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throwaway12  ·  2491 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Homelessness up 26% in LA YoY, 10% in Seattle , *61%* among LA youth

I didn't mean to imply that there is a moral failing. I don't think people who are in poverty are at all at fault for being in that situation. Although I think there may be an intellectual failing of sorts in terms of "trained to do the wrong job".

There are a few cases of poverty:

A person's work isn't valuable, and they can be educated and made to do work that is more valuable.

There is a finite amount of valuable work, and too many people to sustainable do that work.

A person's work is valuable, but systematic factors force them into poverty or do not properly reward the work.

I'm assuming it is a combination of one and two. Birth control and poverty means fewer people born to fill the shrinking pool of needed labor. Education allows those who aren't able to do valuable work to learn how to do the more valuable work. I'm not assuming these people are bad or anything like that, just that it is either literally impossible for them to get ahead in life due to lack of need for labor or that they are held back by education.

If they need education, we should give it to them, along with all other support they need, and our investments as a society will pay off very well. If there just isn't enough labor demand, we have to give them assistance to live while also encouraging people not to have kids so that we don't have this problem in the future.

It has nothing to do with who these people are, it has everything to do with the work they are doing and the value that work provides to the larger society. Bagging groceries is not valuable enough to offset the costs of building and maintaining an apartment complex in the current economy. More and more, as machines make our labor worth less, people's jobs will be falling under this "line of value" unless they are moved to higher ground.