When I pass though the poor part of Vancouver, these are the types of street people that you frequently encounter. In Canada many of these people used to be institutionalized and their basic needs taken care of. However most of the mental institutions here closed in the 1960’s and early 1970’s partly because of the cost and the level of abuse against the patients that was believed to be happening (akin to that later portrayed in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).
When these folks were “set free” from the mental institutions most had no family resources or other support system to take care of them and they ended up homeless with insufficient resources and an inability to look after themselves. This is a large part of our current street person problem in Vancouver and other large Canadian cities. For me this is an example of how government/society really didn’t help matters. They made a change but did not put in a system to compensate for the change.
The other major problem in our cities for poor people is drug addiction, especially opioids. We also don’t seem to have any solutions for that.
I do not disagree with what you are stating here at all.
I do strongly disagree with the conclusion that “poverty will always exist” because those you list.
I strongly believe that we can do better than relegating the disabled (physically or mentally) to a life of poverty purely due to their disabilities.
In addition, we are long way from having only those you list suffering from poverty, so the original statement makes no sense.
Do you know any impoverished people? Are you involved in their daily lives? Do you live in a neighborhood with a lot of poverty? Did you grow up in an area of the country with a great deal of poverty? What do you know about the poor other than what you have been told?
What would you do for people that can participate in the economy but choose not to? I don’t think they have much of a claim on anything. Society does not owe them an existence they can provide for themselves.
I am going to need you to elaborate on what you mean in your last two posts, because it’s coming off to me as “these people don’t deserve to live.” Which surely isn’t what you are saying.
I would give them a secure little bedroom, bland food, and access to bathrooms, libraries, and parks. Some will beg for money for drugs. Some will sing on street corners (which is a way of contributing to society). Some will decide they want more and find a way to earn money.
I think we, as a society, can afford that. It also means that people with moderate disabilities (low intelligence, poor impulse control, clinical depression) don’t have to prove they are totally incapable of work to survive. So there’s not a cliff. People who can participate in society at a level below “earning a living” can still participate, without losing their safety net.
Who determines what an individual’s choice is? Could we have a method for individuals to opt out of receiving benefits, that would be a choice. Society determining an individual’s choice based on an arbitrary standard is not a choice.
Yes, many.
Not as close with them as i once was due to moving across the country.
Not as much as my youth, but still prevalent.
Yes. Substantial poverty in my town, and my trailer park.
My family was on different forms of welfare (both government and church) all through my youth. My situation was better than many of my friends as i had a constant roof over my head, even if that roof was reinforced with numeroua blue tarps and other steps to try to keep the Washington rain out.
When i lost my scholarship to college at 19, I quickly was living between halfway houses and floors of acquaintances, eating only what l got from food banks, for the better part of a year.
I lived through poverty at different levels through the first 20 years of my life.
I am not sure why you make these assumptions about others, the way that you do.
I think i am due an apology from all the people that came at me about misinterpreting Nick’s posts, defending that he was only callously talking about the lives of disabled people not the general “impoverished.”
This reply is the attitude that I thought was encapsulated in the original posts that i rightfully called disgusting. Thank you for confirming that i understood exactly what you meant.
I think everyone deserves a basic level of care and compassion, regardless of what you think they contribute to society or what you think “society owes them.”
So my answer is that society should care for all, not just the ones that pass your test of deserving help.
It is the general attitude that has existed across political spectrums (but is now more prevalent in the conservative/republican camp). It is the fallacy that lead to the hideous welfare to work programs and red states funneling welfare funds to religious organizations and their friends, as they determine that the impoverished “don’t deserve” the aid or they have not jumped through enough hoops to prove they deserve to be part of society.
Definitely pro-life type attitude. Pro-life, but only if you choose to live the life I deem worthy.
Again, it is clear to me that Nick is careful to not say “all” impoverished but rather those “that can participate in the economy but choose not to.” Whom comprises this subgroup is not well-defined, and some have correctly stated the the choices are not always great. I’m willing to give this subgroup a basic safety net that we will all disagree about, but their safety net should not be large enough to incentivize them to notwork.
Generalised statements about caring for all only go so far.
In reality, we live in world of scarcity (driven worse by inequality) were you will have limited resources to help disadvantaged groups.
So, in terms of priorities, I usually focus on:
Children first
Pregnant mothers
Disabled people
Older folks (65+)
The rest
When it comes to funding disadvantaged groups 1-5 above, you will have a limited pot of money (that may or may not grow over time). This means you have to choose how much each groups gets in terms of help.
The reason I say this is because the UK is currently a society that focuses far too much on the old (60+), at the expense of the young and disabled, which is now starting to have negative societal outcomes.
Again, it is clear that Nick is stating the problem that caused poverty is people not willing to work.
And it seems that you believe that this is someone how problem so much that we nedd to make sure we do not “incentivize them to not work.”
I strongly disagree with this, and the entire concept “welfare to work” or everything about the concept of the current programs that spend more time trying not to help people than actually helping them.
Someone in this thread (not saying it was you), was throwing a fit earlier about the free lunch for all school children programs, saying that they still should be means tested because it is giving away too much free lunch & breakfast. The idiocy and narrow-mindedness of that statement is that it actually cost more to do that type of means testing across the state than to just to just provide the benefit for all school age children.
This is just one of the many examples of the useless bureaucracy and criteria that spends more time and effort to make sure we don’t dare give someone a wlefare or similar benefit that "they don’t deserve. "
Yes. My London daughter works for a UK children’s charity that helps youths at risk and she sees the consequences of Tory policies daily. In contrast, the programs and subsidies for seniors in the UK are staggering in number and cost. Seniors vote in high numbers so they will always be the coddled group.
Canada also looks after its senior citizens very well and they have the lowest rate of poverty by age group in Canada due to the guaranteed minimum income program for them and various subsidies. In addition though, the Liberal Government has in recent years introduced several programs that have greatly reduced youth poverty so there is a fairer distribution of resources. I am not close enough to the US welfare system to comment on how well it treats seniors versus younger and disabled people.
The other consequence of targeting such a program is that broader support for it can be eroded because the parents of the better off children who would get no benefit from it may feel they are personally getting nothing from their tax dollars. Not saying everyone would look at this in such a selfish fashion but programs that benefit everyone are more likely to survive as they have broader support from taxpayers. Any additional cost of some people getting unnecessary benefits is less than the consequences of the needy losing the benefit entirely.
I don’t disagree that this is our current state of affairs on this side of the pond.
However, this thread is about why and what we can do better.
I am pushing the concept that we can do better if we stop blaming those that need help for not ‘trying hard enough’ or some other idiotic concept people are using to assert those in need don’t have “a claim on anything.”
This pervasive growth of forcing work criteria and certain types of excessive means testing only accomplish the goal of keeping the funds from this “limited pot of money” out of the hands of those that actually need it.
Blame Reagan and Clinton for where we are here in the states. But at the core, it is the general populances desire to look down on the less fortunate that has allowed these programs to spread.