usmbguest5318
Gold Member
Sadly, Billy000, even folks who might be undecided regarding the veracity or predominantly likely veracity of your central thesis -- Republicans don't understand poverty -- your OP presents a very uncompelling argument and thus is very unlikely to generate concurrence among such individuals. Obviously, among folks who agreed with the thesis upon encountering your OP will continue to do so, though some of them may be somewhat embarrassed by the nature of advocacy found in your argument/OP.
Why do I say that? Well, in recognition of the fact that sound/cogent (strong) arguments must have germane and accurate premises, along with a conclusion (thesis) that follows rationally from them, let's consider some of your premises.
Income inequality is, in isolation, irrelevant to poverty. Why? Because measures of income inequality identify the extent of difference in the income of earners at the top and bottom ends of the income spectrum.
Assume, for instance, the above figures portray a 198% difference between the average incomes of the highest and lowest earning individuals and that the ~$34K/year figure represents a poverty-level income for a one person household. The same measure income inequality, 198%, would exist were the average incomes of the lowest and highest earners $100,000/year and $19,802,310.
Would there then be cause to gripe about income inequality in terms of poverty? It would not. It would not because poverty is a matter whereby how much more or less others make isn't what defines whether one is impoverished. Whether one is impoverished is a function of one's available money (current income and accumulated income, aka wealth) and the prices of goods and services one must buy (food, housing, clothing, transportation, information, fees and excise taxes, etc.) and that are not considered economic luxury goods and services. [1]
Because income inequality is merely a difference measure, if one is of a mind to use it in an argument pertaining to poverty and what someone else has overlooked, one must combine one's discussion of income inequality with a discussion about prices. That is so whether one chooses to approach income inequality from the standpoint of income growth or by citing temporally static observations of income.
Note:
- Economically, luxury goods/services are forms of a "product" that are, in one's local economy, optional. For instance, in D.C., transportation is not an economic luxury good, however, transportation via one's privately owned car is an economic luxury good. In other local economies, that may or may not be so.
Well, to rise above the poverty what the hell else must one in poverty do but get a better paying job?
The government offers assistance programs of which impoverished people can avail themselves to obtain resources by which to live and marketable skills they may sell to buyers of labor. I suppose the government could also offer resources that allow impoverished people to emigrate, but not since the 1840s have people proposed that approach, and even then it wasn't proposed as an explicit solution for poverty.
- It's not as though there's an abundance of "rich, dead uncles" having unclaimed fortuners.
- A poor person may win the lottery, but the odds of that are very slim.
- Theft is also an option, albeit an unlawful and unrecommended one.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Simply put, if one is poor, the things one cannot afford is indolence, ignorance, insipidity and fatuity.
- How can poor people have no time to learn new skills?
- Even if they work and raise kids, the fact that they are impoverished and don't want to be impoverished means they must find time to learn new skills.
- If you clicked on the link just above and read the content at some of those articles, you'll have read about destitute individuals who parlayed their existing skills into profitable ventures. Quite simply, if one is of a mind to not be impoverished, one's first priority must be to do things that alter one's status as impoverished. Of all the things one might do with one's time, a use of it that one can be certain won't alter one's impoverished status is devoting so much of one's time performing a "dead end" job that doesn't pay enough to meet one's goals that one, in turn, has no time to invest any of it doing things that will alter that status.
- How much money must one have to learn new skills?
- College -- Far too few folks who are impoverished avail themselves of the fact that the priciest and most elite colleges and universities make it possible for qualified "ultra poor" individuals to obtain an education from them. That they do is one of the most significant and most easily accessed "field levelers" around. That such institutions meet 100% of demonstrated financial need prepares and enables "the least among us" to join the ranks of "the haves," and it precisely why a friend of mine who mentors young poor kids directs them to apply to the most elite private colleges and universities in the country. The money is there to be given out and those poor kids are most in need of it, so it's just flat-out stupid not to be a high performer in high school, apply to those institutions and, upon being accepted for admission, obtain it. For example:
- Adult training programs
Do you truly not see the argumentative contradiction in asking that question, the answer to which is indeed that the function will be automated [1], by asserting that a robot will probably perform that job?
Note:
- Automation of that sort is already happening in stores where it's economically feasible to do so.
- Fast Food Robots, Kiosks, and AI Use Cases from 6 Restaurant Chain Giants -
- Some examples from that article:
- Amazon just opened a grocery store without a checkout line -- Would you believe that people stood in line to shop at a store that has no checkout lines. Yep, that's how stupid some Americans are....They'll stand in line to enjoy the experience of, among other things, not standing in line. Clearly, having money to spend and being intelligent are mutually exclusive states of being.
That process did begin decades ago and has been going on for years, since at least 1938 in the U.S. You and others may differ normatively about the rate and incidence of minimum wage increases, but the process of raising it has been going on for decades.
For the same reasons and in the context I indicated in my above discussion about income inequality, even if they do, it's an ingermane question to ask.
Why have I written the above remarks? Only to implore you, OP-er, to, if you cannot (or don't want to) present a sound argument, at least present a cogent/strong one. (See: Difference between argumentative/analytical soundness and cogency -- the difference between the two is in the nature of their conclusions, not that of their premises.) Frankly, I think many Republicans don't understand poverty period, be it in America or anywhere else; however, I cannot tick "agree" on your OP because the argument it presents in support of your central assertion/conclusion is too weak to agree with. I don't here expect folks to present perfect arguments, but my approbation nonetheless requires a stronger argument than you've presented. After all, one cannot be taken seriously in a discussion about public policy and have weak arguments for one's positions.
1) It’s pretty simple to understand why income disparity affects poverty. Productivity among low wage jobs has skyrocketed over the last few decades. Rather than these workers seeing a raise in their wages, their wages have gone up very little. Instead of these corporations investing in higher wages given the rise in productivity, they keep that money that was made off the backs of their low level workers. If the top 1% becomes bloated, it is because these lower wage people are not seeing any benefit in the skyrocketing profits of corporate America. These low wages are way behind on the rate of inflation while top earners’ pay is well ahead of it.
2) Christ dude lol. I’m not saying that it is pointless for poor people to learn new skills. I’m saying it’s stupid to suggest this is a cure-all for poverty itself. As you alluded to, it is extremely difficult for single parents to find the time and money to learn new skills. That is a reality whether you like it or not. And again, if every poor person did this and found better paying skilled jobs, WHO would fill all those millions of entry level jobs left behind that pay shit? Obviously corporations depend on this kind of labor. Also, you citing anecdotal stories as evidence of economics is a terrible fallacious argument.
3) My reference to automation was besides my point. I said it as a digression. It would have better had I not said it because I’ll admit it was confusing to add, but you wasting so much energy on trying to prove automation is already happening was pointless lol. I already know automation is currently happening.
4) Yes, the minimum wage has been raised over time in the past. However, my obvious point is that it hasn’t kept up with inflation. Obviously that matters.
5) Also, you are a pretentious, pontificating douche bag.
Okay...Did you not thoroughly read my post? If you did, clearly my attempt to explain the weakness of your argument in neutrally non-criticizing/non-castigatory terms didn't work, let me try a mildly derisive approach.
What is that it? That’s all you have to say? Also, I definitely adequately explained why income disparity is related to poverty. You just choose deny it.
Example of how cause and effect works:
- Action/Cause --> Person A earns a wage, A1. Person B earns a wage, B1.
- Outcome/Effect --> Person A is impoverished/lives in poverty. Person B does not live in poverty.
The difficulty is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it's extremely difficult to do pretty much anything that is worth doing. I can assure you that very few people who crafted for themselves a career that later produced a fine income didn't work very hard to make that happen. What's easy is winning the lottery and letting things fall into one's lap. Making anything worthwhile happen is difficult.
All the more why your argument in support of your thesis statement is weak. Your remark about automation is precisely the answer to the question you posed, and yet you consider it an ancillary factor in arriving at the answer to your question.
Throughout history, goods and service providers who do so for profit have performed essentially the same cost-benefit analysis with regard to the two most controllable factors of production -- that is, determining whether their business will obtain greater returns from capital or from labor. The fact of the matter is that when a firm's operating model for using low cost labor presents less profit than does the firm's model for using capital, the firm's managers will commence to pare back its use of labor and increase its use of capital.
If you truly don't see the substantive difference between saying that "minimum wage increases haven't kept pace with inflation" and what you did write...
....I think you and I should cease and desist right here. If you want to present an argument for a given stance, present a strong one or a weak one, but either way, at least state what you mean -- and with regard to points of observable fact such as for how long ago the "process of raising the minimum wage should have begun," what is indeed so -- rather than expecting your reader to know/infer that you aren't a nitwit, dissembler, ignoramus, lazy f*ck, or whatever who actually believes or didn't confirm the veracity of what you wrote.
And yet, whatever be that relationship has no bearing on whether or not your thesis statement -- "Republicans really don’t understand poverty in America" -- is mostly, likely, or even somewhat true, credible or plausible. Simply put, that...
...doesn't do a damn thing to show that "Republicans really don’t understand poverty in America."
As I stated before, and took the time to explain in detail, the problem isn't that I disagree with your thesis statement; the problem is that the argument you present in your OP is too damn weak to be construed as a cogent basis for agreeing with your thesis statement.
Aside:
While half of Trump's problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that he lies too damn much, the other half of it is that he daily makes claims for which either (1) neither he nor anyone else is willing to present a strong case for their (likely or actual) veracity, and/or (2) there simply is no strong case that can be made for the claims' (likely or actual) veracity.
