3 Facts that Poverty-Deniers Don't Want to Hear

[doxydad]

Three-quarters of conservative Americans say poor people have it easy.

The degree of ignorance about poverty is stunning, even for people far removed from the realities of an average American lifestyle. Both oilman Charles Koch and Nicole Miller CEO Bud Konheim have suggested that we should compare ourselves to poor people in China and India, and then just shut up and be happy. The Cato Institute informs Americans that "The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work." And entrepreneur Marc Andreessen explains, rather incomprehensibly, that "Technology innovation disproportionately helps the poor more than it helps the rich, as the poor spend more of their income on products."

http://www.alternet.org/economy/3-facts-poverty-deniers-dont-want-hear

[BainsBane]

1. Sounds exactly like what some say

about the gender gap and rape.

[nxylas]

2. Confront them with these facts and they'll just switch to plan B

The myth, deeply ingrained in the American psyche, that poverty is a moral failing. Surely, all Those People need to do is wash some dishes to put themselves through college, found a successful business, and then untold wealth will be theirs. Just like those nice sepia-toned immigrants in the Ellis Island videos (not to be confused with the criminal, disease-ridden immigrants on the nightly news).

[TheMick]

7. The funny thing about your post.....

...is that I did exactly that. I was the first to go to college from my family, and I did it by working my way through. Then, after working for corporation for a few years, I saw a need that was not being met, so I began my own business to try to meet that need. The early years were very difficult, but the business eventually prospered. I eventually sold it to a larger firm once I realized that while I could start a business, I did not have the business acumen to run it on a continuing basis. Now, at age 67, I am back working again because I enjoy working. So, it can be done. However, it is not easy.

[BlueJazz]

10. What you say is probably true but a lot of people are not born with your drive,..

...intelligence, genes or abilities or even the opportunity to change their station in life.

We do need these people..(God, I hate that word..These)...anyway, if they were paid a more decent wage and had health care, their life would be so much easier.

[TheMick]

22. That is why.....

.....I took care of my parents until they died. They instilled those attributes in me when I was a boy.

[BlueJazz]

23. I wish more people were like you but sadly...a lot of the populace is broken.

I know a lot of people can rise above adversity regarding upbringing, environment and a host of other damaging life scenarios.
But too few...
I have no answers and mostly, don't even have the questions correct.

Cheers

[AllyCat]

14. When you went to college, 80% of tuition was typically covered by the state in which a person lived

Reagan changed all that so the student funded 80%. At today's wage levels, it is impossible to do what you did. Glad to hear you have been successful!

[nxylas]

15. A myth doesn't have to be completely untrue

As others have pointed out, it is possible, but it is the exception rather than the rule. And it was probably easier in the past, before the 1% started pulling up all the ladders.

I too am currently starting up my own business, but I live in the UK (I am British, my wife American), where there is a more generous social safety net than exists in the US, not to mention government-funded, low-interest startup loans for small businesses. This at least allowed me to put a roof over my head and food on the table (with help from my wife's flourishing piano teaching business). Both of us attended a free government-funded course aimed at helping people set up our own business. These are opportunities that simply weren't open to us when we lived in the States, as we did for the first 6 years of our marriage. (Edit: that was meant to be a direct reply to post 7, sorry).

[surrealAmerican]

17. Welcome to DU.

You probably also understand how lucky you were. Most new businesses fail no matter how clever and hard-working their owners are.

[jeff47]

19. You did it when college was far cheaper.

And you did it when pay was much higher, when you account for inflation. And businesses hired workers full time, instead of hiring twice as many part time. And gave stable schedules, so it was possible to start a business.

The opportunities available in the 1960s and 1970s are no longer available today to the working poor. If we want to demand the poor use their bootstraps like people could in that era, then we're going to have to provide the environment that was available in that era.

[TheMick]

21. I am not sure.....

....if the government has had much of an impact on my life, except to send me to Vietnam. My culture was a primary
motivator, as my parents, and later my wife, expected me to work hard, provide for my family and give my children a
better life than I had. Perhaps people could benefit from emulating Chinese culture.

[jeff47]

24. It had an enormous impact.

The government created the environment in which you lived. They built the roads. They built the universities. They set the minimum wage. They regulated the businesses so you did not die on the job. They regulated the buildings so you were not crushed while sleeping. They regulated the banking system so your business's bank couldn't steal your money. And so on.

Your culture operated within that environment. But the environment was critical to your success, even if you didn't notice.

Back then, a minimum wage summer job could pay for a year of college in many states. Now? A 40-hour a week minimum wage job can't pay for a single semester. Heck, a minimum wage job can't pay rent and feed a family.

Back then, high-paying factory jobs meant higher-paying service jobs. Today, the dearth of factory jobs mean massive competition for service jobs, which means low pay for those service jobs. And it means college kids are competing with adults, driving down wages for the college kids even more.

Thanks to the Reagan Revolution, the environment today is nothing like the environment you had. Ignoring that in order to pretend you are a superior human being, or your culture is superior, is just mental masterbation.

[Demeter]

3. Give them the odds that they or their children and grandchildren will be in poverty

Of course, trust fund babies will not face that, unless there is a convulsion in this country's politics...defund the wealthy!

[Dustlawyer]

4. People are so invested in their beliefs that they refuse to believe the facts since they do not

jive with their preconceptions that they have learned from the media they watch and listen to. They do not know anyone living in this type of poverty so it cannot be wide spread or true. Unless they go live with one of these families for a couple of weeks they will never be convinced.

[ColesCountyDem]

5. I was never unsympathetic, but until it happened to me, I didn't truly understand.

The article nails it squarely on the head!

[Enthusiast]

6. The Cato Institute is nothing more than a propaganda resource.

[marew]

8. Truly disgusting!

They will cling to any crazy idea to justify their steadily increasing greed, callousness, and insensitivity! Sickening!
I am a retired social worker. I met so many people who work so incredibly hard yet who repeatedly get slapped down by the system.
Gawd, I hope there's karma for those jerks!

[dotymed]

9. Gawd, I hope there's karma for those jerks!

Not until we provide it.

[allan01]

11. re:3 Facts that Poverty-Deniers Don't Want to Hear

without us ther aint no u mr .. ceo man or other rich man

[Igel]

12. "as the poor spend more of their income on products"

You'd have to figure out what they mean by products. Otherwise, you have a RWer precisely parroting what progressives say about things like refundable tax credits for the poor instead of tax breaks for the rich. A poor person spends just about 100% of his/her take-home pay on stuff. Food, clothes, shelters, gadgets, typically cheaper but sometimes not so cheap. A person with much higher income spends from 20-90% of his/her take-home pay on stuff, typically a greater percentage on gadgets but still a lot on food and clothing.

I can get a more compact, higher quality tv for $300 now that takes less energy (and so costs less to use) than I could 15 years ago ... for $300 in 1999 dollars. Tech innovation has kept some prices low, lowered others, added new options.

You have to sort out what "poor" means, too, as more and more people have been lumped in that category for political or other reasons. "Poor" used to be the truly destitute. Then it was defined as below poverty level. Now it's more often a ways above poverty level. When I was 23 I wasn't poor. When I turned 28 or so it turned out I had been poor at 23 but not when I was 28. By the time I hit 40 it turned out my income level said I was poor at 28. Didn't "feel" poor at 23 or at 28. But as the upper 50% of society got wealthier, the wealth gap was perceived as wider so it was easier to feel poor, even at more than 133% of poverty. Even if your actual physical condition hadn't changed one bit or had improved slightly. My neighbors think of themselves as working poor. They have 2000 sq ft houses, cable tv, 2-3 cars, smart phones, Wii or PS for their kids, people to handle their yards. Housing in Houston is still fairly cheap. Still, their standard of living isn't much below my parents when I was a kid, and they had two good-paying union jobs and thought of themselves as middle class. (They socked away lots of savings, though, and paid off their 20-year mortgage in 10 years ... unlike, I suspect, my neighbors.)

[Socialistlemur]

13. I have my own ideas about the subject

I have been relatively poor. Poor enough that when I was 16 my sister and I used to walk around on Saturdays, looking for furniture people tossed out. Based on what I saw at the time, a lot of poverty was caused by unwed pregnancies and guys who abandoned their girlfriends and wives. I also noticed there was a huge lack of information as to how one could get out of that mess. I got pretty lucky because my mom didn't have a car, and when she did the numbers she figured out it was better to live I a really small apartment close to her job so she could walk, avoid bus fares, and also get extra time (they could call her in to work an extra shift if somebody was out, and she could show up in a hurry). That apartment was in fairly middle class neighborhood, so I went to a decent school, and then to college. Conclusion: a lot of it has to do with circumstances.

[BuelahWitch]

16. There is a perverse kind of jealousy that wingers have regarding the poor

I see this in the annual "poor people don't have to pay taxes" schtick and also those who would bleat about the fact that they might have cable tv (some companies offer free basic cable to people on gov't assistance) or a cell phone (TracFone pay as you go has a smart phone now, imagine that!). Some even want to deny the poor a refrigerator or air conditioning.
I still want to see a Survivor that forces right wingers who hate the poor to live like the working poor. Not the BS crap that Paris Hilton used to do, but a REAL situation. Living in a Sec. 8 apartment in a food desert with *maybe* an old beater car to let them get around. Have to apply to work at places like McDees or supermarkets to pay for food, no access to their former life bank accounts. THAT is real surviving!

[jwirr]

18. When I watch my great grandchildren go hungry - for healthy food - the last two weeks of the

month I literally hate these rick fucks.

[grahamhgreen]

20. If you give rich people more money, they work harder and create jobs, but if u give more money to

the poor and working class, they just get lazier...????? I mean that's their argument in a nutshell.... WTF????

Essentially, they're saying the higher the pay, the greater the disincentive... Their own argument works against them.