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The Most Unequal Place In America

Deacon923

Deacon923

Scooter Banks
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/opinion/sutter-lake-providence-income-inequality/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

It's a long, but interesting, read.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a graphic from the story:

131028104133-ctl-providence-2-story-top.jpg
 
Great read. Babies and church. Subsidies and tax breaks. Lots of contrasts. I'm curious what the thoughts were regarding the picture of the 5-series next to the trailer. It's a 90's model, granted, but the photo intended to provoke a reaction.
 
Across the country, workers are making just about what they did 30 years ago. But they're also more productive than ever -- producing far more stuff per hour now.

If you're making more stuff and getting paid the same, where are most of those gains in productivity going? If you guessed to the wealthiest Americans, you'd be correct.
That affects how a person like Gilmore is paid.
If her wages had kept pace with productivity, she would make $31,300 per year, instead of about $18,000, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
That's a wage that might actually be livable.
 
jhmd/shouldn't have had all them kids, so raise her taxes and pull all aid for skin in the game and to teach her a lesson about personal responsibility/jhmd
 
Read that piece before coming here today...long and interesting it is. And sad.

Suggested steps to attempt to address the problems highlighted seem to include higher taxes on the wealthy, lowering education costs, and improving lower income wages.

Other ideas? I mean, as a society we should not be impotent in trying to address what most everyone can see is a problem (poverty, ignorance, and severe inequality). So if we're not going to just wish it weren't so, what do we do? And how to do it in today's political climate?
 
There's absolutely no reason why minimum wage shouldn't be tied directly to inflation. It's absurd that it isn't.
 
WakeandBake said:
jhmd/shouldn't have had all them kids, so raise her taxes and pull all aid for skin in the game and to teach her a lesson about personal responsibility/jhmd
Click to expand...

As a fellow lib, I get your point but you have to admit- condoms are exponentially cheaper. Don't get me wrong- I love kids and adore my two but bringing them into a poverty situation is bad for them and their parents. And too often, the kids are the ones doing without.
 
The number 7 concept is an interesting one, and one that I don't think would ever work in America. It is working in Kenya because people there have a different outlook on life and are never trying to be something they are not. In America it seems most people that are randomly given money will use it for something that has instant gratification instead of long term outcome. They want to be "rich" like they see on TV or across the lake so bad that even for a fleeting moment if they can buy a nice TV or car they will do it. A better strategy it seems is to have directed assistance. The woman in the story wants to go to nursing school and become a registered nurse over just her CNA. This is someone that should be identified and giving the ability to better herself through loan interest loan and assistance.
 
Well, I agree that directed/targeted assistance seems to make (a lot) more sense to me than just dropping cash on the street corner, so to speak.

I am not really familiar with the details of the Kenyan program. Maybe I'll try to look at it a bit...
 
Some summary evidence of the effects of cash transfers: link.

[with footnotes and links to further details]

Interesting...

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The poor do not abuse cash as predicted by derogatory stereotypes. Across a range of studies, spending on alcohol and tobacco either decreases, stays constant, or at most increases in proportion with other spending (typically 2–3%). There is no evidence that cash transfers are spent disproportionately at the bar. (3,4,7,12,13,14,15,28) Similarly, most studies find no effect on the number of hours worked. Some studies show increases in working hours as household members migrate to obtain better jobs. (7,8,9,10,11)
----------
 
94Deac said:
As a fellow lib, I get your point but you have to admit- condoms are exponentially cheaper. Don't get me wrong- I love kids and adore my two but bringing them into a poverty situation is bad for them and their parents. And too often, the kids are the ones doing without.
Click to expand...

Totally agree. She had too many kids, so did her daughter. I love kids too. And to a certain degree I agree that the decision to have/not have kids is somewhat financial. But to take that idea to jhmd's extreme, the poor in America would not have any kids at all. I know, plenty of posters here are completely fine with that see it as a completely logical point, but it is unrealistic. Since she was not born into money, and is has no entrepreneurial acumen (and/or no way to obtain the seed money to start a business) she is relegated to a childless existence? I don't know, doesn't seem right.
 
ThinkingWithMyDeac said:
The number 7 concept is an interesting one, and one that I don't think would ever work in America. It is working in Kenya because people there have a different outlook on life and are never trying to be something they are not. In America it seems most people that are randomly given money will use it for something that has instant gratification instead of long term outcome. They want to be "rich" like they see on TV or across the lake so bad that even for a fleeting moment if they can buy a nice TV or car they will do it. A better strategy it seems is to have directed assistance. The woman in the story wants to go to nursing school and become a registered nurse over just her CNA. This is someone that should be identified and giving the ability to better herself through loan interest loan and assistance.
Click to expand...

I think you are perpetuating stereotypes that are not really true. The same way one of the first posts in this thread jumped on the fact that a 20-year old BMW was in one of the photos, the same way I get facebook posts about how unjust it is that a poor person can be on public assistance and have the temerity to get a cell phone or have cable TV. Then, later in your post, you contradict yourself by noting that this woman isn't talking about buying a TV, she's talking about nursing school. In the story, her daughter was dreaming of a job at McDonald's so she could fix up her broken-down trailer so her kids would have a nicer place to live.

I linked a study on another thread that showed when poor people got money, a sizable percentage of it was spent on their kids, and not on drugs or alcohol. If I find it again I'll add it here.

ETA: not the one I was talking about, but here is a good article on conditional cash transfers. Basically, money goes to the parents to spend as they like, but they have to send their kids to school and get them vaccinated. So, some strings attached, but much less bureaucracy and paternalism than the US system of picking and choosing what we'll pay for and making the poor jump through all kinds of hoops to get the aid, then taking it away as soon as they get a paying job.
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21588385-giving-money-directly-poor-people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal
 
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It's hard to not notice some of those things. I mean, the lady highlighted in the piece is driving a 2005 Ford. My vehicle is a 1998 Ford.

Also, in the squalid trailer by the nasty, seemingly rotting mattress, there appears to be some trash from a fast food place (???). So these things reflect what, that these poor people are not poor? Or that they can't ever make sensible choices? No. But it does seem fair to posit that their problems aren't likely to be solved by mere money. Still, the case infusion/transfer case is interesting.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
There's absolutely no reason why minimum wage shouldn't be tied directly to inflation. It's absurd that it isn't.
Click to expand...

Uhh, how about the idea that it would just create more inflation on the same lower-end goods that they are using their money to buy? The guy making minimum wage isn't working at the Benz dealership so that McDuckets has to pay more for his E-class. He is working at Walmart or Hardee's, and if Walmart and Hardee's have to pay their workers more across the board, then the minimum wage guy has to pay higher prices for his groceries and burgers. You're just creating an escalating circle targeted primarily at the people you are trying to help.
 
Are you saying driving a 2005 Ford is a sign someone isn't poor?
 
Here's the study. Britain overhauled their poverty relief programs a few years ago. A big part of the scheme was simply making more cash available to poor families with children, no, or few, strings attached. The results have been very good. child poverty has been greatly decreased. families receiving funds increased their spending on children's clothing, books, and toys, and decreased their spending on alcohol and tobacco. http://www.crin.org/docs/TacklingPoverty.pdf
 
ConnorEl said:
It's hard to not notice some of those things. I mean, the lady highlighted in the piece is driving a 2005 Ford. My vehicle is a 1998 Ford.

Also, in the squalid trailer by the nasty, seemingly rotting mattress, there appears to be some trash from a fast food place (???). So these things reflect what, that these poor people are not poor? Or that they can't ever make sensible choices? No. But it does seem fair to posit that their problems aren't likely to be solved by mere money. Still, the case infusion/transfer case is interesting.
Click to expand...

there is significant research coming out that shows that the fact of being poor actually causes bad choices. The stress of living in poverty lowers IQ. Giving people enough money so they don't have to worry about food and shelter may enable them to make better choices. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/study-childhood-poverty-linked-to-less-emotional-regulation-later-in-life/280806/ http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/09/poverty_and_cognitive_impairment_study_shows_money_troubles_make_decision.html

Long article about the effects of decision fatigue on willpower, including but not limited to poverty issues. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This research is consistent with the results of the British reforms and the Kenyan reforms - poor people can make good decisions, and the less they have to worry about the basics of life, the better decisions they can make.
 
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They cherry picked a unique small population area (7,500 people) with income that includes close relatives of a billionaire and the income and sale of Terral Seed company (the chart is average 2007-2011 and the sale occurred in 2010). Don't you think that kinda sorta skews all that "unequal" data just a tad? They basically eliminated the middle class by folding part of it under a couple of very rich people, and the rest spread over a lot of poor rural people (which probably includes the kids of rich people).

I get that people like this woman are stuck but like the article states, choices matter. We don't seem to be doing a very good job in our educational system getting that across. It seems we often promote those bad choices. I think any discussion of these problems needs to include poorly educating people from outcomes. Unfortunately, a lot of that has been dumped under "family values" politics and attacked by some as backward.

One can also argue that increases in personal empathy for situations like these are due to increases in government involvement. Why care about your neighbor if you're paying taxes and federal government provides a safety net for them? That's a real problem and one reason more local government instead of federal government makes more sense.

Gains in productivity end up as cheaper and/or higher quality goods and services for everyone. Prices for equivalent products have basically halved over the past 50 years, inflation adjusted (or you get twice as much or much higher quality). Economists ignore that routinely but it means the same wage goes much further. Macro economists will believe we've been in a long deflationary cycle (due to increases in productivity) but that concept never seems to extend to individuals.
 
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