Do we have less compassion for the poor?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I don’t like to ascribe any sort of morality to it. But in a country with relatively free labor markets, your salary is largely a product of the value of your skill sets in the labor market where you reside. Computer programmers, lawyers and accountants tend to make more than waitresses and bartenders and fast food workers because those jobs require specialized skills, training and education. There are fewer people who are qualified to do them and value those jobs can potentially provide place a premium on those who can do that job well.

And in economics, there is such a thing as a “moral hazard”. Which basically means that the unintended consequences of providing welfare and other safety nets is that it provides disincentives for people to engage in behaviors that would prevent the need for welfare in the first place. It also provides disincentives to find meaningful work, as there is little marginal benefit to taking a minimum wage job over making a bit less than minimum wage doing nothing.
On the flip side of that, in this country (USA) we do tend to fetishize wealth and power. People are fascinated by rich celebrities, powerful business tycoons, and 23 year old Silicon Valley startup billionaires.

We value the end goal and trappings of wealth but we don’t value the process of education and hard work required to get there. So we tend to deride the poor not because they are lazy or unskilled or uneducated but simply BECAUSE they are poor.

You could be the worlds laziest asshole jerkoff, but if you own a mansion and a yacht, a million people will watch you on the Bravo network.
Which leads to the whole problem of income disparity. When all the wealth is concentrated in a small group of individuals, then what is defined as “hard work” is typically work that benefits those individuals who hold all the wealth. CEOs, corporate lawyers and investment bankers and management consultants make so much money, not because the work is so valuable to the community. They make so much money because their work is valuable to people who have money. It becomes very self-perpetuating.

22

At the same time, it will open opportunities for people to staart their own businesses. The existence of those sort of stores cut off the main route to get out of poverty. And the new businesses can hire people with low skills.

23

I can’t speak to folks in other places, but it seems to me that most Americans still cleave to the notion that this is fundamentally a fair world. It would not be a fair world if people were on the bottom due principally to bad luck, so the collective American mindset downplays the role of luck and emphasizes the role of “choice”. If you’re poor, you must have made bad choices. The fact that we don’t all have the opportunity to make good choices doesn’t really matter to a lot of people.

24

It’s not a stereotype.

25

In October 2007 I was worth $50k a year plus about another $20k in benefits.

In November 2007 I was suddenly worth NOTHING.

How does that square with what you just said? Oh right - obsolesce. Maybe I should just go down to the landfill and allow myself to be buried with the plastic bags and burger wrappers?

Your concept of “free labor market” only works when there are sufficient jobs to go around. We STILL have more job seekers than jobs.

So… if two people have the exact same skill set and, say, both have 20 years experience working, but one is employed and the other is not for years at a time how do you explain that? Is the second person a lazy piece of scum or are there simply fewer jobs available for people of that skill set?

What mostro said about the concept of a “fair world” is spot on.

26

Yes it is.

I am not overweight, spendthrift, lazy, or irresponsible. I am college educated. I have no children. I worked in the professional world 30 years. Yet I am poor. I could point to a lot of other similar examples, such as my landlord, who used to clear 7 digits a year in profit and last year made all of $20k - nevermind he has a master’s degree and 35 years running his own business.

But hey, believe the myths if it helps you sleep at night and fool yourself that it can’t happen to you.

27

Poverty myths, busted

28

I think you have it backwards. We have less compassion, and therefore the pictures are different.

The only difference between now and then is you have less poor people now. Bring the unemployment numbers back to 33% and we’ll have compassion again.

Right now though, what sort of compassion am I supposed to have? I’m aware that some people like Broomstick exist that fall on hard times, but what I am supposed to do about it? Broomstick seems OK to me. And I do not think people who are poor need help. I think starving, homeless, or sick people need help, but not poor people.

Being poor sucks terribly, but I do not think we should help by trying to get people out of poverty. There will always be poverty and people living on very little money. What I would do is focus on teaching people how to be poor, rather than teaching them how to escape poverty.

I think my social responsibility is to ensure that people can live in poverty without starving or being homeless. Helping people escape poverty is not my problem.

29

Those of you who claim that we have no compassion for the poor have an “inconvenient truth” of your own to face–the remarkable level of charitable giving in this country.

Considering the fact that Americans give billions of dollars to charity every year, I would say that your premise is fatally flawed.

Furthermore–although many people on this board will hate to hear this–religious people are more likely to give to charity than non-religious people, and Republicans are more likely to give to charity than Democrats.

30

Because of how a good portion of their employees are on food stamps.

31

I think they perpetuate each other. Americans in the 1930s were no different from Americans today. You heard the same arguments about the poor being lazy and stupid that you hear today. But those arguments lost their influence when the poor were portrayed in the media in a sympathetic light–as hard-working, moral people. People like “us”.

When the poor are portrayed as racial minorities or “white trash”, they don’t seem all that sympathetic.

The face of poverty has changed. Poverty in the 1930s meant walking around barefoot, corn mush for dinner. We don’t see that now, thank goodness. But “rich” in the 1930s meant owning a house and two cars and being able to send your kids to college. This is the middle class today. All boats have floated upwards since the 1930s. But the poor today are just as demoralized as the poor of the 1930s.

How about just voting for political candidates who are in favor of living wages and improved social services, rather than political candidates who’d rather give government hand-outs to corporate interests?

If you donate to charity, why not write a small check to something like the Boys and Girls club, so that poor working parents don’t have to worry about their children’s welfare when school is let out?

I mean, compassion isn’t just an emotion. It’s an action. To be honest, I don’t feel a whole lot of anything when I think about poor people. Right now I don’t personally know anyone on welfare or who lives in the projects. I can’t relate to poor people issues on a personal level. But I can use my imagination to realize how hard it must be to be a productive citizen and be mired in poverty. Since I benefit from everyone being productive, it benefits me to care how to maximize productivity out of everyone. And this requires a modicum of compassion. Not in feeling, but in action.

It’s easy to put down an arbitrary red line and say that everyone who’s above it isn’t suffering, and thus isn’t deserving of help. I think a person who has no choice but to attend a crappy school needs extra help, regardless of how well-fed or clothed they are. I think public transit needs to be maintained and enhanced, even though the majority of its users have shelter and access to medical care. Productivity requires having more than just food, shelter, and clothing.

People said this in the 1930s, before later social welfare initiatives and reforms changed our concept of American poverty. If poverty is such a static, hopeless thing, there should be Hoovervilles in every major city and children should still be walking to school barefoot. But we don’t see these things anymore because we as a society have decided we don’t want poverty to look like that. We could decide we don’t want poverty to look like it does now. I agree that there will always be a bottom rung. But we have a choice over how that bottom rung will look like and how desperate it has to be.

Don’t know what you mean by this. Care to elaborate?

If you care about crime, public health, and the general welfare, you should care about how we can mitigate the negative effects of income inequality. Your neighbor can be well-fed and well-sheltered all day long, but if you’re driving around in a flying car with unfettered access to immortality drugs, while he’s stuck on a moped and slowly dying on your exhaust fumes, your neighbor will never stop trying to break into your delux mansion in the sky.

32

:dubious: Really. Poor fathers spend more time with their kids? Well obviously sitting around the house without a job is somehow relevant to the concept of spending time with your kids.

Adaher got it right. There are demographic groups of generational slackers just as there are other definable groups of poor. Saying any one group represents the impoverished is false.

But make no mistake there is such a thing as multi-generation poverty that is passed down parent to child. We’ve all seen it. It’s plain as day and the social markers are obvious. Poor grades and low school attendance. When parents have no skillsets that extends down to the act of parenting itself. Children are not taught even the most basic of skills.

It is not nor can it be the definition of poverty.

33

That story about WalMart was interesting.

More interesting when you think that years ago, the major retailers like Sears and Montgomery Wards, actually did pay people a good wage. Most salespeople worked off of commissions.

But then WalMart came along and we just want the cheapest. I’d gladly pay more for items if it meant employees were paid a living wage.

As for McDonalds, they have fast food in Europe but their employees are paid a fair wage and are not on food stamps.

34

Years ago, I worked at Sears, part time, in 1982 and 1983. Most salespeople certainly did not work on commission, and we got minimum wage or a few cents above it, not “a good wage.” Only a few people worked on commission, like appliance salespeople.

My mom worked at Sears in the mid-70’s. Same deal. Working retail has always sucked.

35

Montgomery Ward is defunct now and Sears is barely hanging on. I am sure that many of their former employees remember their heyday fondly but that won’t put that won’t put food on the table today. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the U.S. and Canada. Not all of their positions pay badly and they generally have a straight path to let front-line employees work their way up. For example, assistant store managers make about 50K in areas where that is a good income while store managers make 90K or even much more in some areas. They have lots of other positions that pay a living wage by any standard and training programs to help qualified people transition into them. That isn’t bad for something that doesn’t strictly require a college degree. I am not that concerned about the fact that Wal-Mart has millions of employees that make at or near minimum wage unless they have to stay that way for the long-term. Lots of other retail businesses including small ones use the same model but Wal-Mart gets flack for it because they are the biggest.

You are free to frequent businesses that pay all employees well above the minimum wage but you are going to have trouble finding them. People claim that they support them in theory but usually vote the other way with their wallet. Costco is one of the few exceptions.

36

My father worked part-time at Sears while he was assistant principal. He probably didn’t pull in that much more than minimum wage.

But that was the 1970s. Minimum wage has not kept up with the increased costs of consumer goods, housing, and education. I’d be curious to see how many married couples working minimum wage jobs back in the 1960s and 1970s are able to buy homes versus their counterpart today.

37

I’m not sure I agree with the original premise. Is there less compassion for the poor? According to this site we’re spending roughly as much on welfare (as a %GDP) as ever. What evidence are we using to say that there is less compassion for the poor?

38

I think people are poor for many reasons. You mention low pay and consistent low pay (as opposed to increased pay through a series of promotions over years) is certainly one.

Another is that some people just don’t want to live in the capitalist box; the career, the mortgage, worrying out their work hierarchy, swallowing corproate shit until all dignity and integrity evaporates, sitting on a commuter train for 30 years, etc. Not al of that need apply, of course.

This world creates all kinds of poor, some not as poor as they might seem, some more so.

39

Except they cherry picked numbers to use. When comparing increases in things like houses you have to compare square footage and not just the cost of houses. On top of that the value of houses rose significantly because the government funded those purchases with Fannie Mae. Housing prices continued to rise above the rate of inflation until it all came crashing down.

Anytime something is subsidized there is a tendency for the price to rise because it removes market forces. but look at products that aren’t subsidized and the price works on market forces. You can buy a 26" TV for far less than the adjusted cost in the 60’s and 70’s.

When people complain about companies like Walmart the same market forces are in place. Too many people chasing too few jobs. The current political solution is to add 2 new immigrants to every new job created. Do the math. What would be the outcome of such a policy? The lowest people on the totem pole are now competing with illegal immigrants. What is the unemployment rate for demographic groups that were struggling to get by? Black unemployment in August 2007 was 7.6%. Now it’s 11.4% Currently white unemployment is 5.6%. Latino unemployment is 7.3% and White Unemployment is 5.3%.

40

Most people who are really poor are the ones having babies when they are 17 and have no skills and will likely never even finish high school.

There are outliers, but the stereotypes are not entirely unfounded. I can’t bring myself to feel guilty for the single mother of 3 kids. There’s no bad luck in that. She knowingly set her fate in motion.