Racism? It's Not How Good; It's Skin Color

On a little stove. A small Trangia can be bought in America for less than $100.

 

Once again, here's the path:

Do any work you can
Don't have children you can't afford
Stay married
Don't do drugs/alcohol/cigarettes
Live below your means

It's very VERY simple. There are few people who genuinely cannot implement this plan - ergo, it's a choice for 99%.

PS: I know all about poverty. Having lived in it and left it (via the above path), and via living in the Third World in a poor rural village. Not to mention my actual profession, which instersects with First World poverty regularly.

 

1) It's very easy to avoid an 'opioid crisis', don't do drugs! Your continued insistence that these choices are somehow forced upon people is disturbing.

2) Not once did I say food and furniture were luxury items, I said buying NEW clothes/shoes/furniture is a luxury. And fast food, meat, cheese, processed/canned/frozen foods etc are luxuries that the genuinely poor would not (nor could) waste money on. If you're not eating rice and beans, you cannot cry poor.

3) If a homeless pan-handler desists from drugs/alcohol/cigarettes/fast food, etc, and lives on a clean and inexpensive rice/beans based diet, they can acrue a bit of money. If panhandling can keep them in drugs and cigs every day, it's definitely enough to make a difference when saved over a period of time.

4) What I have outlined is the reality of staying out of poverty. YOU don't like it, because it doesn't allow for self-indulgence. And FTR, I'm a Lefty and a Socialist. No idea why you refer to me as Right Wing.

5) "The System" isn't making people fat and/or addicted. Their lack of personal responsibility is doing it. That IS the cause and effect.

6) As long as people like you pretend that First World poverty is involuntary, it will not only remain, but increase. You are literally making it happen, by pretending prevention isn't a thing.

 

I wonder how long it would take to save for, and the saucepan.

 

Just a technical note: we should not mix up genuine abject poverty, the poverty of people who are chronically unemployed, with the problem of low wages, the sort of problem Barbara Ehrenreich described in Nickle-and-Dimed. Nor with the related-but-different problem -- or situation -- of growing inequality, the shift in wealth from labor to capital which has been going on since the 1970s all over the world, even in Communist China.

There are people with barely, or only, a high school education -- possibly a single mother abandoned by an irresponsible husband -- without much in the way of family resources, possibly with an IQ a standard deviation below from the norm, who are just barely getting by. I think there is a legitimate discussion about what, if anything, the state should do to help these people: arguments about the minimum wage, national health insurance, unionization. But this is a different problem than the problem of the people lying on the sidewalks in their own excrement in San Francisco, or young males whose attitude makes them effectively unemployable.

An anecdote: decades ago, when I was a member of the Labour Party (I live in the UK), I was at a local Party meeting and someone mentioned the 'Greenwich Unemployed Workers Defense Union'. Although I lived near Greenwich then, I had not heard of it. I asked a comrade what it was, and she sarcastically replied, "Oh, you pay them five pence a month, and if someone offers you a job, they'll defend you. The fellow who runs it hasn't worked since 1945."

 

Nope.

But I am saying that it is, illogical, if you are now trying to blame Black citizens. For the fact that 10's of millions of White people pissed away their White Privilege/refused to take advantage of living in a society that is intentionally set up for them to succeed.

 

Those who are interested in America's economic problems should read this interesting article.

 

But that is not all you said.

You say you lived in poverty and got your self out. Did you eat meat? Buy shoes or clothes? Did you have a place to live? A TV? Were you living on rice and beans? Did you drive?

I regularly interact with poverty too as part of being an activist (around food security and environmental issues)

Nothing is ever as cut and dried as you are trying to paint. People end up in poverty for a whole raft of different reasons including terrible public policy decisions by government.

As several of the links I provided you suggested, once in poverty it can be incredibly difficult to dig yourself out and you need lot of things to go right.

I know lot of people living in poverty who work as hard as anyone in society often for wages that cannot support them.

Lot's of people living in poverty don't have children or have adult children that have moved on.

Many homeless were never married in the first place.....again this is just a gross generalization with no reality in the real world. Poverty has nothing to do with your marital status.

Drugs and Alcohol are symptoms of social isolation and alienation not causes. Portugal decriminalized all drugs and poverty and homelessness decreased exponentially.

"live below your means" lol.

 

I'm not making anything happen. As long as people like you keep blaming people for their own poverty it continues the myth that bad public policy has nothing to do with the conditions people are forced to live in.

If what you are saying is true, there is no reason that poverty in America would be sand third world in compared with other developed nations.

I know you don't want to address this but I have provided you all kinds of data and facts to try and broaden your perspective.

I refer to you as right wing because you are promoting right-wing memes and policies that greatly contribute to the growing obscene inequality in America and the world.

It is literally the exact policy of victimizing those in poverty through cutting programs while gutting taxes to the very wealthiest and corporations that is tearing the social structure of the US apart.

Right-wingers can never admit this because that would mean changing to more enlightened public policy and that might cut into the profits of the obscenely wealthy.

Sooooooo blame, blame and more blame on the poorest people in society and the most disadvantaged.....children, the elderly. Mentally or physically disabled or drug addicts.

 

I'm not trying to blame black citizens. I don't know where you got that.

Are you mixing me up with another poster?

 

The entire kit is $94 - and includes the burner plus all the pots. And that's a Trangia, cheap knock-offs can bought for half that.

As to how long it would take to save $50 for a cheap knock-off (or even the real thing), I don't know. How much does the average homeless person spend in a week on cigarettes, drugs, or alcohol? My guess is if panhandling can earn you enough to keep you in dope, it can certainly pay for a Trangia.

 

I would argue that the single mother abandoned by an irresponsible husband is just as culpable as the rest of them. SHE chose an irresponsible mate in the first place, and then compounded her own irresponsibility by having children with him. Granted she was highly likely to have been raised without any capacity for discrimination between a good man and a bad (probably driven entirely by lust and romance, without a second's thought to character), it doesn't change the fact that it comes back to her. At some point in our adulthood, we have to do things differently to our forebears, if we hope to leave poverty. There is no getting around that. No short cut. And no 'assistance' will take without it.

 

1) I'm not talking about America specifically, I'm talking about the First World. It's a big place.

2) The data has zero value in the absence of ACTUAL cause. We already know that poor choices lead to poverty. Prevention is the key.

3) Understanding what causes First World poverty is not a feature of partisan politics, or politics period - it's kinda bizarre that you think it is. But since you think it is, I'm a Socialist precisely because I believe everyone should earn their keep (unless very young, very old, or sick). If you yourself are a Faux Socialist (not saying you are, but there are plenty here), you probably ignore the fact that Communism and Socialism require full participation. You may prefer the Flaming Capitalist's version - where services for the lazy are paid for via the glorious profits of industry.

4) Calling a spade a spade is NOT 'victimising'. It's 8am in the morning where I am, does that cause you problems? I mean, it's objective reality .. but maybe it hurts someone's feelings, somewhere? Seriously, this religious aversion to objective reality is one of the most terrifying aspects of Progressivism.

5) Yes, and keep blaming until even a single young person chooses to do things differently and escape the fate their parents bequeathed them. Even one family leaving poverty is a victory. PREVENTION is the goal. You want more of the same? Keep giving them stuff, make it easier and easier to opt out of personal responsibility.

 

You impressed that you were blaming, Blacks, when you submit nonsensical posts such as "So you are saying that no white people have ever lived in poverty?" where I had to then explain a reality which you were already fully aware of, for your whole life; White USA citizens pissing away their White Privilege

No. But clearly you mistook, me, for whoever you meant to post this gobbledygook to:

"And you are accusing someone who is more or less on your side of "white priviledge?...You'd do better to drop the race baiting and approach this subject as honest discussion...Or are you just trolling?"

 

Okay. A single mother widowed through an accident her husband had.
I think you're making the following argument: the world is divided into two kinds of people: industrious, prudent, thrifty, wise, on the one hand. And lazy, irresponsible, impulsive, spendthrift, foolish, on the other. And these traits are welded into their character and cannot be changed by anything the state can do.

I'm arguing that there are cultures which encourage and nourish the first kind of behavior -- the Jews, the Orientals ... and those that don't. There may be an unchangeable genetic component at work as well, although we don't yet know enough to say one way or the other. Here you probably wouldn't disagree.

But I also argue that these traits are, potentially, present in everyone, to some degree -- they get developed, or suppressed or sublimated, by the environment -- the 'culture' being part of that environment.

The reason I believe this is that the proportion of people exhibiting these different behaviors changes over time. Clearly, some environmental change -- perhaps something too obscure or complex for us to see, caused by many factors, is going on. For example, Charles Murray, in his book Coming Apart, shows that young white working class males are beginning, more and more, to behave like many young Black males: declining to become heads of families, drifting from one dead-end job to another, doing drugs, wasting their time. Young white working class women are beginning to face the same dilemma that young Black women face: there are no responsible males to marry. If you want children, you'll have to be a single parent.

This is something new. It must have causes. Maybe we cannot influence those causes through public policy. But maybe we can.

And the terrible state of today's Black underclass was not always the case either. Whites are now becoming aware of the effects of the loss of blue collar jobs because it's affecting young working class people of their race. But we've been here before

The sociologist William Julius Wilson has described the effect of lack of jobs on the Black ghetto in this book. It's worth clicking on to read the comments, even if you don't read the book.

Please understand: I'm not, at this point, arguing for any specific policy. And I'm certainly not taking the view that most people in poverty today are there through no fault of their own. I'm not even arguing that we might be able to change their character: probably many, even most, of the shiftless young people who are on welfare, or who the liberals would like to put on welfare, or give more welfare money to, are beyond changing.

It's the children we have to concentrate on, and not all of them: we have seen with the charter school movement that there are people, at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, who want to escape, or want their children to. I repeat: there is a spectrum, and we have to exercise triage and try to save the saveable.

Let the others emigrant to the future Republic of CalifOreTon.

 

If the data has zero value then we are left just making stuff up to suit our narrative. We know that many different factors lead to poverty bad public policy being first among them. All of us make good and bad choices no matter what station in life we have. If what you said was true then we would expect all people who use drugs or drink to much to live in poverty and all who abstain to be wealthy. The first world is a big place. Why is the US near the bottom in income inequality, food security and nutrition, overall health and life expectancy and child mortality which the US is dead last in?

Are these choices made by citizens or a result of bad public policy?

No offense intended but I don't think you really understand what socialism is in all it's diversity. No one who really understands socialism would try to blame the working poor or even those homeless or jobless as being to blame for their own condition in a supposed unfettered capitalist system. There are many definitions and ideas to express socialism that is not one of them.

Socialism is really about who controls means of production with sub arguments about land and property rights and the role of government in regulating and centralizing the economy. All of these things are debated within wider arguments about socialism.

I'm not going to disrespect you by saying you don't sound anything like someone who as explored the history of socialism in it's many forms but...........

Spoken like a true patrician and again just opinion.

If that were the case then why have programs based on UBI helped to bring people out of poverty, given them better health outcomes and in many cases helped generate economic activity as recipients have started businesses and employed other people?

This has been true in programs in Brazil, Africa including Kenya and Uganda, Finland, Switzerland and Canada and even a form of UBI based on negative income tax in the great state of Alaska which even hard core commies like Hank Paulson and James Baker have proposed taking national.

See what happens when you make gross generalizations based on opinion without actually exploring the evidence?

 

Yes, the Jews and NE Asians are a very good example of how adherence to 'the rules' gets you ahead. And it's not genetic, it's environmental. Cultural. Learned behaviour. When children grow up around industrious, responsible, stable, self-disciplined parents, that's all they know. It will be their norm.

And I absolutely DO believe it can be changed. But it takes the individual to decide he/she is going to start playing by the rules. The problem is that very stupid and cruel people make policy, and they have no actual interest in seeing children escape such fate. Or anyone, for that matter. They simply pay lip service and throw money .. in the hope that they themselves won't be required to actually DO anything - ever. All of this demonisation of 'blame' etc, is merely self-defence. They know that if we actually address the cause (personal responsibility), they will be required to step up in some way. Perhaps they'll have to up their own game, or acknowledge that the world isn't Disneyland. Their reasons (you'll hurt peep's feelings, etc) are beyond ridiculous, and VERY transparent. Those who condemn responsibility, are themselves seeking to avoid same. It's all very child-psychology 101.

 

Somehow, in modern day high-tech society everything is much harder than it was before.

My grandmother grew up on a farm with nine siblings during WW2, if she and her family could survive, it should not require a bloody phD in friggen rocket science for modern man to do the same.

 

Dear, I've lived both Socialism and Communism for much of my adult life. I have read Mao's Little Red Book, and all the other dusty old books. I was a paid up member of the Communist party in my youth. I am regarded as a hardline Far Leftist amongst my capitalist friends. I'm not the one who insists on massive private sector capitalism in order to fund goods and services for those who can't or won't support themselves. That's you. Collectivism has literally nothing to do with govt, and private property is essential to any iteration of it. IOW, you could not be more wrong - but you're no more wrong than any other Faux Socialist. They all think Socialism is a nice life, funded by the profits of capitalism.

As regards America, I cannot speak to that. I can however, speak to First World poverty generally ... and I would guess that the same failures are common to all. When a mammal has all requirement to fight for survial removed, it will retain survival instincts (relentless 'work') for a generation or two, but eventually it will be lost. The easier the experimenter makes it to survive, the faster the instinct will be lost. An obvious cruelty, both inside and outside the lab. Moving away from lab rats, we can very easily observe that those whose parents retain strong survival instincts (most often coming from cultures wherein survival was not guaranteed), do far better than those whose parents never had it in the first place.

 

Indeed. We've become as helpless and lazy as amoebas, but we eat far more.

 

If only people could follow the good old wisdom of "get a haircut and find a job", they would not find life that complicated at all.

 

This is a frightening view of humanity and society.

 

I don't think we can be sure, yet, about the roots of, say, Jewish success. However, it's best not to go into the other possibility at the moment, as it fires up the innumerate Thoughtpolice. We'll know for sure in a couple of decades.

Let me give you an example of where 'environment' can shape individuals. Before 1934, longshoremen on the West Coast were 'casual' labor. You turned up very early in the morning at the docks, the foreman chose the ones he wanted that day, depending on how much work there was, everyone else went home. (No doubt a backhander to the foreman would help put you at the front of the queue.) You didn't have a steady income. It's hard, in a situation like that, to get a loan to buy a house, or even to have a family. The kind of people it creates don't make for a stable society.

Then, in 1934, the Communist Party led a big strike -- it grew into a General Strike in San Francisco. The longshoremen were unionized, although at first conditions didn't change a lot. But eventually, hiring became controlled by the union: the employers would say how many men they needed that day. The union would send that many. But they were chosen, from union members, on a work-sharing basis, so that the union members would have an equal amount of work, over time. After you had workd for several days, you would go to the back of the queue, and others would get to work.

It meant the longshoremen had a fairly predictable income. They could buy their own homes. They could become stable members of society. Just what an old reactionary like me wants to see.

The price was that the cost to the employers of dock labor went up. No doubt it was passed on to everyone else. We all had to pay a penny or two more for our bananas or whatever. Well worth it.

Now, I don't know of any in-depth studies of the lives of longshoremen, before and after unionization. But I would be willing to bet that after they became steady workers, instead of casual labor, a lot of their personal behaviors improved. They could get married, they could buy a home. I know for a fact that some of them became deacons in their churches. (Here I'm talking about the Black longshoremen in San Francisco, where I have some personal knowledge.) This is a good thing. A skilled PHP programmer can no doubt do well as 'casual labor', but further down the social scale, a steady job is needed.

If we're not able to guarantee that for the most part, anyone who is willing to work, can work and earn a decent living -- we're going to see a social tragedy in the US. This is something that can be influenced by government policy, starting with the education system. Peoples' character can be shaped. You yourself believe this, because you believe that the success of Jews and NE Asians is purely a result of their family environment. So let's take whatever aspects of that environment we can put into public policy, and do so.

 

1) No, we didn't eat meat. We didn't take vacations. We didn't own an air conditioner, clothes dryer, vacuum cleaner, or dishwasher. We lived in a run down 1 bedroom house without running water (literally). We had no tv. We lived on rice and beans. We bought all our clothes and shoes from charity stores. We found our furniture, white goods, and even computers on the side of the road or at the refuse centre. We shared one very old Toyota pick-up. And we did this for at least 15 years.

2) No, First Worlders end up in poverty because they've made poor choices. That is the ONLY way you can get there, when everything is paid for (healthcare, education, groceries, etc). If you've behaved yourself, lived where you can afford, and built/retained a stable family, it cannot happen outside of some kind of major natural disaster or war.

3) Part of playing by the rules is getting and staying married. If you choose not to do either, then you've made a poor choice. How is this not obvious? And adult children might 'move on', but they don't suddenly become irresponsible and not help their parents .. unless of course they've been raised by irresponsible parents. ANOTHER poor choice. And yes, marital status is very significant in poverty stats.

4) Drugs and alcohol are symptoms of poor impulse control. Poor impulse control is a result of poor parenting. ANOTHER poor choice.

5) Yes, live within your means. I own property in a very impoverished town, by big city standards. The average income is less than half what the city average is. Yet there are more home owners than in the city. Not only that, but there are more home owners who own their homes outright. How is that? Well, they lived within their means. They lived where they could afford, and lived modestly. Their minimum wage was enough to raise a family and pay off a house. It's not rocket science.

 

oh come on, white privilege? what privilege to whites have? don't confuse white with rich, both whites and blacks that are rich have privilege