
Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care - paulpauper
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/08/laziness-isnt-why-people-are-poor-and-iphones-arent-why-they-lack-health-care/
======
VonGuard
For years, my father would say "that guy using the food bank has an iPhone! I
don't have an iPhone, and I'm not poor. How can these people afford iPhones?"

It's a generational thing, especially. iPhones are seen as glamorous luxury
items, not as an essential tool for living. I always remind my father that the
people who have little money but also have iPhones likely don't have a home
phone number, home computer, or Internet service in their house. Their iPhone
is their only connection to the modern digital world: The one asset they have
to get themselves a job, assistance, information. It's arguably one of the
most important items for a person to own, today, right up there with a car.
Without a good phone and a car, people in the US are basically beached on a
shore of unemployment, or low employment, especially in rural towns.

It's incredibly hard for people to get back on the horse when they've fallen
off, economically. Even harder if they never had a horse to begin with. At the
local library, people are constantly coming in to ask for help with digital
literacy problems that affect their lives heavily: paying bills, responding to
emails, seeing pictures of their grandchildren that were sent to their email.
Having a phone with Internet is literally an essential part of modern life,
and the generation that thinks poor people shouldn't have iPhones are the same
ones who generally view all this technology stuff as magical hoo hah. Like my
dad...

~~~
Banthum
iPhones are luxury smartphones.

There are other smartphones that fulfill the same purposes (that you outlined
above) which are much cheaper.

If someone in poverty buys an iPhone instead of a budget alternative, it's an
indicator that they lack a basic ability to evaluate a handful of economic
choices and choose the most appropriate (and thrifty) one. It's the smartphone
equivalent of getting chrome rims on your car wheels.

EDIT: I was disappointed but not surprised that the article didn't even
acknowledge this fact, nor really make a case at all for what it was saying. I
couldn't find any attempt to convince at all in what was written; it was
simply a declaration of how right the author's view is and how obviously
stupidly wrong the concept of someone being responsible for their own outcomes
is.

~~~
CydeWeys
The article addresses this exact form of argument in a manner that I find
compelling:

> There’s one final problem with these kinds of arguments, and that is the
> implication that we should be worried by the possibility of poor people
> buying the occasional steak, lottery ticket or, yes, even an iPhone. Set
> aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal
> Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only
> access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on.
> Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence?
> Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are
> poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?

~~~
Banthum
Doesn't work, though. An iPhone is not an "occasional indulgence".

Fancy chocolates, or a meal at a mid-tier restaurant are an "occasional
indulgence".

An iPhone is a massive class-signaling purchase that requires expensive
ongoing payments to use.

~~~
scaryspooky
Uh, no. Ting supports iPhones and they have $6/mo plus pay as you go. That
isn't an "expensive ongoing payment" at all.

[https://ting.com](https://ting.com)

~~~
vilmosi
Most people buy $200 iPhones with massive monthly bills, at least in the US. I
don't know if that changed yet.

~~~
parenthephobia
Do you think it's possible that most _poor_ people don't do that, though? Who
do you think the $6/mo deals are made for?

~~~
vilmosi
I would have thought poor people are more likely to do that because they can't
afford the upfront cost of the phone.

I mean, I don't have any data, feel free to prove me wrong. But when I was a
poor student, I wouldn't even dream of buying a smartphone outright, yet alone
an iPhone.

And I had a look, those $6/month contracts barely subsidise anything. I don't
really get what's relevant about them.

~~~
scaryspooky
You can buy a used iphone cheap and get ting. As a bare minimum of needing a
phone to get a job anymore this is one of the cheapest options.

------
judah
I work with the poor often, and I think this article is off a bit.

I work with a group of homeless shelters in my job, and my local religious
congregation regularly volunteers at homeless shelters, food shelves, multiple
times a month. And one thing I've found is that while many poor aren't lazy,
some most certainly are. Some people don't want to work.

Here's one example. A man whom I've never met contacted me through my
congregation. He said he had no money for groceries. We met him a few times
and sure enough, he was unemployed and living bare minimum on welfare. So we
helped this guy. I bought him groceries every week for a few months. All the
while, we tried to help him get a job so that he could stand on his own feet.

But what we found is that this particular man always found excuses not to take
a job. It didn't make enough money, it wasn't what I wanted to do, etc.

Eventually, we saw he was merely using our limited resources to live and eat
for free.

When you're living on the charity of others (or the government), it's wrong to
be picky and choosy about employment.

Bottom line: While not all poor are lazy, I'm absolutely convinced that some
poor are poor _because_ they don't want to work. Some are more comfortable
living off the charity of others. And I wish this weren't the case.

~~~
Banthum
Thank you very much for adding some useful experience here.

Obviously there are poor who really don't want to be.

And there are some who really do just refuse to do the basic things one needs
to do to not be poor.

Too many people act like one of these groups can't possibly exist. So many
people seem to think it's evil or unthinkable to even suggest what you're
saying is real to any degree.

It's really just a question of how many.

Considering how well some refugee groups (e.g. Viet boat people) have done
starting from absolutely nothing in America, I'm willing to believe there is a
path up for people willing to take the basic actions required to climb it.

~~~
AstralStorm
The path is getting narrower every day with low skill jobs being centralised
and automated away.

------
shas3
Going against the grain, I don't think Chaffetz meant it literally.

While he may or may not have been taking an extremist Right ideological view
of poverty, the OP article takes another extreme ideological view, that
poverty is inevitable and individuals can do little to avoid it.

While it sounds heartless, I think there is some truth to the assertion that
sound financial choices can lift you up from poverty. Duflo, Banerjee, etc.
from the randomista economists crowd have shown that poor people are sometimes
likely to spend extra cash in suboptimal ways (TV ownership when they need
extra calories, etc.).
[http://economics.mit.edu/files/530](http://economics.mit.edu/files/530)

This includes buying health insurance. That health insurance is too expensive
is unfortunate, and I think GOP earnestly believes that their plan makes it
cheaper for people to buy health insurance. This is not unlike how Obama and
Democrats implemented their healthcare overhaul with the best of intentions,
yet it lead to expensive premiums, etc.

While we are loathe to admit it, poverty is a result of both poor choices and
unavoidable bad-luck. Like the common debate of 'nature vs. nurture', it is
hard to delineate bad-luck and poor-choices as causes leading to poverty.

At the end of the day, we should have compassion and understand that many
things that affect our situation are beyond our control, and yet not be afraid
to consider honestly and objectively, the various causes of poverty.

~~~
Tepix
I guess you missed the part of the article where it explained that the largest
group of poor people are children. Do you think they made poor financial
choices?

And you also missed "Rates of intergenerational income mobility are, in fact,
higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and other
countries in the world than they are here in the United States."

Governments can do a lot to help people get out of poverty. Blaming them isn't
one of them.

~~~
shas3
> I guess you missed the part of the article where it explained that the
> largest group of poor people are children. Do you think they made poor
> financial choices? And you also missed "Rates of intergenerational income
> mobility are, in fact, higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New
> Zealand and other countries in the world than they are here in the United
> States."

Are you suggesting that I am not acknowledging bad-luck (the sole reason for
childhood poverty) as a factor? Because, I do.

As to Germany, Japan, etc. there are many reasons why those countries are
better off. "Germany does this, their poverty is lower, so America should do
this," isn't a valid argument for anything.

> Blaming them isn't one of them.

Blaming them (i.e. chiding them) doesn't serve any purpose. But helping them
modify behavior, educating them, etc. does. The Government should acknowledge
this.

------
M_Grey
The essential problem is that most people can't accumulate, synthesize, and
understand the requisite knowledge to appreciate that fact. We're strongly
limited by our perspectives, which tend to become more rigid with time, just
as we're having maximal influence on the lives of others. We're tribal, we're
competitive, and we find it difficult to relate to distant strangers in vast
numbers.

As a result people eschew the attempt to gain a broad view of the world, and
its history, and instead decide to trust an ideologue, ideology, religion, or
just as likely these days, invent their own bullshit and find others with
similar flavors of crap. "Oh you think the universe is crystals and orgone? Me
too!" "Oh you think that black people smell funny? Me too!" "Oh you think the
moon is an illusion created by God?..."

You get. At the top you have people with enough money and time, power and
education to appreciate these factors. Most of them seem to be in it largely
for themselves, and even those who later come to some kind of humanitarian
spirit do so in a fractional way compared to their total wealth. Exceptions
exist, but they are so rare we all know the names.

Is it any wonder that in a world of such massively "Haves" and brutally "Have-
Nots", that each group invents a largely specious narrative to explain the
actions of the other?

------
revscat
No, but wealthy libertarians with vast amounts of political power believe it.
According to adherents of this belief system, poverty is a symptom of
laziness, full stop, and government can do nothing, and more importantly
_must_ not.

~~~
M_Grey
I doubt that they believe it, as much as they see it as a convenient
philosophy to propagate. It really is the philosophy of the exceedingly short-
sighted, arrogant, or just plain uneducated. You can't have even a passing
knowledge of history and think that philosophy has merit. You could very
easily think it has merit as a cultural sword and shield though.

It's ironic that the people with the resources and power to rapidly alter the
self-destructive course humanity is on, are the most invested in maintaining
that course.

~~~
Banthum
You think the idea that people are generally responsible for their own
outcomes is "exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or just plain uneducated"?

~~~
bigdubs
Much of what determines outcomes is socioeconomic or race based, much less is
determined by hard work or agency.

This honestly is the fundamental difference between conservative and liberal
political ideologies; conservatives feel that they earned their place in
society based on hard work, liberals understand more often than not, that
place was the result of something akin to a lottery, and many people are less
fortunate by no fault of their own.

------
barrkel
If people woke up to how unearned things like intelligence and circumstances
of birth are, and how much they affect life outcomes, they'd be beset with
guilt. Thus it's psychologically imperative that they can blame some other
factor for poor people. They'll pick out one thing, and load it up with all
the meaning.

What particularly disgusts me is judging people for their choice of resource
allocation, for using their very freedom. If a poor person chooses to invest
in a high-end phone, it's probably because they really really want it; because
it will transform their lives more than can easily be appreciated on the
outside. It's the same thing with a luxury meal; being poor doesn't mean you
ought to live on water and gruel for the whole of your life with the aim of
saving a small bundle of cash in case of illness - such a life would hardly be
worth living. Flourishing demands peaks, local maxima of happiness, and to
deny poor people that is almost inhuman.

~~~
AstralStorm
I'd add that this extreme would make them essentially less well off than
ancient slaves most of the time...

"Sure, we banned slavery, but instead you get to live in the same conditions!"

------
peterwwillis
I think the reason people here don't have health care is we don't require and
provide it, and we make it more expensive than any other country.

60 countries have universal health care. Some have a basic national
requirement that all insurance companies are required to cover everyone with
no exceptions, and that for the most basic health insurance they are not
allowed to make a profit, but can offer supplemental plans. Some countries
have a dual models of both state and private insurance providers. Some make
non-elder care private and compulsory while elder care is provided by
taxation. Some require co-pays, some are free. Some are centralized, some
decentralized.

What is clear is that in the majority of modernized countries around the
world, _they figured out how to do universal healthcare a long time ago_ , and
here we are looking like fucking country bumpkins who can't figure out how to
give people a basic public service. One of our many national embarrassments.

------
oculusthrift
one thing I haven't heard mentioned is that a lot of poor people DON'T have
iPhones. they have cheap flip phones with prepaid cards. And guess what? They
still can't afford health care.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's yet another sign that they have no clue about how much healthcare
actually costs (likely having had employer-subsidized coverage before their
cushy Congressional coverage).

I'm on the exchanges, and my family of four pays $2,001/month plus a $4k max
out-of-pocket (that we're guaranteed to hit). That's about three iPhones _a
month_.

------
elonimus
To the arguments focused around "An iphone is a flagship smartphone", please
consider the highly driven narrative of thus..."the iPhone is the only
smartphone". I realise this perspective may appear delusional, but in reality
we enforce immensely strong ideologies...with our silly marketing budgets...
yet we are unable to relate with the precariat all that we have
affected...When we elect a president like this it's, honestly, time for a
thoroughly investigated reality check.

------
resfirestar
Even if it was true that the cost of iPhones and other minor indulgences could
buy a year's worth of quality health insurance (as mentioned in the article,
it's not even close), I'd still have a hard time seeing the Republican side.
My past flirtations with right-libertarianism make it hard to cringe at the
idea that society doesn't have to save people from making bad choices, but
it's not that simple and the Republicans obviously know it. They're trying to
stop a budget review of the Obamacare repeal because they know that the
government, hospitals, people paying insurance premiums, and so on, will see a
sudden increase in the financial burden they bear for ER treatment of people
who lack health insurance (not to mention the wider public health implications
and the complicated cost calculations on that). That's what Obamacare was
really about, and by some standards it was very effective at addressing the
issue. Once again, Republican voters shoot themselves in the foot by cheering
for the poor to suffer.

------
Romanulus
Huh. Colour me controversial, but I always thought it had to do with low IQ,
traumatic childhoods, and not being able to defer gratification, etc.

~~~
M_Grey
That's not controversial at all, about half of the country seems to believe
that. It's just... wrong.

~~~
synicalx
Is it entirely wrong though? Dumb people who impulse buy things aren't poor?

------
jonbarker
America is the land of opportunity; rich people in America took advantage of
the opportunity. Therefore taking advantage of this opportunity can make you
rich. Says nothing about the arguments for the causes of poverty. Also valid
modus ponens but unsound. Also potentially suffering from Hume's "problem with
induction".

~~~
AstralStorm
Opportunity makes opportunity.

As it is now, many low key opportunities have been taken and/or removed, it is
now much harder than ever to break through for an enterprising person - need
much more up front investment.

In the past, you could indeed go from a paperboy to a writer. Try doing it
today.

