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A third of the population in the richest nation on earth lives in poverty. According to you, that's not a problem because even poorer people in Bangladesh are s

A third of the population in the richest nation on earth lives in poverty. According to you, that's not a problem because even poorer people in Bangladesh are slightly less poor than they would be if American companies had never employed them. What kind of callous person could look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? Or do you not look around at all, holed up in a tacky mansion of your own?

rattray 12y ago
I don't think that's what they're saying. They're saying that the problem of American Poverty is temporary; even poorer people in Bangladesh are earning gradually more and more, and will one day earn as much as unskilled American laborers. And only then will unskilled Americans be able to find work again. FWIW, I'm less enthusiastic about the current system/situation than mattmcknight appears to be.
chii 12y ago
> look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? i dont think anyone is saying the system is working great. Capitalism the worst system, except for every other system tried. What do you suggest?
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  There have been multiple, very different systems labeled "capitalism" for political purposes. The strong-labor, domestic-demand-driven social-democratic model of capitalism worked far better than today's rentier and financial capitalism.
- amirouche 12y ago
  There is parecon http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Participatory_economics http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Participatory_economics
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    >Participatory decision-making involves the participation of all persons in decision-making on issues in proportion to the impact such decisions have on their lives. I live in a country in the EU. 90% of the population does not understand supply and demand. Even more people do not understand the notion if "rhetorics". You want those people to participated in making decisions? Do you really believe that? I am so fed up with this vain anarcho bullshit. WAKE UP. People are dumb. Dumb as a brick. If you want to help them, you have to drag their body over to the finish line.
    - amelius 12y ago
      Perhaps we should fix democracy before we try to fix capitalism.
      - blumkvist 12y ago
        We should fix education before even attempting to fix democracy. Both scholarly and within the family. Any attempts to temper with the social framework by largely un/poorly/mis-informed masses of people leads to catastrophes. Russia 1917 Italy 1929 Germany 1934 Spain 1939 Some enlightened people will always try to exploit people's resentment to gain control and use it as they see fit. Soon the system is far worse than before.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
95% of the biggest nation in the world (or maybe second biggest, no one really knows the exact pop of India and China) lives in far deeper poverty than poor americans. Many of them experience actual suffering - not enough food, no flush toilet, no power. What, precisely, do you believe poor Americans are suffering from? The only concrete answer I usually hear is envy (I.e. "oh noes the inequality"). http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-the-have-nots/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  > What, precisely, do you believe poor Americans are suffering from? Well, just for starters, they're suffering from entirely treatable diseases and injuries because they don't have health insurance, or don't have non-shitty health insurance. Quite a few of of them are suffering from childhood malnutrition, leading to lifelong cognitive and developmental defects. On the lowest rung, they are suffering from homelessness and all the deprivation and desperation that comes with it. You're trying to tell us that someone to trying to raise kids in a rotting, roach-infested apartment in a drug-haunted slum, with no chance at a decent education and no real hope of advancement, is really perfectly all right because at least they're not actually living in a Delhi sewer. Or are you not even aware that this happens in America? You sound like the closest you've ever come to actually knowing a poor person is tossing a quarter to a homeless man in the subway.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    Well, just for starters, they're suffering from entirely treatable diseases and injuries... If that were the case, the increasing access to health care should make them healthier. It didn't. http://www.nber.org/oregon/ http://www.nber.org/oregon/ Do you have evidence for childhood malnutrition? Once you come up with a definition of "rotting, roach-infested", feel free to check what fraction of poor Americans actually fit that definition. See table 2-4: http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf Suffice it to say, probably the majority of my friends are poor by American standards. But then again, I live in India. And even when I was a poor American I still lived better than they do. Though I'm usually told that grad school doesn't count as poverty, even though the economics of it are the same.
tsotha 12y ago
Poverty is a relative thing. Very few actual poor people would recognize American "poverty" as such.
- collyw 12y ago
  I disagree. I saw a definition of being rich as "never having to worry about money". Now take being poor as "always having to worry about money". Doesn't matter if you have got a widescreen TV. If you sell it off you may eat better for a few weeks, but after that you will still be in the same situation, in constant worry about money.
  - vacri 12y ago
    People really do need to give up on widescreen TVs as a marker for "not poor". I was in the Mekong Delta swampland, passing by rudimentary shacks that didn't close completely against the elements. I still saw big TV sets in them.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    But American poor people "always have to worry about money" because of the way they spend it. By that definition no matter how much money Uncle Sugar gave them every month they'd still be poor.
olalonde 12y ago
Here's a pretty convincing TED talk which makes the point that global poverty has indeed significantly gone down in recent history, especially among developing countries: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y... It was posted here about 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373041 I don't think we should look at poverty as a solved problem, but I think it would be overly cynical to not acknowledge how much the "system" has done for the poor.
- psychometry 12y ago
  American slaves in 1850 were much better off than American slaves in 1650. Should we acknowledge what great things slavery did for black people in the U.S.? Do you see why your argument is worthless?
mattmcknight 12y ago
>A third of the population in the richest nation on earth lives in poverty. It's not 1/3, and poverty is a relative term, but really the fraction doesn't matter. "The Census Bureau today released data indicating that the overall poverty rate in 2013 was 14.5 percent – a decrease from 15.0 percent in 2012. This change was the first decrease since 2006." http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib_poverty2014.pdf http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib_poverty201... The US poverty rate does not include the price of non-cash government benefits. The average cost per Medicaid enrollee, which all people at the poverty line qualify for by income, in all states, is $5,563. It doesn't include food assistance. It doesn't include housing subsidies. These vary, but are widely received. >What kind of callous person could look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? What kind of callous person could think helping a person with more money in a country that provides them numerous benefits is better than helping a person with less money? "Or do you not look around at all, holed up in a tacky mansion of your own?" I have traveled the world many times over the past 20 years. The positive change I have seen world-wide is perhaps invisible to you because you choose to focus on actions which cause others to consider you to be helpful, instead of actions which are actually helpful. My house may be slightly tacky.

rattray 12y ago

I don't think that's what they're saying. They're saying that the problem of American Poverty is temporary; even poorer people in Bangladesh are earning gradually more and more, and will one day earn as much as unskilled American laborers. And only then will unskilled Americans be able to find work again. FWIW, I'm less enthusiastic about the current system/situation than mattmcknight appears to be.

chii 12y ago

> look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? i dont think anyone is saying the system is working great. Capitalism the worst system, except for every other system tried. What do you suggest?

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
There have been multiple, very different systems labeled "capitalism" for political purposes. The strong-labor, domestic-demand-driven social-democratic model of capitalism worked far better than today's rentier and financial capitalism.
amirouche 12y ago
There is parecon http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Participatory_economics http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Participatory_economics
- blumkvist 12y ago
  >Participatory decision-making involves the participation of all persons in decision-making on issues in proportion to the impact such decisions have on their lives. I live in a country in the EU. 90% of the population does not understand supply and demand. Even more people do not understand the notion if "rhetorics". You want those people to participated in making decisions? Do you really believe that? I am so fed up with this vain anarcho bullshit. WAKE UP. People are dumb. Dumb as a brick. If you want to help them, you have to drag their body over to the finish line.
  - amelius 12y ago
    Perhaps we should fix democracy before we try to fix capitalism.
    - blumkvist 12y ago
      We should fix education before even attempting to fix democracy. Both scholarly and within the family. Any attempts to temper with the social framework by largely un/poorly/mis-informed masses of people leads to catastrophes. Russia 1917 Italy 1929 Germany 1934 Spain 1939 Some enlightened people will always try to exploit people's resentment to gain control and use it as they see fit. Soon the system is far worse than before.

yummyfajitas 12y ago

95% of the biggest nation in the world (or maybe second biggest, no one really knows the exact pop of India and China) lives in far deeper poverty than poor americans. Many of them experience actual suffering - not enough food, no flush toilet, no power. What, precisely, do you believe poor Americans are suffering from? The only concrete answer I usually hear is envy (I.e. "oh noes the inequality"). http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-the-have-nots/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
> What, precisely, do you believe poor Americans are suffering from? Well, just for starters, they're suffering from entirely treatable diseases and injuries because they don't have health insurance, or don't have non-shitty health insurance. Quite a few of of them are suffering from childhood malnutrition, leading to lifelong cognitive and developmental defects. On the lowest rung, they are suffering from homelessness and all the deprivation and desperation that comes with it. You're trying to tell us that someone to trying to raise kids in a rotting, roach-infested apartment in a drug-haunted slum, with no chance at a decent education and no real hope of advancement, is really perfectly all right because at least they're not actually living in a Delhi sewer. Or are you not even aware that this happens in America? You sound like the closest you've ever come to actually knowing a poor person is tossing a quarter to a homeless man in the subway.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Well, just for starters, they're suffering from entirely treatable diseases and injuries... If that were the case, the increasing access to health care should make them healthier. It didn't. http://www.nber.org/oregon/ http://www.nber.org/oregon/ Do you have evidence for childhood malnutrition? Once you come up with a definition of "rotting, roach-infested", feel free to check what fraction of poor Americans actually fit that definition. See table 2-4: http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf Suffice it to say, probably the majority of my friends are poor by American standards. But then again, I live in India. And even when I was a poor American I still lived better than they do. Though I'm usually told that grad school doesn't count as poverty, even though the economics of it are the same.

tsotha 12y ago

Poverty is a relative thing. Very few actual poor people would recognize American "poverty" as such.

collyw 12y ago
I disagree. I saw a definition of being rich as "never having to worry about money". Now take being poor as "always having to worry about money". Doesn't matter if you have got a widescreen TV. If you sell it off you may eat better for a few weeks, but after that you will still be in the same situation, in constant worry about money.
- vacri 12y ago
  People really do need to give up on widescreen TVs as a marker for "not poor". I was in the Mekong Delta swampland, passing by rudimentary shacks that didn't close completely against the elements. I still saw big TV sets in them.
- tsotha 12y ago
  But American poor people "always have to worry about money" because of the way they spend it. By that definition no matter how much money Uncle Sugar gave them every month they'd still be poor.

olalonde 12y ago

Here's a pretty convincing TED talk which makes the point that global poverty has indeed significantly gone down in recent history, especially among developing countries: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y... It was posted here about 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373041 I don't think we should look at poverty as a solved problem, but I think it would be overly cynical to not acknowledge how much the "system" has done for the poor.

psychometry 12y ago
American slaves in 1850 were much better off than American slaves in 1650. Should we acknowledge what great things slavery did for black people in the U.S.? Do you see why your argument is worthless?

mattmcknight 12y ago

>A third of the population in the richest nation on earth lives in poverty. It's not 1/3, and poverty is a relative term, but really the fraction doesn't matter. "The Census Bureau today released data indicating that the overall poverty rate in 2013 was 14.5 percent – a decrease from 15.0 percent in 2012. This change was the first decrease since 2006." http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib_poverty2014.pdf http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/14/PovertyAndIncomeEst/ib_poverty201... The US poverty rate does not include the price of non-cash government benefits. The average cost per Medicaid enrollee, which all people at the poverty line qualify for by income, in all states, is $5,563. It doesn't include food assistance. It doesn't include housing subsidies. These vary, but are widely received. >What kind of callous person could look around at all the suffering and think this system's working great? What kind of callous person could think helping a person with more money in a country that provides them numerous benefits is better than helping a person with less money? "Or do you not look around at all, holed up in a tacky mansion of your own?" I have traveled the world many times over the past 20 years. The positive change I have seen world-wide is perhaps invisible to you because you choose to focus on actions which cause others to consider you to be helpful, instead of actions which are actually helpful. My house may be slightly tacky.