Posted on 12/05/2018 9:05:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Why are people poor? Conservatives and liberals offer very different explanations.
Conservatives point to a “culture of poverty” and suggest that much deprivation is the result of flawed choices and behavior by the poor themselves. They point to a strong correlation between poverty and a failure to follow the so-called “success sequence”: finish school, get a job, get married, and only then have children. Relatively few people who do those things end up in poverty.
Liberals, on the other hand, say that that is all very well, but choices are always constrained by the circumstances in which people live. Therefore, conservatives are wrong to discount structural factors, such as racism, gender-based discrimination, and economic dislocation, that can help shape people’s choices.
There is truth to both explanations. One can’t strip the poor of agency by treating them as if they were little more than chaff blown by the wind, with no responsibility for their choices. But neither should we ignore the context in which those decisions are made. For all the progress we have made, not everyone starts with an equal opportunity.
However, in my new book, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth America’s Poor (available this Friday, December 7), I offer a third explanation: Too often, government policies help make or keep people poor. Rather than having another sterile debate over whether this program should be increased by $X billion or that program should be cut by $Y billion, we should strive for fundamental reform of those areas of government that most harm the poor:
Criminal Justice: Scholars at Vanderbilt University have estimated that overcriminalization and the bias against the poor and people of color in our criminal-justice system have increased poverty rates by as much as 20 percent. Another study found that a family’s probability of being poor is 40 percent greater if the father is imprisoned. Given that 5 million children have an imprisoned parent, that is an enormous contributor to poverty in America.
As President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers pointed out in 2016:
Having a criminal record or history of incarceration is a barrier to success in the labor market, and limited employment or depressed wages can stifle an individual’s ability to become self-sufficient. . . . Further, criminal sanctions create financial and emotional stresses that destabilize marriages and have adverse consequences for children.
In addition, conservatives who warn about the dangers of nonmarital births should take note of research by Harvard’s William Julius Wilson, who points out that nearly 1.5 million young African-American men have been rendered largely unmarriageable because of their involvement with the criminal-justice system. This has inevitably led to an increase in childbearing outside marriage.
Education: Numerous studies show that educational achievement is a key determinant of financial success. At the same time, government-run schools are doing an increasingly bad job of educating children, especially children who grow up in poverty. Schools attended mostly by children living in poverty tend to produce weaker educational outcomes than do schools attended by more-affluent students. This has continued despite massive increases in spending on public schools. Yet poor families are often left with little alternative to these failing government schools. Indeed, in several states, it is illegal to send your child to a public school outside your assigned district.
Housing Policy: Government policies, from trade barriers to taxes, can increase the cost of living for those already struggling. One of the worst areas is housing policy. Rent can eat up a disproportionate share of the poor’s income, yet government zoning and land-use policies can add as much as 40 percent to the cost of housing in some cities. In places such as New York City and San Francisco, the zoning cost is even higher, at 50 percent or more.
And these regulations don’t merely increase the cost of rent; they effectively lock the poor out of areas with more jobs or better schools. Historically, zoning laws were often explicitly designed to perpetuate racial segregation. They still have that impact today.
Savings: The route out of poverty runs through savings, not consumption. Yet too many government policies are perversely designed in ways that discourage saving. The more forward-looking a poor person is — the more he delays immediate gratification in favor of long-term investment — the more government works against him.
Banking laws make it difficult for the poor to access our banking system. Asset tests for public programs punish the poor for saving. And Social Security squeezes out opportunities for the poor to save for themselves. We need to reconfigure a wide variety of current policies to encourage thrift, saving, and investment.
Inclusive Economic Growth: As President Obama once pointed out, “The free market is the greatest producer of wealth in history — it has lifted billions of people out of poverty.” That means we need to pursue policies such as low taxes, reduced government debt, and deregulation, policies that spur investment, entrepreneurship, and the economic growth that will increase the wealth of our society.
Yet it’s not enough to encourage economic growth if the poor remain locked out of participation in that growing economy. That means we need to eliminate barriers such as occupational-licensing rules, occupational zoning, and the minimum wage. For example, it estimated that more than 1,100 different professions (25 to 30 percent of all job categories) require a license in at least one state, from florists to funeral attendants, from tree trimmers to make-up artists. The removal of licensure barriers not only unlocks employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for the poor in low-skill occupations but also lowers prices. Similarly, occupational zoning can prevent a poor person from starting a small business in his or her home. And minimum-wage laws can block low-skilled workers from getting that first job, and therefore a start on the economic ladder. As with zoning, many of these laws have an explicitly racist history and continue to disproportionately disadvantage the poor and people of color.
An anti-poverty agenda built on empowering poor people and allowing them to take greater control of their own lives offers the chance for a new bipartisan consensus that rejects the current paternalism of both Left and Right. More important, it is an agenda that will do far more than our current failed welfare state to actually lift millions of Americans out of poverty.
I grew up poor in the 30s and 40s.
I can still hear my mother saying,”If there’s food on the house and heat in the pipes you have nothing to complain about” (We lived in MA)
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This. A significant amount of “poor” is mindset and behavior that is informed by attitude. Not that bad things don’t happen to good people, but part of the reason we keep hearing about people who win the lottery and end up broke 2 years later is because they didn’t lose the “poor” mindset and behavior once they weren’t poor. Add to that an inability to differentiate between need and want or to delay gratification, and there you have it.
If you were a politician, you’d hire a bunch of goons to do the actual stealing ...
“It’s well-known that social problems increase to occupy the total number of social workers available to deal with them.”
opportunity
decisions
responsibility
and
bad luck.
Nothing like a fire, a hurricaine, a flood, a health problem to take one’s treasure.
...government policies help make or keep people poor.
~~~
I once had a fairly lengthy conversation with a guy who hadn’t worked in years. It started out due to an on-the-job injury, but progressed into a state of depression (my judgement, not his), malaise, and anger at the world. He had a lot of blame for others, but little blame to spare for himself.
=He should have got disability benefits. =His job should have been protected. =He should have got better medical care so he could have got back to work sooner. =He should get skilled job/career training provided or paid for so he can do something that doesn’t involve physical labor (because he is perpetually hurt now). =Etc. and So-on...
I think may know the mindset. You’ve probably met someone like him.
But to make a long story not-so-long, I asked him why he didn’t at least get a burger-flipping job, at least as a stop-gap to pay a few bills, and to prove that you are employable. I told him, if I had to, and my whole world were coming apart, no job would be beneath me. If no one would hire me (inconceivable, but just as a hypothetical), I’d go out to my garage and start working on crafts, furniture, trinkets, or anything I could peddle on the streets or online. You’re problem, I said, is motivation. You have just enough safety net to help keep a roof over your head, and you blame the world for not giving you a bigger boost up, but you’re blame is poorly aimed.
He told me, “I can’t get any job for less than $10/hr. If I do, I will still lose my benefits, but I wont be able to afford to replace them myself. Not even close.”
Well, I was stumped. I questioned, and listened, and asked for numbers, and thought, but I had no grande schemes to suggest. It was his fault for never getting a marketable skill, but I wasn’t going to be so blunt. I only suggested that he needed to buck up for a while, and find a job for low pay but on-the-job training.
What kind of system gives people the equivalent of $10+/hour in benefits for doing nothing?
What kind of system penalizes people for contributing to society, markets, or employers?
I understand that $8/hr jobs were not intended to sustain people and families. They are generally meant for students, part timers, and entry level unskilled help. But when government hurts people who work, well, just WT actual F
Why Are People Poor?
Only when democrats have power can’t rewrite history.
You can’t even have an intelligent conversation on the topic unless you define “poor” with some specificity.
“Poor” can mean a lot of very different things. Letting every person read their own meaning into it is a recipe for confusion.
How about DNA, positive home environment or lack of during childhood, and the ability to make good life choices versus bad ones?
"...nearly 1.5 million young African-American men have been rendered largely unmarriageable because of their involvement with the criminal-justice system. This has inevitably led to an increase in childbearing outside marriage."
How the he11 can that "inevitability" be reached?
Incarceration is not a cause of pregnancy.
I worked with a guy whose father was like your friend. Dad was in his late forties. Got laid off. Instead of looking for another job, he crawled into bed, indulged in a huge pity party, ended up living in the son’s basement for years, because he “felt unwanted professionally” Wasn’t out looking for work. Just sitting in the basement, watching TV, and having his son and son’s family support him. Started calling himself “retired” at not even 50 years old and with zero assets.
This author uses the same generalizations that many thousands of other authors have used over the decades.
They make for good academic papers, but they provide very little in alleviating the problem.
I thought I did the right things....got an education(no college,tho),served in the military,got married,tried a few jobs before settling on a skilled trade which I applied about 40 years+ to. I’m not poor in the classical sense of the word, but I didn’t exactly find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Got no pension; only Soc. Sec. Part of the problem was that the technology changed; not putting me out of a job, but changing it in such a way that I could not compete in it on a fair basis.
Great point about the lottery. That is absolute proof that it’s not the lack of money that makes people poor, it’s behavior in many cases.
In a society such as ours, it could not sustain itself if we didn’t have poor people. Everybody can’t be rich for capitalism to succeed.No one will dig a ditch, serve food or do other menial tasks for low wages unless that is all they are qualified for.
Lack of ambition is laziness
You can be a hard worker, yet still lack the ambition to improve your lot in life.
Democrats!
bmp
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