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A question. (For those on the right.)

pourdeac said:
So there are issues with the poor, but I think we all need to better understand what it all means. Helping a poor family at subsistence living (World Bank poverty line = income <$2,000) is a heck of a lot different than addressing the needs of families at our poverty line (US fam of 4 poverty line = <$24,000). That difference in definition shocked me. I think everyone wants to help the former. I don't think everyone agrees on if and how to help the latter via government and where the line between help and less help should be.
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Again, this is based on the cost of living in the poorest countries in the world. It is more expensive to live and eat in the US than it is in those countries, the numbers are not comparable.
 
using the World Bank's definition of worldwide subsistence living to help determine which people in the US we should be helping is up there with the dumbest things I've seen on this board
 
ImTheCaptain said:
people realize that non-profit aid for the poor is functionally different from government structures like welfare, unemployment, and medicaid, right? if medicaid goes away, the private non-profit market could never fill that gap.

that's like saying we could go back to privately funded fire departments
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Then how did people survive back in the old days before we made free smart phones and premium cable television an inalienable right?
 
pourdeac said:
Thanks for proving my point.

A recent study on socioeconomic mobility by the Pew group...which is pretty progressive BTW....put up those stats. The link to the PDF is on the wiki site. You should read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States

According to a 2012 Pew Economic Mobility Project study[15] 43% of children born into the bottom quintile remain in that bottom quintile as adults

We absolutely have an immigration policy that fosters the immigration of low income families doing work people here don't want to do. Many work under the table. They send about half their income back home making the problem here worse. We can't really "fix" the problem of existing poverty if we keep importing people that are considered in poverty or takes jobs away from those trying to get out of poverty can we? Is that something you can't admit happens?
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It's appalling that 43% remain in poverty.

It doesn't say where then 57% reaches.
 
avalon said:
Again, this is based on the cost of living in the poorest countries in the world. It is more expensive to live and eat in the US than it is in those countries, the numbers are not comparable.
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This is how about 70-80% of India's residents live. So while I have no doubt $2,000 a day means more in Bangladesh than in the U.S., I think pourdeac's point is that the conditions most of the world suffers through in poverty are unbelievably dire.

india-urban-slums1.jpg
 
pour wonders why so many people have roofs if they're so "poverty stricken"

this new issue of the board conservatives comparing the poor in the US and in developing countries is simply fantastical. how far down the rabbit hole can we go?
 
DeacMan said:
This is how about 70-80% of India's residents live. So while I have no doubt $2,000 a day means more in Bangladesh than in the U.S., I think pourdeac's point is that the conditions most of the world suffers through in poverty are unbelievably dire.

india-urban-slums1.jpg
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I'm confused as to the point. Does this mean that since the poor in the US don't have it as bad as the poor in other countries, that we shouldn't be helping them?
 
DeacMan said:
This is how about 70-80% of India's residents live. So while I have no doubt $2,000 a day means more in Bangladesh than in the U.S., I think pourdeac's point is that the conditions most of the world suffers through in poverty are unbelievably dire.
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That’s a fine point to make. Repeatedly trotting out the $2,000 per year number and pretending it is comparable to the poverty line in the US is not. (Hell, how long would $2,000 last in the US if you were using it solely for food for a family of four?)

And then we’d get into the moral question of whether it is OK to allow people, particularly children, to live in those conditions. Or whether it is good for our society to have a bunch of shanty towns all over the country.
 
BeachBumDeac said:
I'm confused as to the point. Does this mean that since the poor in the US don't have it as bad as the poor in other countries, that we shouldn't be helping them?
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Yes. Telling people in poverty they are better off starving here rather than Bangladesh will ease their hunger pains.
 
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BeachBumDeac said:
I'm confused as to the point. Does this mean that since the poor in the US don't have it as bad as the poor in other countries, that we shouldn't be helping them?
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No. Of course, not. But it also means you are fucking ridiculously naive if you think we aren't helping the poor in our country. We provide a ton of assistance to our poor. We are the most generous country on earth by a wide, wide margin when it comes to charity. And we spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year providing aid to the poor via various levels of government.

How we move people out of poverty is a fair question. But, as pour has already pointed out, how do you want to first define "poverty"? What aid should be provided - that isn't being provided already? And what do you want to demand of those who receive aid?
 
avalon said:
That’s a fine point to make. Repeatedly trotting out the $2,000 per year number and pretending it is comparable to the poverty line in the US is not. (Hell, how long would $2,000 last in the US if you were using it solely for food for a family of four?)

And then we’d get into the moral question of whether it is OK to allow people, particularly children, to live in those conditions. Or whether it is good for our society to have a bunch of shanty towns all over the country.
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Well, I doubt anyone here thinks it is a good or acceptable situation for people to live in a shanty town where there is no electricity, running water and people can literally starve to death. So we should be able to move on from that premise. And, since 99% of all American homes have clean water, electricity and heat, we seem to be doing a pretty decent job on those standards already.
 
DeacMan said:
We are the most generous country on earth by a wide, wide margin when it comes to charity.
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Oh that is not true at all. At least on a per capita level. We aren't nearly as generous as countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden. It's not even really close.

Edit: Thought you were talking about government aid here. Were you talking about private charity?
 
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Why don't conservatives ask, "What can we do to help children have the bootstraps their parents didn't?"

They just seem to want to doom children who have poor parents without offering them a way out.
 
DeacMan said:
No. Of course, not. But it also means you are fucking ridiculously naive if you think we aren't helping the poor in our country. We provide a ton of assistance to our poor. We are the most generous country on earth by a wide, wide margin when it comes to charity. And we spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year providing aid to the poor via various levels of government.

How we move people out of poverty is a fair question. But, as pour has already pointed out, how do you want to first define "poverty"? What aid should be provided - that isn't being provided already? And what do you want to demand of those who receive aid?
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Agree that that is a fair question. I would also say that how the poor live in the rest of the world has next to nothing to do with how to move people out of poverty in the US, unless we are talking about ways that people have moved out of poverty in those countries.
 
DeacMan said:
Well, I doubt anyone here thinks it is a good or acceptable situation for people to live in a shanty town where there is no electricity, running water and people can literally starve to death. So we should be able to move on from that premise. And, since 99% of all American homes have clean water, electricity and heat, we seem to be doing a pretty decent job on those standards already.
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Link?
 
DeacMan said:
Well, I doubt anyone here thinks it is a good or acceptable situation for people to live in a shanty town where there is no electricity, running water and people can literally starve to death. So we should be able to move on from that premise. And, since 99% of all American homes have clean water, electricity and heat, we seem to be doing a pretty decent job on those standards already.
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99% of homes have clean water, heat, and electricity? I'm sure that's comforting to people who are in poverty and don't own homes.
 
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