"Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich." - Anon.
I first began to encounter this when I as an idealistic teenager looked into why poverty/hunger still existed when we had enough food/money to wipe it out. Aid to low income countries often wouldn't get to the intended recipient. Their leaders would live like kings while kids would die from malnutrition. It just baffled me (still does) how someone could be so selfish.
Then I realized we in the US have it just around the corner. I knew someone who worked at a "remedial" high school where the kids struggled with hunger, homelessness, and addiction. All the schools in the area would shuffle any kid in danger of flunking to make sure their numbers looked good. They lived in neighborhoods I as a middle-class person would never venture into. We just do a good job sweeping massive poverty in the US under the rug.
This was a middle of the road state - then you look at states such as Mississippi and you wonder how we can live with ourselves.
No, this has nothing to do with poverty. This has to do with people who believe they are entitled to the 'american dream' but refuse to sacrifice or work hard, or compromise in any way to achieve that dream.
I was raised on government cheese. I am alive because of foodstamps. You are arguing with strawman. I'm all for helping the poor. We need a safety net, specifically to help children. However, that doesn't mean that every hippy who hasn't succeeded is the victim of some grand conspiracy where the rich tilt the system in their own favor.
Who wants to fix schools? Schools are corrupt in bad neighborhoods not because they are being sabotaged (they often have very high levels of funding), but because bad neighborhoods have bad parents and a poor PTA, so there is nobody with any incentive to fix the schools that also have the ability and experience to do anything about it. A poor inner city parent has never seen a school that works, and has never recieved any education to speak of, so they have no idea how to 'fix' their child's school, and most of the time they don't even know that is something they should be concerned about. Their priorities are all fucked. How is that the fault of me or anyone else in the 1%? How is protesting wallstreet in any way related to this? Your points are all entirely off topic.
Health insurance scam them? What does that have to do with wallstreet? Seriously, though, if your biggest problem is long term debt, you are pretty fucking rich in absolute terms. There are people in Africa who's #1 problem is starving to death. After all, our western legal system is completely friendly to debtors these days, they can have all debts removed (other than student loans) by declaring bankruptcy.
It's not my fault people are too stupid to major in a field that will let them pay back their student loans. The humanities do not lead to jobs, everyone knowns this. Hell, it's repeated so much it's a cliche! Blaming other people because you wanted to do an easy major and fuck girls in college while going into debt is an insult to those of us that worked our asses off so that we could make money later. This is just 'the ant and the grasshopper', don't blame the ant.
Actually, I was born into and lived in poverty almost my entire life before the age of 18. I attended many bad schools, and had no support. I don't feel exploited at all, in fact I think I'm lucky to live in an age where even the poorest people, who's parents make the worst decisions (drug use, alcohol abuse, child abuse) are able to attend school, and in fact are compelled to. If you can afford a big screen TV, and you have 500 channels of television, you are not being exploited. Turn off the TV and do something before you start bitching about how unfair life is.
Everyone has access to quality food. If you are too poor to afford quality food, foodstamps are provided for you and your family. If you choose to buy McDonalds and cheetos anyway, what then? Are we supposed to force feed people carrots? Because that is the only way you'll get many poor people to eat healthy food, by forcing them to. Is that what you advocate?
I think if you turned the anger down, you would see that there isn't a class of evil conspirators at the top. The solutions to our problems are not clear cut, and you don't have any answers to any of the problems you think you see. There is no silver bullet to the problems of society, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of lessons to move forward a little bit every generation.
> Poverty comes from lack of opportunity (usually due to centralization of control), perverse incentives (often due to lack of centralization of control), ignorance, delusion, and other kinds of mental problems, not from limited natural resources or from "a small group of people consuming vastly more."
“Mental problems”—did people fail to Think and Grow Rich or something?
If poverty exists in a world where resources are plenty for everyone, the root cause is selfishness. Our inability to love others like we love ourselves.
"poverty" in this case is not "below the US poverty line". "poverty", when used in this context, means failure to satisfy the physiological layer of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: starvation, lack of decent shelter, disease, etc. The suffering from "poverty" in this sense is unimaginable to me. The fact that it's more or less hidden and not a big-ticket media item doesn't make it less of a humanitarian crisis or reduce the suffering involved.
Or put another way, we're not talking about putting dollars in wallets. We're talking about putting food in children's mouths, clothes on their backs, roofs over their heads. Maybe even some education in those heads. Yes, I just used a "think of the children" argument, sorry.
"Because poverty is not actually a bad thing that causes income inequality, it is a circumstance of it."
Poverty is a circumstance of living in a world with limited resources where trade offs have to be made in virtually all decisions. When I have lunch today, I am, in a twisted interpretation, depraving someone else of that food.
In a world where everything has a cost, whether hidden or real, poverty in some form will exist.
Poverty has been falling consitently and we, as a species, is more than able to meet everyone's needs, we simply choose not to because we're greedy and short-sighted.
Good lord, thank you for this. It astounds me how completely off-the-mark progressive thinking around poverty is - probably because it's a) not data-driven in the least, and b) primarily championed by people who grew up middle class.
Poverty in the US is NOT the same as poverty in Somalia. It's not even the same as poverty in Estonia. Childhood hunger is the best example - malnourished children in the US are in that state because of abuse.
Anyone that grew up in a truly shitty North American neighbourhood in the last 20 years knows - the people that were suffering were not suffering because of a lack of resources. They made bad decisions, or had health problems, or were abuse victims.
>People who live in poverty aren't miserable. Far from it
You know this how exactly? I'm guessing you have never lived in poverty, but even if you have, you're making a demonstrably false generalization. Poverty permeates every aspect of the human experience. Studies have shown a clear correlation between it and suicide, likelihood of arrest and imprisonment, depression, and virtually every other negative thing a person can experience. Impoverished parents are inflicting their poverty on defenseless children that had no say in the matter.
> Poverty doesn't just cause immediate issues it can also cause long term issues that can effect not only adults, but the children who grew up in that environment.
This is absolutely true!
> This is largely because families in poverty tend to also abuse their kids at higher rates (this includes mental abuse) or at least foster an extremely unhealthy environment due to the stress it causes.
This could be true with some families, but most parents try at least not to go below the financial level they are at. I remember my parent use to get all jittery even at a slight stress on the finances fearing that they will not be able to sustain. They had prioritised education, food, clothing in that order. Unfortunately, after education and food nothing was left! I remember wearing same set of clothes for almost a decade. Even now, even though I can afford to spend, I got into that habbit of wearing same clothes most of the time. I still use clothes that are almost 10 years old! I remember we(I and my friends, they too were from the same financial status) use to wear same worn-out/torn school uniforms by doing something called "rafoo". That made us kids understand value of money and the determination to get out of the situation as soon as possible. The problem we faced was lack of information and support network. We had to build it ourselves from scratch, most of the time stumbling. It also dents the confidence as you don't know how long it is going to take to achieve your goals, if at all it can be acheived!
I have an alternative article title and maybe concept suggestion.
"Poverty shouldn't exist in America. Money is fake, the ultra wealthy need larger amounts of impoverished people to justify their gross wealth to scare the fairly wealthy into continuing to play the game. Everything is nonsense and it's going to get worse. We've been living in hell for a while but these are the good old days, enjoy what you can while you can maybe. It would be neat if writing about it on the internet could change any of that. Cry, get mad, do whatever. It's fucked."
Thank you for speaking up. I have seen the same time and time again growing up. Yet people can’t believe it is true. Poverty is not just a lack of money.
I first began to encounter this when I as an idealistic teenager looked into why poverty/hunger still existed when we had enough food/money to wipe it out. Aid to low income countries often wouldn't get to the intended recipient. Their leaders would live like kings while kids would die from malnutrition. It just baffled me (still does) how someone could be so selfish.
Then I realized we in the US have it just around the corner. I knew someone who worked at a "remedial" high school where the kids struggled with hunger, homelessness, and addiction. All the schools in the area would shuffle any kid in danger of flunking to make sure their numbers looked good. They lived in neighborhoods I as a middle-class person would never venture into. We just do a good job sweeping massive poverty in the US under the rug.
This was a middle of the road state - then you look at states such as Mississippi and you wonder how we can live with ourselves.
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