Wal-mart asks its underpaid workers to donate food to other underpaid workers

[~Corsair#01~]

Wouldn't it be more accurate then to say that it's not racial homogeneity that helps the other nations but rather racial tensions that hurt the USA#1 poor?

Your position as stated means that other countries - being less diverse - don't have this problem, but they would if they were more diverse. In other words, the problem is the result of diversity and how the US responds to it.

I've heard this before and I'm not sure I buy it, but I'm willing to be convinced if you try.

A big part of why America, or more accurately the American south, has been so far to the right historically comes down to racism. In Europe the poor would never vote for conservatives because they understand that conservatism is an ideology built around keeping them poor. Note that in times of national conflict this changes: Germans rallied around Hitler during the war and Thatcher won a landslide victory on the back of the Falklands war. Appealing to tribal instincts can get people to vote against their own interests.

If you look at America's south you can see this same trend. Slavery impoverished working class whites in the south. It lowered their wages by forcing them to compete with unpaid labor. Southern elites also opposed the Homestead Act because it could allow poor southern whites to go west. But still, when southern elites tried to secede to maintain slavery, the poor whites of the south threw themselves en masse at the Union guns for the sake of the elites. Why? Identity.

Identity politics (both racial and cultural) is the reason why American conservatives have been able to get poor whites to vote for them for so long. It could never be possible in a more racially homogenous society where there was no "other" to frighten people with.

 

[Antilogic]

Wow, there are some AWESOME people in this thread.

I'm just staring slack-jawed at some of these posts. And I'm not even making terrible life decisions like being high or drunk while posting on CFC.

Also, I'm digging PG's concept of USA #! over USA #1.

 

[peter grimes]

A big part of why America, or more accurately the American south, has been so far to the right historically comes down to racism. In Europe the poor would never vote for conservatives because they understand that conservatism is an ideology built around keeping them poor. Note that in times of national conflict this changes: Germans rallied around Hitler during the war and Thatcher won a landslide victory on the back of the Falklands war. Appealing to tribal instincts can get people to vote against their own interests.

If you look at America's south you can see this same trend. Slavery impoverished working class whites in the south. It lowered their wages by forcing them to compete with unpaid labor. Southern elites also opposed the Homestead Act because it could allow poor southern whites to go west. But still, when southern elites tried to secede to maintain slavery, the poor whites of the south threw themselves en masse at the Union guns for the sake of the elites. Why? Identity.

Identity politics (both racial and cultural) is the reason why American conservatives have been able to get poor whites to vote for them for so long. It could never be possible in a more racially homogenous society where there was no "other" to frighten people with.

Yeah, I totally agree with all of this - and doesn't that fit with my point that the problem isn't heterogeneity in and of itself, but how the US population responds to it? Put another way, race isn't the problem; racism is.

 

[~Corsair#01~]

Pretty much, yeah.

But America's racial diversity compared to Europe makes racism a much easier thing to promote. I think there's a good chance that if Europe was as diverse as the USA, racism would be a more prominent part of our political scene.

But maybe that's just me being cynical.

 

[Cutlass]

Put another way, yet another thing that we can blame the South for.

As much blame as the South deserves, for you know everything, that's not really fair. The North is nearly as racist as the South. In fact, some of the South has had that lesson beaten into them better than much of the North.

 

[Arachnofiend]

As much blame as the South deserves, for you know everything, that's not really fair. The North is nearly as racist as the South. In fact, some of the South has had that lesson beaten into them better than much of the North.

The North eventually manages to homogenize those they were originally racist against because historically they've been white immigrants. As much as the Yanks pissed on the Irish in the 19th and 20th century they're just white people like everyone else now.

You can't change black.

(Of course Northerners are very racist against African Americans as well, it's just less violent and more patronizing)

 

[Yeekim]

You seem to be assuming that "equality of opportunity" necessarily means everybody being left to their own devices, if not from birth, then certainly from adolescence. That would be an equality, but that doesn't mean it exhausts the possibilities for equality. Even before you get into the distinction between formal and substantive equality, it's plainly possible to provide people with a very generous starting place without introducing any sort of inequality.

No, I'm not. We could provide every person with a proper nest egg at birth or when s/he enters adulthood (btw, I wouldn't object to the idea, in principle), but that wouldn't change the end result any less unequal.

There would still be inequality. But it would certainly be less inequality than what exists now. Because now it is very difficult for a competent and hardworking person who starts near the bottom to rise towards the top, and even more difficult for a useless and lazy person who starts near the top to fall towards the bottom. The system protects the incompetent at the top from the competent at the bottom. Remove that, put in equality of opportunity, and many more people would be much better off over time.

Well, if you start at the bottom, competence and hard work probably won't take you to the top.... not because of the "system", but because it is a very long way off. But it will let you escape poverty. Anyway... how many poor people who've won the lottery have actually managed to take advantage of that wealth?

Woah. Good word choice, I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think that relative poverty are inherent to the system. You cannot have property and capital without a resulting increase in relative inequality. BUT, absolute poverty actually needn't exist if the society (in aggregate) becomes wealthy enough.

Indeed. I don't think Wal-Mart employees live anywhere near absolute poverty though.

You mean the "safety net" with the quite deliberate 40 foot holes? This so-called "safety net" may exist in your country and most every other country which claims to be humanitarian, but it certainly doesn't exist in this one.

And there are still poor people in every other country as well.

If poverty in the US is nothing more than the result of poor people making poor decisions then that automatically implies that wealthy people made smart decisions.

No, it only implies what you say yourself - that at least their parents or grandparents made smart decisions. Change takes time, in either direction.

If this "poverty is your own damn fault" premise were true, we should expect that other countries would see larger inequality problems, since USA#! is the land of most opportunity. We should expect to see more poor people in the USA#! being able to bootstrap themselves into the middle class than elsewhere. We should also expect to see more wealthy people falling down into the middle class (or further) as a result of their poor decisions./.../
Oh my! Why is it that mobility in the US is so much worse than in Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, the UK -- even Ireland?!
How is it possible that the poor people in those countries aren't making nearly as many bad decisions as poor people here? What are they doing differently, I wonder

Well, no. Social mobility being bad in US compared to other countries does in no way disprove that premise. Rather, it could also mean that US is simply not #1 nor "the land of most opportunity". Secondly, it could mean that since US used to be "the land of most opportunity" long before others, things have largely already taken their due course. That is, intelligence being ~50-70% inheritable (something your graphs ignore), smart people have risen upwards and losers have sunk to the bottom.

Again - equal opportunity and meritocracy means there WILL be losers. And that they only have themselves to blame.

 

[Yeekim]

Disclaimer: since I appear to be arguing, at least partially, on the same side as KmDuya, I would also like to avoid being affiliated with few of his starting points in the thread; namely that taxes are theft, that being on welfare necessarily means being a bum and that Wal-Mart offers their employees a career.

 

[Archbob]

But see, here's the problem. It benefits society the most to let the people with most talents and motivated individuals to rise to the top, therefore any kind of inequality of opportunity is bad because it allows people who have inferior talents or motivation to get to or stay at the top just because daddy was rich.

 

[Crezth]

As much blame as the South deserves, for you know everything, that's not really fair. The North is nearly as racist as the South. In fact, some of the South has had that lesson beaten into them better than much of the North.

Dude, I'm not racist against the south. I have Southern friends.

 

[Yeekim]

It benefits society the most to let the people with most talents and motivated individuals to rise to the top, therefore any kind of inequality of opportunity is bad

Yes.

because it allows people who have inferior talents or motivation to get to or stay at the top just because daddy was rich.

Well, for a while at least. See the lottery winner example.

But I am pretty sure that even current US society is mobile enough to let anyone with a shred of talent or motivation to escape Wal-Mart in a while.

 

[Antilogic]

The issue of North v. South rasism that is not being addressed is the systematic and oppressive disenfranchisement that is practiced in the South and, with a handful of exceptions, does not exist in the North. You can find individual rasists anywhere.

Disclaimer: since I appear to be arguing, at least partially, on the same side as KmDuya, I would also like to avoid being affiliated with few of his starting points in the thread; namely that taxes are theft, that being on welfare necessarily means being a bum and that Wal-Mart offers their employees a career.

That's the core of the argument, though. And your prior post on social mobility doesn't seem quite complete either.

 

[EnglishEdward]

While racism has historically resulted in inequality, I rather think
that rascism is an overstated cause for the increasing inequaliy.

In my opinion in the USA the wealthy elite have successively sold
a number of ideas, through persistent funding propaganda, along
principles developed during the cold war, to the american masses.


1) US abolished hereditary class lords and commoners structure in american revolution
.
(As if slavery was not an extreme form of the class system.)


2) Anyone and everyone can become very rich if only they work hard enough

(This is statistically impossible.)


3) People who question the system are stealing your money or the money you might have if you become rich.

(The fact that much wealth derives from fraud e.g. CDO derivative trading is ignored;
i.e. it is as rhetorically true to state that the rich steal your wealth.)


5) It is your fault if you are poor

(This is not unoccasionally true, but it is incorrect to extend examples
as a generalisation rule, and diversionary tactic to blame the victim.)


6) A rising tide lifts all boats

(Real resources (land and energy) limit the overall growth; as the US
population grows and world economy grows, US individual's share falls.


7) Wealth will trickle down.

(Only it doesn't anymore, the elite take more, the others take less.)


8) Taxation is theft.

(King George III died in 1820)


9) It is God's Will

(He/she has not told me that).


10) God will make it right in heaven.

(Although I am a deist, this line is used to excuse all sorts of injustice).


11) System only works incentivewise if there are a few very rich and many poor.

(Countries like Sweden have managed with less distribution of income and wealth.)


12) Inequality is a consequence of Darwin's theory of evolution.

(Humans are a sentient species and should think outside that box.)


For various, largely now cultural, reasons, I rather think that the post
WW2 European people are less inclined to believe such propaganda.

 

[Labtec600]

Jobs are "designed" for whoever is willing to do to them for the lowest pay. That's labour economics 101, it really is. Even the most dedicated supply-sider recognises that. (They just don't pretend to care.) What kind of fantasy world do you live in, where some great corporatist authority specifies individually-appropriate forms of employment for all, and it is only human folly that has put us in this mess? Hell of a fiction for someone who fancies themselves a steely-jawed realist.

I like how you put insults into what you're saying yet you're agreeing with me. No skill no education jobs pay little as they are easily replaceable with anyone. Hence the low pay. Thanks for agreeing with me.

 

[Cutlass]

Well, if you start at the bottom, competence and hard work probably won't take you to the top.... not because of the "system", but because it is a very long way off. But it will let you escape poverty. Anyway... how many poor people who've won the lottery have actually managed to take advantage of that wealth?

The point is, if you start at the bottom, and are of above average ability and effort, you are going to have a very hard time improving your position. And that's not just getting to the top, it's about moving at all. By the same token, if you start at the top, no matter how useless and lazy you may be, you're still almost certain to remain at the top.

Neither competence, nor effort, nor both, are as important to determining where you end up as your starting position is.

 

[KmDubya]

Disclaimer: since I appear to be arguing, at least partially, on the same side as KmDuya, I would also like to avoid being affiliated with few of his starting points in the thread; namely that taxes are theft, that being on welfare necessarily means being a bum and that Wal-Mart offers their employees a career.

How would you define taxes other than as theft? You forcibly take from one person and give to another. The fact that people vote does not preclude this fact. this situation is getting worse as the percentage of Americans who do not pay income taxes (everyone pays a sales tax) increases and the government handouts increase. People can vote themselves benefits at someone else's expense. This is true in both the present population voting for policies of extreme debt for future generations to pay and in the case of people who get handouts being able to vote in politicians who promise to increase their benefits.

Being on welfare means that you are riding on the sled that others are pulling. The people doing the pulling should have some control over how the person riding behaves. It should be like a parent and their kids - in Dad's house you have to follow dad's rules. If someone is capable of working they should, against their will if needed. If skills are needed to find employment then the educational opportunities should be provided. The goal of a welfare system should be to get people off of it, not allow it to be a lifestyle choice that provides everything that they need.

Walmart does offer career opportunities. Employees can and do rise through the ranks into management positions. It does not happen to all or even most but to some. Minimum wage positions are for gaining experience and an employment record to allow you to get a better job somewhere down the line. If you only have minimum wage skills then perhaps you should hold off on having a family until you can better provide for them.

 

[JollyRoger]

How would you define taxes other than as theft?

Name one tax that does not involve a choice prior to the tax being imposed.

 

[KmDubya]

This is the essence of it, perfectly stated.

If poverty in the US is nothing more than the result of poor people making poor decisions then that automatically implies that wealthy people made smart decisions. But that can't be the case, because most of the current wealthy's wealth wasn't generated from scratch in a single generation - they inherited a large fraction of it, upon which more was built. Same thing with poverty - most poor people are born into poor families. That's entirely outside of their control, and they shouldn't be penalized for being born that way. I also think wealthy people shouldn't be rewarded for simply having the good luck of being born to a wealthy family. But then again I'm a "radical lefty"

If this "poverty is your own damn fault" premise were true, we should expect that other countries would see larger inequality problems, since USA#! is the land of most opportunity. We should expect to see more poor people in the USA#! being able to bootstrap themselves into the middle class than elsewhere. We should also expect to see more wealthy people falling down into the middle class (or further) as a result of their poor decisions.

Spoiler :

Source: http://www.verisi.com/resources/prosperity-upward-mobility.htm
EDIT: for a really interesting aspect of this, click the source and set the data comparison to look at daughters instead of sons.

Oh my! Why is it that mobility in the US is so much worse than in Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, the UK -- even Ireland?!

How is it possible that the poor people in those countries aren't making nearly as many bad decisions as poor people here? What are they doing differently, I wonder

You are comparing each group to itself. As in America's poor compared to America's rich instead of the EU poor to America's poor. This makes a difference.

Here is an excerpt from http://www.heritage.org/research/re...or-examining-the-plague-of-poverty-in-america

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
◾Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
◾Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
◾Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
◾The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
◾Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
◾Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
◾Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
◾Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Conclusion

The living conditions of persons defined as poor by the government bear little resemblance to notions of "poverty" promoted by politicians and political activists. If poverty is defined as lacking adequate nutritious food for one's family, a reasonably warm and dry apartment to live in, or a car with which to get to work when one is needed, then there are relatively few poor persons remaining in the United States. Real material hardship does occur, but it is limited in scope and severity.

The typical American defined as "poor" by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.



The fact is that being poor in America is a pretty good life, better than any other poor in the world for sure and better than many places middle class.

 

[JollyRoger]

McDonald's (MCD -0.45%) is coming under fire for recommendations it reportedly offered its workers on an in-house, employees-only McResource Line website, on how to cope with issues like the upcoming holiday financial crunch.

According to screen grabs compiled by the activist group Low Pay Is Not OK, the McDonald's site offers such stress management tips as "Pack your bags: At least two vacations a year can cut heart attack risk by 50 percent."

http://money.msn.com/investing/post--mcdonald%E2%80%99s-has-more-tone-deaf-advice-for-workers

 

[KmDubya]

Name one tax that does not involve a choice prior to the tax being imposed.

Choice in this case is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. The sheep gets a vote but still gets eaten.

If the taxation system was such that everyone paid then it would be better, no taxes would be nice but is unrealistic to the point of being a fantasy. A flat tax of everyone paying 15% would be a better system. Everyone would have "skin in the game" and share the burden of the costs for what government does or does not provide.

My tax burden is higher both as a percentage and also as a total value contributed compared to the majority. The current system is such that people who pay much less or even nothing at all can decide to take more from me and take it themselves. At this time it is still in my best interest to continue to work and pay into the system even though I pay more. At some value of taxation that will no longer be the case. High earners will either choose to work less or look for tax shelters, both of these will reduce tax revenue.

Look at the economic benefits to the US after the tax cut instituted by Kennedy in the 1960's and in the 1980's from Reagan