Keep Them Poor?

[peeonme]

There is a component missing from this construct.

When our great grandparents and their parents arrived on these shores, they lived in tenements, in squalor, and others moved out to the rural areas and worked themselves to death, scraping by, learning their work, including logging, farming, the slaughterhouses, domestic servants, and other grinding jobs.

They didn't suddenly live in Mayberry and have gingham curtains and pot roast.

I remember a masterclass choral director from Baylor who shared that he had lived as a child with his siblings and parents in a dugout in New Mexico, and lived there a year or two until they could build a log cabin.

We too conveniently forget the arduous path of the poor who came before us.

Today, those eaten alive by greed in the cities DO have a choice. They can move out to the rural areas that had been abandoned over the last two centuries. There are yet jobs there. No, they don't pay the riches of the car factories in the boom economy of post-war 1950's, but living there is affordable.

You go to where you must when you can't succeed where you are.

I tend to lean toward what you are saying, but I don't know where there is land available to just take, and even if it was possible to get enough I am not sure that most folks would even have the fortitude or knowledge to do so. I spoke with a former neighbor tonight. I turned over 30 plus accounts to him at the trailer park where I lived. I sold him a riding mower that was not even a year old at a very low price. I notified my customers that a new mowing service would take care of their accounts. Today he has none of the accounts and the mower died.

While I believe that corporate greed is out of control, I also think that we are at least 2 generations past the day when we had a work ethic and families that even gave a shit about each other.

 

[Rickrock]

Although I hear what you are saying NotHardUp1, I am not sure that there are jobs in the country nor that it is always cheap to live there, but I could be wrong. Also, a lot of people (Americans) wouldn't know how to do that. Some of my ancestors came here over 100 years ago and found jobs in the steel mills and seemed to do alright, but I know others went to the coal mines (not in the cities) and the coal companies took advantage of them.

I agree with peeonme's comments.

 

[Dominus]

There is a road out of this rut but it involves the use of a dirty word, don't know if this word is allowed on JUB.
Maybe if I say it very quietly. socialism.

Every attempt at socialism so far has resulted in catastrophe.

I've been saying quiet on this because I know my opinion is not popular around here. But I have to point out that when the communists took over my home country, there was nothing but starvation. Let me point out a few things.

Over there, they assigned my oldest sister to work in a shrimp factory. Removing shell from shrimp. Over here in the US, she is now head electronic engineer managing a whole department in one of the biggest corporations manufacturing electronic parts.

Over there, my oldest brother was assigned to work as a ditch digger. Over here he is a project manager leading hundred million dollar projects.

Before the communists took over, my mom was a school teacher. After they took over, they assigned her to work in a sweat shop sewing clothes. My dad was a college professor and a member of government. After they took over, he was sent to a re-education camp for 7 years.

Communism and socialism take away people's ability to explore their potential. Vast amounts of human potential are wasted.

We didn't come to this country as political refugees just to see it fall into the same trap as what happened to our homeland.

 

[metta]

^
I don't think anyone is talking about pure socialism or communism. Most of those countries turned into dictatorships rather than what they said they were, which is not the same thing. It is not really a fair comparison. Social democracies are highly successful. They generally have better health care, education, systems to keep people from falling below the poverty line, and high incomes.

 

[Kulindahr]

But anyone in the US, with a single 40 hour a week job should be able to afford housing, decent food and healthcare.

Yeah, if you can get a 40-hour job! Places around here are offering $18/hour just to get someone to work, but then they only schedule people for 30 to 31 hours per week. Guess what that number!

 

[Kulindahr]

Housing costs have increased too much because of lack of housing. Some areas have now overbuilt and prices are dropping

Also because of urban growth boundaries, which have had the predictable result that in order to increase housing you have to tear down existing housing and build upwards. This results, of course, in housing shortages. It's why Portland has such a huge homeless population -- that and the occupancy restrictions; it used to be that a half dozen teenagers could rent an apartment together and be able to live on minimum wage, but now that same apartment is restricted by law to just two, perhaps three people.
All of this has been pushed by liberals with the intent that everyone should have quality housing that isn't out in the suburbs. There were academic papers written predicting all of this but they went unheeded, and once again in history good intentions for others have resulted in misery for some of the very people they were supposed to be helping.

 

[Kulindahr]

There is a road out of this rut but it involves the use of a dirty word, don't know if this word is allowed on JUB.
Maybe if I say it very quietly. socialism.

Don't even have to go very far in that direction; just paying attention to the fact that there are things that the market cannot provide because they are inherently at odds with wanting a profit. We had that figured out for fire departments and highways, but the GOP has thrown highways out and aren't interested in extending it to the obvious sector called "health care", where by the stats a dollar goes about 30 cents farther when done collectively than for-profit (and of course the for-profit folks have gotten all sorts of laws passed so that groups who band together for mutual benefit get penalized if they don't throw money away on other things).

 

[Kulindahr]

Today, those eaten alive by greed in the cities DO have a choice. They can move out to the rural areas that had been abandoned over the last two centuries. There are yet jobs there. No, they don't pay the riches of the car factories in the boom economy of post-war 1950's, but living there is affordable.

In Oregon you can't build a new house in a rural area unless it's on a parcel of at least 160 acres; there are some areas where 'only' 40 acres is required. If you live in a house in the countryside and want to build a new one, you have to tear down the old one and in some places "repair' the land so no one can tell there was a house there.
A friend lives in Indiana and he says just about everyone he knows drives between thirty and eighty miles to work because the small towns don't have jobs -- and the small towns don't have jobs because all the legislators are from the cities because the cities outnumber everyone -- a huge reason that every state senate should be one senator per county; that way the senators from rural counties would have the clout to get roads improved and companies attracted to the small towns instead of cramming more into the cities.
Heck, in Oregon businesses from Europe keep wanting to set up business in small towns because they view the quality of life as being better, but the legislature hands out tax breaks only if things get built in the cities -- plus they don't give enough money to rural areas to even maintain the roads let alone improve them.
Then there's the folks I know in Colorado where they have to drive ninety miles one way to get groceries . . . .

Yes, if my house was in Portland it would be worth 1.3 million by the latest estimate from on-line places that track such things, and if it was in rural Indiana it could be had for "only" sixty thousand, but in rural Indiana where my friend lives the jobs are in the cities.

And things will stay that way unless the states switch to actual republican form of government -- which isn't going to happen because the cities won't allow it; they're too thrilled by being able to order the serfs country folk around so they run the countryside to make the city people (who can afford to travel) think the countryside looks nice.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'll add this: in Oregon small towns where liberals have tried to make things nicer by passing laws like the cities have, the result has always been a heap of laws and regulations that ONLY impact the poor. Some examples are you can't work on your car if it's parked on the street (which is the only place most people can park), you can't keep a work trailer parked on a street unless it's connected to a vehicle, you can't park on your lawn to wash your car, you're supposed to maintain the sidewalks in front of your house but they require a $200 construction permit for every seventy-five feet of sidewalk and a separate permit for driveway work, you can't leave anything in your yard for more than 48 hours without a permit, you can get fined if you don't keep your hedge trimmed nicely . . . .

 

[NotHardUp1]

There isn't any idea that a poor person will move to the country and buy or build a new house, or that land will be given him, or that he'll plop down into a 40-hour job with great benefits.

He'll do as our ancestors have done. Work his way up from lesser jobs, or multiple jobs, as they did. He'll live in rental property until he has enough money to live in better and some day buy. He may have to live with several others until they can afford separate homes.

Although I am very much in favor of socialist programs, it doesn't remove the need to work hard and extra and work your way up to better. The Mexicans are doing it today, some legal, some not, but they ARE working themselves up the food chain through hard work. I see it all the time.

As for the land, statistically, homes are continually being left behind, unmaintained, as the rural towns shrink and cities continue to grow. A good use of public funds is to incentivize this migration from the cities to the rural places again.

We are no longer a manufacturing economy.

We are NO longer a manufacturing economy. That was told me BEFORE I entered college in the late 70's. It is still true. And the sevices and information economies are increasingly workable by remote technology. Significant funding in the Infrastructure Bill was included for fiber optic com, and it is reaching even the smallest hamlets.

No, the easy factory jobs from the 50's are mostly gone. People who go through school and drop out before getting degrees are going to have to work the trades, work Amazan warehouses/trucks, or some other starter job until getting more marketable skills.

Empathy for the poor doesn't change the reality that sacrifice will be required to rise, and always has been. It's just that the 20th century prosperity was built on the hard earned progress of the generations just before.

No easy street. Hard work. Deferred gratification.

Oh, and they need to vote until it hurts.

 

[NotHardUp1]

And to address Portland, it's not typical.

It's a coastal state that has frankly become a Mecca for hippies and homeless and it has triggered a culture war and reactionary laws, etc.

It's on the coast. It is more expensive because it is more desirable.

I'm not arguing it's not rural, but the coastal states where there is influx and demand are different than the states between the pressures of the coasts.

The poor, to get a better break, will need to look at rural towns in states that are not sexy or hot in the market. That's the reality of economics.

And, I repeat my refrain. No easy street. If you're not going to work a lot, and overtime, and be ambitious, if you're just going to try to find a shortcut to hard work and progress, you have little chance of landing it all if you're poor.

That's reality. Wishing for easy is just distracting from what is required.

 

[peeonme]

There isn't any idea that a poor person will move to the country and buy or build a new house, or that land will be given him, or that he'll plop down into a 40-hour job with great benefits.

He'll do as our ancestors have done. Work his way up from lesser jobs, or multiple jobs, as they did. He'll live in rental property until he has enough money to live in better and some day buy. He may have to live with several others until they can afford separate homes.

Although I am very much in favor of socialist programs, it doesn't remove the need to work hard and extra and work your way up to better. The Mexicans are doing it today, some legal, some not, but they ARE working themselves up the food chain through hard work. I see it all the time.

As for the land, statistically, homes are continually being left behind, unmaintained, as the rural towns shrink and cities continue to grow. A good use of public funds is to incentivize this migration from the cities to the rural places again.

We are no longer a manufacturing economy.

We are NO longer a manufacturing economy. That was told me BEFORE I entered college in the late 70's. It is still true. And the sevices and information economies are increasingly workable by remote technology. Significant funding in the Infrastructure Bill was included for fiber optic com, and it is reaching even the smallest hamlets.

No, the easy factory jobs from the 50's are mostly gone. People who go through school and drop out before getting degrees are going to have to work the trades, work Amazan warehouses/trucks, or some other starter job until getting more marketable skills.

Empathy for the poor doesn't change the reality that sacrifice will be required to rise, and always has been. It's just that the 20th century prosperity was built on the hard earned progress of the generations just before.

No easy street. Hard work. Deferred gratification.

Oh, and they need to vote until it hurts.

And... why are we no longer a manufacturing economy? Oh, wait... I know. It's not because manufactured items are no longer needed or used. Our government got in bed with a communist government (China) a nation diametrically opposed to us and gave the green light to greedy corporations to abandon America and the workers that built them up so the could go and exploit cheap labor that dare not unionize for fear of retribution from their evil government. But wait.... there is more. OSHA standards were no longer needed, quality from China is an oxymoron and the money made grew a huge military, Mean while back at home cities like Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Bay City, Jackson, Grand Rapids lay in ruin. Drugs, crime, poverty, homelessness are the order of the day. But, lets have for profit prisons and even youth homes. More money made on the backs of those that BOTH parties flipped off. I would add that I am doing fine, I make more per hour than I ever did while working as a tool maker or machinist... far more. Furthermore I have worked in iron foundries, auto plants and many job shops. None of those jobs were "easy". Those who claim to have represented the American people and supported global trade at the expense of those who they were elected to represent are traitors, When you see a homeless person... thank a politician.

 

[Dargelos]

This is great. This is the old school debating that some of you have been pining for in other threads. Keep up the good work gentlemen.

Communism has failed, obviously. Socialism is not communism. The countries with the highest quality of life scores are the ones that use redistributive principles to make a capitalist economy work for the benefit of the country as a whole and not just the one percent. America was once like that. Late fifties, early sixties, tax was high, trade union membership was high, living standards rising, life expectancy rising, this was the country everyone wanted to be like. Today that is all reversed. Anybody who wants to make America great again is going to have to promote higher taxes and large scale union membership. That's not quite what anybody is promising.

 

[metta]

Some manufacturing will be coming back to the USA, but it will not provide more jobs. It will be coming back because of robots and AI. Growing globalization is coming to an end. Not globalization itself. It is just expected to not continue to grow as it has. Automation, AI and robotics will result in the elimination of many jobs in the future. Capitalism is not good at preparing for the future, and it will result in painful transitions.

 

[peeonme]

The elephant in the room that none want to talk about is inflation. In the late 70's inflation was a problem, but the folks who it really hurt were those that had a lot of money and lived off of investments. If you had 1.000,000 and couldn't find a place to invest it that paid higher than the rate of inflation then you lost money. Workers at that time received COLA (cost of living adjustments) plus regular raises. What caused inflation? Too many dollar chasing too few goods. The cure was "Reaganomics" also known as "supply side" economics. In short, it meant taking money from that pockets of the worker and putting that cash in the treasure chest of the rich.

Couple this with out sourcing and we can see why poverty, homelessness, crime, drug use and incarceration have grown. This nation has turned it's back on those who built it.

 

[me203]

^I was very young in the 1970s (early elementary school). And while this is totally anecdotal, my memory suggests that my family was a lot better off than it was when I was a teenager. Maybe impact of Reagan. Maybe something else. I can recall us actually going out to a restaurant every Saturday night (1970s), not just "special occasions" like birthdays (1980s). Throughout, my mother was (mostly) a stay at home mother. So if she'd worked it would have meant more money. But it's interesting that we were doing better on just my father's income in the 1970s, when he was either finishing school or in the early years of his career. He received his first major promotion early in the Reagan administration. He probably received another promotion by the end of the Reagan years.

And I'd hear stories of what it was like before I was born, and it was unbelievable. It probably helped that my parents both had good incomes with no kids. To cite one example: when they needed a washing machine, they bought a top of the line Kenmore. It was on clearance--old model--but, even so, I can imagine they could have bought something cheaper. If that washer had been replaced in the 1980s, I might have overheard a discussion of whether the cheapest possible washer was good enough for our needs. (Think one of those with one water level, no delicate cycle, etc.)

 

[me203]

Another thought: I think I've noticed at least a couple of "vote" comments. Charming idea--except in order for that to make any difference, one needs a candidate to vote for who will actually care about the problems of real people. And one needs a majority of people like this to win in order to actually make any changes. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that day.

 

[me203]

Some manufacturing will be coming back to the USA, but it will not provide more jobs. It will be coming back because of robots and AI. Growing globalization is coming to an end. Not globalization itself. It is just expected to not continue to grow as it has. Automation, AI and robotics will result in the elimination of many jobs in the future. Capitalism is not good at preparing for the future, and it will result in painful transitions.

That's my thought. I'm aware of an audio equipment maker that makes relatively inexpensive equipment in the US. Something they mention as a sales point. But I have honestly wondered if the "making" isn't largely through the magic of robots (particularly for the assembly of circuit boards).

Although I have to think that there would be some pluses to making stuff here even with robots. It probably would generate some jobs. And, past that, there is plus to making stuff here and not being so dependent on other countries. Is it really a smart idea being so dependent on countries like China for everything?

 

[Kahaih]

/\ But, isn't the US heavily in financial debt to China. Seems like it might be too late to cut that connection.

 

[me203]

^Good point.

To a degree, my thoughts above were more about making sure that we can obtain things to buy, no matter what happens with world events.