The New American Politics thread

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by peter12

The downward shift in the bottom 20% isn't just structural, but cultural as well.

Originally Posted by peter12

The collapse in marriage being the main thing, but there are lots of other weird socio-economic phenomenons that have slowly been eroding the social networks of the bottom 20% ever since the 1970s.

One of the reasons poverty is so difficult to discuss constructively is because you have the left saying it's all about structure, and the right who say it's all about individual responsibility. But it's about both.

Structures affect your likelihood of succeeding. If you have strong family support, excellent schools, and money, then you have a solid foundation for achievement. Of course, there are people who have all those things but end up broke basket-cases anyway. I'm sure we all know people from comfortable middle-class backgrounds who are major screw-ups barely able to keep body and soul together. And then there are people who immigrate to Canada with next to nothing, and within 20 years have pulled themselves into the middle class, and raised children who excel in school and go on to high-status professions.

So what are these cultural factors? Marriage is the big one. The collapse of marriage among the working class has been a catastrophe. Besides removing male role models from the home, it leaves families in much more precarious financial straits. And without the spur to bring home a decent salary to support a family, many men drop out of the game altogether.

Education is another. Part of that is structural - having access to good schools and the funding for post-secondary education. Part of it is cultural - books in the home, the discipline to do homework every night, expectations from family to do well, even having a regular bedtime so you get a good sleep every night.

A mobile population that has lost connections to extended family is another. It's one thing to be living on $24,000 a year when your mom and sister live in the same town and can help watch the kids while you do your shift at the hair salon. You can probably put some money away because you're not paying child care. It's another thing altogether when you live in an apartment in a big city and have no family and few friends.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by peter12

The collapse in marriage being the main thing, but there are lots of other weird socio-economic phenomenons that have slowly been eroding the social networks of the bottom 20% ever since the 1970s.

What is stranger is that these trends have persisted, even through good times. Stagnant wages in unstable industries certainly remain an important aspect of the discussion though. I don't know exactly where I stand on the minimum wage - certainly small and incremental changes in certain industries don't seem to effect niche employment.

Is it the collapse of marriage, or the collapse of the nuclear family? Also, isn't the destruction of the nuclear family more a result of economics than cultural influences? Women were driven into the workforce because of economic needs, then the lib movement really started with earnest. I appreciate this a chicken or egg type of argument, but economics appeared to be the driver for the disintegration of the nuclear family.

Also, what impact did advancing technology have on the lower class? Many of the jobs they used to fill were eliminated by advancing technology. That caused unemployment in those communities and economic hardship. A lot of those communities couldn't afford to keep up and the communal systems suffered. It is hard to get a good education when you don't have access to good schools, good teachers, etc. I think we have maybe not been good stewards of maintaining access to those means that allow for the pursuit of happiness and Liberty for all citizens?

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

My boss has two children in college right now, at a mid-size school. Despite getting pretty sizable scholarships, they're paying over $30k/year each for their children to go to college. Fortunately my boss is upper middle class enough to afford it.

Which is probably the reason why they are paying $30K for each kid.

If you are "poor" enough, the expected family contribution on the government financial aid forms can be zero.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

If you're coming from a family where your parents are already in poverty? That isn't an option. Just flat out isn't an option.

I disagree. See above. Pell grants, although restricted, remain available and are still given out. And if your academic record shows promise, and the school really wants you, the school will find a way to make it affordable for you to attend.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

You want people to be responsible with their money, but at the same time you're advocating that they just go to college despite the massive costs involved?

Well, not quite. They should go to a reasonably priced college and earn a degree in a field that has a high likelihood of success of leading to a job that will allow the student to be able to pay back whatever debt is incurred within 5 years (or less) from the date of graduation. Not every college involves "massive costs."

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Even Penn State, a state school, for in-state tuition charges over 17k a year, so for four years of school, you have nearly 80k in debt. That's fiscally responsible, right?

If you come out of it with a well-paying degree, yes, it can be.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

And what about all of the people who go 80k+ into debt to go to college as you suggest, who then can't manage to get a job making enough money to repay that debt?

The simplified answer is this:

Get a different degree, or stay in school to increase one's credentials. Maybe the bachelor's degree isn't enough to get into the desired field, and additional studies or degrees are required.

Or, adjust your expectations and deal with living off of a $30K/year job.

The more complex answer is consolidate your loans (ideally, you only got subsidized Stafford loans), and lock in a low interest rate, and put the loans on a 10 (or 30, if they still offer them) year repayment plan. Continue to live like a student for several years after graduation, perhaps with a roommate or two, and work like a dog at whatever job you can land to become successful at whatever it is that you do and pay off the loans with every possible cent you have. You get a raise? Great--don't change your standard of living, and put the entirety of the increase in take-home pay towards your loans. Get a bonus? Same thing. Need more money? Get a part-time job on the weekends. Cut lawns if you have to. Whatever it takes. But before you know it, the debt really will be manageable, and better jobs will come your way.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

If it were that easy, everyone would do it.

Sadly, I don't think that is the case, and history shows it to be true.

It is easy not to be a teenage parent, and yet---surprise, surprise---teenage pregnancies still exist and teenage parents are out there.

It is easy not to get a speeding ticket, and yet---surprise, surprise---people still speed and get ticketed every day for doing so.

And so on.

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Success is a lot of hard work, certainly, but it's also a whole lot of luck.

I don't disagree. At the same time, though (and as has often been quoted), the harder you work, the luckier you get.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by Fire of the Phoenix

You do realize that a certain percentage of the population will always be poor and disadvantaged?

Of course I realize that.

I've been saying that throughout this entire thread....

[peter12]

Originally Posted by New Era

Is it the collapse of marriage, or the collapse of the nuclear family? Also, isn't the destruction of the nuclear family more a result of economics than cultural influences? Women were driven into the workforce because of economic needs, then the lib movement really started with earnest. I appreciate this a chicken or egg type of argument, but economics appeared to be the driver for the disintegration of the nuclear family.

Also, what impact did advancing technology have on the lower class? Many of the jobs they used to fill were eliminated by advancing technology. That caused unemployment in those communities and economic hardship. A lot of those communities couldn't afford to keep up and the communal systems suffered. It is hard to get a good education when you don't have access to good schools, good teachers, etc. I think we have maybe not been good stewards of maintaining access to those means that allow for the pursuit of happiness and Liberty for all citizens?

Isn't marriage just part of the nuclear family? The life-long contract to raise a family as a mutually-supporting unit?

Except the trends have also increased during periods of full employment - like 1994 to 2004.

Economics and technology probably have something to do with it. That is Charles Murray's argument.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

So what are these cultural factors? Marriage is the big one. The collapse of marriage among the working class has been a catastrophe. Besides removing male role models from the home, it leaves families in much more precarious financial straits. And without the spur to bring home a decent salary to support a family, many men drop out of the game altogether.

Is marriage (or lack thereof) really the problem? Or is stuff like teenage/unwanted pregnancies that force people to make a choice about marriage the problem?

I think a focus on mandatory sex ed in all schools would help this a lot.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by peter12

Great Society was a disaster.

Was it? With a focus on the poor, it was a failure. Measured as a whole, I think it was very successful. Civil rights was a pretty massive win. Health care reforms were extremely successful. The introduction of endowments for the arts and consumer protections were minor at the time, but have proven valuable over time. Big ideas like this are usually destined to never achieve the vast expectations placed on them at the time. You have to judge them based on the change they fostered. There was a lot of good that came out of a program that "lost the south" for generations.

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Originally Posted by peter12

Oh man, give yourself a medal.

So, I take it you don't follow Christ's teachings when it comes to how we should treat the poor?

https://www.unitedbiblesocieties.org...y-and-justice/

Maybe I have you confused with someone else, I thought you subscribed to these beliefs?

#9 is my favorite. But I guess the USA is only a Christian nation when it's convenient and when it helps rich people stay in power.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Out of family planning, access to higher education and subsidized child care, which do you disagree with and why?

I would likely be against subsidized child care because I do not agree with tax dollars going to fund (or support) one's personal choices. It is the same reason that I am against the mortgage interest tax deduction, the tax deduction for charitable donations, and so on.

Now, if the subsidized child care was given privately, through one's employer or in some other manner, that might be a different matter.

But if someone wants to have children, that's fine, and that's their personal choice. But, in making that choice to have a child, I believe that the parents should first be fully capable of completely and totally supporting the child through its entire life up to adulthood without looking to the government for financial assistance.

[And before someone takes this statement to the extreme, I am not suggesting that parents should be the only people who fund the public education system or the like]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Just because they will be funded by the wealth of people who don't need a significant proportion of it anyways?

Oh, dear...please, let's not go down this line of discussion again.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by peter12

Isn't marriage just part of the nuclear family? The life-long contract to raise a family as a mutually-supporting unit?

Except the trends have also increased during periods of full employment - like 1994 to 2004.

Economics and technology probably have something to do with it. That is Charles Murray's argument.

I don't see marriage as having an impact on the modern nuclear family. Marriage is a quaint structure that is more political hot point than a cultural necessity to the success of a family unit these days. Since almost 51% of marriages end in divorce, and cohabitation has become a norm for family formation, the ideal of marriage is not what it once was.

Let's not go down the Murray rabbit hole again. That argument never goes anywhere positive.

[nik-]

The nuclear family is artificial anyway.

[afc wimbledon]

nm

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

$200/month for rent? Where in the US are you finding $200/month for rent? I've had friends with roommates here in Pittsburgh, which doesn't have exorbitant housing costs in line with DC/Boston/NYC/LA--they were all paying between $500-700/month to share an apartment. $200/month isn't even close to normal, unless the kid is still living at home. And if you are in one of those bigger cities, $200 might buy you a car to sleep in.

But that's my point. There are places in the deep south where you can pay $200 for rent with a room-mate. I know young people in Charlottesville, Va who pay $400 a month for a room in a shared apt with a nice pool, and gym. In DC, you'd be lucky to find any kind of shared accommodation for less than 600-700. So why should the minimum wage be the same for all those places?

Has anyone advocated for a $50 minimum wage? I've heard that bandied about before on places like Fox News, and it's so incredibly tone deaf. No one is saying we need to suddenly make all minimum wage workers 6 figure/year earners. No one is saying we need them to suddenly be upper middle class. But no one can survive on under $20k a year in this day and age. Period, end of story. I don't care how well you budget or how hard you scrimp and save, $20k/year isn't viable for even a single person with no dependents. And by the way, $20 is still nearly $5000 higher than 40 hrs/52 weeks a year on minimum wage.

Where did I say anyone was advocating for a $50 min wage. The point I was trying to make was that raising the minimum wage to some level you definitely will cause significant job losses. I was trying to illustrate that we can all agree that $50 will definitely cause job losses, while we can probably all agree that raising it 25 cents won't have a huge impact on jobs. You can't just say that raising minimum wage will never impact jobs because it hasn't been shown to do that in some instances. At some level between .25 and $50, it is going to mean less people are working. I'm of the opinion that $15 will be absorbed in some cities, and would have a huge detrimental effect on jobs in some states. My overall point being that trumpeting a $15 national minimum wage as your campaign promise is a bad idea, because it wouldn't stand up to debate or scrutiny in most people's eyes.

There's also the issue with a lot of those minimum wage employers refusing to give workers 40 hours, and also refusing to give them regular schedules so that they can get a second job to to make ends meet around that insufficient wage from the first job.

That is a big problem with young people I know now. Most of them don't have too much trouble finding jobs, and usually the jobs pay a few dollars higher than minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage to $15 will compound this problem, and not help it at all.

Australia's minimum wage for workers over 21 is over $15/hr. I can't speak to their exacts for their economy, but it doesn't seem like they're doing all that bad.

Australia was questioning last year whether their minimum wage was working out as joblessness has increased:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/australi...igh-1422210360

Also, the conversion rate these days mean the Australian min wage is more like $10 US, not $15. Things are also considerably more expensive in Australia, so how much better off are those minimum wage workers really?

[Coach]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

I would likely be against subsidized child care because I do not agree with tax dollars going to fund (or support) one's personal choices. It is the same reason that I am against the mortgage interest tax deduction, the tax deduction for charitable donations, and so on.

Now, if the subsidized child care was given privately, through one's employer or in some other manner, that might be a different matter.

But if someone wants to have children, that's fine, and that's their personal choice. But, in making that choice to have a child, I believe that the parents should first be fully capable of completely and totally supporting the child through its entire life up to adulthood without looking to the government for financial assistance.

[And before someone takes this statement to the extreme, I am not suggesting that parents should be the only people who fund the public education system or the like]

I hear you about the parent's choice, but what about the child's choice? They didn't ask to be brought into the world, and they are the ones that will ultimately suffer, and perpetuate the systemic and cultural issues that we have all been discussing. At some point we have to collectively step-in and help these young people become contributing members of our society, rather than allowing them to fall into the trap their parents (and the generations before) have set up for them.

Oh, dear...please, let's not go down this line of discussion again.

I agree. You and I discussed that at length in this very thread. But it is relevant. We need money to live. It has replaced basic needs as the medium of exchange we need to purchase our basic needs. So you see a bunch of people who have earned their status, but I see a bunch of people sitting on piles of food and homes and clothes, more than they could ever need or use for themselves, while others literally starve. How is that right? How can people in those situations feel OK about being that knowing what goes on at the bottom? Do they not know, or not care?

[Senator Clay Davis]

This will help temper his ego I'm sure

An anonymous US politician has put forward Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in one of the most unlikely nominations since that of Soviet strongman Josef Stalin in 1947.

The nominator, likely to be a Republican senator or congressman — both of whom are eligible — submitted the nomination only days before the deadline of February 1.

The nomination praised the way Trump’s bellicose foreign policy ideology functioned as “a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Isil], nuclear Iran and Communist China”, citing “his vigorous peace-through-strength ideology”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ace-Prize.html

[ernie]

I'm tired of the "get another degree" or "work harder" stuff.

The fact that no one ever wants to talk about is this: there are only so many higher paying jobs and most of the jobs out there are lower paying (there is one store manager but 30 cashiers for instance. There is one regional manager and 100 store managers....). It is not possible for everyone to be in a job that pays above the poverty line as things stand now.

You may not like it but a very large number of people are essentially forced into low paying jobs and if we want them to (a) have a chance to move forward and yes better their education and strive for better and (b) be able to help their children achieve more they can not be left below the poverty line. Minimum wage increase is only part of the solution but it has to be done because fixing the structural mess is going to take time and even when fixed people can not live on those salaries. And yes it can be raised too much. But it certainly needs to be raised from where it is now.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by MattyC

I hear you about the parent's choice, but what about the child's choice?

I don't know.

Maybe subsidized child care is offered for 2 generations, and if no improvement (however that may be defined) occurs, then the program is dropped. The problem, however, is that by then the program will be entrenched and seen as an "entitlement," and it becomes just another government program that is funded by others who seldom get any benefit from it themselves.

Originally Posted by MattyC

How is that right? How can people in those situations feel OK about being that knowing what goes on at the bottom? Do they not know, or not care?

I'm not saying that it is "right," or that the "rich" feel okay about the matter. I have no idea what the "rich" feel about the matter, nor do I know what they do with their monies.

But, ultimately, it isn't my decision what they do with their money, just like it isn't my decision what it is that you do with your money or your decision what it is that I do with my money.

Short of living in a pure communist or socialist system (neither of one I wish to be in), inequality will always exist. That's just the way it is, unfair as it may be.

[afc wimbledon]

Just because 'you' don't use a program doesn't mean you don't get an advantage from it, state education, day care etc is not designed to help the individual, as a society we all benefit from a healthy well educated population.

I'm no huge fan of Maoist communism but there is no doubt that universal education provided by the state has provided the country with a pool of well educated talent that has allowed the country to take off, Pakistan and Bangladesh on the other hand have no chance, so their start ups, if you can call them that, are limited to sweat shops where the illiterate can make t shirts.

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

I don't know.

Maybe subsidized child care is offered for 2 generations, and if no improvement (however that may be defined) occurs, then the program is dropped. The problem, however, is that by then the program will be entrenched and seen as an "entitlement," and it becomes just another government program that is funded by others who seldom get any benefit from it themselves.



I'm not saying that it is "right," or that the "rich" feel okay about the matter. I have no idea what the "rich" feel about the matter, nor do I know what they do with their monies.

But, ultimately, it isn't my decision what they do with their money, just like it isn't my decision what it is that you do with your money or your decision what it is that I do with my money.

Short of living in a pure communist or socialist system (neither of one I wish to be in), inequality will always exist. That's just the way it is, unfair as it may be.

People like you are going to go absolutely bananas when 1st world countries are forced to give a base amount of money to nearly everybody as the world becomes more and more automated. Eventually even the low end jobs will disappear, you're already seeing it with self checkouts and the like. Give it 30 years and eventually there will be one low end job for every 10 people that want one. The government will be forced to redistribute the wealth in order to keep the economy from collapsing. I suspect people like you will complain that the lowlifes still aren't working hard enough or should budget better lol.

[jayswin]

You would think that after a poster suggests that k-12 does its job in the states because kids come out of it more educated than when they went in at 6 years old that the discussion would kind of end there. Lol