Re:Massachusetts to tax ride-hailing apps, give the money to...
by TeMPOraL on Sunday August 21, 2016 @07:18AM
(#12330443)
> If the folks at the bottom are continually stressed about money
I'd say this is the key. It doesn't matter whether your bare-minimum cheapest apartment is an old wooden shed or a pretty newly constructed flat with heated floors, two bedrooms and a lifetime free subscription of Netflix. It doesn't change a damn thing if you're two paychecks from getting evicted and going hungry, raising your children on the streets.
More and more jobs are turning transient, transitional, on-demand. This may be more efficient, but this hit the poorer hard, because there is no way in hell you can do any financial planning for yourself if you don't know when and how much money you bring home, or if you'll have any job at all next week. This is one of the bigger things that keeps poor in poverty.
The problem is more the difference in quality of life and opportunity. This is a problem even if the base quality of life is generally improving. If the folks at the bottom are continually stressed about money, if they have shelter, food, power, etc, it is bad. If the folks at the bottom cannot get access to the things that basic society thinks they should have - internet, cell phone, transportation and decent clothing, it is bad.
If one simply cannot afford education, regardless of intelligence, because of simple money or knowing they'd not be able to ever pay off the loan with a teacher's salary, it is pretty bad.
And those are the things that really matter - if one can have a comfortable (though sparse) life at the bottom, and if one can actually work or try to improve their situation. Unfortunately in the US, a lot of folks are bound by circumstance. Their circumstances - such as bad health, whether or not they have children, not making enough to afford transportation, or even their parents' circumstance - determines their opportunity. Yet if they don't have the opportunity, or circumstances tend to be unlucky for years, they might never climb out. They are stuck at a miserable bottom.
And it seems that countries that have transcended this also tend to have less income inequality. And the bottom isn't nearly as horrible as it is in the US - and you still have some opportunity. It can likely be solved without reducing the inequality, but I'm not sure exactly How do do this.