Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

You can escape poverty by working harder; it is just that working harder will not always work. It needs to be coupled with other virtues; of course the solution is not just simply to work harder, but to suggest that working harder is not a great deal part of the solution is false by every measure. Lets say this, you are born into a poor family - you still get to go to school that likely has a great library - the school and the library represent a deposit of great wealth that has been bestowed on you by society and you can take advantage of that - or not; most don't and mostly it is due to laziness. Most children would rather watch TV all day. Say you live in a "bad" neighborhood. You can pick up trash around your house or leave it there, or throw more trash on the ground. My observation is that the poor just throw more trash on the ground, they don't make their beds, they live in filthy or cluttered houses...with all that time on their poverty stricken hands they could at least organize their place. I have seen such stark differences...here in the states, in the middle east, and in Africa. I have seen impoverished people that wallow in their mire, and I have seen those that work hard to improve their situation, and though they may still be financially impoverished - they at least make the things around them a little nicer, educate their minds with what books they have and therefore live a more fulfilled life.

Attributing outcomes to inherent properties, instead of systems and interactions, seems to be a fundamental mental error that is manifested in language, at least in English.

We say that a blanket or jacket "is warm", even though all it's doing is trapping heat that we produce. We say a task "is difficult", even though we are the ones who are having the difficulty in completing it. We say an apple "is red" even if we know that the color we perceive is a property of how light interacts with the apple's matter.

And we often say that people "are poor" rather than "in poverty."

Language exists somewhere between representing the way we think, and affecting the way we think. Attributing poverty to an inherent property of a particular person, rather than their context, seems in line with how we speak (and perhaps think) about a lot of the world around us.

I think this is one reason it is so hard to fix social problems: because the first step must be a critical mass of people who can and will overcome a default way of thinking about the world.

> However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder.

Wealth and poverty for both society and the individual a generational. This generation lifts themselves to a height that makes life better for the next generation. One life time isn't enough to measure whether working hard will make you successful.

Being born into a well off standard is being born into generations of sacrifices and hard work. If the current generation doesn't work hard to maintain they will certainly make life harder for a few generations down the line.

The slope counts for something, but the y-intercept should not be forgotten. And in the US, the distribution along the y-intercept is huge, but often ignored.

>you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder.

This is a traditional, stereotypical belief that in order to escape poverty you have to work harder. This is old understanding of meritocracy and it's no longer valid. The new meritocracy is that you have to learn harder. And now, given all the learning resources available for free on the internet (which is also very accessible nowadays) it's probably the best time ever to self-educate.

Once in a while I walk past a person selling pens/begging for money in my neighborhood. I always wonder how much he could've learnt and improved his life if he spent his time on learning instead of sitting on a bench and begging for money. I have sympathy for people that are poor due to unbearable circumstances such as mental illness or disability. But I honestly don't understand why an otherwise capable person won't make an effort to self-educate in order to break out of poverty.

The diabetic Vanessa could have chosen not to have her first baby at 16.

> the meritocratic myth

I've been around to see people over decades, and how their decisions affect their lives. Meritocracy is not a myth. Where people wind up is very much a consequence of their choices.

This isn't the Soviet Union where one is assigned a career, a job and an apartment.

I've seen immigrants arrive here with nothing and become millionaires. That's why everyone wants to come to America. The opportunity is here.

You don't need to 'educate' parents as to the importance of education. It is a typical rich person bias to believe that poor and disadvanted people need to be told that.

Likewise, people know that getting pregnant at 16 is not a great life plan. But the fundamentalist right have been campaigning for decades to control women's reproduction, including to prevent sexual health education, prevent contraception, and to deny access to abortion.

Lack of a social safety net (including health care) means that if you get a few bad breaks you could be living in your car with your kids. Essential medicine (like insulin) which should only cost a few dollars actually costs someone on minimum wage all their disposable income.

Saying that its better than a developing economy misses the point, the US is one of the richest countries in the world, and ordinary people are systematically taken advantage of by their own system of government. It's just tragic.

What do parents who understand the importance of child education do?

(1) choose a better school district, i.e. buy or rent housing in a more expensive location -- not applicable to poor parents

(2) read with their young kids; help older kids with homework -- requires time and a good enough living situation and enough education of the parents. Encouraging reading to kids is one of the top parent-education strategies being tried. The amount of help a parent can provide is limited by their own education level and time availability.

(3) Provide a stable environment where kids have good food, space to work quietly and access to books and computers -- this can be hard to impossible for the poor!

(4) transport kids to school every day -- most families in the US are expected to transport kids to neighborhood schools. For the poor, this means walking regardless of weather. In bad weather, attendence of the poor is way down, understandably.

(5) extracurriculars -- other than in-school sports, these typically require fees, parents to drive kids places, and parental time. Not possible for many poor families.

How exactly do you intend to fund the design, implementation, and ongoing maintenance of such a massive social engineering program?

Your anecdote doesn’t really mean much. “Significantly way better” is apparently still not enough.

Similar to why food stamps are cheaper than food education. The administrative burden is prohibitively expensive.

Let’s not consider the thesis at hand here; jobs aren’t the answer. That flies in the face of our corporate sponsored religion.

Of course believing that inherently threatens your status.

This site should best stick to discussion of technology. Whenever social topics come along, the community quickly reveals its ignorance of reality for the majority, and knee jerk defense of its status quo

This is just social darwinist moralising imo. If you're going to really prescribe that as a solution, can you point to cases where "telling poor people not to have kids" has proven effective to improve society? Even if it is effective, it's still sickening to me, the idea that you should only have kids if you either inherit money or you're lucky enough to climb out of poverty. If population control ever becomes necessary in the west it has to be by random ballot not privilege.

It's entertaining that we, as a society, prevent people under the age of 18 from voting, and under 21 from drinking, and we say (truthfully) that it's because they aren't fully developed yet.

But when a person of 16 makes a life altering decision, and we shrug our shoulders and say "they should have known better".

> 1. Educate parents on the importance of children education

I'm not sure most parents, Vanessa included, don't know that education is important to their children's future. She likely lacks the opportunity to send her children to a school where they would receive a good education.

> 2. Educate people to not have kids before they're financially and emotionally ready.

I would argue that most people look at having children in terms of opportunity cost. If you're wealthy and have a good career, you tend to put off having children or have fewer children. That's why the birth rate is so low in developed countries compared to that of the developing world.

Absolutely. Refrain from having children if you cannot afford to have children.

People love to tell me I'm insensitive but I say the community needs to step up and do it part to help raise the children. We won't do that. We harp on about "personal responsibility".

I think most* people who don't already have children (me included) should elect to not have children in the current situation. There is no benefit to having children in the west. We don't care after our parents. How can we expect our children to provide care for us? It makes no sense to have children on am individual level. Yes, a shrinking population can wreak havoc to GDP growth rate but what is this GDP growth doing for people out of work and unable to afford health care in Wisconsin?

There is a stigma associated with not having children. It needs to go away. It needs to be the norm and not the exception to have zero children.

The US is not a developing country, it's the most wealthy country in the world. This comparison does not seem useful.

Okay but changing the minimum wage would have a real impact in her life now going forward. Does your plan retroactively change her state?

Also, there will always be some worse off country to say "look it could be worse, see how lucky you are?" I think that is such a disingenuous and irrelevant point.

2.5. Educate people how not to have kids before they want to, and give them the supplies they need to make it happen.

I would expect US minimums to be far greater than developing countries.

I think you'd need stronger evidence than has ever been given that raising minimum wage concurrently raises purchasing power, _especially_ for staples. In the end, it's a feel-good solution - politically, it's hard to pass up, as a great deal of people would be very happy about seeing their paycheck get bigger, without also examining whether the prices around them are going up as well, or noticing that their coworker cohorts are thinning out.

Interestingly enough, $7.25 would be enough for me to get by just fine where I'm at in Mississippi. I wouldn't have much left over, but it would more than cover my bills, food, and transportation. Not everyone could do it, but based on the numbers and my current expenses, I could. It's also a bit rare to find a job paying that little around here, based on what I saw during my job search in the beginning of the year. McDonald's, Lowe's and Walmart are all paying several dollars more than that. The dollar stores tend to pay that low, or slightly more, though.

No minimum wage is able to remove poverty. Set it too low and it has no effect, since it will be below the price you are able to get on a free market. Set it too high and fewer jobs will be available, and thus less people are able to earn money to fight their poverty.

There are nearly twice as many Americans working below the minimum wage than at the minimum wage [0]. The BLS data is from self reported numbers. It doesn't include information about Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or by individual state or local minimum wage laws. But if even a portion of those individuals working below the federal minimum wage in the gray market or under the table, it kind of makes minimum wage rates less important. If there is that much flexibility of employees to shift from (presumably) legal minimum wage jobs to under the table jobs paying below minimum wage, then increasing the minimum wage could serve to move some of those minimum wage workers to the informal sector. In the informal sector, they don't benefit from legal protections and would harm them in the long run (IMO).

[0] https://stats.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2016/home.ht...

> minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty

Minimum wage is insufficient yet to put all population into poverty.

If we increase minimum wage to, say, $100/hour, then 99% of population would be not able to find any jobs [that pay minimum wage or more] and that would, effectively, put 99% of population into poverty.

With current $7.25/hr minimum wage only few percent of population cannot find jobs because they do not have enough skills to get minimum wage job.

(Accepting everything you've stated.)

What are some optimal tax rates? What are the target individual finances (food, housing, retirement, etc)? What should government spend money on?

I manifestly do not care what the absolute values are for minimum wage, fees, various tax rates, government spending, etc.

I do care about fairness, equal opportunity, rule of law, and empowerment. I care that people can feed and educate their kids, grow old, and play with their grandkids.

---

I want a SimCity for IRL policy.

Policy makers first simulate their proposals. Then repeat their experiments in the real world.

First a little, then a lot.

Hypothesis, experiment, evaluate. Rinse, lather, repeat.

As circumstances change and new ideas crop up, better strategies displace old strategies.

--

We're geeks. We should be thinking about this stuff systematically. Lead by example.

Servers still have to receive the standard minimum wage. If their tips don’t bring them up to that level, their employer has to make up the difference. Of course, not all employers follow the law, but that’s the requirement.

- Why or how would the minimum wage be compared to the average wage of another country? It's the minimum.

- Agreed on the single earner families on minimum wage guaranteed to be in poverty. But, pointing somewhere else and saying "It's better there!" seems off to me. Pick a specific policy and advocate for it. Higher minimum wage? Guaranteed housing? Universal basic income?

Legally, employers have to make sure that wait staged are making at least minimum wage after tips, or make up the difference themselves. I've heard enforced enfircement can be lax though.

There is something wrong with this: "There must always be more jobs available than people that want them, not slightly fewer."

Even at 5% unemployment, your condition can be satisfied. For example, jobs might be unfilled because the candidates are unwilling to move. The candidates might be unqualified... shall we hire a random person as a brain surgeon? There could be a dozen job openings per person, and still the unemployment rate remains above zero.

As you move toward 0% unemployment, you push harder and harder against the problem of unsuitable workers. Reaching 0% is a bit like traveling at the speed of light: it is an unreachable goal, with difficulty rising dramatically as you get close.

>If there are only 19 bones for every 20 dogs, then it doesn't matter how good a bone hunter they all are there will always be one dog disappointed and the other 19 will be grateful for the bone no matter how thin and weedy it is.

Or, if the dogs are intelligent, they could split those 19 bones to 20 pieces...

> If there are only 19 bones for every 20 dogs, then it doesn't matter how good a bone hunter they all are there will always be one dog disappointed and the other 19 will be grateful for the bone no matter how thin and weedy it is.

The example I've come across was of musical chairs. If there are 3 seats and 10 people, no matter what, some people will be out of luck.

I find it strange reading all the "get an education" or "don't have babies out of wedlock" attacks. If everyone in the country got PhDs, we still have the same level of poverty. If everyone married and then had babies, we'd still have the same level of poverty.

Lets say every american went to medical school and become doctors. You know what we'd have? A lot of doctors in poverty. If everyone became a software developer like me, we'd have hordes of poor developers.

The dominant economic system ( quasi mercantilistic capitalism with some social protections ) today pretty much guarantees poverty for a portion of the population. It's structurally systematic. The system is designed for income inequality and no matter what, we will have few extraordinary wealthy and lots of people in poverty. This is the dominant trend with a few blips ( the burgeoning of the middle class post ww2 US, but that was an anomally ).

If the hungry dog is always the same, maybe the problem is not the missing bone.

I'm not sure what is the point of the first paragraph but it's considered full employment at 5% because not everyone is interested in having a job. It is impossible to have 100% employment rate. So there's no point in pursuing it.

Its a kind of thing like the average number of hands per population is less than two. Seems counter intuitive, but when you think about it, it does make sense. One shouldn't relay on the expected value of people having two hands, for global population it's a tad lower.

The maximum entropy situation is one dog with 6+ bones and lots with none. It is structurally broken at a statistical mechanics level if you are concerned about fairness.

> Thus in the not too remote future, the rate of interest would have to be negative and income tax would have to be replaced by an income subsidy.

Interesting. We definitely have negative interest rates in some places by now. Now waiting for the income subsidy.

The economy is not a fixed sum. Wealth can be created and destroyed.

And, of course you need a way to prevent employers from using various alternatives available to them.

* You need very high import taxes, so goods have to be produced with local labour

* If truly automation were to become pervasive, that needs taxing

* You probably need restrictions to prevent money from crossing borders too easily

* You can't have open borders

(or)

* You have to strongly respond to illegals working (or legalize them, while still killing those illegal jobs), because they'll destroy the bargaining power of others

(this is, incidentally, why for 90% of history leftists and communists were strongly against immigration, and the right was pro-immigration. Even today, the right is still in favor of (limited) immigration, that doesn't seem to have changed much. But I sometimes wonder if it isn't the case that Trump won because a significant portion of the left electorate voted for him because of the labour competition due to immigration and tolerating of illegal immigrants and illegal immigrants' labour)

If you ignore the religious association, how is this concept any different from the notion that society functions better when people are industrious and maximise their efforts to do things that are useful and valuable to others?

I hear the PWE invoked (usually with a sneer), and reflect that it seems to be referring to exactly how my parents have operated throughout their adult lives, and that if everyone behaved the way my parents have done (to the extent that they are capable, of course), society would function far more effectively and harmoniously.

And then I wonder what I'm missing.

My mother spent her career working in hospitals helping to rehabilitate seriously injured and ill people. In her non-work time she cared for her ageing parents until they passed away. Now she helps raise her grandkids.

My father helped design and build telecommunications networks then ran a company making electronic gadgets that helped school kids learn about science, and environmental researchers gather data.

Both of them have spent much of their non-work time volunteering in the community - at kindergarten, school, church, and more. And they have maintained a healthy social life and done plenty of travel.

They've always been busy, but never burnt out or exhausted. Always occupied and fulfilled, never resentful.

I don't see how any of their work or volunteering is surplus to society's requirements.

I do see that society would be better off if more people were doing the kind of work and volunteering that my parents have always done.

What am I missing here?

Protestant work ethic would also absolutely recognise taking care of your family as "work". In fact, it would recognise nearly anything that keeps you non-idle and isn't done purely for pleasure as work. The requirement to be employed in order to receive social help is really weird, it should also factor in any elderly parents and children to take care of. Even from the point of view of complete utilitarianism aiming for maximum workforce, helping parents raise children is a net gain because those children will grow up to be workers, at least until they themselves have children to take care of.

I'm sorry to hear about your parents. However I don't know what your point is. On one hand you say your hard work and focus on future got you out of poverty. Then you say your parents are an example of where hard work and grit are NOT all you need.

Honestly it sounds like you were born with a certain amount of intelligence, got some money to go to college, and you made the most of it. But where would you be if you had neither, I wonder?

Your story seems to indicate that studying hard and focusing on the future are necessary but not sufficient conditions to enter the middle class.

I think the formula is that you need all three:

-Relatively consistent work ethic

-Decent decision-making

-Some minimal opportunity

Often the argument seems to swing between these absurd positions that it's all about just one of these and the others don't matter. Of course they're all necessary, and different people lack different components. There's no shortage people poor hard-working people. There's also no shortage of people who blew a lot of money or opportunity due to laziness and terrible choices. There's terrible luck events and great luck events. It all matters.

Some smart person said: People are usually correct in what they assert, and incorrect in what they deny. (I think maybe it was Hume).

Your story resonates so much with me - thank you for sharing.

Similarily, it wasn’t applying for oodles of financial aid/loans, working throughout college, and applying for scores of scholarships that let me study software engineering - it was the fact that my great-aunt, who I have exactly one memory of, left a fund to cover rent and books each semester. That arbitrary, fortunate fact gave me the substrate with which to form my education.

Hard work will only get you so far when you show up to the pottery wheel without clay.

Breaking out of poverty requires a mindset that not everyone can acquire. Given the opportunities that the U.S. has you would think that there would be NO poverty. Yet there is. At a very simple level, you would think that working hard and saving your money would get you to a higher economic plane. But to get to that point you need to be able to learn how it's done and not lock yourself into situations that will make it so much harder to scape out of the bottom such as teen pregnancy, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and even bad role models.

The biggest problem is role models. If your family or friends live a certain way then you tend to copy them unless you're able to think differently or have someone to advise you thru your early years.

Not only that, getting out of poverty is a long-term process that requires hard work in the right areas. But even hard work is not enough. I can do very hard work all my life at a minimum wage job and never get ahead.

At a very basic level getting out seems very simple. All people need to do is to study to get a good job and work hard. But in reality, that's not enough. You need the support system and the right mindset to get you out. Many people can do it but as we see over and over many people can't.

I think that throwing jobs and money at the problem is not the solution. What will work is to consult young families and young kids that are at risk on what they need to do to get ahead plus the support system that will help. This needs to be done not once but for years and on a regular basis. It would be similar to a regular check up the way we visit the doctor or dentist and get advice on what to do.

> For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try.

From my viewpoint, breaking out of poverty comes down to these factors, in order of greatest to least importance:

1. Starting off on the right foot at an early age with regards to academic performance. Circumstances can make this tough. Lack of access to good schools, parents too tired to engage their children (e.g. reading to them and instilling academic curiosity) due to working long shifts at strenuous jobs, lack of attention span on the part of the kids, etc. But coming out of school with good academic performance opens so many more doors than not.

2. Choosing a career path that has good job availability and pay (software development, healthcare industry, etc.). You can be a master of your field or trade, but if there aren't enough positions to fill, or if competition is fierce, or if the industry pays poorly, then what's the point unless you have a deep love of it?

3. Luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Not having a major medical issue. I'd almost consider placing this first.

4. Working hard.

Working hard has its place, but it's last on my list. I've known many people who did the first three and don't work hard, and still remain employed since the job market is so good for what they do. We had a developer who was absolutely terrible, but he'd regularly job hop every 1 to 2 years and get more money in the process. To be fair, the software development industry has some serious flaws in its screening processes, but nevertheless, it seems you can't ever hire enough developers. I'm not condoning being a poor worker, but the reality is that, though hard work has its place, there are more important criteria in raising oneself out of poverty.

Glad you got out of poverty, anecdata only gets us so far. Hard work counts, but so does the opportunity you mentioned, and access to being able to put in hard work.

The lack of social mobility is well documented, and it's a travesty that's affecting large parts of the developed world still (and shamefully, the UK pretty much leads on it):

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers/17-2...

https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/disturbing-finding-l...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobil...

Unfortunately I'm not as well versed in reliable US sources, but there are references through here that the US doesn't exactly beat us hands down on social mobility either.

I do implore everyone to read more on this topic, there's a lot on HN about "meritocracy" and "well, just work harder", but that's just simply not the world we live in. It's a shit-show out there, and people's ability to break through the "class-ceiling" is being stunted, not improved.

I think your story illustrates that it all depends on:

* Hard work

* Smart decisions (your mother deciding to go after the other and putting the money off)

* Luck (pro-bono lawyer, and your father's death in some sense)

i can't tell if you actually think it is simple or not. you and your mother are fortunate for that professional class lawyer who worked pro-bono for no material gain whatsoever.

I believe it's called the hindsight bias.

Breaking out of poverty requires a mindset that not everyone can acquire. Given the opportunities that the U.S. has you would think that there would be NO poverty. Yet there is. At a very simple level, you would think that working hard and saving your money would get you to a higher economic plane. But to get to that point you need to be able to learn how it's done and not lock yourself into situations that that will make it so much harder to scape out of the bottom such as teen pregnancy, gangs, drugs, alcohol, and even bad role models.

The biggest problem is role models. If your family or friends live a certain way then you tend to copy them unless you're able to think differently or have someone to advise you thru your early years.

Not only that, getting out of poverty is a long-term process that requires hard work in the right areas. But even hard work is not enough. I can do very hard work all my life at a minimum wage job and never get ahead.

At a very basic level getting out seems very simple. All people need to do is to study to get a good job and work hard. But in reality, that's not enough. You need the support system and the right mindset to get you out. Many people can do it but as we see over and over many people can't.

I think the throwing jobs and money at the problem is not enough. I think what would work is to consult young families and young kids that are at risk on what they need to do to get ahead. This needs to be done not once but for years and on a regular basis. It would be similar to a regular check up the way we visit the doctor or dentist.

The FT had a couple of great podcasts last year ([0], [1]) that discussed the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration. I don't remember all of the details, but the key points were, to the best of my recollection:

* Highly skilled/educated immigrants provide a significant boost to economic growth and pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. I don't recall whether the podcast addressed the impact of these immigrants on the wages of highly skilled native-born workers.

* Low-skill immigrants are a net positive in the long term (i.e., once their children grow up) to the economy as a whole, but their net impacts in the short term are somewhat ambiguous, and there is some evidence that they bring about wage decreases for low-skill native-born workers. While that evidence is not completely clear-cut, it seems likely that there's at least some level of impact. There's also evidence suggesting that some of the displaced native-born workers "climb the ladder" into higher-skill, higher-wage positions when this happens, which may mitigate that impact.

From what I've read more generally, my impression is that outsourcing has a much larger impact on unskilled workers' wages than immigration does, though I don't have a specific source to support that claim.

[0] https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/09/15/2193785/podcast-the-e...

[1] https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/11/10/2195727/podcast-kim-r...

You're ignoring the demand side. Immigrants also increase demand. For everything.

I'd argue that legal immigration has the greatest impact on higher sectors of society- such as salaries in software / IT. This can be fixed by raising the minimum pay for H1Bs. I'd believe that illegal immigration has a incredibly small effect overall.

It’s interesting the immigration cannot even be mentioned without getting down voted.

It seems obvious to me that fewer low skill workers would result in higher wages for those who could most benefit from it.

Have you checked minimum wage vs inflation chart? Seems that not having a minimum wage that goes up yearly to catch up to inflation has the biggest impact in wage growth. There are bigger fish to fry rather than speculate on the impact of immigration (but not as easy to sell to angry constituents), the current population is at ~320 million and you receive ~1 million immigrants a year, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and let's more than double it and say 5 million. That represents 1.5% unwanted growth via immigration, I have my doubts that a change so small can have an impact so big on an economic system.

The cost of one AGM-114 Hellfire missile is $100,000+. Most likely they will be used to blow up some random guy in the middle east for no reason.

The cost of a 1 liter water bag at a hospital is $500.

Walmart evaded $70+ billion dollars in tax. They made that money by keeping all their workforce on medicaid.

That's where you money is going to, not $6 an hour fruit pickers spending all their money in food.

Illegal immigrants are 1% of the population in the U.S. It's used as a way to divide people rather than an actual serious issue.

"Wages in rich countries are determined more by immigration control than anything else, including any minimum wage legislation. How is the immigration maximum determined? Not by the ‘free’ labour market, which, if left alone, will end up replacing 80–90 per cent of native workers with cheaper, and often more productive, immigrants. Immigration is largely settled by politics. So, if you have any residual doubt about the massive role that the government plays in the economy’s free market, then pause to reflect that all our wages are, at root, politically determined.” Chang, Ha-Joon. 2011. 23 Things they Don’t Tell you about Capitalism, Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market

The scale of immigration has definitely been whole lot higher in 1960s, not to mention 1920s of course when it was free and open for everyone who could pass a basic medical check.

I stopped my subscription to the New Yorker because I got fed up with exactly this. Although, as others here have commented, it may more emotionally resonant to hear one person's story, it also reinforces a very American view of history that all changes good and bad are forged by individuals, not by motivated groups of people or larger stochastic events / underlying structural changes.

Repeated enough, it can create a narrative that the wider groups don't matter as long as you support the few exceptionals. This seems to play out across all sides of US society both in justice (think "headline" prosecution of corrupt individuals in finance etc) and in social welfare. This is not to say that exceptional individuals do not have a disproportionate role in society. They unquestionably do. However I can't think of any of those individuals who has not been enabled by dozens if not thousands of talented others.

People are humans, they relate to individual stories more than raw statistics.

I think it's great, it shows there's always a human side to trends and large statistics.

Because it is a feature article, not a news or news analysis story. The latter types have a very different 'pyramidal structure' where the most salient facts are in the opening sentences and each subsequent paragraph adds less vital supporting information and colour. That story structure was specifically designed so that as different editions of the paper came out, if a story needed to be cut it could be essentially cut from the bottom in ever increasing amounts without it needing to be be re-written; in extremis being cut all the way back to the opening sentence, in which case it would simply be a 'news in brief' or Nib item.

Feature stories have typically attempted to hook the reader not through a news lead, but though a colour intro - and one technique is to introduce an abstract issue by relating it through a case-study. You may not like them, but when done well they can work.

Being done well, however means that the case study should be fairly short and there shouldn't be a mismatch between headline promising one thing and annoying the reader when the opening paragraphs don't deliver.

In traditional print, the combination of headline, subhead and design combined gives you an idea of the type of article you are about to read. However when the headline is simply posted as a link, it can feel like bait-and-switch. You go in expecting a pithy summary of the issues, you get a feature article.

This is a side effect of the way the story is posted, rather than a particular problem with the journalism, in my opinion, though I do think the initial anecdotage is a bit leisurely and meandering in this case, for my taste.

That is what people are taught good journalism is. I agree, it's annoying and time consuming. It is disrespectful of my time as a reader.

Agreed. I got a couple of screen-scrolls through the article and gave up. It might be my attention span declining, to it could just be too much fluff in the story.

I attended a panel at Rights Con 2016 about getting tech stories picked up by the news. One tip from journalists on the panel was that articles anchored on a human narrative arc tend to be more successful. The human story helps people understand why it is worth investing time to learn the related facts/science/tech.

Many writers still get paid by the word or they get an assignment that requires X number of words.

Some of the worst offenders are magazine writers. I've read articles that go on and on and yet say nothing.

This difference you've pointed out is starkest here, in 2 articles about the travel ban.

1. Trump’s Travel Ban, Aimed at Terrorists, Has Blocked Doctors - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/health/trump-travel-ban-d...

2. Trump’s Immigration Order Could Make It Harder To Find A Psychiatrist Or Pediatrician - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-immigration-orde...

Both of these are reports on exactly the same issue, but different techniques.

The NYTimes prefers to use pictures of a doctor, along with quotes from various doctors and medical students. "We need him desperately", says someone about an oncologist. "I love this country", says a Syrian doctor about America.

Fivethirtyeight tells the story with statistics. How many doctors are there in America? How many of those are immigrants? How many from these countries? All told in one image. Which specialties do these doctors practice? In which counties do they practice in? No human interest, just the facts.

Me personally, I prefer FiveThirtyEight's style. I read their article and that one image helped me realise what a grave issue it was. They get straight to the point, no fluff. But I totally understand how others might connect more with the NYTimes article. Seeing the story from the perspective of a real, breathing human. Hearing them talk about love, about sacrifice, about family. It humanises the issue and they understand it better. Different strokes.

I think many journalists like to think themselves as writers. But this ain't a novel!

It brings it alive - sounds corny, I know, but it's true. The article depressed me, which had it just been a piece about statistics and policy statements would have left me cold.

Interested to know why you're not interested in the human angle.

Yep... imo it's used to manipulate people. In this case it's good, but was also used as bad a bunch of times. So people that find motivation from this kind of story telling, can be manipulated

This is probably heavily affected by at least two things:

1. increase in healthcare costs and how health insurance is bound to employment

2. increase in wealth concentration and a shift from cash compensation to asset compensation (Bezos is only absurdly rich if he liquidates his Amazon holding instantly)

So, I would say your portrayal of hourly compensation is disingenuous as well. All of these statistics probably need to be calculated as medians instead of means ("compensation per hour" sounds suspiciously like "total compensation / total hours", which is a mean) in order for it to come close to accurately describing the situation of the median American, because wealth concentration has skewed the mean American into something a lot more optimistic than one would think.

Probably the gains went to the owners, i. e. shareholders.

Or, perhaps, David Graeber wrote in his book «Bullshit Jobs» that at least a part of the gains inflates the bullshit part of businesses, i. e. more bullshit managers are employed. Of course this means that the hourly pay would rise. I don't know.

The article points out this is is a vanishingly small percentage:

>That is, among the poor, two in 100 are working-age adults disconnected from the labor market for unknown reasons. The nonworking poor person getting something for nothing is a lot like the cheat committing voter fraud: pariahs who loom far larger in the American imagination than in real life.

are we talking about a middle class 20 year old dropout, or the three kids the woman in this story is raising?

not that it should matter, though if you want to help more people, help women with kids. people's lives are complicated in so many ways. it doesn't help to blame the victims (though i prefer to see the folks living tough lives -- especially when that involves also caring for others!! -- as fucking badasses).

(a) let women own their own bodies and lives, and stop blaming them for how fucked up our culture and laws are when it comes to sex and pregnancy

(b) value kids and mothers. stop underfunding childcare, education, and overprotecting domestic abusers and the patriarchy.

Seems like the woman needs education and a good job more than just about anyone to take care of those kids

> How can such a large country suffer from a bigger housing crisis

Because we don't just provide things to people because they are struggling or starving. They have to be literally dying, or appear to be in medical distress, and then we send a fire truck as a first responder, and then they go to the emergency room because we waited until they were dying to provide care, and then we rack up unpayable bills that raise health care prices.

I mean, we create the conditions that cause homelessness, and then literally criminalize the homeless. If that doesn't tell you how little of a shit we give about people in distress, I don't know what will.

America is a land of plenty only for people that already have plenty.

> Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

Maybe "the market" is not a good tool to solve inequality.

The problem in the USA is lack of morality.

The lack of morality to vote for decent politicians. Why do US citizens claim to want medicare for all but vote for Democrats or Republicans who do not want medicare for all ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX5GSClA8z4&t=207

The lack of morality that private property should be spent to help other persons in need.

The lack of morality that allows an insane military budget and immoral lies and crimes and murder in other countries by political and military and economic warfare.

https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-...

Because the market doesn't try to solve this problem

You have to keep in mind that everything in the US (health care, education, food industry (which causes the health problem)) is harnessed just for one single purpose: Make money for the share holders. Subsequently the US goverment doesn't serve the people and their interest, it serves the interest of these big companies.

This whole system is optimized for making money for the select few, not to cater for the society by and large. Therefore it creates these unfortunate side effects.

Unable to afford stuff is not poverty. It's a symptom of poverty.

Poverty is the inability to know how or be able to survive at a minimum comfortable level in our society.

The causes are many, such as lack of education, addiction, early parenthood, good role models, lack of good health and many more I can't even begin to imagine.

So giving people stuff and housing is only a temporary solution. The solution is so much more and it takes years to get ahead of it.

Look at Venezuela, they tried to solve their poverty problem very simply by basically giving people food and shelter without fixing the fundamental problem of lack of knowledge and the other problems that cause poverty and now they are in worst trouble than ever and yet in theory they had the financial resources to fix the problem.

What you mention is just a start and poverty will always be unless the more fundamental problems are fixed.

Yes, it's all about density. Source: living in South Korea.

Markets alone won't do shit of it's not profitable. That's why you need government regulations. Some things should not be driven by profit.

Thinking otherwise is delusional.

> America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything.

Doing nothing will not remove poverty. Still some work is needed at least to bring up natural resources and work on other areas... yes - everything needs some work. Just sitting and complaining will not make anyone richer.

The issue is not that we don't have enough space.

You could rent a house in the middle of nowhere Tennessee for a couple hundred dollars a month if you wanted.

The problem is instead housing in places that people actually want to live.

Well at least the Americans are not standing in queues.

Seriously, I wonder why this scarcity for quite many is not highlighted as failure of capitalism, why the bailout of banks with tax-money is not marked as "capitalism and free market has failed" just like communism is?

> Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

Well my elementary knowledge of economics suggests that the market equilibrium price is the intersection of the supply and demand curves. There is additional demand but at a price lower than can be supplied. It is not profitable to supply housing further, and some demand is not met. This will always be the case (according to my elementary understanding of economics).

That is where socialism comes in in most countries. Since profit motive cannot solve this problem, compassion motive can. Supplying low cost housing without disrupting the rest of the real estate market is managed in a variety of fashions in different countries to greater or lesser success.

> Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

The market did solve the problem and then we blew it by undermining the family unit so we have people dependent on the state with no significant family support.

> Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures.

The soviets tried this approach it doesn't work because you end up with a shitload of crappy communist housing blocks. The correct approach is to develop as much high end housing as possible which pushes all other houses down the depth chart. We want the poor living in houses that the rich used to own - not shittier houses.

At some point we have to realize that the issue isn't wealth or even inequality. The harsh reality is a significant number of the population has a several hundred dollar a day drug addiction and no means of taking care of themselves even if they were handed a blank check.

Terrible poverty? Well much less poverty than in about 95 percent of the planet so everything is relative.

Now, the market cannot solve a problem that is linked to human nature. Humans like living in dense areas rather than on the top of mountains, so space will be more and more expansive as density increase. Nothing unusual. Density also brings more jobs and more commerce so this is a cycle that goes with it.

This being said if you care nothing about living in a modern civilization it is perfectly possible to live far away from cities with very minimum expenses and a lot of land. Thats just not what people want.

It's said that you need to do 3 things in America to avoid poverty.

1. Graduate High School 2. Work full-time 3. Don't have a baby out of wedlock

It's that easy.

> What's the next stage of society?

Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, duh.

A problem with raising minimum wages is then marginal businesses will lay off employees. It may be better for the government to subsidise low wages by chipping in a bit on top. eg this kind of thing https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/working-ta...

Sweden seems to do okay without them.

Do you have any constructive suggestions to add, or just cynicism?

There was no poverty before America?

What is poverty in noncapitalist countries a result of?

The US went from subsistence farming in 1800 to superpower a hundred years later. Nearly the entire population that made up the US arrived penniless, and moved up into the middle class and higher.

To say that American capitalism somehow "caused" poverty is contrary to about every statistic.

Is that why hunter gatherer societies didn't have poverty? Is that why communist countries weren't poor? How is that working out for Venezuela? Capitalism is literally the only thing in human history that has ever lifted large numbers of people out of poverty.

I don't care or need to love you. But I do love my family and myself. So if I need to put on a smile and provide a service or good to you for money to help the people I love I will do it. That's the point of capitalism and free markets.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”

What do you mean "removed"? Are you talking about this comment that was downvoted?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17966334

February 1928 political speech by Herbert Hoover:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rugged%20indiv...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rugged_individualism

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/rugged-i...

It's actually educational attainment [1]

[1] https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/how-does-level-education-rel...

This is not accurate in my opinion. And as automation puts more and more people out of work we'll see 'jobs' prove to be a legacy mode of gaining resources because jobs won't exist.

It seems to me your policy would lead to the creation of permanent two-class society, where moving between the classes is difficult. Besides, do you really want to live in a fortress segregated from the rest of the society?

Why not invest money in education, training and a social security net that gives poorer individuals the means and space to catapult themselves into wealth?

You just described every dystopian sci-fi film ever. And I think you can figure out what happens in the end.