Statement on Visit to the USA by Professor Philip Alston | Hacker News Reader

Statement on Visit to the USA by Professor Philip Alston

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103 pointsCaveman_Coder65 comments

The whole report is a great read, which completely lines up with my experience living in various places in the US (particularly California + Louisiana) as a European - but this example near the beginning particularly stands out to me because, living in an area in San Francisco with a very visible homeless population, I witness it on a near daily basis:

"I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to"

As I said, I witness this extremely regularly just outside of my apartment. It ranges from a patrol car stopping for a few minutes to just give a talk to the homeless people that amounts to "hey, we're the police, we are letting you know we're here and we've got our eye on you... we know you can't magically stop being homeless but please stop looking so homeless", all the way to 4-5 cars + a firetruck/ambulance on standby while the officers make the homeless people take down camp, pat them down, etc. with sometimes a city sanitation pickup truck taking away all of their possessions as garbage (it seems that many homeless people are hoarders).

I'm not sure what's going on "behind the scenes" here. Is it an irate neighbor that calls the police complaining about the homeless people and asking them to do something about it, which they then do their best to? Or is interacting with the homeless population an actual, documented part of their job? If so, is it tracked? What are the outcomes they hope for?

What I observe is that when they make the homeless people leave, they'll typically be back a few days/weeks later, so clearly this is only shuffling the problem around, rather than actually solving it in any meaningful way.

My hunch is that this is all essentially theater - the police/fire department know they can't do anything, but have instructions from above to do "something" about it, so they just end up doing what they can, even if it is utterly pointless and ineffective. But at least the irate neighbor is satisfied that there are no more homeless people outside their window for now.

It's all very sad.

It was my understanding that SF in particular is an incredibly rich county and that there are adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless. Is this not the case?

This article[0] claims that the shelter system has 1200 beds, and that official figures put the homeless population count at ~7000, while unofficial figures put it more around 10 000-12 000 and the parent article quotes 21 000.

[0] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Questions-about-San-Fran...

The city of San Francisco spends $40,000 per person per year on the city’s homeless population. That was $241 million in 2016 [0]. The issue of homelessness is complicated but is made worse by terrible mismanagement by the city.

[0] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...

Shelters are notoriously nasty places, and a bed alone is not what these people need. Many, if not most are seriously mentally ill, and need a level of care that isn’t available to people without serious money. Since the 1980’s mental health has been shafted in the US, with predictable results for homelessness and mass violence. Remember that the Us is a country in which a sitting congresswomen and bystanders can be gunned down by a paranoid schizophrenic who was known to authorities, and nothing changes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner

> in which a sitting congresswomen

That's a part of the problem right there: Gabrielle Giffords is a woman, not a man - unlike the other 78% of Congress. As usual with politics, as long as you're not a white, able-bodied male with money, no one will care what happens to you. There will be a couple of rallies, maybe a week or so of media headlines and that's it. Oh and maybe anniversaries of the event.

Sounds cruel but I have the feeling that it will need a rich white powerful politician's kid to die or be maimed in a mass shooting to have any effect on gun control. And even then, I wouldn't bet my money on actual change happening.

As for mental health, no idea how more funding for that can ever be passed. Unlike with a person with a wound it's difficult to "see" mental health issues (or, the healing process), and a culture in which mental health issues are regarded as "weaknesses" that must be ignored/covered-over than be helped doesn't help eithr.

Ever hear of Steve Scalise?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Scalise

SF spends about a quarter of a billion dollars a year on homelessness.[1] There are not adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless.[2]

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/10/san-francisc...

There are not adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless. There are not even adequate shelters for the homeless. The shelters are not always even safe places to be if you're homeless. Nor are the shelters that exist adequate substitutes for mental hospitals that a portion of the homeless population should be housed within but can't be because they don't exist.

If you're homeless, there are worse places to be than San Francisco and not many that are better, certainly none that I could think of. Maybe Salt Lake City? That said, there aren't any good places to be homeless in America, only comparatively better.

There aren't enough beds, and many homeless people prefer sleeping on the street, then in a shelter, for a number of logical reasons.

1. They are more likely to be assaulted or robbed in a shelter. Shelter staff may or may not do shit to help you.

2. Shelter admission hours can be limited - they may be incompatible with their job.

3. You are expected to be drug and alochol free in a shelter. For someone with an addiction, this may not be something they can accept. [1]

[1] Before anyone suggests that the solution is for those people to just quit their addiction, please keep in mind that there are many wealthy, intelligent, mentally sound people in a stable, supportive environment, with a loving family are unable to break their addictions.

> 3. You are expected to be drug and alochol free in a shelter. For someone with an addiction, this may not be something they can accept.

There's an addition to this: pets, especially dogs but also rats. For many homeless people their pets are their only living companion - but shelters accepting people with pets are a rarity even in Europe. Of course, because multiple dogs in the same space will lead to all night barking, territory fights etc. - this is why unconditional (!) housing first policies are the only thing that works.

> 1. They are more likely to be assaulted or robbed in a shelter. Shelter staff may or may not do shit to help you.

I'm not sure you can still call something like that a shelter to be honest.

The implicit, undocumented, de facto aim of moving homeless on to somewhere else is to have them die quietly out of the public eye.

A better way to solve the “homeless problem” is to give people homes, counselling, and access to work. This is because homelessness is usually a result of losing a job and thus a house and thus one’s self esteem (and in some cases, one’s mind).

Worked in Utah.

TL;DR Housing the homeless is cheaper than the chronic costs of not housing the homeless.

"Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness By 91 Percent; Here's How"

https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

Disputed counterpoint: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13894796#13895345

No, they aim to move homeless so that whatever camp they create is not their de facto home.

SF spends a mind boggling amount of money on supporting the homeless population and trying to get them back on their feet. Unfortunately this compassion is rewarded by many more homeless people moving to SF to take advantage of the amenities.

It's because of this. [1]

A large contingent of the public wants to not have any homeless, but isn't willing to fund getting homeless people off the streets. (Yes, San Francisco may be mismanaging their homeless budget, but not every city is.)

So, since they aren't willing to do anything constructive, but are willing to complain, they call the police. Since it's almost impossible to be homeless and not be breaking one law or another, the police show up, move them somewhere else, and the cycle repeats.

[1] https://thehomelessguy.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/citizen-do-n...

> 2. My visit coincides with a dramatic change of direction in US policies relating to inequality and extreme poverty. The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans

Really hard to take this seriously. I don’t think anyone in the US needs a tax cut right now, so I oppose the tax reform. But the fact is that before the Trump tax cuts, US corporate tax rates were higher both in theory and in practice than in Germany, France, Australia, Canada, etc. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the...

Our taxes are also far more progressive than Germany, France, and Sweden: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/ameri.... Trump’s tax plan won’t change that: the cuts in the top rates are very small and even most people in the top 1% won’t be able to take advantage of things like pass through treatment.

Could you explain how the statement "before the Trump tax cuts, US corporate tax rates were higher both in theory and in practice than in Germany, France, Australia, Canada, etc. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the... rebuts the professor's claim that the tax cuts will "greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality"?

It’s more the “bid to become the most unequal society” framing of the point. That makes it seem like the US is doing something different than everyone else. The entire OECD has been cutting corporate tax rates massively over the past few decades: https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/corporate-tax-cuts-and-....

hey, two problems I see with your post: a) taxation is no measure for (in-)equality, policy is - direct the money at the poor and it reduces inequality. the countries you mentioned do that, the US, not so much (see your very own link to the WaPo). b) yes, Paul Ryan has already proposed cutting programs benefiting the poor to tackle the self-inflicted rise of deficit caused by the tax cuts.

If taxation isn’t the problem, and the US tax system is more progressive than many European counterparts, why the hell lead with the tax reform point? If he had led with: we spend too much on middle class welfare and not enough on really poor people, as the WaPo article explains, he would’ve had a point.

Who mentioned corporate tax rates? There is a simple widely accepted measure for economic inequality, the Ginii index, where the USA have steadily moved towards greater inequality, from a starting point that is already a lot more unequal than other NATO or western nations. You even seem to agree that this latest tax reform will not fundamentally change this course.

This is a much more comprehensive measure than looking at individual tax rates or even the tax systems progressiveness. Sure, of what poor Americans earn, they might keep comparably more but that is of little use when illness costs them their job and many times their net worth - their companions in Germany, France and Sweden might pay a 40% tax rate but they are not paying out of pocket for healthcare.

Philip Alston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston

"The proposed tax reform package stakes out America’s bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans....It is against this background that my report is presented."

It's interesting that he is a law professor (not an economics professor) and yet he stated this as if it were incontrovertible fact, with no facts to back up his prediction, and then went on to base much of the rest of his report on it. That statement may turn out to be true, and it may turn out to be false, but it is certainly not settled fact.

It renders this entire report meaningless, as it is based on nothing more than speculation on the part of a clearly biased author about what the outcome of recent tax policy changes will be.

In what way is it controversial that the major beneficiaries of the tax reform will the richest parts of society? I thought that's pretty obvious.

It’s a very biased framing. Even with the changes, our tax system is more progressive than say France or Germany.

"As noted in the World Inequality Report 2018, in both Europe and the US the top 1% of adults earned around 10% of national income in 1980. In Europe that has risen today to 12%, but in the US it has reached 20%."

The tax reform will shift even more income to the top 1%. How is that biased framing?

So I am looking up GINI. European countries have similar and sometimes higher( france, germany) GINI than USA. Over the years seems to have stayed constant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

What data are you looking at on this page? I see the US way higher than either Germany or France. I am looking at "Gini coefficient, after taxes and transfers"

I was looking at " Gini coefficient, before taxes and transfers" but I think after taxes is more relevant like you pointed out.

"Overall, the American system remains the most progressive tax system in the developed world, whereas most social democracies like France, Germany and Sweden have actively regressive systems heavily reliant on value-added taxes. Then again, U.S. pay-outs aren't nearly as progressive, and so our government reduces inequality through taxes and transfers much less than peer countries."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/04/u-s-t...

It's interesting that you're an Entrepreneur (not a Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights) and yet you've rendered this entire report meaningless, in-spite of all the additional body of evidence considered in the report.

I read it. He presents no evidence that the recent tax reform has exacerbated the wealth gap. Of course, he couldn’t have, because the reforms were only recently passed, and thus it is not possible to know what the long-term outcome will be. By his own admission, he framed the entire report in light of his false statement of fact made at the beginning.

So, while there are some interesting factual tidbits sprinkled throughout the report, any conclusions that it reaches based upon those facts are meaningless, because they are colored by the false statement of fact.

"stakes out America's bid" implies that this is intention and not result yet, so he's not claiming that it's happened yet.

Rest of his report is kind of strange also

eg: * Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA *

> 424 symptomatic Zika virus disease cases reported*

> 414 cases in travelers returning from affected areas

> 4 cases acquired through presumed local mosquito-borne transmission in Florida (N=2) and Texas (N=2)

> 6 cases acquired through sexual transmission

There were ~10 cases were people got infected by zika while in united states.

How is spending more money on public health going to prevent people getting infected while traveling to affected areas.

https://www.cdc.gov/zika/reporting/2017-case-counts.html

Thank you for pointing this out. Everybody is a skeptic these days, quick to condemn, quick to blame, quick to be "right" by always being pessimistic. The tax reform bill thus far has proven to greatly improve US company profits and a plethora of companies have issued substantial bonuses to Americans (not just to executives). Repatriation is good for all Americans, no matter class, wealth, or political affiliation.

You're right that we aren't certain that changes in tax rates alone might increase inequality, but the author is also speaking about that the cuts to welfare programs and social services that will probably follow the tax bill. The sentence that you elided from your quotation is:

"The dramatic cuts in welfare, foreshadowed by the President and Speaker Ryan, and already beginning to be implemented by the administration, will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes."

This is more than mere speculation--this is what the Speaker is saying he wants to do[1]. This is an important part of the background for this analysis.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/gop-e...

We can argue all day about whether these cuts will come from efficiency-based savings (cutting out waste/fraud etc) or whether they will actually “shred crucial dimensions of a safety net already full of of holes,” but I don’t think anyone can argue against the fact that the way he phrased that shows his extreme political bias. Which, again, is a bad way to start off a supposedly fact-based report if you want anybody to pay attention to it.

As seen from an extreme right point of view, every reasonable position that is not deep conservative is seen as biased far to the left.

If you're referring to me, I'm actually somewhere in the middle. But I simply can't stand seeing political propaganda masquerading as legitimate news or facts - on either side of the aisle. So when I see such things, I'm going to point it out.

What do think about the other content in the report?

He presents some interesting actual facts, but again his analysis is colored by the extreme left-wing view they he laid out in the first paragraphs of the report. Assuming his facts are accurate, those are what they are. It’s the assertion of his editorial, hunches, and political views as fact that I have a problem with.

> and then went on to base much of the rest of his report on it.

The report is mostly based on statistics and the observations of the author. There is some discussion of tax reform later under "VI. Principal current governmental responses" but to claim that the author "went on to base much of the rest of his report on it" is disingenuous at best.

Furthermore, I don't feel like this a controversial claim. Can you cite a single source that argues that the tax reform package will have no effect on income inequality or will reduce it? I was not able to find one (in my limited search). The best I can do is find arguments that income inequality doesn't matter (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-11-30/liberal-c...)

Apologies for going off topic but what the hell did the developers of that do to the keys? If you scroll down and then use the down arrow you're taken to the top of the page and, paradoxically, one of the nav items opens. Can't use Command-Left Arrow to go back in the history. Just does nothing. Did they do that on purpose? Who thought that was a good idea? One I hope doesn't spread.

> If you scroll down and then use the down arrow you're taken to the top of the page and, paradoxically, one of the nav items opens

I can't reproduce this one, but cmd+r and then using the arrows does not work - only after clicking with the mouse once in the text.

The HTML output of that page is an utter, utter mess including MS Office comments revealing part of their internal infrastructure and workflow (look for www-edit.in.ohchr.org in the source). Jeez.

I don't doubt the gist of most of the report. We could do much better with the money we spend on Health...

but this sounds odd: "Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA"

Given that a few years ago it was unheard of disease by most professionals.

Not sure what point he is tyring to make with that

> 424 symptomatic Zika virus disease cases reported*

> 414 cases in travelers returning from affected areas

> 4 cases acquired through presumed local mosquito-borne transmission in Florida (N=2) and Texas (N=2)

> 6 cases acquired through sexual transmission

There were ~10 cases were people got infected by zika while in united states.

How is spending more money on public health going to prevent people getting infected while overseas.

https://www.cdc.gov/zika/reporting/2017-case-counts.html

video talk : https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJkLD_s9pYaYteD-3LxQd2f...

Interesting, and sad to read. Our America has many problems, many of which shouldn't exist on a nation as rich as ours. What amazes me is, did he gather all that, first hand, within two weeks?!

US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world

This is a common stat thrown around, but there is a non-obvious caveat. How this is counted differs between countries (even different in different EU countries). Wikipedia has a pretty good summary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality

It's not reporting: "the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States' relatively low international ranking. Rather, the report concluded that primary reason for the United States’ higher infant mortality rate when compared with Europe was the United States’ much higher percentage of preterm births.[72]" from the wikipedia article you cite.

The question is why does America have a higher "percentage" of preterm births. I'll give you one reason, lack of affordable health care.

Doesn't this explain why?

"A non-viable live birth in the US could be registered as a stillbirth in similarly developed nations like Japan, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France – thereby reducing the infant death count. Neonatal intensive care is also more likely to be applied in the US to marginally viable infants..."

"the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States' relatively low international ranking."

and

"Many countries, including the United States, Sweden and Germany, count an infant exhibiting any sign of life as alive, no matter the month of gestation or the size, but according to United States some other countries differ in these practices."

“the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation”

Notice they haven’t gone through the trouble of normalizing the criteria and doing a proper count. ‘Unlikely’ is an opinion unchecked by data.

I’m getting a bit sick of the trend on HN of down voting facts that conflict with people’s world view. Prove it makes no difference or acknowledge that is a deceptive statistic to use.

Along those lines, where is your data on why the US has more pre-term births? Perhaps the US has less abortions when things are going to be tough? Speculation and poor comparisons don’t enlighten on solve problems.

> often make their profits purely from speculation rather than contributing to the overall wealth of the American community.

Wondering what some of these speculations are. Stock markets?

Property is a big one.

That report starts out with the ridiculous statement that "40 million people continue to live in poverty" in the US.

If you spend just five or ten minutes trying to understand where that number comes from you can only include that Mr. Alston is either unimaginably incompetent in understanding poverty statistics or he is being massively disingenuous in his reporting.

A little googling will show that the 40 million number is based on cash income that doesn't excludes massive amounts of government assistance (housing assistance, food stamps, and so on). It is an absolute useless statistic to use as a primary statement about "poverty" in the US.

Here is a good take down of this misleading report: http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/30/completely-tak...

A little googling will show that "there is no international consensus on guidelines for measuring poverty".

I agree that "40 million people continue to live in poverty" is a claim that needs an accompanying definition of poverty and and description of the measurement methodology to really convey information. However that number is the Official US estimate of its own poverty rate. I agree that our methodology of measure poverty in the US is laughable and needs improvement, but you can't blame Mr. Alston for that.

Your assertion that this claim is "ridiculous" and that Mr. Alston is "unimaginably incompetent" or "massively disingenuous" for using the US's own measurement of poverty is thus clearly beyond hyperbole and more than a little ridiculous and quite disingenuous itself.

So you agree that the statistic is meaningless without context and yet you are OK with that being the lead in the report?

I would have preferred to see context provided with the statistic (as it should be with every statistic). I don't think that usage of that statistic without context is meaningless given that it is the official US estimate of poverty. I certainly don't think the usage of that statistic without context warrants anything close to the vitriolic language that you used.

I did use strong language. The statistic as used is extremely misleading. So far I haven't seen anyone discredit that conclusion. Pointing out that it is an official statistics isn't a rationale in favor of its use in this way. It happens to be just one of the measures of poverty published by the US government. There are lots of other poverty statistics that could have been used and so I can only assume the use was intentionally misleading.

You could have come in here and made a constructive comment about the number and the associate methodology of measuring poverty. Instead you made unfounded and unwarranted attacks on the author and made zero constructive contributions to the conversation.

If you want to make people more aware of better measures of poverty, you should have come in here with a critique of the measurement without the vitriol and ideally with examples of better measures that can be used.

You are right, I could have done that and probably should have done that.

I have a certain amount of frustration that resulted in me venting rather than contributing. The misuse of the official US poverty stat is not something new. It has been floating around for a while and has been criticized quite a bit -- yet it is still used to put forth misleading arguments out of ignorance most often but not always. Here is a link on this very issue from 2011:

https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/under...

It is one thing for a misleading statistic to be repeated in tweets, online discussions, comment streams and so on. It is a completely different thing for the misleading stat to be coming from an "authority". They should know better.

Since this is a report about dealing with poverty, I would have like to see the author make the point that: improving our measurement of poverty is an important part of being able to fight poverty.

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