
Privatizing Poverty - axiomdata316
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/privatizing-poverty-phillips-fein
======
jernfrost
It should be like in Finland where fines are tied to your income. Poor people
get small fines, rich people get big fines.

That is the most logical as a fine is supoosed to be a deterrent and it does
not deter if you are super rich. It is also supposed to be a fairly mild
punishment so if it is always so high that you can’t pay but have to go to
prison then you are suddenly handing out very severe punishment for minor
infractions.

~~~
humanrebar
There is actually a constitutional right to be free of "cruel and unusual
punishment" in the U.S. Judges just have to start ruling that $250 is cruel
when someone is in poverty.

There is also a right to a "fair and speedy trial". Judges just have to start
ruling that sitting in county jail for six months waiting for trial is
unconstitutional.

~~~
pc86
SCOTUS has already ruled that the death penalty is not cruel and unusual
punishment - more specifically, that since it is not unusual, it is not a
Constitutional violation despite where you feel it falls on the cruelty
spectrum. A common pleas or even circuit court judge can't simply say "lol
whatever I'm going to ignore that." Only SCOTUS can reverse its position on
the Constitutionality of the death penalty.

~~~
dmm
SCOTUS has ruled that the death penalty _is_ cruel and unusual punishment in
many circumstances.

For example, in 1980 they ruled that it could only be applied only if it
involves a precise and aggravating factor[0].

Louisiana had a law that made the rape of a child punishable by death and
SCOTUS overturned that law in 2008[1].

SCOTUS has consistent narrowed the crimes punishable by death in the past 50
years using the Eighth Amendment as a justification.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States#Supreme_Court_narrows_capital_offenses)

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

~~~
deusofnull
Just look at the number of executions of people with mental handicaps and tell
me the current justice system is capable of acting in a just fashion.
[https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/list-defendants-mental-
retardat...](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/list-defendants-mental-retardation-
executed-united-states)

~~~
bobwaycott
The parent has not made such a claim.

------
nateburke
Awareness of this issue, the criminalization of poverty, is growing in
America. For example, Equal Justice Under Law
([https://equaljusticeunderlaw.org](https://equaljusticeunderlaw.org)) is
focused solely on this problem, and has won _all_ of the 18 cases it has tried
so far on behalf of victims of wealth-based discrimination.

------
expertentipp
Anyone who went through the US visa process, even for the basic visitor visa
B1/2, got a taste of this. One needs to set up the appointment, appointment
system is handled by the subcontractor, the contractor charges you for setting
up the appointment. If someone told me I have to pay for queueing in front of
the embassy on the day of the appointment I wouldn't be able to say whether
it's some fraudsters, or a policy of US embassy. Yeah yeah, I know - no one is
entitled to visit the glorious US of A. I don't pity Americans having
hardships over here in EU, because no pity is given in reciprocal situation.

~~~
macspoofing
If the costs are unreasonable, it's one thing, but I don't see a problem with
paying administrative costs to get a visa.

------
humanrebar
> In one case, a homeless man in Sacramento, California, living under a bridge
> received 190 citations from police (almost all related to sleeping outside
> and camping) and wound up being assessed $104,000 in unpayable fines. When
> he died of cancer in 2016, there were thirty-seven warrants out for his
> arrest. Whose definition of public safety does any of this serve?

On the flip side, the government is powerless to address chronic mental health
issues without a paper trail. We all know that poverty and mental health
issues are deeply entwined. The government can't just compel mental health
care on a whim. They need evidence. Evidence like trespassing citations,
public intoxication arrests, and citations for defacating in public. Evidence
like 911 calls when a senile resident continues to forget to turn off the
oven.

~~~
coldtea
> _On the flip side, the government is powerless to address chronic mental
> health issues without a paper trail. We all know that poverty and mental
> health issues are deeply entwined._

Only in the absence of a civilized public welfare system.

~~~
humanrebar
I'm arguing for one of those, actually. But even though I'd like to see more
resources focused on these problems, we can't just spend our way into good
mental health care. When people are in danger or harming others, care and
treatment sometimes _has_ to be compelled. People have a right to their day in
court, so some amount of evidence _has_ to be gathered so judges can
objectively rule on the relevant questions.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I don’t think camping and sleeping under bridges are dangerous or harming
others. I’m confused how this example shows your point, since your point is
about dangerous people, and I’m not sure if people who sleep under bridges are
necessarily dangerous.

~~~
nradov
Camping and sleeping under bridges harms _everyone_ because of all the waste
that ends up in watersheds. I've helped out with cleaning up riverbanks a
couple times after illegal encampments were removed. Those places were like
disaster areas and toxic waste dumps.

~~~
prolikewh0a
There's no trash removal for these people, and they're shut out of all public
bathrooms. What do we really expect?

i-5 in Seattle is absolutely trashed from Northgate to Downtown because Jenny
Durkan and previous mayors have raided homeless encampments out of view, away
from other homes, spending millions of dollars to displace them instead of
just giving them garbage cans and a few porta potties. They end up on i5 and
in tent camps downtown and it looks like a dump.

~~~
nradov
I'm not familiar with the situation in Seattle, but in areas where homeless
shelters have open beds then I really expect people to use them instead of
wrecking ecologically sensitive areas. And in the cleanups I helped with,
there were multiple public garbage cans within a couple blocks.

~~~
prolikewh0a
[https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-
homeless-c...](https://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166666265/why-some-homeless-
choose-the-streets-over-shelters)

------
koboll
>In what might seem a clear violation of the right to a public defender,
forty-three states bill clients for their lawyers—in South Dakota, the charge
is $92 an hour. Even if found innocent, clients still have to pay—and not
having the money is itself breaking the law.

There is zero chance this survives 4th Amendment scrutiny at the Supreme Court

~~~
gruez
which has 0 chance of happening because they can't even afford a trial lawyer

~~~
philjohn
And the SC is looking like it will be stacked with "Originalists" before too
much longer.

~~~
Mary-Jane
How is that relevant?

~~~
thatjsguy
People are afraid of rightwing ideologues on the Supreme Court because it
means that certain cases might be reasoned from a point of view that is based
less on sound legal philosophy and more on personal beliefs from the 1800s.

~~~
xamuel
There is a proper mechanism for revising the constitution: constitutional
amendment. If you want to be angry at someone for what the constitution says,
then be angry at the legislators who have neglected their duty to update it.

~~~
thatjsguy
I mean, I’m angry at a lot of people, legislators included. There’s plenty of
anger to around..

------
steve_gh
Interesting. While I live in the UK, I had never really thought about the link
between wealth and privacy, and the potential for the state to discriminate in
this way.

A thought-provoking read. Thanks for sharing

~~~
gambiting
I live in the UK too and every day I am grateful we don't have the absolutely
idiotic concept of paid bail - the police can only hold you for 48 hours
without charging you with a crime, and then you _have_ to be tried within 51
days or released on unconditional bail, so idiotic situation like the one here
where someone in the article was held for 3 years without a trial can't
happen.

But yes, having read the article it just reinforces the impression I have of
USA - that it's the "land of the free _but only if you have money_ "

~~~
cortic
I'm glad too, but some of your numbers are a bit off;

[https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/how-long-you-can-
be-...](https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/how-long-you-can-be-held-in-
custody)

Also its worth noting our anti-terror laws seem to allow indefinite detention
without charge. And ant-immigration laws allow for long (months even years)
detention of migrants, without even suspicion of a crime.

~~~
PJDK
According to your link, the longest you can be held without charge is 14 days
under the terrorism act.

The longest ever proposed was 90 days (proposed in 2006), and the longest
implemented was 28 days (between 2006 - 2011).

[https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-
rights/counterin...](https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-
rights/countering-terrorism/extended-pre-charge-detention)

~~~
cortic
Terrorism Act 2000 (which was partially ruled unlawful by the House of Lords
for what its worth) allows for theoretically infinite extensions to the
detention period with only a police superintendent needed to sign off on it.

as for imigration 'Just over one fifth of immigration detainees are held for
at least two months' :

[https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/im...](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-
detention-in-the-uk/)

~~~
PJDK
Have you got a source on that part of the terrorism act, it's not something
I've heard of.

~~~
cortic
[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/contents](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/contents)

more specifically section 29, 1, (d):

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/8/part/...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/8/part/III)

Though F1 seems to have been edited since i last looked.. still its in theory,
unlimited detention without trial.

There is also the Terrorism Act 2006, which i think extended the standard
limit to 26 days.. Not sure if this was ever repealed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2006](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2006)

------
troupe
> she suggests that poor mothers lose their privacy altogether if they accept
> public assistance,

I'm not sure about the altogether part, but if I don't want people to know how
much money I have, going to the government and saying "I need money from other
people because I'm not capable of providing for myself and my kids" is kind of
the start of a process of telling people about your life in exchange for
getting money from other people.

The article makes some good points on bail and fines, but the idea that
getting other people to pay for your living expenses should somehow be
possible without giving up up any information about yourself is pretty silly.

~~~
chris_mc
It's not that they have to give information, like name, age, SSN, address,
etc., it's that they have to answer very private questions about their lives,
like who they are dating, how often they have sex, do they use condoms, do
they have medical conditions, etc. It's not right to make someone answer these
questions just to survive and help their kids survive, because they have
literally zero other options.

~~~
tomjen3
I can totally see that.

But the other side is that they money they are asking for has to be taken from
people who were responsible and can afford their families. Shouldn't we at a
minimum require that if you seek help for family members you can't afford,
that you take the same steps others take to not get any more kids you can't
afford?

Because unless you have a good counter argument to that, you won't get
anywhere politically.

~~~
mikeash
It does sound quite reasonable when you put it that way. On the other hand,
you could also describe it as, "we should starve poor families to death if the
mother is sexually active and doesn't use approved birth control." Which
sounds decidedly less reasonable to me.

But ultimately my counterargument would be that we should focus on helping
people who need it, rather than on _not_ helping people who we think don't
deserve it. This country has a puritanical mindset about public help, where
we're outraged at _any_ person who receives it who we see as being in any way
unworthy. For a pervasive recent example, look at drug testing for welfare
recipients. It's more expensive than not doing it, but people love it because
we see drug addicts as being evil and therefore unworthy of help.

We need to teach compassion, or at the very least rationality, rather than a
punishment mentality.

~~~
tomjen3
>we should starve poor families to death if the mother is sexually active and
doesn't use approved birth control.

We also murder people who have expired tags, as long as they don't pay the
fine, don't show up in court, resist the police officers enough to get them to
shoot them.

In reality essentially everybody stops before it gets to that point, and in
your example the women buys (or ideally gets) a bunch of condoms, use them and
no more children nobody can afford is brought into the world, and maybe she
also avoids some STDs.

Look I don't want to compel her to do it, but at the very least make sure that
she understands that the people who pay for her children have certain
justifiable expectations.

>people love it because we see drug addicts as being evil and therefore
unworthy of help.

If you work hard at a crap job that pays say 22 usd/hr, you don't want to pay
for somebodies meth bill.

If you want a system that can help people then you need it so that it is
politically palatable enough -- or you won't be able to focus on it at all.

------
Shivetya
the privatizing portion of the the article time and such is a bit out of
place. the poor are subject to abuse by those in positions of power and it all
has to do with insufficient laws to protect everyone from the abuse of
government officials.

A recent story on Reason (yes I know their leanings) pointed to a suburb of
Atlanta with excessive fines for issues that harmed no one except of course
those who could not afford it [1]

the poor are not just hit by the justice system but they are hit by all sorts
of government fees and regulatory policies that can force them into expensive
schools just to do simple jobs like braid hair. Occupational licensing costs
can keep many from productive jobs to get themselves out of the poor house.

so if you want to fix it it has to be done at the legislative level.
restrictions of how fines and fees are assessed. people joke that HOAs are bad
have seen nothing when faced with over zealous county and city code enforcers.

[https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/24/georgia-town-brags-
about-...](https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/24/georgia-town-brags-about-fining-
resident)

~~~
pc86
What seems a bit out of place is framing occupational licensing (meant to
increase consumer safety) and codes enforcement (meant to increase public
safety) as some kind of war on the poor. The fact that some things cost money
is not in and of itself a negative or evil thing.

~~~
Mary-Jane
How does occupational licensing to braid hair improve consumer or public
safety?

~~~
darpa_escapee
There are safety and sanitations concerns a hair stylist must take into
consideration, and they are expected to understand how to properly use
chemical treatments in both styling and sanitation.

There was a time where getting a scratch from an unsanitized blade meant an
infection that could kill you.

~~~
mikeash
Still could. It's unlikely to kill you from an acute bacterial infection as
would have been common before, but there are still plenty of deadly blood-
borne infectious diseases out there. Wouldn't want to go for a haircut and
come home with hepatitis.

------
taxicabjesus
Before I started taxi driving, I had limited exposure to the struggles of the
underclass. I grew up at the upper end of "middle class", where my parents
both worked for a living and made enough to save for retirement and go on
vacations.

One of the things I came to appreciate was the harm done in the name of
"justice". I blogged about some of my experiences (most were originally posted
at kuro5hin.org [RIP]). _America 's Make-Work Sheriff: The Anachronism of
Joseph Arpaio_ [1] examines the United States' criminal justice system as a
"make-harm program", which is a jobs program where the government puts people
to work making work for themselves.

[1] [http://www.taxiwars.org/2017/09/americas-make-work-
sheriff-a...](http://www.taxiwars.org/2017/09/americas-make-work-sheriff-
anachronism.html)

This submission mentions _Gideon v. Wainwright_ , which is a rather important
Supreme Court case that found the accused have a right to counsel for all
criminal prosecutions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_v._Wainwright)
After Gideon got the Supreme Court to find that he had the right to an
attorney, he was re-prosecuted and acquitted.

IMHO, the next phase in the evolution of the United States' criminal justice
system is moving away from "punishments" (revenge) towards helping the
convicted with their actual problems. Something like how Germany treats the
people they've convicted: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/this-is-
prison-60-minutes-goes-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/this-is-
prison-60-minutes-goes-to-germany/)

(edit: shifted order of paragraphs)

------
macspoofing
There are hard problems with no clear solutions and then there's the 'Vera
Cheeks' case outlined in the article. That should be an easy legislative fix.
Minor traffic infractions (like rolling through a stop) should never result in
incarceration.

------
gumby
As was explicitly stated by the government in Ferguson, the poor were
considered a resource to be mined so that taxes on the middle class could go
down. Yet nothing has changed.

------
ttonkytonk
I hope this is not just "another article" for those reading it; this is the
reality for poor people in general.

------
megamindbrian2
How did it get this way?

Why doesn't Department of Economic Security fix this?

~~~
prolikewh0a
Trickle-Down Economics (Trickle-Up really), wages haven't grown in relation to
inflation for lower 60% of the country since the 70's, the bottom 40% even
seeing negative real wage growth since the 70's. Rent costs have gone up in
most areas, security deposits and first/last months rent requirements keeps
poor people out of housing.

The system has been rigged in favor of the rich for decades. Someone said it
above, but it's the Land of the Free _only if you are wealthy_.

------
TangoTrotFox
edit: --clipped for correction--

~~~
grasshopperpurp
_> According to the bureau of justice statistics, 77% [2] of individuals are
released from jail without financial condition._

Where are you getting 77%?

>Except for a decline to 57% in 2004, the percentage of defendants released
each year varied only slightly, from 62% to 64%. A more pronounced trend was
observed in the type of release used (figure 1). From 1990 to 1998, the
percentage of released defendants under financial conditions rose from 24% to
36%, while non-financial releases dropped from 40% to 28%.

The only mention of 77% I see just says total release - not release without
financial condition.

>Defendants with a prior conviction (51%, not shown in table) had a lower
probability of being released than those without a conviction (77%). This was
true even if the prior convictions were for misdemeanors only (63%). The
effect of a conviction record on release was more pronounced if the defendant
had at least one prior felony conviction (46%).

 _> A bail of let's say $250 for a minor offense is, in effect, a bail of $25.
Though again, in the vast majority of cases a minor offense generally means
you're released for free._

Why say $250 when the median of released defendants was $5,000?

>The median bail amount for detained defendants ($15,000) was 3 times that of
released defendants ($5,000); the mean amount was about 5 times higher
($58,400 versus $11,600) (not shown in table). For all defendants with a bail
amount set, the median bail amount was $9,000 and the mean was $35,800.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I definitely made a mistake there. These numbers were only for people charged
with felonies - as is all the information you're mentioning. I'm currently
looking for the information on all arrest data, which would crucially include
misdemeanors, and am unable to find it on on the BJS site.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
All good - was just making sure I wasn't misreading it :^)

------
CryptoPunk
One of the ways in which the poor are isolated is through economic barriers to
working and operating businesses. You can't run a food stand without a
license. You can't work in many occupations without meeting minimum skill
standards, which often requires undergoing an expensive licensing process.

Even minimum wage is a barrier for some. Marginalized groups (e.g. chronic
drug users) can find it difficult to find an employer who values their labor
at the minimum wage. The stepping stone of working below minimum wage is made
illegal for them, which leaves them with bottle/can collection, squeegee-ing,
panhandling and petty crime as the few other alternatives.

Overall, it's good to be aware of problems afflicting the poor, because the
adverse effects of repressive government policies seem to fall
disproportionately on this subset of the population.

I think where the article discredits itself is when it presumes that people
are entitled to welfare:

>>If they want to get public health insurance while they are pregnant, they
have to answer questions and give up information about their sex lives, their
romantic histories, their medical past, their incomes, their ideas about the
future of their families. In some states, if they want to receive public
assistance, they must agree not to have more than a certain number of
children. Their family lives are subjected to a routine scrutiny that is
entirely different from the experience of middle-class families.

No one is entitled to public health insurance. It is provided at the expense
of others, through the taxes they are compelled to pay. Where is the privacy
for those who are required to file an income tax return? Where is the privacy
for those who are audited, and forced to produce an untold number of documents
to prove their reported income and deductions are accurate? Where is the
individual liberty in the entire process?

The mandates imposed on the taxpayer fully justify conditioning use of public
welfare on information disclosure. That the article overlooks this completely
indicates an ideological narrow-mindedness, and callousness toward the other,
who is forced to pay for these public benefits.

The ideological angle is seen again here:

>>It is true that the decimation of the American welfare state has helped to
create a tremendous pool of people living on remarkably low incomes, who may
be only tangentially connected to the labor market.

The idea of the American welfare state has been decimated is a common, and
inaccurate trope, often peddled by leftists. Since the War on Poverty began,
per capita social spending has rapidly grown.

It was vastly greater in the 1980s than the 1970s and it was vastly greater in
1990s than the 1980s:

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fiv...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fivethirtyeight-
gov4/16fivethirtyeight-gov4-blog480.jpg)

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fiv...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fivethirtyeight-
gov6/16fivethirtyeight-gov6-blog480.jpg)

By all indications, the War on Poverty has failed, given the poverty rate was
declining far faster before its institution than during the 50 years since it
began. Social welfare spending's negative unintended consequences, like having
a measurable effect on the proclivity of women to have children out of
wedlock, appear to outweigh its positive effects.

~~~
djhworld
> Even minimum wage is a barrier for some. Marginalized groups (e.g. chronic
> drug users) can find it difficult to find an employer who values their labor
> at the minimum wage. The stepping stone of working below minimum wage is
> made illegal for them

I find this line of reasoning flawed, if you relaxed the constraints around
minimum wage, the "stepping stone" would become the new minimum

~~~
CryptoPunk
That assumes no market rate for labor, and only government wage floors
maintaining current wage levels, which given labor statistics, which show the
unemployment rate being extremely low, and the vast majority of jobs paying
above minimum wage, is clearly not true.

~~~
pc86
It's probably best to avoid the word "clearly" on topics where economists with
PhDs can disagree widely and come to drastically different conclusions from
the same data.

~~~
CryptoPunk
Economists don't disagree widely on there being a market rate for labor. This
is a basic economic truism.

