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levite · 10-26-2010, 12:49 PM

I think that a major part of our problems with poverty have to do with two facts in chief.

The first is that we are spectacularly poor at actually providing the impoverished with the kind of help that they need. Generally speaking, welfare and food stamps together does not provide enough money and support for families to live on with anything approaching a decent quality of life; our public free or low-income housing is both painfully insufficient in quantity and nightmarishly insufficient in quality and safety; and perhaps most importantly, we condone an enormous lack in the poorest neighborhoods of our cities of proper grocery stores and produce markets (meaning that the poor have reduced access to healthy foods), and we permit the schools in the poorest areas to be unsafe, underfunded, run-down and ill-supplied (meaning that not only do fewer students learn and graduate, but fewer students want to go to school, fewer children feel empowered and hopeful about their futures, and thus fewer families feel that they are actually working toward achievable goals).

The second is that our welfare/assistance programs are hideous catch-22s, wherein if people can manage to get approved for aid and assistance at all, they must accept total or near-total aid. As soon as they begin to work and earn money, the aid vanishes, whether they are earning enough to survive or not-- based solely on an abstract calculation made in a government office. Plus, the poverty line itself is both woefully out of date and unreasonably inflexible: what qualifies as sustainable living income in Boise, Idaho is not the same as in The Bronx; and what guarantees a decent apartment and food in the fridge in Waycross, Georgia is not the same as in Los Angeles.

We need massive overhauls of our aid and assistance programs, which allow caseworkers to tailor aid and assistance packages to individual families' needs, in order to get them back on their feet, truly help them find work-- and relocate if necessary-- and wean off of welfare in such a way that they become truly self-sustaining, and are not dropped without a safety net the instant an abstract financial threshold is passed. More caseworkers must be hired, to be able to deal with families in realistic and helpful ways, and those caseworkers must be qualified and decently paid.

We need a flexible poverty line, that is constantly updated, that is drawn to constitute a reasonable minimum quality of life, and which takes into account the cost of living in different areas. And we need a flexible minimum wage, which takes into account the same things as the poverty line, and which guarantees everyone a decent standard of living. And we need to have a flexible structure of tax breaks for small businesses, with a corresponding closure of loopholes, increase in tax, and stronger enforcement of collection from giant megacorporations (most of which should be broken up under anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, anyhow).

Rather than building endless tracts of public housing, we need to convert to a rent-assistance system, that allows the government to step in, indefinitely fix the rent on a poor person's apartment, and take over payments to the landlord until such time as the person is able to pay themselves.

We need grocery stores in poor areas, government-funded public vegetable gardens and neighborhood beautification programs, and most importantly, local control of schools. If the government wishes to establish a national high-school graduation exam, that might be a way to ensure a national standard, but otherwise, schools must be run locally, teachers and administrators must be paid decently, schools must have adequate security, be clean and well-supplied, and qualified teachers given leave to teach as best they know how, rather than wasting children's valuable class time on endless standardized tests. If left unchecked, poverty breeds not merely crime, but apathy, which is worse.

We need real national health care, not the half-assed mess the Obama administration let the Congress mangle and then pass. An enormous amount of the income of the poor and the lower-middle class is consumed in just trying to keep themselves covered with health insurance. If this stops, the positive effect on poverty will be gigantic.

We need to legalize marijuana, decriminalize most other drugs, and legalize gambling and prostitution nationally. Once the police are not wasting their time catching junkies, petty dealers, hookers and pimps, bookies and number runners, they can actually focus on catching serious violent offenders, and make our streets safer. Plus, the tax and licensing revenues from marijuana and industrial hemp products and sales, and from gambling and prostitution enterprises, will contribute vast amounts of money into the treasury, helping to fund all these revisions to the social assistance programs.

We need to make undergraduate college education in public universities free to all citizens and legal residents. High school is not enough anymore, especially if we want to transform the United States back into a world leader in research, development, and production of new technologies, ideas, and goods.

And we need raise taxes on the rich to help pay for all of this. I'm sorry, but if you make a billion dollars, you should be paying ninety percent of that in income tax. Because you know what? Ten percent of a billion dollars is a hundred million dollars. That is more than enough to be fabulously wealthy on. And if the freedoms you enjoy as an American citizen let you become so successful that you can pay 90% and still have a hundred million dollars left over, then that's your fair payment to help keep this country up. And the same principle holds true if you make half a billion, or a quarter billion, or a hundred million, or fifty million. And if you make forty or twenty or ten or five, then you should pay between sixty to eighty percent. And if you make more than two million, you should still pay fifty percent. And you should not get loopholes to get you out of paying, and you should be fined for everything you've got if you try to evade taxes by tucking your money away offshore.

The truth is that we have so much poverty and so much apathy about improving the lot of the poor in our society because we don't respect the poor. We look down on them. We forget their humanity. And we idolize the rich, just for being rich, and let them get away with anything, because they are so rich. And what will really help us get our society right is when we remember that we are all people, and we all need to be treated decently, and we all have to do our part for one another. You don't get something for nothing, and if we want America to be a society that is clean, busy, prosperous, and respected, then we need to put in time, money, respect, and trust-- which means more local control, and less attempts in Washington to solve all the problems of every neighborhood in the USA using the 535 most argumentative, corrupt, bloated, self-aggrandizing, self-important, selfish, greedy, manipulative, secretive, untrustworthy, idiotic bunch of thieves and lawyers that we could manage to elect.

/rant

10-26-2010, 12:49 PM	#3 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: The Windy City	I think that a major part of our problems with poverty have to do with two facts in chief. The first is that we are spectacularly poor at actually providing the impoverished with the kind of help that they need. Generally speaking, welfare and food stamps together does not provide enough money and support for families to live on with anything approaching a decent quality of life; our public free or low-income housing is both painfully insufficient in quantity and nightmarishly insufficient in quality and safety; and perhaps most importantly, we condone an enormous lack in the poorest neighborhoods of our cities of proper grocery stores and produce markets (meaning that the poor have reduced access to healthy foods), and we permit the schools in the poorest areas to be unsafe, underfunded, run-down and ill-supplied (meaning that not only do fewer students learn and graduate, but fewer students want to go to school, fewer children feel empowered and hopeful about their futures, and thus fewer families feel that they are actually working toward achievable goals). The second is that our welfare/assistance programs are hideous catch-22s, wherein if people can manage to get approved for aid and assistance at all, they must accept total or near-total aid. As soon as they begin to work and earn money, the aid vanishes, whether they are earning enough to survive or not-- based solely on an abstract calculation made in a government office. Plus, the poverty line itself is both woefully out of date and unreasonably inflexible: what qualifies as sustainable living income in Boise, Idaho is not the same as in The Bronx; and what guarantees a decent apartment and food in the fridge in Waycross, Georgia is not the same as in Los Angeles. We need massive overhauls of our aid and assistance programs, which allow caseworkers to tailor aid and assistance packages to individual families' needs, in order to get them back on their feet, truly help them find work-- and relocate if necessary-- and wean off of welfare in such a way that they become truly self-sustaining, and are not dropped without a safety net the instant an abstract financial threshold is passed. More caseworkers must be hired, to be able to deal with families in realistic and helpful ways, and those caseworkers must be qualified and decently paid. We need a flexible poverty line, that is constantly updated, that is drawn to constitute a reasonable minimum quality of life, and which takes into account the cost of living in different areas. And we need a flexible minimum wage, which takes into account the same things as the poverty line, and which guarantees everyone a decent standard of living. And we need to have a flexible structure of tax breaks for small businesses, with a corresponding closure of loopholes, increase in tax, and stronger enforcement of collection from giant megacorporations (most of which should be broken up under anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, anyhow). Rather than building endless tracts of public housing, we need to convert to a rent-assistance system, that allows the government to step in, indefinitely fix the rent on a poor person's apartment, and take over payments to the landlord until such time as the person is able to pay themselves. We need grocery stores in poor areas, government-funded public vegetable gardens and neighborhood beautification programs, and most importantly, local control of schools. If the government wishes to establish a national high-school graduation exam, that might be a way to ensure a national standard, but otherwise, schools must be run locally, teachers and administrators must be paid decently, schools must have adequate security, be clean and well-supplied, and qualified teachers given leave to teach as best they know how, rather than wasting children's valuable class time on endless standardized tests. If left unchecked, poverty breeds not merely crime, but apathy, which is worse. We need real national health care, not the half-assed mess the Obama administration let the Congress mangle and then pass. An enormous amount of the income of the poor and the lower-middle class is consumed in just trying to keep themselves covered with health insurance. If this stops, the positive effect on poverty will be gigantic. We need to legalize marijuana, decriminalize most other drugs, and legalize gambling and prostitution nationally. Once the police are not wasting their time catching junkies, petty dealers, hookers and pimps, bookies and number runners, they can actually focus on catching serious violent offenders, and make our streets safer. Plus, the tax and licensing revenues from marijuana and industrial hemp products and sales, and from gambling and prostitution enterprises, will contribute vast amounts of money into the treasury, helping to fund all these revisions to the social assistance programs. We need to make undergraduate college education in public universities free to all citizens and legal residents. High school is not enough anymore, especially if we want to transform the United States back into a world leader in research, development, and production of new technologies, ideas, and goods. And we need raise taxes on the rich to help pay for all of this. I'm sorry, but if you make a billion dollars, you should be paying ninety percent of that in income tax. Because you know what? Ten percent of a billion dollars is a hundred million dollars. That is more than enough to be fabulously wealthy on. And if the freedoms you enjoy as an American citizen let you become so successful that you can pay 90% and still have a hundred million dollars left over, then that's your fair payment to help keep this country up. And the same principle holds true if you make half a billion, or a quarter billion, or a hundred million, or fifty million. And if you make forty or twenty or ten or five, then you should pay between sixty to eighty percent. And if you make more than two million, you should still pay fifty percent. And you should not get loopholes to get you out of paying, and you should be fined for everything you've got if you try to evade taxes by tucking your money away offshore. The truth is that we have so much poverty and so much apathy about improving the lot of the poor in our society because we don't respect the poor. We look down on them. We forget their humanity. And we idolize the rich, just for being rich, and let them get away with anything, because they are so rich. And what will really help us get our society right is when we remember that we are all people, and we all need to be treated decently, and we all have to do our part for one another. You don't get something for nothing, and if we want America to be a society that is clean, busy, prosperous, and respected, then we need to put in time, money, respect, and trust-- which means more local control, and less attempts in Washington to solve all the problems of every neighborhood in the USA using the 535 most argumentative, corrupt, bloated, self-aggrandizing, self-important, selfish, greedy, manipulative, secretive, untrustworthy, idiotic bunch of thieves and lawyers that we could manage to elect. /rant __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)