Alabama Has the Worst Poverty in the Developed World, U.N. Official Says | Hacker News Reader

Alabama Has the Worst Poverty in the Developed World, U.N. Official Says

newsweek.com

73 pointstomrod40 comments

I am sure that this news article has absolutely nothing to do with the special election on Dec 12th between Moore and Jones for Senate.

And if it is a "3rd world" state, why aren't people jumping to donate and help and aid them?

"Cuz 'rednecks." The only group you're allowed to prosecute on TV, media, and public discourse.

But if liberals were running in and giving free aid, and helping lives, those people would start to like liberals.

I mean, when we help people in Ghana, do we check to make sure they don't have any conflicting political values? When we aid Syria, have we checked to make sure they're there aren't any nationalists and racists?

I'd love to hear an actual rebuttal, but I guess I'll have to settle for downvotes from people who can't. I guess bigotry is okay when it's people you hate.

> I mean, when we help people in Ghana, do we check to make sure they don't have any conflicting political values?

I think there is a critical difference between Ghana and Alabama, and that is that Ghana does not have representatives in Congress making policy decisions affecting all of America.

Ghana also has no people who pay taxes to the U.S. government or any other rights of U.S. citizenship.

But they are at risk of influence of extremist Islamic groups to destabilize the country. That’s in our strategic interest to counter.

> I mean, when we help people in Ghana, do we check to make sure they don't have any conflicting political values? When we aid Syria, have we checked to make sure they're there aren't any nationalists and racists?

Basically, yes. We expend an enormous amount of effort making sure aid gets to the "right" people, and we have a track record of rescinding it when those people change their opinions to ones we don't like.

One might say that “liberals” (blue states) are already giving aid to Alabama and other impoverished “red” states through the disproportionate share of federal funds these red states get as compared to their federal tax revenue. Alamaba is #4 in the country for taking more than it gives.

> But if liberals were running in and giving free aid, and helping lives, those people would start to like liberals.

Not to put to fine a point on it but the #1 criticism I hear from my GOP friends is that Liberals want too much of our tax money to go to welfare programs. Who do you think benefits from those welfare programs?

As a study of human nature it is fascinating. These people don't benefit from tax breaks, they don't even have enough money to be taxed. They do benefit from the social welfare programs. Yet they consistently vote for the party that gives out the tax breaks. It makes no sense.

One possible explanation is the fear that the liberals will give away the jobs to immigrants and oversees workers. I don't have a good answer for those people, I wish I did.

> "Cuz 'rednecks." The only group you're allowed to prosecute on TV, media, and public discourse.

Except for muslims, immigrants, citizens of countries we don't like, LGBT people... and liberals. Turn on Fox, it is 3 hours of liberal bashing. Clearly they are "allowed" to do that, no one is stopping them.

Seriously, I'm not even a liberal. I'm a Libertarian. But anyone can see the holes in your arguments.

The rich, who benefit from tax breaks, spend copiously on issues that influence the poorest’ votes. Abortion, religion, military, immigration, homophobia. Emotional issues that influence deeply those who lack critical thinking skills. And so the poor vote against their own interest, consistently. It’s classic neuropsychology.

> Who do you think benefits from those welfare programs?

I can tell you who many poor Republican voters believe benefit: "Lazy urban youth." Yes, this is a dog whistle. But I have heard the words "welfare queen" in person, and I knew exactly what they meant.

The answer is mostly to do with the long standing culture of keeping a power structure in place that benefits the few, historically pit poor blacks against poor whites, and an inability to override the desires of a State.

Most programs that deliver aid to poor people are administered by states use Federal money but have rules set at the State level and are implemented at the state/county level. That system is run that way because of “states rights” senators from the south and west.

The “red necks” are living in an illusion of choice. They live as best they can and are strongly independent. But in that pride, as a group they lose the recognition that they live in a corrupt electoral system where they cannot affect change and are divided & conquered from neighbors in similar circumstances because of the legacy of Jim Crow.

Politics was not my intent when posting this to the forum. I regularly visit family in these areas of Alabama, and thought others may be surprised by this take. It's always hard to see poverty like this, be it in Alabama, the Philippines, or what have you.

The brightest minds in the world frequent HN. I'm always interested to hear what folks think about problems, and even better, solutions.

Unfortunate headline. Would expect to see it changed.

Growing up I spent a few years in Alabama. Not at all surprised by any of this, but it's not "the worst in the United States", or the developed world, by any stretch.

Not that it's a competition, but census data would put a couple of states (I believe consistently Louisiana, West Virginia, & Arkansas) below Alabama in median household income.

It's not about how poor or rich the state is, but what percentage of people live in poverty. The poverty definition used is living for less than 50% of median income in the area (in this case state) so it's more of an income inequality measure.

That seems like a gameable metric. Encourage the 5/10/50/100 highest-income individuals to establish their primary residence someplace else (in this case other state) and things will look very positive comparative-equality-wise.

As the GOP slashes federal spending, you’ll see that.

Hah, being from Arkansas, we always said "Thank god for Mississippi". Arkansas was often 49th in many scales of poverty, MS was 50th. I'm sure Alabama has issues too.

Article has a picture of a falling down house. But guess what, it's a house!

Go look under an overpass in San Francisco to see even more dire poverty and even less chance of self obtaining minimum standards of living (i.e food and basic shelter) as cost of shelter is so far removed from potential income.

But probably stating California has worst poverty in developed world doesn't support the underlying motive of the article.

Incidentally, Alabama does have a lot of poverty and isn't a place most of would be comfortable living due to social climate. Which is a real shame because I find it to be quite a beautiful state, at least the areas I've seen.

I would have thought Mississippi but it doesn’t surprise me that it’s in the South. Huntsville has some defense work and I know there’s a Mercedes plant (in Vance, I had to look that up). But I can’t think of anything else in the state.

https://www.careerinfonet.org/oview6.asp?soccode=&id=&nodeid...

Redstone Arsenal/NASA/Aerospace in Huntsville

Mercedes in Vance.

Hyundai in Montgomery

Honda in Talladega

Toyota in Madison

Airbus Mobile

well thats clearly untrue, because when adjusted for cost of living, California has a higher poverty rate[1]

[1]http://www.politifact.com/california/statements/2017/jan/20/...

Some data from the study mentioned in the Newsweek fluff piece: https://qz.com/879092/the-us-doesnt-look-like-a-developed-co...

>The US has the second-highest rate of poverty among rich countries (poverty here measured by the percentage of people earning less than half the national median income

That is a preposterous way to compare poverty between countries. By this definition, an American can make more money than a Frenchmen, but the former will be counted as poor and the latter not. And I reckon that we'd fair much better than the EU as a single entity under this standard.

Measuring food security by obesity rates is also dumb. Americans are fat because food is incredibly abundant, we have a cultural preference for junk food, and we are physically lazy. That says absolutely nothing about the availability of healthy food.

We are unhealthy individuals, but our health care system is the absolute best at treating diseases. We pay a lot for it because we’re the only developed country where the health care industry isn’t a monopsony (single or oligarchic purchaser).

Our child mortality and life expectancy are conflated with a large immigrant population and the existence of an underclass. If you equalize the results for diversity, America does just as well as the other developed countries.

And it is absurd to compare the entire US to tiny countries like Denmark or even medium sized ones like France. If you broke the US into regions, you’d probably get different results. I bet New England and the Pacific Northwest would be at the top of many of those categories.

Basically, this data is framed with a conclusion in mind and doesn’t account for how big, diverse, and unique the United States.

>That is a preposterous way to compare poverty between countries.

My guess is it's a quick way to compare while factoring differences in the cost of living. The idea is that the absolute differences between the countries might not mean much given differences in cost of living, so you compare relative difference inside a country. I can't defend it vigorously, but that's my guess.

>Our child mortality and life expectancy are conflated with a large immigrant population and the existence of an underclass. If you equalize the results for diversity, America does just as well as the other developed countries.

"Hmm, if we cut out of our statistics the points that draw it down, it will bring our average up." That seems like cooking the books. Shouldn't we include those who bear the brunt of externalities in society? Is that exactly what they are looking for here?

> My guess is it's a quick way to compare while factoring differences in the cost of living.

How does using national median income factor in the difference in the cost of living between states?

Point taken. While I also feel like delineating by regions in the US might be smart to some extent, the states are somewhat coupled to each other due to federal programs and such. But yeah, you're probably right about it not helping since states have widely varying cost of living.

Regardless, even if you do delineate by geography, excluding populations within a population is still "lipping your bad statistics to push up your mean.

>My guess is it's a quick way to compare while factoring differences in the cost of living

It’s a pretty bad way of doing that. Despite having a much greater GDP per capita, the US has a much lower cost of living than the major European countries.

My guess is that it’s an attempt to define inequality as poverty, which smells suspiciously like a predetermined conclusion against the United States.

> We are unhealthy individuals, but our health care system is the absolute best at treating diseases.

I have not seen evidence that this is correct, either statistical survey or personal experience (France, Germany, Australia, USA in my case).

Do you have a citation?

> That is a preposterous way to compare poverty between countries.

Yes, it is. Using "national median income" as a metric totally ignores the fact that the cost of living is considerably less in Alabama than it is in, say, California.

See https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/

Apparently they hadn't made it as far west as Mississippi yet

Headline is slightly misleading:

>A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.

i.e., the worst poverty the official had ever seen in the developed world, not the worst according to some comprehensive study.

>i.e., the worst poverty the official had ever seen in the developed world, not the worst according to some comprehensive study.

Well I'm sure the fine folks of Alabama will sleep better at night knowing this.

Well, the choice would have been for the article to have a factual title or get flagged off the front page. HN seems to have chosen the second option.

Ugh, yeah, what would those United Nations officials whose job it is to investigate poverty know about poverty.

I remember seeing somewhere that they mostly rely on Mountain Dew for hydration and even feed it to the baby, so bad that they have early tooth decay issues. Apparently the amount of people living in trailer parks is huge and constantly growing.

Troubling when you think that this is happening in the US. I saw that kind of situation in central america.

From what I remember and what I can find, that was something that was particularly found in Appalachia, not Alabama (see this article[0]). A quick check on Google maps shows that Alabama is about as far from Appalachia (in West Virginia) as London, UK, is from Hamburg, Germany. So I think it's a stretch to say they're in the same geographic area.

[0] - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/09/12/221845853/mo...

About half of Alabama is Appalachian.

https://www.arc.gov/images/appregion/AppalachianRegionCounti...

a former co-worker of mine from there used to say that when a tornado touches down in Alabama it always hits a trailer park, because it can't not hit a trailer park

<sigh> More politics on Hacker News. Tiring.

Although the "signal to noise" of HN political discussions is so good compared to everywhere else.

Question: is there another community that has high-quality discussions on political issues? Would love to find one.

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