American poverty is too high for all kinds of people
slowboring.com
slowboring.com
The brilliant thing about “equity” is that it refocuses everyone on distribution within a class instead of between classes. “Health equity” means you prioritize people of color over whites when they show up at an under-resourced hospital. But it draws attention away from the disparities between medical resources available in rich communities versus poor ones. Admissions gerrymandering at Princeton may mean that the consultants at McKinsey are more diverse than ever, but they’re all still working on shipping American jobs to China. In theory, of course, one can chew gum and walk at the same time—think about class disparities, and also about racial disparities that exist even after accounting for class. But that’s not the nature of politics. If you split the electorate along one axis (race), it becomes almost impossible to work on issues that require them to orient themselves along another axis (class). And of course 80% of racial inequality is caused by the top 10%, so you’ve kneecapped your ability to achieve the measures that would make the biggest difference.
This is something I hope is not true, but as more people mention it make me think really is. How sick is it, if true, people are purposely pitting people against each other for the sake of getting away with something.
Semi related...I hear a term a lot recently that seems similar...'pulling the ladder up.'
Seems most companies who are all in on diversity have all white C levels, often all men. Typical "I got mine." mindset. Seems increasingly those pushing divisive things are those not affected by them.
I don't know if "purposeful" is the right word. More like the emergent behavior of lots of people in large organizations working in their self-interest. Imagine you're a young Harvard graduate entering Wall Street. In the olden days, you would reconcile yourself to being "the man," and convince yourself that the working classes deserved their condition due to their moral shortcomings. Now your schooling has filled your head with notions of justice and equality, but you're still "the man" and your personal incentives haven't changed. Committing to "equity" while condemning working class white people for their moral failings allows you to square the circle and make minimal changes that could affect your own self interest.
But the consequences of that attitude downstream are dire and indistinguishable from a deliberate effort. When a white manager commits to "equity" and condemns the white line workers as "racists, sexists, and homophobes," that not only divides the working class amongst itself. It also inverts the traditional cultural understanding that the line workers are "the good guys" and the managers are "the bad guys"--further depriving the working class of what little political and rhetorical capital it used to possess.
> Semi related...I hear a term a lot recently that seems similar...'pulling the ladder up.'
You see this acutely among first versus second+ generation Asians. I relied on meritocratic systems to get ahead after my parents immigrated here from Bangladesh. I went to a public magnet high school, engineering school, and law school based on my test scores. I don't know anybody on that side of the ladder who thinks there's anything wrong with using testing to identify talent. But my kids go to a private school where we have a second winter break for ski vacations. Whatever system replaces standardized testing, I will know how to work it and my kids will be fine.
What are you talking about here? What's a scenario where this happens?
You saw his dynamic play out in the professional class's (including the media's) reactions to Trump. You'd expect Democrats to hate Trump for the things he shares with Bush or Romney: tax cuts for the rich, trying to repeal Obamacare, etc. But even from the beginning, that's not what outraged people the most. They hated Trump far more for the things he shared with his working class voters. Indeed, the media rehabilitated Bush and Romney--bombing Muslim countries could be overlooked; saying nasty things about Muslim refugees could not be.
Above the Law is a manifestation of this. It used to be a non-political legal gossip site. These days, it's got a heavy dose of left-wing articles--all revolving around racism, sexism, etc.--juxtaposed against cheering six figure bonuses for 20-somethings. Never will you find any criticism of the work these firms do turning the gears of corporate America, or even the a milquetoast center-left ditty on raising taxes on these ever-growing bonus checks.
Where I snag on this is that I don't believe anyone takes the DEI-speak in that REI syllabus seriously; a long stretch of it --- not coincidentally the part that Rufo chose to highlight --- is almost verbatim the same content that the Smithsonian was forced to apologize for posting in a display about whiteness vs. blackness. The documents start with a framing (that most people would find risible, though it's mostly accurate) that "white" doesn't mean what you assume it means, but is rather a artificially constructed category deliberately design to exclude outgroups. That's true! It's not well argued, and nobody is going to pay attention to it, and it's a terrible flaw in the pedagogy, but it's also not valid to suggest that the document is saying you're automatically a white supremacist by dint of e.g. being a Minnesotan of Nordic heritage. The whole syllabus is shoplifted from other people's work, but probably 80% of it is stuff you agree with, or at least have in the past professed to agree with.
Isn't it enough just to call out hucksters making a buck off clueless corporate initiatives, or status-obsessed Very Online people trying to score Twitter points? The idea that white people are routinely attacked at their places of work for an unexpurgated original sin of racism is just not plausible.
Companies that are really all-in on diversity tend to be small and low visibility. Megacorporations that are all in on marketing social virtue of any kind (environmentalism, DEI, whatever) are doing image management that is, for the most part, either unrelated to or directly opposed to the substance of what the company does (not uncommonly, marketing bare minimum legal compliance, and sometimes specific sanctions imposed on the firm for wrongdoing, as virtue.)
Just looking at two companies recently in the news for their 'white privilege' training pushes...Amex and Coke.
Amex - https://ir.americanexpress.com/governance-and-corporate-resp...
Coca Cola - https://craft.co/the-coca-cola-company/executives
Notice how these companies put out such trainings, but never properly diversify or offer to step down themselves.
The absolute gall of a 70 year old white rich ceo trying to make their 20 year old barely minimum wage stockperson feel like privileged racist trash is sickening.
One wonders if it is to take attention off of their exec level(again, I got mine), or perhaps more conspiracy theorist level...rich people getting everyone else to fight among themselves while income disparity grows and grows. Pretty gross either way.
Friend is holding down a support team two levels down by managing up. His new boss is a lawyer with zero domain expertise in IT. The support team is ready to leave, too, because of the upper managements' actions.
What made everyone so fed up? With the constant talk about DEI, constant promises about promoting people of color into prominent, visible, and effective roles, they were led to believe the company actually cared about those things. Apparently they found that not to be the case, and execs wouldn't (couldn't?) summon the initiative to do the right thing.
Unlike many here I was a lowly laborer for most of my early life. In the southeast USA. And you know what... people just weren't that racist. When I was landscaping I worked with hispanics, blacks, whites, you name it. It was a pretty fair system of...can you do it. We were gruff, made fun of each other, and yeah...lot of 'racist' jokes. In fun. But we were pretty tight.
I avoided computers for that time because I found programming depressing (and still do, really). But the money was too good and I moved over, naturally.
Holy hell where are all the hispanic and black folks? Nonexistent. Then this company I work for has the nerve to tell me to be more accepting stop being racist, because I am even if I don't know it.
The world sometimes feels like a weird joke to me.
What they can do is replace everyone below them, give themselves a big pat on the back, and continue to look out for number one.
Rich white folks don’t care about poor white folks. Never have. They care about keeping theirs pockets lined. If they can convince all the poor white people they are racist they can continue to keep them at the bottom and continue to line their pockets all in the name of equality. To summarize Tupac. “You white kids don’t need to be successful because you have Mark Zuck.”
TLDR: I think it has always been about class and equity is just the latest rich person hustle.
> Rich white folks don’t care about poor white folks
This is definitely true, but perhaps too exclusive. I don't think rich people of any race care about anyone below them of any race.
Which, I think you realize. It's pure class warfare at the cost of all of us laypeople's mental health.
The elephant in the room is that most impoverished people in the US are white but the social narrative is that this is only an issue for minorities.
FYI, you've got this backwards and its a very meaningful difference: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
The mean is significantly higher than the median because it is pulled up by the ultra wealthy.
If median wealth for majority families was that high I would be very confused how most families in the US could NOT handle and unexpected $500 bill.
~188k Is more inline with what I'd expect the median home equity to be for families, so that makes more sense.
Hence we come back to the OP's point - it's hard to get broad public support for both racial and class issues simultaneously... regardless of how interconnected the problems and possible solutions may be.
Poverty is a policy choice. The cruelty is the point. 20% of children on the wealthiest country in the history of the planet do not know where or when they'll get their next meal and that is entirely socially constructed.
Americans weren't joking when they said better dead than red. I wish they felt that statement in their bones the way they do in their heads.
No, we aren't.
Resource remain finite, and less than human desires, which is the definition of scarcity.
> Poverty is a policy choice.
Yes, but it's a choice because the desperation in the working class produces conditions that enable the elite class to get more of the goods and services they want; the particular distribution of the pain of scarcity may be artificial, but it is designed to deal with real scarcity—people have desires for goods and services, and the tradeoff for maximizing them is other people must be deprived. If we were post-scarcity, the desires of one group would not need sacrifice by another to satisfy. The existence of such a tradeoff defines scarcity.
I'm fine with Kshama Sawant being on the Seattle City Council but 49% of voters in that district are disenfranchised. They should be able to band together with others to get a candidate more to their liking.
If something other than D and R were considered viable everywhere, Sawant wouldn't seem like such an outlier.
When people are forced to hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils, can we really say they are enfranchised? What if those two evils are captured by corporate interests and not the interests of general citizenry?
Googling suggests "The Poverty Rate of white residents in New York, New York is the same as than [sic] the national average."
Source: https://www.welfareinfo.org/poverty-rate/new-york/new-york
In that link you'll find the poverty rate is higher for non-whites but that doesn't change that there are indeed poor white people on the coast.
Equity is nothing more than the "to each according to their need" half of traditional Marxism. And from what I can tell no one really has a problem with the latter half -- all critiques I've heard focus only on the former.
What do you mean by “opening up…under-resources individuals?” If this isn’t happening along racial lines, then I agree. But if it is, then your second paragraph is hypocritical.
I believe you just have more contact with the former than the latter.
US poverty looks bad when using the OECD's relative poverty rate. For example, the USA has a poverty rate of 17.8% and Mexico 16.6%. Hmm... Does something sound strange about that?
OP's article's graphic shows that, among non-hispanic whites, USA's poverty is 14.7% and Sweden's is 9.3%. What that doesn't tell you is how the lowest 20% of Americans consume more than the average of Sweden: https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...
"Poverty shouldn't exist in America. Money is fake, the ultra wealthy need larger amounts of impoverished people to justify their gross wealth to scare the fairly wealthy into continuing to play the game. Everything is nonsense and it's going to get worse. We've been living in hell for a while but these are the good old days, enjoy what you can while you can maybe. It would be neat if writing about it on the internet could change any of that. Cry, get mad, do whatever. It's fucked."
Stop voting Republican (unless you are among the richest 1%, you are irrefutably voting against your own personal economic interests to ensure the richest 1% remain the richest 1%). The greatest trick the devil ever pulled pales in comparison to what Republicans have done, which is make the poor believe they should vote against their own economic interests for the day they will be rich... and with that vote they ensure that day will never come.
No. But even if it was... your point is?
> At this point if you think voting is going to turn this around
Indeed I do. Republicans want small government (read: no regulation) and support conservatism (read: maintain status quo & low tolerance for others), while other parties are progressive (read: open to changes) and liberal (read: tolerant). Republicans in power are massively over-represented and have been for more than 20 years in the minority, and yet, they are stifling the majority while holding them hostage with illegal acts, such as fraud, efforts to prevent Blacks from voting, gerrymandering, or refusing to execute their sworn duties as elected representatives.
Residents of D.C. and Puerto Rico, US citizens, are being taxed without representation. Clearly this is unethical. If only they could exercise their right to vote, we wouldn't be having this problem. Or if some Californians moved into Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, again, the crushing yoke of Republican tyranny could be cast off, and the US would begin to operate as intended, i.e. as a republic.
This is an overreaction, but why not more when you had the chance. Allow me to participate similarly by asking, Why not naturally amplify such pince-nez takenabackedness one-step beyond it's fundamental exaggeration to the fabulous ends of beyond possible hyperbole and add the exclamation point? You were right there! REQ. TIA
For the most part, I feel your pain. But I see it as, for the most part, a bunch of imperfect people trying to do their best to do what they believe is right for everyone, upholding the Constitution and integrating modern complex social issues, labor, defense, etc., the country, to roll with the work of it, sometimes screwing up, but mostly being tripped by the vastly over-represented minority party that tell such near instantly and verifiably obvious lies to justify their agenda and get what they want, whether legislative roadblocks for the opposition, roadblocks to voting for voting groups that don't vote for them, while all of their major successes are astoundingly obviously ill-gotten by quasi-legal maneuvering, and by the numbers, sir, by the numbers alone, is not remotely representative of the needs or wants or best interests of 99% of the voting politic, citizens and residents of the United States, and boldly in plain site on all media refuse to abide by the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or the laws of the US, nor the laws of common decency, doing so not only without honor, but without even a shred, not even a shred of decency.
Among the top 1% (who are the only people who should rationally even be voting Republican), those in that small group who are actually Republicans and politically powerful are shitting on the American people while claiming to be inclusive of the American People. Gumming up the gears of honest government executed by a staff with integrity is not remotely what the Founders intended, and anyone that believes otherwise is an anarchist, which is really what the Republican members of the 1% are... they'd be perfectly satisfied if they didn't have to deal with government oversight, regulation and taxes, and could just exploit Americans for profit unfettered by law.
But this is just my vaguest impression of what's happening and has been happening in America for more than a few decades at least. One side is like Mr. Magoo, the other is shady as shit. Brilliantly but wickedly, stupid nanny issues (like gun or abortion) are used to distract otherwise rational voters into ignoring their own personal economic interests. It really isn't debatable what party a married father of two earning $32K should be voting for, and it is hurting America that so many like him are not operating in their personal economic interests, as the Framers of the regulated capitalistic economy intended, and it is really messing things up for... everyone but the rich, especially the uber wealthy. It should be a lot less expensive and easier for all the other Americans, the 99%, to live and breathe in America.
So if you are a hard core communist or socialist, yes the parties are both capitalist and your ideological lens prevents you from differentiating, but for the vast majority of American's, one party is far superior to their everyday lives in meaningful ways than the other. As a reminder, the Democrat's Child Tax Credit program cut child poverty nearly in half after decades of stagnation and regression. No tax cut ever did anything like that for America.
As a reminder, the Democrat's themselves let that expire and threw all of those children back into poverty.
Have you ever considerer that maybe, just maybe, it’s a stage to keep you in line? “Look, the people I support supported it but the evil bad Republicans didn’t. I need to fight harder to get the Dems, the good guys, in office.”
You fight harder and what happens? Well the “good guys” somehow stay magically balanced with the bad guys! But you fought your hardest and the system is “honest”, this is what always happens…may as well just keep working for the system without revolt.
I promise you, the DNC isn't in the background somewhere coordinating how to keep people in poverty.
Hate to break it to you, but humans in leadership have a LONG history of conspiring against their people. And when each state has a population bigger than Rome, are you really so naive to think that Roman politics has magically ceased?
There ARE conspiracies among our politicians — they are conspiring to keep you poor and themselves & their interests rich.
OK, but you offer no alternative. The Democratic Party is the party of homeless camps, illegal immigration, out of control riots, and unaffordable cities. I'm not going to vote for that, either.
The issue is not only for poor but for anyone (élite included) when poverty became too or too little widespread. With a too spread poverty social unrest are granted and sooner or later a civil war happen. If there are "too few" poor than the economy have issues, even if evolve to be fair because we always have unpleasant works to do, not all can be automated today, and probably for many others years to come.
USA problem to my European eyes is that USA are, like Europe, ruled by a small clepto-corporatocracy that led to an unbalanced quick&dirty evolution of the country, until there are resources such system work. When they became scarce but someone else have them, possibly someone unable to defend them, an external war makes just a new business, when no one else can be stolen than there is an unsolvable issue. People with a certain lifestyle might accept certain changes but not big&quick ones. The classical move in those cases is creating credible emergency to separate people, those who are useful and/or can afford a far more expensive life on one side, poor on the other, physically separate, possibly with a certain geographical distance.
That's what I see happening, well corroborated by having read few bits about ONU New Urban Agenda, WEF Green New Deal & IMF Great Reset scenarios/agendas. Unfortunately, not only for poor, such scenarios normally seems to work on paper for some, but normally do not for almost all.
If one can believe The Economist[0], food security in the US is pretty darn good relatively speaking. What are Ireland, the UK, Austria, and Finland doing better than what the USA, Germany, France, and Norway are doing?
[0] https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-sec...
Do you honestly just think that we haven't thought hard enough about these problems and that it's all just some conspiracy?
A government's job in the 21st century is not much more than to counter the downsides of capitalism. But people see how bad the US is at doing that so they lose faith in the government and so decide that the solution is to privatise everything, thus actually exasperating the problem!
We need institutions(governments) that exist outside of the incentives of capitalism in order to fix capitalisms problems. But the US government, and increasingly many others, are far too affected by capitalistic incentives.
When the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns.
This is entirely intentional. Republicans get elected, they privatize, slash and burn, and otherwise stifle government function, and then run ads screaming "Look how shitty the government is, elect us and we'll kill it", repeat.
China has used capitalistic market principals from the 1970s to greatly benefit the wealth of its population, as opposed to the Mao era command economy which clearly failed. If you look at poverty in the world from the 1970s you will clearly see the China's reopening greatly reduced world poverty (mostly because their population is a major proportion of the world's).
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-world-poverty-rates-plum...
Capitalism recognizes that a competitive market driven economy relies on governmental controls to protect against market failures, externalities, and imperfections. These are knowns in American economic academia.
Because the government of America fails to give appropriate, or lack-thereof, government control in the face of some of these issues (such as healthcare) does not mean that the capitalism concept is incorrect. It means that the federalistic, two party, republic has not properly regulated some issues as recognized by standard economic practices.
However, give me concrete examples of other governments that better protect against "when the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns" abuses while not removing blatant freedoms, and give specific changes you propose. Sitting on the side of "capitalism is for pigs" is much easier than actually studying and solving the problem.
The changes that I would propose are more cultural than governmental.
Cultural map of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultu...
Happiest countries in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-...
Notice the correlation between happiness and culture. That should be the measure of success, not pocket depth. Those cultures that are happiest also have a strong disinclination to talking about money, as they recognise the divisiveness of egotistical capitalism.
'Capitalism either creates or reinforces egoism by lessening any altruistic instincts and by weakening the “moral force in man which combats the inclination towards egoistic acts” including criminal ones.' (America also has the highest incarceration rates of any developed country).
A government's job in the 21st century includes legally privatizing public property, waging profit-bearing forever wars, and distracting us from the wealthy who feed on us. It's enough to make P.T. Barnum blush.