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Anatomy of the Collapse of a Failed City

Wealth buys you the privilege to have children out of wedlock, eat like shit and become obese, commit crimes and not serve time in prison, etc. The working poor are held to a higher standard across the board on all human behaviors.
 
WakeandBake said:
Wealth buys you the privilege to have children out of wedlock, eat like shit and become obese, commit crimes and not serve time in prison, etc. The working poor are held to a higher standard across the board on all human behaviors.
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Great post.
 
food and poverty have a weird relationship in this country. food is more abundant than its ever been, it's other parts of a poor person's budget that are more the problem now. the poverty line calculation is one example of the weirdness. Poverty line = (cost of a minimum basket of food) X 3. That's because way back in the 50s or 60s, food was 1/3 of the average poor person's budget. The rest was 1/3 housing and 1/3 everything else. Food is much more affordable now, housing and "everything else" (primarily healthcare and education) much less affordable, so the poverty line calculation overestimates the difficulty of obtaining food and underestimates the difficulty of housing and everything else.
 
dmcheatw said:
plus if you rigidly adhered to such a diet you'd eventually get serious health complications/diseases from the aforementioned malnourishment.
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Milk, Cereal, OJ for breakfast
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich or somethign else with some cheap protein in it (Ham / turkey sandwich)
Pasta at night with a side of veggies (broccoli or something).

All can be fixed in minutes, and there is no way that eating like that wouldn't be cheaper and way more nutritious than pretty much any diet any of us adhere to. I am all about fixing poverty, but to be both poor and obese just seems like a ridiculous combination. Yes you can be fat and be malnourished, but that is because you are choosing the wrong foods. There are plenty of ready available, cheap, healthy food in this country...no matter where you live. Frozen broccoli at the grocery store might not be organic, but it is still really good for you and a lot better than a side of french fries.

And this has almost nothing to do with the topic at hand, or the failure of Detroit. I just hate the argument that our poor have zero access to healthy food. They have more access to healthy food than any other nation in the world. Yet we are the only nation with a poor/fat epidemic.
 
holy shit when wrangor and jhmd turn threads about legitimate economic issues to blame-the-poor-fests its like listening to a kid trying to change the subject
 
Deacon923 said:
food and poverty have a weird relationship in this country. food is more abundant than its ever been, it's other parts of a poor person's budget that are more the problem now. the poverty line calculation is one example of the weirdness. Poverty line = (cost of a minimum basket of food) X 3. That's because way back in the 50s or 60s, food was 1/3 of the average poor person's budget. The rest was 1/3 housing and 1/3 everything else. Food is much more affordable now, housing and "everything else" (primarily healthcare and education) much less affordable, so the poverty line calculation overestimates the difficulty of obtaining food and underestimates the difficulty of housing and everything else.
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You're appling and oranging the standard of living again though. That 1/3 for housing in the 50s and 60s was for an asbestos-laden shack hopeful to have indoor plumbing. Now that 1/3 is for a 2-bedroom apartment with A/C. You can still get a shack with outhouse for less than 1/3 of the calculation. If you think about it, food is really the only thing that should be relatively constant from then to now in terms of what people eat (or at least should eat), so should be the appropriate measurement. Buying broccoli then has the same effect as buying broccoli now, whereas housing and other purchase items are completely different.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
You're appling and oranging the standard of living again though. That 1/3 for housing in the 50s and 60s was for an asbestos-laden shack hopeful to have indoor plumbing. Now that 1/3 is for a 2-bedroom apartment with A/C. You can still get a shack with outhouse for less than 1/3 of the calculation. If you think about it, food is really the only thing that should be relatively constant from then to now in terms of what people eat (or at least should eat), so should be the appropriate measurement. Buying broccoli then has the same effect as buying broccoli now, whereas housing and other purchase items are completely different.
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pesticide development, genetic engineering, cheap foreign labor, better meteorology...food development, and thus the type of food and it's costs are not the same 1/2 century ago as it is now. apples and oranges.

there is another problem with your post from a social perspective (not material, which is what you're focused on in that particular post) that i bolded, but don't feel like elaborating on right now. a social scientist could pretty easily explain why the bolded is missing the point almost entireley. it has to do with social stratification, in part.
 
Poor is a relative term particularly in a country that prides itself on social mobility.
 
PhDeac said:
Poor is a relative term particularly in a country that prides itself on social mobility.
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If the definition of poverty is relative then by definition it will always exist, unless or until there is no difference between the top and the bottom. Is the relative line based on a set spread from the highest point at the top of the wealth distribution or set as some percentage based on the highest point?
 
You missed the key of the post. Social mobility.
 
PhDeac said:
You missed the key of the post. Social mobility.
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I did not miss the social mobility point I just personally am not sure it really exist for most of society. I love the ethos of work hard and get ahead but I haven't seen a lot of evidence that it actually exist for most Americans, little on, people living in other countries. We have been fighting the war on poverty for all of my life, and yet poverty still exist. I personally do what I can to help through charitable giving but really do not feel that I can make much of a difference, but I can help a few.

I believe that most of the governmental effforts to decrease poverty are ineffective. Short of confiscation and redistribution of wealth which I believe would lead to the downfall of our country and a massive flight of assets to other countries with more favorable tax policies, I do not see the problem ever going away. Education seems to offer the best long term solution but after sending my own two children through public schools, I fear that schools are now much more concerned with social engineering and care every little about actually educating our children.
 
I apologze for the whiny, morose post. Apparently, I am in some type of funk.
 
And you've identified the broader problem. There will always be poverty, but it's not a temporary state before getting back up. People are poor from generation to generation despite working hard.

Now I'm curious about your "social engineering" point.
 
By social engineering I mean they seem to be more focused on trying to solve and account for all of society's problems instead of just focusing on educating the children. They have lost the focus on thier core mission and are failing. They are working on solving an entire host of societal issues that they cannot hope to adequately address. They are underfunded for their core mission and get distracted by other efforts, while most of the ones they get distracted by are worthwhile and worthy, these should not be the focus of public education.
 
olddke said:
By social engineering I mean they seem to be more focused on trying to solve and account for all of society's problems instead of just focusing on educating the children. They have lost the focus on thier core mission and are failing. They are working on solving an entire host of societal issues that they cannot hope to adequately address. They are underfunded for their core mission and get distracted by other efforts, while most of the ones they get distracted by are worthwhile and worthy, these should not be the focus of public education.
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how much time have you actually spent in a public school classroom?
 
olddke said:
By social engineering I mean they seem to be more focused on trying to solve and account for all of society's problems instead of just focusing on educating the children. They have lost the focus on thier core mission and are failing. They are working on solving an entire host of societal issues that they cannot hope to adequately address. They are underfunded for their core mission and get distracted by other efforts, while most of the ones they get distracted by are worthwhile and worthy, these should not be the focus of public education.
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So we face a situation in which educational disparities can be directly traced to socioeconomic disparities, yet public education shouldn't be focused on doing what is necessary to bridge those gaps and educate the public. Sounds like you're mad the teachers spent too much time with the poors than your kids.
 
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