
The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem - cr1895
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-states.html
======
frgtpsswrdlame
This is the other side of globalization.

Globalization is super nice when you're secure in your job, "hey everything is
getting cheaper!" but when your job is the one in the crosshairs what you're
feeling is a pressure that is pushing the living standard of the third world
and yours together. That's why I find it so annoying that this board is
usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely
hypocritical.

And before I get jumped on, no I'm not against all trade. What I'm for however
is noting that people don't live in the long-term, economically we are firmly
short-term creatures. Good policy won't give everything up for the long-term,
it will also protect people in the short-term, we don't need an end to trade,
we need a curtailing of some trade.

~~~
wbl
Why should Bubba live a better life then Liu Chu just because he was born in
one country and Liu Chu another? Globalization has reduced extreme poverty
worldwide, to the point where it will not exist in a few years.

Globalization has very little to do with the plights of blacks in the
Mississippi Delta. Old fashioned racism and a lack of jobs in sectors which
aren't agriculture have a lot more to do with it.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Well Bubba has no more right to a good life than Liu Chu but if you live next
door to Bubba and 7000 miles from Liu Chu I think you have a higher duty to
him than her.

Second, you could consider that Bubba has the ability to vote in US elections
and Liu Chu doesn't. Making Liu Chu better off is a nice moral deed, making
Bubba better off is not just a nice moral deed but also a political
obligation.

~~~
vec
Bubba can vote, so he's able to represent his own interests. Liu Chu has no
voice in the system.

It seems to me that if I have any obligation it would be to advocate for those
that cannot advocate for themselves first.

~~~
pnutjam
Help given to Liu Chu will by necessity pass through many hands and you have
no control over the ethical structure of Liu Chu's society. Helping Bubba is
something you can verify, and it will also help Liu Chu when Bubba has more
income and can afford to help others.

------
xya3453
> Beyond that, many Americans, especially whites with no more than a high
> school education, have seen worsening health: As my research with my wife,
> the Princeton economist Anne Case, has demonstrated, for this group life
> expectancy is falling; mortality rates from drugs, alcohol and suicide are
> rising

Yet in 2018, most diversity initiatives still focus on race regardless of
socio-economic background.

~~~
woodruffw
Here we go again.

Race correlates _strongly_ with socioeconomic background. Insofar as diversity
initiatives are actually attempting to improve the lives of disadvantaged
people in this country, arguments like yours amount to relative privation.

Heart disease kills more people than lung cancer, but there's nothing wrong
with raising money to research lung cancer.

~~~
woodruffw
I'm going to post this as a reply with the poster elided, since they deleted
it and I think it's important:

>> Heart disease kills more people than lung cancer, but there's nothing wrong
with raising money to research lung cancer.

> The difference is that face of diversity initiatives are zero sum.

No, they are not. Hiring someone from a disadvantaged group does not mean that
you have to fire someone from a privileged group. That is what a zero-sum
scenario would require.

Diversity initiatives level the playing field by increasing _opportunities_
for one group relative to another. That doesn't necessarily mean that the
disadvantaged group has _more_ opportunities _than_ the privileged group -- it
only means that they have more than they did _before_.

~~~
cobookman
I just don’t buy that. Not every company has infinite head count.

Universities for example only have so many spots they can offer. So if a
university keeps 10% of the spots for diversity candidates, then only 90% of
the capacity is for diversity candidates.

Compounded with non diversity candidates applying in a disproportionately high
number to diversity. And the population of non diverse having a better
education. You end up making it harder for non diverse candidates and raising
their bar.

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
>You end up making it harder for non diverse candidates and raising their bar.

You're right but that's fine. The argument though is that society has already
imposed a 'higher bar' on "diverse candidates" (let's just be honest and call
them minorities and the poor.) Think of it like this. A poor black girl named
Keycia lives at home with her single mother and three siblings. She's studious
but attends a bad public school, she works after school to help out at home,
she takes care of her little brothers and sisters. Now compare to Chad, a
white boy from an upper middle class family. He's also studious and also
attends a public school but a good one with AP/IB classes, dual credit and so
on. He doesn't work but he does play on one of the best lacrosse teams in the
state and also swims.

All of which is to say it's two kids both working hard. Now, _even with_
diversity initiatives, who's got a better chance of getting into Stanford?
Hell who's got a better chance of getting into Iowa State? Or even being able
to attend? Diversity initiatives exist to put these two kids on even ground.
That's what equality of opportunity means.

~~~
xya3453
In an alternative universe, Chad is a poor white boy who lives at home with
his single mother and three siblings. He's studious but attends a bad public
school, he works after school to help out at home, he takes care of his little
brothers and sisters. In this universe Keycia is a black girl from an upper
middle class family. She's also studious and also attends a public school but
a good one with AP/IB classes, dual credit and so on. She doesn't work but she
does play on one of the best lacrosse teams in the state and also swims.

Now, with diversity initiatives that are geared against Chad and in Keycia's
favour, who's got a better chance of getting into Stanford?

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Sure! But that's an argument for more complex diversity initiatives (race,
gender, AND poverty) which I'm totally fine with.

------
jamesblonde
This video from Anaheim (California) is reminiscent of travelling around Dehli
(from 39' in -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF7hWzqdPDk)).
The level/amount of poverty in this video is shocking.

~~~
odonnellryan
Probably worse in CA, but this exists on some level in every state. Here in NJ
we have the same exact thing, just not along a bike path.

~~~
bpicolo
Berkeley has a tent community dead in the middle of downtown on some
government property. Berkeley's homeless problem is really front-and-center.
The otherwise nice parks in the area are pretty unusable.

~~~
notyourday
I'm sorry, I have zero sympathy to people from Berkeley complaining.
Considering the amount of money that Berkeley citizens collectively have and
the progressive positions that they hold I am baffled why they do not add an
addition $X thousand per year tax to everyone who makes more than a federal
poverty level there to make sure that all out of luck homeless people have a
real roof over their head, warm meals and medical care.

Unless of course the so called progressive population does not actually care
that the middle of downtown Berkeley looks like a third world country.

~~~
bpicolo
It's a mix yeah? Berkeley as a whole has a poverty rate 6% higher than the
national average. .6% higher than Oakland.

~~~
notyourday
2015 fiscal berkeley operating budget was 293 million.

[https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2015/05_M...](https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2015/05_May/Documents/2015-05-12_WS_Item_01_Proposed_FY_2016.aspx)

2017 homeless number is about 1000:

[http://www.dailycal.org/2017/05/29/berkeleys-homeless-
popula...](http://www.dailycal.org/2017/05/29/berkeleys-homeless-population-
nears-1000-homeless-shelter-crisis/)

If every one of them is provided a $3k/mo apartment, it would increase the
budget by 36 million.

Berkeley population is estimated at 121k

[http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/berkeley-ca-
popul...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/berkeley-ca-population/)

20% of berkeley population lives below powerty level. So lets say it is 100k
that are left.

36M/100k is what? $360 per person? There, I just solved Berkeley homeless
problem at a price of less than 5 bottles of Napa Valley Cab per person who
screamed at the sky in the city of Berkeley the day Trump became President
Elect.

------
bradleyjg
_According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a
day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in
the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in
Italy, Japan and Spain)._

I tried to track down this factoid. First I went to the world bank:
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=U...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?locations=US)

which does show 1% for the US. In the notes it says " Data for high-income
economies are from the Luxembourg Income Study database." My next stop was
there. From
[http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home](http://www.lisdatacenter.org/frontend#/home)
I found that the source of their data was Current Population Survey (CPS) -
Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) (United States). The Current
Population survey has a table creator here:
[https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html](https://www.census.gov/cps/data/cpstablecreator.html)

Although there is nothing that quite matches the 3.2 million figure cited, the
LIS did some harmonization so the most likely ultimate source is the 3.446
million people living in households that were categorized as having "no
income" in 2013. This is separate from the 2.775 million people that were
categorized as living in households that have "$1 to $2,499 or loss" in
income.

I'm very skeptical that this is an appropriate use of this data. The world
bank poverty number is supposed to be about consumption--it has to do with
people consuming very little in the way of goods and services. But no one at
all can live on no goods and services. They'd die of hunger and thirst in far
less than a year. It could in theory be the case that millions of Americans
were living on less than $1.90/day in consumption but it cannot possibly be
the case that millions of Americans are living on $0/day.

To the extent that the figure cited for "no income" means anything (and isn't
just noise in the data), it doesn't mean what the world bank means when it
says living on $1.90/day.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
If the consumption comes from a market, then sure. But during the Depression,
millions of rural Americans lived on $0 for years. Kitchen garden, a cow, a
pig, some chickens and there you are.

So point is, maybe dollars aren't tracking what we think they're tracking?

~~~
bradleyjg
The world bank attempts to measure consumption from all sources, not just
those that result from market transactions. Which is a very good reason why it
is inappropriate to source a number for the US from a survey that doesn't
attempt to measure consumption that way.

I understand that the US isn't the primary focus of the project, nor should it
be, but in the absence of good data it would be better to put N/A as it did
for several other countries, rather than a misleading statistic.

There's some good information on measuring consumption starting on page 91
here:
[http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452741468778781879...](http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/452741468778781879/pdf/multi-
page.pdf)

------
balthasar
Americans are slowly becoming more radical as a reaction to economic
pressures. With each side's policies alien to the other, compromise becomes
impossible. Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get
very interesting.

~~~
mschuster91
> Eventually one side will have to win out and then things will get very
> interesting.

Well things _are_ pretty violent already, with the deadly class war the police
is fighting against the population (~1k in 2017,
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-
shoo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-
shootings-2017/)) plus the countless arrests, macing, tasering and other
violent actions of police against peaceful demonstrators, plus all the
violence committed by Nazis (e.g. the Heather Heyer murder and the other
actions counted as right-wing domestic terrorism). Add in the _huge_ number of
weapons circulating in the US... when the poor people (or the armed rednecks)
finally feel desperate enough that will be quite a bloodbath.

~~~
marcoperaza
Police fighting a class war? The vast majority of those 1000 deaths are
unambiguously from the justified use of force, in self-defense and the defense
of others. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of violent and bad people out
there.

~~~
brohee
There are countless youtube videos of police arresting violent individuals in
Europe where they would just be gunned down in the US.

If you want another comparaison, look up dog shooting in the US and in Europe,
unless you really believe dogs are somewhat more dangerous in the US, the
inescapable conclusion is that American cops enjoy the power trip of gunning
down living creatures...

And why shouldn't they, it's almost risk free for them, which is the root of
the issue.

~~~
xya3453
Or taking Hanlon's razor, Americian cops have been institutionalised to use
force, almost as if they're operating in a country with more guns than
citizens (unlike anywhere in Europe, or the world for that matter).

------
bcatanzaro
I don’t understand how this is possible. We have a lot of programs to help
people - food assistance, housing and health care assistance, disability...
Are these benefits being counted when we say they live on $4/day?

~~~
jschwartzi
These benefits are inaccessible without a long trip through some really
Byzantine application processes where nobody is actually incentivized to help
you. These processes ostensibly exist to block freeloaders but they also serve
to prevent the needy from accessing the resource too.

~~~
guihvvv
I readily critize our grotesque engorged bureaucracy, but getting food stamps
isn't difficult, as exibited by the 40+ million people who take advantage of
them, and by personal anecdotal evidence.

~~~
dbingham
I think it depends on where you are and how used to using bureaucracy you are.
I know people who really struggled to wend their way through the bureaucracy
that protects food stamps in order to get them.

~~~
dictum
It's also self-selecting: if you're good at navigating bureaucracy, you most
likely won't be homeless.

------
ivankirigin
I welcome an absolute definition of poverty. We talk about the richest and
poorest quintiles much more often, which is worse than a moving target. There
will always be a lowest quintile. The cynic in me thinks this is a job
protection program for those working in poverty reduction.

I wish we had more science here. The linked research points to the 1995
welfare reforms as causing a change. The way to prove effectiveness is with a
well run trial - one that changes in federal policy make impossible.

Economic growth (or stagnation) is also crucial here to lower poverty rates.
But all of macroeconomics suffers from the same basic measurement problem.
Restated: what anti poverty program did hundreds of millions of Indian and
Chinese families since 1995 participate in?

------
ThomPete
It's not a poverty problem it's a cost of living problem. Those are two very
different things (and becomes more and more severe the poorer you are)

You can't outsource your home to China.

Globalization does not make every day cheaper it just provides more choices
and will in aggregate always increase the cost of living.

So as long as your job/income is on the right side of the rise of the cost of
living you are fine but if you are on the other side with either no job or
poorly paid job or as a freelancer (with no healthcare) then you are in
trouble no matter how cheap flatscreen TV become.

~~~
kingraoul3
And with a wave of her magic wand and the enunciation of the magic words
"Ceteris Paribus", the Free Market Fairy made hookworm in Alabama disappear.

~~~
ThomPete
There is a big difference between just saying deep poverty and then qualifying
what leads to this deep poverty.

Just saying poverty is the cop out here trying to qualify what drives this
problem offers at least a way to look at the problem that doesn't end in tax
the rich as that will not solve the deep poverty problem.

~~~
kingraoul3
Meanwhile, in the real world, it is the demand of Capital to grow at %6 a year
regardless of the health of the overall economy that is fueling the attacks on
the social safety net.

~~~
ThomPete
That demand is by design and is the price of a stable economy and is followed
by more or less every country in the developed world.

Even in countries like Denmark (which is where I am originally from) and who
have high taxes and a high degree of redistribution of wealth, you will find
people who are poor and homeless.

Add to that the discussion about relative poverty and you will have a problem
that can never be solved unless you give everyone one exactly the same.

------
aluhut
I don't see a reason why the U.S. can't in this article. Or did I miss
something?

It worked pretty good even when they've been in the open. Recently we had a
topic here where people were reporting about homeless people being carried out
of the cities.

It seems to me that the U.S. got quite comfortable with their poor. Probably
even working as an negative incentive for the (still) employed. Don't forget
the American Dream too. I mean according to that: it's just their fault...they
COULD have been rich!

~~~
sbarre
I think the end of the article is where the author(s) make the case for
looking to help at home as much or more than abroad.

"The U.S." in this case is not the government or institutions, but rather the
people who are willing and able to help others, and how the traditional "help
poor countries" wisdom should be revisited and perhaps changed to "help poor
_people_ ".

------
xorfish
So what do Switzerland, Germany and Iceland better than the rest of the
developed nations?

~~~
11_4_time
They haven't had decades of sustained mass immigration of low-skilled workers.

~~~
theonewhocanfly
What a bogus , Switzerland has 40% foreigners which have immigrated , 30% of
those have nowadays a citizenship and passport , read Swiss history before
posting such crap!!!

~~~
11_4_time
The raw numbers aren't the issue. Switzerland hasn't had decades of sustained
mass-immigration of low-skilled workers. The flow of immigrants to Switzerland
is nothing like that into the United State.

------
d--b
Mmmh, they say they adjust the poverty threshold based on actual needs, yet
they use a single $4 threshold for the whole of the US, and the whole of
Europe...

And then they're not critical about their methodology when it consistently
shows that warmer countries have a larger chunk of the population that is very
poor.

Perhaps it's easier to live on $4 in Spain than it is in Denmark. And perhaps
it's easier to live on $4 in California than it is in Michigan...

When it comes to extreme poverty anyway, we're looking at the very tail of the
bell curves, so the stats are somewhat shady there. It's not very clean to
compare tail stats between countries.

The thing that can be compared is the evolution of these numbers over time. If
in the US more and more people are living with less than $4 a day, that is
concerning.

------
natecavanaugh
It seems it can, from behind it's gated content community

In all honesty, though, I'd love to hear some stories from any social workers
here as to their beliefs are regarding the extreme lows of poverty and maybe
fix it.

I think we've all heard that we should change drug policy, expand government
service for mental health and treatment, but does anyone have any other we
don't normally hear about?

------
xstartup
I think in a few years, American will write off all debt. Quantitative
Amnesia.

~~~
PacketPaul
No we will just devalue the currency. There is no reason to default if you can
just print more.

~~~
maze-le
>> There is no reason to default if you can just print more.

Sure there is a reason, it is called hyperinflation.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
[https://outline.com/STFZAv](https://outline.com/STFZAv) paywall bypass

------
fredgrott
probably a direct result of money in politics...

------
obeardly
Poverty is not a problem. It is the default state. Instead of asking what
causes poverty, we need to ask what causes wealth. We also need to realize
that being poor is not a good/bad thing. Again, it's the default state.

~~~
sevensor
> being poor is not a good/bad thing

This is a silly line of reasoning. As more people grow wealthy, we find more
ways to systematically mistreat those who have not. It's not just that the
poor started poor and stayed that way, it's that the rest of us find ways to
make things even harder for them as our comparative wealth grows. Being poor
is most definitely a bad thing.

~~~
randomdata
The fact remains that everyone starts with nothing. The parent questions why
some are able to flourish, while others continue with nothing indefinitely.

~~~
tabeth
The "fact" that everyone starts with nothing is obviously false. Even ignoring
opportunity, the fetal health is highly dependent on the environment.

~~~
moduspol
I think the point is being missed here. In an _inherent sense_ , humans start
with nothing.

We (as a society) have hospitals available which greatly decrease infant
mortality. We have widely available nutrition that keeps people from starving.
These are steps that we, as a society, have taken to improve upon the default
state (having nothing) of humans--including fetal health. Perhaps rather than
focusing on how to make people in poverty more comfortable, we should focus on
how to get them out of poverty.

That's not the same as claiming all people start on a level playing field.

~~~
tabeth
In _no_ sense do people start off with nothing. People start off with the
abilities or lack thereof possessed at birth. Compare a child with fetal
alcohol syndrome with one without it. Do both start off with nothing? No.
Clearly _one_ has _something_ the other does not.

Why do people insist on believing nonsense?

~~~
moduspol
Of course individuals have different abilities. You're missing the point.

The claim is societal. We (as humans) started out with nothing. Over thousands
of years, we built religions, governments, businesses, laws, science, and
everything else, which ultimately resulted in a lot of us having a lot better
quality of life. But our default state (as humans) is to have nothing. That
some people are still in poverty shouldn't be seen like a disease to be
treated--it should be seen as a condition all humans effectively default to.
They just haven't benefited from all the systems and processes we've built
that the rest of us have, and we should figure out how to get them to (or
modify our systems so they do).

Again: This is in no way claiming each person starts on a level playing field.

~~~
tabeth
Yeah, no. How can you claim we started off with nothing yet say over thousands
of years we built things? Clearly we started off with something. You should be
more precise in your language.

If you change "nothing", with "no possessions, talents, abilities, or skills",
which is the same thing, then you'll see why what you're saying is illogical.

~~~
moduspol
> Yeah, no. How can you claim we started off with nothing yet say over
> thousands of years we built things?

I'm not sure how to respond to this. Have you read a history book? At one
point humans were in caves, with effectively no possessions and terrible
lives. That was poverty, and it affected everyone. Whether or not one cave man
was born smarter than the other is irrelevant.

Over time, we developed all of these systems that made life better for the
vast majority of us, yet some of us still live in poverty, because the default
human state is to have nothing. That in no way implies a level playing field
among two different people born today.

> If you change "nothing", with "no possessions, talents, abilities, or
> skills", which is the same thing, then you'll see why what you're saying is
> illogical.

You're still missing the point. I don't know how I can rephrase this in a way
that won't be intentionally misinterpreted.

------
wahsd
The most bizarre aspect of it is that the very same people that lament that
fact, are also the ones who support all its causes and throw the most violent
tantrums to scuttle improving the situation. We have tried it their way for
decade after decade after decade, and the astronomical cost has only led to
barely measurable improvements at wild cost/benefit ratios, while being
unsustainable on their own essentially everywhere those measures are not
artificially scaffolded and have heavy layers of spin and blatant propaganda
lies applied to it.

Maybe the worst part of it is that those very people don't even understand
that they are doing any of that because they have been manipulated and lied to
about both the causes and solutions as they have ever increasingly been drawn
into a cult in which up is down, left is right, and only the con job leaders
benefit from it. When you have fixed, preconceived notions about outcomes,
don't be surprised that you cannot achieve them with the existing variables.
You end up having to bend and manipulate and rig and patch things ever
increasingly and more bizarrely in order to maintain the desired end state or
outcome that the system becomes ever more unstable and fragile. See the mid
aughts housing fraud, aka, housing bubble for reference. The conclusion was
that house prices can only go up, so everything was subsequently rigged
through self-perpetuating incentives to support that fixed assumed outcome.
Precisely what keeps us repeatedly doing the things that have no effect on the
desired outcome. But at least it supports a huge non-profit industry complex
that perpetuates itself under the guise of "helping" .... itself to your
money.

It's quite frustrating that in spite of the truth and solution being right
before our eyes, because truth and reality is too inconvenient and difficult
and uncomfortable because it does not fit with preconceived conclusions and
assumptions, we simply want to ignore reality and substituted our own. And so
goes the perpetual poverty "problem" that we are seeking "solutions" for.
Organizations can't even move away from Microsoft products simply because they
get money from the Gates foundation ... and we want to solve poverty? It's a
bad joke.

As someone has said, our "help" and development money is taking money from
poor American children, in order to give it to rich Africans ... who then
scurry it away into offshore bank accounts.

I know this may make some arteries pop, but the President of Uganda puts it
well: [http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-
presi...](http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-president-i-
love-trump-because-he-tells-africans-frankly)

------
11_4_time
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the U.S. immigration policy (or lack
thereof) bears a signification part of the blame here.

Why in the face of globalization (and now increased automation) the U.S.
continues to have an effectively open-door policy to low-skill workers makes
no sense at all.

As a U.S. citizen, I'd like to see a return to the temporary moratorium that
existed until the mid 1960s (say 10 to 15 years) on most immigration beyond
high-skill (however that is defined) and an end to "chain migration" in which
entire families are allowed to immigrate regardless of most other factors.

~~~
orf
> Give me your tired, your poor,

> Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

> The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

> Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

I think it would be hypocritical at best, given America's history and current
position to take such a stance. Surely the right thing to do is not to be
scared of the immigration bogeyman and take some concrete steps towards the
future, rather than closing the door and pretending things will get better by
itself. It won't.

If you want to comfort yourself in a nice blanket of blame, go ahead and blame
the immigrants rather than the people in power who have actually caused this.

~~~
11_4_time
That's from a poem tacked onto the Statue of Liberty in 1903, not U.S. law or
policy. People quote that as if it's from the preamble to the constitution or
something...

Mass immigration made sense when the U.S. was a manufacturing colossus, no
longer. Immigration should be targeted and far lower than it is now.

~~~
orf
Well it was also written specifically for the statue of liberty, and was
'tacked on' to it, not even 20 years after it was dedicated for a reason.
Because that's literally what the statue represents.

It's kind of sad to see a nation built by, from and for poor immigrants
completely forget their origins.

~~~
11_4_time
People haven't forgotten their origins at all; in fact most people are
probably too overly proud of them.

But times also change. What may have made sense in 1903 may be detrimental to
the descendants of those immigrants today. I believe we should have a sharp
but temporary reduction in most immigration today to see if it benefits the
lowest wage earners in the U.S. It's an easy policy to reverse if it doesn't.

