Look at it this other way: is there something we could afford to provide for the cost of those TVs and iPhones that would ensure a good chance of those people lifting themselves out of poverty? If the answer is yes, then you've discovered a game changer: for a few thousand dollars per person, we could end poverty! The government should just buy those things for people directly and watch the magic happen.

If the answer is no, then it's stupid to complain about poor people buying an iPhone or TV. It's calling for a meaningless gesture of piety. They're not making those purchases in lieu of something that would advance their condition.

What if there is such a thing, but it only works if the people themselves do it, not the government?

For a concrete example, it seems to me that one thing that helps people get out of poverty is having some savings. Being poor is expensive, often because large expenses compound due to financing, late fees, or even just an inability to make bulk purchases. Having a financial cushion can make life a lot cheaper. But there's no way (that I can see, anyway) that the government can provide such a cushion for someone who wants to spend it right away on irrelevant stuff.

The few thousand dollars you might save not buying a TV or cell phone isn't going to do shit to get you out of poverty. You can't save your way out of being poor a nickle and dime at a time.

It means you can stop wasting money on buying necessities constantly in small quantities, not pay massive interest on credit cards or payday loans because your needs a sudden repair, etc. Will this solve the problem? Surely not for everybody. But a big problem (even if far from the only problem) with getting out of poverty is that it's a trap because it's so expensive to be poor.

Except it doesn't mean that. It means that when you have $300 in the bank instead of buying a cheap TV set, and suddenly your car needs $500 in repairs, you're still going to a payday loan place, except you're on the hook for $200 instead of $500. Still paying the fees, still stuck in the let's-rip-off-the-poor cycle, except you also don't have a tv set.

I know, I know, now you'll say "well you're poor, what do you need a tv set for, you should sit in your dank apartment with just the road noise for entertainment," and that's where the compassion kicks in: these folks are poor, they're not animals, and if TV lets them be less miserable, it's about as cheap a way to do so as is reasonable.

Are you saying that being on the hook for 60% less in interest and fees isn't an improvement? Is a millionaire still stuck in a poverty trap because it's theoretically possible for them to get hit with costs that exceed their savings? What you're describing sounds like a huge improvement, not "still stuck."

Regarding your second paragraph, no, I wouldn't say that. I'm not actually passing any judgment here. I don't think that buying iPhones and fancy TVs is a particularly wise choice for poor people, but I also don't really fault them for it. I'm merely giving an example of something which could help with poverty but which the government can't provide. A decent chunk of poverty comes from poor financial choices, and that's just an observation without implying any judgment towards the affected people.

Except that sitting all day watching TV is CERTAIN to keep them on welfare for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps buying them books instead would work better? Community colleges are very inexpensive, there are state grants available to the poor. Why not create incentives to learn a skill/trade, perhaps a degree?

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

Instead of down-voting a relevant, on-topic comment, please provide a counter argument.

It's 'poor people have refrigerators' in another guise. It is apparently a laudable goal to decay our social infrastructure till large parts of our cities will resemble African poverty.

TV's are completely different to fridges in this discussion, I'd say. One is pure entertainment, the other has functional uses that help reduce costs, as well as improve health by preventing food from going off.

That's practically irrelevant, and also stunningly blind to how humans actually function. Entertainment is important - its sufficiently important that we've dedicated considerable resources to it throughout the sum of human history, to the point that we ship giant entertainment venues to warzones.

But more to economic point: TVs are cheap. The TVs people complain about are maybe ~$500, and you can do very well if you shop second hand. They are a one-off capital expense which considerably improves your life, and which the lack of sale thereof utterly fails to meaningfully help you not be poor.

Because poverty is a flow problem, and it fails to be defined by whether or not one owns certain conspicuous goods. If we were talking about impoverished people who were nonetheless buying $3000 LCDs on debt every few years, then we might have something to talk about. But since concrete examples are always conspicuously absent when points of this nature are brought up, I'm content to point to the economics: selling your TV wouldn't meaningfully improve your situation, buying a TV doesn't meaningfully degrade it.

It's also worth noting that in a discussion of being unable to climb out of poverty, requiring people to dispose of all their worldly possessions before we help them is a good way to create a poverty trap.

You are missing the point of welfare: it is supposed to help people get back on their feet, not keep them dependent on taxpayer's money for the rest of their lives. So training/education, not TVs and computer games.

That $500 could perhaps buy supplies to study at a local community college (tuition waivers/scholarships are available).

Poor != stupid.

no, they're just wasting money foolishly and then gawping about like goldfish when they have no money left for things that matter. so maybe it's stupid to complain, but that doesn't make it smart to facilitate.

> Where I lived you also had to prove you were applying for work to stay on it, but if you got a minimum-wage full-time job you would lose your welfare but not have as much money...

Would you rather see the elimination of welfare or the removal of sharp cliff-like penalties for re-entering the workforce (eg, benefits that taper off as your income rises)?

Regardless of which answer, why?

> No matter how much assistance you provide, it cant be so much that it disincentivizes you from rejoining the work force without facing a 'penalty'.

That's the welfare cliff, and it can be solved while keeping the overall welfare system in place.

It just means that we need to wean off welfare between 20k/year and 40k/year, to encourage people to work at higher paying jobs instead of penalizing people who work at higher paying jobs.

Everyone knows it is a problem, but Congress is too "busy" investigating Benghazi for years rather than hammering out a law that solves the welfare cliff.

We have that. It's called the earned income tax credit.

That needs to apply to _all_ government programs, like Food Stamps.

SNAP cuts off immediately once you grow above the monthly income. So if you get a raise, all of a sudden you lose all food stamp benefits.

There isn't just one welfare cliff to be solved: there are dozens. All of which need to be converted into something like the Earned Income Tax Credit (which more gradually weans people off of the Welfare as their income grows)

I can attest to this in the U.S. as well. I hang out with a pagan community that has a high percentage of people on food and cash assistance. They get so much money that they purchase holiday gifts with EBT (food stamps) and live almost solely on expensive branded snack food. Every person I've known on EBT has been gaming the system in some way - everything from getting roommates to sign off that rent is higher so they get more money and doing work under the table for cash and not reporting it, to wanting to get married but deciding not to because it would eliminate their benefits and turning down higher paying jobs because they know they need to keep low-wage, part-time jobs to keep benefits. Withdraw cash from a cash card to buy earrings, concert tickets and other luxuries - no problem! Until a couple years ago I didn't even know people were given debit cards with money on them from the government.

I had always thought that poor people bought generic products, had old TVs, couldn't afford cable, had old flip phones, etc. But it's the exact opposite. The poor people I know on welfare/assistance have much nicer things than the middle class people I know.

I believe that the system needs to be revised so only certain products can be purchased with government funds. It would help to keep the people using these services healthier as well.

You're barking up the wrong tree though - iphones and TVs are fixed costs. I'm willing to bed vast majority of the poor spend vast majority of their money on housing, food and clothing, although a small minority might actually spend it on crack. And of course, a small minority will attempt to keep on welfare for as long as possible.

Would you feel better if they do not have iphones? After all, they should know their place in the system, no?

Do you even know the actual figures? How much does a single welfare recipient get per month?

>Ive seen many lives reduced to manipulating a aystem instead of becoming something beneficial to others

Well, it ought to prepare them for a life dealing with corporate politics in that case.

We can play a game of anecdotal evidence all day. My experience is totally opposite to yours, welfare was though and no way in hell did we have more than our peers. Welfare was also something you didn't talk about, it was embarrassing and my dad yearned for a job, not for the money, he got that on welfare, but for the human dignity, the social contact, the respect, instead he was paralysed at home. Incentives played no role.

But we're in agreement on your final sentence and I do acknowledge that there are people who game the system. But the issue I feel with the welfare debate is that it's usually a discussion about reducing it (to increase incentives to work), maintaining it or expanding it, with most people leaning towards one of the first two options. When really there are genuine cases of welfare where incentives play no role, and they're being squeezed hard. The debate should be more geared towards reducing fraud, catching dishonest recipients and supporting them in their dependency, not squeezing dishonest and honest welfare recipients all the same.

Many poor people also smoke and play the lottery, because that the entertainment that's accessible to them.

I guess since we can't all openly stereotype people based on race and religion any longer we'll have to make do with stereotyping the poor. I'd love for you to show me these iPod toting welfare recipients. I'm Canadian, and can assure you that welfare recipients are not living high-on-the-hog. Due to the extremely high cost of living in Canada they are, in fact, quite impoverished http://www.ccsd.ca/factsheets/fs_ncwpl01.htm Great to see another conservative view point buttressed with nothing more than anecdotes. Also, based on your account, by age 10 you and your friends were discussing your parents finances to the point you knew which families were receiving welfare? Seems far fetched.

And all you'll ever get is anecdote if you look in the U.S. The "welfare professionals" (let's define this term to mean those that know precisely the minimum of effort to maintain the illusion of 'seeking gainful employment' in order to keep their handouts) keep a low-profile and compartmentalize well. Going to the welfare office today? Don't wear new/"in" clothing, don't take the iDevice with. Out and about socially? Maintain the appearance of not actually being on welfare of any sort: wear the nicer clothing, expose the iDevice prominently. And they can't have their children mocked and ridiculed at school for not fitting in as well, so they need their own iDevice as well.

It's anecdote because there's no data. There's no data because who'd admit to cheating the system? There's no cause for investigation due to compartmentalization-- none of their intended social circle knows they're on welfare; any that do are also on welfare and doing the same thing.

How would I, a "technocrat" making about six figures know this? Because a couple times in my life I've had to take advantage of this safety net. And I was always irritated at how people I'd seen entering and leaving the welfare office had so much material crap that I couldn't afford when I'd see them again out in public. There were several occasions where some of these welfare recipients were running businesses and hired me to perform computer repair, then in the offices I'd here them on the phone discussing with others how to game a particular part of the system. Disheartening.

You want /data/ on this? Good luck.

LOL, so it's a conspiracy and all the poor people are in on it!

I never said all of them; I said "welfare professionals" for which I don't have a count. If you want a count from my anecdote, let's say 15. I can't even guess a percentage because I didn't sit at the welfare office all day observing and counting people, nor following them around to observe their public lives and behavior. I'm sharing my own anecdote so you can see how it might be impossible to find actual data on this phenomenon.

Certainly there are people who "conspire" to do bad things. Sometimes the "conspiracy" is one guy. Sometimes it's a small group. The only thing I can say with absolutely certainty is that the system will be gamed. How much depends on data that you're just not going to find.

So it's the same level of anecdotal evidence as all of those suspected in-person voter fraud cases, which justified the introduction of voter ID laws?

This entire rant is just that: a rant. You have no idea if anything you're talking about is real. It's all anecdote and suspicion at others.

Someone who is creative and fastidious about saving, reusing and recycling would, to your eyes, look like a welfare fraud because they might superficially seem better off then you think they should.

How is it a rant? He has first-hand, eye-witness experience.

There are enough anecdotes (I could supply a few) to suspect there is a welfare abuse problem - we just don't know the extent of it, as numbers are hard to come by (for reasons explained by the poster you criticize).

Stating the fact that _some_ people take advantage of the system does not make one a heartless bastard.

Yup, you definitely sound like you have never been poor.

Oh yes. What could an HN story that involves poverty be without yet another round of "You don't know poor people. Let me tell you about poverty."

I am not offering a story. Where'd you get that? Oh, right, you imagined it.

Sorry, that's only my 2nd most anticipated downvote from a parent-poster.

The parent poster cannot downvote your comment, as you cannot downvote this comment.

Cost of living in Canada before the year 2000 was significantly more affordable on a housing basis alone in Ontario and BC, which contain half of the countries' population. The high cost of living comes from the constant universal government policies to increase housing values and a housing bubble that has never popped.

I don't think the cost of food or transit has gone up much in inflation adjusted dollars. The cost of gas and probably household energy has gone up significantly although. Overall most of the cost of living problems for the poor comes from housing.

Comments like this are a reason I try to avoid any HN threads related to inequality/poverty...