
What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people? - nkurz
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/07/evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city-matthew-desmond-review
======
sokoloff
People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods
and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to
the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not!

The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably
grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff
of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. The other landlord has also built herself a
business in real-estate and now can afford to take a vacation? Good for her,
seriously. She's providing housing and her tenants/customers are providing her
income. Building such a business (and I assume running a 131 unit mobile home
park) is absolutely work, the value of which is evident by the paying tenants.

~~~
darpa_escapee
Predatory businesses are still exploitation.

> Building such a business (and I assume running a 131 unit mobile home park)
> is absolutely work, the value of which is evident by the paying tenants.

Running a sweatshop is still work, the value of which is evident by its
customers.

Just because someone needs to work or a place to live doesn't make it right or
commendable.

~~~
darawk
What is the alternative? These people aren't forced to live there. If there
were a cheaper, better alternative available to them, they'd probably take it.

Nobody is 'profiting from poverty' here. These landlords would make much more
money if these people were wealthier! I'm sure they'd love to make nicer
places and charge higher rents with higher margins, but they can't, because
that's all these people can pay.

~~~
HillRat
For some reason I'm reminded of the old joke: a Keynesian and a rat-ex
theorist are walking down the street. "Look," says the Keynesian, "A twenty
dollar bill!" "Can't be," says the other economist. "If it were there, someone
would have picked it up already."

Here's the thing: being a slumlord is profitable. Yes, your tenants don't pay
much, but if you don't improve your property, ignore complaints, refuse basic
maintenance and throw everyone on the street if they're a day late on the
rent, your margins are _excellent_ , far better than you'll make with decent
apartments where people demand things like legally-conformant housing and
nonabusive contracts.

These are tenants who don't have recourse, or at least not easy recourse, to
the legal system, so cold water flats, no A/C or furnaces, black mold, and
rats and roaches are part and parcel of the slumlord experience. Of course,
all this is illegal, but slumlords tend to have a lot of free cash to throw at
local politicians and attorneys, and if they own a large number of single-
family dwelling it's hard to track down and deal with every nonconformant
property.

~~~
tamana
You made a huge leap from "running a trailer park" to "being a slumlord", and
you also implied but haven't answered the question of who is to pay for mold
remediation etc when the tenants can't afford to make it profitable. Surely
landlords can't be compelled into their own poverty , forced to rent units
below cost. Such a price has to be paid by society/government overall, or not
at all.

~~~
HillRat
No one is forcing these property owners to "rent units below cost;" they set
the rents on their houses and apartments. The issue is that many of these
people buy properties that are out of code with no intent to improve them, and
then rent them anyway. Yes, it's not economically-rational to rebuild them.
No, it's not the government's fault that the slumlord's business model depends
on flouting code and safety violations.

The simple answer is that if I can't afford to maintain a minimal level of
environmental and residential standards, _I 'm not allowed to rent out my
property_. Likewise, I can't buy an empty lot, fail to maintain it to code,
and then offer a defense that it's too expensive to keep it up. Governmental
police powers are quite adequate to compel compliance.

All this is quite separate from the other point you bring up, which is that
affordable and decent housing is going to require socializing costs. In fact,
there's no reason government shouldn't engage in more public-private
partnerships to help fund affordable housing as part of mixed-income
residential planning. But I don't buy the argument that minimal living
standards are an unwarranted intrusion on the liberty of rentiers -- and I
dont think you do, either. If payday loans can be deemed predatory, can't
"environmentally hazardous" rental units also be?

~~~
gozur88
>The simple answer is that if I can't afford to maintain a minimal level of
environmental and residential standards, I'm not allowed to rent out my
property.

That's all well and good, but what happens to the people who are renting
there, and what happens to the people who can't afford a place with "minimal
level of environmental and residential standards"? Will those people be better
off sleeping rough?

~~~
gradstudent
> Will those people be better off sleeping rough?

Everyone should have access to basic housing. If they do not that's a failure
of government to provide a sufficient social safety net.

~~~
mantas
What is basic housing?

Today's poor housing would look like a damn luxury 100 years ago. Today's
luxury housing will probably look bellow standards after 100 years

~~~
jernfrost
Adam Smith, father of free market economics, pointed out already 300 years ago
the fallacy of this argument. He has a passage about how an Englishman was
expected to wear leather shoes while a frenchman could walk barefoot without
being ashamed. Further he talks about how in his day a linen shirt if
considered a necessity even for the poor while the ancient greeks and romans
could do well without it.

So the point is that following your reasoning there is really no end to the
depravity you can reach and somebody would still be able to claim that is all
fine, because only rich people in the stone age could afford such luxury.

The point Smith made was that poverty is always a relative phenomenon. What is
a necessity is always defined in terms of the society you live in. There is no
such thing as a universal definition of necessity.

I had an interesting conversation about this with my wife's American parents.
Despite the fact that her parents were noticeably better off economically in
their childhood than my parents, they felt a severe stigma of poverty my
parents never felt. My parent grew up in a country where they were much the
same as everybody else. In fact a little better off. They did not feel poor at
all. They had a happy childhood both of them. But one of my wife's American
parents had a bad childhood, plagued by a strong feeling of being lesser than
everybody else. Never having people over on visit out of shame over their own
poverty. She was used to seeing everybody else being better off and internet
the idea they they were somehow lesser people.

Today my home country is richer than America by GDP per capita but comparisons
of wealth and of people's feeling of wealth or poverty is difficult. Many of
my american relatives enjoy bigger houses and cars than I do, but one always
gets the feeling that their life is much more of a struggle than mine. I live
in a smaller house and have no car. But I have no financial worries like them.
I have long vacations, I am not constantly overworked. I don't worry about
health care insurance, saving for college education to my kids, getting fired.

So I think one should have some respect for the desperation and despair the
poor in America feel. Knowing that a surprising car repair or medical bill
could send you onto the street in no time. Even poor in much less wealth
western countries have to deal with quite that level of insecurity.

~~~
webXL
Poverty may always be a relative phenomenon (even in Cuba) but there has been
no better system to lift people out of the life-threatening effects of abject
poverty than capitalism. In fact, you cannot have a success with socialism
without a large number of wealthy (or well-off) people to tax, and a society
cannot tax itself to prosperity.

> I live in a smaller house and have no car. But I have no financial worries
> like them. I have long vacations, I am not constantly overworked. I don't
> worry about health care insurance, saving for college education to my kids,
> getting fired.

In America, we trade stability for social mobility (probably truer before the
WWII), and our government promotes car and home ownership, but I doubt those
were tradeoffs you made for longer vacations and "free" health care and
education. We became more socialist and fascist after WWII and during the Cold
War, but we've still managed to maintain steady income growth for average
Americans, despite what the media would have you believe with "household
income": [http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-
discov...](http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-discovery-of-
unseen.html#.VwvIxxMrIQ8)

Poverty will always be with us, but there are plenty of things our bureaucrats
can give up to fight it better. Our federal government has more or less the
same number (very few added in the last 100 years) of representatives despite
our population tripling. This system has become more susceptible and beholden
to corporate interests, including media corporations that promote stories like
this one and the problems and divisions in our society without any context of
our achievements and commonality. This promotes bandaid and politically
expedient half-measures that only make the problem worse in the long-run.

~~~
mahranch
> In fact, you cannot have a success with socialism without a large number of
> wealthy (or well-off) people to tax, and a society cannot tax itself to
> prosperity.

And you can't have success with capitalism without a healthy and prosperous
working/poor middle class to be your consumers.

I'm thinking of democratic socialism. It's capitalism with a heavy emphasis on
welfare and super strong social safety nets.

If you look at the quality of life index (the "where-to-be-born" index),
you'll see that the top 10 countries all employ a form of democratic
socialism. That's saying something right there.

------
jakobegger
Instead of giving money to poor people, who then have to spend it all on rent,
why not provide affordable housing?

In Linz we have something called "housing cooperatives" (the German word is
"Wohngenossenschaften"). These cooperatives build apartments, and to rent them
you become a member of the cooperative. The goal of these cooperatives is not
to make a profit, but to provide affordable housing.

And it's amazing how well that works! Rents are typically 50% lower than
average, and the buildings are always well maintained. In general, they also
have better amenities (playgrounds for children etc) compared to privately
owned apartment buildings. The only problem is that there are very long
waiting lists (more than 5 years in some cases).

It's amazing how cheap good housing can be when it's not necessary to make a
profit for the owner.

~~~
LoSboccacc
We have those in Italy, as a counter point: it's amazing how fast those got
occupied abusively and how local criminals use it to either hide their illegal
workers or use it as bargaining chips to gain support and omerta from the
population.

~~~
jahnu
Sounds like a problem with law enforcement rather than anything else.

~~~
LoSboccacc
true, and goes to show how even the best ideas needs to be declined in the
context of the other society issues a region has.

~~~
jacobush
Oh, you said what I meant with my comment above, but with other words. Thanks,
missed that.

------
lindenksv85
There is definitely a set of people for whom reducing poverty is not
profitable. Unfortunately in SF you see this coming from a number of non
profit affordable housing developers as well as tenants rights advocates who
are often the loudest voices opposing adding housing supply and even fighting
legislation for density bonuses for developments that include a high
percentage of affordable housing. It took me a really long time to understand
that actually fixing the housing problem inSF would mean that they lose a ton
of government grants and that the executives of these orgs who often make over
200k would all lose their jobs. So it's not just in the private market- it's
definitely the non profit sector too.

------
Overtonwindow
Poverty is profitable to other people. People who are in poverty often have to
depend on services that are overpriced and predatory. From check cashing
services, and payday lenders, to not being able to go to a grocery store where
prices are better, but instead depending on smaller stores of convenience
where the prices are often higher. The lottery depends on those in poverty.
Sometimes I think even the police and city governments depend on people in
poverty to pay a large portion of fines.

~~~
hotshothenry
Of course they do. IMO towing (especially here in SF where the price for
getting your car towed is astronomical relatively speaking), lottery, all
those types of gov't fines are really just a tax on the poor. If you're well
off you don't really give a damn about getting your car towed a fee here and
there, besides the inconvenience, but for someone who depends on their rinky-
dink car to get to and from work, getting towed and having to pay a fee that
is in some cases equivalent to the value of the car itself basically just
fucks their entire life up.

~~~
Overtonwindow
I agree completely on the towing. On the one hand I think the entire process
of towing is rigged and corrupt, but on the other, I think it's enforcement is
completely uneven and absolutely targets low income people.

------
zw123456
There is an old saying that "if you took all the money away from all the rich
people, and spread it around evenly to everyone else, within 2 or 3 years, all
the formerly rich would be rich again having taken advantage of the poor who
don't know how to make and keep money". This adage, although heartless to be
sure, has some degree of truth to it in my view. The problem is twofold, 1) a
lot of people become rich not because they are so smart but because the lack
compunction, that is, they feel no remorse for taking advantage of someone
else 2) people who come out of poverty often lack the skills to know how to
improve their situation, such as a lack of business skills, money management
and etc., not having had good role models. In my view, the role of the
government should be to check the first, that is to insure that some are not
taking advantage too much, obviously this is a far to complex issue to even
begin to cover here, but I am just touching on the gist, the second is to lend
help to those in poverty through education and training assistance. The third
component is of course, the well to do who are willing and able to help and do
(e.g. the Gates and others). Thank you for the excellent thought provoking
post and many good comments so far.

~~~
herbetdangerbri
> they feel no remorse for taking advantage of someone else

I don't understand what it means 'to take advantage of someone else' in the
context of this thread.

Is Starbucks taking advantage of me when I want a coffee by selling me a
coffee?

Is Elton John taking advantage of my desire to see him play live at my party
and the fact that there is only one of him by charging me a million dollars to
appear?

Are the bus companies taking advantage of my need to get to work when they
sell me a ticket?

I don't get where normal economic transactions and supply and demand becoming
'taking advantage' or 'exploitation'.

~~~
gear54rus
Well that's pretty easy.

The most obvious form comes from the good old (bs) saying that 'the real price
is what the buyer is ready to pay' (feel free to correct me here as to actual
form of that).

Hiking up price to a drug (the shkreli story) would be an exploitation and not
a 'normal economic transaction'.

So would be buying time of some poor workers in China for a dime. And then
selling what they make on a 10x margin and pocketing it. There's nothing
economic about that, its plain old theft (or deceit, whatever you want to call
it).

There are more subtle forms, like apple spreading bs about their products
being 'the best' and them having a 'vision' and then some uninformed fella
buying stuff they make when its sometimes twice the price for objectively
comparative product. Like always the devil is in the details.

This is all highly endorsed by the 'greed is good' model and it won't stop
until we denounce it. No amount of government regulations can change it,
snakes will always find a way. It's all in people's heads.

~~~
axelfreeman
But the decision to buy this overpriced shit is made by the people and not buy
the companys. This seams like bad decisions if you have not that much money or
want to spent it better.

The real problem are systems where rich people doen't have to buy so much
taxes of automated productions or property.

------
Animats
US housing has become much more expensive as a fraction of income since WWII.
As the article points out, the big problem in the Great Depression was food,
not housing. In 1950, most people in apartments in NYC were paying about 10%
of their income for rent. Now, 60% in NYC, about 30% nationally.

Why is this?

Some of it is tax policy. Tax policy is very favorable to property owners. Not
only can landlords deduct mortgage interest and depreciate over 27.5 years,
when someone buys an old building, they can depreciate it all over again.

Antitrust law doesn't seem to be applied to rental property. In some smaller
cities, there are only a few big landlords.[1]

Given the current low cost of borrowing, rental housing prices should have
dropped. But they haven't.

[1]
[http://people.oregonstate.edu/~emersonp/rentcontrol/rc2.pdf](http://people.oregonstate.edu/~emersonp/rentcontrol/rc2.pdf)

~~~
sokoloff
Depreciation of rental buildings (the land is excluded) is just a tax timing
issue and reduces the basis in the property, so it's eventually recovered via
recapture.

The paper you cite _takes as an assumption_ a monopoly of landlords. It does
not prove that's the case. "It should be clarified that our model here is one
where...landlords have monopolistic power. ... We do not claim that this case
is in any way closer to the reality of the housing market than the perfect
competition assumption."

------
jdietrich
The thesis is transparently false. While the deprivations of poverty may be
_exacerbated_ by exploitative business practices, they are self-evidently
_caused_ by a lack of income. Software developers in San Francisco or lawyers
in NYC may complain about high rents, but they are not impoverished by those
rents. Someone living on $733/mo of SSI remains poor even if their rent is
free.

The author mentions a significant root cause in the first paragraph - de-
industrialisation. Like so many other American cities, Milwaukee was
relatively prosperous before the collapse of the manufacturing industry.

Improved regulation of the rental market would be a minor improvement at best.
It's wishful thinking to imagine that poverty could be fixed quickly and at
negligible cost to the taxpayer. The problems of poverty are systemic and so
are the solutions - better welfare provision, better education, better support
for job creation. If we wish to see an end to poverty, we must be willing to
pay for it.

~~~
mychael
This reads to me as "People have no money because they have no money", which
is tautological.

~~~
superuser2
It's a little more than that: focusing on the expense side is useless, nothing
is going to help much besides increasing income.

------
timedoctor
I have over 15 houses that I rent to low income people. It's very difficult.
Not at all a method of getting rich as claimed in the article. Constant
problems with collections, problems with repairs and maintenance (given that
the properties are old and were not well maintained).

I bought these 15 houses after the crash in 2008 as I thought it was the best
investment possible with fantastic returns. IN fact I would have been WAY
better off buying ONE house in the bay area and renting it to one well off
person. I would have made a whole lot more in net rent and in capital gain.

So I think the premise of this article is completely wrong in the majority of
cases. Renting to poor people is extremely difficult and a very easy way to
lose money. Many states in the US are very favorable to tenants and not
favorable to landlords. You also have to pay taxes, insurance.

Seriously if it was that easy everyone would do it. I thought it was an easy
way to make money and I was wrong. Not horribly wrong as I did buy the
properties very cheap, but still, not an easy way to make money.

------
no2empire
The profitability of poverty is foundational to how capitalism works. Workers
work, heirs do not. How do heirs manage to expropriate wealth workers create
during their surplus labor time? The answer is the reserve army of labor -
keep people unemployed or underemployed as a level to use against those who do
work.

One sign of this is that unemployment did not even exist several centuries ago
in any kind of manner - all those who were capable (except again, those on top
expropriating wealth created during worker's surplus labor time) worked.

This is openly discussed in the business press, like this
([http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_44/b3653163.htm](http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_44/b3653163.htm)
) BusinessWeek article "When is the jobless rate too low?" It's not a secret
that those who control production are working to create unemployment, poverty
etc. It's a foundation of the current economic system.

------
Tycho
_Tobin Charney makes $400,000 a year out of his 131 trailers, some of which
are little better than hovels._

That sounds about right to me... I doubt anyone would consider it worth the
hassle leasing 131 trailers if the income was say 100k.

------
minikites
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they
managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus
allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an
affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then
leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those
were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so
thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the
feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could
afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry
in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would
have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have
wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

~~~
gammarator
Barbara Erenreich's book "Nickled and Dimed" [1] is a good illustration of how
lack of cash forces the working poor to make economically sub-optimal choices.

An example will suffice: without the savings needed to put down a security
deposit for an apartment, you are forced to leave in cheap motels (absent
options like living with others or in a shelter), even though the monthly rate
is higher. There's no kitchen in those motels and you may be working multiple
jobs, which limits your ability to cook nutritious food and eat cheaply. And
the cycle continues.

Some of the stories in George Packer's "The Unwinding" [2] emphasize how
narrow the margin of error is. Everyone makes poor choices from time to time;
those with resources (financial & social) can weather them.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-
America/dp/03...](http://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-
America/dp/0312626681/) [2] [http://www.amazon.com/Unwinding-Inner-History-
New-America/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Unwinding-Inner-History-New-
America/dp/0374534608/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
And Scratch Beginning by Adam Shepard is a good illustration of how a hard
working person can work his way from homeless to middle class in under a year.

[http://amzn.to/1RZZHhf](http://amzn.to/1RZZHhf)

There are apparently good choices and bad - Erenreich illustrates how making
the bad choices keeps you poor, while Shepard illustrates how making the good
choices can you out of poverty.

~~~
tamana
Indeed, being young, male, healthy, educated, and white is a great way to
bootstrap out of poverty.

------
megan42
I think this problem is much bigger than people realize in the US because
homeless women and children are rarely visible. Couch surfing, going from
shelter to shelter. When I was three my mom lost her job (she was assaulted at
work and pushed the man back). We lived in a tent in friends' yards, then in a
park with a space heater running in out tent. We weren't tripping on the
street but transitioning back to employment was harder and harder the longer
my mom had no address. That was in the 80s. The 20th Century was about
capitalism vs. Communism. How can we feed and protect people in our society? I
think the 21st century question, with increasing productivity and abundance,
is how can we NOT? I don't think small business owners are the problem, in
real estate or elsewhere. We need a living wage, welfare. We have to be smart
enough to make it work.

------
grecy
Of course it profitable, which is why we have things like minimum wage - if
WalMart et. al. could, they would pay 3 cents an hour, or even better consume
peoples living and eating and entire lives like factories in China.

At some point the governments in developed countries have stepped in to set
some kind of limit on what's "reasonable".

IMHO, they're not doing enough in America right now, the enormous social
divide is showing that to us clearly. Developed countries that have stronger
laws have less people in severe poverty, because the government forces the
wealthy to distribute their wealth.

~~~
orangecat
_if WalMart et. al. could, they would pay 3 cents an hour_

Sure. Of course they can't, because most of the time even poor people have
other options. Also WalMart has in fact supported raising the minimum wage,
which is either a virtuous act of corporate responsibility or an attempt to
increase the burden on their competitors.

 _because the government forces the wealthy to distribute their wealth_

I just finished my taxes. Quite a bit of my wealth is being "distributed",
unfortunately mostly to well-off retired people and on bombs to drop on the
Middle East.

~~~
grecy
> _Sure. Of course they can 't, because most of the time even poor people have
> other options._

If there were no laws, every company would do this, and there wouldn't be
other option.

You think people work in factories in China for $0.50/day even though they
have an option to make a good wage?

> _Quite a bit of my wealth is being "distributed"_

Not nearly as much as if you lived in another developed country, where your
money would be paying for healthcare for all, higher education for all, etc.
etc.

~~~
brbsix
What you've just said is pretty much identical to "if there were no laws,
every company would charge $1 million for every product and there wouldn't be
another option".

Do you realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds?

You really think the only thing preventing a company from paying employees
$0.03/hr is a law? Minimum wage in SF is $12.25. By your logic, I should
expect every employer to pay no more than $12.25/hr. Why do I not see this?

~~~
grecy
My "logic" is real, not theory.

Without laws, there are people making $0.50/day and the air is not breathable
in China.

------
greglindahl
When I was in high school, I wrote an inventory-control system for a rent-to-
own business, which rented TVs and furniture to poor people. It was an
extremely exploitative business, and 100% of their customers would have been
better off doing without & saving up some money for 4-6 months to buy a used
or new whatever. I'm now ashamed that I didn't walk out the minute I figured
out how the business worked.

------
stegosaurus
The headline here is a bit odd - it seems self-evident.

If we define the poor as a group which relies on regular labour to survive,
and the wealthy as a group who does not, then many income sources of the
wealthy dry up if the poor cease to exist.

One fairly obvious example is renting. The existence of a rental market is not
undesirable. People will always want to live in a place temporarily, as a
trial, as a holiday, as a stepping stone. But I'd imagine a huge majority of
the rental market exists solely because the tenants either cannot afford, or
have too little financial security to risk a mortgage.

More broadly, the cost of labour is reduced by the existence of poverty. The
minimum wage is an attempt to alleviate this - in a world without poverty, a
minimum wage would be unnecessary.

The question is whether we can do better. Axiomatically wealth inequality is
good for those on top, at least in a direct sense.

~~~
ultramancool
Wealth inequality is good for all in a lot of ways, so I hate it when people
talk about it like it's an inherently bad thing. If someone does something
amazing and unique, they should be able to profit from it.

Think about a world with perfect wealth equality and you'd have the opposite
sort of problems - like it or not, capitalism and yes, wealth inequality have
brought more people out of poverty than any other system in the history of the
planet. More of those poor people in 1st world countries are fighting to pay
for high end smartphones than to pay for food these days. It's far from black
and white, but China is an amazing recent example of this. Going from an
agricultural nation of the dirt poor to a highly industrialized nation with a
decent middle class in the span of a few decades.

[http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-
pr...](http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-
prosperity/world-poverty/#declining-global-poverty-share-of-people-living-in-
extreme-poverty-1820-2015-max-roserref)

~~~
jpetso
I think the question we should ask ourselves is not how to eliminate
inequality, but what baseline level of services and opportunities we want to
give people at any stage in their life, regardless of their competitiveness
and productivity, including when they're otherwise poor and a net drain on
society.

In other words, is stable housing a basic right or is it a luxury? If it's a
basic right (and/or a net positive if it gives people the chance to bootstrap
themselves into higher earnings), then we should strive to increase the reach
and quality of tax-funded government housing programs - together with other
baseline programs, such as public education, social services, etc. Or if
you're a small-government person, substitute "tax-funded" with "charitable"
and make it dependent on individuals' goodwills.

If it's a luxury then the status quo seems acceptable - markets need to be
able to pick their customers, and baseline services are losing products unless
the "exploitative" pricing makes up for it.

Abolishing inequality isn't desirable at all, but the range of inequality
doesn't have to go from 0 to billionaire. We can provide a baseline that still
leaves enough incentive for people to work their way up but is decent enough
to live with dignity, greater than 0. Soviety provides some of that today.
Discuss where to draw that line and who, taxpayer or otherwise, can provide
it. A functioning society is never completely equal or completely without
minimum support, always somewhere in between.

~~~
sokoloff
If the top end is short of "billionaire", I think you get a world without
Tesla, Space-X, Blue Origin, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and
several other things that I believe are valuable and worthwhile.

You may argue that the cost is too high and that we'd be better off without
those things.

~~~
jahaja
Maybe in a more equal world were people would not be whipped, I mean
"incentivized", into working all the time, a larger portion of the population
would be able to contribute their passions to society than just the elites of
today? Hence maybe surpassing the results of the current aristocratic version
of this.

------
erikb
It's really hard for me to start reading. Yes, there are other reasons for
poverty, and yes people make money out of poor people. But that doesn't really
mean that this reasoning replaces the reason that many poor people don't know
how to handle money, family, friends well enough to keep their head above the
water. And most of the examples they use seem to underline that as far as I
can see.

Poverty has a lot of facettes. Here's one that wasn't even mentioned: Because
you can recognize poor people by their dressing preferences, richer people
give them less opportunity. And there are quite a few opportunities that come
with being at the right party, having the right friend, having the right hobby
(like playing Golf). Poor people aren't at that party. And they don't feel
comfortable in a suit.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
> But that doesn't really mean that this reasoning replaces the reason that
> many poor people don't know how to handle money, family, friends well enough
> to keep their head above the water.

Do you have a citation for this opinion?

Seems you're shifting focus from the concrete cause of poverty, lack of
money/resources, to one of character. The article points out that others
profit from this lack of resources and contribute to that cause of poverty.

Why is it harder to read that than an article that speculates that the poor
are poor because they are shifty and can't balance a checkbook?

~~~
erikb
What I meant to say, sorry for my poor English, was that there isn't one
single reason. Lack of resources is one reason, lack of Guanxi is another,
lack of money management skills is another, lack of a mindest to improve
oneself is one as well, etc. There are also indirect causes, like not going to
the gym, therefore having poorer health, therefore perform worse and spend
more money/time on medical treatments.

Not having a single dimensional problem means you can't resolve one dimension
of the problem and expect the problem to go away. E.g. you give money to a
poor guy, he will still be poor 5 years later, you give education to a poor
guy, he will still be poor 5 years later (if he even accepts it in the first
place).

Hard to read was the article because it assumes this multidimensional problem
to be one dimensional and then argues that the source is not single-dimension
A but single-dimension B. Both is based on an assumption I disagree on,
despite all the details possibly being correct.

------
OJFord
Everything is profitable to other people.

    
    
        > makes $400k a year renting out 131 trailers
    

So, just over $3kpa each. Not a lot. It only sounds like he's profiting a lot
because nobody would do that unless at scale - i.e. have 131 of them.

At those margins (I don't know what the costs are, but with that little annual
profit per trailer it really doesn't matter) there would be no reason to not
want the poverty-stricken to have more money, other than perhaps an
unwillingness to change business model. The profit margin is just _so_ much
greater on more expensive properties.

~~~
CydeWeys
With 131 properties she probably also has an employee or two to help her
manage and repair them.

My main problem is I just don't see what the alternative is. Any rental
housing needs to be minimally profitable or no one will bother providing it.
That applies at _all_ ends of the pricing spectrum. So if a profit can't even
be made, what is the alternative? Millions of people homeless because there
are no properties rentable at a price they can afford?

~~~
danharaj
You don't see any alternatives because you are not challenging the premise of
private property enforced by a state. That is a very strong assumption that
precludes most possibilities. And state property is just a degenerate form of
private property where one entity owns everything.

~~~
CydeWeys
So what exactly are you proposing then? If no one can own anything then the
best available will be little more than tents; think nomadic hunter-gatherer
societies.

~~~
danharaj
That's an incredible statement, what's your support for it?

~~~
CydeWeys
How about you answer one of my questions before you ask me yet another one.
What exactly are you proposing if neither people nor government are allowed to
own property? I'm not aware of any such scheme in all of modern civilization.
The onus is on you to explain.

~~~
tamana
Land-Value Tax. Landlord makes money by improving the land and providing
services to residents, not by merely owning land in perpetuity. Land is common
wealth.

~~~
CydeWeys
So I'll admit that personally I'm intrigued by land-value tax, but it's not an
answer to the other guy's question. He was precluding all public and private
land ownership. There can't be taxes on land of any kind if no one owns
anything and no ownership is enforced.

~~~
undersuit
Why can't there be taxes on land and no ownership? You can't tax land use? Are
all the shelters floating above the land? No records?

What's the problem that makes taxing land with no ownership untenable?

~~~
CydeWeys
There wouldn't be any shelters on unowned land because it would be foolish to
improve it if anyone could take your improvements from you at a moment's
notice. Now you need a government to enforce exclusive use of the land by a
given person, and guess what, that's ownership.

~~~
undersuit
But you're paying taxes on the shelter. Your shelter.

If someone takes your improvement from you that's theft. We have laws
regarding theft in most countries do we not?

~~~
CydeWeys
If something can be stolen from you, then you own it. You're trying to have it
both ways by playing with semantics.

A land value tax charges taxes for owning land. Now you're saying that it
wouldn't be taxes on the land, but rather, taxes on improvements. Then it's no
longer a land value tax at all then. The whole point of a land-value tax is
that the tax reflects the potential value of the land, regardless of any
improvements that might be on it, e.g. the Empire State Building or a flat
parking lot would owe the same amount of LVT in midtown Manhattan. What you
are proposing is a regular property tax, which does take improvements into
account.

~~~
undersuit
I didn't say the shelter was being taxed for value. The shelter is on land.
You pay taxes on the land. Ergo, you're paying taxes for the shelter. The only
reason you'll probably want to continue paying taxes on the land is because
you have a shelter there.

>If something can be stolen from you, then you own it.

Right, you have been grant the right to use the land as long as you pay the
taxes, which you may or may not have built a shelter on. You also own the
shelter. You don't own the land.

~~~
CydeWeys
So you're proposing the exact same system that we have now, working in the
same way, except that you aren't calling it ownership for some reason, even
though being granted the exclusive right to use land by the governemnt, and
paying taxes on said land, is what ownership is.

I just don't think that you've thought any of this through, or that you have a
coherent image in your mind as to what you're proposing, or how it's different
in any way from the status quo.

~~~
undersuit
What's the problem that makes taxing land with no ownership untenable?

------
lifeisstillgood
What shines through here is a lesson not only America has never learnt , but
one we in the UK are fast forgetting - social policies _work_

The social safety net is pretty simple. Bob, A healthy worker is made
unemployed, they can either take state assistance and find work 6 months
later, leading to another 30 years of tax revenue, or let them default on
mortgage, spiral into poverty and no tax. Now extend that so Bob needs six
months rehab.

Housing built, owned and managed by the state (or so closely regulated it may
as well be) has been a cornerstone of the social safety net. This article
underlines that.

------
ps4fanboy
Wealth isnt about money, its a measure of your ability to buy other peoples
time. Until every person on this planet cant afford to buy more of other
peoples time than they sell to others you will have lower class, middle class,
upper class.

------
personjerry
One thing I find interesting about the current state of affairs is that the
top 1% own more than 50% of the world's wealth. Which means that on average if
a person just up and decided to not recognize money and property in the
current system, they would in theory come up ahead. Now, this might sound
technical and perhaps unrealistic, but if this level of wealth inequality
continues, then one day enough people (i.e. a significant majority of the
people in the world) will realize that they gain a lot just by shrugging off
the chains put on them through social conventions, such as the current
implementations of money. They can refuse to work and demand changes, and it
seems like there wouldn't be any way to pacify that many people except by
catering to them and allowing some sort of income equality. Just an
interesting, theoretical thought.

~~~
randyrand
Much of that wealth is held in things that inherently have value.

Homes will still have value. Cars. Gold. Ect. So you're saying to just steal
it all from their owners? What a novel concept.

~~~
personjerry
I might argue that "inherent" isn't as inherent as it really seems to be, in
terms of "monetary value". (But I agree that there is value in the utility of
the vehicle, and that leads me to the second point.)

Indeed in this sort of anarchy I might go so far as to argue that property
should also be redistributed. While this sounds like stealing, if we might be
a little crazy and "open-minded", we might think in the sense that some people
always unfairly make more money, redistributing their property isn't as much
"stealing" as "making fair". Of course, this is all in a crazy theoretical
situation. :)

~~~
randyrand
> we might think in the sense that some people always unfairly make more money

Some people also very _fairly_ make more money and work their butts off for
it, sacrificing along the way.

What do you say to those people?

I enjoy your hypotheticals tho.

------
Animats
Another way poverty is profitable is that the existence of a hungry underclass
helps to keep wages down in low-end jobs. Back when the US had welfare, some
employers complained they had trouble filling low-paying jobs.

------
jetskindo
Here is a place that sucks the money out of the poor for no particular
benefit: check cashings.

You cash your check for a good percentage of it. If they had a bank account
they wouldn't need to spend that money. I don't know how it is in other states
but the last time I opened a bank account in California it was a pain. The
amount of information needed is certainly not possible for a huge chunk of
people.

~~~
a_bonobo
Australia has another business model that is predatory on the poor: home
appliance renting.

The dole payment isn't large enough to afford the price of a washing machine -
but it is enough to afford the rent for one. Of course in the end you'll wind
up paying much more than the outright buy price, but you can't help it, you
can't afford to buy the machine.

(Of course these places rent out much more than the "needed" appliances, you
can also get fitness equipment, Playstations etc.)

~~~
brndn
US has something similar called Rent-A-Center.

------
coldtea
What if? That's the whole idea of it. It's what keeps highly profitable (to
the employee) jobs churning...

Nobody would work in the conditions needed for diamond extraction or sweatshop
clothing making for example, if it wasn't for dire poverty.

~~~
Snargorf
Sure they would. People will do almost any job, if they're paid enough.

This is why military contractors in war zones, Arctic crab fishermen, and
prostitutes make a lot of money.

This is econ 101; supply and demand. You know it too. You're (presumably) not
impoverished, but you'd work in diamond extraction or a clothing sweatshop, if
you were paid enough.

~~~
pdkl95
> if you were paid enough

I've always liked the idea that you should never turn down an offer or
request. Instead, you should _name your price_. Sometimes that price might be
functionally equivalent to turning down the offer, but there's always a tiny
chance that someone might agree to your (probably laughably unreasonable)
terms.

(I should really watch The Magic Christian again)

~~~
coldtea
Or watch the Indecent Proposal:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107211/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107211/)

------
edko
Being from a country where we have suffered populist governments who "defend
the poor" by increasing their numbers, I am convinced that this is very true.
Instead of creating jobs and improving education, they give handouts to the
poor, and their number has dramatically increased. These jobless people depend
on the handouts, so their vote is guaranteed to go to the populist party. In
my country, this technique has been used effectively since 1946.

~~~
tamana
If this system worked so effectively to its ends, why is bill gates so wealthy
and not taxed away?

~~~
sickbeard
Personal income tax isn't based on how wealthy you are. It's based on how much
income you earned during the year.

------
CullingTheHerd
Hmmmm, do I really want to put myself through the painful experience of
reading HN comments about "the problem of poverty"?

Pass.

------
jonny_eh
Shocking! Landlords are wealthier than their tenants. I would think this is
true not just of trailer parks, but also downtown condos.

How dare these landlords take vacations… in Jamaica!

------
partycoder
Academic journal publishers force academics to constantly go through paywalls,
putting massive restrictions to scientific research.

Walmart and other companies pays employees the bare minimum, forcing them to
go on welfare and boycott their right to form unions and defend themselves.

Pharmaceutical companies do fake studies as well as tricks to extend patents
and prevent people from benefiting from affordable drugs.

Healthcare disproportionally overcharges people. 500 dollars for a bag of
water with salt.

Food industry adds sugar to all foods knowing sugar poses health risks,
because sugar is addictive and keeps people coming back to their products.
They also lobby to prevent proper labeling of sugar in food.

Companies sell garbage food to kids in schools like pizzas and hotdogs,
knowing it's ruining generations of people.

You get the idea...

------
kdamken
Let's do some basic math - she makes $400,000 a year, on 131 units. 400,000 /
131 / 12 = $254 a month per unit. That's really not a ton of money for each
one. $254 for your own place to live isn't a bad deal.

Additionally, when they say she makes $400k a year - is this her take home, or
her business's gross profit? Are they considering the money she has to spend
on mortgages, insurance, repairs, business administration, rent collection,
legal fees, etc?

A holiday in Jamaica is something most middle class people can and often do
afford, even lower middle class. You can get a trip to an all inclusive for a
week with airfare for $1000, maybe even less.

~~~
undersuit
I like how you first do the math to show how cheap these units are. "It's a
bargain!"

Then you wonder it the $400k is gross profit or revenue. Wouldn't it be useful
to know if the units were being rented for $254 a month or if the owner was
renting them at rates that would generate in excess of $254 a month in
revenue?

------
alanwatts
>And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions
about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in
life's marketplace. (Yes) But one day we must come to see that an edifice
which produces beggars needs restructuring...Now, when I say questioning the
whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that _the problem of racism,
the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied
together._ (All right) These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

-MLK, Where Do We Go From Here? 1967

~~~
fucking_tragedy
It's too bad that MLK was assassinated before he demonstrated and spoke
prolifically from this platform.

His previous successes would have given the credence and momentum to actually
get somewhere.

------
vorg
> The standard measure is that your rent should be no more than 30% of your
> income, but for poor people it can be 70% or more. [...] Money from
> government programmes intended to help the poor – welfare, disability
> benefits, the earned-income tax credit – go straight into the landlord’s
> pocket and, ironically, fuel rising housing costs.

In these types of economies (the US, Australia, etc), a Universal Basic Income
would just make rents go up, just like easy 95% equity loans made house prices
go up.

------
jeffdavis
I expected the article to detail a list of profiteers, but the examples cited
just don't seem very compelling.

And the story isn't really complete unless it somehow connects to powerful
people pulling the strings to keep the money rolling. A small time landlord is
probably not friends with senator.

So who exactly is the villain here?

------
clavalle
>The main condition holding them back, Desmond argues, is rent.

This is a symptom. The main condition is that they have to bargain with their
life (or physical suffering) on the balance for nearly everything including
rent.

When the choice is pay rent you can't afford or live on the street (a severe
risk to one's life) then you will pay whatever you are able.

The same goes for selling their time for less than it is worth for decades at
a time. It is either that or die or be in pain. This is also very profitable
for the parties on the other side of the equation.

This seems like the defining feature of poverty and why it is worth fighting.
When people are not bargaining with their life on the line, they will make
decisions to improve their lot rather than to merely lose less.

------
lyqwyd
This is a very poorly reasoned article. First it frames the options as either
poor people are lazy, or rich people are exploiting them into poverty. There
are many possible causes of poverty, other than either option.

The title is also ridiculous. Yes, in a market driven economy, some people are
going to make a profit off of poor people, but that's true for every economic
level. As far as I'm concerned that's only a problem when it's exploitative.

The premise is that landlords are keeping them down through rent, but that is
BS as well. There are many voucher programs, and those that receive them don't
miraculously escape from poverty.

I'm not opposed to providing housing subsidies for those in poverty
conditions, but it is not the cause of poverty.

------
known
Most politicians doesn't want you to prosper; They fear you'll vote for your
CONSCIENCE in elections;

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_selling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_selling)

Most
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)
doesn't want you to prosper; They fear you'll dilute their HEGEMONY in the
society;

If we dwell deep higher social class exhibits increased UNETHICAL behaviour

[http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109)

------
bsbechtel
There is a line of thinking by many in this thread that if two parties enter
into a transaction, and one party has significantly more wealth than the other
party, the party with significantly more wealth is automatically guilty of
exploiting the party with less wealth, regardless of how said wealth was
accumulated. While this may be the case in a small number of transactions, it
forgoes the assumption that one is innocent until proven guilty. It also isn't
really a productive line of thought in trying to find a solution...assuming
guilt/exploitation by those who are better off than us does not make us any
better off.

------
tim333
The arguments in the article seem a bit of a muddle. Fair enough landlords
make money from renting to poor people but they also make money renting to
rich people and are probably not the main cause of the poverty.

Most laws and government policies that affect poverty have trade offs -
subsidise education and someone has to pay for it and so on. And tennant's
rights come into that - laws that favour renters at the expense of landlords
will probably be lobbied against by landlords though that's a bit removed from
the arguments in the article and affects wealthy renters as well as poor ones.

------
flubert
What if more people read "Games People Play" by Eric Berne?

[http://www.ericberne.com/games-people-play/](http://www.ericberne.com/games-
people-play/)

------
facepalm
Already the first paragraph annoys me to no end because it claims "What if the
problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re lazy and
impulsive and irresponsible and have no family values – or that they lack the
skills and smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy?", implicitly
claiming that is the common way to think about the poor. That is just nonsense
(yes you can surely find people who think that way, but not serious
economists, journalists or policy makers). Didn't read on...

------
ageofwant
ABC (Australian Broadcast Corporation) has a taxpayer funded show that
explains consumers what their right are:
[http://www.abc.net.au/tv/thecheckout/](http://www.abc.net.au/tv/thecheckout/)

Its very entertaining and highly recommended. The first episode has a segment
about people that rent appliances because they cannot afford them, and the
companies that exploit them. Eye opening and infuriating.

------
educar
So, I thought the question was obvious and answer is a resounding 'yes'. Many
elections are won by keeping people poor and in many of those countries
politicians hand out freebies. This is also the case for non-goverments. It is
in the best interests of the middle class to have a working poor population
because one can offload chores (like house work, car driver) to the poor at a
cheap cost.

------
dataker
There's a single problem with Right vs Left debates: they can't understand the
other's point.

1) The Right can't recognize there's a problem with contemporary elites ("They
Deserved it"). Poverty is all about the government.

2) The Left can't recognize the government plays a role on this . Inequality
is all about greedy rich people.

~~~
cylinder
There's overall a huge problem of lack of nuance in the national conversation
in America.

In response to the overwhelming vastness and complexity of this country,
debate has degraded into simple truisms yelled at the TV.

Even in immigration - you're either "let everyone in and legalize all the
aliens!!!" or "deport everyone and build a wall!"

------
danharaj
What if Marx was right?

~~~
unclebucknasty
That's actually a thoughtful comment, irrespective of whether one "agrees with
communism". Not sure why it's being downvoted.

~~~
tim333
Presumably amongst the 50 volumes of Marx/Engels Collected Works he was right
in some places and wrong in others.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Presumably, a better approach to downvoting would be to explore the works in
context.

~~~
tim333
I didn't downvote myself and also have no intention to further explore the
works - awful vague pompous stuff that they seem to be from the few pages I've
read.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Well, that must be the most concise summary of their work in history.

------
tomcam
I believe they're looking in the wrong place for villains. The poverty
industrial complex that starts right in the walls of the federal government is
a great place to start. Why not just cut checks to the needy? The government
burns up at least half of it in bureaucracy.

------
bufordsharkley
"The beggar is the necessary supplement to the millionaire." \- Henry George,
as paraphrased by Tolstoy.

Ever since I first saw Henry George's ideas, I can't stop seeing it
everywhere; there's a very real difference between the return to rent than for
other capital or labor.

~~~
bufordsharkley
For more information, check out Geolibertarianism[1], though Henry George's
writings are lucid, rigorous, and energetically written. Progress and Poverty
is the best place to start.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism)

------
iofj
These discussions always end up the same way. We don't know a solution to the
problem of poverty, so people advocate just using the government to force a
solution to the problem.

This won't work. Now don't get me wrong : that doesn't mean you can't make it
work through investment for a while, potentially even a long while. But you
can't make it work over long periods of time.

The only way to solve poverty is to find something for huge numbers of
unskilled labour to do that's economically positive (ie. makes a profit for
whoever is the boss). That can last. And yes, we'll have to do it again, and
again, and again.

Now should we use the government to bridge people over between jobs ? To help
them out in periods where their economic utility is low ? In my opinion
absolutely. But we should NOT make the mistake to assume that this can be
anything but a very temporary measure.

------
force_reboot
_What if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? What if the problem
isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re lazy and impulsive and
irresponsible and have no family values – or that they lack the skills and
smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy? What if the problem is
that poverty is profitable?_

Let me rephrase these biased questions with the opposite bias (well actually I
think my version is fair...):

"What if the leftist discourse on poverty is just wrong? What if the problem
isn't greedy capitalist profiteers tricking the downtrodden out of their hard
earned money? What if the problem was a self-perpetuating cycle where short
term lack of resources lead to the inability to make long term plans, or take
advantage of opportunities? What if changes in the technology and the economy
meant that skills and education are required that large sections of the
population do not have?"

------
wernerbrosna
What do you mean by "what if"? It's like asking what if 1+1=2?

~~~
ageofwant
Is that for large values of 1 ?

------
randyrand
This article conveniently forgets that US poverty is still incredibly rich by
any other standard.

Nearly everyone in the US is just a different degree of rich - trailer park
residents included.

------
sjg007
Of course it is. Walmart has employees who require food stamps.

------
veeragoni
Then they will try to create more poverty to solve it. its "in Human". So, if
someone might not be part of poverty, now be part of it!

------
baxter001
What's the old joke? Poverty is a symptom of wealth.

~~~
yourapostasy
Iaian Banks' take on it: Money is a sign of poverty.

------
awqrre
At first, when people are getting poorer, it is probably more profitable then
in the long term (if nobody can spend money, how can it be profitable).

~~~
zanny
That is macro vs microeconomics. A business today cannot function in the
market behaving morally for the good of society when all its competition is
maximizing exploitation even the end result is the destruction of the consumer
base they rely on.

The point is to take as much of the cargo as you can and jump ship just before
it catches fire and hope to make it out safe at this point, considering the
predatory behavior of capitalists in almost every industry and market
nowadays.

------
zaro
"What if"? It definitely is profitable for some people ... Without poverty yhe
modern slavery won't even exist ...

------
INTPenis
The trick is to not just leave them poor, but leave them poor and employed.
Then you have cheap labor.

------
pmarreck
See if you can model the problem mathematically/computationally.

------
draw_down
Boy oh boy, that "what if" is really saying a mouthful.

------
sksixk
this is a cultural/ethical/social issue. not an economic one. you can't have
the rich without the poor.

------
calinet6
Ugh, this thread is disgusting.

The problem is complex and takes no sides. The poor are unskilled with money
because of their environment, upbringing, relationships, and situation; and
also because of inherent features. The rich are rich because of their luck,
circumstances, upbringing, and situation; and also because of inherent
features. The combinations of all of those factors and the interaction between
them defines the problem, not any one aspect. This you must understand first.

So yes, absolutely, one of the problems of poverty is that it's profitable to
other people; because the poor are powerless to stop it, and the rich are
powerful and easily take advantage to the extent they can under their laws and
morals. That is the reality, and arguing otherwise reveals our collective
_immaturity_ in terms of understanding systems and complexity—the true root
cause of our unfair and unbalanced society. Instead of seeing reality, we are
often limited by our human capacity and biases that don't help us understand
the world—much less respond to in a constructive way.

So let's talk about the systems that influence us all—the article is about one
of those systemic problems, and it's fascinating and evidential. It's a good
discussion, and it's the right one to have, and I'm always sad that
discussions of poverty or inequality devolve into talk of individuals and what
they should or should not do. Let's keep our eye on the ball and talk about
the whole, and the productive construction of a society that works better.

~~~
llamataboot
I find that Americans are still woefully illiterate when it comes to
understanding not only how systems and structures shape outcomes, but also
shape selves/consciousness. The myth of the separate individual self is
arguably pretty deeply embedded across the West, but when I go to Greece for
example, there is no across the board denial of the effects of systems and
structures, partially because they have become impossible to ignore for the
majority of the populace, but also because the United States is still a deeply
religious and irrational country (in very good and bad ways) and one of its
religions (perhaps its greatest) is the religion of the "Free Individual".

There is also something about an empathic gap that exists primarily because of
both the way poverty is racialized in the United States, but also in how it is
/spatialized/. Poor people are seen as the other, because they are the other
-- it is very rare that a city in the United States has places where people of
all classes (and all races) mingle together. There is much less "public space"
in the US as a whole (exception, a city like NYC where literally everyone
rides the subway together, even if they are going to different stops) so it is
much easier to rationalize systemic outcomes as some kind of inherent failure
of the other.

------
rebootthesystem
Poverty is valuable to politicians. Extremely valuable. If you understand
Spanish I urge you listen to what Gloria Alvarez has been saying now for many
years:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYEXS16dZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYEXS16dZA)

Latin America has been waking up to the realities of Populism. This, to a
large extent, due to Gloria quite literally risking her life to speak-up and
educate the populous about such topics.

In the above lined speech she delivers a line that is right on point
(translated):

"Populism loves the poor so much it multiplies them".

That, right there, is the root of much of the evil keeping the poor down.

In another passage she reads a definition of Populism penned by another
activist:

"The shortcut through which politicians play with the passions, dreams and
ideals of people by promising what is impossible, taking advantage of their
misery while leaving out logic and reason. It plays with their needs to impose
dictatorships."

You see, in the US, Democrats need poor disenfranchised blacks and hispanics.
Guaranteed votes. And Republicans need poor disenfranchised bible-thumpers and
low education folks. Again, guaranteed votes.

Writing that was disgusting. Yet, it is the truth.

And so, both sides, through Populism, have every incentive to NEVER fix the
problems of the poor. If the poor are elevated it is likely that both sides
would lose votes. Politicians don't want to work hard for votes. They'd rather
promise the impossible and play to your needs and fears and just get you to
vote. Once elected, they drop you on your head.

Want to point a finger at evil? Populism.

All four of the top contenders for the Presidency of the US today are
populists: Clinton, Sanders, Cruz and Trump. They are all playing people like
a finely tuned violin. All of them. Nothing good will come out of electing any
of them. Regrettably, there doesn't seem to be a way out of this one. Not
voting will only play into the hands of whoever promises more free shit and
gets more people to support them.

Poverty isn't hard to fix. First you have to fix the fact that poor people are
far more valuable politically while they stay down and remain poor. Imagine a
political system where politicians are actually rewarded for fixing problems
like poverty. Not sure what that looks like. You'd have to take Populism out
of the equation.

