this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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How is it specious? Do you know what the word even means?
Fact: there are more people living in poverty after the war on poverty was started than there were before those policies were put in place.
There’s nothing specious about that
Fact: there are double the number of people in the country after than there were before.
Fact: social status tends to have generational inertia.
Specious: "misleading in appearance, especially misleadingly attractive."
It's absolutely specious, because you're somehow suggesting those policies failed because the absolute number of individuals went up, disregarding the fact that had those policies not been in place, the number would've been double what it is.
And I said at best, because it's far more likely you're just trolling. But, giving you the benefit of the doubt, let's work through this.
If a family in poverty that's 2 people, has 3 children, that's now 5 people.
If this is the only family that exists, 100% of people are in poverty. If one of those children winds up getting out of poverty, you've gone from 2 people in poverty, to 4 people in poverty. However, you've gone from 100% poverty to 80% poverty.
And you're saying that's a failure.
You’re being spacious right now, trying to cover up the fact that there are demonstrably MORE suffering people than there has ever been.
You need to talk about real people, not statistics. What’s 20%? Who gives a shit. More suffering is more suffering, no matter what the percentage is.
The reason these programs were introduced was supposed to lead to less suffering. That’s been a lie
I mean, what is an acceptable number of people living in poverty to you and when are there too many? Is it a percentage? Or is it a real number of real people?
And yet somehow your claim is that doing less would have been better?
Again: because there's more PEOPLE than there has ever been. Yes, there is more suffering. I have no idea what you expect, the political climate is such that we can't just eradicate their suffering. But to pretend like these policies are a failure is going to cause more suffering. How do you not see that?
That 20% is the number that aren't suffering because of these policies. If you were to remove them, that 20% is the added suffering you are causing.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not.
Have they accomplished everything they set out to? Absolutely not.
Are they failing? Absolutely not.
See, in my world, percentages are real numbers of real people. I know, that's crazy. And I'm not going to pretend like there's some number that's acceptable, or enough, because that's not the point. The point is that the policies we're discussing have reduced the suffering.
You calling them a lie can only lead to more suffering. Hopefully you realize that some day.
I expect less suffering, just as was promised for the money spent on these programs.
That’s not what’s happening
So then suggest a better plan? Your point is the total number of people living in poverty has increased and that the money we're spending is ineffective. If we do nothing poverty at best stays the same or at worst increases. So, for your argument to make sense, just cutting programs meant to reduce poverty doesn't make sense. Unless you have your eyes on a better plan, your whole position and point here is to whine and cry about government spending without any care for solving the actual problem.
It’s complex for sure, and I’m sure if I had all the answers I’d be in a position to actually propose them.
The idea that handing out money is working is wrong though, I think it should be pretty clear to anyone paying attention that’s the case.
We need to continue creating jobs, in order to do that we need to make it as easy and painless (and affordable) for small businesses to exist and succeed.
We should probably lean heavier into the market in that way, pull regulations back, pull government further out of the markets further out of our everyday lives in general (government isn’t good at …. Anything, really. The less they are involved in my life and you’re the better imo).
There should certainly be some kind of social safety nets, but nothing to the extent as what we have now. You’ll always have people who legitimately cannot work, who do not have family or community to help support them (think children caring for their parents in old age).
Charity would be easier for people to voluntarily give to if their taxes were less. As it stands now, a lot of people feel like if they are already paying 30% of their income to the government to take care of people who need help, then that’s all of a sudden the governments job and not the communities, or the individuals.
People would have a hard time making less working everyday than they might make from the government, but even having a low paying job is growing. You learn how to even have a job, how to show up on time, how to work with others, you learn some sort of skills just being at work and trying everyday.
Many would think relying on family and community and individuals to take care of each other and themselves instead of the government is somehow insensitive, but that’s always been how humans have done it.
There will always be a certain amount of the population who refuse to participate in the system, there isn’t much you can really do about those people. You can’t force someone to live a way they don’t want to live, but for those who want to improve their station in life, you can give them the opportunities to do that by making competition and small businesses more appealing.
Right now, a lot of the issue is that people often don’t feel like it’s ‘worth it’ to get off the governments teat. They lose benefits and have to …. Work. And that’s okay.
But if you look up welfare's effect on poverty you will see in many cases increased spending on welfare leads to decreased levels of poverty. Why get rid of programs that are consistently proven to reduce poverty across many countries?
But the market doesn't fix everything. When a companies interests oppose those of the public we've seen time and time again that a company will opt for the choice that leads to the greatest profits over the interests of the public. Arbitrarily cutting back regulations and letting the market figure things out is a poor strategy. The market hasn't solved this issue already. So, what would incentivize the market to actually help those living in poverty? Keep in mind that businesses already commit more welfare fraud than individuals.
It's not really an either/or situation where you either are poor, unemployed and doing nothing on government benefits, or you have a job and are a productive member of society. There are people relying on benefits who are also working, who know how to show up on time, who know how to work with others, who are working on developing employable skills and so on. There are people who are employed who suck at showing up on time, work poorly with others and are general drains on society.
To drag this point further the majority of households receiving snap benefits already have one or more working members (this figure specifically). It's not like those on benefits doing nothing are absolutely the rule, they're more likely the exceptions.
Yeah, I don't think people are arguing against enabling others to improve their station in life when they argue in favor of things like welfare. The notion that being on welfare implies people aren't trying to improve their station or that they just don't want to work and so on is a big claim that needs real evidence beyond just being asserted to be taken seriously. Even if that is the case, it doesn't successfully argue that we ought to totally dismantle or even reduce welfare systems to begin with, just that we need to better tool welfare systems to incentivize different sets of behavior.
We track the change in the number of people living in poverty to the total pop via these statistics. For example if last decade we had 20% of people living in poverty and this decade we have 10% of people living in poverty, that tells us relative to the total population there are less people living in poverty. In other words previously if we had randomly sampled 100 people we would have expected to find approx 20 living in poverty vs now we would expect to only find approx 10 if we randomly sample 100 people.
Bringing poverty down from one percentage to a smaller one as described above describes a success in the sense that poverty is more uncommon compared to the total population.
If P is the total number of people living in poverty, T is the total population and R is the ratio of people living in poverty to the total population then we have R=P/T, in other words P=TR.
Your issue is just that the number of people living in poverty P is too large. But if that's your concern then we either need to decrease T (the total population) or decrease R (the ratio of people living in poverty to total population) or decrease both T and R.
You're arguing that our efforts to decrease R aren't working (or aren't working well enough). So, then what should we do? If we do nothing, R remains fixed (or even increases) and P increases due to the increasing population T, which makes your issue worse. Decreasing the total population T seems tricky too, if that's a viable solution to you, them how do you suppose we should accomplish it? As far as I can tell the only plausible solution is decreasing R, which is exactly what the person you were replying to was talking about?
Note: I'm also ignoring that the rates of change in T and R matter a lot. If you care to argue that we're not decreasing R fast enough, then what would you suggest in order for us to decrease R faster?
Have you ever heard the term “lies, damned lies and statistics”?
When I say that 40 million people in the USA live in poverty, is your response going to be “well, that’s only 11%!” And feel good about yourself?
Or are you going to think “shit. That’s more than the entire population of Canada.” And then rethink on these social programs, their cost and their effectiveness?
It’s fairly clear, when you start digging into these numbers that the more money spent to fight poverty doesn’t correspond to less people living in poverty. And if throwing money at the problem doesn’t help, it’s probably pretty scary for you to try to sus out what the alternatives might be.
In all honesty, with the amount of dollars spent over the last 70 years (an entire generation of US citizenry), poverty should be absolutely eradicated.
The interesting question to get to here, is why hasn’t poverty been eradicated? $20 some odd trillion dollars have been spent.
If you spent $20 trillion on 11% of the population, or 40m people …. That’s what? $500,000 spent per person living in poverty?
How do these numbers work out? How do you spend $500k for every person living in poverty right now, spread over a generation? And how is poverty still a thing?
Did you read my actual post? My point is about how actual accurate statistics work and the logical conclusions that must follow from them. Not about whatever particular statistics you've read and chosen to disagree with today. My points still hold regardless of whether we're talking about statistics you agree with or not.
If you read what I actually said you'll notice part of what I was asking you was what is your suggestion for what to do in place of these programs you're claiming are failures? You disliking a particular statistic doesn't address that question.
Yes, basic familiarity with ratios and the fact that the population is increasing also leads us to this conclusion i.e. basic elementary school math also tells us this. I addressed this in my previous post to you actually.
Why even bother to respond if you're going to address none of my points, answer none of the questions I've asked you and instead whine and moan about statistics that are entirely irrelevant to my point? If you would read what I said you'll notice that my points and questions don't change whether the population is 10 people or 10 million people, or whether the ratio of people living in poverty to the total pop is 100% or 1%.
Fact: The percentage of people that are in poverty is significantly lower than it was multiple decades ago.