# What would happen if all the poor people left America? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 8, 2011, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934 "2011-08-08T11:44:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/22 "2011-08-08T23:00:28Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > Then what the hell training _do_ you have? You sound more like one of the exceptions I was talking about. Software Development & Project Management of said software development. I omitted the people who worked for me in those areas as I was just stating the jobs I could not do. I could not do the jobs of the people who work for those people, though - the actual programmers. I was a programmer once, so I have the capability, but certainly do not know enough about modern languages and tools to do the job these days. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/23 "2011-08-09T01:39:08Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > Is the average middle-class person less able than the average poor person to do the typical “poor person” job? I think not. It’s more complicated that this, don’t you think? Consider this: If most middle-class people have jobs and are (relatively) skilled, what would make them suddenly want to do unskilled “poor person” jobs? Well, you say, if you raise the pay for those jobs, they’ll become more attractive to richer folks. “Poor” jobs would start offering competitive wages. Otherwise, there would be little incentive for a cubicle worker to suddenly start picking apples or emptying garbage pails, right? You have to raise the apple picker’s pay so that it is as much if not more than the average “middle-class” job, and then the applications will come. Problem solved. Yet in order for this to happen, your “more skill required=more pay” theory has to be contradicted. This paradox tells me that the operative factor is demand, not the amount of skills you have. If demand for janitors is much higher than the supply of willing janitors, then it doesn’t matter how many skills it takes to do that job: the job will be difficult to fill and the pay will reflect that. Consider that garbage collectors get paid relatively high wages compared to other “dirty” jobs. Probably because it is perceived as hard, tireless, nasty work. But the same skills used in that line of work are probably no different than the skills used in jobs that pay considerably less. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/24 "2011-08-09T02:26:07Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Who would be doing all the low-paying jobs that the poor now do? You know-the jobs with few(if any) benefits? In my experience, me. Since I’m the one that has to bust my ass when low-paid employees show up late or call in sick. In my wife’s experience those jobs help make skilled workers more productive. Her first job was at a reasonably small tech company that to save money didn’t have janitorial type services. Each employee pitched in during the week to do those task. Would it kill you to empty out your own trash bin? When I was in college to save money our dorm paid students to clean instead of hiring a service. Worked well enough. A lot of these jobs used to be done by students, would they be considered poor? ---
**Author:** ![ptug101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e36b37/32.png) [@ptug101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ptug101)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/25 "2011-08-09T04:45:40Z")
In capitalism somebody has to be considered poor,so that is imposssible. what would happen is that your service products like cable,nannies, groceries etc. the prices would sky rocket because the low wage workers, who do those jobs would be gone. They would have to pay more educated people those jobs thus driving up the price even though there wasnt any new demand for said products supply was loss. Rising inflation would cause middle class people to become poor because, there income would be eating up by inflationary prices. Its whats happening now with gas prices as the Chinese,Brazilians,Indians and Russians,they become richer and they buy more oil,thus driving up the gas prices and depleting your real income. or the other scenario is that they would not be able to fill these jobs, and they would have to import(immigrants) poor people. so the cycle starts over again. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/26 "2011-08-09T16:04:35Z")
> [@ptug101](#): > > In capitalism somebody has to be considered poor,so that is imposssible. Why? If you just mean that if incomes and assets are not held absolutely equal, some people will make more money and have more money than others, and those people will be rich and the people who have slightly lower assets will be poor, then fine. But what does that have to do with capitalism? ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2011, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/27 "2011-08-09T20:31:08Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > This paradox tells me that the operative factor is demand, not the amount of skills you have. If demand for janitors is much higher than the supply of willing janitors, then it doesn’t matter how many skills it takes to do that job: the job will be difficult to fill and the pay will reflect that. Consider that garbage collectors get paid relatively high wages compared to other “dirty” jobs. Probably because it is perceived as hard, tireless, nasty work. But the same skills used in that line of work are probably no different than the skills used in jobs that pay considerably less. Generally I agree with you that skills are only one factor in the supply/demand equation. But there are a lot of jobs that require nothing more than the ability to show up and perform a specified physical movement eight hours a day. If you watch an assembly line, even one that produces a fairly complex finished product, the jobs are so dumbed down that when a new person shows up, it takes about five minutes to explain how to do it. For jobs like that, there are so many people available to do them relative to the demand, that the unskilled nature of the job crowds out all the other factors. I think also that trash haulers tend to make more money than similarly skilled workers because they often work for the government and are often in unions, which means that their wages are determined by a political process and not simply supply/demand. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/28 "2011-08-10T14:15:23Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > I find that hard to believe. I could not do the jobs of most of the people who reported directly to me: > > [ol] > [li]Our controller, because I do not have financial training[/li][li]Our IT guy, because I do not have IT/network training[/li][li]Our VP of Sales, because I am not a salesman[/li][li]Our CTO, because I am not technical enough[/li][li]Our head of QA, because I have no QA training.[/li][li]Need I continue?[/li][/ol] > > None of them could do my job, though. WTF do you do? ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/29 "2011-08-10T18:32:53Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > WTF do you do? Run a software company of 30 - 40 people. (Well, I did - I am retired now). I am not sure if you saw my response to a similar question, but I omitted the jobs that I could do. In a small company the guy at the top has to manage people doing a wide variety of things and could not possibly be truly competent to do them all themselves. I certainly believe myself to be capable of learning all the jobs I listed, except possibly VP of Sales, but there would be little point doing years of learning when I can simply hire experts and manage them to do the work. I know enough to set objectives and manage people to achieve them. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/30 "2011-08-10T18:41:14Z")
In a well running free-market society, problems with supply and demand are self-correcting. So, if one day, there are no longer enough people willing to work in the field for $7 an hour, and we need the food, then the offered wage (and with it, most likely, the cost of food) will rise until it finds someone willing to take it. If necessary, it would rise high enough that well-paid white collar professionals seriously consider becoming field workers because it pays so much. Now, our economy is not perfect and there are other forces (e.g. regulatory matters), so this doesn’t always work fully in real life. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/31 "2011-08-10T19:29:34Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > This is just fundamentally wrong. I don’t want to imply anything about you, so let’s call the person who typically makes this argument “George.” George has never worked with his hands; maybe he’s a professor or a writer or something. He sees guys running jackhammers at a construction site and feels that he could never, ever do that eight hours a day. George may be right about that, but his mistake is thinking that nobody else could do it either, except maybe illegal immigrants. But the fact is, many people could do that. They might not like it for the first few weeks, but they’d get used to it, especially if it was the only job available. Maybe George knew some people like this when he was a kid, but he’s forgotten they exist because they are rarely seen at faculty parties or Whole Foods. > > Low-paying jobs are low-paying because anyone can do them. Offer $20 to have someone do brain surgery for an hour, and you’ll find no takers. Offer $20 to have your yard raked for an hour, and you’ll find many takers, some of whom will say, “I’ll do it for $10.” The wages for different jobs are not inscribed on a stone tablet at the Department of Labor. > > Supposing that the poorest 20% are composed mostly of people with no particular talents, taking those people out of the economy would cause the pay for unskilled jobs to go up. At some point you’d run out of people who would “do it for $10”. I think you think the work force’s ability to market between jobs is a lot more hyperelastic than it actually is. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/32 "2011-08-10T19:32:35Z")
> [@OneMissedPost](#): > > What about interns doing all the work for their bosses? What about employees doing all the work for the CEOs? Employees in general who go above the typical job requirements? There are many subordinates who do all the work for their bosses and get little to no credit. Also, very few bosses will acknowledge that there are certain jobs in which they depend on their subordinates to do because they in fact can’t do it. Let me tell you that those people doing all the work aren’t complaining about the fact that they make too much money. > > Your experience is not everyone’s experience. If your argument is solely based on your experience, you do not have much of an argument. In my experience, most administrative assistants can do their boss’s work if they stick with it for any length of time, but the admin asst. tend to be lower and middle middle class and the bosses tend to be upper middle class, and it’s very rare that the admin. assts. are able to cross that line … cause the upper middle class types are incapable of thinking of the admin. assts. purely in terms of skill. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/33 "2011-08-10T19:33:41Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > I find that hard to believe. I could not do the jobs of most of the people who reported directly to me: > > [ol] > [li]Our controller, because I do not have financial training[/li][li]Our IT guy, because I do not have IT/network training[/li][li]Our VP of Sales, because I am not a salesman[/li][li]Our CTO, because I am not technical enough[/li][li]Our head of QA, because I have no QA training.[/li][li]Need I continue?[/li][/ol] > > None of them could do my job, though. Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/34 "2011-08-10T21:37:00Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > I think you think the work force’s ability to market between jobs is a lot more hyperelastic than it actually is. I assume you mean the ability of people to switch from one job to another. That, too is greatest at the low end. It’s not unusual to find a guy who has driven a cab, been a security guard, stocked shelves, etc. It’s very unusual to find a guy who has been a surgeon and a lawyer. Though they do exist! ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/35 "2011-08-10T21:38:38Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > In my experience, most administrative assistants can do their boss’s work if they stick with it for any length of time, but the admin asst. tend to be lower and middle middle class and the bosses tend to be upper middle class, and it’s very rare that the admin. assts. are able to cross that line … cause the upper middle class types are incapable of thinking of the admin. assts. purely in terms of skill. In my experience most admins\* think\* they can do their boss’s work. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/36 "2011-08-10T22:04:39Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > In my experience, most administrative assistants can do their boss’s work if they stick with it for any length of time. In my experience I have never come across an administrative assistant who could come remotely close to doing their boss’s work. ---
**Author:** ![Sateryn76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@Sateryn76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sateryn76)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2011, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/37 "2011-08-10T22:25:09Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > In my experience I have never come across an administrative assistant who could come remotely close to doing their boss’s work. I have been a paralegal at this firm for 13+ years. I could not do 50% of my bosses job. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/38 "2011-08-11T15:53:18Z")
> [@amarone](#): > > What would happen if all the people at or under the poverty line somehow left or disappeared (let’s not worry about the logistics)? Let’s call it the poorest 20% of the population. > > This is obviously a significant number - some 60 million people. There would be issues with respect to the reduction in consumers, given that consumption is 70% of GDP, but they are the consumers who spend the least. > > Local and state tax revenues would fall, but the Federal tax position would be improved. Medicaid expenditure would fall. I don’t know how Medicare would fare overall - poor people pay less into it (to the extent that many don’t qualify for Medicare at all, but have to rely on Medicaid), but use it more until they die earlier. Ditto for Social Security. > > In the “rich” thread, some people are saying that the rich would be replaced fairly seamlessly by their near subordinates. If the poor left, would the nearly-poor fall and replace them, or would the poor have largely disappeared permanently? > > This is a racial angle, of course. The disappearance would disproportionately include minorities and immigrants. I am not particularly interested in discussing that - this thread is intended to be more about effects on the economy. Toa large extent the growth in GDP is tied to teh growth in population. A 20% reduction in population would mean a pretty big GDP hit. There would be a lot of excess capital and we would have a recession. There is a big difference between replacing the 100,000 or so multi millionaires and losing 20% of your population. If we lost the poor and they were replaced by engineers from India and China, then the country would probably be better off. ---
**Author:** ![amarone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2011, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/39 "2011-08-11T16:08:08Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Toa large extent the growth in GDP is tied to teh growth in population. A 20% reduction in population would mean a pretty big GDP hit. There would be a lot of excess capital and we would have a recession. Do you have any idea of the size of the hit? The bottom 20% does not earn much of the total income. I didn’t find a figure for the bottom 20%, but [this article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States) includes a reference to the bottom 10% earning about 1% of total income, so the bottom 20% might be about 3% Loss of that spending power would not hit GDP much, but I do not know the definition of “income” in those figures. It may not include welfare or EITC, for example. In the same article, in the section headed “Quintiles”, it gives the median number of income earners per household. The median for the bottom quintile is zero. Given that they give this in whole numbers, the mean could be close to half. Nevertheless, it indicates that the majority of the poorest 20% do not work. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/40 "2011-08-16T13:47:38Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, what happened in communities that were particularly devastated by war or epidemic, since these disporportionately kill off the poor? In 14th-Century Europe, lower-class survivors of the Black Death started demanding higher wages, owing to the labor shortage. Of course, some “communities” – villages – died off entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934/41 "2011-08-16T20:44:09Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > This is just fundamentally wrong. I don’t want to imply anything about you, so let’s call the person who typically makes this argument “George.” George has never worked with his hands; maybe he’s a professor or a writer or something. He sees guys running jackhammers at a construction site and feels that he could never, ever do that eight hours a day. George may be right about that, but his mistake is thinking that nobody else could do it either, except maybe illegal immigrants. But the fact is, many people could do that. They might not like it for the first few weeks, but they’d get used to it, especially if it was the only job available. Maybe George knew some people like this when he was a kid, but he’s forgotten they exist because they are rarely seen at faculty parties or Whole Foods. > > Low-paying jobs are low-paying because anyone can do them. Offer $20 to have someone do brain surgery for an hour, and you’ll find no takers. Offer $20 to have your yard raked for an hour, and you’ll find many takers, some of whom will say, “I’ll do it for $10.” The wages for different jobs are not inscribed on a stone tablet at the Department of Labor. > > Supposing that the poorest 20% are composed mostly of people with no particular talents, taking those people out of the economy would cause the pay for unskilled jobs to go up. At some point you’d run out of people who would “do it for $10”. You miss the point. The problem is not that low wage jobs are impossible to fill with unskilled labour - they’re not (even though I would disagree that they involve no knowledge or skill whatsoever. I for one couldn’t change a spark plug to save my life). The problem is that people with better qualifications don’t \*want \*to do them, not only because the pay and benefits are crap but also because they typically involve heavy lifting, horrible hours, hazardous materials, the great outdoors, noise pollution, mindless repetition, physical confrontations or all of the above. IOW, do you expect an M.D. to pick up the trash, greet at WalMart or work a jackhammer ? If he has a choice, of course he won’t. The flipside is that even if they were desperate enough to want to pick up the trash, as you say the worker shortage would drive salaries up, as would the expectations of all these people with degrees and diplomas working below their paygrade. Which means that all these nice, cheap jobs won’t be cheap any more, and that will in turn translate to the price of goods and services. Which, in effect, will make everyone poorer. Eventually society will be right back where it started - possibly even worse, since while the lower class will still be just as poor, the middle class (whose jobs and salaries haven’t changed in the mean time) now has a lower purchasing power. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-all-the-poor-people-left-america/591934.md?page=3)