- The major roadblock to synthesizing competing explanations has been — and continues to be — political polarization. Vested interests on the left and right have delayed, and in some cases prevented, recognition of the overlap between liberal and conservative hypotheses, and have pointedly ignored evidence that contradicts their preconceived partisan positions.
It takes some serious cognitive dissonance to take a study from the Heritage Foundation and a study from the CEPR and say "there's common ground here." If you put it that way, I'll put it this way: With no incentive to provide a living wage, industry requires Americans to compete against 3rd world labor in pursuit of profit that, instead of "trickling down", accumulates amongst those already in possession of the majority of national capital. Right. Well, at least we all agree that poverty exists. No, many conservatives don't give a fuck. There is exactly nothing about the conservative platform that values "equal opportunity" nor has there been since Teddy Roosevelt. What makes people poor? Wealth accumulation. What is the goal of the Republican Party? Wealth accumulation. This is not a mystery, nor is it something worthy of deep thinking.What if we put it together this way? Automation, foreign competition and outsourcing lead to a decline in well-paying manufacturing jobs, which, in turn, leads to higher levels of unemployment and diminished upward mobility, which then leads to fewer marriages, a rise in the proportion of nonmarital births, increased withdrawal from the labor force, impermanent cohabitation and a consequent increase in dependence on government support.
which, in turn, leads to higher levels of unemployment and diminished upward mobility, which then leads to fewer marriages, a rise in the proportion of nonmarital births, increased withdrawal from the labor force, impermanent cohabitation and a consequent increase in dependence on government support.
many conservatives fail to see the extent to which equal opportunity, a central principle of our national self-understanding, is becoming harder to achieve.
I agree with you, and I actually think that Edsall probably does too. I think he's using some creative arguments that, while perhaps unconvincing, are his attempt to try to lure conservative into the debate. From what I know of his writing, of which I am normally a fan, he is a center left thinker who doesn't normally shy away from telling conservatives how wrong they are on the issue of inequality. I think he's using flattery for their 'ideas' to try to convince them that we need them to help to rectify the centuries of wrongs in this country. The mainstream conservative movement seems intransigent on the issue of poor people, but at some point they need to be engaged to be won over (or maybe they'll all die; I suspect, however, that's too hopeful, as young liberals will grow up to be conservative replacements for the deceased as soon as they inherit mommy and daddy's estate). The other alternative, of course, is that low income people can be both educated and convinced to vote in numbers that actually make a difference.
I'll take your word for it. If I'm not intended as the article's audience, it's okay that the article struck me as idiotic and tone deaf. I think the conservatives are fucked, frankly. Mommy & Daddy are a lot less likely to have an estate in this day and age (granted, if they have one it's likely to be bigger than grandpa's). That's the bugbear of wealth concentration - fewer Joneses, easier to keep up with. Every analysis I've seen points to the fact that Millenials are investing less and saving more than any generation since the Great Depression... a demographic like that doesn't swing for trickledown they swing for socialism. Meanwhile, they're growing up not really caring about gay marriage, living in a country that's steadily legalizing marijuana and in an environment where "terrorists" are the closest we can get to a bodily enemy but giant corporations surround them to fuck up their day.
I'm surprised he didn't mention culture. I tend to agree with most of his points, but I think culture is an enormous driving factor in generational poverty. People in the working-class world think fundamentally differently than people in the middle class, than people in poverty, than the homeless, than the wealthy. I grew up in the working class, or "blue collar," and to some extent rural poverty. Since getting a BS in a STEM field, I find myself in the middle class "white collar" world. Not only in work, but in all my social circles. Most of my friends fundamentally don't understand what it's like to be poor, and that it's a completely different mindset. They think poor people just don't know how to manage money. They're wrong. Some examples. The working class (and poverty line) live paycheck-to-paycheck. They don't save. They can't save. In the middle class, saving is obvious. You're an idiot if you don't put money away. In the working class, if you try to save, an emergency will pop up, or someone will need money. And if you don't give it to them, they won't help you when you need it. The only way to "save" is to buy things you need so you don't have money when people ask. Which is completely insane from a middle-class perspective. That's just one example. There are countless others. A Framework For Understanding Poverty does a reasonable analysis. An anecdotal example. My father is working-class. He started working maintenance in a factory 25 years ago. Being incredibly intelligent, he worked his way up to maintenance foreman of the plant, where he was making around $100k/year. Well into middle-class wages. But he lives in a $70k house with a few toys, like a shortwave and a computer he's always wanting to upgrade. He was only able to retire from an early-retirement bonus the company was giving out. He cashed out his 401k every decade or so. I think he's had over $20k in credit card debt since before I was born, which is cyclically paid down and re-charged. Why? Because he lives, and spends, at a working-class level, with a working-class mindset. It sounds stupid, because you're in the middle-class. It's not. It's one of the best ways to manage money—with working-class wages. It's the same reason people who win the lottery rapidly lose it. Because middle-class people don't buy lottery tickets, working-class buy lottery tickets, and working-class financial rules don't work with middle-class money. Having money is a huge part of the middle-class, but it isn't everything. One has to learn a great deal of middle-class culture to continue to exist in it, and to position one's children and grandchildren to remain in it. It's much more than money management, too. Things like how to apply to college, and how to make professional connections. Things most people in the middle class aren't even consciously aware of as skills. Learning the unspoken, unwritten rules of another culture is incredibly difficult. It's even harder when people on both sides are rarely even aware of it. But it's impossible to break the poverty cycle without it.
Poor people consider Middle Class people as rich. Rich people and wealthy people are abstract, like the President or an entertainer, nothing we ever see. We see rich people all the time. In reality they are middle class. Anecdote: Your comment can extend beyond communal resources as well. For example my family refused to assist me in going to college. My mother died when I was 19 and I was left with her bills which I was not able to pay and as winter approached, no place to live. I was continually guilted by comments about my leaving to become one of "them". I then had to pay student loans, loans I should not have had to take out but because I was poor and my financial aid officer was local and knew my family as poor, I was denied that state grant. This is my identity, all I will ever be in that town. Only when I resigned college and got a minimum wage job did my family help me buy a house and car. I failed to get a middle class wage paying factory job because I was young and assumed unreliable and simply had no training on how to do a job interview. Only after 6 years of working two full time jobs was I even called back by such a company but by then it was too late for me. I injured myself while working and now receive disability of $1245/month, which is too much to qualify for food stamps and most other aid. Disability goes back 6 years to assess what your insurance payments should be. I was working two full time jobs. Had I been an average worker I would be receiving as little as $600/month but I would qualify for food stamps and other assistance. I lost everything and I tried my best to keep what I had. On the other hand most people in my circle of acquaintances do not value possessions. Most of their possessions were regularly pawned. Playstation 3? Great for a couple of weeks until bills come due and then pawned. Often never recovered. The plight of the poor is a source of profit for more than the rich, wealthy and politicians, middle class business owners and their ilk are just as culpable. There are, as mentioned, cultural differences. An example is a car mechanic. I know many car mechanics and factory workers that bust their ass all day long. They go home and they do not shower. They get up the next day and put on the same unwashed overalls they have worn all week. They are literally physically exhausted. They are completely unkempt and their culture understands that and doesn't even think about it, that is normal. When reflecting on this it is easy, and common in my experience, for poor people to have existential depression. Nothing they do matters. They may not be educated enough to know that they are depressed or why or to be able to research philosophy and develop a world view and engage with other cultures and explain their actions and plight themselves, but I see it constantly. I can do my best to represent them but I only know my perspective on their existence and my own life experiences. What causes poverty to be the inescapable prison it is? *Communal culture of those impoverished imposed for mere survival. *Society at large stifling individual progress by judging one's socioeconomic position rather than one's character. *Society at large exploiting the impoverished persons inability to meet the requirements placed upon them. *Mental health, specifically depression and anxiety. *Ignorance and lack of education of both those impoverished and those not. We are all judged and relegated to our plight by the decisions we make without regard for the choices we had before us.
Yep. Everyone up to the bottom rung of the 1% view themselves as "middle class." Absolutely. Culture is just one factor. Civilization has always been a pyramid. The wealthy require a strong lower class to support them. They have very intentionally built a society to create that support. Americans think they're different. That America is "by the people." American government has always been controlled by the wealthy for their purposes. Most of the founding fathers were wealthy. George Washington was the richest president ever. The American Revolution wasn't "the people" revolting against "oppression." The average person doesn't naturally care that much about taxes and "rights." The people were made to care by propaganda pamphlets written by Thomas Paine and printed and distributed by the American wealthy. It was the wealthy who were really affected by high taxation, who goaded the masses into revolution for their own ends. Today, we see the same thing in the form of corporations. Corporations are not abstract entities. They are owned by, and represent, the wealthy. When corporations are granted personhood and "rights," what is really happening is the wealthy are given extra rights. Their own natural rights, and the rights by proxy of their corporations. Poor people consider Middle Class people as rich
Society at large exploiting the impoverished persons inability to meet the requirements placed upon them.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
I have been poor the entirety of my life, working two full time 50+ hour per week jobs. This came to mind for me as being incredibly relate-able, powerful and succinct; Eminem - Lose Yourself: "That I can't get by with my 9 to 5 And I can't provide the right type of life for my family Cause man, these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers"
That quotation went right over my head. I recently watched a doc called A Small Act. A bright kid from Kenya got sponsored by a Swedish charity donor in the 70's. He's now a human rights lawyer at the UN and he has created a charity that gives grants to (really) poor, smart kids like he once was. The documentary is an example of how important seemingly small actions of support are and how they can create extremely positive ripple effects. I'm now sponsoring 2 poor children.
Something I've been pondering recently is whether a type of microloan system could work in the US. We spend a lot of money on the poor just to maintain their status as poor people, and not completely starving. Why not use a bunch of that money to give low or no interest loans to potential small business owners? I don't mean the stupid dream finding the next Steve Jobs in the ghetto. I mean a few thousand dollars to start a food truck, or to buy lawn mowing equipment, etc. Microloans have been shown to be effective and to have remarkable high repayment rates in poor countries, and I think the idea is adaptable here, although the required sums are certainly much greater in the developed world. Welfare buys food, but it doesn't buy dignity. Helping poor people to create wealth, which we actively destroyed for a century, might be a good place to start to try to rebuild dignity and community in the inner cities.
Now you hit the problem on the nail, not just in the US but most of the aid for the developing world is in the shape of basic needs, and usually after some catastrophe. People need new horizons to pull themselves out of the vicious cycle of poverty and education provides that. That doesn't seem to be true (referring to the high rates) for kiva.org - I got a lot invested on loans on that website and the rates seem reasonable. We spend a lot of money on the poor just to maintain their status as poor people, and not completely starving.
Microloans have been shown to be effective and to have remarkable high repayment rates in poor countries,
Something I've been pondering recently is whether a type of microloan system could work in the US.
Kiva also has a section for the US (called Kiva Zip), this might be what you're describing. Although the loans I've seen are not for people in extreme poverty but more starting entrepreneurs, which look fairly well off when compared with the borrowers in developing countries.
Oh right, sorry my bad. English is my second language and sometimes things escape me. Thanks for clarifying : )
WORD. Seriously, though, if you give people access to capital, they know how to use it. The access part is what's missing from the equation for many people in lower-income neighborhoods. Case study: my roommate (white guy, early 30s) owns the house we live in, the warehouse next door (which contains an aborted food truck and a million bike parts for his dream coffee/bike shop), a house about an hour away that he barely makes ends meet on by renting, and a lease in SF. Motherfucker doesn't have a day job and lives off these investments, though by a somewhat narrow margin, but, notably, got all of these by loans he took out. He knows the game and the game trusts him and his co-signers. Meanwhile, 5 blocks over, there's a dude that rolls around West Oakland on a bike mounted with a modified blender that he pedals to make daiquiris on the spot. This guy makes more profit than my roommate has in years, but lord knows he probably doesn't even have a bank account, much less does he know his way around a loan form that he could probably put to good use. Nothing against my roommate, though, he's just a lil scatterbrained, is all.Welfare buys food, but it doesn't buy dignity.