Laziness isn’t why people are poor. And iPhones aren’t why they lack health care
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
It's a generational thing, especially. iPhones are seen as glamorous luxury items, not as an essential tool for living. I always remind my father that the people who have little money but also have iPhones likely don't have a home phone number, home computer, or Internet service in their house. Their iPhone is their only connection to the modern digital world: The one asset they have to get themselves a job, assistance, information. It's arguably one of the most important items for a person to own, today, right up there with a car. Without a good phone and a car, people in the US are basically beached on a shore of unemployment, or low employment, especially in rural towns.
It's incredibly hard for people to get back on the horse when they've fallen off, economically. Even harder if they never had a horse to begin with. At the local library, people are constantly coming in to ask for help with digital literacy problems that affect their lives heavily: paying bills, responding to emails, seeing pictures of their grandchildren that were sent to their email. Having a phone with Internet is literally an essential part of modern life, and the generation that thinks poor people shouldn't have iPhones are the same ones who generally view all this technology stuff as magical hoo hah. Like my dad...
There are other smartphones that fulfill the same purposes (that you outlined above) which are much cheaper.
If someone in poverty buys an iPhone instead of a budget alternative, it's an indicator that they lack a basic ability to evaluate a handful of economic choices and choose the most appropriate (and thrifty) one. It's the smartphone equivalent of getting chrome rims on your car wheels.
EDIT: I was disappointed but not surprised that the article didn't even acknowledge this fact, nor really make a case at all for what it was saying. I couldn't find any attempt to convince at all in what was written; it was simply a declaration of how right the author's view is and how obviously stupidly wrong the concept of someone being responsible for their own outcomes is.
You can get an Android phone for cheaper than an iPhone, but you pay for it in lost time (not to mention the low quality of budget Android phones)
iPhones are iPhones. There are luxury priced ones, of course, and they were never 'budget', but having access to the internet isn't a luxury anymore. It's a requirement.
And the "all androids are cheap and useless" trope is so trite at this point.
Lost time because typically Android phones require more maintenance and produce more hassles for novice users, and a budget Android phone is going to have more problems (and probably stop getting updates).
FTR, I haven't owned an iPhone since the original one came out. All Android since. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's owned multiple different Android handsets and given them as gifts to family (I've since learned my lesson about that one).
I also really disagree with iPhones somehow having fewer issues than Android phones. You're never just "holding it wrong"? Or being unable to even Copy and Paste? Or having to lug around dongles? Of course, Android has it's own share of stupidities, but to argue that iPhone is vastly superior is being less than accurate.
Edit: to add, the bottomline I'm suggesting is that the differences are minor enough that, if an iphone from a couple generations ago is costing you the same as an Android from the same time, it's not clear that an iphone is better. I have an ipad that has aged just as horribly as older androids.
>the API is more restrictive
> there are things you can do on Android that are impossible on an iPhone
>such poor UI design
Do you honestly think these are the things an average consumer thinks about when deciding what phone to get?
Some things Android does way better, some it does way worse. As far as ergonomics go, Apple went way too far recently with hiding functionality under gestures or pressure sensitivity, making them not discoverable and sometimes finicky to activate. I'm talking basics, like app switching.
On the other hand, for some apps, the limitations mean they have to hold to OS GUI guides more closely.
One learning experience that sticks out to me was googling how to turn off my iPhone the first time I went to a movie with it.
If I'm young and have owned more than one smartphone, I more or less know how they work. To suggest that the poor are somehow too dumb and stupid to appreciate the mysterious, multi-layered nuances of a fucking _App store_ is to crap all over them from your ivory tower.
Now make the exciting mental leap... what if you haven't owned a smartphone before?
It wasn't hard to learn, just miserably slow.
So, no, your argument fails to hold water. Maybe their circle also uses iPhones. Maybe they want robust hardware and software for a device that will help determine whether they get and keep a job, and rightly or wrongly they feel an iPhone provides that robustness.
Not a political judgement, just a data point. I don't think poor folks buying older or used iPhones is prevalent, in NYC at least.
Until you can tell us how many smartphones you see, what percentage of them are iPhones, how often you see them, how the iPhone was acquired, and the apparent class of the person carrying it, you're just saying things that reinforce your viewpoint without any way of disproving it. Might also help if you can admit any bias you have to start with - do you really think that poor people are poor because they can't budget, spend unwisely, and are lazy?
The trade-off for the flagship phone in case of iPhone is battery life - it is noticeably shorter.
Definitely phones have had problems with reception depending on how they're held, as Apple pointed out at the time. There's little doubt the iPhone problem was worse, however. Discussion: http://gizmodo.com/5589336/apple-antennagate-and-why-its-tim...
I have no idea which iPhone had "consistently failing power buttons" but I have little doubt you can find other phones which have had problems with physical buttons.
Bendgate: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/04/04/bendgate-...
Yes. http://www.phonearena.com/news/HTC-responds-youre-holding-it...
> consistently failing power buttons
Define consistently? This is a complaint I haven't heard of, and having had four separate iPhones generations for both myself and my wife I've never had a button fail. https://www.google.com/search?q=htc+power+button+failure https://www.google.com/search?q=lg+power+button+failure
> or that bending issue?
Yep. https://www.cnet.com/news/oh-no-samsungs-new-phone-bends-jus...
jimmaswell: are you joking? http://www.samsung.com/us/note7recall/
Edit: Apparently I should've refreshed first.
But the strategy of defining disagreement as evil, and then stating that the other person is so morally below you as to be not worth communicating with, is a great way to ensure you'll never have to question or change your beliefs. Cognitive dissonance: solved!
So I guess you got that.
We value rational discourse here. At least I do. You radiate anger and I won't guess the cause, but I'm sure it has little to do with anything Banthum has said.
which people in poverty do all the time. even on shitty cars.
what is your point?
Rap critics that say he's "Money Cash Hoes" I'm from the hood, stupid? What type of facts are those? If you grew up with holes in your zapatos You'd celebrate the minute you was having dough.
I'm from India, and in general, the Indian attitude towards money is "you only spend it if you have it" and even then, essentials came first and then money saved in a shoebox for a rainy day. There is no concept of borrowing money as a "personal loan" to afford a new MacBook or new Chrome wheels. In my very limited, east coast experience, this was not the attitude of the American poor.
Maybe from some kind of loanshark, but no bank is going to give someone a loan, especially if they don't have the means to make the payments, to go out and buy a new MacBook.
I don't see the downside. Happy, and has a cushion if circumstances change? Awesome.
I'm afraid I had to edit my comment, my point wasn't clear and I was bordering on rambling. I tend to get a little lippy first thing in the morning, but I'm glad someone caught the point regardless.
It isn't just a failure of empathy, but creativity, to miss these points.
It isn't just a failure of intelligence, but cognitive discipline, to miss these points.
May you please source this assertion?
- a gift from a family member
- still the property of someone else, but they get to use it (possibly including a plan)
- a refurbished device
and so on.
It's a failure of intelligence to assume that just because someone has the use of something that they should not be able to afford that they are somehow making bad decisions.
You could easily argue that for some yuppie buying a car on credit but for a homeless person their phone pretty much is the only expensive thing they will own.
https://gigaom.com/2014/02/20/npd-confirms-it-apples-iphone-...
It's disingenuous (and insulting) to suggest that the reason poor people can't afford expensive health insurance is that they all have brand new iPhones, or some other unnecessary luxury.
It is a valid rebuttal of that argument that poor people don't all spend their money on brand new iPhones, or the like. One cannot rebut that rebuttal by repeating the original claim.
Now it is quite possible to get a quality smartphone for $200 ( http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-budget-android-phone/ ) instead of almost 1k.
Agree to grandparent's points about smartphones being almost indispensable tools for those without computers and landlines.
iphone 5s starts at 130$ used
iphone 6 starts at 235$ used
iphone 6s 299$ used
iphone 6 plus 330$ used
Youre right, theres plenty of phones for less than 1k, and theres plenty of iphones under 1k too.
Even when it comes to smartphone ownership, the poor get screwed. You get better pricing if you have good credit, and if you're going with prepaid or non-credit plans, they charge you even more for subpar service (some features are entirely unavailable). So even if you skimp and buy a cheapo smartphone, you're still getting less value for your money than a middle-class buyer.
Used iPhones and year-old iPhones (likewise for Galaxy S-model phones and others on the top end) still perform better than "mid-tier" phones. Given this, an iPhone and "a budget alternative" are not mutually exclusive terms. Keep in mind that for most people today, a phone might well be the closest they can get to having any form of decent connectivity, so it becomes an investment in one's future to buy a device with years of life ahead of it.
A _new_ iPhone might be mutually exclusive with "a budget alternative," but that's not what's being argued.
Durability is also improved. I'm talking about newest of Samsung A and J series compared to older S models here.
You also get the vastly updated software which will be hard to get on the old device.
> There’s one final problem with these kinds of arguments, and that is the implication that we should be worried by the possibility of poor people buying the occasional steak, lottery ticket or, yes, even an iPhone. Set aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on. Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence? Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?
The aristocracy is always seeking to distinguish themselves from the "Nouveau", and far more so from the "peasants". That's not a nice thing to think though, so it's rapidly sent through cognitive/ideological/religious filters and produces a more agreeable output for the thinker.
Fancy chocolates, or a meal at a mid-tier restaurant are an "occasional indulgence".
An iPhone is a massive class-signaling purchase that requires expensive ongoing payments to use.
I mean, I don't have any data, feel free to prove me wrong. But when I was a poor student, I wouldn't even dream of buying a smartphone outright, yet alone an iPhone.
And I had a look, those $6/month contracts barely subsidise anything. I don't really get what's relevant about them.
So here we have the heart of the problem.
You begrudge those who you feel are not in your class their ability to lower the value of your signal.
Maybe you should stop seeing phones as 'class signaling devices' but see them instead as small portable computers that you can make phonecalls with.
It's entirely possible to use an iPhone without a service plan. Free wifi is easy to find in any city or decent-sized town.
It absolutely is. You can buy a decent used iPhone for a couple hundred bucks. This is a purchase that will be used for hours each day and last years. Amortized, its hourly cost is almost nothing, a fraction of your alternate options. Purchasing a good phone is thus a rational economic decision to maximize utility, because of how often it gets used.
> Fancy chocolates, or a meal at a mid-tier restaurant are an "occasional indulgence".
You can buy "fancy chocolates" once a month for two years for the equivalent cost of using an iPhone over that period. As for a meal at a mid-tier restaurant, you're looking at eating out once per quarter versus getting to use a nice phone for hours each day. The poor aren't stupid. The phone is simply a much better use of their limited funds than these frivolous wastes of money that for some reason you are projecting that they should rather indulge in.
> An iPhone is a massive class-signaling purchase that requires expensive ongoing payments to use.
Bullshit, it's a necessity of modern life. If you don't have a phone and Internet access it's nigh impossible to even find a job. Employers of all levels expect you to be accessible, if for no other reason than changing your shift time on you.
More often than not people are NOT responsible for their outcome. It is a genetic lottery. Will you be born into money? Then you're set for life. Not born into money? You're going to struggle and have to work much harder just to survive, let alone get ahead. That's unlikely to happen.
So a big old FRAK YOU to the arrogant assholes who claim poor people just need to work harder and be smarter, when I promise you they work much harder than yourself. Friends with that piece of human garbage Jason Chaffetz? He tells people they need to stop wasting their money (that they don't have) while he gets everything in his entire life paid for by rich donors who control his vote. Fuck. You.
You act like an iPhone is a Rolls Royce to an Android being like a Kia. It's absolutely not that materially different in cost, and most decent Android devices worth their salt cost as much, or almost as much as an iPhone. Nearly all of these device (irrespective of platform) are bought on time/installments as part of one's monthly bill anyway! Another thing to consider is that if someone of limited means needed a device and was trying to buy a cheaper unlocked Android, that actually might be harder for their cash flow since the monthly installment plans are lower and easier to manage from a cash flow standpoint than dropping $200-$300 at once for a more economical (but already inferior!) model. These seem like small trivial things, but they're the kinds of decisions people need to make, and again a lot of pople have to have some kind of net/web connected device for more than leisure.
Ultimately, it just does not follow to me that people who need a decent and reliable smart phone in 2017 would have better healthcare outcomes if only they skipped having one, or bought a flip phone or even an Android phone instead of an iPhone. Medical procedures run into the thousands or tens of thousands. Premiums on family medical coverage are like 2 iPhones _per month_, so getting that less robust model device really isn't going to make much difference and it may not last as long, costing more in the end, anyway.
FWIW, I use an Android device, I just don't think iPhones are the culprit or an automatic indicator that the person of limited means using one is irresponsible or incapable of making good financial decisions. That seem like a harsh judgment.
For many middle class and upper middle class people, being financially responsible is a matter of being thrifty with the adequate resources they have; for a person who is truly poor the issue is more likely to be a straight up lack of income, and no amount of pinching pennies is going to result in enough money to pay rent.
I'm the author of YSN[0], which is a web and mobile app for helping homeless youth in Minnesota.
Whenever I show the app to people, the usual response is: "Wait, homeless youth have phones?"
The answer is yes, a great many do. Because, as you note, it's their only connection to the digital world, and often times, the only connection to friends or family.
[0]: https://ysnmn.org
What changed in the last 15 years to make this so?
Try finding a job through a news-paper ad, try making a doctors appointment by phone, try reaching the authorities without having to go through email. Try buying a regular map of any city and try staying in touch with your family without facebook or email.
Without a home-address email/phone is suddenly the only way authorities can reach you or vv.
(Smart)Phones are safety devices. And I'm saying that as a 'dumb' phone user, but I can only afford that because I also have a laptop and a desktop machine and don't care one bit about facebook.
If 15 years ago you could tell a homeless person that they could carry a post office, a phone box, a map, a list of social services, a research tool, and a way to communicate with friends, family and allies in their pocket, they would have gotten one, too.
Of course you're not going to pay for an iPhone if you're short on cash, but smartphones have cost less than 100 dollars for five years, and used phones sell for less. Combine this with wifi, and maybe a pay-as-you-go or super cheap unlimited SMS plan with limited talk, and the low price you pay for the kind of resources you get access to is a no-brainer.
And let's not forget you have a lot of down time when you're homeless. Candy Crush Saga might just keep you from going crazy.
What planet do you live on?
An iphone is not an essential tool for living. I was without a smartphone while I was looking for a job last year, and used an old monochrome cellular device. I managed to keep on living without much difficulty. And yes - I travelled.
An iphone is a flagship smartphone, there are much cheaper devices you can use to browse the net.
In the context of this conversation, which is about people with nothing else... how else should your comment have been interpreted?
"Luxury smartphones" aren't essential. Cheap smartphones themselves aren't essential. Access to some kind of internet-connected computing device is becoming essential. Starting from 0, the intersection of price, function, and convenience is more likely to be a smartphone than any kind of laptop/desktop.
> There's no scenario
The topic is basically "poor people with smartphones". This is the "scenario" that we're talking about.
Lots of people in my generation have purchased iPhones because they're en vogue and easy to use.
I'm not necessarily begrudging somebody who does purchase an iPhone, but non-technical people aren't always as dumb as we make them out to be.
But your comment conflates "one of the most expensive smartphones" with "having any connection to the digital world". No disagreement that connectivity is critical and that mobile devices are an efficient way to get there on a low income, but iPhones are definitely not. My mom doesn't have a working computer in her house atm, and her phone cost 200 dollars (or free with carrier subsidy). There's pretty much no reason to get an iPhone on purely functional grounds, just as there would be no reason to get a $700 Galaxy S7.
Though I should note that ios has moved downmarket when they started selling older models, which filled some of this gap.
I gave up on giving Android devices to my family. They always replaced them with iPhones (used, typically).
This is just a rationalization to buy the more expensive version.
If you are poor, an iphone is a shitty use of your money when a Moto G4 exists.
Of course, this won't make or break a person, but if it's representative of their cost/benefit analysis in general, their spending could be a huge problem.
Having supported a variety of non-technical folks both in a business and family capacity, this simply isn't true.
Hell, even basic directions depend widely on the manufacturer - the OS may look and act totally different depending on whether it's a Samsung device or not.
Maybe it's worth extra money to a businessman who refuses to learn a slightly different UI, but he isn't asking for subsides to afford it.
If you apply to the same logic to all of a poor person's decision they'd go broke. Cooking it pretty hard. You need pots and pans and stuff. Better eat McDonalds every meal!
I agree that it's no $650 difference, but it's certainly substantial.
Phones are a luxury, what percentage of the poor demographic do you think can afford a smartphone? Much less, know how to operate something they've never had experience with.
BILLIONS of people have smartphones. It's not such a new and expensive tech anymore.
Around 2 billion people have cellphones (~30% of the population) which is a minority. Although, in the U.S 64% of those in poverty have a smartphone[1].
Maybe you confused my generality for locality. I'm talking in broad strokes, all over the world (not just the developed world).
It's just that your own numbers show that 2/3 poor people own a smartphone, compared to 4/5 in general (in the US). That's not a luxury item by any definition. And you're not including the fact that people might have access to the Internet anyway, even if they don't own a smartphone. Or their friend might have a smartphone... Or they might have a kid who knows about smartphones. Or they see ads for a smartphone.
Get it?
I was referencing poor people as a whole, not solely from the U.S.A.
The last < £50 Android phone I bought as our flats have a doorbell that goes to a phone number.
Trying to use the browser or anything in it was a bad experience, it was just way too slow for the OS on it.
That is without considering carrier subsidies or used market. (So compares to $700 iPhone price.)
Then there's the issue of older people using the term "iPhone" generically. Poor people overwhelmingly have Android phones (as evidenced by the massive disparity between the perceived iPhone market share in the tech bubble and reality), but it's all the same to Republicans.
And that time Obama made a similar argument, you thought he was just as idiotic as well right?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/03/07/chaffetz-hit-for-...
Chaffetz - people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.”
I get very different meaning from what they said, thus no I do not think what he said was 'just as idiotic'.
The argument is always the same, the idiotic part is when you need to convince an entire nation to sign up for your healthcare plan but instead blame people for having an iPhone.
Grow up.
People become poor after buying stuff like iphones and often wouldn't improve their financial position by selling them.
People get expensive phones for cheap with contracts. If the problem is that family needs 400 per month in food stamps and 700 help affording health insurance which amounts to 13000 a year in help the extra 200 they paid for an iphone is a small thing.
People buy older phones for cheap or even get given them by family members who upgrade. I can buy an older iphone on craigslist for $40 right now.
And we all know the quote wasn't referring to second hand iPhones.
Which means they are unlikely to accurately identify an actual iPhone. More likely, they see a glass surface on a diagonally 5" device, and just assume the $50 low-end Android phone is an iPhone. That, and it conveniently fits their uncharitable mind set.
There are a lot of things that can go into "good" - unpacking, I think here you more specifically mean "(sufficiently) reliable"?
They resemble old Nokias (although I've seen flip phones).
When your life is filled with stress (because you have to work two jobs) and you are constantly on the verge of being homeless/going hungry (despite working 50-80 hours a week), the choice is simple. Choosing between some brief happiness and luxury given by an iPhone, satellite TV, tasty junk food,a nice pair of sneakers, or even a hit of heroin versus more AGONY, STRESS and PAIN provided by real life is a no brainer.
It's hard to fault someone for choosing to take a slice of happiness for themselves in between long stretches of crappy existence. Is it not obvious that one should think twice about judging someone else's motivation and behavior without context? What do you know about their life and why they do the things they do?
There is even related research that has repeatedly demonstrated[1] that being poor is /not/ due to laziness or being a lesser human. When poor/disadvantaged people are provided funds (with no strings attached!) they do the right thing and improve their own lives. They don't just "spend it all" on "booze and drugs". With the money their lives improve significantly and permanently.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_cash_transfer , https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/05/28/why-goog... , etc
It particularly irritates me when it's a some shady employer who refuses to pay for the work done, or demands absolute devotion and loyalty for the barest minimum they can bear to part with.
I'm sure that a number of the people in this thread, on seeing these computers in these homes, would immediately jump to the conclusion that these poor people are undeserving of any kindness or welfare because they wasted their money on shiny computers - an attitude often proudly worn on the sleeve. I've heard the satellite dish argument before, which makes the very same assumption. ("I was in a poor area and I saw satellite dishes on most houses!" What percentage of houses? Why assume they were hooked up? Why assume that in every house is a poor family? At what threshold would you allow people to start spending their own money as they see fit, and what if there's no way they can earn enough to reach this threshold? Who died and made you dictator of the world, anyway?)
Funny thing is that while some small number know who I am, and some think I'm awesome for giving them a computer, I'm not. All I am is the middleman. It's the organization doing the upgrading who got the computers to me that's the real star here. I just happened to know some people in need - and I'm quite excited because the organization may be retiring a few more computers in the near future.
We might be able to help change a few more lives for the better. I will have to start looking for more struggling families.
I work with a group of homeless shelters in my job, and my local religious congregation regularly volunteers at homeless shelters, food shelves, multiple times a month. And one thing I've found is that while many poor aren't lazy, some most certainly are. Some people don't want to work.
Here's one example. A man whom I've never met contacted me through my congregation. He said he had no money for groceries. We met him a few times and sure enough, he was unemployed and living bare minimum on welfare. So we helped this guy. I bought him groceries every week for a few months. All the while, we tried to help him get a job so that he could stand on his own feet.
But what we found is that this particular man always found excuses not to take a job. It didn't make enough money, it wasn't what I wanted to do, etc.
Eventually, we saw he was merely using our limited resources to live and eat for free.
When you're living on the charity of others (or the government), it's wrong to be picky and choosy about employment.
Bottom line: While not all poor are lazy, I'm absolutely convinced that some poor are poor because they don't want to work. Some are more comfortable living off the charity of others. And I wish this weren't the case.
Obviously there are poor who really don't want to be.
And there are some who really do just refuse to do the basic things one needs to do to not be poor.
Too many people act like one of these groups can't possibly exist. So many people seem to think it's evil or unthinkable to even suggest what you're saying is real to any degree.
It's really just a question of how many.
Considering how well some refugee groups (e.g. Viet boat people) have done starting from absolutely nothing in America, I'm willing to believe there is a path up for people willing to take the basic actions required to climb it.
While he may or may not have been taking an extremist Right ideological view of poverty, the OP article takes another extreme ideological view, that poverty is inevitable and individuals can do little to avoid it.
While it sounds heartless, I think there is some truth to the assertion that sound financial choices can lift you up from poverty. Duflo, Banerjee, etc. from the randomista economists crowd have shown that poor people are sometimes likely to spend extra cash in suboptimal ways (TV ownership when they need extra calories, etc.). http://economics.mit.edu/files/530
This includes buying health insurance. That health insurance is too expensive is unfortunate, and I think GOP earnestly believes that their plan makes it cheaper for people to buy health insurance. This is not unlike how Obama and Democrats implemented their healthcare overhaul with the best of intentions, yet it lead to expensive premiums, etc.
While we are loathe to admit it, poverty is a result of both poor choices and unavoidable bad-luck. Like the common debate of 'nature vs. nurture', it is hard to delineate bad-luck and poor-choices as causes leading to poverty.
At the end of the day, we should have compassion and understand that many things that affect our situation are beyond our control, and yet not be afraid to consider honestly and objectively, the various causes of poverty.
Do you let people die on the street, no matter what got them there, or not? It's a simple question.
We're slavers who've just put some steps in between the misery and ourselves, while making sure the slaves are also all "bad people". Treating them like just... people... even only a percentage of them, would destroy the system and its profits. (Not to mention power, control, and political power)
And you also missed "Rates of intergenerational income mobility are, in fact, higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and other countries in the world than they are here in the United States."
Governments can do a lot to help people get out of poverty. Blaming them isn't one of them.
Are you suggesting that I am not acknowledging bad-luck (the sole reason for childhood poverty) as a factor? Because, I do.
As to Germany, Japan, etc. there are many reasons why those countries are better off. "Germany does this, their poverty is lower, so America should do this," isn't a valid argument for anything.
> Blaming them isn't one of them.
Blaming them (i.e. chiding them) doesn't serve any purpose. But helping them modify behavior, educating them, etc. does. The Government should acknowledge this.
Even if you (very reasonably) want to resist demonizing folks who disagree with you, it's important to not overcorrect.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"
http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-media-busted...
A few logical fallacies to your point:
- People without healthcare are charged more for healthcare as they are unable to negotiate bulk rates for care and medication.
- The system is setup in a way that people who live day-to-day are unable to respond to life-events such as a car accident or a death of a income generating family member. They live hanging by a thread.
- It costs more to be a poor person. You can't buy things in bulk or pay by the quarter/year for things at a discount.
- poor people eat less-healthily, and have less free time to excercise. This leads to poorly health outcomes (the aggregate stats don't lie).
- "poor decisions" often come from education. poor people live in neighborhoods where their ability to learn other life skills but surviving is limited a(critical thinking, long term planning etc) and the public education on offer leads to poorer outcomes.
Massively cutting the subsidies people have been getting won't make plans any more affordable, at least not in the short to medium term.
Wanting to reduce government spending is an ideologically coherent position to take. Trying to sell it as fixing the healthcare system is awful.
I'm not saying there are not exceptions. Poor minorities make out of the neighborhood they grew up in sometimes. Middle class people get lucky and get rich, I'm sure both of these happen everyday in a large population like ours.
But I believe these occurrences to be the exceptions not the rule and that for a large majority of Americans in our time working hard and making perfect decisions isn't an automatic ticket to success and wealth.
As a result people eschew the attempt to gain a broad view of the world, and its history, and instead decide to trust an ideologue, ideology, religion, or just as likely these days, invent their own bullshit and find others with similar flavors of crap. "Oh you think the universe is crystals and orgone? Me too!" "Oh you think that black people smell funny? Me too!" "Oh you think the moon is an illusion created by God?..."
You get. At the top you have people with enough money and time, power and education to appreciate these factors. Most of them seem to be in it largely for themselves, and even those who later come to some kind of humanitarian spirit do so in a fractional way compared to their total wealth. Exceptions exist, but they are so rare we all know the names.
Is it any wonder that in a world of such massively "Haves" and brutally "Have-Nots", that each group invents a largely specious narrative to explain the actions of the other?
It's ironic that the people with the resources and power to rapidly alter the self-destructive course humanity is on, are the most invested in maintaining that course.
This honestly is the fundamental difference between conservative and liberal political ideologies; conservatives feel that they earned their place in society based on hard work, liberals understand more often than not, that place was the result of something akin to a lottery, and many people are less fortunate by no fault of their own.
She has virtually zero family support, almost a net negative. Her father died two years ago from a lifetime of substance abuse, her mother suffered a stroke and has been in rehab for months, her step-father is an alcoholic who has problems keeping a job.
Yes, she's responsible for her outcome to the extent that she made some poor decisions as a teenager growing up with a dramatic absence of good role models, and she'll be paying the price for those decisions for the rest of her life.
But the fact that her family is of little help and the government really, really doesn't want her to succeed (I could describe the challenges she's had getting a suboxone prescription but I'd be here all day) is very much not her fault.
> "According to adherents of this belief system, poverty is a symptom of laziness, full stop, and government can do nothing, and more importantly must not."
So I think what M_Grey was probably getting at when they said, "It really is the philosophy of the exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or just plain uneducated" we can believe it to be in the context of a libertarian who believes, "[...] poverty is a symptom of laziness [...]".
So to just fully concatenate that:
Libertarians who believe that poverty is a symptom of laziness and government can and should do nothing must be exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or plain uneducated.
Or maybe I'm contextualizing too much? Either way, it hardly seems the comment thread worthy of trying to turn people's words back on them.
It's also downright cruel. If one is willing to look at the data, past their own delusion of the 'just world' fallacy, they'll see that one's birth location and parents determine an overwhelming majority of one's outcomes.
In the absence of government coercion, it should be obvious that the moral responsibility for aiding the poor and unfortunate falls heavily upon us as individuals (primarily acting through voluntary civic associations). Libertarians acknowledge that the "free-rider problem" that requires taking of resources by force is a real thing, but believe that it is a result of the withering of civic responsibility as government has increased in scope over time.
You can disagree with any and all of these premises, but to accuse all libertarians of being psychopaths is not a great way of convincing them to rethink their assumptions.
A lot of things should be obvious to people, that are not, or that they conveniently ignore. Your fantasy of human nature, is not human nature. Humans are the ones who wait for the comet to whisk them away to a spaceship, and when it doesn't happen they believe in it even more. People march each other into mass graves and ovens. People as a group are vulnerable to populism, and the vagaries of chance and hard times leading to short-term instabilities that rapidly magnify.
We are chaotic. You're welcome to entertain whatever optimistic fantasies you like about the natural state of ungoverned people, just don't try to sell it to anyone.
I never said you did. What I said was "...Before attacking others beliefs as delusional (and then creating a ridiculous straw man argument) you might want to spend a little time trying to understand how their beliefs differ from anarchism, fascism, communism, etc."
>...The fact that in the real world, "Libertarianism" inevitably covers for, or becomes of them is more ...
So, besides attacking others beliefs as delusional, now it appears you are saying they are disingenuous. If you are simply going to use straw man arguments and ad hominem attacks don't be surprised if people don't take you seriously.
What particularly disgusts me is judging people for their choice of resource allocation, for using their very freedom. If a poor person chooses to invest in a high-end phone, it's probably because they really really want it; because it will transform their lives more than can easily be appreciated on the outside. It's the same thing with a luxury meal; being poor doesn't mean you ought to live on water and gruel for the whole of your life with the aim of saving a small bundle of cash in case of illness - such a life would hardly be worth living. Flourishing demands peaks, local maxima of happiness, and to deny poor people that is almost inhuman.
"Sure, we banned slavery, but instead you get to live in the same conditions!"
60 countries have universal health care. Some have a basic national requirement that all insurance companies are required to cover everyone with no exceptions, and that for the most basic health insurance they are not allowed to make a profit, but can offer supplemental plans. Some countries have a dual models of both state and private insurance providers. Some make non-elder care private and compulsory while elder care is provided by taxation. Some require co-pays, some are free. Some are centralized, some decentralized.
What is clear is that in the majority of modernized countries around the world, they figured out how to do universal healthcare a long time ago, and here we are looking like fucking country bumpkins who can't figure out how to give people a basic public service. One of our many national embarrassments.
I'm on the exchanges, and my family of four pays $2,001/month plus a $4k max out-of-pocket (that we're guaranteed to hit). That's about three iPhones a month.
Being poor can lower your IQ. Read this http://theweek.com/articles/460396/how-being-poor-lower-iq
As it is now, many low key opportunities have been taken and/or removed, it is now much harder than ever to break through for an enterprising person - need much more up front investment.
In the past, you could indeed go from a paperboy to a writer. Try doing it today.