foxytrotsky
No bio...
User ID: 614
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
What percentage of poor people do you believe work full time (or look for full time work) 50-52 weeks/year and are still poor?
I don't know the percentage, but a lot of people work for Walmart or fast food or as a janitor/cleaner or as a day laborer or any number of poorly paying jobs where you are on the edge of subsistence, even working full time.
Why do you think poverty is bad?
The number one problem is insecurity -- having to constantly worry about stuff other people take for granted. Another problem is stigma/low social status. And obviously it's bad not being able to get all the shit that you need to live comfortably.
What specific goods or services do you believe poor Americans lack?
-
Decent housing
-
Mental health care
-
Dental care
-
Transportation (can't afford to maintain a vehicle)
-
Utilities (can't afford electricity/heat/water/air conditioning)
-
Phones/internet
-
Tampons, personal hygiene products in general
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Moreover, this argument just sort of assumes resources are available and their quantity isn't affected by our choices. But in reality, the poor people are both consumers of utility and producers of it.
Sure, I admit that a certain segment of the population may drop out of the workforce in a strong welfare state scenario, and that that has negative effects on everyone else. The question is whether it's worth threatening people with poverty to get them to drywall houses for less money.
This is interesting. Possibly we should more widely publicize exactly what it means to live in poverty in the US? I.e. make sure everyone knows that "poverty" by US standards means lots of leisure time (most poor people don't work and aren't in the labor force), no danger of hunger, free medical care, a bigger house than the average Parisian or Londoner, 1-2 cars, etc.
I don't think you've talked to many poor people about their situations. A lot of poor people do work and are still poor, they can easily end up with huge bills for seeking medical care so they avoid it as much as possible, and not even wealthy people can afford a house in Paris or London! But yes, "poverty isn't actually that bad" is a coherent response to my argument, I just think it's blatantly inaccurate.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
If you're left wing and utilitarian shouldn't you want to abolish the welfare state and send that money to Africa instead?
Yeah, I think that there is a fundamental tricky problem of "who you care about." For me, I care about people in my country (USA) more than other people, but I definitely do care about people in Africa as well, just not as much. If you care about nonhuman entities, maybe you want to spend all that money on abolishing the use of animals.
it usually turns out that the utilitarian thing to do is what you actually wanted to do all along anyway. By pure coincidence I'm sure.
Yes, I agree with this! It is a problem -- ultimately, you can make it come out any way you want...
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
How can you quantify, in a principled way, how much you care about one individual's pleasure/pain relative to others? I think a baseline egalitarianism is actually essential to this, as I wrote lower down in the post:
Who "deserves" what is a question of justice, of deontology. But here, we are trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This is difficult enough, boiling down all of human experience into two buckets, "pleasure" and "pain". If you add a whole 'nother set of buckets, "good people", "medium people", "bad people"... then you've really abandoned the exercise and are just doing deontology with extra steps. The pain someone experiences from not having housing or food or heat during the winter is plainly real and sincerely felt, even if you believe that that person should have done something different to avoid being in that state.
Also, I do think humans experience poverty and wealth in broadly similar ways, enough to make generalizations about the utility/disutility of both.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
But that first single dollar means a lot more to that guy than it does to Elon Musk, since for him it’s the difference between eating and not eating right then and there whereas for Elon it’s not even a rounding error. You can be right about how Elon and the homeless guy value their time relative to earning money, but $1 still means a lot more to the destitute hungry guy than Elon.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Gambling seems like a poor example for your point. Poor people are buying the opportunity to imagine themselves getting rich (and every once in a while it happens). People who already are rich can buy real investments and the psychic thrill isn’t the same for them.
The higher savings rate for the wealthy also seems like evidence of diminishing marginal utility of money. Wealthy people put more money away because spending is a lot less urgent than someone struggling to make ends meet.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
as others have already observed when this comes up, such welfare states tend to not scale well for countries as big, and diverse, and low trust as the US. A prosperous, homogenous, small country having generous welfare is sorta analogous to a breadwinner providing for his family. Now try to scale this to a stadium.
I disagree, I think you could scale it to a stadium, or a thousand stadiums -- it's called insurance, and we do it all the time! We don't have to trust the other people on the same car insurance program -- you know some of them will be idiot drivers who cause mayhem and destruction, but you also know that many will be normal people who pay way more into the system than they take out in benefits. I take your point, but again this seems like more of a practical political problem with setting it up than an objection to social democracy in a large, diverse country per se.
Poverty largely has been eliminated in America. Americans even in the poorest of states have higher living standards than people in the UK. There are so many programs for poor families in the US, like free education, up through college, dental, healthcare, subsidized housing, etc. People fail to avail themselves of such options due to addiction, mental illness (the two often go together) , or other problems, not because of America being against the poor.
Poverty has not been eliminated in America. 11% of the country, which is 37 million people, were living below poverty in 2020 according to the US Census. There may be "many" programs in the US, but they are NOT sufficient at guaranteeing subsistence, healthcare and subsidized housing being two areas where many, many people fall through the cracks. Subsidized housing does not really exist in many parts of the country, and it is not comprehensive anywhere.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
I don't really believe in diminishing marginal utility in its strong form.
Why not? It seems like common sense to me -- a dollar means a lot more to the guy begging outside McDonalds than it does to Elon Musk.
I also don't think the modern welfare state does much to eliminate the real sufferings of poverty, its more akin to a heroine drip for addicts.
What are the "real sufferings of poverty", then?
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
I notice that a lot of people on this site seem to be both utilitarian and right wing. This makes me confused, as the utilitarian case for a strong welfare state seems extremely strong on its face. By "strong welfare state" I mean something akin to the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) in which the necessities of life (healthcare, housing, minimum subsistence) are essentially guaranteed, while maintaining a market economy.
Premise #1: We want to maximize pleasure (utility) and minimize pain (disutility).
Premise #2: Within the unit of people we care about, we care about everyone equally.
Premise #3: Central planning doesn't work very well, so we want to maintain a market economy.
Premise #4: We already have a fairly industrialized, advanced capitalist economy.
ARGUMENT:
-
Being in poverty is extremely bad for people's wellbeing, both in terms of physical and psychological health. It is extremely unpleasant for people to be homeless or hungry, or having to make decisions like choosing between heat in the winter, medicine, or food. Poverty sucks -- it is painful not being able to afford the essentials of life.
-
Being afraid of falling into poverty is also bad for people's wellbeing -- it is a major source of worry and concern because everyone knows that being impoverished sucks and is painful. So the existence of poverty is a cause of pain for a much larger group than those actually impoverished. Fear of poverty also leads people to refuse to take risks to avoid the pain of poverty, which leads to less pleasure.
-
Diminishing marginal utility. At a certain point, another yacht for the ultrawealthy rich guy is not going to make him significantly happier. Money can't buy love, you can't take it with you, etc. etc. However, charging that guy more in taxes and using those resources to eliminate poverty will make the groups mentioned in #1 and #2 significantly more happy.
-
We should be OK with high taxes in exchange for eliminating poverty by directly providing the necessities of life for those who cannot afford them. The pain avoided by eliminating poverty outweighs the pain imposed by the taxes (or the pleasure that is lost for the wealthy) because of the principle of diminishing marginal utility. Poverty causes more unhappiness than luxuries cause happiness.
Responses to obvious objections:
a. "Eliminating poverty will cause more pain in the long run because the economy will collapse or at the very least growth will slow, leading to a decline in living standards for everyone." Response: This doesn't seem to have happened in Scandinavia. The Scandinavian countries have been strong welfare states for a long time and are still very wealthy countries, among the wealthiest in the world. They haven't had their economies collapse from having too many layabouts and such.
b. "Charging me high taxes on wealth I created infringes on my liberties/freedom". Response: This may be a coherent objection, but it's not a utilitarian objection, it's a rights-based objection.
c. "The Scandinavian countries only could do this because they are ethnically homogenous, tightly knit societies. Look at Sweden right now, it's falling apart as they let in more immigrants." Response: This goes more to the political problem with instituting this system rather than the desirability of the system itself. The fact that present-day social democrats are pro immigration does not make immigration a necessary part of a social democracy. One can easily imagine a social democracy with Japan-style immigration restrictions.
d. "I only care about those who are deserving to not be in poverty; I don't care about everyone, I'm fine with people being in poverty if they do nothing to better themselves, or if they are in the outgroup." Response: This is also not really a utilitarian objection. Who "deserves" what is a question of justice, of deontology. But here, we are trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This is difficult enough, boiling down all of human experience into two buckets, "pleasure" and "pain". If you add a whole 'nother set of buckets, "good people", "medium people", "bad people"... then you've really abandoned the exercise and are just doing deontology with extra steps. The pain someone experiences from not having housing or food or heat during the winter is plainly real and sincerely felt, even if you believe that that person should have done something different to avoid being in that state.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
I'm not arguing for a return to "Christian moral hegemony," and I think you can be worried about family formation without wanting a full on return of 1950s sexual politics. But either way, if you are trying to maximize people being in stable, monogamous relationships, legalizing prostitution feels like a significant disincentive for both men and women for pursuing that -- men because they can get easy sex outside of a relationship even if they are not the type of guy who successfully manages to have casual sex, women because they can have a "side hustle" that will often put tension on any serious relationship.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Fair enough, I suppose I set myself up for that. My point is that selling your body for sex feels extremely different from other unpleasant/harmful jobs (like being a garbageman or a plumber, which are two examples another poster gave). Setting aside the risks (abuse, pregnancy, STDs), the work is deeply, unavoidably, personal and potentially alienating in a way that other jobs are not.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
The tab of the web browser was crashing. I use Brave, and it only happens on one device (a laptop).
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
I think having to make physical contact with someone for money is psychologically distinct from selling pics/videos online. In this I guess I agree with the OP!
But yes, this isn't an issue that I feel I have completely made up my mind on, and I'm willing to be convinced that it could be regulated in a relatively safe way. I do think the psychological impact of selling intimacy has to be reckoned with in any argument for legalizing (or subsidizing!) prostitution. I also think that if you are worried about traditional family formation, as many people on this site seem to be, further going down the road of explicitly turning sex into a commodity is a bad thing.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
There are many jobs that are uniquely harmful for the ones performing them
Name a job? I can think of dangerous jobs or jobs that require long hours. I can't think of a job that involves selling your own body so a stranger can use you for sexual pleasure. That feels different enough to require "special regulation".
I think there are women who enjoy sex work and can do it without too much of an impact on the rest of their lives, yes. But I think that any woman being forced into it, either through physical coercion by a pimp or because they don't see another way to financially provide for themselves, is a moral catastrophe that we should try really fucking hard to prevent.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Prostitution is banned because of the impact on those selling sex, not because of the impact on buyers. I don’t think you have to be a feminist to see that this post totally ignores what selling sex could do to the woman’s psychology (and her health in general). Plus there is always the fear that women are being forced into it by pimps. I personally think it should be decriminalized instead of legalized — I don’t think having a McDonald’s of sex would be a happy development.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Culture war thread keeps crashing for me.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Foreign Affairs reported this week that the UK/US did in fact pressure Ukraine to walk away from a peace deal back in April. The peace deal would have basically been Russia retreats to pre-February 23rd status quo and Ukraine commits to not join NATO. Of course, the deal might have broken down anyways, but there is some evidence out there that the UK/US do not want peace and want Russia to bleed until Putin is ousted or the country is severely weakened. Source
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
My point is that having the police go to gas station parking lots and run plates all day is an enforcement decision by the police department, and I think it’s a poor use of police resources. Squandering resources chasing easy arrests instead of trying to focus on maximizing public safety is squarely the fault of the police departments.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
Or they didn’t pay a fine. Or child support. Or they were convicted of one DUI and were never able to pay for the class or counseling they were supposed to do. I can’t speak for every state but where I practice, it is simply not the case that only “habitual drunk drivers” have their licenses suspended.
To my point, I also think that it’s an inefficient use of police resources in terms of preventing crime — it’s fishing for arrests, not fighting crime. Yes, theoretically you could prevent a drunk driver…. But much more likely you just ruin a poor person’s day, with no real public safety benefit.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
The proposal makes sense based on my understanding of the criminology. But massively increasing the number of cops makes me nervous. There would have to be a real reform in the departments to go along with it, and I certainly do not trust police departments to manage a massive influx of money themselves. I’m a defense attorney (not the guy who often posts here), and here are some things I see cops doing at my day job:
-
Running plates at parking lots to find someone with a suspended license and then arresting them
-
Showing up to a domestic and arresting the victim
-
Showing up to an attempted stranger rape and arresting the guy who tried to stop it for assault
-
Arresting people for drug residue on a straw
-
Arresting people for pills they have a prescription for
-
Arresting people for violating a no contact order when the contact is plainly consensual (they are in car/house together) and the protected party is asking the police not to arrest
-
Arresting a homeless guy for passing false checks when that guy was kidnapped and driven around at gun point to different banks by three actual criminals who forged the checks (and not investigating the guys who forged the checks because they covered their tracks and are from out of state).
Obviously the above list is cherry-picked, and you may feel differently about some of them then I do. But my point is that if we’re going to have a lot more police, the culture of policing has to change so they focus more time on getting serious crime right rather than nailing people for stupid misdemeanors. I have no confidence in police departments to self-direct a surge in funding — from what I see, many departments will use that money to hire more guys to run to plates and write speeding tickets rather than dealing with serious crime. There is an institutional culture in American policing of sloth and of valuing “good arrests” over actually solving and preventing serious crime.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
I think your historical analysis is a bit off. France was plainly the "democratic" side of the conflict for the decade-plus after the revolution. All of the opponents to France, other than Britain, were absolute monarchies. Democratizing the French army is exactly what made them such an amazing war machine -- they could bring huge amounts of people under arms, and they promoted by merit, whereas the rest of Europe still had small, aristocratic armies, which is why France spent 20 years kicking everyone's ass.
I also think that both Hitler and Napoleon demonstrate that authoritarian societies have a major problem with being tied to the judgment of one guy, who can at any point make a catastrophic error (like invading Russia). Aggressive authoritarian societies tend to unite other states against them. Lastly, I do think that democracies benefit from a kind of "wisdom-of-the-crowds" thing, but I'm willing to concede that that may be wishful thinking!
As for China, I look at their increasingly disastrous Covid-zero policy, and the ramifications of the one-child policy starting to really be felt in their housing market and overall economy, and I'm not as worried as I once was about them ending up running everything. They have huge, not easily solved problems. Covid-zero is such an obviously stupid policy that it makes me seriously doubt their decision making apparatus. But they could start WW3, which could be the worst thing to ever happen, so there's that.
foxytrotsky
2yr ago
This is indistinguishable from /r/politics fare, except from the right.
I know nothing about this person or this race, but this is pretty anodyne Democratic messaging.
In the second paragraph, she refers to the "community", "families", "small business owners" (I imagine there are a fair amount of white small business owners in Austin!), "homeowners", "renters," and "you" (who are presumably white). In the Democratic messaging world, she is actually going out of her way to signal that she's going to represent rich white people (small business owners, homeowners, etc.) as well as poor POCs.
I'm sure some of them support her to be the "good" progressive white person. I'm also sure many people support her because of her relationships, what she's done in the city prior to this, and because they actually support her policies.
More options
Context Copy link