U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

Failure, yes. Market, no. Local governments will point guns at you if you try to build more housing.

You might say that income inequality contributes to disparities in political influence which may cause more longterm poverty, but that link has far too many steps in it (political corruption for example) to say the two are now directly linked

What is bad is extreme inequality where a lot of people are in poverty. I think most people would agree that poverty is a bad thing that we should try to reduce.

It's quite possible for poverty to decrease and inequality to increase at the same time. The old "a rising tide lifts all boats" analogy. It just means everyone is doing better but the wealthy are seeing more relative gains. If the whole pie is growing, it's easy to see how everyone could get more pie even if it's not distributed equally.

edit If you disagree please state why. Drive by downvotes do not convince me that I'm mistaken, they just lower my opinion of the average HN user.

The danger on one side is falling into a sort of hedonic treadmill issue where the poverty level defines a standard of living that is so generous that it ceases to be a measurement of hardship. The danger on the other side is fixing the poverty level at some static level that doesn't take into consideration inflation and other changes to the environment that people actually live their lives in.

It is possible for the people at the bottom to have better housing, better food, better education, and better health, while the people at the top still enjoy a vastly disproportionately greater increase in income and wealth.

With disproportionate gains and different spending priorities, you won't see consistent inflation across all kinds of goods. Because the inflation is concentrated at the top, the people at the bottom won't get priced out of the things they need. They're not getting priced out of anything they couldn't have afforded 20 years ago.

A nice house that cost $100k in 1999 costs $200k today.

A fabulous house that cost $500k in 1999 costs $5,000k today.

However, it does seem to me that that you still haven't addressed one of the main points you're responding to, that we can have perfect equality where everyone lives as the average person below poverty line today. Would that be a better society considering your arguments?

Which data are you talking about? Because on the one hand, yes. On the other hand most of the data I'm aware of is very context- (especially social-situation-) specific. I don't think there is evidence that the simple existence somewhere out there of very wealthy people is upsetting.

This is a gross oversimplification, but I think the takeaway is it's ok to have spaces for both discussions.

I'd also add that both discussions are happening concurrently. The race issue is big right now, but economic justice is still a central topic. Occupy was a good example even if not a well organized one.

My suggestion is that you can start with what the demographic in question cares about. Then look sincerely at if what you're trying to do actually addresses those real, sincere, valid concerns in a way that's comprehensible to a relatively ignorant person who is perhaps justifiably suspicious of being tricked.

A genuine question of my own: what has planted this worry in your mind? What tenor do you speak of? The demographics of the US mean that any policy that POC want to enact has to also be supported by enormous numbers of white people; that POC-friendly policies have ever passed is evidence that working with white people is par for the course.

To attempt to answer your original question, it depends on what you mean by "join".

The simplest answer is to bring it back around to class and recognize the shared fight against intergenerational poverty: support social programs that disproportionately benefit the poor of all races e.g. a livable minimum wage, expanded worker protections, public healthcare, etc.

If what you mean instead is to start a conversation about the unique ways in which poor whites are disadvantaged, well that's fertile ground but it also requires acknowledging that whites and poor whites have schismed into, effectively, entirely different races (they don't intermarry, they don't socialize together, they hold different values, have different cultural touchstones, etc). That's a difficult conversation to have, and you're going to find a lot of resistance from plenty of poor whites who still want to associate their identities with a holistic "whiteness" that they still long to be a part of. But someone has to start the conversation, even if it's uncomfortable, because the alternative is that the powers-that-be continue to wield that longing as an instrument by which to motivate poor whites to vote against the social programs that would benefit them.

'The narrative' doesn't unconditionally control what people do. There are also multiple narratives out there and people get to subscribe to the one they want. If someone builds up an income-based coalition then the idea of 'systemic racial injustice' will fade away in favour of looking for more money.

The template for a movement is out there, and we're not as divided as you think. Just ignore academics and journalists lol.

The obsession with race by the political class gets lower class whites to lose focus on real reform that would benefit everyone. So instead of saying why can’t poor people afford justice they have their attention shifted on the crimes committed by POC and the need for more cops and harsh penalties and whatnot. Instead of saying we need better pay, better health and child care the focus is on welfare deadbeats. This list goes on.

The focus on a large numbers of issues in the U.S. is about race rather than about class. News media and whatnot fuel this because fear sells. It’s gets more viewers to talk about out of control black kids terrorizing whites than it is to talk about school reform, prison reform, culture reform, etc.

The history of the US is far more rasist then it is classist; and there has been far more social movements along racial lines then class lines.

While we have had (successful) class based movements in the past, there is no class based analog in US history to the civil rights movement, or abolition. Even school children understand what Martin Luther King day is about; most American's couldn't tell you what Labor Day is about.

When there was a global movement for class based solidarity, the US found itself on the other side of the fight. (I'm referring to cold war era communism).

Even if a class based approach makes more sense now; there is a lot of institutional and cultural inertia behind a race based approach.

- Race is immutable, and can't be faked

- Race is linked to genetics (ingroup preference increases YOUR genetic proliferation)

- For millions of years, we've done it this way (there were no class problems in prehistoric times)

Those of us with stable housing take a lot of things for granted.

“I’ll just shower at the gym.” Turns a shower from a 20-minute operation to more than an hour.

Food storage and preparation.

Clothing storage, care, and maintenance.

Not to mention that getting homeless in the first place happens because of lack of resources (or poor allocation of barely sufficient resources).

Then on top of that, an eviction on your credit report makes it harder to find a new place.

And finding a place is hard and time-consuming. Not even taking into account the deposits and other costs.

Another potential mechanism would be if unemployment went up high enough due to a minimum wage increase that productivity decreases so much that the same number to dollars are chasing the results of less workers.

That said, with the exception of very rural areas the wage floor for most moderately skilled or unpleasant work is above $15 an hour already, so this will probably not have much of a impact on poverty or inflation.

If someone earns less it should be considered gig not work and basically non even taxed.

B does not follow from A if demand is elastic. Minimum wage proponents assume enough labor demand is elastic.

Inflation is a boogeyman. I heard a friend of mine not wanting any sort of covid stimulus checks because it would make his and his family's savings depreciate.

You don't want cashiers, wait staff, grocery baggers or call center staff? All of these jobs are generally minimum wage.

Amazon. Enjoy your monoculture.

Poor people aren't idiots. They think about the future. They plan for the future. If they need to save, they will save.

It's the paradox of thrift.

To note, it has been economic policy to not have Americans save up.

There are ways to live below your means in America. You may need social assistance if you're in hard times (and that's OK, that's what it's there for), but there is. If you say otherwise, you're just making things up.

I said this in another post, but I can guarantee you that even in places like North Korea, people are squirreling away the little they have, just as my grandmother did. It's possible to save even under poverty and/or extreme situations. And America isn't North Korea.

But you need to want to have those savings. Most of the people I know living day to day spend beyond their means (like buying the BMW instead of the reliable Honda) or waste their time watching tv, drinking with friends or getting high.