Author Topic: Why are the poor, poor?  (Read 122638 times)

Offline Artiste

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #60 on: May 01, 2008, 01:12:15 pm »
The poor pay much more for junk, like Made in China items, made by slaves in China !!

Did you know?

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #61 on: May 01, 2008, 02:07:18 pm »
We already have some Welfare reform in place don't we?  Limited time to get the checks, the number of kids covered is now restricted to a certain number.  We could improve and increase the criteria of receiving the benefits quite easily.

yes, you are correct, there has been some limited reform in the states since the 1980's and some reform at the federal level during the Clinton admin. These were and still are certainly welcome, but do not fix the fundamental problems.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #62 on: May 01, 2008, 02:37:18 pm »
But in the US we are taught, even if it is only implicitly, to look upon the wealthy as role models of what we would like to become, and upon their possessions as what we would like to have for our own.

Yes, that is the problem, I think. We are sympathetic toward the rich because we all assume we'll eventually be among them (me, I'm counting on Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes  ;D ). For most people, of course, that won't happen. But the Land of Opportunity encourages us to think it's just a matter of time.

Quote
Here I disagree.  People are entitled to spend their money on whatever they want, as long as it is legal.  He may be giving a ton of money to charity as well.  There are a lot of wealthy out there living nicely who are not in the news, and that is fine.  Hopefully they are giving back to society as well as enjoying their lifestyle.

I have mixed feelings. You're right, people are technically entitled to spend their money on anything legal. And it's true that this particular guy may give away a ton of money to charity.

Nevertheless, I'm disturbed by the degree of inequity that's built into the structure of the U.S. economy. Here's a list comparing CEO pay in developed countries to the amount earned by average workers:

Japan 11:1
Germany 12:1
France 15:1
Italy 20:1
Canada 20:1
South Africa 21:1
Britain 22:1
Hong Kong 41:1
Mexico 47:1
Venezuela 50:1
United States 475:1

(Note: This list is from an academic research paper by a business professor. I can't absolutely vouch for these particular numbers because I didn't want to spend lots of time doing research and comparisons. But these figures more or less match other such lists I've seen.)


Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #63 on: May 01, 2008, 02:49:39 pm »
I'm disturbed by the degree of inequity that's built into the structure of the U.S. economy. Here's a list comparing CEO pay in developed countries to the amount earned by average workers:

Japan 11:1
Germany 12:1
France 15:1
Italy 20:1
Canada 20:1
South Africa 21:1
Britain 22:1
Hong Kong 41:1
Mexico 47:1
Venezuela 50:1
United States 475:1

(Note: This list is from an academic research paper by a business professor. I can't absolutely vouch for these particular numbers because I didn't want to spend lots of time doing research and comparisons. But these figures more or less match other such lists I've seen.)
I'm suspicious of this list. I need more information. For instance, what if there are only a handful of large corporations in those other countries, with many prospective CEOs to choose from, in contrast to the U.S. where there are hundreds of similar companies but only a few U.S. citizens capable of leading them? That would drive up the price significantly. Another thing, maybe CEOs in the U.S. serve an average of 4-7 years whereas those in other countries may serve 20 years or even more. The U.S. CEOs would need much more money.

Never thought I'd be an apologist for U.S. CEOs!!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline serious crayons

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #64 on: May 01, 2008, 04:33:30 pm »
I'm suspicious of this list. I need more information. For instance, what if there are only a handful of large corporations in those other countries, with many prospective CEOs to choose from, in contrast to the U.S. where there are hundreds of similar companies but only a few U.S. citizens capable of leading them?

Glad to see you here, F-R! But ... sigh.   ::) You're determined to make me do more research, aren't you?  ;)

OK, well, to answer your first question, I'm not sure why the U.S. would have so few citizens capable of leading big companies. For example, Britain probably has fewer big companies, but it also has fewer citizens.

I'm not going to take the time to find the comparative figures on this. But it seems to me that big companies and people capable of leading them would be roughly proportionate from one country to the next. (And don't let's get into a discussion about the U.S. education system, broketrash!  ;)) But maybe you're are thinking of something I'm missing.

Quote
Another thing, maybe CEOs in the U.S. serve an average of 4-7 years whereas those in other countries may serve 20 years or even more. The U.S. CEOs would need much more money.

They NEED much more money? So John A. Thain of Merrill Lynch can't scrape by on, say, $10 million a year -- he's absolutely gotta have that $84 million, or he'll have to cancel the cable TV? If Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs took a cut from his $54 million annually, his kids would be eating store-brand macaroni for dinner? If John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley got anything less than $41 million, his wife would have to start taking in laundry?

I'd bet there are more than a few minimum-wage workers who might question whether John A. Thain needs a raise more than they do. If we're going to start paying "to each according to his needs" ... well, I'm not sure the CEOs would be the first to endorse that system!  :laugh:

Here's more info in an article from the Forbes magazine website, not exactly a bastion for leftist class-warfare politics:

Quote
Executive Pay
More In A Day Than In A Year
Steve McGookin, 08.29.07, 5:26 PM ET

As the nation prepares to celebrate a Labor Day holiday that will see the first increase in the federal minimum wage in 10 years, a new report shows that the gap in pay and compensation between workers and bosses is growing.

Indeed, according to the study, compiled jointly by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, corporate CEOs "collected as much money from one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year."

The report, "Executive Excess-The Staggering Social Cost of U.S. Business Leadership," also says that the private equity boom "has pushed the pay ceiling for American business leaders further into the economic stratosphere."

The 14th annual survey showed that CEOs at the biggest U.S. companies averaged $10.8 million in pay and associated compensation, including stock options, based on data from 386 of the Fortune 500 companies. That's more than 364 times the pay of the average American worker. Meanwhile, the survey says, the top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers, who work on a fee-based reward system linked to their funds under management, were paid an average of $675.5 million.

That is equivalent to 22,255 times the annual pay of an average American worker--or more in roughly 10 minutes than the average worker makes in a year, the study says. (In this survey, the "average" worker's salary is around $30,000 a year.)

Meanwhile, the new federal minimum wage, $5.85 an hour, is, in real terms, 7% below where the minimum wage stood 10 years ago, the survey says. It also notes that CEO pay and compensation over that same decade has increased by about 45%.

The survey also shows that American executives are in a dominant position when compared with their European counterparts. It found that in 2006, the 20 highest-paid European executives earned an average of $12.5 million, roughly one-third as much as the 20 highest-paid executives in the U.S.

Here's a NYT list of top-paid CEOs and their compensation. It also shows for each how their pay increase or decrease compares to the price of their company's stock. For example, Kenneth Chenault of American Express saw his pay raise 95 percent (to $50 million) while the company's stock fell 12 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/05/business/20080405_EXECCOMP_GRAPHIC.html

And here's a lot MORE information in the report Forbes mentions by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. As you can probably tell from the title, "Executive Excess 2007: The Staggering Cost of U.S. Business Leadership" the IPS and UFE are not exactly right-wing organizations. (Note that this is a pdf):

http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/070829-executiveexcess.pdf



Offline brokeplex

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #65 on: May 01, 2008, 11:37:45 pm »
So we have read delalluvia's very specific recommendations for fixing the welfare system.

But broketrash, I guess I'm not clear on exactly what you're advocating, aside from instituting a consumption tax. You have complained that the poor should not receive assistance to pay for food, medical care, education, etc. So are you saying those programs should all be eliminated? That the poor and their children should be required to fend for themselves, even if it means starving or dying for lack of medical care? And not only that, but -- via the consumption tax -- to pay A HIGHER PROPORTION of their income than more affluent people do for these basic necessities and other goods and services?


Hello crayons, hope you had a great day, it was a helluva blow here! had wind gusts up to 50 mph, blew me right off the jogging trail with dust in my eyes!

You have asked me to offer a sample of my proposed solutions to what I see as the current mess of a welfare system, which in reality is a self perpetuating poverty creating mechanism.

Without going into all of the many, many programs which I feel the Federal government has no place being involved in, I will start by saying that welfare is one of those programs.

The Federal gov needs to get out of the poverty pimping programs and turn everything over to the states, local gov, and private charities.

I advocate "federal" (as opposed to the Federal gov) solutions to the challenges facing the US. And one of those challenges is the intractable nature of an underclass that continuously perpetuates itself generation after generation. This underclass is a huge burden on the tax payers who have to pay for the welfare programs, and the commiserate crime that grows out of dysfunctional neighborhoods. The federal programs designed by LBJ and his consorts as a "War on Poverty" back in the 1960's have failed utterly to eliminate poverty. They have in fact lead to the current situation of the plague of men who dog women leaving them pregnant and on WIC, etc. Notice, I am blaming the men and the women. Why are the men able to abandon the women and their children so easily? Because they know that the welfare system will feed, clothe, medicate, and educate their progeny. There is no motivation to stay and be the fathers that they should be. And because welfare benefits are tied to the size of families, the women have no motivation to use readily available birth control and abortion.

The federal gov having failed in this attempt at social engineering should back out completely from this endeavor and allow the states to find their own individual solutions to the problem within each state's borders. The founders intended the states to act as laboratories when they set up the union, and this is a perfect opportunity for the states to find solutions that work for them. The value of a "federal" union, is that some states will succeed, and others will fail, but all will learn and eventually emulate the winners if the Federal gov in DC would get its carcass out of the way.

what are my specific reforms which I would advocate in my home state?

1) The states need to regulate procreation in all recipients of welfare aid. if a person can not afford to raise children, then they shouldn't be allowed to have them, by law.
Birth control pills then should be mandatory for welfare recipients to continue to receive aid. Male birth control pills should also be mandatory. additional pregnancies should be viewed then as a disqualifier for continued aid. Periodic mandatory pregnancy tests should be a part of the qualifying procedures for aid, with periodic followups.

2) The fathers need to be tracked down and forced to contribute to the family income. If they refuse, then we need to revive the prison farm system. The productive work of raising commodities for sale can be applied to individual families. Repeat male offenders should be forceably sterilized.

3) Abortion needs to remain legal and safe, and this is not just a cast off comment. The Roberts court will probably invalidate Roe this next term. If Roe is invalidated, then the matter of abortion will return to the states. In my home state, I will be among the minority of conservatives who wish to keep abortion as a legal but restricted option.

4) Educational reform : it is crucial that we offer a relevant quality education to those who are at the highest risk to becoming a burden on the tax payers. (this is tied into my belief that the Federal gov has no business being in the education business. I want the states and local gov to handle all matters involved in education.)

On each state level, I would advocate an educational system which continues free education at the primary and secondary levels. Additionally, at the high school levels, the system should break into two paths - one for academics, another for technical and trade schools. We are presently in all of the states wasting billions in federal and state aid to education encouraging nonacademically qualified students into attending college. This is a disservice to the tax payers and the child. 

And, just as in the two track high school system, we need a two track system in higher education. Academia and Trade/Technical  schools. This is the model that has been used in Germany for generations with a great deal of success. If we can offer students a useful education that trains them in relevant job skills leading to an apprenticeship program and a guaranteed job at the end of their studies, we will have moved a long ways towards solving the problems of the perpetual underclass.

Additionally, I would advocate making all tuition, fees, and learning materials FREE to all students who enter the higher educational system, whether they go the academic route or the trade/tech route.  It is absurd that students must go into debt in order to complete a course of college studies! I agree with Michelle Obama'a gripe about the student loan trap. Its time to fix that.

The key to eliminating the underclass problem is for early intervention before the person in question enters the underclass.

5) Shame should be reintroduced as a societal deterrent to unwed and unsupported pregnancies. (I would definitely include the men on the wall of shame as well) those who are a burden on society should feel its disapproval in order to function as an object lesson for those who have yet to enter underclass behavior.

6) Those who receive welfare aid should also be required to offer community service such as cleaning up the parks. It is not acceptable to take the income from others without showing gratitude. We should make it very clear that welfare assistance is NOT AN ENTITLEMENT, and it is not a permanent condition.

7) Those who make the transition from welfare to productive careers should be publicly honored for their achievement. Creating a positive role model.

have a great night!

Offline HerrKaiser

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #66 on: May 02, 2008, 12:07:38 am »
broketrash, you are essentially defining, on a behavioral level, the way in which the asian and european american americans pursue their lives. That is part of the cultural problem; blacks who exist in the lower economic strata are ofthen offended by such ideals and lifestyle behaviors and tend to reject them as being culturally in conflict with their own or as forcing them to integrate into a process that did not originate in their own ethnicity.

In order to affect that "change" even Obama will have a tough time. Bill Cosby has made laudable attempts to do so, but he was generally sidelined by the larger power of the speicial interest demogues who know how to race bait. 100 years ago, booker t Washington made the same arguements, but his memory and leadership/advice has also fallen far away from actionable agendas.

Hence, you may be correct that a tough stance (rigid consumption taxes, forced participation in labor, strict control on family planning, etc) on most social issues might lead yield a learning curve that drives behavior. Guiding by suggestion and example may not work; surely not much evidence to show for it. During the past 40 or so years, the educational theory that learning will occur without much (if any) discipline has been largely debunked.

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #67 on: May 02, 2008, 12:22:00 am »
broketrash, you are essentially defining, on a behavioral level, the way in which the asian and european american americans pursue their lives. That is part of the cultural problem; blacks who exist in the lower economic strata are ofthen offended by such ideals and lifestyle behaviors and tend to reject them as being culturally in conflict with their own or as forcing them to integrate into a process that did not originate in their own ethnicity.
In order to affect that "change" even Obama will have a tough time. Bill Cosby has made laudable attempts to do so, but he was generally sidelined by the larger power of the speicial interest demogues who know how to race bait. 100 years ago, booker t Washington made the same arguements, but his memory and leadership/advice has also fallen far away from actionable agendas.

Hence, you may be correct that a tough stance (rigid consumption taxes, forced participation in labor, strict control on family planning, etc) on most social issues might lead yield a learning curve that drives behavior. Guiding by suggestion and example may not work; surely not much evidence to show for it. During the past 40 or so years, the educational theory that learning will occur without much (if any) discipline has been largely debunked.

Kaiser, good to see you back posting!

I have a question: do you honestly see dysfunctional underclass behavior as racially/ethnically/culturally linked? Lets look at the underclass as it exists in most US cities, and I am not talking about rural poverty but urban. If you look at the urban underclass and all that implies in regard to dependency on welfare, high crime rates, single parent families (even grandparent headed families), you will see that it is transracial. Anglos, Hispanics, Blacks all engage in underclass behavior. You can make the argument that Blacks are proportionately in greater numbers in that category, but I'm not sure that implies that the behavior is racially/ ethnically/ culturally based.

I can also make the argument that if the underclass were linked closely with racial/ethnic/cultural conditions, then we would not see the growth in middle class Black America, not to mention the phenomenal and wonderful rise in Hispanic entrepreneurship.

I honestly don't know much about the state of the Asian community across the US. Here in N TX Asian are mostly very successful professionals, and entrepreneurs. I am not aware of any underclass problems in the Asian community, but there could be somewhere else.

And the most important question that I draw from your post: if what you are saying is correct, would the solutions which I offered above for a state by state level evaluation, be regarded by those who define their culture in ways that could be called underclass as cultural or ethnic imperialism?

You have offered interesting and provocative commentary and I would be interested in discussing this.  :)

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #68 on: May 02, 2008, 12:41:51 am »
here is an interesting article about poverty in America.

August 27, 2007
Executive Summary: How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America
by Robert E. Rector

"Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau counts the number of "poor" persons in the U.S. In 2005, the Bureau found 37 million "poor" Americans. Presi­dential candidate John Edwards claims that these 37 million Americans currently "struggle with incredible poverty." Edwards asserts that America's poor, who number "one in eight of us…do not have enough money for the food, shelter, and clothing they need," and are forced to live in "terrible" cir­cumstances. However, an examination of the living standards of the 37 million persons, whom the government defines as "poor," reveals that what Edwards calls "the plague" of American poverty might not be as "terrible" or "incredible" as candi­date Edwards contends.

But, if poverty means (as Edwards asserts) a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, then very few of the 37 million people identified as living "in poverty" by the Cen­sus Bureau would, in fact, be characterized as poor. Clearly, material hardship does exist in the United States, but it is quite restricted in scope and severity.

The average "poor" person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines. The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:

Forty-three percent of all poor households actu­ally own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Cen­sus Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.


Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.


Only 6 percent of poor households are over­crowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.


The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, Lon­don, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the averagecitizens in foreign countries, not to those classi­fied as poor.)


Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.


Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.


Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.


Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.
Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrig­erator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry, and he had suf­ficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

Of course, the living conditions of the average poor American should not be taken as representing all of the nation's poor: There is a wide range of liv­ing conditions among the poor. A third of "poor" households have both cell and landline telephones. A third also have telephone answering machines. At the other extreme, approximately one-tenth of fam­ilies in poverty have no telephone at all. Similarly, while the majority of poor households do not expe­rience significant material problems, roughly a third do experience at least one problem such as over­crowding, temporary hunger, or difficulty getting medical care.

Much poverty that does exist in the United States can be reduced, particularly among children. There are two main reasons that American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and their fathers are absent from the home.

In both good and bad economic environments, the typical American poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year—the equivalent of 16 hours of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year—the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year—nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of offi­cial poverty.

As noted above, father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three-quarters of the nation's impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Yet, although work and marriage are reliable lad­ders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid con­tinue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. If welfare could be turned around to encourage work and marriage, the nation's remaining poverty could be reduced.

While renewed welfare reform can help to reduce poverty, such efforts will be partially offset by the poverty-boosting impact of the nation's immigration system. Each year, the U.S. imports, through both legal and illegal immigration, hun­dreds of thousands of additional poor persons from abroad. As a result, one-quarter of all poor persons in the U.S. are now first-generation immigrants or the minor children of those immigrants. Roughly one in ten of the persons counted among the poor by the Census Bureau is either an illegal immigrant or the minor child of an illegal. As long as the present steady flow of poverty-prone persons from foreign countries continues, efforts to reduce the total number of poor in the U.S. will be far more dif­ficult. A sound anti-poverty strategy must seek to increase work and marriage, reduce illegal immigra­tion, and increase the skill level of future legal immigrants."

Robert Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

 

Offline delalluvia

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Re: Why are the poor, poor?
« Reply #69 on: May 02, 2008, 08:24:48 am »
Lotta trouble with that article.

I'd like to see these "various govt reports' referenced.

My favorites are the 'owns TV, air conditioners and cars'.  Yeah.  How do they define an "air conditioner"?  I've grown up around things they could call an air conditioner.  A small metal box that if you poured water into it and turned it on, you'd get cool air cranked out - but only if you stood in front of it and only for about 15 minutes, then you had to pour more water into it.  Is a 'fan' called air conditioning?  They don't say these people have central air.  The poor people across the street from my mother "owned" about 4 cars...only 1 worked.  They traded batteries around every morning trying to find one that would help start the one car that might work.  And it goes without saying that they didn't have the money to run their one car legally - no insurance, no tags, inspection etc.

And this Yet, although work and marriage are reliable lad­ders out of poverty, the welfare system perversely remains hostile to both.

You do know that marriage has a failure rate of about 50%?  So what if a poor person marries?  There is a good chance they'll be divorced soon and right back where they started.  So much for that "reliable ladder".