I did some light research all I can do right now and I found one study from the UK showing 10 years gap between rich and poor, and this remember is a country with universal healthcare.
Other studies talk about the gap between wealthy first world and poor third world nations, an unfair comparison.
I’m open to more.
I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a moment. All of these responses already assume that poverty is a quirk in the system, an unfortunate outcome in an imperfect economy. The system is, however, dependent on poverty: the cheapness of our consumer products depend on it. Poverty is part and parcel with our economic system. The system, as it is presently constructed, cannot sustain everyone being wealthy. That’s why the American Dream is a canard: although any one person can indeed become rich, not everyone can, so the Dream is a fleeting fantasy for at least some, if not most, people. You may argue that although our “free enterprise” system may have relative poverty, it ultimately allows for the eradication of absolute poverty. Capitalist competition has led to cheaper gadgets and medicine, for example. This is mostly true, but we still have the problem of relative poverty, which is partly systemic in nature.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/life-expectancy
I didn’t know what sort of stuff you’d find interesting, so there’s an assortment.
You’re far too modest. The kind of delaying of gratification and self-imposed deprivation you describe in your upbringing requires a constant swimming against a major current of the culture of your father’s chosen nation. The fact that you did so successfully while so many others could not implies that you are, in fact, quite extraordinary.
It is sad, however, when the extraordinary have such contempt for the ordinary.
I checked all three links for hard numbers or claims, the first and third contain none or they are buried within hundreds of pages of text. The largest disparity on the second cite between two zip codes is a 16 year gap between age of death which is startling but I’m unsure how representative of the USA as a whole.
I don’t dispute social conditions and poverty can adversely effect healthcare, I was just wondering what the data was.
If you don’t want to help, what do you think will be the alternative?
Personally, I believe that your fear is irrational. I think it is clear that everyone is inherently curious and have a desire to learn. However, people can only take so much and the stress of life crushes the “spirit” of many people. It is a fundamental problem of education and a sense of security.
I think we could make drastic improvements in the social structure, but there’s a catch. Everyone’s got to pay. I.e. - Taxes. People simply don’t want to pay because they got theirs, and honestly life is hard enough as it is. It’s much easier to sit back and tell those “poor people” to figure it out on their own.
I thought you were interested in why just dropping dead isn’t a fun alternative to a life of deteriorating health.
Edible Hat, the inevitable result of our capitalistic system is why I favor society doing all that it can to make sure the top strata’s ever-expanding ice cream cone is “licked down” for the benefit of bottom. There’s no excuse for the Top 1% to complain about their tax burden when their income levels have risen practically exponentially, yet more and more people become impoverished. What the hell is that about? Are the wealthy harder working than they were just a decade ago, with everyone else becoming lazier? Who is generating all that extra productivity and why isn’t everyone benefiting from it? Why are people at the bottom–the working-class stiffs who literally sweat on the job–not benefiting as much as the folks at the top?
It is embarrassing that SNAP has swollen as much as it has, but I shudder to think what would happen if we didn’t have it. People call welfare spending “socialism”, but it actually deftly enables capitalism by allowing employers to keep labor costs low so they can enrich themselves. Why NOT just pay a cashier minimum wage? If she and her family can’t eat on that, she can use food stamps to cover the difference. The upside is cheap goods for us all. Cheap goods take some of the sting out of the fact that most people’s pay checks haven’t risen much. Food stamps keep the poor alive so they can continue toiling. Ten dollar pizzas delivered free to your door within 30 minutes mollify the others.
Without welfare, American-style capitalism would have collapsed permanently back in the 30s. Free market acolytes should get down on their knees and thank God for FDR and Lyndon B.
What does laziness have to do with poverty? Wealth is based on providing services and/or products that others want to give you money for, not on your work ethic. While a good work ethic is sometimes an indicator of how much your labor is worth, it is not the sole criterion. If you lack the education, the language skills, and the time that people want to pay for, your work ethic will only get you so far. Does Donald Trump work ten-thousand times harder than a coal miner, as his net worth would suggest?
I know that, and I know a lifetime of subpar healthcare sucks. I’ve seen medical people on this board baffle at a RX they find bizarre, but that in my experience is very common even in the USA if you are poor(if you’re curious it is RXing Ventolin/salbutamol as an asthma controller med to be used X times daily, instead of more expensive newer meds the patient can’t afford). No point in RXing your patient meds they will never be able to afford.
I wanted some hard numbers because we’re in GD, just how badly does being poor in the USA effect your health and average age of death?
agreed. It is a catch 22. I don’t think most people make the excuse that poverty is a result of exclusively poor choices, it’s just as easily the luck of the draw and being born into poverty already gets you 2 1/2 strikes against you. Just as being born rich give you a huge leg up financially. And TriPolar makes a great point. Whether born poor or rich people make dumb choices, and the consequences of those dumb choices are exacerbated by poverty. So it isn’t entirely the fault of the poor.
I’m not talking about health care. Look at the CDC page.
Ok.
A whole lot of factors and variables effects the quality of healthcare any one individual receives. One of which is wealth, and like most they are variables any one individual is pretty powerless to effect.
Am I right so far?
My point was that to some posters in this thread they believe wealth is one variable people have power over(I don’t totally agree) and they are aghast that a poor person would not strive to become wealthy. I was saying many of them are probably cognizant of this fact, but they not pursue wealth not because they are stupid but because they decide they would rather do other things with their life. Whether that is wise or not I can’t decide.
No. Look at what you are quoting, then see how you keep trying to make it all about healthcare. Healthcare isn’t immaterial, but it’s only mentioned in the first sentence. Why are you interpreting all of this as healthcare?
I’m not, from my very last post:
But no one has yet blamed people for being born to uneducated parents, or in a warzone, or black, or in Burma. They did blame people for being poor.
Wait, do you want me to say that many and varied circumstances affects the health of every person from conception to death? From genetics, to early childhood nutrition and environmental factors? Most totally beyond their control, obviously.
Yes I agree.
I think you’re missing the point that merely having money isn’t indicative of “doing everything right”. It can also mean you were born into a wealthy family, or you picked a winning lottery ticket.
Likewise, you can do everything right and STILL wind up poor - natural disaster, illness/disability/accident, a profession that looked promising 40 years ago is now obsolete, etc.
Poverty is a vicious cycle. It’s easy as an outsider to say “If you only do X, Y, and Z, then you won’t be poor anymore!” but when you come from multi-generational poverty , it affects everything. Your outlook on life, your ability to plan for the future, your ability to create achievable goals.
I’ve been mentoring a teenaged girl who is from a poor household right outside DC, and I’m frequently treated to reminders of how different our most basic perceptions are. For instance, her mom is about 5’6 and weighs 200 lbs. Most middle-class folks would call her overweight, especially since she carries all her weight in his mid-section. But the girl thinks her mom is thin and actually remarked that she hopes to be in the same shape when she gets to be her mom’s age. It is clear that obesity is so much the norm in her world, that her concept of what constitutes a healthy weight is off by about 50 lbs. So then you have to wonder: How many of her other perceptions are similarly off?
And can you really blame a kid for having skewed perceptions of what’s normal, when in their world, it is normal?
I don’t know what the solution is, to be honest. Some redistribution of wealth or job creation has to occur at some level unless we want the poverty cycle to become even harder to break from.
We had a recent thread in General Questions with the title:
Factual data: how many “welfare queens” versus “honest poor” ?
The consensus was that perhaps 2% of the people on welfare will really abuse it. Not much more then the abuse percentage in any other system where intensive control and sanctions are either not possible or not cost-effective.
But it is true that for most people, seeing (or reading a juicy outraged article on) entitled S’haniqua makes their blood boil far more then tales of other people abusing other systems. The outrage about Shaniqua is an outlet for the frustration most people feel about their jobs, but they still go there day in day out, while Shaniqua doesn’t. That just hits close to home.
In fact, that is one useful way to use the Shaniquas of this world. If reading about her really, really makes your blood boil, chances are you are very unhappy in you job, close to a burn out, and need to take some time off to find another job. And if reading that makes you foam at the mouth and say “I wish I could, but I can’t!” then you really need to take a long hard look at your priorities.
How are we defining works? I don’t expect it’ll be a great success at breaking the cycle of poverty, but I think it will alleviate the ills of poverty which should really be our goal in any case. Our system guarantees winners and losers, needs winners and losers. The winners receive outsize rewards, I think there is room for allowing all the innovation of positives of that system where you take some of the winnings from the winners and give it back to the house to redistribute.