Poverty is not what you think it is

[Vonsalza]

It seems that this whole thread is about the dissonance between competing ideological systems.

Capitalism is the economic analogue of Darwinism. If I can build a better mousetrap, I have a near moral obligation to do so and put your mousetrap company out of business. In the battle for survival, I won and you lost.

Christianity, on the other hand, has this weird rule about caring for these losers. How on Earth do we reconcile the two? I mean sure; we’re not to throw our pearls before swine. But Christ seemed pretty “okay” with us throwing cloaks and sustenance toward The Great Unwashed.

So who decides if a particular example is “swine” or some sort of “righteous poor”? Me? You? God? My money’s on the last.

I think I hear prosperity gospel is attempting to successfully interface both of these opposing views, even as all the major characters of the NT were rather poor…

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I worry that there’s a difference between when we’re in a situation ourselves, or personally advising someone, and when we’re looking at societal attitudes or who we should provide help to. I think in the first case it’s more useful to discuss motivation and making the right choices.

It’s important in the latter to ensure that we avoid survivorship bias. While looking at what people who succeeded did can be valuable, it’s often easy to overlook cases where people may have done the same thing and not succeeded, or where outside resources played a part. In my case, part of getting back on my feet has involved getting help from family, which is something I recognize not everyone can do.

Well again I’d come back to the St. Vincent De Paul society training I mentioned. The training is too long to fully explain it all here, but one point is that people who are chronically poor (as opposed to just suffering a temporary setback that may last a few months or a few years or require their family help them for a while) tend to get in that position because they don’t have resources like you mention. Someone who got an education, or had a good job but got laid off, likely has both resources and a mindset that will help them eventually move to something else. It may not seem like you have resources when you are eating ramen and sleeping on mom’'s couch, but you do.

On the othe hand, the chronically poor often don’t have the same sort of resources, appear to “mess up” jobs and opportunities they are given, and get judged as being lazy or irresponsible because they have a different value system.

I doubt anyone who earned a degree, even if it turned out to create debt and not provide a good job, would be considered the same way as a chronically poor person who dropped out of high school, gets public benefits for several kids conceived with different fathers, and has as the main priority getting the money to throw a big party or get the cable TV turned back on. The training is intended to explain some of this and give case workers some strategies to constructively help better.

The person with a degree and no job needs help too, but it’s a different kind of help they need, and they are likely to get out of the rut they are in eventually, not continue that way for the next 20 years. The person with skills has also shown they can solve problems and complete goals, just by graduating, so it’s likely that with a little help they can get over the next hurdle.

 

[Monica4316]

When I was graduating from high school, it seemed like there was an expectation to apply for university. Where I live there are high school courses for students who are planning on university, and other courses for students who are planning on college (where I live that’s more practical jobs). I took the university courses and then it was time to apply for university.

I thought I wanted something (now I see I wouldn’t have liked it anyway) but didn’t get in to the program (it was very competitive). So I chose another, “random” program, as a backup - Psychology. That lead me to get a psychology degree, a field I wasn’t particularly interested in, and then I found out that I can’t do anything with that degree unless I go to grad school. I didn’t want to spend ten more years in grad school for a field I didn’t care that much for… and it was super competitive anyway for the particular type of grad school I was looking into. So I ended up going into something else as a second degree. I was able to use my credits so it’s not like I wasted them, but still… now I have a huge loan. I guess the moral of the story: it’s better to go into something you really love if you want to do years of grad school after, and if you don’t intend on a million degrees, go into something that has good job prospects to begin with.

But how are you supposed to know all this at 18? I remember the way I was thinking was not realistic at all.

 

[JonNC]

It seems that this whole thread is about the dissonance between competing ideological systems.

Capitalism is the economic analogue of Darwinism. If I can build a better mousetrap, I have a near moral obligation to do so and put your mousetrap company out of business. In the battle for survival, I won and you lost.

Christianity, on the other hand, has this weird rule about caring for these losers. How on Earth do we reconcile the two? I mean sure; we’re not to throw our pearls before swine. But Christ seemed pretty “okay” with us throwing cloaks and sustenance toward The Great Unwashed.

So who decides if a particular example is “swine” or some sort of “righteous poor”? Me? You? God? My money’s on the last.

I think I hear prosperity gospel is attempting to successfully interface both of these opposing views, even as all the major characters of the NT were rather poor…

Meanwhile, while building a better mousetrap, twice as many people got a job as lost one.
Capitalism is often doing great good for the community by improving your own life .

 

[Tis_Bearself]

But how are you supposed to know all this at 18? I remember the way I was thinking was not realistic at all.

The problem is that these schools have no motivation to try to help students think realistically or minimize the amount of time they spend getting a degree. As long as loans are available, the school gets paid, and if you end up taking 8 years to do 2 degrees, so much the better for the schools.

 

[JimG]

Meanwhile, while building a better mousetrap, twice as many people got a job as lost one.
Capitalism is often doing great good for the community by improving your own life .

Capitalism is simply making productive use of capital to efficiently provide, goods, services, jobs, and growth. When capital is misallocated by governments, people suffer.

 

[St_Francis]

The usual implication of a statement like this is that the benefits are structured to keep poor people on the dole, knowing that people on benefits will probably vote for those who espouse continuing or increasing benefits over those who do not. The logic indicates that the motive being explained is not that of those receiving benefits, as you have pointed out, but that of those determining the structure.

I think it may be significant but would take a lot of sorting out to see.

You may not think of chastity as a virtue, but surely you think that controlling one’s impulses is? Would you raise your children to do whatever when ever the whim struck them? If it feels good, do it?

When welfare was first instituted, because it was for widows and abadoned mothers, welfare workers would come to the houses of the benefits recipient to make sure there was no man in the picture. This was brought to court and the practice ended, but the ability of people to receive benefits, especially health (Medicaid) was greatly restricted from married couples.

This gravely affected families who fell into poverty, say if the father was injured and couldn’t work, then the parents had to split up in order that the children be able to eat.

Gradually, women realized that they could replace one “wallet” (their husbands) with another (the government’s). Believe me, women totally understand this. It’s one thing when a woman leaves an abusive spouse–I’m not talking about that, but a different thing when a woman leaves her husband rather than to work things through and continue the marriage.

(must run, will continue later)

Sorry about the poor formatting in this previois post!

Generally speaking, the poor very frequently cannot afford higher education, at least in the U.S.

Well, yes and no. People at the schools bend over backwards to help get the tuition paid for disadvantaged students, but then the poor students find it difficult to feed themselves as it is hard for them to get any welfare-type benefits while in school. What Dard Angel said about resources is true: some families can help with the other expenses like food and rent, but some families are unable to do so.

Not being able to predict the future doesn’t change whether students or taxpayers are paying for college.

But if students are paying for it, they are more likely to pay attention and not study something useless.

True, but sounds very much like victim-blaming.

The idea of victim-blaming came from the way our legal system or police officers used to handle rape cases. A woman was walking through the park at a reasonable hour, was jumped on by a complete stranger, and *she *was grilled: have you had other sexual partners? Why was your skirt so short? etc.

That is “blaming the victim,” when a person does *nothing *to prompt the bad circumstance that arrives. There is only so much one can do to avoid bad cicumstances in life.

I don’t think it’s blaming the victim if the victim actually did contribute to the circumstances in a cause-and-effect way. If I drive drunk, is anyone going to say it’s blaming the victim if someone says, well, no wonder you crashed your car, you had a .14 alcohol level! No, no one will. I think we can go too far in saying that people in difficult situations do nothing to contribute to that situation.

All that having been said, there are factors which I believe mitigate the “blame,” such as mental illness, lack of role models in childhood or any sort of raising outside of the welfare system, systemic problems such as lack of wealth being passed on (long story), and the general set-upmof welfare.

Eliminating poverty = expanding CAPITALISM? Most of the world is capitalist at the moment, why are there still millions of people dying every year due to preventable causes?

Aside from the problem of definitions, most of the world is not really under a free-market system, and most preventable deaths occur because of corrupt government officials. If one considers the source of most of the methods used to prevent death, one sees that they mostly came from free-market situations, not from highly-controlled economic systems, and the spread of these methods was often through the free market.

 

[Rau]

Capitalism is simply making productive use of capital to efficiently provide, goods, services, jobs, and growth. When capital is misallocated by governments, people suffer.

Capitalism in practice has a great many more characteristics and side-effects than that Jim!

 

[Shredderbeam]

It is true that capitalism lifted millions out of poverty (eg. the developed and developing countries).

It is simultaneously true that after many decades of capitalism, poverty levels in the developed world is disturbingly high.

Capitalism has lifted some out of poverty, true enough - no system has zero positive side-effects - but if worldwide American capitalism hasn’t lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, what use is it?

=
The level of poverty is no lower in the United States now than it was at the beginning of the Great Society programs. The government war on poverty is a failure because it was ill conceived.

politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/29/bill-oreilly/bill-oreilly-says-poverty-hasnt-budged-1965-despit/

I know that you’re not Bill O’Reilly, and I know that you’re not using his arguments, but the data suggests that something has been very successful in reducing poverty.

One area it has been successful is in destroying the black family in America, dramatically increasing the out-of-wedlock birthdate over the last 50 years.

What leads you to conclude that the War on Poverty is directly responsible for increasing out-of-wedlock birthrates in black families, and not other factors?

the Great Society programs started in 1967. So, yes, over decades

Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant. I was very tired, in fairness!

What I meant was that yes, we’ve spent roughly the U.S. government debt on social programs, but that was over several decades. It wasn’t one big splurge of spending, and we’ve run up the debt in other areas as well.

This country spends billions on making education available. The cost of getting into community college is often means tested. There are Pell Grants, private scholarships.
But going to college isn’t the determining factor for poverty. Finishing high school is.

Community college is a great alternative, but lots of families live paycheck to paycheck. It’s fine if you have an extra few thousand dollars, not so much if you don’t.

I don’t know about the offical poverty levels, but it’s very hard to earn a comfortable living as a high school graduate without a degree. Sure, you could master a trade, become an electrician or something, but statistically, there’s a big difference:

usnews.com/news/articles/2014/02/11/study-income-gap-between-young-college-and-high-school-grads-widens

The point of my post is to pick a major that gives one the greatest opportunity to find a good job after college. If you pick wrong, lateral entry programs in most states offer a pathway into teaching.
But it isn’t as hard as one thinks to make broad predictions: technology/IT, healthcare, education, a business major, to name a few. Avoid the majors that have no obvious application or pathway to a broad array of employment opportunities.
usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2016-07-21/top-college-majors-for-finding-full-time-work

I’ll definitely agree that majoring in philosophy probably won’t open up too many doors in the near future, but it’s possible to have a tax-payer funded college system where you’re not free to get a doctorate in art history, for example. Ireland, to pick a country, has a system where you have to demonstrate certain competencies in order to study certain subjects. Perhaps a system like that could work?

. It it’s true, it isn’t victim blaming. If you drop out of high school, if you have a child before you are married and have a job, you aren’t a victim. Poverty is potentially then self-imposed

When I say “victim”, I mean “the one suffering the consequences”, not that they are blameless. Poor word choice on my part.

Dropping out of high school, having a pre-marital child, getting involved in drugs/crime - all of these things involve choices on the part of those involved, yes, but there are generally powerful forces pushing them to those choices.

most of the third world is not capitalist. They are either socialist or corrupt tyrannies. These are the two main causes of poverty in the world. Venezuela is a glaring example.

Capitalism is simply the private ownership of the means of production. In most countries, the means of production are not controlled by the state/workers. Venezuela is actually a very unusual example, as they never diversified their profits from oil.

The usual implication of a statement like this is that the benefits are structured to keep poor people on the dole, knowing that people on benefits will probably vote for those who espouse continuing or increasing benefits over those who do not. The logic indicates that the motive being explained is not that of those receiving benefits, as you have pointed out, but that of those determining the structure.

I don’t know if that structuring is intentional, but I certainly agree - welfare would greatly benefit from some sort of “fade out”, where earning extra income isn’t punished.

I think it may be significant but would take a lot of sorting out to see.

Sorry, I meant that in terms of “sure, it’s a lot of money, but it’s spread out over several decades”. I certainly think it pales in comparison to military spending.

 

[Shredderbeam]

(Sorry for double posting, but apparently there’s a 6,000 character limit! )

You may not think of chastity as a virtue, but surely you think that controlling one’s impulses is? Would you raise your children to do whatever when ever the whim struck them? If it feels good, do it?

It depends on the impulse. If it’s destructive, don’t do it. If it’s neutral or constructive, what’s wrong with that? I don’t plan on having children, but if I did, I’d rather raise them to use good judgment.

When welfare was first instituted, because it was for widows and abadoned mothers, welfare workers would come to the houses of the benefits recipient to make sure there was no man in the picture. This was brought to court and the practice ended, but the ability of people to receive benefits, especially health (Medicaid) was greatly restricted from married couples.

This gravely affected families who fell into poverty, say if the father was injured and couldn’t work, then the parents had to split up in order that the children be able to eat.

Gradually, women realized that they could replace one “wallet” (their husbands) with another (the government’s). Believe me, women totally understand this. It’s one thing when a woman leaves an abusive spouse–I’m not talking about that, but a different thing when a woman leaves her husband rather than to work things through and continue the marriage.

(must run, will continue later)

I’m not very familiar with the history, but when you describe “women” as a manipulative monolith, I have to be skeptical.

 

[Rau]

Capitalism has lifted some out of poverty, true enough - no system has zero positive side-effects - but if worldwide American capitalism hasn’t lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, what use is it?

What is “American capitalism”?

 

[Shredderbeam]

What is “American capitalism”?

Essentially American neo-colonialism, or America using a form of “soft power” to control regions. As always, Wikipedia eclipses me as a teacher:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism

(I don’t mean that in a rude sense, I’m honestly not great at explaining things to others. I’d make a terrible teacher.)

 

[Rau]

Essentially American neo-colonialism, or America using a form of “soft power” to control regions. As always, Wikipedia eclipses me as a teacher:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism

(I don’t mean that in a rude sense, I’m honestly not great at explaining things to others. I’d make a terrible teacher.)

The discussion has been about the more general system of “capitalism”, rather than the more specific subset of “American neo-colonialism”. Accordingly, I stand by my post #25.

 

[signit]

I don’t know, when I was 18, the idea as presented to me was definitely “you have to go to college right away or you are a lazy failure.” The idea of waiting to go to college until you knew what you wanted to do was for spoiled trust fund babies. That seems to be a very common attitude nowadays.

That was what I was told, too.

If you took a year off before college that meant you got wrapped up in your routine and getting a paycheck and you wouldn’t go back at all.

My point is, if the “mistake” is “going to college and ending up with a degree you can’t use”…that ends up being a pretty hard mistake to recover from, especially if you thought it was one that had pretty good employment prospects and went into debt to get it.

Perfect.

I ought to know; I never quite recovered from it.

 

[Vonsalza]

Meanwhile, while building a better mousetrap, twice as many people got a job as lost one.

In my experience, the opposite appears to be more true. One way to build a better mousetrap is to do it more efficiently. Instead of a production process requiring X number of people, you do it with X/2 number of people and compete on the basis of cost.

Capitalism is often doing great good for the community by improving your own life .

Often it is!

It is also disruptive to the lives of people. I know a nice lady that devoted her life to Sylvania producing florescent lighting. Her plant was one of those that closed due to competitive pressure from the rise of home LEDs and she was laid off a few years short of retirement. “Crisis-mode” was a suitable way to describe her life at that point.

Thank God, state government was willing to hire a woman in her late 50s who would be eligible to retire via age-rules in less than a decade. The private employment market finds retirement-age women to be less than desirable - for many, mostly obvious reasons.

I’m a devout capitalist. It’s how I make my living. But I have no problem identifying the objective problems within the system. None at all.

 

[St_Francis]

Capitalism has lifted some out of poverty, true enough - no system has zero positive side-effects - but if worldwide American capitalism hasn’t lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, what use is it?

politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jul/29/bill-oreilly/bill-oreilly-says-poverty-hasnt-budged-1965-despit/

I know that you’re not Bill O’Reilly, and I know that you’re not using his arguments, but the data suggests that something has been very successful in reducing poverty.

What leads you to conclude that the War on Poverty is directly responsible for increasing out-of-wedlock birthrates in black families, and not other factors?

Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant. I was very tired, in fairness!

What I meant was that yes, we’ve spent roughly the U.S. government debt on social programs, but that was over several decades. It wasn’t one big splurge of spending, and we’ve run up the debt in other areas as well.

Community college is a great alternative, but lots of families live paycheck to paycheck. It’s fine if you have an extra few thousand dollars, not so much if you don’t.

I don’t know about the offical poverty levels, but it’s very hard to earn a comfortable living as a high school graduate without a degree. Sure, you could master a trade, become an electrician or something, but statistically, there’s a big difference:

usnews.com/news/articles/2014/02/11/study-income-gap-between-young-college-and-high-school-grads-widens

I’ll definitely agree that majoring in philosophy probably won’t open up too many doors in the near future, but it’s possible to have a tax-payer funded college system where you’re not free to get a doctorate in art history, for example. Ireland, to pick a country, has a system where you have to demonstrate certain competencies in order to study certain subjects. Perhaps a system like that could work?

When I say “victim”, I mean “the one suffering the consequences”, not that they are blameless. Poor word choice on my part.

Dropping out of high school, having a pre-marital child, getting involved in drugs/crime - all of these things involve choices on the part of those involved, yes, but there are generally powerful forces pushing them to those choices.

Capitalism is simply the private ownership of the means of production. In most countries, the means of production are not controlled by the state/workers. Venezuela is actually a very unusual example, as they never diversified their profits from oil.

I don’t know if that structuring is intentional, but I certainly agree - welfare would greatly benefit from some sort of “fade out”, where earning extra income isn’t punished.

We’ve been working on this for 50 years now… at some point, one has to consider that something is going on…

Sorry, I meant that in terms of “sure, it’s a lot of money, but it’s spread out over several decades”. I certainly think it pales in comparison to military spending.

The feds alone spend over 25% of the budget on fighting poverty, and currently only 16% on our fighting forces.

 

[Vonsalza]

The feds alone spend over 25% of the budget on fighting poverty, and currently only 16% on our fighting forces.

I was given the impression from the most recent budget that nearly a quarter of it is discretionary and non-discretionary military spending.

 

[St_Francis]

(Sorry for double posting, but apparently there’s a 6,000 character limit! )

It depends on the impulse. If it’s destructive, don’t do it. If it’s neutral or constructive, what’s wrong with that? I don’t plan on having children, but if I did, I’d rather raise them to use good judgment.

Assessing the impulse and avoiding carrying out bad ones requires control, therefore your children would be learning impulse control from you.

I’m not very familiar with the history, but when you describe “women” as a manipulative monolith, I have to be skeptical.

Considering that not all women divorce their husbands, I clearly was not speaking of women as a monolith. But believe me, there are women’s legal clinics advocating this and I know some of the women who have done it, on the very basis I stated.

 

[DarkLight]

On the idea of being a victim…I think it’s worth considering why people make certain mistakes. For example, we know that unwed parenthood does lead to more poverty. But we also know that the children of poverty are significantly more likely to be unwed parents and at a much younger age.

Another thought is that untreated mental health problems are a major risk factor for substance abuse. Those in higher stress situations are both more likely to be at risk for mental health problems and less likely to get treatment.

So in any case, it might not be as simple as just pointing out bad choices. We all make bad choices, and I think many of us might have made worse choices if we grew up in a different environment. If you’re poor, there are likely a lot more consequences to the bad choices you make, and there are often stronger pressures or temptations to make worse choices.

 

[Vonsalza]

On the idea of being a victim…I think it’s worth considering why people make certain mistakes. For example, we know that unwed parenthood does lead to more poverty. But we also know that the children of poverty are significantly more likely to be unwed parents and at a much younger age.

Another thought is that untreated mental health problems are a major risk factor for substance abuse. Those in higher stress situations are both more likely to be at risk for mental health problems and less likely to get treatment.

So in any case, it might not be as simple as just pointing out bad choices. We all make bad choices, and I think many of us might have made worse choices if we grew up in a different environment. If you’re poor, there are likely a lot more consequences to the bad choices you make, and there are often stronger pressures or temptations to make worse choices.

Without a doubt, most American poverty is generational. Social mobility is real, but rare. You’re probably going to occupy the same socioeconomic niche as your parents, roughly. They’re the ones that largely taught you how to think about things.