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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov I have to run to class, but here are a few examples of structural facets of poverty: Capital Traps Lack of credit. Many poor lack the resources to become microentrepreneurs, and those that make the effort usually do so with inferior inventories. For instance, someone with no marketable skills may try to open up a car repair shop, but without the capital to purchase the necessary tools and parts, they'll be limited in the types of services they can provide, losing more business than they gain. Though Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for creating a microfinance model in the developing world, no such thing really exists in the US.

All good points. Traps of any kind are problematic.

I'm going to comment on this though. Lack of credit is not something that crushes capitalisim, or shouldn't.

It is only American Capitalism that requires credit.

In a capitalist system the entrepreneur works, gains money in return for thier labours, saves a portion of thier earnings (lives within thier means), and eventually invests in capital which is used to generate a product or provide a service which is exchanged for more money than was originally invested.

In an American Capitalist system the entreprenur takes out a loan to invest in capital, skipping the work part, and invests in capital.

So long as wages are to low to build up money in a timely manner the system is forced to be an American Capitalist system. This occurs when the lowest paying jobs do not offer enough money to sustain a living while saving.

American Capitalist systems can trap people who aren't able to get credit, a more pure capitalist system will not require credit.

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Originally posted by atbell Oh, no fun, I'm in the middle of this one. I'm quite warry of a workers' revolution except that I'd call it an unemployed educated youth revolution. It is all the more likely in a country where guns, and stock piles of guns, are so available. But at the same time I agree with Capitalizt that there is always going to be 'poverty'. There has to be, some people want to work harder then others, some people are smarter then others, some people are lucky, some peoples risks don't pay off. IMO, once that is accepted then the real work can start which is to make sure that 'poverty' isn't crushing. The slums of Mumbai or Rio are good examples of pressing poverty issues, many of the 'poor' in North America are good examples of poor that have some amount of opertunity. From the people that I went to high school with many of them had the chances to raise thier social status siginficantly and some took the opertunity. By the same token, some of those who could have gone on to climb the social status lader chose to move down a notch to live with fewer complications. I'm also a beleiver in the concept of 'nobless obliger', the notion that the highest social classes have a responsibility to help those in need once they have enough. In this case clearing slums would be a good example of where money is needed, or possibly the social support organizations such as women's shelters / childeren's shelters.

I'm not suggesting a "poverty-less" society. The point is to make society a place in which everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.

I'm going to recommend a book to you krypt (and you too lebez!) It is highly relevant to this discussion and addresses the point of view both of you seem to have:

http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-...l/dp/0684864622

I know Sowell has become a shill for the neocons in recent years..but this is an older book of his and he really nails this issue down in my opinion. You two seem to favor the idea of "social" (or "cosmic") justice, rather than traditional justice. He goes to great lengths in this book to point out the differences between the two ideas..and costs and risks of adopting the cosmic justice philosophy. I highly recommend you check it out from your local library when you find time. Here are a few excerpts from his own summary.

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Traditional concepts of justice or fairness, at least within the American tradition, boil down to applying the same rules and standards to everyone. This is what is meant by a "level playing field"-- at least within that tradition, though the very same words mean something radically different within a framework that calls itself "social justice." Words like "fairness," "advantage" and "disadvantage" likewise have radically different meanings within the very different frameworks of traditional justice and "social justice." John Rawls perhaps best summarized the differences when he distinguished "fair" equality of opportunity from merely "formal" equality of opportunity. Traditional justice, fairness, or equality of opportunity are merely formal in Professor Rawls' view and in the view of his many followers and comrades. For those with this view, "genuine equality of opportunity" cannot be achieved by the application of the same rules and standards to all, but requires specific interventions to equalize either prospects or results. As Rawls puts it, "undeserved inequalities call for redress." A fight in which both boxers observe the Marquis of Queensberry rules would be a fair fight, according to traditional standards of fairness, irrespective of whether the contestants were of equal skill, strength, experience or other factors likely to affect the outcome-- and irrespective of whether that outcome was a hard-fought draw or a completely one-sided beating. This would not, however, be a fair fight within the framework of those seeking "social justice," if the competing fighters came into the ring with very different prospects of success-- especially if these differences were due to factors beyond their control. Presumably, the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found everywhere are the fault of "society" and so the redressing of those inequalities is called social justice, going beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. However, even those who argue this way often recognize that some undeserved inequalities may arise from cultural differences, family genes, or from historical confluences of events not controlled by anybody or by any given society at any given time.

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In a sense, proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. They are not trying to destroy the rule of law. They are not trying to undermine the American republic. They are simply trying to produce "gender equity," institutions that "look like America" or a thousand other goals that are incompatible with the rule of law, but corollaries of cosmic justice. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality.

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The argument here is not against real justice or real equality. Both of these things are desirable in themselves, just as immortality may be considered desirable in itself. The only arguments against any of these things is that they are impossible-- and the cost of pursuing impossible dreams are not negligible. Socially counterproductive policies are just one of the many costs of the quest for cosmic justice. The rule of law, on which a free society depends, is inherently incompatible with cosmic justice. Laws exist in all kinds of societies, from the freest to the most totalitarian. But the rule of law-- a government of laws and not of men, as it used to be called-- is rare and vulnerable. You cannot redress the myriad inequalities which pervade human life by applying the same rules to all or by applying any rules other than the arbitrary dispensations of those in power.

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Because ordinary Americans have not yet abandoned traditional justice, those who seek cosmic justice must try to justify it politically as meeting traditional concepts of justice. A failure to achieve the new vision of justice must be represented to the public and to the courts as "discrimination." Tests that register the results of innumerable inequalities must be represented as being the cause of those inequalities or as deliberate efforts to perpetuate those inequalities by erecting arbitrary barriers to the advancement of the less fortunate. In short, to promote cosmic justice, they must misrepresent what is happening as violations of traditional justice-- as understood by others who do not share their vision. Nor do those who make such claims necessarily believe them themselves. As Joseph Schumpeter once said: "The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie." The next thing the idealist will do is character assassination. All those who disagree with the great vision must be shown to have malign intentions, if not deep-seated character flaws. They must be depicted as having some personal "obsessions" if they carry out the duties they swore to carry out as a special prosecutor. In short, demonization is one of the costs of the quest for cosmic justice. The victims of this process are not limited to those targeted. The society as a whole loses when its decisions are made by character assassination, rather than by rational discussion, and when its pool of those eligible for leadership is drained by the exodus of those who are not prepared to sacrifice their good name or subject their family to humiliations for the sake of grasping the levers of power. This loss is not merely quantitative, for those who are willing to endure any personal or family humiliations for the sake of power are the most dangerous people to trust with power. In a sense, those caught up in the vision of cosmic justice are also among its victims. Having committed themselves to a vision and demonized all who oppose it, how are they to turn around and subject that vision to searching empirical scrutiny, much less repudiate it as evidence of its counterproductive results mount up? Ironically, the quest for greater economic and social equality is promoted through a far greater inequality of political power. If rules cannot produce cosmic justice, only raw power is left as the way to produce the kinds of results being sought. In a democracy, where power must gain public acquiescence, not only must the rule of law be violated or circumvented, so must the rule of truth. However noble the vision of cosmic justice, arbitrary power and shameless lies are the only paths that even seem to lead in its direction. As noted at the outset, the devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt I'm not disputing the fact that inequality exists. I'm disputing the idea that it is a "problem" to be solved politically. The world is unequal. People will always live in different circumstances and have unequal skills and ambitions..so naturally inequality will exist.

All of this is absolutely true. But you don't see any reason that in a highly civilized society we can reduce the inequalities and promote greater equality among citizens? Shouldn't the mark of an advanced society be greater equality and opportunity for all? Where more people can achieve their full potential?

There will always be poor people working shit jobs. Those people enable the rest of us who make a lot of money to live more comfortably. We need doctors, but we also need TSA screeners, trash collectors, drive thru employees, grocery store clerks and bus drivers. Is it necessary to make life as difficult as possible for them? Is everyone working at the bottom of the food chain just expected to get a masters and become a lawyer if they're poor? That makes no sense.

Lowering the enormous disparity in income in this country would have untold numbers of benefits. Crime would go down, more people would be inclined to get healthcare, they would spend more, they would be more likely to send their kids to college, the general average quality of life would increase, etc...

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Originally posted by ******** Seplling don't demonstrate intelligence and educatoin - knowing does.

I agree with everything you said Clovis.. The part where we probably disagree is on methods. What is the best way to improve the living standards of the poor? I would argue for removing artificial barriers wherever possible..for removing government from the equation. I think we should abolish all taxation on those earning below the poverty line and have a 0% corporate tax rate on everyone trying to start a small business. We should encourage entrepreneurship and job creation by reducing the penalties for success as much as possible. The other side tends to favor penalizing success and redistributing income with a variety of social programs.. That approach seems both unfair and counterproductive to me. I've never believed it ok to pull people up by dragging others down, and it doesn't really work in the end anyway. We can't correct every cosmic injustice and get everyone in the country on precisely even footing while still living in a free society. If you want to help poor people, the best we can do is to focus on improving the education system, then get government out of their way.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt I agree with everything you said Clovis.. The part where we probably disagree is on tactics and methods. What is the best way to improve the living standards of the poor? I would argue for removing artificial barriers wherever possible..for removing government from the equation. I think we should abolish all taxation on those earning below the poverty line and have a 0% corporate tax rate on everyone trying to start a small business. We should encourage entrepreneurship and job creation by reducing the penalties for success as much as possible. The other side tends to favor penalizing success and redistributing income with a variety of social programs.. That approach seems both unfair and counterproductive to me. I've never believed it ok to pull people up by dragging others down, and it doesn't really work in the end anyway. If you want to help poor people, focus on improving the education system, then get government out of their way.

your answer to everything is less government.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN your answer to everything is less government.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Yeah, I think we need less government..but not no government. Government has a place in protecting people from theft and violence...in maintaining necessary infrastructure and institutions. Some force is necessary for a stable society. But more often than not throughout history government has stood in the way economic progress..so yes, I take the de facto position that reducing it's power and increasing individual liberty is a good thing.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt You say that like it's a bad thing.

it is just as bad as the person that thinks more government is always the answer. life is complicated and i find anyone that thinks their chosen "ism" has all the answers to be a little bit on the blind side.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt But more often than not throughout history government has stood in the way economic progress..so yes, I take the de facto position that reducing it's power and increasing individual liberty is a good thing.

yeah, kinda like how we increased the liberty of financial institutions so they could give us all the economic progress we're enjoying right now?

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Thank you for pointing those out. you certainly raise real issues for the extremely poor. And, it is important that your clarified that you meant people in extreme poverty can't climb the ladder (i agree that it is much more difficult for them than it is for a working class kids, of which I was one).

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov I have to run to class, but here are a few examples of structural facets of poverty: Capital Traps Lack of credit. Many poor lack the resources to become microentrepreneurs, and those that make the effort usually do so with inferior inventories. For instance, someone with no marketable skills may try to open up a car repair shop, but without the capital to purchase the necessary tools and parts, they'll be limited in the types of services they can provide, losing more business than they gain. Though Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for creating a microfinance model in the developing world, no such thing really exists in the US.

I get the structural aspect of this argument, but there really isn't a way to avoid this other than direct government funding. A private enterprise is not going to lend money to an un-creditworthy borrower just to satisfy a social goal.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Un-insurable Risks Property, nutrition, healthcare. Most poor people can't afford or don't have access to many of these necessities. Instead, their lives orient around minimizing risk of catastrophe - not upward mobility. The maintenance of the status quo is safer than taking risks to build assets that will lift them out of poverty (see above). For instance, poor people are largely disempowered in terms of decreasing risks - instead they engage in informal risk-sharing behaviors that lead to distortions of local job markets and economies of scale.

i agree with most of that.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Debt Bondage This one can be generational. Unscrupulous money-lenders are regulated in the US, but they still exist (anyone else see commercials for CashPoint, etc.?) - terms of debt are designed to be a trap.

i read a good article on this. Unlike some of the other arguments, this is much less structural than a consequence of poor choices by people utilizing these services.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Family-Child Labor Traps Though child labor laws exist in the US, they are often subverted by families that wouldn't be able to survive without children contributing to the household and earning some income. When this is the case, children aren't going to school and they aren't learning the skills (like literacy) needed for upward mobility.

i agree in concept, but i would like to see support with solid numbers. i'm not asking you to provide it, i'm just saying that i'm uncertain of the extent to which this goes on and whether it could actually be a structural element holding down a large portion of the population. It very well could be a real part of the rural culture that i'm unfamiliar with.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Fertility Traps Ever wonder why so many poor families have many children? It isn't related to contraception as most believe. It's related to a bargain made by the parents. The more children, the greater the odds that one of them succeeds enough to care for the parents as they age. Hope you draw a lucky straw at birth. This can overload the resources used to help poor families, resulting in an over-saturation that leaves future poor generations larger and more destitute than those before.

i dispute that this is a structural issue. this is simply poor personal choices that have economic consequences.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Health Trap If you're poor and chronically ill or disabled, game over.

no dispute here.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Collective Action Trap This is where community organizers (like Obama) have done great work. Mobilizing the voiceless to lobby for better low-income housing and service provision. Also, joint community projects have been shown to raise standards of living as well as local employment rates.

what's the trap? Did you mean to say that historically the poor have been voiceless? If so, I see this as a consequence of personal choices not to mobilize.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Criminality Traps For youths, they can help their families most by joining gangs or organized crime groups/drug rings that offer more money than they could ever hope to make with their minimal skills on the legitimate job market.

again, this is only a structural issue if you disregard the fact that it is entirely dictated by personal choices. With other issues, like the health care trap, families aren't consciously decided to forgo health care.

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Anyway, those are just a few. There are many more. Also, I should be clear that I'm not talking about lower middle-class. I'm talking about the 30 million Americans that actually live in abject poverty. That isn't synonymous with ghetto - in fact, many of them are rural.

i understand.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN yeah, kinda like how we increased the liberty of financial institutions so they could give us all the economic progress we're enjoying right now?

ah, but the problem there is one of socialism..because most of the pain is coming from the trillion dollar bailouts and the rape of taxpayers worldwide in an effort to keep these zombie companies afloat. If we didn't have a socialist mindset, we would let losers go down and be bought by winners instead of sustaining them endlessly at everyone's expense. The pain of failure might suck, but the pain of preventing failure at any cost is much worse.

i wont continue this discussion until you learn what "socialism" means and can use it correctly in a sentence.

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