American poverty is too high for all kinds of people

https://www.slowboring.com/p/american-poverty-is-too-high-for

by paulpauper • 4 years ago

92 66 4 years ago

rayiner4• 4 years ago

Among my affluent, educated, “liberal” friends, expressions of concern about race have completely replaced concern about poverty. I probably hear more people talking about student loans than poverty—except insofar as that poverty affects non-whites.

The brilliant thing about “equity” is that it refocuses everyone on distribution within a class instead of between classes. “Health equity” means you prioritize people of color over whites when they show up at an under-resourced hospital. But it draws attention away from the disparities between medical resources available in rich communities versus poor ones. Admissions gerrymandering at Princeton may mean that the consultants at McKinsey are more diverse than ever, but they’re all still working on shipping American jobs to China. In theory, of course, one can chew gum and walk at the same time—think about class disparities, and also about racial disparities that exist even after accounting for class. But that’s not the nature of politics. If you split the electorate along one axis (race), it becomes almost impossible to work on issues that require them to orient themselves along another axis (class). And of course 80% of racial inequality is caused by the top 10%, so you’ve kneecapped your ability to achieve the measures that would make the biggest difference.

coryrc• 4 years ago

We need more than one axis to vote with in the US. Mathematically that will only be stable if we eliminate FPTP voting and switch to voting for multiple people for multiple positions.

I'm fine with Kshama Sawant being on the Seattle City Council but 49% of voters in that district are disenfranchised. They should be able to band together with others to get a candidate more to their liking.

drewcoo2• 4 years ago

Even an axis can hold more than two points.

If something other than D and R were considered viable everywhere, Sawant wouldn't seem like such an outlier.

When people are forced to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils, can we really say they are enfranchised? What if those two evils are captured by corporate interests and not the interests of general citizenry?

uoaei2• 4 years ago

That is an incoherent conception of "equity". I don't really see how you can consider the pursuit of equity not to involve things like opening up otherwise exclusive (e.g. medical treatment) options to under-resourced individuals.

Equity is nothing more than the "to each according to their need" half of traditional Marxism. And from what I can tell no one really has a problem with the latter half -- all critiques I've heard focus only on the former.

DiggyJohnson• 4 years ago

You’re giving a completely unconstrained analysis here.

What do you mean by “opening up…under-resources individuals?” If this isn’t happening along racial lines, then I agree. But if it is, then your second paragraph is hypocritical.

kevin_thibedeau• 4 years ago

except insofar as that poverty affects non-whites

The elephant in the room is that most impoverished people in the US are white but the social narrative is that this is only an issue for minorities.

foerbert• 4 years ago

In terms of (only) racial equality, it is actually only an issue for non-whites. That's not factually incorrect.

Hence we come back to the OP's point - it's hard to get broad public support for both racial and class issues simultaneously... regardless of how interconnected the problems and possible solutions may be.

AniseAbyss• 4 years ago

Solving racism is basically child's play compared to solving poverty. There have been some half-hearted attempts in America that never went anywhere. Lumpenproletariat will always exist until we become a post scarcity civilization.

drekk2• 4 years ago

Most people in the US are white. Adjusting for population sizes, the mean and median white family wealth was $188,200 and $983,400, respectively. For black and hispanic families those numbers were $24,100 and $142,500, respectively. It's disproportionately a problem for minorities, and if we're serious about tackling poverty and its roots we shouldn't ignore that disparity.

silisili4• 4 years ago

The brilliant thing about “equity” is that it refocuses everyone on distribution within a class instead of between classes.

This is something I hope is not true, but as more people mention it make me think really is. How sick is it, if true, people are purposely pitting people against each other for the sake of getting away with something.

Semi related...I hear a term a lot recently that seems similar...'pulling the ladder up.'

Seems most companies who are all in on diversity have all white C levels, often all men. Typical "I got mine." mindset. Seems increasingly those pushing divisive things are those not affected by them.

dragonwriter2• 4 years ago

Seems most companies who are all in on diversity

Companies that are really all-in on diversity tend to be small and low visibility. Megacorporations that are all in on marketing social virtue of any kind (environmentalism, DEI, whatever) are doing image management that is, for the most part, either unrelated to or directly opposed to the substance of what the company does (not uncommonly, marketing bare minimum legal compliance, and sometimes specific sanctions imposed on the firm for wrongdoing, as virtue.)

cassac• 4 years ago

Well they can’t replace themselves.

What they can do is replace everyone below them, give themselves a big pat on the back, and continue to look out for number one.

Rich white folks don’t care about poor white folks. Never have. They care about keeping theirs pockets lined. If they can convince all the poor white people they are racist they can continue to keep them at the bottom and continue to line their pockets all in the name of equality. To summarize Tupac. “You white kids don’t need to be successful because you have Mark Zuck.”

TLDR: I think it has always been about class and equity is just the latest rich person hustle.

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

The political class (both parties, but republicans in particular) and rich elites are absolutely polarizing the country, discrediting the value of tolerance and education, buying up all media, and aiming people at each other like nuclear missiles instead of promoting the general welfare.

rayiner4• 4 years ago

How sick is it, if true, people are purposely pitting people against each other for the sake of getting away with something.

I don't know if "purposeful" is the right word. More like the emergent behavior of lots of people in large organizations working in their self-interest. Imagine you're a young Harvard graduate entering Wall Street. In the olden days, you would reconcile yourself to being "the man," and convince yourself that the working classes deserved their condition due to their moral shortcomings. Now your schooling has filled your head with notions of justice and equality, but you're still "the man" and your personal incentives haven't changed. Committing to "equity" while condemning working class white people for their moral failings allows you to square the circle and make minimal changes that could affect your own self interest.

But the consequences of that attitude downstream are dire and indistinguishable from a deliberate effort. When a white manager commits to "equity" and condemns the white line workers as "racists, sexists, and homophobes," that not only divides the working class amongst itself. It also inverts the traditional cultural understanding that the line workers are "the good guys" and the managers are "the bad guys"--further depriving the working class of what little political and rhetorical capital it used to possess.

Semi related...I hear a term a lot recently that seems similar...'pulling the ladder up.'

You see this acutely among first versus second+ generation Asians. I relied on meritocratic systems to get ahead after my parents immigrated here from Bangladesh. I went to a public magnet high school, engineering school, and law school based on my test scores. I don't know anybody on that side of the ladder who thinks there's anything wrong with using testing to identify talent. But my kids go to a private school where we have a second winter break for ski vacations. Whatever system replaces standardized testing, I will know how to work it and my kids will be fine.

bogota• 4 years ago

It sucks. I have all but stopped talking about any issues. My opinions are no longer wanted or valued in society. Anything someone disagrees with instead of talking about it’s “you are privileged so of course your opinion is wrong”.

TeeMassive• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the charts showing a huge spike in media articles talking about racism and diversity right around the time of Occupy Wall Street.

throwaway7033• 4 years ago

I'm reminded of this cartoon - Introduce them to identity politics (https://imgur.com/gallery/KdeMOdA).

babyshake• 4 years ago

The other aspect about racial equity is it quickly gets into highly subjective territory that often just amplifies existing unconscious biases. You may think that 30 year old men from China and India are sufficiently represented or even over-represented in tech at the expense of people of color, but you may find yourself giving preferential treatment to Carlton from Bel-Air over people from the lower classes or castes of their cultures who don't happen to have the particular appearance that helps sell how diverse your company is on its careers page. And to pre-empt downvotes, of course Carlton is an outlier, I'm just using a pop culture reference to make a point.

weezin2• 4 years ago

The interesting thing is that for them that makes sense, the poor people are not white on the coast, but for the "fly over states" there is a ton of poor white people with drug addictions and poor education.

mbg721• 4 years ago

It doesn't even have to be by state. PA is Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other, and Pennsyltucky in between. I sort of do appreciate the novel dismissal of "a ton of poor white people with drug addictions and poor education" as opposed to "a ton of poor white people whose previously-vibrant relationships got mercilessly ploughed over", because that's the exact thing that happened with black neighborhoods.

RhysU• 4 years ago

the poor people are not white on the coast

Googling suggests "The Poverty Rate of white residents in New York, New York is the same as than [sic] the national average."

Source: https://www.welfareinfo.org/poverty-rate/new-york/new-york

In that link you'll find the poverty rate is higher for non-whites but that doesn't change that there are indeed poor white people on the coast.

bryanlarsen• 4 years ago

Context matters. In my experience, at firms with good salaries the focus is on racial equity because that's the problem they have. At firms paying close to minimum wage, the cause people are focusing on is getting the employer to pay a living wage.

I believe you just have more contact with the former than the latter.

faangiq• 4 years ago

Look man. If Trevor Noah says it’s cool, it’s cool. Don’t rock the boat kemosabe.

oh_sigh• 4 years ago

What could America do to improve food security?

If one can believe The Economist[0], food security in the US is pretty darn good relatively speaking. What are Ireland, the UK, Austria, and Finland doing better than what the USA, Germany, France, and Norway are doing?

[0] https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-sec...

dlp2115• 4 years ago

Vastly increase the size and scope and eligibility of SNAP. I mean these things are not hard to solve, just hard to pass politically. Remember, increasing the Child Tax Credit, it's refundability, and sending those payments as monthly distributions nearly halved child poverty. The answer is send people money.

foogazi• 4 years ago

Why is the answer to this always top down throw money at people ?

insaider2• 4 years ago

Because it's the most capitalistic country on the planet and inequality is the direct result of that.

A government's job in the 21st century is not much more than to counter the downsides of capitalism. But people see how bad the US is at doing that so they lose faith in the government and so decide that the solution is to privatise everything, thus actually exasperating the problem!

We need institutions(governments) that exist outside of the incentives of capitalism in order to fix capitalisms problems. But the US government, and increasingly many others, are far too affected by capitalistic incentives.

When the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns.

drewcoo2• 4 years ago

A government's job in the 21st century is not much more than to counter the downsides of capitalism

A government's job in the 21st century includes legally privatizing public property, waging profit-bearing forever wars, and distracting us from the wealthy who feed on us. It's enough to make P.T. Barnum blush.

Diesel5552• 4 years ago

I'd be really interested to hear your definition of capitalism, because I think you are confusing ideals. It appears you are tying capitalism to a tax structure or some other government program to promote equity. Capitalism is simply using a market economy rather than command economy.

China has used capitalistic market principals from the 1970s to greatly benefit the wealth of its population, as opposed to the Mao era command economy which clearly failed. If you look at poverty in the world from the 1970s you will clearly see the China's reopening greatly reduced world poverty (mostly because their population is a major proportion of the world's).

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-world-poverty-rates-plum...

Capitalism recognizes that a competitive market driven economy relies on governmental controls to protect against market failures, externalities, and imperfections. These are knowns in American economic academia.

Because the government of America fails to give appropriate, or lack-thereof, government control in the face of some of these issues (such as healthcare) does not mean that the capitalism concept is incorrect. It means that the federalistic, two party, republic has not properly regulated some issues as recognized by standard economic practices.

However, give me concrete examples of other governments that better protect against "when the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns" abuses while not removing blatant freedoms, and give specific changes you propose. Sitting on the side of "capitalism is for pigs" is much easier than actually studying and solving the problem.

reverius42• 4 years ago

Your definition of capitalism also seems confused, or insufficiently nuanced -- if markets == capitalism, then what is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism?

insaider2• 4 years ago

I'm tying capitalism to its resultant effects, specifically inequality. https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/ameri...

The changes that I would propose are more cultural than governmental.

Cultural map of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultu...

Happiest countries in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...

Notice the correlation between happiness and culture. That should be the measure of success, not pocket depth. Those cultures that are happiest also have a strong disinclination to talking about money, as they recognise the divisiveness of egotistical capitalism.

'Capitalism either creates or reinforces egoism by lessening any altruistic instincts and by weakening the “moral force in man which combats the inclination towards egoistic acts” including criminal ones.' (America also has the highest incarceration rates of any developed country).

mrguyorama• 4 years ago

But people see how bad the US is at doing that so they lose faith in the government and so decide that the solution is to privatise everything, thus actually exasperating the problem!

This is entirely intentional. Republicans get elected, they privatize, slash and burn, and otherwise stifle government function, and then run ads screaming "Look how shitty the government is, elect us and we'll kill it", repeat.

Maursault3• 4 years ago

In 2017 an Oxfam study found that only eight people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race.

Stop voting Republican (unless you are among the richest 1%, you are irrefutably voting against your own personal economic interests to ensure the richest 1% remain the richest 1%). The greatest trick the devil ever pulled pales in comparison to what Republicans have done, which is make the poor believe they should vote against their own economic interests for the day they will be rich... and with that vote they ensure that day will never come.

broken8ball2• 4 years ago

This is a bit reductionist, no? Any and all embers of hope at eliminating wealth inequality are dashed as soon as they are much more than that, all at the behest of shareholders and lobbyists whose money conveniently slips into both blue and red pockets. At this point if you think voting is going to turn this around, man do I have a bridge to sell you. The only thing that will incite material change will be riot, miracle, meteor, or—hey, even more relevantly with another imperialist world war on the horizon—maybe a couple hundred nuclear-tipped warheads! We probably won’t get to vote on that one, ya think?

Maursault3• 4 years ago

This is a bit reductionist, no?

No. But even if it was... your point is?

At this point if you think voting is going to turn this around

Indeed I do. Republicans want small government (read: no regulation) and support conservatism (read: maintain status quo & low tolerance for others), while other parties are progressive (read: open to changes) and liberal (read: tolerant). Republicans in power are massively over-represented and have been for more than 20 years in the minority, and yet, they are stifling the majority while holding them hostage with illegal acts, such as fraud, efforts to prevent Blacks from voting, gerrymandering, or refusing to execute their sworn duties as elected representatives.

Residents of D.C. and Puerto Rico, US citizens, are being taxed without representation. Clearly this is unethical. If only they could exercise their right to vote, we wouldn't be having this problem. Or if some Californians moved into Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, again, the crushing yoke of Republican tyranny could be cast off, and the US would begin to operate as intended, i.e. as a republic.

theandrewbailey• 4 years ago

Stop voting Republican

OK, but you offer no alternative. The Democratic Party is the party of homeless camps, illegal immigration, out of control riots, and unaffordable cities. I'm not going to vote for that, either.

stuntkite• 4 years ago

I have an alternative article title and maybe concept suggestion.

"Poverty shouldn't exist in America. Money is fake, the ultra wealthy need larger amounts of impoverished people to justify their gross wealth to scare the fairly wealthy into continuing to play the game. Everything is nonsense and it's going to get worse. We've been living in hell for a while but these are the good old days, enjoy what you can while you can maybe. It would be neat if writing about it on the internet could change any of that. Cry, get mad, do whatever. It's fucked."

bitshiftfaced• 4 years ago

You can see this in the OECD’s relative poverty rate, which counts a person as poor if they are at less than half the national median income.

US poverty looks bad when using the OECD's relative poverty rate. For example, the USA has a poverty rate of 17.8% and Mexico 16.6%. Hmm... Does something sound strange about that?

OP's article's graphic shows that, among non-hispanic whites, USA's poverty is 14.7% and Sweden's is 9.3%. What that doesn't tell you is how the lowest 20% of Americans consume more than the average of Sweden: https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...

kkfx• 4 years ago

Poverty of many is wanted by essentially all élites to have cheap labor and "expendable people" to use to go to war etc. One of the biggest growth in the west was the colonial period thanks to gazillion of new cheap labor and resources. That's is.

The issue is not only for poor but for anyone (élite included) when poverty became too or too little widespread. With a too spread poverty social unrest are granted and sooner or later a civil war happen. If there are "too few" poor than the economy have issues, even if evolve to be fair because we always have unpleasant works to do, not all can be automated today, and probably for many others years to come.

USA problem to my European eyes is that USA are, like Europe, ruled by a small clepto-corporatocracy that led to an unbalanced quick&dirty evolution of the country, until there are resources such system work. When they became scarce but someone else have them, possibly someone unable to defend them, an external war makes just a new business, when no one else can be stolen than there is an unsolvable issue. People with a certain lifestyle might accept certain changes but not big&quick ones. The classical move in those cases is creating credible emergency to separate people, those who are useful and/or can afford a far more expensive life on one side, poor on the other, physically separate, possibly with a certain geographical distance.

That's what I see happening, well corroborated by having read few bits about ONU New Urban Agenda, WEF Green New Deal & IMF Great Reset scenarios/agendas. Unfortunately, not only for poor, such scenarios normally seems to work on paper for some, but normally do not for almost all.

American poverty is too high for all kinds of people

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