Hey, pick your xxx-ist. It’s not like it matters what fantasy land these impossible ideas come from. And your post is so racist.
Probably. Like I said, I’m not certain whether this would be a good or bad idea overall. I’m just pointing out there are downsides that need to be weighed in the consideration.
I can give a personal data point. My nieces live in a city where you can apply to have you kids attend a different school than the one in your local district. The local school where they lived wasn’t considered very good so my sister applied to have them attend a better school in a more upscale district.
I know my nieces were not completely happy about the transfer. They now felt like they were in the “poor kids” group at their new school because they could see that many of the other kids came from families that had more money. My nieces eventually ended up going back to their local school (admittedly wanting to go to school with friends from their neighbourhood was also a major factor).
It doesn’t. There, just as informative.
In case you aren’t following along, it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, this idea of forcibly dispersing the poor is not based in reality. So pick whatever fantasy authoritarian ideology you want, it’s still fantasy land. How will you force people to live in a place they would otherwise not live?
coms
Considerably less, actually, based on your post.
It is not a matter of forcing the poor to live among the middle class, it is a matter of forcing the middle class to accept that, to which there is no objection both conceivable and defensible.
If you’re going to “disburse the poor” through some sort of forced government relocation program, why don’t we just go all-in and disburse them into shipping containers to be dropped in the ocean and be rid of them?
Oh that’s right. It’s because we don’t live in a totalitarian society.:smack:
Poor people live in undesirably dense housing in the worst parts of town because those are the only areas they can afford. When those neighborhoods become gentrified, the poor people get pushed out as wealthier people drive up home prices.
I don’t really know what’s better. To be the poorest kid in some affluent town where they are viewed as weird oddball losers whose parents can’t afford to buy them a BMW for their birthday. Or to be completely surrounded by poor people where the worst druggie criminal trash are considered cool role models to look up to.
Somehow I think policies or urban designs that create socioeconomically homogeneous enclaves are a bad thing. It just encourages people to stick with what they know, reinforcing biases and misconceptions.
No, because we want to benefit them as opposed to killing them, and benefiting them does not require a totalitarian society, which would probably kill them.
(my bold)
This word means what you think it means. Unless you are devoid of imagination to conceive of a person against being forced to live where they would not otherwise live. Or you know, you can look at the posters in this thread who think the idea is un-workable, to be generous.
Every time I read these really whacky ideas I take solace knowing that they are entirely fantasy…well, more nightmarish but not based in reality none the less. And the salient point:
But this is also why these places are a crab-bucket. You have the support when you are the neediest person in the circle, but you’re on the hook to support whomever is the neediest at any given minute. Get a slightly better job? Now everyone lives slightly, slightly better, and you probably are never the neediest anymore. And once you’ve done that, you’re even more stuck, because everyone has adjusted to relying on you–maybe not for daily expenses but to touch in an emergency. You’re the one that makes “good money”. So you can’t decrease your income even a little to, say, take a job with more opportunity for advancement long term, and you can’t save anything yourself to even make your own life more stable–like buying a really reliable car, or a house, or just a true rainy day fund. And it isn’t about people being deliberately exploitative or anything: there’s just so much immediate need.
I am honestly not sure what I think of the idea but the experiment has been tried and we do have some results which should be part of the discussion.
Okay, these efforts were not exactly the same thing as the op. People were free to move to where they wanted to with those vouchers and most moved to neighborhoods where there were already high minority and poverty rates, not dispersing them as much could have occurred. As another article evaluating this data puts it:
So recognize the trade off: avoiding any negative impact on the middle class communities requires keeping the dispersed fairly widely dispersed, no clustering of them in any neighborhood; dispersing the poor that widely isolates people from their support networks.
I don’t want to “benefit them”. It’s not like I don’t want them to benefit, but it’s not something I feel is a personal priority for me. I’m sure others feel the same way.
We live in a free society. So you can’t really “force” people to accept other people. You also can’t force people to live where they don’t want to live.
Well said, and absolutely true.
This thread is an eye opener. I never knew this issue was so complex and complicated. I am glad I live in a developing nation where the majority is below poverty. We don’t have these issues.
I see here some very strange concepts of what it’s like to be poor. Most poor people care about:
A. Taking care of and spending time with their family
B. Working a job that provides for them.
C. Maintaining their health and safety.
D. Living with integrity to their spiritual beliefs.
Seriously, poor people are not some alien species with completely incomprehensible world views. They really are not different than anyone else. What they do have, however, are often different sets of problems. I grew up in a Section 8 housing complex, and the vast majority of people who were “chronically poor” had untreated mental disorders, untreated addictions, or physical health problems. What can you do? If you have schizophrenics heroin addicts and the waiting list for drug treatment is five years, what is going to happen? If you have advanced cancer, no health insurance, and are too sick to work, what is going to happen?
It’s also worth remembering that while the feckless young men are an easy face for poverty, most of the poor are children, the elderly, and mothers. Most of these people are ordinary, normal, perfectly nice people. And despite the US’s relatively low social mobility, most poor people are only poor for a short period of time. Half of the US population will experience poverty at some point in their life. Most people move past that, in part thanks to the social supports we’ve set up to make sure that happens.
Anyway, I’m not sure what i have to contribute beyond that. I enjoyed growing up where I did because there were always a lot of kids running around. But looking back, it would have been better for my social mobility if I had exposure to a wider and more diverse group of people. For one, I went to college because I knew that was the best thing for me to do, but I had few models for how to transition from college into a career. It would have been nice if I’d had a few examples around me illustrating what that looks like and how that path works.
Oh, and when I lived in the “third world,” my neighbors actually did mow (well, rake and cut) my yard every day.
One of the better ways out of poverty (perhaps the best way?) is better education and training and with that, better access to better jobs. But making those things available and in an affordable manner is probably just as complex as the many other issues discussed here.
I believe that a lot of 3rd world countries are the way they are because they’ve basically written off more than half their population (i.e. all the women, and most likely a huge percentage of the men too).
What does a “poor person” look or act like, anyway? I know there are low-income people living in my apartment building, but the owners don’t care as long as they pay their rent and don’t disturb the neighbors. For example, we aren’t allowed to have clotheslines here, but some people hang their laundry off the balcony. My friend who lives upstairs reported one family for doing it repeatedly, but they still do so I’m guessing they aren’t violating any rules. I personally don’t care, because they clearly bring it in when it’s dry, and honestly, this might be a family that sometimes has to choose between this and buying groceries. Lots of our residents are college students, too (the ones who live here are usually married and/or have children) so you know they don’t have a lot of money, either.
And my grandmother got Section 8 for a few years before she moved to a nursing home; she lived in a senior high-rise that took it, and was eligible. She paid $125 a month for an apartment that would have been $400 if she hadn’t had a subsidy. She was also on Medicaid. Those programs didn’t exist back in the 1950s, when she was raising 4 kids by herself.
I had a similar experience a few years ago while job-hunting. I was at Forest Park Hospital in St. Louis, which is in a ghetto and literally across the Interstate from the zoo and a very nice park, and when I walked in, the building seemed to be on lockdown. Usually, when you walk into a hospital lobby, people are walking around, but that wasn’t the case here. I really didn’t feel safe, so I turned around and left. 
Variations on the following have gotten me timed out of several websites. Oh, well.
American poverty, 2013:
Morbid obesity
All the latest electronic equipment
Hair weaves, sculptured nails, and grillz if you’re black
Full-body tattoos and exotic facial piercings if you’re white
Designer clothes
Can’t get basic medical care for the kids, but they regularly go to amusement parks
Before get accused of racism, before I moved back here, I lived in a small city in the Ozarks that is 98% white, and meth has absolutely destroyed that region. This town had a surprising problem with homeless teenagers; they couldn’t live with their parents, and couch-surfed from friend’s house to friend’s house. Some private donors decided to start a “backpack program” when they found out that some kids’ only meals were those provided by the school, and this was discontinued when it was discovered that the parents were eating the food, or more commonly trading it and the backpacks for drugs. :mad:
I volunteered at a food pantry when I was in college (at which time I was probably eligible for food stamps, but I never applied for them because I didn’t need them) and was VERY surprised to see that the clientele was mostly senior citizens. :eek: I had expected it to mostly be single moms, and there were some, but most of those were either recently widowed, or had their first child before they were 18 years old. Another surprise was the number of single fathers, and their story was always the same: Ex-wife isn’t paying child support, and the courts won’t help him out because he’s a man. :rolleyes: Last time I checked, it costs the same amount to raise kids, regardless of who’s doing it.
Someone on another website told a story about working in the Australian outback, and encountering a 38-year-old GREAT-grandmother. :eek: She had brought her 12-year-old granddaughter to the hospital, in labor; the girl’s 25-year-old mother could not because she was drunk.
I haven’t seen much of this. I do see some acrylic nails, but a closer looks shows that they’re being filled in once a month instead of every two weeks like they should. I don’t see “weaves” much, though I see some wigs. I definitely don’t see high end electronics (except for the big screen tvs), I see flip phones, candybar phones and the occasional first gen smartphone, but very occasional. I’ve never seen a grill in real life, but I’ve seen lots of missing teeth and chronically infected gums. i don’t see designer clothes unless they’re years out of date, but i do see lots of cheaply made designer knockoffs sold as discount stores like Dots.
I see a lot of obesity, that is true. I also see neighborhoods without a decent grocery store or produce stand, but plenty of convenience stores and fast food…and a rich culture of high calorie delicious soul food invented to support hard physical labor that people aren’t doing anymore. It’s something I do have to work hard to educate about, for sure.
Haven’t heard any amusement park plans, but a trip to the casino once a month is definitely something that draws a lot of excitement and anticipation…but lots of them go for the buffet at least as much as the gambling!
But there’s your crab pot problem again. When all your family and friends are headed out tot he casino for a monthly outing or a birthday, what are you going to do? Stay home and be virtuously bored and $50 richer at the end of the day? You can bet Uncle Vernon’s gonna bum that $50 off you when he gets home, anyway. Might as well enjoy yourself for a day.