social Security) I still don't know how much the parent pays in taxes, but that didn't include state tax, either income, property, or sales tax.
  - minikites 13y ago
    What state has a ~20% effective tax rate? I don't see any marginal tax rates that even come close: http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/highest-state-income-tax-rates.htm http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/highest-state-income-... I'm obviously estimating, but when I look at which is more likely, someone misunderstanding tax brackets, or someone paying an insane amount of property tax in a state that doesn't exist, the first choice seems more likely.
    - aestra 13y ago
      I didn't say or even imply any did. I said "minor nitpick." I said "I still don't know how much the parent pays in taxes." The GP might be counting all their payroll deductions as kinda a "tax" depending on how you look at it. It doesn't matter, I just pointed out you didn't include state taxes.
  - JackFr 13y ago
    Well, New York State will add around 6% on top of that and New York City will add about 3%. And those are just income taxes.
- olegious 13y ago
  True, but if you count student loan repayments and health insurance payments (something that most civilized countries provide for free or low cost)- those are almost a tax and quickly get you over 40%.
- evunveot 13y ago
  Looking at my 2012 tax return: my taxable income last year was $x and the sum of my federal and state taxes (including all FICA, or in my case, "self-employment tax") was $0.39x. Including local taxes and fees it would definitely be 40%+. That's a bit of a cheat, though, since "taxable income" is the number you get after accounting for all the politically contrived deductions and exemptions. As a percentage of my total income it's more like 25%, and if I also don't include FICA (since that's just the government holding onto my money for me until I'm old, right?) it goes all the way down to 12%. That said, 25% is the reality, although it does feel like 40% sometimes.
- inspectahdeck 13y ago
  I live in NYC and my net income is just under 60% of my gross income
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  > Throwing money at the problem is literally the best way to solve it: You clearly didn't read the whole article. This particular family inherited $40k but spent it on heroin. The naivety of that Atlantic article is astounding. I think New York City has done an absolute ton for this family. This girl might have done okay, except her mother encourages her to fight her peers (and the mom picks fights with store clerks in front of her children). That is ultimately going to be her downfall, and I am not sure what the city is supposed to do.
batmansbelt 13y ago
Most of that 40% isn't going to pay for stuff like this. You should really have a new sentence starting after the word taxes. It makes it sound like you're implying that the money is all going toward paying for social services, when it isn't.
- olegious 13y ago
  I realize that it isn't- what bothers me is that it is high, nearly as high as European countries, yet we have exponentially more poverty and poverty related problems.
bluedino 13y ago
>> It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country. Dasani's story is sad and it happens far too often. For whatever reason there are plenty of people (like the parents in this article) who will fuck up every chance that you give them. Being from a crime-ridden, poor city I have to see this every day.
bmj 13y ago
It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country. I wonder how much of this has to do with scale. Americans often look to European countries as models of what governments should do, but I think we often forget that most of those countries have smaller populations than New York City[0]. And, if I can vaguely trust what I'm reading, many of the larger countries have poverty issues that are not unlike those of the U.S. So, your 40% tax rate is used to combat the issues of ~313 million people across wildly different situations. I'm sure that if NYC could collect a 40% tax rate and implemented programs focused on its own issues, the government could do a lot more to combat poverty. But, NYC only gets a piece of the pie, and the federal government needs to figure out how to help the homeless in NYC as well as the homeless in Washington, DC, and Chicago, IL, and..... Given that, I tend to think there is not a technocratic solution to poverty in the U.S.--that is, it isn't just that we haven't quite found the proper program, or implemented it properly. Homelessness and poverty have been around for a long time, and while during some periods, some governments may have done alright in dealing with it, no one is ever going to turn a knob and make poverty magically disappear. That's not say we shouldn't try, but we also need plenty of organizations that simply get out there and provide basic help for the homeless (food, shelter, etc). [0] I'm making a broad generalization, yes.
- warfangle 13y ago
  > I'm sure that if NYC could collect a 40% tax rate and implemented programs focused on its own issues NYC has an income tax on top of state and federal income taxes. It's based on NYS taxable income. For example, at $65,000/yr you'll pay $2,047 + 3.648% of 5,000, for a total of $2,229.4[0]. 0. http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/nyc_tax_rate_schedule.pdf http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/nyc_tax_rate_sche...
- malandrew 13y ago
  To be far only 29.2% of those taxes are used to combat the issues of ~313 million people across wildly different situations. The other 10.8% goes towards military spending to combat 6.816 billion people across wildly different situations.
sanskritabelt 13y ago
Those F-35s ain't gonna pay for themselves, pal.
jweir 13y ago
Why would you take children away from a homeless family? And put them where?
zem 13y ago
"tough love" is a very patronising concept. the poor don't need to be "pushed to be self-reliant" (which, if you read the article, is far more a part of the problem than of the solution); they need the people maintaining the current system to stop screwing them over at every turn. a good start would be to find ways of eliminating "poor taxes" (i.e. the myriad ways in which poor people end up paying more than rich people for the same goods and services), and to replace intrusive criterion-based aid programs with simply giving the poor money (something that studies have proven to be more effective), possibly by way of a negative tax bracket.
amerika_blog 13y ago
"It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country." Maybe the problem isn't the money involved, but the methods involved. After all, they say that to repeat the same actions and expect different results is a form of pathology.
thetrb 13y ago
Even though the amount of taxes you pay might not be that far off from European countries there's a big difference in how much of that money is used on welfare. See this table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Welfare_expenditure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Welfare_expenditu... For example according to this table Germany spends 27.4% of GDP on welfare (excluding education), while the US only spends 14.8% of GDP.

minikites 13y ago

Minor nitpick, you almost certainly don't pay 40% in taxes, that's not how tax brackets work: http://i.imgur.com/ZYWWn28.gif http://i.imgur.com/ZYWWn28.gif and http://i.imgur.com/gogxtbv.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gogxtbv.jpg And I think the solution is raise the minimum wage and set a long term plan for a sort of guaranteed minimum income / negative income tax. Throwing money at the problem is literally the best way to solve it: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-cut-the-poverty-rate-in-half-its-easy/280971/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/how-to-c...

aestra 13y ago
Minor nitpick, the parent said they pay 40% in state and federal taxes and social security and you quoted only federal taxes (looks like the last graph includes Social Security) I still don't know how much the parent pays in taxes, but that didn't include state tax, either income, property, or sales tax.
- minikites 13y ago
  What state has a ~20% effective tax rate? I don't see any marginal tax rates that even come close: http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/highest-state-income-tax-rates.htm http://taxes.about.com/od/statetaxes/a/highest-state-income-... I'm obviously estimating, but when I look at which is more likely, someone misunderstanding tax brackets, or someone paying an insane amount of property tax in a state that doesn't exist, the first choice seems more likely.
  - aestra 13y ago
    I didn't say or even imply any did. I said "minor nitpick." I said "I still don't know how much the parent pays in taxes." The GP might be counting all their payroll deductions as kinda a "tax" depending on how you look at it. It doesn't matter, I just pointed out you didn't include state taxes.
- JackFr 13y ago
  Well, New York State will add around 6% on top of that and New York City will add about 3%. And those are just income taxes.
olegious 13y ago
True, but if you count student loan repayments and health insurance payments (something that most civilized countries provide for free or low cost)- those are almost a tax and quickly get you over 40%.
evunveot 13y ago
Looking at my 2012 tax return: my taxable income last year was $x and the sum of my federal and state taxes (including all FICA, or in my case, "self-employment tax") was $0.39x. Including local taxes and fees it would definitely be 40%+. That's a bit of a cheat, though, since "taxable income" is the number you get after accounting for all the politically contrived deductions and exemptions. As a percentage of my total income it's more like 25%, and if I also don't include FICA (since that's just the government holding onto my money for me until I'm old, right?) it goes all the way down to 12%. That said, 25% is the reality, although it does feel like 40% sometimes.
inspectahdeck 13y ago
I live in NYC and my net income is just under 60% of my gross income
jcampbell1 13y ago
> Throwing money at the problem is literally the best way to solve it: You clearly didn't read the whole article. This particular family inherited $40k but spent it on heroin. The naivety of that Atlantic article is astounding. I think New York City has done an absolute ton for this family. This girl might have done okay, except her mother encourages her to fight her peers (and the mom picks fights with store clerks in front of her children). That is ultimately going to be her downfall, and I am not sure what the city is supposed to do.

batmansbelt 13y ago

Most of that 40% isn't going to pay for stuff like this. You should really have a new sentence starting after the word taxes. It makes it sound like you're implying that the money is all going toward paying for social services, when it isn't.

olegious 13y ago
I realize that it isn't- what bothers me is that it is high, nearly as high as European countries, yet we have exponentially more poverty and poverty related problems.

bluedino 13y ago

>> It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country. Dasani's story is sad and it happens far too often. For whatever reason there are plenty of people (like the parents in this article) who will fuck up every chance that you give them. Being from a crime-ridden, poor city I have to see this every day.

bmj 13y ago

It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country. I wonder how much of this has to do with scale. Americans often look to European countries as models of what governments should do, but I think we often forget that most of those countries have smaller populations than New York City[0]. And, if I can vaguely trust what I'm reading, many of the larger countries have poverty issues that are not unlike those of the U.S. So, your 40% tax rate is used to combat the issues of ~313 million people across wildly different situations. I'm sure that if NYC could collect a 40% tax rate and implemented programs focused on its own issues, the government could do a lot more to combat poverty. But, NYC only gets a piece of the pie, and the federal government needs to figure out how to help the homeless in NYC as well as the homeless in Washington, DC, and Chicago, IL, and..... Given that, I tend to think there is not a technocratic solution to poverty in the U.S.--that is, it isn't just that we haven't quite found the proper program, or implemented it properly. Homelessness and poverty have been around for a long time, and while during some periods, some governments may have done alright in dealing with it, no one is ever going to turn a knob and make poverty magically disappear. That's not say we shouldn't try, but we also need plenty of organizations that simply get out there and provide basic help for the homeless (food, shelter, etc). [0] I'm making a broad generalization, yes.

warfangle 13y ago
> I'm sure that if NYC could collect a 40% tax rate and implemented programs focused on its own issues NYC has an income tax on top of state and federal income taxes. It's based on NYS taxable income. For example, at $65,000/yr you'll pay $2,047 + 3.648% of 5,000, for a total of $2,229.4[0]. 0. http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/nyc_tax_rate_schedule.pdf http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/nyc_tax_rate_sche...
malandrew 13y ago
To be far only 29.2% of those taxes are used to combat the issues of ~313 million people across wildly different situations. The other 10.8% goes towards military spending to combat 6.816 billion people across wildly different situations.

sanskritabelt 13y ago

Those F-35s ain't gonna pay for themselves, pal.

jweir 13y ago

Why would you take children away from a homeless family? And put them where?

zem 13y ago

"tough love" is a very patronising concept. the poor don't need to be "pushed to be self-reliant" (which, if you read the article, is far more a part of the problem than of the solution); they need the people maintaining the current system to stop screwing them over at every turn. a good start would be to find ways of eliminating "poor taxes" (i.e. the myriad ways in which poor people end up paying more than rich people for the same goods and services), and to replace intrusive criterion-based aid programs with simply giving the poor money (something that studies have proven to be more effective), possibly by way of a negative tax bracket.

amerika_blog 13y ago

"It makes me sick that I pay around 40% in state and federal taxes and social security (not that much lower than Western European countries) yet there is still so much poverty and poverty related issues in our country." Maybe the problem isn't the money involved, but the methods involved. After all, they say that to repeat the same actions and expect different results is a form of pathology.

thetrb 13y ago

Even though the amount of taxes you pay might not be that far off from European countries there's a big difference in how much of that money is used on welfare. See this table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Welfare_expenditure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Welfare_expenditu... For example according to this table Germany spends 27.4% of GDP on welfare (excluding education), while the US only spends 14.8% of GDP.