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Comment by mbfg | Hacker News Reader

people won't get out of poverty working at amazon warehouses. America has always had enough money to do whatever it wants. We could spend money in Ukraine and Chicago if we cared to, but we just don't. This country will never solve the poverty problem, as there is no real interest in doing so to any significant level by those who could solve them.

Universal free health care, like the rest of the modern world. Free Education, like much of the modern world. An effective and cheap transportation system like most the modern world

Those things would make a pretty big impact. America doesn't believe in such things. It won't happen. America believes in the lottery system (not just thru tickets). You have a chance to be rich beyond your wildest imagination. But almost certainly won't be. and if you aren't, hit the road.

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> This country will never solve the poverty problem

When poverty is defined as the lower quintile of income, it cannot be solved. America's poor are the richest poor people in history. It's one reason why millions flood over the border to get in.

Which is why the general sentiment in this thread is not to solve the poverty problem, but to solve the unaffordability problem, ie. living paycheck-to-paycheck with no liquid assets, and still having less than $50 at any point, maybe going through periods of high credit card usage and paying minimum payments to get through things like vehicle repairs.

How to get into the middle class in America:

1. stay in school, pay attention, get good grades

2. get a loan and go to college, major in something that pays well

3. don't do drugs

4. don't commit crimes

5. use birth control

It isn't rocket science.

Sure, your formula is not wrong. But its a bit like saying "it's easy to lose weight, eat less, eat better, exercise more." It might be simple, but it's not easy.

Going into the nuance of each step in your formula would result in a too-long post, but let's consider the first;

>> stay in school, pay attention, get good grades.

For various reasons this is easier to do for the rich, and harder for the poor. Better nutrition. Better home support if your parents were educated and have surplus time. Better access to ancillaries (books, stationery etc.) Less need for you to get a job to supplement family income. No need for you to act as day care to younger siblings. More reliable transport to and from school. Better sleep patterns in warm, secure, environment. Better infant nutrition resulting in well-developed current mental facilities. Better access to heath care, meaning fewer lost school days.

And so on.

Your formula is not wrong. But it is not easy. And every part of it is greased with money. The best indicator of success is the environment you are born into.

I didn't say it was easy. I said it was simple. These are all choices one makes.

The first step towards success is making the choice to own your choices, instead of blaming your parents, your school, etc.

Nobody makes people take drugs. They choose to.

I agree you have choices. It's just that those choices are easier, and simpler, the more money you have.

Incidentally the drug choice is less aligned with poverty. Middle class and rich people take plenty of drugs, including expensive ones like opiods and cocaine. Drugs more likely to be used by the less affluent (weed) is more actively enforced, including well understood disparities on racial and socio-economic lines.

But we digress, this is not about drugs. It's about the ability of people to succeed. And the playing field there is far from level.

So don't smoke weed, and disparate enforcement won't matter.

I voted for the legalization of marijuana. That doesn't mean smoking weed is a good idea. It's expensive, too. Can't really claim one can't make ends meet when spending money on weed.

But as I wrote, we each make our choices.

It's worth stating clearly: the best predictor of poor health and other "failure" is being born into poverty. A predatory economic system will defend predatory economic mechanisms.

Such a system will even go to war to defend the "proper order of things".

> When you see or interact with someone who is down on their luck, remember that it probably wasn’t just one thing that put them in that situation.

Indeed.

1. Yes, but schools can be incredibly bad. They are largely funded by local taxes and tend to be playgrounds for lunatic educational theories of both right and left. You need a big dose of luck to ride this train.

2. Assuming you can get the grades, without a library, internet, or a stable home life, sure. And that you can navigate the fafsa and the rest of the college bureaucracy, potentially without parental help (and god help you if you have an uncooperative parent and cant get the data).

3. Sure, assuming your home life is stable enough to keep you out of this. Harder if mom or dad is already neck deep in weed, meth, or opioids.

4. Sure, if we are talking about shoplifting or larceny. But a teen can be pulled over for riding in a car on the flimsiest of reasons, and if the cop doesnt like you, you can easily get sucked into the maw of the justice system. I think we've all seen enough video of police acting badly to know that things can easily go badly wrong in a heartbeat.

5. Yes, except that not every plan covers it, and sometimes it fails, and it is becoming increasingly hard to get a plan B, like literal plan B or abortion. Plus we may have higher rates of sexual crime.

All the things you say are correct, but the reality of being poor in America is much, much uglier than straightforward theory suggests.

The schools are run by the teachers' union. If the schools are bad, it starts and ends with the union.

Yes, sometimes birth control fails, and there are sexual crimes. That doesn't explain teen pregnancy rates, though.

> without a library, internet, or a stable home life

The library, internet, or home life is simply not necessary to get good grades. The schools move along very, very slowly. 6 hours a day in class is enough time to learn it all several times over. If one pays attention.

> enough video

That implies that all the crime in poor neighborhoods is actually over-enforcement by the cops. That doesn't explain the bars on the windows.

> And that you can navigate the fafsa and the rest of the college bureaucracy, potentially without parental help

What do you need parental help for there? The colleges provide everything necessary. When I was in that situation, I sent a letter to each college asking for their admissions package. They mailed it to me. I followed the directions in it. Fulfilled the requirements. Wrote the essays. Filled in the forms. Sent it in. My parents did exactly none of it.

If one stayed in school K-12 and paid attention in class, one should be quite capable to handle applying to college.

You need to watch Season 4 of The Wire.

Considering how many middle-class and upper-middle-class folks live paycheck-to-paycheck too, I don't think it an "unaffordability problem" -- it's a "missing social safety net" problem.

Many will always live paycheck to paycheck regardless of their income. The solution is to make financial disasters less devastating. "Unaffordability" is a separate, also extremely serious problem.

I think this is more a result of how easy it is to spend to your capacity; if you make $500 a month after rent, you're heavily incentivized to avoid any unnecessary spending to avoid either taking on unnecessary debt or hitting 0 in your checking account. but if you change jobs and now have $1000 a month after rent, you'll find ways to 'splurge' on your (short term) QOL by buying more things instead of putting that towards a savings account. The best way around this is to set hard limits for yourself, eg. splitting direct deposits via payroll or setting up rules in your bank to automatically transfer a portion of your paycheck to savings (This is not to say that the government should make it harder to spend money via some black magic or technological measures)

But you're right in that society could do better to set up safety nets so that losing your job doesn't mean impending doom in the form of crippling medical debt and being kicked out on the street. The government, even the republicans, know that this is vital to preventing a complete collapse of the middle and lower classes, given they ran the PPP loan and forgiveness programs, but it's applied selectively because the two party system allows our political leaders to turn a blind eye as long as the other side also doesn't advocate for improving the situation.

Many people who live paycheck to paycheck are not impoverished. They simply spend all they make. Giving them more money won't change anything.

Warehouses and employers with benefits (like healthcare, 2-4x minimum wage, retirement savings, and scholarships regularly offered) are definitely a way out of poverty.

There's a book written about how healthcare at Starbucks kept a man from poverty and changed his life from cancer.

What's been missed is that Chick-fil-A, in and out,McDonald's, Targets, Walmart, Publix jobs have some of the most opportunity for college aimed people. But sometimes the small local (without scholarship, or pays under the table) is a quick win (scholarship applications take additional effort and require 6+ months in the job).

But yet, universal healthcare, even Medicaid/Social security expanded to not have such a steep cliff would make stark difference.

You can quibble over who the employer. I don’t care if it’s Amazon or the federal government. Putting middle class jobs in these areas is important. Middle class jobs inherently means some form of health care.

Universal health care by itself won’t solve poverty.

Do you not completely lose faith in the country by saying only middle class and above can have healthcare? Or that healthcare is tied to full time employment in order to keep the masses grinding for the capitalist machine? Is that not fundamentally evil when there are better solutions out there?

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