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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

Poverty harms children. It's possible it harms young adults as well. The sooner we dismiss the notion that we need the poverty to motivate us to work and adopt some form of basic income, the better.

It might be cheaper too than current system when you consider all the harm that poverty does to economy and workers.

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Malnourishment harms anyone, and severe malnourishment at childhood harms a lot https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/child-nutrition... but mostly in poor countries.

A nice variant of basic income is minimal tax return when everyone gets tax return proportional to a small percentage of the total tax collected past year. This would allow to gradually reduce other forms of social payments, without introducing arbitrary fixed values for the amount of basic income.

Is malnourishment a problem among the poor in the US? Looking around, it seems the problem of the poor in the US is obesity.

I dropped multiple dress sizes by improving my nutrition. I also got my younger son to drop weight without dieting by buying him dark chocolate as a means to discourage him from eating chocolate pop tarts. I learned he was eating chocolate pop tarts all day, concluded he was specifically craving cocoa and found him a better source of cocoa so he could get enough cocoa with fewer calories.

I suspect obesity is frequently due to getting too little nutrition while getting enough/too much in the way of calories. You keep eating precisely because you are malnourished and it fosters cravings.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I live in a country where people don't get enough protein due to religious and cultural dietary restrictions. Once I got my own apartment I upped my protein intake and significantly limited my carbs, and found that the constant cravings I'd had pretty much my entire life decreased substantially, after a short but painful transition period.

If all you get to eat is cheap processed junk food you can be both obese and malnourished

I'd argue yes, malnourishment is a problem in the US primarily due to sugar subsidies. Remember that malnourishment != starvation.

It can be eating heavily processed foods with extra sugar (in 1 of the 56 different approved names for sugar by the FDA). Or it can be from soda in myriad forms. Or packed and hidden in the aisles of a grocery store of, again, high prpocessed and low nutrient foods.

Or they're in a food desert in the extreme rural areas or the big cities.

And I'd definitely classify obesity as a type of malnourishment. Mal- just means bad.

About 1/10 households were food insecure in the US last year according to the government itself: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...

Lots of kids from poor families start the school day hungry

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/03/give-k...

What is defined as poverty?

If you have internet and food, are you still in poverty?

I'd say if you have food, internet and roof over your head and can get treatment when you get sick you are not in poverty. There are some official definitions though.

I think one other factor to consider is your future. You might have food, internet, healthcare, and a roof over your head right now, but if your current situation will lead to a lack of one of these in the future, then you could probably already be considered poor. Eg, if you lose your job and can't get another one, then you still have some savings to have food, internet, healthcare, and housing, but you will lose it in the future.

Considering the state of healthcare and savings in the US this puts a majority of the population in poverty because they cannot afford a $500 medical expense.

Which is true, and I would agree on most people being impoverished even if you think they are buried in gadgets and high fructose corn syrup. Most people I know, meet, and would see on the street I would almost always bet are to varying degrees psychologically harmed by their poverties, whatever form they take.

I would also access to further learning, be it trade school college, a library etc

I think that's what the internet is about.

Giving money to poor you only create more of those. People should be given a chance, not money.

Giving money to poor is giving them a chance. A lot of problems with being able to find and keep a job ultimately stems from lack of money for things like housing, clothing, transportation, healthcare and decent meals.

Exactly. I have been without before, and it consumes too much of your higher brain function. Lots of problems evaporate even with a small amount of cash or cash flow. Conversely it is hard to then use money as an efficient lever after running on fumes for years. This is often why you see changes in leadership as an org grows, the person who bootstraps a company has a much different skillset then the person who grows it into a large powerful org. The latter should know where to spend much larger sums of money to achieve goals rather than penny pinching and sinking more precious resources like time or focus.

the thing that gave me the most chance out of anything in the absolute turning point of my life was free money. After which it was access to free schooling (which is a type of money), landing the first job a year later that I used to build my two decades career was on me though.

on edit: no wait, actually landing the first job required me getting advised to go to a particular place from a person that was a contact of someone from my last free schooling place. That guy later turned out to be a three counties class asshole but I guess I have to thank him for this.

Exactly, but if basic income becomes reality, it won't happen because people will want to help the poor, but because the amount of work required to produce food will become so small that people by their mere existence will generate more value, similar to the way people can get email accounts with gigabytes of storage for free.

I think that when most people think of basic income, they don't think of the type of society you mentioned. That's something we hopefully will get to in the future, but we're still quite far from it. If we get basic income, then it's probably going to be much sooner than that, which is going to have widespread implications on society. Many of which we don't know.

I even think that most people would have no problem with a basic income type system when most basic goods are incredibly cheap to produce. After all, if it costs a penny out of your paycheck, then would you really mind if that covered the basic needs of everyone? The main issue I could see related to that would be if this somehow encourages population growth.

Population growth is a good thing, it will force us to build cities on mars, irrigate sahara, build floating cities on the ocean. And will help to make "produce once, use infinitely" things: art, software, science cheaper. It wouldn't be a side effect of basic income but the main purpose.

Poor people need both money and opportunity. If you can't feed yourself, you can't pursue opportunities.

Source?

There would not be poor if it was not for the rich.

marx's capital lays this out.

This is otherwise known as the fixed pie myth. No, wealth is not a zero-sum game.

Of course it is not, sorry if it seemed I implied that. productivity is always increasing, but do wages?

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

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