Also you are glorifying and over generalizing the opportunities to the Americans you disdain. Just because one has electricity does not mean one has opportunity. I think you'd be surprised to find that many Americans have no realistic way to know where to earn something themselves. 2 Hrs from NYC can be just as cut off from opportunity as 2000 miles.
Do you think this person will be stuck in poverty forever, given that he's cut off from opportunity by a 2 hour train ride?
Also, I find your claim that people in New Haven or Poughkeepsie (approx 2 hours away) don't know they could find work in NYC simply implausible. I've had random conversations in broken Hindi with auto drivers; when they ask where I'm from and I tell them "New York", they immediately recognize it. Random people in South America, SE Asia, etc all seem to have a pretty good picture of what NYC is. Yet somehow someone from Allentown, PA doesn't?
That implies that it's the American's choices, rather than his circumstances, which cause him to be poor. How is that irrelevant?
They have TV, and the internet. It's not like they are cut off from civilization, with no knowledge of life outside of their immediate surroundings. They know that places like NYC are where the rich people live, and where the jobs are. They just can't do those jobs.
I'm sure we would be better off if all of these people were successful and productive, but it's unrealistic to assume that would happen, for the reasons I've enumerated in my comment. The bottom line is that they have had many advantages, and they have failed in a country that was designed to help white people succeed. Every country has people like this. Look at England.
People tend to assume that if someone is poor, they must be a victim of injustice, and that opportunities need to be created for them. That is sometimes true, but not always. This is one of those cases where it isn't.
What solutions do you propose that could turn these people into successful, productive, happy members of society?
Not often. Regardless, my solutions would start with chipping away at the disdain, indiffernece, and exploitation by privileged Americans. Wealth inequality creates a lot of the problems. Offshoring wealth to Ireland by Apple, FB, etc. to avoid taxes if you want to get even more granular.
Actually, almost everyone in America has TV and internet access, including the very poorest.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/teens-baltimore-poorer-health...
"DR. ROBERT BLUM, JOHNS HOPKINS URBAN HEALTH INSTITUTE: Well, first of all, just to put that in perspective, if Baltimore were a country, we would be 75th in the world for infant mortality, below every industrialize country and many low and middle-income countries."
That is an American neighborhood. Tell me how Medicare and welfare payments make everything alright again?
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I don't know if you've looked at how much gov't assistance is paying out, but it's not enough to live on. There's a plethora of data contradicting everything you say, but it doesn't fit with your moralizing narrative.
Why don't you cite some of it, then?
I can certainly cite plenty of data showing he's mostly right. For example, the poor mostly do not work, they mostly have good quality housing, and they have lots of food.
http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf
https://www.brookings.edu/2015/01/08/weight-and-social-mobil...
Concretely, what do you think he's wrong about, and where is the data supporting your claims?
Also, your second link is literally 642 pages, please point to the relevant part.
For example (table 2-2, page 48), 2.75% of poor households have a sagging roof. 66% of poor households (table 2-3, page 50) have at least 2 rooms/person and 94% have at least 1 room/person. 3.5% (table 2-4, page 52) lack a complete kitchen.
I don't know of any single characteristic to cite to prove that the conditions of poor people's housing are good; but whatever specific characteristic you want info on, you can probably find it in that document.
> I don't know if you've looked at how much gov't assistance is paying out, but it's not enough to live on.
Clearly it is, because these people don't have jobs and are able to afford housing, cars, TVs, Playstations, etc. How else are they paying for these things? Do you think they stole them? Clearly, the money they receive from the government is enough to live on. Maybe not enough to live comfortably, but enough.
Food deserts. Lead paint poisoning. Lack of access to healthcare.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-hea...
"Take, for instance, Sharlene Adams who recently needed a blood pressure cuff. To buy one required no less than four bus rides, a stop at her doctor's office for his signature, a visit to two different pharmacies and a side trip to borrow money to make the required co-pay. The 55-year-old eventually got her hands on the $40 item in East Baltimore 5 1/2 hours after starting on her quest, the Maryland students documented."
https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2513561
Or see the Oregon experiment: https://www.nber.org/oregon/
Food deserts are actually the result of people's consumption choices - poor folks choose not to buy healthy food, so no one sells it to them. Making healthy food available does not change this behavior.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/giving-people-ac...
The thing I suspect is that the violence these people visit on themselves contributes more to their situation than lack of access to government services. I didn't say that more government services wouldn't help at all.
By the way, the Baltimore Sun article you cited is not about poor white people. It is about poor urban blacks in West Baltimore. That's not really relevant to this discussion, because blacks have faced enslavement and discrimination for centuries in this country. Discrimination against blacks, especially in hiring practices, has helped the poor white people we are talking about. Having to now compete against non-whites for jobs is a significant component of the poor white anger in this country, although many don't want to admit that.
So, whites deserve nothing from the institutions of their own country, except the "privilege" to be permanently tainted by a kind of Original Sin, and neglected in favor of literally every other ethnic group? Got it.
And people wonder where working-class rage comes from...
First of all, I said that these people already get plenty of help, and are not entitled to even more help.
Second, I did not say that "everyone else on Earth" was deserving of help. I said that some people are, because they are poorer than the Americans we are talking about.
Third, I did not say that our country should give money to anyone. I said that I would prefer to give my money to the poorest people in the world, and they are not Americans.
Fourth, I never said that anyone was evil. I did not even imply it.
I suspect you are intentionally making an uncharitable interpretation of my words, because no reasonable person would interpret them in such a twisted way.
And anyway, it's clear from your explanation that if these people were not white, you might have some sympathy for them. How else are we to interpret statements like: "they cannot point to any injustices visited upon them as an excuse for their current state of affairs" and that "these people have nothing to offer to anyone" a few lines after you elucidate how the US Govt did nothing to protect American manufacturing jobs? What exactly do foreign manual laborers "have to offer" that white Americans don't, aside from being cheaper?
No, it isn't. It is simply a recognition that some people are treated better than others because of their race. It says nothing about the legitimacy of a group's interests, and it certainly has nothing to do with the concepts of evil or sin.
We can't bring the manufacturing jobs back for these people, either. Let's dispel the notion that the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the rust belt, where many of these people live, was the result of political choices. It was inevitable -- the rise of China, southeast Asia, and Latin American countries has revealed the truth that US manufacturing was not globally competitive, but merely sheltered. NAFTA sent some jobs to Mexico, but in the absence of NAFTA, those jobs would have gone to Asia instead. If the US government had decided to protect US manufacturing jobs at all costs, we would have quickly learned what "all costs" means -- the cost of protecting those jobs would have risen quickly over the years until we could not have afforded it anymore. The tariffs required to do so would have been an enormous drag on the economy, and on the well-being of most Americans, and therefore unsustainable economically and politically. So the political choices involved in the collapse of manufacturing jobs could at best have delayed the inevitable.
So, whatever we can do for these people is by degrees -- improve the free public education they already have, improve the welfare benefits they already have, maybe cut their taxes, if they earn enough to pay taxes. We can't bring the jobs back, and it's naive of them to believe candidates who promise that they can.
But maybe we shouldn't feel sorry for these people, who grew up in the richest country in the world, with free education, and have nothing to offer to anyone. A lot has been done for them already, and unlike almost any other group in this country, they cannot point to any injustices visited upon them as an excuse for their current state of affairs. Let's keep in mind that they were never enslaved, and that they were sheltered from competition from non-whites and foreigners for decades. They have managed to fail in a country designed to promote the success of white people, often at the expense of other groups. Their lives are significantly better, more comfortable, and more secure than those of people in many countries of the world. Billions of people live in poverty these poor white Americans could never imagine. These Americans have housing, enough to eat, clothes to wear, cars, TVs, video game consoles, government-provided health care (Medicaid) and welfare payments in many cases -- all the trappings of middle-class life in many parts of the world. What else do we owe them? Self-actualization?
Frankly, I'd rather give my money to some of the billions of people in the world who live in ramshackle houses with dirt floors, no electricity, no education, and no way out. These white Americans have enough that I don't see how they are entitled to any more unless they earn it themselves.