Senate UN Special Rapporteur's report on poverty in the USA

Want to see my apartment?

 

I mean people who are or were Democrats tend to give them a pass when they ought not.

 

Please recall that it was Bill Clinton who ended Aid to Families With Dependent Children, a New Deal program which ensured that single mothers and their children wouldn't starve. His was one of the cruelest domestic acts by a president in the last half century (leading Robert Reich, then-labor secretary, to resign in protest), but par for the course for the Clintons, who have made it their mission to expunge any trace of liberalism from the party.

Also recall that it was Barack Obama who walked into the presidency with the opportunity of a lifetime, with the ruins of the '08 crash still scorching, and decided to make the banks bigger while turning a blind eye to the 5.1 million families who lose their homes. This is the same con-artist who assured voters that he'd save his "soft shoes" to stand beside strikers but failed to act when Wisconsin teachers battled Scott Walker.

Turn your attention to the current prevarications of the DNC and DCCC, who are doing all they can to tip the scales in primary races all across the country, favoring corporatists over progressives. (That repulsive lizard, Tom Perez, just endorsed Andrew Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon, even though this runs contrary to purported DNC rules.)

 

Have you watched Making a Murderer? It tells you everything you need to know about Wisconsin and it's "civilization".

 

Why would I respond here? Firstly, my already extreme view would be mischaracterized and represented as absurdly cruel and heartless.

But hey, here goes:
We have a safety net. I agree that all nations need a safety net.

But here in America you can live how you'd like. If you don't want to live in poverty, you don't have to. There are opportunities. Take them.

But there are some who find work more abhorrent than living in squalor. I don't know. People are like that. And you have that freedom here.

 

You're positively Dickensian, J-Rod. Hopefully tonight, you'll be visited by three ghosts.

Anyway, I'll provide a link for those with distinctly different Christian values.

https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/

 

I think this report should be disseminated as wide and far as possible in the U.S. At some point we have to be slapped out of our stupor, take off the sun glasses ala They Live and not only realize the middle/lower class is being ****** but see who is doing the *******.

The problem I had with the report was how it was headlined in certain media outlets. I posted this in the politics thread but the Rueters article specifically cited Trump as the cause in the headline but in the body of the article freely admitted the data was collected prior to his taking office. As much as I may not like Trump, this is the type of agenda driven gerrymandering that does nothing to help the conversation never mind the situation.

No doubt. Nor is it any shock to anyone who has worked in urban emergency services. You want a front row seat to the **** show spend a night with an inner city engine company or medic unit.

No you don't have to and yes there are, unless you don't and you can't. Failed education, inability to move up in economic class because of it, entire communities financially depressed/oppressed and broken (forcibly) families are barriers that are exceptionally difficult to overcome. It becomes a circular cycle.

There is a reason why I work overseas and yes, there was an opportunity and I did take it, but:


I will grant you that there are those who belong to the "woe is me" crowd with their hand outstretched but my experience has been they are the exception, not the rule.

 

The U.S. foundered on institutional racism, basically our history of slavery and dehumanization of the people we involuntarily imported into this country to work for free has destroyed our culture from its inception.

The Reagan Revolution can easily be read as a backlash to the MLK/LBJ vision of opportunity and equality and the effort to really begin to right the wrongs of slavery. After centuries of slavery and another century of second class status for African-Americans, we tried Affirmative Action for about 15 years and then began to abandon it, because a half generation commitment to right the wrongs of centuries was too much for the white middle class to bear.

Essentially, white America would rather abandon the social safety net, universal healthcare, a commitment to public education and opportunity for the poor rather than pay for African Americans to access all those things equally.

 

I wouldn't paint that broadly, RyloKen. While there is no small supply of spiteful whites in this country (as evidenced most recently, and spectacularly, in the infamous Alabama race last year), I'm not convinced they constitute a majority in most regions. The Reagan Revolution was a backlash, to be sure, but there were plenty of complications on the way to spawn it--three of which happened to be the fissures from the cataclysmic Vietnam War, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and the appalling failure of the Carter presidency to usher in change. Had any one of these been forestalled, the Great Society coalition could have perhaps held strong.

I can't properly judge the whole of White America until we see a fair, national election between a genuine progressive and a reactionary.

 

Yeah so I was actually talking about the "I'm left wing, but by Americans standards" Democrat crowd and not you. The ones who should care but are beneficiaries of the current system and therefore want the status quo preserved. They know who they are.

You, I just expected to not read the report (confirmed) and then hand-wave its conclusions away with platitudes divorced from reality (confirmed).

So I guess you'd already responded in my head.

Anyway actually read the report and explain how the US lags so far behind the rest of the OECD countries on all indices except number of billionaires (which, as Russia and China prove, is not a positive measurement).

 

@J-Rod, here are some specific points (with paragraph references) I'd like your thoughts on.

12. Successive administrations, including the current one, have determinedly rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights, despite their clear recognition not only in key treaties that the United States has ratified, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, but also in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United States has long insisted other countries must respect. But denial does not eliminate responsibility, nor does it negate obligations. International human rights law recognizes a right to education, a right to health care, a right to social protection for those in need and a right to an adequate standard of living. In practice, the United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that, while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable health care or growing up in a context of total deprivation. Since the United States has refused to accord domestic recognition to the economic and social rights agreed by most other States in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other treaties, except for the recognition of some social rights, and especially the right to education, in state constitutions, the primary focus of the present report is on those civil and political rights reflected in the United States Bill of Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States has ratified.

13. In thinking about poverty, it is striking how much weight is given to caricatured narratives about the purported innate differences between rich and poor that are consistently peddled by some politicians and media. The rich are industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic and the drivers of economic success. The poor are wasters, losers and scammers. As a result, money spent on welfare is money down the drain. If the poor really want to make it in the United States, they can easily do so: they really can achieve the American dream if only they work hard enough. The reality, however, is very different. Many of the wealthiest citizens do not pay taxes at the rates that others do, hoard much of their wealth offshore and often make their profits purely from speculation rather than contributing to the overall wealth of the American community.
14. In imagining the poor, racist stereotypes are usually not far beneath the surface. The poor are overwhelmingly assumed to be people of colour, whether African Americans or Hispanic “immigrants”. The reality is that there are 8 million more poor Whites than there are poor Blacks. The face of poverty in America is not only Black or Hispanic, but also White, Asian and many other backgrounds.
15. Similarly, large numbers of welfare recipients are assumed to be living high on “the dole”. Some politicians and political appointees with whom the Special Rapporteur spoke were completely sold on the narrative of such scammers sitting on comfortable sofas, watching cable television or spending their days on their smartphones, all paid for by welfare. The Special Rapporteur wonders how many of those politicians have ever visited poor areas, let alone spoken to those who dwell there. There are anecdotes aplenty, but little evidence. In every society, there are those who abuse the system, as much in the upper income levels as in the lower. But in reality, the poor are overwhelmingly those born into poverty, or those thrust there by circumstances largely beyond their control, such as physical or mental disabilities, divorce, family breakdown, illness, old age, unliveable wages or discrimination in the job market.

An illusory emphasis on employment
29. Proposals to slash the meagre welfare arrangements that currently exist are now sought to be justified primarily on the basis that the poor need to leave welfare and go to work. The assumption, especially in a thriving economy, is that there are a great many jobs out there waiting to be filled by individuals with low educational qualifications, often with disabilities of one kind or another, sometimes burdened with a criminal record (often poverty related), without meaningful access to health care, and with no training or effective assistance to obtain employment. It also assumes that the jobs they could get will make them independent of state assistance. In reality, the job market for such people is extraordinarily limited, and even more so for those without basic forms of social protection and support. The case of Walmart, the largest employer in the United States, is instructive. Many of its workers cannot survive on a full-time wage in the absence of food stamps. This fits in a broader trend: the share of households that, while having earnings, also receive nutrition assistance rose from 19.6 per cent in 1989 to 31.8 per cent in 2015. 32 Up to $6 billion annually goes from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other public assistance programmes to support workers in firms like Walmart, providing a huge indirect subsidy to the relevant corporations.33 Walmart lobbied heavily for tax reform,34 from which it will save billions, and then announced it would spend an additional $700 million in increasing employee wages and benefits for its workers.35 But the resulting rise in the debt of the United States, due in part to the tax reform,36 has then been used to justify a proposed 30 per cent cut in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding over a decade.37 31. In terms of job availability, the reality is very different from that portrayed by the welfare-to-work proponents. Despite the strong economy, there has been a long-term decline in employment rates; by 2017, only 89 per cent of males aged 25 to 54 were employed. 38 While “supply” factors such as growing rates of disability, increasing geographic immobility and higher incarceration rates are relevant, a 2016 White House report concluded that reductions in labour supply were far less important than reductions in labour demand in accounting for the long-run trend.39 In the future, new technologies, such as self-driving cars, 3D printers and robot-staffed factories and warehouses, may lead to a continuing decline in demand for low-skilled labour. Leading poverty experts have concluded that, because of this rising joblessness, the poverty population in the United States “is becoming a more deprived and destitute class, one that’s disconnected from the economy and unable to meet basic needs”

 

I love how living in squalor is promoted as a freedom as well. Come to America, where you have the freedom to live in poverty should you chose to do so! I wonder if that is a God given right or just a regular right?

 

They've had 250 or so years to really ram home the message that being poor is because you're lazy; that collectivism in any way is Satanic or some nonsense, and that being well off is the only measure that makes you a man.

The Rapporteur's findings in that regard aren't a surprise. Just disappointing that J-Rod will not read the report and hand-wave the findings away.

EDIT: This is also a country where homeschooling is not considered automatically the activity of lunatics breeding lunacy into future generations. So...

 

Well according to Darth Guy this is more a figment of the imagination than actual reality so I'm not sure I know anything anymore.

 

I simply said the extreme individualists don't constitute the "average" American or the majority of Americans. That's different than saying those people don't exist.

 

I think the average American though is indoctrinated to a subconscious Americentric mindset and that includes being individualist though, no?

 

I don't know how I disprove a subconscious thing, so .

 

To be fair you don't seem to take that mindset, or at least you're aware enough to call it ou

 

Is the notion that "poor people are just lazy, America has opportunity for all if you have the gumption to give it a go" really an example of "extreme individualism" though? Apart from the bleeding hearts who post on this site, I always got the impression that this was pretty mainstream. In fact, I thought it pretty much defined the "American dream"?

 

I think that was the point the Rapporteur observed, @LostOnHoth.

 

Yes, I would say that "poor people are just lazy" is not a view held by the majority of Americans. A good 50%< of Americans are poor (e.g., struggle to pay for housing, can't afford unexpected healthcare expenses). There are actual polls that show Americans support, for example, a government healthcare guarantee, be it single-payer or something else. Many of the people in control of our society have strong contempt for the poor and working people, but again, that's different. I didn't read the whole report, but I don't think the Rapporteur is trying to say that Americans are monsters or that the majority are directly responsible for the state of the country.

 

No of course it's not saying that - I haven't exactly studied the report myself but the basic vibe of it seems to be an observation that there is an element of US culture (to the extent that it influences government policy) which regards money spent on poor people as wasted money as poor people are poor because they do not have the up and go required for success (also comments that poor people are generally stereotyped as being minorities) as opposed to giving relief to the rich which is money well spent because they have proven their entrepreneurial spirit.

 

Even, how much of that phenomenon of "I'm poor but I will be rich one day and in that case I don't want my money going to lazy welfare recipients" is typical? Ties into LOH's point above.