Being Poor is NOT a virtue!

Yes, that's what I was saying in post 142, but I was rather long winded, so probably nobody read it. So...

what ethereal said.^

 

One that isn't dominated by government nor private entities such as mafias nor big wig employers. When an employer has control over a small business, that's one thing but when they have control over a huge business, that gives them too much power. It's a risk that society shouldn't be forced to take.

This corporatism shi* has gotta end now.

Can't argue there.

And perhaps if people actually had the balls to acknowledge the reality of my signature...hmm...

 

How can a person with no job and free housing pay a landowner full market value for access to a public school or an emergency room? or do you think these people do not exist?

Granted, there are WORKING poor and middle class people who are not justly compensated for their lost rights, but there are plenty of others who simply live off the government and don't contribute anything to society. Those people are MORE than compensated.

 

I have to research the details of this more. However, what about the "robber baron" days?

As for gasoline, copper (and most metals), salt, very obviously land (the more people you have, the more you have to divide the total surface area of Earth by to get the amount of land that any individual can have), and as a consequence of land, food (most kinds of food require farmland), and the long-reaching effects of scarcity of all these things..if we had half the number of people on Earth today, they really would be far less expensive. People simply have to acknowledge this mathematical fact. It's cold, but true.

I.e. yes it's possible to live in "prosperity" with this number of people in it, but it'd simply be economically easier, in terms of real wealth, if there were a lot less people, each requiring resources.

 

I'd be vehemently against said people, if it weren't for the reality that (especially with overpopulation), the percentage of jobs available vs. people who need jobs is dismal these days.

Yes, indeed, the total population of people is related to this percentage. One could try to point out this point:

"But if a population is twice as big, you need twice as many people to maintain it and thus there'll be twice as many jobs, right?"

Wrong. Not only will the real wealth lower for each individual as I've mentioned, but this lowering in real wealth will mean that people are spending less and stimulating the economy less. The cost of everything skyrockets. That's the only difference that a higher population makes; the cost of everything skyrockets.

 

Except there are housing subsidies, too, so many of these poor people are not required to pay anything to live near a hospital and obtain free medical care.

I'll be the judge of that. I've already become an advocate of land taxation as a means to compensate people for their lost property rights, so what else are you beefing on?

And let's be clear, there is nothing more exploitative than a monopoly over money. Not only do they have unfettered access to the universal medium of exchange, but they can also devalue (i.e., steal) other people's money at will. THAT is the very heart of privilege and exploitation and should be the number one priority of anyone seeking to restore liberty and prosperity to the people.

 

How do you account for the fact that drug abuse is much higher in the U.S. and the U.K. than other developed nations?

I never claimed that no one is responsible for anything. I am saying that there are various factors beyond our control.

The U.S. and the U.K. have low levels of social mobility. The greatest determinant of someone's wealth is their parent's wealth. This is not so much the case in the rest of the developed world where social mobility is higher.

Why don't Sweden, Germany et al. suffer from these problems?

If you were right that welfare is the problem then these countries would have worse drug abuse etc., they don't. Therefore you are wrong, or there are other more important factors.

What creates mindsets?

 

Ethereal, just out of interest can you tell me what causes people to be lazy? Above and beyond the 'natural rate' of laziness.

 

Being Poor is NOT a virtue!

Jesus got it wrong, eh? Good thing there are no Christians in the US, isn't it?

 

That's just it. We're all naturally lazy. It's an evolutionary imperative for humans to maximize consumption while expending as little energy as possible. What causes people to be lazier than the 'norm' is inducements and incentives like welfare and mental conditioning. Now, some people will be lazier than the norm as a result of bad parenting (a form of mental conditioning) and this is regrettable, but those people need to wake up and realize that while their parents might have sucked at raising them no one besides them has the power to effectuate positive and long-lasting change in their lives. In order for them to realize this, we cannot constantly provide them with excuses and inducements to remain lazy and irresponsible.

 

So, Theory X rather than Theory Y?

Why do you think that Germany, Sweden, Denmark etc. don't suffer from this blight of laziness to the same degree as the U.S. and U.K. despite having more generous welfare?

 

Not sure what you mean.

I don't think there is a "blight of laziness" in the US. Our worker productivity is the highest on the planet. But there is a subsection of our populace that is decidedly unproductive and this is caused by a multitude of factors ranging from the kinds of inducements and incentives I mentioned previously (welfare, demagoguery, etc.) to authoritarian central government (drug prohibition, central banking, etc.).

At the heart of the issue, I believe, is the alarming degradation of the black family over the years. I posted an editorial from the Wall Street Journal a while back which attempted to explain how welfare entitlements and populist demagoguery have served to facilitate the erosion of familial and communal bonds within black society and not a single person addressed it. Here is the article if you're so inclined.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_theory_Y

I don't really disagree with any of this, I do however disagree with your method of tackling the problem.

One of the main human drives is the desire for social status (which obviously has evolutionary origins). Current social status is a great determinant in many areas of one's life. In a society where social mobility is low, where income inequalities are enormous and visible then this strengthens the 'struggle' for social status. I would argue that the riots in England were of this vein. People stealing products that had been aimed at them, products built up as the key to their happiness, products which determine their social status (the newest runners [read 'trainers']).

So, what do this waffle have to do with anything? Well take this paper for example:
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v5/n2/abs/nn798.html

Apes at the lower end of a social hierarchy self-administer drugs more often than those at the top and this effect is changed when the lower status apes are caged alone or in groups where they are the dominant ape*.

Or take this one on humans:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/BeliefSystemsandDurableInequalities.pdf

Abstract. If discrimination against an historically oppressed social group is dismantled, will the group forge ahead? This paper presents experimental evidence that a history of social and legal disabilities may have persistent effects on a group’s earnings through its impact on individuals’ expectations. 321 high-caste and 321 low-caste junior high school male student volunteers in village India participated in an experiment in which their caste either was not revealed or was made salient. There were no caste differences in performance when caste was not revealed, but making caste salient created a large and robust caste gap in performance. When a non-human factor influencing rewards (a random draw) was introduced, the caste gap disappeared. The results suggest that when caste identity is public information, low-caste subjects anticipate that their effort will be poorly rewarded. The experimental design enables us to exclude as explanations socioeconomic differences and a lack of self-confidence by low-caste players.




*Not sure if that second part (putting subordinate apes into hierarchies were they were dominant) was done (I read it ages ago) but putting them on their own certainly was.

EDIT: Ape should be monkey, they were macaque monkeys not chimps as I had erroneously remembered.

 

Unfortunately all too many Christians in America come from the Calvinist tradition (Baptists, Fundamentalists, Pentacostalists, Presbyterians, and others) with the doctrine of Divine Predestination firmly embedded in their culture. The doctrine goes something like this:

You are poor because God knew you would be poor so you deserve to be poor. In fact, you are probably poor because you are a great sinner and God doesn't really like you; we can't know this for sure, but the odds are greatly in favor of that being the case. The only reason the good rich folk give you charity is because it benefits their souls, not because it benefits your wallet. Try and repent and maybe God will take pity on you when you die.

 

I don't really subscribe to either of those hypotheses. I feel they are overly simplistic.

Which method is that?

But doesn't this support my contention about demagoguery and welfare? Both condition poor people to believe they are helpless victims incapable of lifting themselves out of poverty without the help of someone else - or am I wrong?

 

You basically ignored everything he said and went off on some irrelevant tangent about Calvinist predestination.

 

It's hard enough for kids born in poverty to reach the same standards as those born in more luxurious households:

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081206_brain

How do we tackle a problem like this?

 

They are conditioned by ALL capitalist approaches to believe they couldn't take over in half and hour and expropriate the expropriators for good. The poor ye have always with you - until they wake up, at which point they won't have you with them.

 

I think one of the biggest steps we can take towards alleviating this is to repeal laws against drugs and prostitution. The enforcement of these laws have a devastating effect on the familial and communal bonds of the impoverished. By forcing drug users and prostitutes into the criminal fringes of society, they are violently marginalized and forced into a never-ending cycle of deviancy and incarceration. The physical and mental toll this has on people is passed down to their families, and so on and so forth.

 

I completely agree with you on this.

 

Increase the frequency with which you say this and you will be on the path to enlightenment.

 

Mexico, unsecured border, duh.

Nope, but it's always the silent scream with you liberals.

So we need a caste system?

Those countries don't suffer from rampant illegal immigration. First secure the border, then you can start comparing us to other countries that actually enforce their immigration policies.

What you might not understand is that our rate of public assistance per capita exceeds any of our European counterparts. European countries have become more conservative, reducing benefits, lowering taxes, etc, while we've become more like Europe used to be.

 

They aren't meant to be accurate models. They are just pointing out that there are two approaches. Now any real approach is going to combine elements from both Theory X and Y.

That said, you made an argument that was almost Theory X verbatim and then dismiss it as simplistic?

The European welfare states seem to be doing fairly well. So was the U.S. in the 50's and 60's. The welfare state does not necessarily create independence.

We need policies that reduce social mobility and reduce income inequalities.

The welfare state is not the only solution. Japan for example has a weak welfare state but has lower income differences at the company level. Stronger unions could also work. etc. etc.

So you account for the increased drug use in both the U.S. and the U.K. with the Mexican border? Really? Really?

I don't even know what that means. Anyhows, I'm not a liberal, I am much worse.

So you take my argument against low social mobility and conclude I want a caste system? I was arguing for the exact opposite.

Bull(*)(*)(*)(*). Yes, immigration is a major factor in the U.S. particularly the Southern U.S. but it is by no means a determining factor.

If Mexico hadn't been turned into a hell-hole by NAFTA then the problem would be a lot smaller.

You might be able to 'explain' away all the U.S.'s problems with immigration but you cannot account for similar problems in the U.K and elsewhere.

Per capita expenditure is not a good measure of welfare. In many countries the money is spent in highly ineffective ways.

For example:
The U.S. spends $36,000 per capita.
Sweden spends $24,180 per capita.

Before/Post welfare absolute poverty in Sweden: 23.7 / 5.8

Before/Post welfare absolute poverty in the U.S.: 21 / 11.7

From wiki:
Esping-Andersen argues, based on comparative histories of actual welfare states, that they fall into three types of policies: liberalist (heavily means tested, limited services), corporatist (pre-market conservative welfare state in origin, social insurance schemes), and social democratic (universalistic "Beveridge" style social rights based on citizenship instead of working life).

The social democratic one tends to work.

 

I simply said it was an evolutionary imperative for people to maximize consumption and minimize energy expenditures. I went on to clarify that people who are lazier than the "norm" do so because of inducements and conditioning. It would stand to reason that people who are less lazy than the "norm" are that way for the same reasons. Essentially, a person in an unconditioned state will adhere roughly to the imperative I cited whereas a person who is conditioned to work hard and be self-reliant will deviate from it to some extent.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a person's environment will be the largest determinant of how much they deviate from this biological imperative to act "lazy". A person raised in an environment where they are taught to be self-reliant and hard-working will probably be a better employee than someone who was raised in an environment that taught them to avoid blame and embrace victim-hood.

You're looking it at too broadly. You could also say that the US's relatively smaller welfare state seems to be doing fairly well too. After all, we are the most powerful nation on the planet. It's only when you look at specific demographics that you begin to see the dependence created by excessive welfare. I do not think it's a coincidence that the black family unit has become so severely degraded over the years, especially when you consider the fact that they've only become MORE free and MORE subsidized over the years. What other explanation could there be? Slavery and Jim Crow couldn't even destroy the black family yet they're falling apart before our very eyes. How do you explain it? By the way, did you read that editorial I posted earlier?

As I've said numerous times, the abolition of drug and prostitution laws would be a monumental leap in the right direction. I also believe welfare reform (not abolition) would be another big step in the right direction. The abolition of the central banking system, I believe, would also help increase the wealth of the poor and the middle classes. These are all things we could do.

 

Sure, as long as you're young and healthy and you never get sick, or have an accident of some sort.