4 ms·

> What are these elementary requirements Food, water, housing, clothing, healthcare, education. The list is long, but basic. I'm sure you can come up with the

by alyxr 12y ago

> What are these elementary requirements Food, water, housing, clothing, healthcare, education. The list is long, but basic. I'm sure you can come up with the rest. > and aren't they now satisfied? Not for the vast majority of people living in the vast majority of countries. Even in your own, I'm sure imperialist country, huge masses of the population are in want.

Tycho 12y ago
Well, let's see, I live in the UK. We have running, clean water in every part of the country, I've never heard of any problems relating to people going thirsty or becoming ill from the supply. Likewise with food, I haven't heard of anyone actually starving, and while you could conceivably run out of money to buy food, there's a safety net of food banks. Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough clothes to last years. Education is provided for everyone to a level beyond what is necessary for most jobs, and that's before you consider the subsidised further education and of course the vast reams of learning material available for free on the internet (access to which is provided in public libraries). Healthcare is also provided for everyone via the NHS. You can of course get better education and healthcare through private means, but most people don't bother even if they can afford it (unless they can easily afford it). Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue. So, is there more stuff we should add to the list that would make it more obvious how huge masses of the population are in want?
- kybernetikos 12y ago
  I know some people working in this area and they tell me that there is absolutely a problem with hunger in the UK. The existence of the safety nets is more a sign that there is a problem than that there isn't, as such charities get started when people who have the wherewithal to act realise how bad the situation is. You seem to be dismissing it on the basis of the fact that you simply haven't heard about the problem, which is partly because there is no official monitoring, and the current government like to claim that it doesn't exist. The red cross apparently stepped in last year to try to help: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-red-cross-launches-emergency-food-aid-plan-for-uks-hungry-8872496.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-red... If you want to know more, check out some of the charitable campaigns: http://endhungerfast.co.uk/ http://endhungerfast.co.uk/ http://www.trusselltrust.org http://www.trusselltrust.org
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    Which groups are hungry in England? How bad is it? On a sliding scale: Mentally ill? Illegal immigrants without jobs? Drug users? Unemployed? Retired? A related question for ending up homeless? (Not English, just curious about the safety net there. Not trying to argue about anything, please. :-) )
  - Tycho 12y ago
    Put it in perspective. When Stalin was speaking, there were people actually dying of starvation, millions of severely undernourished people, and huge structural problems with food production. In the UK today, most people have copious amounts of food, a lot actually goes to waste every day, and while some people might find it hard to put food on the table, it's within the means of private charity to help them without the government having to intervene. The reported increase in the problem seems a bit dubious to me, e.g. here is an actual food bank founder speaking: Consider again the views of Robin Aitken of the Oxford Food Bank, a former BBC journalist who now collects unsold fresh food from supermarkets and distributes them to charities in Oxford. He says: ‘Some people like to believe that there has been this enormous upsurge in food poverty. My point is that there have always been poor people in this country. You could have gone back ten, 20, 50 years and there would be people who don’t get enough food. ‘The fact is that food banks are a new phenomenon. Now we have got up to 500. If you provide a service, people use it.’ Significantly, he believes that people suffered greater hardship in the recessions of the Seventies and Eighties than today, when food banks didn’t exist.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "I've never heard of any problems relating to people going thirsty or becoming ill from the supply." I've definitely heard of people becoming ill from the supply of water in the UK. The story of the map that showed cholera to be water borne (not airborne as previously believed) is a fascinating anecdote in the history of epidemiology. Of course, that was in 1854, so not terribly relevant to current conditions (I hope!)...
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "of course the vast reams of learning material available for free on the internet (access to which is provided in public libraries)." While there's doubtless more information available on the internet these days, I just want to drop in this reminder that there is also learning material in the books housed in most of those libraries.
- stormbrew 12y ago
  > Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough clothes to last years. And this is where we come to the fact that poverty has been, to some extent, exported beyond the borders of your country. In the modern world you can't just stop the economic analysis at your border, millions (if not billions) of people around the world take part in your economy and many of them are starving or malnurished and probably don't have access to health care or a decent education. If their cheap labour weren't present, you wouldn't be able to buy a year's supply of clothing for a day's wages.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    I'm not sure clothing isn't mostly automated by now. If not, it will be. The larger problem is, Nobody is needed for hand labor any more (or soon that will be the case). What do we do with the uneducated masses then? Educate them? We absolutely don't need a billion more engineers. Then what? I have no answer.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      The core of Marxism basically boils down to the problem you set out above. One could summarise the core of Marxism like this: Capitalism is exceptionally good at improving production, to the point where it will eventually put people out of work, and throw a growing number people back into poverty, and that is when a society is ready for a socialist revolution: When all basic wants can be met, but no longer are solely for the reason of distribution rather than production. In The German Ideology (1845), Marx warned that an attempt at a socialist revolution in a society that is not sufficiently advanced was doomed to failure as it would just make want common, and class differences would re-assert themselves. No points for recognising the long string of examples where this actually happened. Every other part of Marxist theory pretty much serves to underpin or expand on that core.
    - Kliment 12y ago
      Unfortunately, garment processing is one field where automation is way, way behind other fields due to fundamental technical problems. There has been little to no progress in the past few decades compared to other related fields, notably fabric production (which is almost entirely automated now).
- DanBC 12y ago
  > Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue. Local authorities absolutely do not have to provide accommodation for those who apply. Accommodation is provided to people in priority groups. Even people who have no home and who are living on the streets (which as you say is rare in the context of homelessness) could find themselves excluded by rules for local authority accommodation. And for the people who do meet the rules there are huge waiting lists. Tower Hamlets has a population of about 250,000 people, with about 24,000 people on the list.
  - Tycho 12y ago
    So you are saying there are 24,000 people sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets each night? I doubt it. That's 10x the official statistic for the entire country (England).
    - DanBC 12y ago
      No, i am jot saying there are 24,000 rough sleepers. I am saying that even though the rules to get on a local authority housing list are tight there are still 24,000 people on the list for tower hamlets. Some of these people are homeless but not rough sleepers. Note that it is possible to be sleeping rough and not meet the criteria for acceptance to the LA housing waiting list.
      - Tycho 12y ago
        Let's cut to the chase. Being 'homeless' because you have to stay with friends or relatives is not the same thing as living in a slum or a cardboard box. The only relevant point here is your last one, which I'm sure is technically true (although I'm not sure how temporary accommodation figures into it) but I doubt it accounts for a very large number of people.

by alyxr 12y ago

Tycho 12y ago

Well, let's see, I live in the UK. We have running, clean water in every part of the country, I've never heard of any problems relating to people going thirsty or becoming ill from the supply. Likewise with food, I haven't heard of anyone actually starving, and while you could conceivably run out of money to buy food, there's a safety net of food banks. Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough clothes to last years. Education is provided for everyone to a level beyond what is necessary for most jobs, and that's before you consider the subsidised further education and of course the vast reams of learning material available for free on the internet (access to which is provided in public libraries). Healthcare is also provided for everyone via the NHS. You can of course get better education and healthcare through private means, but most people don't bother even if they can afford it (unless they can easily afford it). Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue. So, is there more stuff we should add to the list that would make it more obvious how huge masses of the population are in want?

kybernetikos 12y ago
I know some people working in this area and they tell me that there is absolutely a problem with hunger in the UK. The existence of the safety nets is more a sign that there is a problem than that there isn't, as such charities get started when people who have the wherewithal to act realise how bad the situation is. You seem to be dismissing it on the basis of the fact that you simply haven't heard about the problem, which is partly because there is no official monitoring, and the current government like to claim that it doesn't exist. The red cross apparently stepped in last year to try to help: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-red-cross-launches-emergency-food-aid-plan-for-uks-hungry-8872496.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-red... If you want to know more, check out some of the charitable campaigns: http://endhungerfast.co.uk/ http://endhungerfast.co.uk/ http://www.trusselltrust.org http://www.trusselltrust.org
- BugBrother 12y ago
  Which groups are hungry in England? How bad is it? On a sliding scale: Mentally ill? Illegal immigrants without jobs? Drug users? Unemployed? Retired? A related question for ending up homeless? (Not English, just curious about the safety net there. Not trying to argue about anything, please. :-) )
- Tycho 12y ago
  Put it in perspective. When Stalin was speaking, there were people actually dying of starvation, millions of severely undernourished people, and huge structural problems with food production. In the UK today, most people have copious amounts of food, a lot actually goes to waste every day, and while some people might find it hard to put food on the table, it's within the means of private charity to help them without the government having to intervene. The reported increase in the problem seems a bit dubious to me, e.g. here is an actual food bank founder speaking: Consider again the views of Robin Aitken of the Oxford Food Bank, a former BBC journalist who now collects unsold fresh food from supermarkets and distributes them to charities in Oxford. He says: ‘Some people like to believe that there has been this enormous upsurge in food poverty. My point is that there have always been poor people in this country. You could have gone back ten, 20, 50 years and there would be people who don’t get enough food. ‘The fact is that food banks are a new phenomenon. Now we have got up to 500. If you provide a service, people use it.’ Significantly, he believes that people suffered greater hardship in the recessions of the Seventies and Eighties than today, when food banks didn’t exist.
dllthomas 12y ago
"I've never heard of any problems relating to people going thirsty or becoming ill from the supply." I've definitely heard of people becoming ill from the supply of water in the UK. The story of the map that showed cholera to be water borne (not airborne as previously believed) is a fascinating anecdote in the history of epidemiology. Of course, that was in 1854, so not terribly relevant to current conditions (I hope!)...
dllthomas 12y ago
"of course the vast reams of learning material available for free on the internet (access to which is provided in public libraries)." While there's doubtless more information available on the internet these days, I just want to drop in this reminder that there is also learning material in the books housed in most of those libraries.
stormbrew 12y ago
> Clothing is very cheap - for a day's wages you could buy enough clothes to last years. And this is where we come to the fact that poverty has been, to some extent, exported beyond the borders of your country. In the modern world you can't just stop the economic analysis at your border, millions (if not billions) of people around the world take part in your economy and many of them are starving or malnurished and probably don't have access to health care or a decent education. If their cheap labour weren't present, you wouldn't be able to buy a year's supply of clothing for a day's wages.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  I'm not sure clothing isn't mostly automated by now. If not, it will be. The larger problem is, Nobody is needed for hand labor any more (or soon that will be the case). What do we do with the uneducated masses then? Educate them? We absolutely don't need a billion more engineers. Then what? I have no answer.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The core of Marxism basically boils down to the problem you set out above. One could summarise the core of Marxism like this: Capitalism is exceptionally good at improving production, to the point where it will eventually put people out of work, and throw a growing number people back into poverty, and that is when a society is ready for a socialist revolution: When all basic wants can be met, but no longer are solely for the reason of distribution rather than production. In The German Ideology (1845), Marx warned that an attempt at a socialist revolution in a society that is not sufficiently advanced was doomed to failure as it would just make want common, and class differences would re-assert themselves. No points for recognising the long string of examples where this actually happened. Every other part of Marxist theory pretty much serves to underpin or expand on that core.
  - Kliment 12y ago
    Unfortunately, garment processing is one field where automation is way, way behind other fields due to fundamental technical problems. There has been little to no progress in the past few decades compared to other related fields, notably fabric production (which is almost entirely automated now).
DanBC 12y ago
> Which leaves just housing - only 0.1% of the people literally do not have a place to stay, and local authorities are obliged to provide accommodation for those people if they apply. There are also large private charities to address this issue. Local authorities absolutely do not have to provide accommodation for those who apply. Accommodation is provided to people in priority groups. Even people who have no home and who are living on the streets (which as you say is rare in the context of homelessness) could find themselves excluded by rules for local authority accommodation. And for the people who do meet the rules there are huge waiting lists. Tower Hamlets has a population of about 250,000 people, with about 24,000 people on the list.
- Tycho 12y ago
  So you are saying there are 24,000 people sleeping rough in Tower Hamlets each night? I doubt it. That's 10x the official statistic for the entire country (England).
  - DanBC 12y ago
    No, i am jot saying there are 24,000 rough sleepers. I am saying that even though the rules to get on a local authority housing list are tight there are still 24,000 people on the list for tower hamlets. Some of these people are homeless but not rough sleepers. Note that it is possible to be sleeping rough and not meet the criteria for acceptance to the LA housing waiting list.
    - Tycho 12y ago
      Let's cut to the chase. Being 'homeless' because you have to stay with friends or relatives is not the same thing as living in a slum or a cardboard box. The only relevant point here is your last one, which I'm sure is technically true (although I'm not sure how temporary accommodation figures into it) but I doubt it accounts for a very large number of people.