"So many would say that it’s really convenient NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?"

Does historical injustice make it right to behave unjust in the present, almost as if it were a revenge? I don't think so.

I agree about importance of defining poverty though. Both income and wealth should be taken into account and taxed appropriately. It's not only a class issue, but also generational issue with lots of old people sitting on super-expensive property, while young families can't afford a home.

The issue is if the intent to act just now is just a way to institute selective justice to further injustice.

For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most.

So when I hear let’s help everyone when it helps their in-group, but they don’t have that same energy elsewhere (or the same energy a decade ago when maybe it wouldn’t have helped their in-group) — I get cynical.

> For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most.

Not a westerner. Why is this a bad thing at all? Giving college admission is like giving opportunity to improve someone's condition (teaching to fish), whereas welfare schemes are like giving a fish.

My country also suffers greatly due to many welfare schemes, all of that money could have gone to infrastructure and public education.

Disclosure: I also come from a poor background and have benefitted from both merit-based education and welfare schemes. But I think welfare is overblown. If the same money was put on education, my parents would have been educated one generation ago.

College in the US is generally not competitive. That is, learning is available to almost anyone who cares to learn. The community college system is very cheap. Only four years are expensive.

The debate about admissions into the top highly selective colleges is purely about who gets into the gates for networking opportunities and signaling (of the 1000+ colleges, affirmitive action impacts probably less than 100). So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn.

Further, financial aid generally is race blind. It’s only admission at these top schools where affirmitive action plays a role. So if your parents were in the IS they could’ve been educated long ago. The only question is if it is at Harvard or Tennessee State.

Financial aid is not race blind. There are no schools near me that have merit scholarships for white people, but plenty have merit scholarships for non whites.

I’ve researched this because I have kids, and where I grew up merit scholarships applied to all, but where I live now they will not receive any, at least in state. Unlike my parents, however, I’m not dirt poor and can set my kids up for success. If not for a merit scholarship, I likely would have followed my father and his father into a factory job.

Merit scholarships run the gamut. I typically don’t bucket merit scholarships in with financial aid because it is often need blind.

And while there are probably few if any explicit scholarships for white students there are several that have never gone to anything but. Lots of organizational scholarships where nearly everyone in the org is white. Or even large orgs that tilt heavily white such as DAR and the Elks Lodge.

And if you were to add up all merit scholarships the dollar amounts for those that are race based pale in comparison to those that aren’t. And adding in financial aid makes the numbers minuscule.

EDIT: When you say there are no scholarships for white students do you mean that whites are prohibited from winning any scholarships? Or that there are no scholarships exclusively for whites?

There are 0 merit scholarships available to whites. All scholarships at the major state universities in my state have a race based restriction.

So the scholarships aren’t merit, or <race>, but race + merit, presumably to help filter out and select applicants.

I was shocked when I found this information; I assumed that most states had race-blind merit scholarships, but that isn’t the case I guess.

> There are 0 merit scholarships available to whites.

False. There are both non-school private, school-based, and many state programs open to Whites, and, in fact, whites receive them disproportionately under many of the programs. [0]

> All scholarships at the major state universities in my state have a race based restriction.

Even if that’s true (and the claim is vague enough that is impossible to conclusively falsify without reviewing the scholarships available at major state universities in all 50 states), there is a big difference between “there are no merit scholarships available to whites” and “there are no merit scholarships funded at the major state universities in my unspecified state that are open to whites” (and even if the latter was true, there are non-school-specific merit scholarships open to Whites that could be used at those schools.)

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/07/merit-sc...

I received state university scholarships for merit. My kids cannot because I moved and they are white. I’m not sure how this is reasonable in anyone’s mind.

What state are you in?

> So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn.

I have learned so much from what MIT, Stanford etc.. post online, and the material is top notch.

Speaking of IT/engineering, In my country most colleges are crap and the value of a good college mostly lies in provide mostly lies in a) the college hiring pipeline and b) the opportunity to sit in same classroom as many other intelligent people, and learn from them. Teaching is total crap.

So I wonder why you think college doesn't matter. From what I heard, ivy league colleges matter for getting hired in big company too.

This is daft. Treating wealth as a measure of poverty wouldn’t work. Think about why. It pretends families don’t exist. Total non-starter.

So, if someone has a low or nonexistent income and vast inherited wealth, you would consider them to be poor?

Not unheard of - people inherit great houses in fantastic locations that they have no money to keep and which they can't sell otherwise for various legal reasons. You're poor despite living in prime estate and despite theoretically having a net worth into 6 digits.

What kinds of legal reasons?

The property's transfer or sale may be prohibited by the terms of inheritance.

IANAL and am mostly familiar with this type of situation from rom-coms about down-on-their-luck dukes who live in crumbling, unsellable castles, so I'm not sure if that scenario truly exists in law or if it's just a handy conceit.

I prefer the rule where you must spend $30 million dollars in 30 days, but have no trace of the money left — yet still have received fair value for your spending — in order to get the inheritance.

That's pretty easy:

You go to a bank to manufacture you a derivative on eg the stock market. The deal is that you pay them 30 million dollars now, and in 30 days they either pay you x dollars with probability p or you lose everything.

Eg they pay you 100 million dollars, if the S&P 500 index goes above, say, 5000 which they think will happen with probability of just under 30%.

If you do the math: the deal is fair.

If you lose the bet, you get your inheritance.

If you win the bet, you get your 100 million dollars from the bank, and presumably pay the 30 million dollars back (if that's a stipulation in the will).

Yes, this seems much more common in fiction than in reality.

You live in the place already but there are inheritance matters still waiting to be settled. Or you inherit 20% along with 4 other siblings, they don't want to sell but they won't contribute or live in the place. Or you might simply not have the money for the legal process to sell. The place might need work before you could even put it on the market but you don't have the money for it.

You can put things on the market, even if there's work to be done.

> Or you might simply not have the money for the legal process to sell.

If your property is valuable, someone will be willing do that work for you in return for a cut of the proceeds. (And if your property ain't valuable, then the original comment doesn't apply.)

If wealth were useable as a metric for poverty it would be used. It’s not. We define poverty based on income. Not because nobody has ever thought about it in the same lucid terms as yourself, nor is it because the prevailing ethnic group or class has selected their preferred definition and nobody can change it. Wealth that is not realized is sort of meaningless. Are the people of Venezuela wealthy? But they possesses all that oil. See the problem?

That's not true in most states in the US. Programs with means testing (TANF, Medicaid, and the like) don't consider you poor if you have assets.

You hear about this a lot when people require certain kinds of care that Medicaid covers but Medicare does not. People will sign over all their assets (real estate, cars, financial instruments) to their spouse, then get divorced. All because the government doesn't consider you poor if you have wealth.

Doesn’t income have the same issue?

Income isn’t perfect but it’s used for a reason. Think about the problems inherent in defining “wealth”. It’s too squishy a concept to use for policy reasons, or else they would. Is somebody who makes seven figures but spends it all on food, entertainment and travel really poor? No.

Except wealth is used for lots of policy. For example, financial aid at schools attempts to use wealth. Which is why they take into account equity in your home.

And if you have ten million in a trust and no income — are you poor?

Not if payments from that trust is classified as “income”.

Let's say that the terms of a trust dictate that interest revenue be immediately paid out to a specific charity, but you are allowed to spend the principal. Are you poor?

I’m saying it’s not useful in policy as measurement of poverty. Poverty is and forever will be defined by income. Wealth is used in policy like everything else, yes of course. Tax policy is a great example. Is there anything that tax policy doesn’t have loopholes and special provisions for? I’d argue that wealthy people benefit from all that. Poor people benefit from clear and effective policies that use simpler, less game-able constructs. Getting into the business of trying to define nebulous hard to define constructs like wealth will benefit those with greater resources, always.

You measure wealth and income?

You can, but the question is how is this split? What is the formula to measure it?

For example, my cousin does financial aid for a set of private high schools. There is a group that fights the use of wealth measures when determining need. It is typically upper middle class people who don’t want things like their real estate or investment portfolio to be a part of the equation.

The absolute richest oddly do tend to support these measures. I suspect in part because tuition isn’t a big deal to them anyways.

No political issue can be solved if all people care about is optics.

I never said it’s all people care about. But buy-in to policy will be tougher if it looks like you always take on neutral policies only when it helps certain groups.

If you aren't saying it, I will. Most political discussions I see, especially in America seem to mostly care about optics.

Can you give an example?