Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[pErvinalia]

When an article says so many millions of people are "poor" in America, they are including in that group a lot of people who live in houses they own, have two cars in the driveway, have plenty of food, have computers, tvs, internet, and go to the movies and other entertainment options regularly with some discretionary funds.

Link for this, please.

To say that the homeless and hungry of the US are better off than the homeless and hungry of some other nation is just a lazy kind of way to declare that the hungry and homeless are not really hungry or homeless, that the poor are not poor, or at least that they're not that poor - like third-world poor.

It's not saying that, though. To be clear. I haven't said, nor did the articles say, that the "hungry and homeless" are better off here than other "hungry and homeless" people in another country. If a person is hungry and homeless, they are hungry and homeless. It's bad wherever you are. However, what the data showed is that the bottom 10% of American households live better than the average person in many first world countries, and are only worse off than the bottom 10% in one or two countries. That's according to the OECD's Better Life Index.

No it's not. That's according to The Economist's skewed analysis. You been taken to task on this before.

[pErvinalia]

This is just ridiculous. Poverty is related to the cost of living of where you live. If you can't afford to house and feed yourself properly, then you are in bad poverty, no matter how your income compares to the third world.

You're missing the point. The data that I cited showed that the people being classified as "poor" in the US can, in fact, afford to house and feed themselves.

No, YOU'RE missing the point. YOU keep citing data that compares absolute dollar values between the US and third world countries. It's a ridiculous comparison, as cost of living is wildly different between the two cases. It's utterly irrelevant to whether a person is struggling to live or not.

That's the whole point of the data I cited at length from multiple sources, including the OECD, Pew Research, Heritage, Forbes, and others. It's not a comparison of income. That's what Dutchy posted

WTF?! This is why you are the most dishonest person on this site. The post of yours I was responding to contained numerous comparisons of income between the US and the third world. Seriously, you are dishonest beyond belief.

You see what I mean? If we defined poverty as "not being able to afford a home/apartment, transportation and food" there would be almost no poverty at all in the US. That's the data.

Ok, so how does that number compare to other oecd countries? Where's your data for that, since you won't accept the universally accepted definition of poverty?

DISCLAIMER - I am not making a claim to superiority. I am sure that in Oz, for example, the same is true. If the test in Oz were to find the percentage of people who are not able to afford a place to live, transportation, food, clothing - the basics - the number would be very very small.

There's apparently a large number of people right on the borderline of this state in all our countries, and it's a number that is growing. Why are you so determined not to accept this reality?

[pErvinalia]

A few years back, I remember reading the single-dumbest SJW Progressive type article ever written, and it caused me to stop reading the site at all. I used to read it all the time, because Hitchens wrote for it. But, that's 6 years ago now since the Hitch died. A year or two after he died, I was reading an article where this dopey author suggested that it was now appropriate to start asking babies for permission to touch them when you change their diapers - I mean it - I am not joking. They wrote in all seriousness that when you bathe or change a baby who cannot talk or otherwise communicate other than through crying and smiling and such, you need to ask the baby permission every step of the way, if it's o.k. to touch their butt when you wipe their ass and stuff.... is it o.k. to take off your poo filled diaper? LOL. It was the most ridiculous thing. They had lots of articles in that ilk, but that one took the cake. That's Slate.

Let's see the article. With your history of misrepresentation, there's a good chance it didn't say that at all.

If you like sources that promote leftist polices, based on principles of central control, unlimited government and lack of individual freedom, then that's all fine and good. Your sources may still be relevant, but don't pretend that because a source is "up your street" that it's the reputable one. Heritage is a reputable source. But, it also was not my only source - Pew, Forbes, and the government primary data, plus the OECD data itself, all support my statements.

I notice you focus on Heritage, which of course, you don't point out anything about the data in the article that was wrong - just that you don't like the fact that they promote free markets and free enterprise. However, you say nothing about the OECD Data I separately cited,

Which OECD data? I recall you posting The Economist's slanted take on that data. Did you post any actual OECD data itself?

[Hermit]

While Forty Two is taking a bit of time out to find more Heritage Foundation type objective data, I had a bit of a look around on my own. So it turns out that the official Federal Poverty Levels for the 48 Border States and D.C. starts at an annual income of US$12,228 in 2016 for a single person and changes incrementally in line with how many people live in a household*. Just about all forms of income are taken into consideration. Exceptions are Capital gains or losses, Noncash benefits (e.g. food stamps and housing subsidies) and Tax credits**. According to the United States Census Bureau 12.7% of the US population lived between the applicable poverty thresholds***.

Now I would like to know two things:

1) How can an article include, as Forty Two claims, a lot of people who "live in houses they own, have two cars in the driveway, have plenty of food, have computers, tvs, internet, and go to the movies and other entertainment options regularly with some discretionary funds" among people living below the poverty thresholds?

2) Does Forty Two really expect anyone to accept the following statement in the Forbes article he linked to and quoted: "Thus we can say that by global standards there are no poor people in the US at all: the entire country is at least middle class or better. We seem to have fought and won that War on Poverty."?

*https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time ... holds.html
**https://www.census.gov/topics/income-po ... sures.html
***https://www.census.gov/search-results.h ... chtype=web

[pErvinalia]

It's nonsensical to state that there are no poor in the US just because a US citizen who was magically transported to the third world would be at worst a middle class citizen.

[Scot Dutchy]

Back in the seventies I heard a definition of poverty in America was when when a family could not afford a new washing machine.
There is real poverty in the US but the right wing will just not admit it and creates the wildest stories to cover it.

Another interpretation of the figures:

The Real Numbers: Half of America Is in Poverty -- and It's Creeping Upward

Last year, the Charles Koch Foundation released a commercial that ranked a near-poverty-level $34,000 family among the Top 1% of poor people in the world. Bud Konheim, CEO and co-founder of fashion company Nicole Miller, concurred: "The guy that's making, oh my God, he's making $35,000 a year, why don't we try that out in India or some countries we can't even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy."

Comments like these are condescending and self-righteous. They display an ignorance of the needs of lower-income and middle-income families in America. The costs of food and housing and education and health care and transportation and child care and taxes have been well-defined by organizations such as the Economic Policy Institute, which calculated that a U.S. family of three would require an average of about $48,000 a year to meet basic needs; and by the Working Poor Families Project, which estimates the income required for basic needs for a family of four at about $45,000. The median household income is $51,000.

....

2. Almost Half of Americans Own, on Average, NOTHING

The bottom half of America own just 1.1% of the country's wealth, or about $793 billion, which is the same amount owned by the 30 richest Americans. ZERO wealth is owned by approximately the bottom 47 percent.

This nonexistent net worth is due in great part to the overwhelming burden of debt for Americans, which now includes college graduates entering the work force. The average student loan balance has risen 91 percent in the past ten years.

3. Half of Americans are "Poor" or "Low-Income"

This is based on the Census Department's Relative Poverty Measure (Table 4), which is "most commonly used in developed countries to measure poverty." The Economic Policy Institute uses the term "economically vulnerable." With this standard, 18 percent of Americans are below the poverty threshold and 32 percent are below twice the threshold, putting them in the low-income category.

The official poverty rate increased by 25 percent between 2000 and 2011. Seniors and children feel the greatest impact, with 55 percent of the elderly and almost 60 percent of children classified as poor or low-income under the relative poverty measure. Wider Opportunities for Women reports that "60% of women age 65 and older who live alone or live with a spouse have incomes insufficient to cover basic, daily expenses."

Another view:

Do We Have Real Poverty in the United States of America?

Consider the images of starving children in Africa, Asia, or Latin America accompanying appeals for humanitarian aid. It is not difficult to understand why people deprived of the most basic material necessities for subsistence — adequate food, clean water, shelter from extreme heat or cold — would suffer high rates of preventable disease, disability, and premature death. Poverty in developing countries is often defined as living on less than $2.00 per person per day (1). By those terms, very few people in the United States would be poor. But poverty criteria for poor countries are not applicable in affluent countries with far higher living costs. The official U.S. poverty guideline in 2005 was an annual income of $19,350 for a family of four (2), which would represent wealth in many poor countries (3). Why, then, are Preventing Chronic Disease and other U.S. journals participating in this multi-journal issue, to be released October 22, 2007, on poverty and human development? Is it simply a magnanimous gesture to support fighting poverty and its adverse health consequences in poor countries, or is poverty an issue we must address at home?

America’s Real Poverty Rate

The Census Bureau recently released a highly-anticipated report suggesting ways to improve the measurement of poverty in America. It found that adjusting for medical expenses, the value of benefits payments, regional differences in the cost of living, and other technical factors raised the poverty rate to 16 percent, up from the official count of 15.1 percent.

....

This year is 2011, not 1969. The tortured technical debate over poverty measurement misses the point. However we measure it, our standard of what constitutes a decent standard of income should be higher in 2011 than it was in 1969. Our accepted poverty line is now 42 years out of date.

How long will it take before we accept that a 1969 poverty standard is just too old? It’s already too old. Human dignity requires that people today live better than people lived in 1969. Even poor people.

[Animavore]

Holy shit there is some straight up delusional thinking in this thread. Religious thinking. Holy shit!

[Brian Peacock]

... The point I was making is that it's really ridiculous to call the US an outlier from the rest of the world in that way, because pretty much, other arguably than a handful of first world, western European, Canada Oz/NZ, being poor in the rest of the world is much worse than in the US.

And the point I was making is that viewing the poverty of the impoverished in absolute or global terms is unhelpful when talking about or addressing the actual poverty of the impoverished of any nation.

Unhelpful? Not sure what you mean by that.

I thought that was pretty clear from my comments. It's unhelpful because it gives the wrong impression about peoples living standards and opportunities in the context of their membership of a society.

The idea is that a nation can have no real poor in it, relatively speaking. There are some who equate income inequality with poverty, which it is not.

I'm not one of those, nor did I forward that point.

If you had a society of millionaires and billionaires, and nobody below the million mark (and all such persons could live in big houses, with plenty of gourmet organic food, transportation, entertainment, intellectual stimulation and disposable income) they wouldn't become poor just because there happen to be billionaires out there who have 80% of the wealth.

I'm wondering who said otherwise?

I.e. - income inequality is one measure and a relevant one, but it is not the definition of poverty, nor is it inherently bad to have unequal distribution of income.

I'm afraid I'm not seeing how this relates either to my comments or the post I was responding to...

In fact, to have a free society where people have economic freedoms, there will inevitably be inequalities due to people's differing life choices. People who opt to focus on work, for example, and eschew a family, will have a better chance at amassing more wealth because they limit expenses and increase income. Making more money than other people is not inherently bad.

If you're of the view that I think otherwise you're mistaken. And besides, criticism of widening or worrisome income inequality is not founded on the premiss that everyone has some moral right to exactly the same amount of money and exactly the same opportunities as everybody else. Personally I feel that characterising criticism of income inequality in that way is a bit of a rouge fish.

... Are the hungry and homeless of New Hampshire better off than the hungry and homeless of New Mexico, or the hungry and homeless of the UK or The Democratic Republic of the Congo? Perhaps they are in absolute terms, which is to say by comparison, but they're still hungry and homeless Americans.

The "poor" in the US are not hungry or homeless. Only a very very small number of people in the US are ever homeless, and those that are are most often homeless for a brief period of time, staying with family and such. The percentages are very low. Now, I'm not denying that they are there, and I am not saying that no provision should be made for them in our system. Provision IS in fact made for them. Help is available. But, it's a different group of people to say "the poor" in the US vs. "hungry and homeless" in the US. When an article says so many millions of people are "poor" in America, they are including in that group a lot of people who live in houses they own, have two cars in the driveway, have plenty of food, have computers, tvs, internet, and go to the movies and other entertainment options regularly with some discretionary funds. The hungry and homeless portion represents a tiny fraction.

Fair point. My literary pretensions have clouded the point. For 'homeless and hungry' read something like 'very poor', or 'impoverished'.

...
To say that the homeless and hungry of the US are better off than the homeless and hungry of some other nation is just a lazy kind of way to declare that the hungry and homeless are not really hungry or homeless, that the poor are not poor, or at least that they're not that poor - like third-world poor.

It's not saying that, though. To be clear. I haven't said, nor did the articles say, that the "hungry and homeless" are better off here than other "hungry and homeless" people in another country. If a person is hungry and homeless, they are hungry and homeless. It's bad wherever you are.

Sure is. But just taking hunger and homelessness for a moment, at least they are a pretty clear indication of poverty, and the levels of each give a sense of how a nation is doing in relation to those structural features which apply to everyone and which everyone has to navigate as citizens. Are the numbers of very poor and destitute people rising, falling, or staying about the same? Are those numbers too high, too low, or about right? How many people are in long-term nutritional deficit? How many children are homeless or in households that cannot meet basic living costs? That kind of thing.

However, what the data showed is that the bottom 10% of American households live better than the average person in many first world countries, and are only worse off than the bottom 10% in one or two countries. That's according to the OECD's Better Life Index.

OK. To put a human face on that nugget, 10% of America equals c.32 million people - around half the population of the UK, or about six-times the population Norway. A previous post stated that the lowest quintile of the income distribution curve (lowest 20% of the population) had incomes amounting to c.0.01% of GDP - around $1.8bn, or about $30 each pa. I mention this only to point out that rather than simply talking about a number, like 10% of the population, perhaps we should be a little more probing about what that actually means.

For example: What's the income distribution within that 32 million people? Are their incomes rising relative to costs, going down, or staying about the same? Given the structural landscape of the US what's likely to happen to the chances of those 32 million people in the next 12months, in the next 5 or ten years? Of that 10% how many people are in severe poverty; unable to meet basic living costs, in housing crisis, in nutritional deficit, in associated poor health etc? How many are in some form of employment? How many are in receipt of some form of state assistance? How many are children, how many are of working age, and how many are of retirement age? Things like that.

...It feels like an aphorism to salve the conscience of those who don't really want to consider matter seriously, or who want to avoid the issue all together - it means poverty is a problem for the poor to solve themselves rather than recognising that the vast majority of poverty is not the consequence of personal action, inaction, or moral failure but a structural consequence and a social, and therefore a political, issue.

I'm not talking about the morality of anyone's actions or the reasons for them being poor. I'm saying - very clearly - that the when an article says that X million Americans are "poor" they are not "hungry and homeless" (except for a very small percentage).

What percentage?

Most of the poor, as the Better Life Index showed, live better than the average person in most European countries. That's the data. Not a value judgment.

OK, I've granted that referring to 'homeless and hungry' was a bit OTT, but how many people have or are accruing debts they cannot service, how many people are working or are supported by the state but cannot cover basic needs like housing, energy, food, or clothing costs, who have to make choices between feeding their kids and feeding themselves, or between sanitary products for mum or diapers? Again, what I'm saying is that poverty is a real issue for any society but in order to examine and address it one has to look at it not just in abstract terms but in real, human terms, because it is a factor in the real lives of real human beings.

Now I know there are government programs and charities that cover some of the shortfall in means that people experience, but do they address the underlying issue or merely meet some of the immediate needs of the worse-cases without doing anything to ameliorate the additional costs of being poor, such as additional transport costs or having limited access to credit at affordable rates, to name but two; do the limits and/or conditionalities of assistance programs themselves carry additional resource costs for poor individual's or families?

The issue is never really looked at in the round by those with the power, and the responsibility, to address such important social quandaries, it seems. The thing here is, if your neighbour is not just poor but embedded in a structure that keeps them impoverished then they are likely to become desperate, and liable to rely on alternative forms of finance, like the black economy or irregular and unregulated work, or crime even. What percentage of desperately poor people are you happy to live alongside?

I'm sure that in the US, as in the UK, most people who are poor are not that kind of desperately poor, and I'm sure most are exceedingly grateful for the help and support they do receive -- if perhaps a little embarrassed about their circumstances -- but the fundamental structural issues persist year-on-year. And with each inevitable turning of the electoral cycle these structural issues not only go unaddressed politically (other than to be reaffirmed as a 'fact of live'), but currently they are actively being upgraded, enhanced, and ever-deeply entrenched (or so it seems to me, with the likes of the so-called 'tax reform and jobs bill' currently being pushed into US law, or the recent revisions of tax and welfare systems in the UK which are actually pushing people in income, food and energy poverty, rent arrears, eviction, destitution, and ill-health - and in some cases suicide).

The claim of many on the right of the political spectrum is that Capitalism could and can solve this structural problem if it's is freed from the restricting hand of bureaucratic regulation and governmental control. However, that a big 'if' isn't it? It presumes that Capitalism has a kind of moral purpose in the form of some obligation to other people and to improving their lot in life. Do you think Capitalism has such an obligation - and if so, how do you think it is doing?

[Scot Dutchy]

Capitalism == exploitation. The poor are there to exploited. The US has serious serious problems with all social matters and never mind the gun problem yet people like you wrap stories around them to hide them. Your president should be moved henceforth to the nearest clinic and put under sedation. Your country is one big mess.

42 people like you make me sick. The only person I have met on this forum who is worse than you is no longer with us strangely enough and maybe it is...

[Forty Two]

While Forty Two is taking a bit of time out to find more Heritage Foundation type objective data,

OECD data and Pew Research, already cited previously. I've not relied on exclusively the Heritage Foundation. However, the Heritage Foundation is a far better source than, say, clickbait Slate.

[Forty Two]

Can you imagine what it's like to be okay with making 300x more than what someone who works under you makes?

--holy shit

Oh well, it's a reason to never feel too bad about myself I guess. At least I'm not rich.

What's the right number? 200x? 100x? 50x? 25x? 12.5x? 6.25x? 3.125x? Everyone should make the same?

Who are you to determine what other people should make? In my position, having worked for 30+ years working, I make like 20 times what some other people make. What would be fair? For me to pay for a required education and licensure, to work for 30+ years day in and day out, take the risk of creating and running an enterprise, and then I have to pay an employee who comes in and does menial labor close to what I make? 1/2? What? What's fair?

Bill Gates made like a $11 billion last year. Is that "fair?" What about Christiano Renaldo who earns $88 million a year to kick a soccer ball? Lionel Messi? Roger Federer? Lebron James? What's it like to be those guys, who make 4,000 or 5,000 times the minimum wage? Those evil bastards....

[Forty Two]

Can you imagine what it's like to be okay with making 300x more than what someone who works under you makes?

--holy shit

Oh well, it's a reason to never feel too bad about myself I guess. At least I'm not rich.

For 42 it is normal way of life. Like everything in America.

The ability to make more money with which to live a better life and take care of one's family is a good thing. A public policy which would eliminate that ability or take away earnings from a person simply for the sake of depriving that person of money, and not as part of a fair taxation system to sustain the operations of the government, seems both pointless and sad. Making money is not evil in itself. There is nothing "wrong" with making a lot of money, is there?

Charlene Heineken is a multi-billionaire. So, what is the problem with that? Is that the normal way of life in Netherlands? Why do they let her get away with that? What it must be like to make so much more than the average....

Fritz Goldschmeding.... Dik Wessels... John De Mols... Wijnand Pol...

So, can we agree that's just fine for the richest 1% to own 1/4 of the wealth? https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutc ... nds-wealth

We know that's just fine, because they do things right in the Netherlands, and so, you know, so, when the richest 1% in the US own about 1/3 of the wealth in the US - that's just awful - that's horrible - that's just evil and mean, and that's capitalism run amok. A good, well-balanced Netherlands, well, they limit the 1% to just 1/4 of the wealth, so that's just a fine balance which ensures income inequality stays at a reasonable level.

[Forty Two]

The task of a CEO is the mange the company so it makes money, because if it doesn't make money it will cease operations because it will run out of money. Then all the workers are out of jobs, and the company is gone.

So, if Thomas Rutledge's remuneration package did not amount to $98 million per annum, Charter Communications Inc. won't make money, cease operations because it will run out of money, all the workers will be out of jobs, and the company will be gone. Got it.

Not necessarily, and you missed the point of what I was explaining, so I'll try again. The task of the CEO is to manage the company so it makes money, because if it does not do so it will go out of business. The company is an asset, owned by people who hold equity interests in it. The owners hire managers, if they're not managing the company themselves. The job of a CEO is not a particularly fungible one - and a company who is looking to hire a CEO is trying to find one that knows the business and is capable of managing the relationships and structuring the company in such a way that it will be successful. This is not the same as being a line employee, someone hired to put widgets together, or someone doing accounting, or bookkeeping or other defined tasks. The few people who have the capacity to run Charter Communications, Inc. are in high demand and low supply. The way Thomas Rutledge gets hired involves negotiations and extensive documentation. He won't take the job if he isn't paid significant money. If Charter doesn't want to pay him a lot, then Rutledge won't take the job. That's fine and dandy. That's the way it goes. Charter was free - being big boys and girls - to hire someone other than Rutledge. They made a decision that Rutledge was worth more to them than $98 million. Nobody hires someone unless they think that person is worth more to them than the amount they're paying.

Here's an article by Forbes ... https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal ... b6a6d25cb5

Thus we can say that by global standards there are no poor people in the US at all: the entire country is at least middle class or better. We seem to have fought and won that War on Poverty

I have great difficulty imagining how anyone can quote that with a straight face.

That's because you have come to accept a particular narrative about the United States that is just not true.

[Forty Two]

Tell these people that:

And these.... 27,000 homeless in the Netherregions - https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2013/52/2 ... etherlands

Nobody says there are zero problems in the US or zero people needing help. That does not refute the overall numbers, does it?

[rainbow]

That's fine and dandy. That's the way it goes. Charter was free - being big boys and girls - to hire someone other than Rutledge. They made a decision that Rutledge was worth more to them than $98 million. Nobody hires someone unless they think that person is worth more to them than the amount they're paying.

Do you have any idea how Corporate Cronyism works?

An overpaid CEO is only "worth it" to those that have their snouts in the same trough.