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

BS. Go check your stats on Indian and Chinese migrants. While you're at it, check Nigerians also ... if you're still insisting on pretending that minorities (non-white migrants the children of non-white migrants) aren't leading your wealth and education stats in 2019. The facts are well demonstrated with the IndoChinese refugees after the war, who arrived in the West with nothing. It actually goes back to your Gold Rushes, with the influx of Chinese peasants ... and eventually expanded to Korean, Japanese, and Indian during the 20thC.

Hahahaha .. yes, tattoos and fast food are sourced underground. Of course

 

The problem with discussing poverty in the US is that it is possible to produce, or plausibly refer to, individual examples for any thesis about the cause of poverty you care to put forward.

Are there poor people who are poor because of their own bad choices? People who, when they get money, just waste it? If anyone doubts this, I'll give you a link to an acquaintance of mine who died recently. We were both Leftist radicals in Texas in the 60s. He died indigent after, according to the obituary by a friend of his, blowing through three inheritances. Educated, articulate (he was a leader of the Green Party late in his life), but unable to handle money.

Are there poor people who are poor because of a series of bad breaks? I'll try to find the link, but I recall reading an article -- I think in the New Yorker -- about someone who lost his job, lost his home in a divorce, ... had no friends or relatives from whom he could get a loan ... and ended up not having the money to get his car fixed, so that he couldn't drive to work. Once he was down at the bottom, he couldn't climb up. (I forget the details, but it was plausible.)

And we know that booms and busts seem to be an inevitable part of capitalism. It surely cannot be due to fluctuations in laziness that unemployment -- pretty closely correlated with poverty -- went from 3% in 1929 to nearly 25% in 1933 -- and then dropped to a little over 1% (that's right, 1 per cent) in 1944. (We had a big Keynsian program running then, I think, including compulsory government jobs for about fifteen million men, involving overseas travel.)

Of course personal characteristics play a huge role in one's life-circumstances. There are people who, if deprived of all their property and dropped naked into the desert, would end up owning a Mercedes dealership or a Vietnamese restaurant in ten years. There are others who inherit millions and end up with nothing.

But ... these are extremes on a spectrum. And 'social policy' plays a role in shaping the behavior of people who are not at either extreme, but who have, as most of us do, a combination of 'good' and 'bad' personality features (with respect to dealing with life's bad breaks and good breaks).

For instance, most -- not all -- people on the Right don't really have much against social policy which forces people to behave rationally by forcing them, via taxes, to save against the proverbial rainy day. Essentially, these are measures for compulsory insurance. One of the first set of welfare state measures was instituted by that very non-liberal fellow Bismarck. You can read about them here.

The argument we're having is, in essence, about the actual distribution of poor people along the spectrum from totally irresponsible, whom no social program will get to behave responsibly, to people who have had a series of bad breaks, who will take advantage of government help to get back into work and normal life.

How you think this distribution looks probably depends on your own personal experience of life and people. There may be 'scientific' studies which try to be more concrete than mere impressions but ... my own prejudice is that the people who do these studies have a pre-conceived opinion of what they're going to find. (We've recently seen that many studies in psychology are not replicatable, and I suspect that the same thing is true in other social sciences.)

But here's the thing: we don't need to come to agreement on this factual question.

What we should be arguing is what, if anything, the state should do to address poverty.

At one end of the argument are those who say, take money away from those who have it, and give it to those who don't. At the other end are those who say that any redistribution of income whatsoever -- even taxes to support public education -- is wrong, as well as any 'forced insurance' program of the Bismarck sort.

Most people probably fall somewhere in between, supporting certain programs like unemployment insurance and very basic welfare measures, but not overly-generous programs which they feel will encourage idleness.

A debate among people at either end of the spectrum is pretty pointless.

 

100%!
Coming from someone who was born and raised in Ukraine and lived through 90s and witnessed hyperinflation on the same level you see one in Venezuela now.
When liberals of the west talk about poverty in America they have no effing idea what they are talking about. It’s like watching a virgin bragging about sexual adventures!

 

This report on poverty, by a conservative foundation, is worth reading. It expresses the mainstream conservative approach to poverty-alleviation, but without going into any details.

 

You're the one making claims about Chinese and Indian immigrants so you back it up with stats. I've provided multiple links in every post showing you the real stats on poverty in America and you still just post your opinions and impressions. How about some real data to back up your claim that everyone in poverty is choosing to be there.

I checked PEW research. The stats say that Asian Americans have 12.3% of people living in poverty while 14.6 is the figure for the country as a hole. PEW also says that these states may be skewed because in general Asians have larger households than average.

Of course families that have been here for generations are in general going to be more prosperous than those who first arrive in general. And comparing what happened in the era of the gold rush with what is happening today is ridiculous. It is like comparing what happened in the civil war era with what happened in the sixties.

And just so you are aware, all those Indochinese refugees who came here with nothing had generous assistance both in financial terms and in relocation and education under the Indochina Migrant and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975. So all the factors that helped them settle and prosper you ignore while at the same time trying to make the same sort of assistance to ordinary Americans living in poverty to be socialism or stealing from the rich.

What are you talking about? What I said is homeless people don't have TV's or get their hair done as you claimed and that often poor people who do have homes and TVs get them from charity organizations like Value Village or the salvation army. A lot of people get tattoos in jail.

You are trying to make sweeping generalizations about poverty in America based on your opinions and prejudices only. I have provided multiple links to show you this yet you won't read or ignore out of hand anything that does not fit your opinions and prejudices.

Here is what you claim:

Blatantly false. over 40 million Americans live in poverty including 16 million children

Blatantly false. The poorest person in America likely sleeps in the woods on bare ground or on a grate somewhere in a big city and has NOTHING. A slightly poor person in the third world likely has family support a home and a marginal income.

I will agree that poor in a rich country like America are marginally better off due to a variety of factors including social services and better access to health and nutrition and have a better chance to pull themselves out of poverty but to suggest that the poorest person in American is richer than a slightly poor person in the third world is just weird. Having nothing is still nothing no matter where you live and the poorest person in America by definition has NOTHING.

Then please explain how the IndoChina Migrant and Refugee Assistant Act did not help all the refugees from Indochina that you said arrived here with nothing?

And all kind of data from places like Portugal and even here in Canada show that programs like Housing First and Income support do help people become stable enough to start to find employment and that none of these programs lower rates of employment.

Absolutely ridiculous to suggest that people are remaining in poverty because they don't want money. Literally one of the most non-nonsensical statements I've seen on this board. I'd love to see you try to prove that statement but of course you won't because it is absolute nonsense. Next you will be telling me the hungry don't want food or refugees don't want peace and stability.

I don't need to reconcile anything. I've provided link after link to support what I've said.

You need to provide some evidence to support your claim that the poor choose to be poor because they don't want money or that the poorest American is richer "(by far)" than a slightly poor Asian.

Good luck with that

 

I think the problem here is that 'Asian' is not the right category.
'Asians' mean Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmans, Malays, Phillipinos ... and these people are widely diverse in their culture, attitudes towards work, attitudes towards saving money, attitudes towards education.

If you go to Singapore, you'll see an immense difference in educational effort and achievement, and economic effort and achievement, between Chinese Singaporeans on the one hand, and Malay Singaporeans on the other.

Everywhere the Chinese go, they become a 'market-dominant minority'. Like the Jews, they are hated for their success. Periodically, there are murderous pogroms against the Chinese in Asian countries for being so successful.

I don't know what the figures are, but we need to 'disaggregate' the various sorts of Asian Americans to get real insight into poverty in America and its causes. The official figures for Vietnamese poverty are not very different from those for other Americans, but it would be interesting to see exactly what sorts of Vietnamese are poor, and why they are poor, when the Vietnamese as a whole have a higher median income, by about $3000 a year, than native-born Americans. Are poor Vietnamese elderly family members brought over on the family-reunion plan? Newly-arrived immigrants who speak little English? Are they employed, but in low-pay jobs?

A joke:
Question: how do you know when your home has been burgled by a Vietnamese teenager?
Answer: Nothing has been stolen, but all your homework has been done.

 

Racist

 

You left out, the energizer for all of their USA successes; White pale skin and hair texture, which look just like northern-European Caucasians.

 

Please go away. You are ineligible for me to, reply, since your posts are always too deceitful and too demonic.

 

All you EVER do is fill this site with racist spam.

 

Haha .. an oldie but a goodie!

 

Yes, those black skinned South Indians sure have the wrong HAIR TEXTURE. You're a riot

 

You mean HOMELESS people? 90% of whom are addicts? Gimme a break.

And as for family support amongst poor Third Worlders, yes .. obviously. Because they are GENUINELY poor, and would never be so irresponsible as to believe they could make it alone on a very low income. That's another reason we know First Worlders who remain in poverty are choosing to do so. So many of them opt out of strong and stable families. No one who feared for their survival, or the survival of their children, would ever do that.

 

You should know by now, your deceitful posts will never work wherever I'm posting.


Those black skinned South Indians you referenced, do have every northern-European Caucasoid feature ---except White skin!--- as they still have Caucasian-like hair texture and northern-European lips cheekbones nose and jawbone. They look like African negroids only in, skin color, and not in their lips nor their eyes nor their nose and likely not in their genitalia lol.

 

But many choose to remain so.

 

What causes poverty? Irrational behavior,

 

Long-term poverty on the part of sane, able-bodied adults in the United States during non-depression times is caused by the behavioral choices of the people involved.

It may be possible, through rewards and punishments, to make that behavior better. For instance, if you want to encourage being a welfare mother, offer more money to welfare mothers. If you want to discourage it, don't. If you want to have more semi-literate teenage mothers, don't have sex education in school, made it hard to get contraceptives, and outlaw abortion. If you don't want more semi-literate teenage mothers, have sex education in school, and make contraception and abortions easy to get.

But most of these things bring a package of effects, including effects you may not want: no money to welfare mothers will mean there will be fewer of them, but they will still exist, and their offspring will grow up in poverty. If you don't like teaching about sex in schools, or believe that we should obey the Pope with respect to artificial contraception, or oppose abortion, you want not want to do these things. and accept that your moral scruples will make for more semi-literate teenage mothers.

 

gee, why would homeless people living in poverty want to use drugs?

So your argument is that you think first worlders who remain in poverty are opting out of strong families?

Do you have any evidence on how many came out of strong families in the first place? I think not. You have no idea the kind of family conditions or abusive relationships some people are fleeing - and that includes people fleeing alone or with their children from third world countries

Just another of your gross generalizations in order to blame the poor for their own poverty and the further victimize the addicted for addiction?

 

Many don't have a choice. Again, no on chooses to live in poverty.

 

I know a good deal about the cause/effects of this stuff, as it happens, and I can assure you that the drugs come FIRST, and the homelessness is a result of the drugs. Only the excuse maker or the painfully naive think it's the other way around.

And yes, a huge percentage of people remaining in poverty in the First World are opting out of strong and stable families. And opting out INCLUDES making the home environment so toxic that people are forced to leave.

This is the reality of First World 'poverty'. It's a result of bad choices.

 

Of course they do. There are an endless array of ways and means of leaving poverty in the First World, so there are no excuses.

 

Yeah. Right. And nobody chooses to work; and nobody chooses to study; and nobody chooses to be honest; and nobody chooses to be ambitious; and nobody chooses to be successful; and nobody chooses to be rich...it’s frigging amazing anything gets done with so many nobodies choosing to do nothing. Frigging magic.

 

Everyone who has strong opinions on this subject should ask himself: what evidence would make me change my mind?

There will always be extreme cases: the young man who inherits a fortune, blows it on good times, and ends up on the pavement in San Francisco.
Or the laid-off steelworker whose wife divorces him and with a good lawyer takes most of the familiy assets, leaving him with a near-zero bank account. Or, if
that seems implausible today, then what about the one in four Americans who could not find work in the 30s? (Most of them didn't end up on the pavement in San Francisco -- they would have been arrested -- but they were jobless -- through their own fault?)

The problem is, the great majority of our present homeless are 'in the middle': neither liberals, who see all homeless as innocent victims of capitalism, driven to drugs and lying in their own excrement by forces beyond their control, nor conservatives, who see all homeless as people who threw away shining opportunities to advance themselves in favor of the immediate pleasure of the crack-pipe, will see evidence for the dis-confirming of their own views.

Like others here, I have a relative who is 'poor'. (Reading about another person's similar relative here was eery ... I almost thought it was my relative, the behaviors are so similar.) I believe he is poor through his own life choices -- his siblings are not, and they all started from modest circumstances. However, if someone is determined to deny free will, they will be able to say that he must have been driven to his current circumstances, and the rest of us should have some of our money taken away and given to him.

 

Can you provide a shred of evidence to back up your claim? If that were true then everyone who did drugs should become homeless. Do you have any evidence that this is so?

Again, not a shred of evidence to back up your claim that poor people are opting out of strong families. In fact there is a preponderance of evidence that poverty is generational and systemic and has nothing to do with personal choice - which is in fact a ridiculous claim.

Not a shred of evidence to support this. First World poverty may be a result of bad choices but that has little to do with people actually living in poverty and much more to do with an economic system that benefits entrenched wealth and corporations and ins increasingly leaving ordinary Americans behind.

 

Many of those living in poverty are working poor struggling to stay alive in an economic system that rewards entrenched wealth. Many students come out of college with so much debt it takes years before they can come out of it and take proper place in the economy:

"While the U.S. economy has shown signs of recovery since the Great Recession, inequality among America’s 33 million working families has increased. The unemployment rate has fallen from a post-recession high of 9.6 percent in 2010 to 4.4 percent in 2017—the lowest level since 2000.3 However, gains at the lower end of the income spectrum have been slower than those at the top. The number of working families with income below 200 percent of the poverty level—termed low-income—fell slightly between 2015 and 2016 (from 10.3 million to 9.9 million).4 But despite recent improvements, there are more low-income working families today than there were at the onset of the recession in 2007 (9.5 million). Today, three in 10 working families in the United States may not have enough money to meet basic needs. There is also a large and persistent economic divide among different racial/ethnic groups. In 2016, working families headed by racial/ethnic minorities were twice as likely to be poor or low-income (44 percent) compared with nonHispanic whites (21 percent).5 Wealth gaps were even wider. Economic disparities among racial/ethnic groups present a critical challenge to ensuring economic growth and bringing opportunities to all workers, families, and communities across the United States. Supported by the Annie E. Casey, Joyce, and W.K. Kellogg foundations, The Working Poor Families Project (WPFP) is a national initiative to strengthen state policies that can assist families striving to work their way into the middle class and achieve economic security. This data brief, based on 2016 data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, provides a national and state-by-state analysis of low-income working families in America. In particular, it highlights: 1) the growing economic divide between working families at the top and bottom of the economic ladder; and 2) the persistent economic disparities among working families."

http://www.workingpoorfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Spring-2018_WPFP-Policy-Brief.pdf

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthi...a-new-census-data-paint-an-unpleasant-picture

I know you have to keep denying all this in order to keep your narrative that the poor are to blame for their own poverty. All I can do is keep providing facts in the hope you one day can see the world as it really is.