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You left out poor white people in your discussion. While white people do have a lower rate of poverty than blacks or latinos, they actually make up a very larg

You left out poor white people in your discussion. While white people do have a lower rate of poverty than blacks or latinos, they actually make up a very large majority (68.5% as of 2009) of the people living under the poverty line in the United States. [1] "... let's not pretend that the Cherokee are the ones we're worried about here." "Successfully repeating this experiment in poor black and latino populations a few times would go a long ways towards convincing the skeptical... " I'm all in favor of repeating the experiment in whatever populations, ideally the general one on a large enough sample size to tease out demographic information. I don't want to seem like I'm implying something here, so I will instead say overtly that I find the way you've singled out certain populations for skepticism with regards to whether they should be helped disturbing. [1] http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditures_poverty_wealth/poverty.html http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/income_expenditu...

prawn 13y ago
Poor white people were left out of that comment because the writer's point was about minorities with access to a payment that didn't feel like "theirs". A poor white person receiving welfare from a largely white government/authority might not be a good comparison.
notdrunkatall 13y ago
Forgive me for offending your politically correct sensibilities, but it seems that I'm going to have to be even more blunt: if you want to convince white people in this country that doling out free money to the poor is a good idea, you're going to have to convince them that blacks and latinos aren't going to abuse that system en masse. The only way to do that is to try something similar in neighborhoods that are comprised predominately of minorities and cross your fingers that it is a success. It doesn't matter whether those below the poverty line are 65% or 5% white - it's the minorities that they're concerned with. That's just the political reality of the situation. And while we're on the subject of statistics, I may as well go ahead and ask about yours: where did you get that figure from? Because I found something much different: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb11-157.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_weal... According to this, only about 25% of people living in poverty were white, and that includes the somewhat dubious category 'white, not hispanic.' (It's near the bottom, Table B) That also includes white retirees, which inflates the figure as you're taking the number of retirees from a large category and sticking them into a smaller category, which means they will be over-represented in the smaller category. And that's not even mentioning the rate of poverty or welfare participation, which is where the common perception that blacks and latinos abuse the welfare system comes from in the first place. It's much higher than it is or other races. When you dig into the data, it usually turns out that stereotypes exist for a reason, and this appears to be no exception.
- thyrsus 13y ago
  I don't believe those who have contempt for the poor have any less contempt for science, and social science in particular.
- protomyth 13y ago
  You could have probably gone with: a tribally (single culture or group) owned and operated business paying dividends to its members is likely to have different results than a welfare payment from a government where ownership is distant. I'm actually fairly offended that people are equating dividends from a tribal business with welfare. It is a bit insulting.
- djtriptych 13y ago
  Shocker: You completely misread the data from that source. Table B in the link you posted shows 31,650* white people in poverty out of a US total of 46,180. That's 68.5%. * all numbers in thousands
  - stephencanon 13y ago
    To be fair, he’s describing “non-black, non-latino”, which I suppose most closely aligns with “white non-hispanic” in that table: 19,599/46,180 or 42%. No longer a majority, but still a plurality. The whole argument is ridiculous, of course: > If you want to convince white people in this country that doling out free money to the poor is a good idea, you're going to have to convince them that blacks and latinos aren't going to abuse that system en masse. The only way to do that is to try something similar in neighborhoods that are comprised predominately of minorities and cross your fingers that it is a success. When did we have the double-blind controlled study showing that the mortgage interest tax deduction wouldn’t be abused by the upper middle class "en masse" as a tax-protected store of wealth, contributing to a wildly over-inflated housing market? Perhaps you can point me to the literature showing that carried interest being taxed as capital gains wouldn’t lead to wealthy fund managers being able to claim zero “income”? Budget policy in the US (or anywhere, really) isn’t set by enlightened scientists who carefully consider the sociological and economic consequences. Voters and politicians are swayed by pundits and lobbyists, not by scientific studies. Get the right people to endorse an idea with the right (specious but superficially convincing) talking points and you too can help set public policy.

prawn 13y ago

Poor white people were left out of that comment because the writer's point was about minorities with access to a payment that didn't feel like "theirs". A poor white person receiving welfare from a largely white government/authority might not be a good comparison.

notdrunkatall 13y ago

Forgive me for offending your politically correct sensibilities, but it seems that I'm going to have to be even more blunt: if you want to convince white people in this country that doling out free money to the poor is a good idea, you're going to have to convince them that blacks and latinos aren't going to abuse that system en masse. The only way to do that is to try something similar in neighborhoods that are comprised predominately of minorities and cross your fingers that it is a success. It doesn't matter whether those below the poverty line are 65% or 5% white - it's the minorities that they're concerned with. That's just the political reality of the situation. And while we're on the subject of statistics, I may as well go ahead and ask about yours: where did you get that figure from? Because I found something much different: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb11-157.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_weal... According to this, only about 25% of people living in poverty were white, and that includes the somewhat dubious category 'white, not hispanic.' (It's near the bottom, Table B) That also includes white retirees, which inflates the figure as you're taking the number of retirees from a large category and sticking them into a smaller category, which means they will be over-represented in the smaller category. And that's not even mentioning the rate of poverty or welfare participation, which is where the common perception that blacks and latinos abuse the welfare system comes from in the first place. It's much higher than it is or other races. When you dig into the data, it usually turns out that stereotypes exist for a reason, and this appears to be no exception.

thyrsus 13y ago
I don't believe those who have contempt for the poor have any less contempt for science, and social science in particular.
protomyth 13y ago
You could have probably gone with: a tribally (single culture or group) owned and operated business paying dividends to its members is likely to have different results than a welfare payment from a government where ownership is distant. I'm actually fairly offended that people are equating dividends from a tribal business with welfare. It is a bit insulting.
djtriptych 13y ago
Shocker: You completely misread the data from that source. Table B in the link you posted shows 31,650* white people in poverty out of a US total of 46,180. That's 68.5%. * all numbers in thousands
- stephencanon 13y ago
  To be fair, he’s describing “non-black, non-latino”, which I suppose most closely aligns with “white non-hispanic” in that table: 19,599/46,180 or 42%. No longer a majority, but still a plurality. The whole argument is ridiculous, of course: > If you want to convince white people in this country that doling out free money to the poor is a good idea, you're going to have to convince them that blacks and latinos aren't going to abuse that system en masse. The only way to do that is to try something similar in neighborhoods that are comprised predominately of minorities and cross your fingers that it is a success. When did we have the double-blind controlled study showing that the mortgage interest tax deduction wouldn’t be abused by the upper middle class "en masse" as a tax-protected store of wealth, contributing to a wildly over-inflated housing market? Perhaps you can point me to the literature showing that carried interest being taxed as capital gains wouldn’t lead to wealthy fund managers being able to claim zero “income”? Budget policy in the US (or anywhere, really) isn’t set by enlightened scientists who carefully consider the sociological and economic consequences. Voters and politicians are swayed by pundits and lobbyists, not by scientific studies. Get the right people to endorse an idea with the right (specious but superficially convincing) talking points and you too can help set public policy.