May 31, 2010

Poverty

The big problem with being poor in 21st Century America is not that you can't afford to buy enough stuff, it's that you can't afford to move away from other poor people.

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

Boy is this true...

Anonymous said...

tru dat

l said...

Likewise, poor children can't afford better parents.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that idiotic thought, Steve.

Dahlia said...

Steve,
I've alluded to it before, but there's definitely been an uptick in the hostility directed at you... and usually within the first five comments. Trolls or in-your-face folks, either way you're being monitored. Is it by true believing individuals responding to a growing cognizance of you or a formal group?

Anonymous said...

Somewhat relatedly, Charles David Ginsberg, the Executive Director of the Kerner Commission and advisor to President Johnson on black/white race relations, recently died. Obit here:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2010/05/27/david_ginsburg_98_led_panel_studying_race_riots/?page=1

Things did not seem to turn out the way David expected they would. A generation of liberals is passing, and it would be a good time to reevaluate white and black people's roles in creating ghettos. A Washington Post survery several years back showed that most blacks in DC blame their own communities for the troubles that blacks experience these days.

The times, they are a chang'n.

Harry Baldwin said...

The second biggest problem about being poor in 21st Century America is over-nourishment. You get so fat you can barely move, so it's hard to hold a job. A vicious cycle, really.

Anonymous said...

The problem with poor people is that they are poor at being people.

I realized this in 1969 when as a beginning public social worker I started to visit my clients in their homes. Most of them were black and they led highly disorganized lives. They always wanted more money and indeed they needed it.

Then one day I visited a rare young white couple. They said they were doing fine and indeed they were. They didn't ask for more money - what we called "special needs". They had furnished their apartment with things they got from second hand stores and some furniture the young man had made.

If you didn't drink it up or shoot it up the AFDC monthly grant was plenty. If you didn't go to Reno the day the check came you would have money at the end of the month.

Even in those days there was food stamps, rent assistance, and Medicaid. Blacks and Latinos however never had enough.

The very first day I went into the "ghetto" I was surprised at how hard it was to find a parking space. Later I learned that many welfare recipients had as many as five televisions.

In a central city with public transportation and broadcast TV it can be very easy to live on very little.

That's not to say that all the black welfare recipients were lazy and lacked "get up and go". I had a woman on my case load who organized all her neighbors in the housing project. She had all of them take their appliances and furniture out of their apartments and then she burned down the building. They then got "special needs" - money from the welfare department to buy replacements.

She had done this several times. She constantly complained that Housing Authority wouldn't move her to a better project - one in which there were fewer black people. She wanted to be among those well behaved old white people.

Middle class white folks don't want black welfare recipients near them, neither do black welfare recipients.

Albertosuarus

jody said...

the problem is that even the poor can afford too much food, so now there is a nation where the poor have an obesity problem. the US produces so much food it has to export lots of it.

currently IMPORTING millions of mestizos who metabolize food directly into fat, though.

Headline 2020: "How did America get so fat?"

Christopher Paul said...

It's not idiotic.

Speaking of poverty, this today from the New York Times:

Blacks in Memphis Lose Decades of Economic Gains

Naturally,

The mayor and former bank loan officers point a finger of blame at large national banks — in particular, Wells Fargo. During the last decade, they say, these banks singled out blacks in Memphis to sell them risky high-cost mortgages and consumer loans.

The "hero" of the piece is a laid-off janitor with four kids, three cars in the driveway and a two-story house he's in danger of losing.

Anonymous said...

Somewhat true but not exactly original. I'm from a former industrial city that is now ghettoized in parts. And there is a inverse relationship between housing prices and the prices of the cars parked in front of them.... RIMS YO!!! I gots dem RIMS!!!!

OTOH if you are truly truly poor. You ride the bus.


The ironic thing is that in coastal cities blacks may have more disposable income than whites due to lower housing costs. And (cough) off the books employment.

Anonymous said...

you can't afford to move away from other poor people

Isn't that why they invented Section 8?

sn said...

there are tradeoffs.. stay in a cheaper (and much smaller) rental in a nice area than own a (much larger) home in a lousy area. this tradeoff is made by people who value education/neighbors and those who don't take the alternative route

Xenophon Hendrix said...

relevant article by Fred Reed

Truth said...

"I had a woman on my case load who organized all her neighbors in the housing project. She had all of them take their appliances and furniture out of their apartments and then she burned down the building."

So in other words you aided and abetted an arsonist.

Baloo said...

Agree with Dahlia. If somebody wants to argue with your point, fine. If they just spew, like the third anonymous, 86 their comments. Who needs it? There, I've always wanted to use the word 'spew' with reference to the left. They keep hogging it.

dearieme said...

There's a remark in the middle of this short article on social mobility that might interest you, Steve.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1282985/Social-mobility-myth-How-Labour-punished-middle-class-problem-doesnt-exist.html

RandyB said...

As I often point out to liberals, the difference between a slum and a gentrified neighborhood ain't the architecture.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous
"you can't afford to move away from other poor people

Isn't that why they invented Section 8?"

I read the Atlantic article connecting crime and Section 8. Thanks for the tip. Everyone should think about unintended consequences of their well-meaning actions.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Thanks for that idiotic thought, Steve."

Hey, anonymous drive-by poster:

Fuckoff, Asshat.

Harry Baldwin said...

Xenophon Hendrix said...relevant article by Fred Reed

I used to read Fred but I'm put off by that dumb picture on his site of him with the sunglasses, cigar, leather jacket and cap. Is it supposed to be a joke, or does he fancy himself a real douchebag?

Anonymous said...

Matriarichal Ghettos tend to look the same.

Wherever you subsidize single women having babies, single women will have babies, and create "insta-slums".

The blogger Hawaiian Libertarian has described some of the pockets of matriarichal ghettos on the Hawaiian Islands full of non-tradtional welfare-recipients like Koreans, Japanese, Pacific Islanders, and some whites on his blog. Theodore Dalyrimple described the burgeoning white underclass in northern England (see the YouTube video, "A Very British Gangster).


We destroyed the black family by paying single black women to dump kids on our civilization and promising to give them food, clothing, shelter, some money, and free medical care.

To a white, living in public housing projects would be a living nightmare..............but think about this my fellow isteve.blogspotters....if those ghettos were chock full of white people at over 95% of the occupancy, especially plenty of young white women in decent shape who didn't mind having easy-no-strings-attatched-sex, and seldom came looking for "baby-daddys" in search of child support when they got knocked up, and the drugs were cheap and authentic, and liquor stores surrounded the place, and there was a block party somewhere within walking distance almost every night, and you were never physically assaulted for "just being white", and the music was good to YOUR ears, and you got 1000 ft. of brick-and-mortar-living space for concocting some kind of "disablity" (ever heard of "crazy checks"? thats what many ghetto men get), would it really be so unnattractive a life option if you were 19, and wanted free money to go to school instead of working on a construction site with illegals at $7.75-an-hour? You could hit the neigborhood bars 3-4 nights a week, shoot hoops to stay in shape, run 2-to-3 women at a time. Remember, you are 19 again now, all that testosterone coursing through your veins......

It be easy to start that slide and wind up down there. "Aw, it'll just be for a year or two, then I'll climb out". I can hear the rationalizations now.



Pat Buchanan was right, we were better off with orphanages so the state could raise underlcass children of parents who couldn't afford them until those parents got on their feet fiscally. This would discourage a permanent underclass forming, and would encourage our underclass to marry each other and look for a way up. We have put them in a pickle with the illegal-alien cheap labor and outsourcing though. It'll be tough. Im not enthusiastic about near-term change.

eh said...

And leave all that 'vibrancy' behind?

AmericanGoy said...

"Yes, but more lending to minorities, which is what the government, the media, and all right-thinking people were demanding, equals worse lending. It's called diminishing marginal returns."

Actually, it's called stoking the bubble, making the FIRE economy purr and money roll into the system, greasing it.

More money into the stockmarket leads to elites making more money.

Since the trick of "every American (minority) deserves to own a home" by 'W' (who, like all Republicans, just LOVES blacks and latinos, right?!) cannot be repeated in the near future, and the oil bubble stoked by speculators, bigger game play needs to be made.

Namely, privatizing social security.

And Obama has enough cover (he is a leftist after all, RIGHT?!) to pull it off for his masters.

This will be called "social security reform", as the money is rolled into the market. After all, "health care reform" showed us what is possible with the right media propaganda and the general stupidity of the populace.

Brian said...

Anonymous:Thank you for the link to that Atlantic article. These public housing projects began to be torn down twenty years ago. At the time I could have told these city-planners exactly what the end result would be. Of course twenty years ago I was twelve years old.

Dutch Boy said...

One of the side effects of the Mexivasion of California has been the migration of blacks from the inner city to suburbia. The Mexicans are destoying the livability of suburban California by proxy. Next stop, Idaho?

american fez said...

I used to rent in a good neighborhood because I couldn't afford to buy there. Now I own in a bad neighborhood because I can (just about) afford to buy there. I have swapped purse dog crap on the sidewalk for human crap on the sidewalk, and a flower shop on the corner for some sort of dubious drug rehab clinic on the corner. It's a grim place to live but at least it's mine.

helene edwards said...

Just in case anybody's wondering how handouts go to blacks these days: for the last few weeks, I've been noticing two black guys in yellow vests spending the day standing immobile on the tracks in front of San Francisco's West Portal tunnel (for street cars). Yesterday I asked one of them what his job was. He said it was to keep people from getting run over by the streetcars. The tunnel's been there for about 90 years pedestrians walking around unrestricted all the while, and for the last 20 or so the cars have entered at about 1 mile per hour, precluding any real prospect of an accident. But now there's this new job description.

kudzu bob said...

"So in other words you aided and abetted an arsonist."

He said nothing of the sort. Please try and follow along with the rest of the class, Twoof. If your goal is to make make the case that the black-white achievement gap isn't genetic, then the drivel that you post here isn't helping.

JHB said...

The big problem with being a poor white male in 21st Century America is Griggs v. Duke Power.

Truth said...

"He said nothing of the sort."

He said nothing about turning her into the police.

Spark Check said...

I notice a lot of big screen televisions where I work. Illegals living in shitty little roach-infested apartments. 20-something-year-old grandmothers, unemployed or underemployed baby daddies. But somehow there's a 50+" flat screen TV in the living room.

kudzu bob said...

"He said nothing about turning her into the police."

Why should he say anything about turning her in, Twoof? He's not on trial here. Now get back to your water-fueled cars.

neil craig said...

So since everybody can't move away the answer is to build lots of really big walls through poor neighbourhoods & turn them into lots of smaller neighbourhoods in which (A) residents can have more personal influence & (B) they might hit lucky & end up separated from the real scum.

ProudWhiteMan said...

Actually, that was the idea behind section 8- that poor people would adopt the values of the middle class by living among them. The problem, of course, was that it was more likely that the neighborhood was ruined. The poor kids had their poor friends over, and soon, the lawnmowers went missing. I'm sure if they had been the "old immigrant-type poor", it might have worked- an intact family of similar ethnicity and better values and IQ. But those people make it out of the slums on their own anyway. The problem of American poverty is intractable, unfortunately. P. J. O'Rourke did a piece in one of his books about riding with the Guardian Angels, and how urban American poverty was unlike anything you see anywhere else in the world (although Europe is catching up, and for the same reasons- wonder what they are?).

It seems to me that this is an enormous opportunity for private lower-middle class gated communities- like condo boards, they can determine who lives there and how. As the concept of free association has now been raised by Rand Paul, perhaps this concept can begin to be discussed, with the hope that this might be possible in 30-40 years.

Or we could expand section 8 housing, and assign it by lottery. If we put section 8 housing in wealthy neighborhoods, liberals would change their minds real quickly about restrictive covenants.

Truth said...

"He's not on trial here."

Sure he is; for cowardice.

Bob said...

Low rent housing and apartments should be far away from expensive neighborhoods.

kudzu bob said...

"Sure he is; for cowardice."

Maybe he did turn her in. Or maybe there wasn't enough proof to make an arrest (that would be my guess). Or maybe he chopped her up with a hatchet and fed the pieces into a garbage disposal. The only thing we can be sure of is that you manage to believe six stupid things before you've had your morning bowl of Count Chocula, Twoof.

Truth said...

It's Frankenberry, Sport.

Anonymous said...

>If we put section 8 housing in wealthy neighborhoods, liberals would change their minds real quickly about restrictive covenants.<

Yes. Which is why putting section 8 in wealthy neighborhoods hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of happening.

>shitty little roach-infested apartments [...] unemployed or underemployed baby daddies. But somehow there's a 50+" flat screen TV in the living room.<

Is that what our governmentwallstreet wizards mean when they refer to the technology that stands for wealth not captured in "Old Economy" thinking?