"Lower than survival? Please."
with no minimum wage limit, what is to stop pay dropping below the 'viable life' line, however you personally define it?
"People need a purpose. Something to do."
They also need money: to eat, to live, to feed their dependents, to transport themselves (to work!), to educate themselves, to clothe themselves and to warm themselves in winter. To medicate themselves. To participate in life.
"Crime like what you describe is evidence of desperation -- people are able to strip copper out of buildings because none of the neighbors give a shit, and the local government's policies make it viable for speculators to keep buildings vacant."
That may be why people get away with it. but people perform those acts out of desperation. because they need money to do all the above.
"Read "The Death and Life of American Cities". Poverty doesn't need to equal misery, and being provided with stuff doesn't equate to happiness. We forgot about that after World War 2."
Im not talking about buying them televisions. Im talking about being able to afford to take your daughter to the doctor, to buy yourself a book for school.
If you can so easily brush off the sodding huge downsides of poverty, I am going to go out on a limb and claim that you have never experienced it in its real form.
Poverty is brutal. It makes people hard, it makes people stupid and it makes them desperate.