I can think of at least one person who got away with a double murder because he was not pooe. He went to prison later, though. But now he’s out.
I marvel that a thread about being poor in the US has a discussion that includes paying $3000 a month on a mortgage or rent.
I know what you mean; I am living off of $1000 a month. My biggest splurge is paying for my Internet connection to browse Reddit and The Straight Dope. And I consider getting a burger at McDonalds as “going out to eat”.
I analyzed that example before; it’s talking about people with nearly $900k houses. But in fairness the person giving that example was trying to illustrate how that subsidy works, and especially since the 2018 tax law it only really works for pretty high income people. Median income people, let alone poor people, will now almost always have a larger standard deduction than itemized deductions so even if they have a house/mortgage the interest is effectively no longer deductible in millions more cases than previously. At the other end of the spectrum the new limit to interest on a 750k mortgage balance reduces the benefit on very expensive houses, which affects fewer people but is also significant in reducing the cost of that provision to around $25bil/yr in lost revenue, which is pretty minor to be mentioning as if a major pillar of tax inequality. And anyway, differing tax treatment is not exactly the same as where market prices (for say insurance, loans, store prices in poor areas etc), are higher for poorer people. I take ‘the cost of living’ to mean prices not taxes or govt benefits.
Back on the car/driving safety thing, I guess it’s worth considering if car inspections really affect it much. Though I’m less convinced emission inspections don’t affect emissions much. An earlier post against inspections admitted that a lot of pollution in a given category tends to come from a relatively few violators who are way, 10’s, 100’s, maybe more orders of magnitude above strict environmental rules. But then claimed emissions checks don’t address that. I’m not sure of the logic there. With safety you might argue a) modern cars just aren’t as prone to becoming really unsafe and b) drivers of any income level have a direct personal interest in not continually driving extremely unsafe cars, so generally will eventually get their car reasonably safe as money allows. Neither argument works nearly as well on emissions.
Also I was thinking about the politically influenced (I believe) tendency to different conclusions about safety inspections v the debate about giving undocumented immigrants drivers licenses. The argument for the latter often features the need to make the roads safer via qualification and testing of all drivers, but people on the right tend to value this less than ‘rule of law’ (as they see it): that states shouldn’t be condoning people being present contrary to ostensible federal immigration law as now written. On inspections it seems it tends a bit opposite: right leaning might emphasize the public safety aspect more, and left leaning more emphasize the difficulty of poor people in keeping their cars compliant, similarly when expressing opposition to people getting in trouble for driving without insurance. Thus one side might favor car safety inspections and licenses for only legal residents, and other side no car safety inspections but licenses for everyone present. I’m not saying this is directly ‘hypocritical’ on either side, but it’s the kind of variation that often arises between the political tribes as to which principal is more important depending on the issue.
so you don’t remember Andy Williams wife, who killed her lover and was only sentenced to 6 months in jail (!!) and didn’t even serve that because judge ‘it would be too hard on her’ (can you see Black/Latina women getting that result?? At the same time, a Black woman had to serve several years in prison on welfare charges) Poor people do not equal justice.
And sometimes it’s the little things: Shop-Rite was selling 10 cans of Progresso Soup for $10. If you didn’t have the money to get ten cans, or didn’t have the means to get ten cans home, they were $1.69 each.
Yes, I had the money and I have the strength to carry the ten cans the eight blocks home, but many do not.
What are you talking about? I was just musing over whether the differing outcomes are due to some sort of corruption/preferential treatment on the part of the legal system, or just because non-poor people have better access to, and ability to pay competent attorneys to help navigate any legal system interactions they may encounter.
I mean, looking at it from my side of the fence (the not rich, but not poor side), I have both the connections to find a competent attorney, as well as enough money to hire them if I had to. I suspect that would in pretty much all cases, result in a better outcome for me than if I was hiring some ambulance-chaser working on contingency whose ad I saw on the side of a bus, or if I couldn’t afford to find one at all.
No corruption/preferential treatment, just access to better resources.
Yes, think of the difference between a middle class person making $80,000/year with $50,000 in the bank; a poor person making $18,000/year with $50 in the bank; and a rich person, who it doesn’t matter how much they make a year, because they have $500 million in the bank. A $200 traffic ticket, $500 bail, or even $5,000 bail is well within the means of the middle class and rich person, but impossible for the poor person. So the middle class or rich person pay the fine or get out of jail and hire an attorney; basically just deal with the problem with some amount of non-life altering pain. For the poor person the problems just compound with unpaid tickets, months in jail waiting a trial, inadequate representation, etc. The net result is unequal justice.
There’s a whole family class component too that I’m not sure how to describe well. E.g. I was equiped to help a sibling make a slow, cross-country job transition that would have been very challenging on their own with minimal resources.
A little from column A, a little from column B.
There’s also a lot to be said for being from the same social and economic class that judges tend to come from (rich white males). Judges have a lot of discretion, so it really helps if they can see you as someone like them: a fundamentally good person who did something wrong, but has learned their lesson and will be better going forward.
This sort of thing is also how you get those outrageous “affluenza” results, where some rich frat boy gets a few months for a DUI that kills someone, or sexual assault. Because the judge remembers being a dumbass rich frat boy, and while he probably didn’t kill anyone and hopefully didn’t rape anyone, he did do plenty of dumb stuff that he doesn’t think defines him. This kid from a good family will probably put that rascally behavior behind him and straighten up and fly right just like he and his frat brothers did.
But if you’re a poor person driving on a suspended license with no insurance? Nothing in his experience to relate to there. Shoulder your responsibilities, parasite.
This isn’t necessarily corruption. Like, the elite families and universities aren’t paying the judge off. It’s just that judges are human and humans are partial and tribal even when we try really hard not to be.
Nitpick, (if you’re talking about the example of the woman who got six months for murder) criminal attorneys are not allowed to work on a contingency bases. And, thankfully, in many places (not all) the public defenders are the most competent and experienced attorneys one could hope for (although they are overworked)
I was thinking about civil cases or stuff like probate/estate stuff, more than criminal cases, when I was thinking contingency.
Still, there’s nothing special about the legal system screwing the poor.
The fundamental problem in nearly every example in the thread is that the lack of any sort of reserve capacity/slack, be it money, time, child care, etc… makes the poor suffer adverse consequences for a lot of things that people with more reserve capacity do not. That’s true if it’s some sort of home-related appliance or system breaking, whether it’s a sick child, vehicle inspection issues, or something else. And in many cases, this lack of reserve capacity causes follow-on effects which are also exacerbated by lack of reserve capacity.
But that’s not a problem that’s strictly limited to the poorest of the poor; I’d bet there’s a certain per-capita family income that above which, these sorts of things don’t often happen. And I’m willing to go further and bet that it’s not what we’d consider “poor” either, but probably somewhere in the realm of working class.
About a year ago, I got pulled over because I didn’t have a back plate. Some jerk had not only stolen my plate (with brand new tabs), they also stole or more likely threw my license plate frame away because it was also gone.
During my conversation with Officer Friendly, I learned that I could go to the Motor Vehicle department and order a new plate, then print the official “new plate on the way” sign to hang in my back window. We agreed that if I did it right then on my smart phone, he wouldn’t need to write a fix-it ticket which would have required me taking the time to have the repair inspected and signed off. As I had a smart phone, and also had 40 bucks available on my debit card, I was able to deal with the issue right away. I didn’t get a ticket, the encounter took less than 10 minutes and when I got home I was able to print off my new plate sign.
This was annoying, but I am more upset about losing my public library fundraising license plate frame than anything.
It would have been a much bigger deal to someone who didn’t have a smart phone and money on a card. If the cop was nice, that person would have been allowed to drive home, but nowhere else until the plate was replaced. If you don’t have a computer, you need to go to the library or a friend’s house to use one. If you don’t have the money to pay for a new plate, you need to work until you have it. Not having transportation is a serious hardship for anyone in that spot.
And this is one of those things that could be easily made better by a government system that tried to serve victims rather than punish them or make them jump through the hoops of bureaucracy.
Police officers could just carry those printouts and give you one! They could record the theft of the plate and that could trigger the DMV to send you a new one.
And, craziest of thoughts, maybe we shouldn’t make the victims of license plate thefts pay for their replacement?