From "Nikki Haley: ‘It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America’" by Jeff Stein in WaPo.
Haley's statement, which came out yesterday, continued: "In our country, the President, Members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, and City Council members actively engage on poverty issues every day. Compare that to the many countries around the world, whose governments knowingly abuse human rights and cause pain and suffering."
The top-rated comment at WaPo, by our_kakistocracy is:
Nothing false about the UN report summary... Nikki Haley denying the truth fits right in with all the other liars, truth-deniers, and outright fabricators in the Trump administration. All of them. Vote in Nov 2018. Tie them up.But where is the lie in what Haley said? Even assuming every word of Alston's is true, Haley's response contains no lie, just political spin. Those who want Trump crushed in the 2018 elections ought to do some truth-based, real-world thinking about what political spin works in American. I doubt if it's the U.N.'s leaning on us about "youth poverty, infant mortality, incarceration, and income inequality" in the abstract and how fat we are.
"Kakistocracy" — based on the Greek for "worst" + "rule" — means " The government of a state by the worst citizens"(OED).
1829 T. L. Peacock Misfortunes Elphin vi. 93 Our agrestic kakistocracy now castigates the heinous sins which were then committed with impunity ["Agrestic" = rural, rough and uncouth.]I see that Salon got to the OED and deployed that word and those quotes before Trump was even sworn in: "Degeneration nation: "It takes a village of idiots to raise a kakistocracy like Donald Trump’s/Donald Trump’s government will be 'for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools'" (December 17, 2016):
1876 J. R. Lowell Lett. II. vii. 179 Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?
As Amro Ali explains in a piece calling for a revival of the term “kakistrocracy” [sic] “In a world where stupidity penetrates multiple levels of government, policies and personalities; it is strange that the term coined to best describe it has actually ended up in the endangered and forgotten words books.”...That link on "if it sounds like shit" goes to an etymology dictionary entry for "kakistocracy":
Forbes contributor Michael Lewitt reminds us that “kakistocracy” should be used to describe a state or government run by the most unscrupulous or unsuitable people: “Corrupt, dishonest and incompetent politicians, regulators and bureaucrats were put in charge by self-absorbed, selfish and ignorant citizens.” He goes on to acknowledge that we are probably not the first society to consider our leaders as part of a kakistocracy....
The word kakistocracy comes to us from Greek. Kakistos means “worst,” which is superlative of kakos — “bad” — and if it sounds like shit, that’s because it is.
.... from Greek kakistos "worst," superlative of kakos "bad" (which perhaps is related to PIE root *kakka- "to defecate") + -cracy.In that view, the real "shithole country." When will the U.N. give us credit for having the most nerve and confidence to criticize those we elect and continually threaten to oust?
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129 comments:
The report cites the tax law... Which even Democrats acknowledge gave money back to the poor... As evidence of policy that hurts the poor. I can see why Hailey may not trust the report.
Did the report talk about unexpectedly high growth, lowered unemployment especially among poorer minorities and wage increases?
The statistics for the Whites in the USA are about the same as for the Whites in other countries.
But while many experts do think Trump is making life harder for the poor, America's poverty rate has likely gone down — not up — since he took office because the economy as a whole continues to improve, according to poverty experts. -- Quote from the WaPo piece linked in the article. Also: These statistics largely “could not reflect the policies of the Trump administration,” since the best existing poverty data predates his inauguration, said the author of the report, Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, in an interview.
Weird this didn't make it into the report or Hailey didn't bring it up.
So in one year Trump undid all 8 years of Obama's good works?
Must have been hiding that behind surging employment, rising wages, increased home ownership, and rising satisfaction with the direction of the US economy.
-XC
Not the UN report. The news report using the WaPo piece.
It's so bad here, I can't believe so many people are lined up to get in, both legally and illegally.
Notice the qualifier "developed world". He should define with a list. Then they should on getting more countries into the "developed" category instead of worrying about the US.
It doesn't have to be true and the lefties don't care if it isn't.
In May, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston did not release a report saying the United States has the highest rates of non-white, non-Asian citizenship among all countries in the developed world because we're all supposed to pretend that it's irrelevant.
The other countries of the developed world are now importing a lot of people who will help those countries catch up to the USA soon in these bad statistics.
the UN report is OBVIOUSLY TRUE!! THE UNITED STATES IS THE WORST COUNTRY, EVER
Want proof? TENS of MILLIONS of American poor sneak over the border Every Year! American Poor people are So Disparate to leave the US, that (if necessary) they'll Even send their children on alone: Even though they know the Dangers!!!
THAT'S HOW BAD THE US IS! People are literally dying to get out!!!
The problem is SO BAD, that the US Government has to spend $millions$ each year to try to secure their border. That's how bad the US is!!
There! There's your Proof! Being poor is The Worst Case Possible !
So the UN is going to start paying their way now that the US is in such bad shape?
Obama government was the macacaocracy... Macaca!
How do the statistics of California compare to the statistics of the other 49 states?
How has that comparison changed in the past decades? Why the change?
Ma Clinton is running.
She is not making speeches in New Zealand because she enjoys the plane ride.
I notice that this article claims much of the data from the U.N. report is from 2016.
UN HQ in Zimbabwe would make a statement.
Spread the news that the U.S. is officially a shithole!! Better to stay in Guatemala.
We just escaped the rule of the most corrupt.
Who says it takes nerve or confidence or sense to criticize our government openly?
Obviously, we should stop funding the UN and spend the money on ourselves.
Immigrants must be passing through on their way to Canada.
Our leaders have run the country down quite bit, but it didn't just happen in the last year and a half. Trump's election is a response to declining standards in America, not the cause.
Somebody should tell Philip Alston that posing and wanking should never be done at the same time.
A wall would help prevent Americans from sneaking over the Mexican border to escape our plight. Build the wall for Mexico's sake!
Citing obesity as a sign of how tough life is for the poor is a nice touch. Some progressive intellectuals, obsessed with dieting and working out, might be inclined to simply disapprove of people who are both poor and fat. For God's sake, why don't they look after themselves? It's only natural that no one wants to hire them or fuck them. Look at them! They need help getting out of a chair, or walking ten steps! Maybe we should consider euthanasia? But then progressive education kicks in. It's not their fault. It's those capitalists, constantly offering them crap to eat, and encouraging them to sit in one place enjoying electronic devices. We need a complete overthrow of the system to help all victims blah blah blah.
Does Mr Idiot Philip Alston think that the illegal immigrants from south of the border (not to mention from all over the world) are trying to get into this country so that they can be poorer and less well fed?
America
Come for the Poverty. Stay for the Obesity.
Is this report from the same UN that has the world's worst human rights abusers leading it's Human Rights commission?
Obama must love poor people because he tried so hard to make more of them.
Million-felony Hillary WAS the kakistocracy.
She was soundly defeated.
Does the UN want to buy some fireworks?
This word jumped out at me the U.N. special racconteur’s report: “... seems ...”
So he’s just bullshitting about the GOP’s and Trump’s policies.
Darrell has a point! Build the Wall; for mexico's sake!
Lloyd, if you talk to a liberal wacko (like my mother; a local director for the WIC program), they'll tell you that:
Obesity is PROOF of Hunger! If poor people weren't suffering from food insecurity they wouldn't eat so much. Poor people stuff their faces with meats and fats and sugars because they're worried where their next meal is coming from. The solution is to increase funding for programs like WIC. If poor people don't have to worry about hunger, they'll eat more sensibly .
When I asked why so many non poor were obese as well, she changed the subject
The term "kakistocracy" has been in use in the paleo and "dissident" right for years.
Funny how the progs just started noticing the "stupidity penetrat[ing] multiple levels of government, policies and personalities..."
As for "it is strange that the term coined to best describe it has actually ended up in the endangered and forgotten words books", the word wasn't "endangered and forgotten" among people not infected with virulent presentism, who bother to read history seriously. I wonder where the guy calling for its "revival" managed to stumble across it.
The left keeps telling me and anyone else who'll listen how terrible the USA is. The number of negative things and influences in this country is simply beyond listing, they say. And besides that there are all these deplorables. So why all the effort to bring people into this country?
Everyone knows - tout de monde - that these immigrants are not assets. Rather, they're liabilities, from not having any job or language skills. We notice that when Merkel and her kind speak of the so-called refugees, she doesn't speak of sharing assets. Rather, it's "sharing the burden [of the refugees]," without the native population ever having been asked if this was a burden they wanted to take on.
This report is total crap and anti-US propaganda.
I travel to places like Haiti, Venezuela (not so much anymore), Bolivia, etc. The poor in the US would be middle class, or better, in those places.
The poorest sections in those countries have no equivalency in the US for abject poverty and suffering. I have not seen the photos of poor US kids creating gangs and marking out territory for crawling through our dumps looking for food. And if they existed, the pictures would be in every newspaper and MSM telecast, blaming Trump.
"We just escaped the rule of the most corrupt."
No, we didn't. We just didn't get the distaff side.
America has been a kakistorcracy for decades.
Does anyone find it strange that Alston is Australian? You know, where the convicts went. The Fatal Shore. A nation of Kallikaks? Maybe. How about those Aboriginal Australians? Thriving, are they? Of course, he has been here for years. He must like it.
I'm sure there are many other things we're worst at. Lousiest elevators. Most unspayed cats. Where are the reports? The U.N. is falling down on its job!
Educate the poor about municipal bonds.
Nuke the U.N.
Kakistocracy is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.
AustinRoth:
This report is total crap and anti-US propaganda.
Yes (for UN reports that usually goes without saying)...
I travel to places like Haiti, Venezuela (not so much anymore), Bolivia, etc. The poor in the US would be middle class, or better, in those places.
...but it did specify "among all countries in the developed world".
gspenser said:
"We notice that when Merkel and her kind speak of the so-called refugees, she doesn't speak of sharing assets. Rather, it's "sharing the burden [of the refugees]," without the native population ever having been asked if this was a burden they wanted to take on."
A modest proposal: Let's designate California, Connecticut, New York, Washington and Oregon as America's official sanctuary states and transfer all immigrants from our southern border to those states. If the immigrants are as productive, intelligent and civil as advertised, those states will flourish without federal assistance. Problem solved.
Guess what. If you import a bunch of poor people, your measures of poverty and inequality go up.
Immigrants must be passing through on their way to Canada.
That must be it, Freeman. And we should usher them right on through. Seriously, if we are such a shit-hole country, would so many be trying to enter?
We should have extricated ourselves from the UN decades ago.
I had my mouth washed out with soap in my much younger years for saying kakka. My brother tricked me into using it on my grandmother. To this day I hate the smell of Ivory (the soap of choice to clean a mouth full of dirty words)
Buzzard - by selectively excluding whatever countries they wish, they get the results they desire.
The most interesting thing about any sort of UN story is what you can gleam from people's reactions to that story. There is an interesting political divide where people on the right tend to perceive the UN as unimportant, ineffective, and generally not good. Whereas the left perceives the UN as important, valuable and overall good for the world. This kind of makes sense because the right tends to favor it's nation being free to pursue its own national interest uncurtailed by any sort of overarching government body, and the left in general favors the idea of a big global institution to keep individual nations in check.
However the other big factor that affects a person's perception of the UN is what country they are from. Big powerful countries, especially if they have a security council seat or have a close ally on the security council, don't care that much about UN condemnations or proclamations. But if you are from a lower end of middling country and below, what the UN does matters a lot more. It can affect funding from other governemnts, direct from funding from NGO's, various trade deals, and industries like tourism.
What I think many from other countries miss is how little cachet a UN proclamation carries domestically in the US. Even among the left in the US many perceive the UN as not very effective, and these are people that probably generally favor the UN and it's basic mission.
The recent act of the US leaving the human rights council in the UN was probably interpreted differently in different countries. Middling countries, probably thought it was a rebuke and pushback against the UN condoning activities the US viewed as very bad and dangerous. But, I suspect in the US it was largely viewed as an action recognizing how completely ineffective and useless the human rights council had become.
"The recent act of the US leaving the human rights council in the UN was probably interpreted differently in different countries. Middling countries, probably thought it was a rebuke and pushback against the UN condoning activities the US viewed as very bad and dangerous. But, I suspect in the US it was largely viewed as an action recognizing how completely ineffective and useless the human rights council had become."
Maybe those in power in Washington today believe there's no point in pretending anymore that we give a shit about human rights, here or anywhere else, and that it's simply easier to be honest. Therefore, why further the pretense by remaining as a member of the council?
The UN must be ashamed to have its HQ in such a terrible country. How about they move? I bet Trump could put together a syndicate to buy the UN buildings -- a riverfront coop would make a great investment. Then the UN could move to a new HQ in a more progressive country. Germany would be a good choice. Not only does it have a pretty good welfare state, but its got a growing third world population, too, which should make a lot of the UN delegates feel right at home.
You know you’re on top when the focus of every other nation on earth is to tear you down.
More Trump winning.
Just the value of free stuff for the poor in the U.S.-- public education, Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, housing subsidies, and EITC--exceeds the median income of most countries.
"Maybe those in power in Washington today believe there's no point in pretending anymore that we give a shit about human rights, here or anywhere else, and that it's simply easier to be honest. Therefore, why further the pretense by remaining as a member of the council?"
Maybe those in power in Washington today believe there's no point in pretending anymore that the UN gives a shit about human rights, here or anywhere else, except as a stick with which to beat Israel and the U.S., and that it's simply easier to be honest. Therefore, why further the pretense by remaining as a member of the council that has Cuba and Venezuela as members?
FIFY.
I'll let others argue the other stuff. I'll just say that it is mostly bullshit and comparing apples to oranges.
Infant mortality is REALLY comparing apples and oranges and something that drives me a bit nuts. WHO defines infant mortality as "infant deaths per thousand live births before 1st birthday" That may not be the exact wording but is close enough.
The problem is not with counting the deaths, that is pretty straightforward. The problem is that different countries define "live birth" differently and WHO does not address this. France and Germany do not count live births until the baby has left the hospital and has a birth certificate registered. Typically 4-6 days.
Italy does something similar but there is a difference between northern Italy and southern Italy which prevent comparisons even in the same country.
A couple of countries do not register premature births as "live" until the baby reaches a certain weight.
Japan, for cultural reasons, counts any baby who dies within 7 days of birth as "stillborn".
The US counts, basically, any baby however premature, whatever medical problems it may have as a "live birth". Thus a baby who is born live and dies 5 minutes later goes into our infant mortality stats. It does not get counted in French, German and other stats.
I can see valid arguments pro and con for each of these methods. What I can't see is any way to compare them.
Most infant deaths happen fairly quickly, within hours or days of birth. The US will always have a higher reported infant mortality rate.
That may or may not mean we actually have a higher rate since there is no way to compare them.
Caveat: My info comes from a deep dive I did into infant mortality rates for a class I was teaching back in the late 90s early 00s. As far as I know, from casual reading, the above is still true. If anyone has newer info about how live births are counted, I'll be happy to stand corrected.
If the UN ever had any usefulness, it has long ceased to. We should probably leave the UN. We should definitely be agitating to move the UN to some other country. Brazzaville or Lagos could do with a boost.
We won't and it won't because the UN supports an enormous amount of high end real estate and other businesses.
John Henry
"The infant mortality rate is defined as the number of deaths of children under one year of age, expressed per 1 000 live births. Some of the international variation in infant mortality rates is due to variations among countries in registering practices for premature infants. The United States and Canada are two countries which register a much higher proportion of babies weighing less than 500g, with low odds of survival, resulting in higher reported infant mortality. In Europe, several countries apply a minimum gestational age of 22 weeks (or a birth weight threshold of 500g) for babies to be registered as live births. This indicator is measured in terms of deaths per 1 000 live births."
https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality-rates.htm
John Henry
I Really Don't Care. Do U?
Blogger Hagar said...
Ma Clinton is running.
For or from?
She is not making speeches in New Zealand because she enjoys the plane ride.
I never could see that. How much of a market can there be in NZ for a book by a twice failed US politician about a failed campaign? Why would it merit a book tour in person?
I wonder if she looked at any real estate while there.
John Henry
Manhattan will be happy to be rid of the immune drivers.
I'm not wasting time wading in but I suspect the metrics of obesity and inequality are misleading. Inequality means you have some proportion of the population that's prosperous but makes no comparison relative to other places you're comparing. Our poor our richer than your poor. Some people are poor or everyone's poor but you don't want the latter.
Fat means you have enough wealth and leisure to get that way, and the very wealthy in the US are less likely to be obese.
Hillary went for the fall foliage.
"kakistocracy"
Thank you Ann for defining that word. I've been hearing it for some years now and thought it was a made up word "kaka" plus cracy. I've heard kaka all my life as a synonym for shit and just figured that kakistocracy meant something like rule by the shitty.
Now that I know the definition, I see that I have always had the definition correct though I was wrong on the etymology.
That's why I love it here. Learning something new every day.
John Henry
Maybe those in power in Washington today believe there's no point in pretending anymore that we give a shit about human rights, here or anywhere else, and that it's simply easier to be honest. Therefore, why further the pretense by remaining as a member of the council?
I guess this depends on who you mean by "we". If you mean we as in the general people in the US I think you are wrong. You will find almost no one in the US who thinks it is ok for the government to imprison a person because they were a political opponent. Similarly you will find almost no one in the US who thinks it is ok to execute a person because they are gay. When disagreements arise it is over the interpretation of human rights not on whether it is ok to violate them. For example most on the left think as a right people are entitled to free healthcare. People on the right do not believe it is a right.
Now if you meant "we" in the global sense, then I think you have a fair point. I think most people are very much willing to tolerate abuses of human rights in other parts of the world, so long as they don't occur here, where ever here may be. This doesn't mean they like it or support it, it just means they are more than willing to do nothing to stop it. And that isn't necessarily an unreasonable position to take. Saudi Arabia metes out some punishments that to us seem incredibly barbaric, disproportionate, or just plain unwarranted. There isn't much political clamoring in the US to change that. But there is action around pressuring them to keep wahhabi radicals contained, and also to not mess with global oil supplies. I think most people have a rational level of apathy about human rights abuses in other distant parts of the world.
Wilsonianism is dead! Long live cultural bloc based realpolitik!
What is the definition of "Poor" or "poverty"?
Most of the time I see it as some percentage of the population. As in, anyone in the bottom 20% of all earners. If that is the metric, we will always have a 20% poverty rate.
John Henry
I agree with the Vault Dweller. While we may choose to use economic leverage to influence other countries' human rights practices, it's not our prerogative to dictate how other sovereign nations manage their own internal affairs. Having a World Court, in essence, to enforce 'human rights' is to assume these rights are universally accepted.
If you list the poorest 20% in the world, none would live in the US.
Our homeless get their coffee from Starbucks and have their own data plans.
John Henry, that's an important observation. People living in 'poverty' in the US own newer cars, big-screen TVs, eat out several times a week, and have their hair and nails done regularly. I have none of those and am not 'poor'.
The "Living in Poverty" measure is also a BS statistic. It is based on the median income for the country, so there will always be people living in poverty, even if that 'poverty' measure is greater than the median income of most other countries. It also does not include any government benefits like food, housing and medical coverage.
It's hard to compete with countries that abort any fetus with a possible birth defect.
AustinRoth:
"Buzzard - by selectively excluding whatever countries they wish, they get the results they desire."
They'll get the results they desire, by whatever means. But there's nothing inherently dishonest (or anti-American) about intra-First-World-countries comparisons. Honest analysts do it all the time, with useful results. The U.S. does make a poor showing in some metrics; the real problem here is that UN types have no interest in honestly addressing why that is so, and a huge interest in suppressing any realtalk about why things are the way they are.
All I'm sayin' is, with so much bullshit to aim it in any given UN report, it's stupid to criticize something that isn't there. The report isn't comparing the U.S. to Third World countries, period, and you are. (And frankly, "our poor are better off than the Haitian or Bolivian poor" is one weird damning-with-faint-praise defense of the U.S.)
What it *is* comparing it to is plainly stated in the report. Misrepresenting that just presents your enemies with a weak point by which they can discredit your criticism and make a lot of deflecting noise about *your* dishonesty or reading comprehension skills.
The elite need to better curate the words they use to disparage the deplorables. This is a man bun kind of word. It's more likely to inspire dislike of its user than contempt for its target. Rapporteur isn't such a great word either.
Where would a person prefer to be poor?
That is a question that the UN really needs to answer. But they know the answer to that question, don't they?
I've seen real poor people. Not first world poor, but starving poor.
youth poverty, infant mortality, incarceration, and income inequality
Thank black parents.
More propaganda from the global "deep state".
This caste of mandarins crosses borders and has a large expat component in its international institutions, NGOs and Qangoes. There is a great ecosystem of these things. In my Asian days I had much to do with these, notably in my case the Asian Development Bank and the Asia Foundation. But they are ubiquitous.
You used to be able to get a look at the nature and pecking order of the system in the back pages of the Economist, full of employment ads for academics in international bodies. In my time of subscribing to the Economist these things pushed out the once more typical employment ads for, say, private banks.
I have doubts about whether the term “rate[] . . of income inequality” has any real meaning.
What do our statistics look like if you don't count the illegal immigrants?
I am Mr. International Comparisons.
Angle-Dyne is right, this is useful. The US is very resistant to this analysis because it mainly shows poor execution of public policy, instances of which I have often mentioned. It mostly shows up the poor quality of the US public sector, the domain of the Democratic party. International socialists are easily shown to be better quality socialists than US socialists.
The propaganda in this thing, however, is that it is deliberately targeted at the Trump administration by disingenuously using data that preceded it. It is in that sense a horrible lie made up for political purposes. Which is of course a normal sort of thing, especially these days.
"I guess this depends on who you mean by 'we.'"
I mean the government. (And many citizens, too, but that is immaterial.)
When’s the UN moving out?
I hear Venezuela is beautiful, has oil and is cheap. Very little wealth disparity.
America has been a kakistorcracy for decades.
Welcome to humanity, Cookie. The world is.
America has been a kakistorcracy for decades.
Welcome to humanity, Cookie. The world is.
If we don’t build a wall and sort out our immigration process, our stats will get worse. So what the UN is saying, since we’re the host country is we need to build a wall so our stats don’t get worse.
"When will the U.N. give us credit for having the most nerve and confidence to criticize those we elect and continually threaten to oust?"
The UN is in no way interested in a system where authority can be questioned and is under threat of removal and replacement. I'd like to know how we can throw the current idiots out of UN office (along with its own Deep State and it many, many documented abuses) and replace them with the alleged kakistos, who could scarcely do a worse job.
Immigrants must be passing through on their way to Canada.
Maybe. We do know that they passed or were escorted through Mexico.
It's the fallacy of regulation. This is why California has high poverty rates. The state is chocked by restrictions and regulations that only the wealthy can afford to pay those costs. Ironically, the left decries multinational conglomerations while the Kafka-lite regulations insure that MegaHugeCorp will easily crush smaller competitors. It helps maintain a defacto caste system.
Infant mortality is a Choice and a rite wholly supported by the UN.
Youth poverty is subject to adult poverty and liberal spending sprees.
Incarceration. He's right. We can adjust our laws to reduce focus on behavior modification and normalize self-destructive orientations.
People's obesity is by choice (e.g. gluttony), improper diet, insufficient exercise, stress, and other factors.
Income inequality is not a measure of substance but politics. The measure of substance is income (earned or redistributed) and cost-of-living.
Howard is completely correct.
The dynamic is rarely explained like this in public policy arguments and never in educational ones.
Propaganda works best as a system of exclusion. Cover only the facts and arguments that support your message, and block those that don't.
buwaya puti: Thanks. Another exernality is how environmental and development regulations have a tendency to increase economic and environmental injustices where the poor carries most of the toxic exposure burden in economically blighted communities. The shift in emphasis on greenhouse gas rather than toxics and nano-particulates increases this injustice.
Blogger Jupiter said...
Robert Cook said...
"I mean the government. (And many citizens, too, but that is immaterial.)"
Cookie, do I understand you correctly? You believe that the United States should be intervening more vigorously in the affairs of other nations? Or just that we should wring our hands more?
This is why California has high poverty rates.
California has high poverty rates because of:
A) Illegal immigration
B) Good weather
C) High welfare payments
D) Progressive (and permissive) city governments
When liberals talk about poverty, they are only ever talking about relative poverty, the object being to create and perpetuate class envy, a perennial plank of the left's platform Yes, capitalism creates so much surplus wealth that it's inevitable that some will get incredibly wealthy. "OMFG", scream the liberals, "Look how bad the poverty (gap) is!" Meanwhile, the "poor" enjoy absolute wealth beyond the dreams of any nineteenth century millionaire. Capitalism does this. Thanks, Capitalism.
The "Living in Poverty" measure is also a BS statistic.
Any metric dealing with poverty is bullshit.
First of all, the definition of poverty is constantly changing. The US government redefines poverty every year. Secondly, as was mentioned above, there will always be poor people and rich people. If Trump gave everyone a million dollars tomorrow, the new definition of poverty would be a millionaire.
The better metric is standard of living.
Meanwhile, the "poor" enjoy absolute wealth beyond the dreams of any nineteenth century millionaire.
Poor people in the United States have a higher standard of living than 99% of all the humans who have ever lived. (It's why everyone else is literally dying to get here)
I tell my students on the first day of school (and repeat it often) that they have all won the lottery by being born in the United States in the 21st century.
"Kakistocracy" is what we'd have here if the Clinton mob took over. I've always preferred the term coined by Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE): "plunderbund," meaning a gang ("liberals," socialists, whatever the particular gang calls itself) that stays in power by looting Peter to subsidize Paul . . . and line its own pockets while doing so.
The UN just keeps handing Trump bats to beat them with, via Insty:
...Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago....
They hid the decline. Cut their funding.
Not tired of winning!
Extreme World Poverty has fallen to 10%. Not even 1 billion people live in extreme poverty anymore. Open North Korea. It’s a distribution/socialist/progressive problem now. We’ve done good! We did build this.
"Cookie, do I understand you correctly? You believe that the United States should be intervening more vigorously in the affairs of other nations? Or just that we should wring our hands more?"
No. I'm saying our government doesn't give a shit about human rights. Full stop. We use "human rights" as an excuse to interfere in other countries' affairs, and we lecture other nations for their violations of human rights while committing them here and ignoring or abetting them among our allies.
"Meanwhile, the 'poor' enjoy absolute wealth beyond the dreams of any nineteenth century millionaire."
You obviously don't know how 19th Century millionaires lived. You obviously also don't know the conditions many people in America live in today.
You obviously don't know how 19th Century millionaires lived. You obviously also don't know the conditions many people in America live in today.
How many 19th century millionaires had AC, cable television, refrigerators, microwaves, cell phones, x-boxes and access to fresh fruits and vegetables year round?
There are no such thing as 'rights', only what freedoms one obtained by power. Power is the only thing that matters, the ability to obtain by force.
Not to mention $200 tennis shoes.
Heat, light, running hot and cold water, antibiotics, medicine, and the ability to be homeless across the country from where you started?
Sieg heil, Alex!
What happened in the i think 60s Cookie?
The commies wanted to show how bad it was here so they showed American homeless living in their cars and the average Russian said they have cars?
BTW, Cookie, I’ve seen poverty here but I never saw women carrying yokes of water or washing their clothes in a stream. I saw that in Russia and that was about a decade AFTER the Wall fell. And they turned off the hot water to a city of over 1 MILLION people to work on the pipes before winter.
William Chadwick, go kindly fuck yourself.
Then there was the tornado and the arms depot....
I’ve never seen that here, either. Grin.
Robert Cook said...
You obviously don't know how 19th Century millionaires lived.
Could a nineteenth-century millionaire jump into a personal vehicle that could travel all day at 80 mph on wide, smooth highways for a few dollars?
Did a nineteenth-century millionaire have a magic picture frame in every room of his house that showed news, information and entertainment at the press of a button?
Could a nineteenth-century millionaire buy a ticket and get on a machine that could carry him in the air anywhere in the world in a few hours?
Did nineteenth-century millionaires carry wallet-sized devices that allowed them to communicate with anyone in the world?
Could a nineteenth-century millionaire count on having his tetanus, cholera, sepsis, heart attack, cancer etc. etc. routinely cured?
Open your eyes, Robert. Open your mind. These things didn't happen by themselves, and never would have happened without the profit incentive
Read analysis of this report yesterday. Not only is data obsolete but is based on Census surveys of households that is considered to be very unreliable for this type of analysis as it undercounts actual usage of social programs such as SNAP, SSI, Medicaid, etc. Report is pretty much useless.
"How many 19th century millionaires had AC, cable television, refrigerators, microwaves, cell phones, x-boxes and access to fresh fruits and vegetables year round?"
Is that your definition of "absolute wealth beyond dreams?" Iyiyiyi!
That said, there are people in this country who lack some or all of these things you mention, or live in conditions that mitigate the "luxury" (sic) such things provide. (The misery of living in an unheated apartment in winter that lacks running water, or has holes in the walls, or is infested with roaches and rats is not mitigated by having a tv to watch, or a microwave to quickly heat up crap food.)
thank you for proving the point, Cookie. They’re still better off being poor in the US.
It requires a high level of ignorance and disingenuousness, common to WaPo commenters these days, to deny the truth of Haley's statements.
It is also absurd to suppose the study is not politically motivated. To lay These evils at Trump's and the Republican Congress' feet is absurd. It takes years, if not decades, for such reported conditions to arise if they exist at all. And they are certainly not caused by tax cuts.
Trump's great gift is the extent to which TDS stimulates the mass production of fake news, fake studies and fake polls. They are pablum to diehard partisan Democrat ignoramuses and evidence of panic in the swamp to normal Americans.
Being from a place that has its feet, so to speak, solidly in both the modern era and in a semi-feudal past, I can I think answer concerning those 19th century millionaires.
The advantages of being such a person, such a family, is not really in physical comfort, or access to technology, or even protection of health.
People are communal animals and the true satisfactions of life are communal - in other words, power and prestige.
A wealthy person could afford servants, and otherwise commanded the labor, and attention, of multitudes, because of course he was rich and labor was relatively cheap. Whatever techno-toys anyone today has, it takes megabucks to buy the satisfaction of a middling-wealthy person of the 19th century. The "Upstairs-Downstairs" life is much less affordable now.
It is hilarious to talk about poverty in America and directly equate it with other countries. We define poverty here in relative terms. Most of the poor get some sort of support, have a phone and a TV and a roof over their heads--no comparison to poverty in Africa. I visited France and truthfully most of the people there seemed poor to me. There were people living in WWII bombed out buildings not far from the airport and people still bringing in the hay on horse-drawn wagons (no they were not Amish).
Any criticism from the UN is guaranteed to be disingenuous.
Regarding poverty and inequality: the bottom economically is to be dead broke and homeless. Some people down on their luck plus the crazy and intoxicated will always inhabit this zero territory. Thus as the country gets richer the inequality increases. It does not signify a problem. A problem is when the reason there is a rich person is that he is president/dictator and stole all the money (Venezuela, Cuba, Philippines a while back, many African countries).
Marx! Marx! Marx!
Poverty is always relative.
That said, there are people in this country who lack some or all of these things you mention,
People in the United States are poor for one or more of three reasons:
1) Bad choices in their personal life (child before marriage, drop out of school, drugs, gangs, crime)
2) Mental illness
3) Illegal immigration
"thank you for proving the point, Cookie. They’re still better off being poor in the US."
1. I didn't even mention those who don't even have rat-infested unheated apartments to live in. As you know, there are many homeless in our nation.
2. It's not a matter of it "being better to be poor in the US." They're still poor.
3. It's easy to be smug and arrogant when you're not affected by poverty and don't see it.
4. I've been very fortunate and have not been without a job since I was 22 and have never been poor, (I've never been rich, either). I have known people who were poor, and I would not want to have had to experience what they did, even though they were not homeless. Their lives were a constant grind of stress and debts that could not be paid. They worked, by the way. It was my seeing their experiences that sparked me to question the Republican verities I'd been raised with, and to move away from those ideas.
"To lay These evils at Trump's and the Republican Congress' feet is absurd. It takes years, if not decades, for such reported conditions to arise if they exist at all. And they are certainly not caused by tax cuts."
This is true. Trump's policies may not alleviate (or may even exacerbate) the levels and conditions of poverty in this country, but he didn't cause them. Clinton and Obama certainly didn't do anything to help the poor or alleviate poverty. They were neo-liberals: neo-cons in liberal clothing. Obama could have placed conditions on the government handouts to the banks who almost crashed the country 10 years ago, such as requiring they renegotiate mortgages for the many thousands of homeowners who were fucked by the crash. But he didn't; he gave the bankers the money strings-free, and they paid themselves handsome bonuses. Trump-lovers are no more deluded in their adoration of their unholy fantasy savior than were Obama's foolish and still deluded supporters.
What I don't understand is why the UN maintains its headquarters in such a shithole country. Maybe they should move the UN to, oh, I don't know, maybe the Gaza strip? They seem to greatly admire the residents there. Or maybe to Caracas?
We have high rates of XYZ - because of open borders and mass immigration.
Invite the 3rd world and you'll have 3rd world youth.
The USA isn't full of magic dirt that magically transforms young Nigerians and Guatemalans into kids form Lake Woebegon.
@Robert Cook,
As I'm sure you know, an awful lot of poverty is caused by bad choices. Like choices to drop out of school, take drugs, have children out of wedlock or commit crimes. That said, there are things the government can do to help. But most of them are opposed by modern-day Democrats and many Republicans as well.
School choice is one example. Getting rid of restrictions on entry into various lines of work is another. In some localities it takes hundreds of hours of bullshit "training" before you can cut somebody's hair for money. Or apply makeup. Or trim toenails.
We could eliminate minimum wages that price inexperienced, less-educated labor out of the market. If you want to increase the value of work, the right way to do it is via wage subsidies, not minimum wages.
We can lower the prices of commodities that loom large in the budgets of the poor by getting rid of all agricultural prices supports, marketing orders, quotas, etc. And by eliminating the ethanol mandate that raises the price of both gasoline and corn, and indirectly raises beef, pork and chicken prices.
We could allow people with legitimate college degrees in subjects to teach those subjects in schools, rather than requiring education majors who have no expertise in much of anything.
We could reduce the risks of financial crises by refusing to subsidize risk-taking with taxpayer guarantees. There's no reason banks and other financial institutions should be allowed to operate with less than 20 percent capital requirements.
We could greatly increase labor mobility and reduce housing costs by outlawing zoning. There was no home price crash in Houston because there was no bubble to pop. When prices started to rise, builders were free to build (supply) more houses, and they did. Houston has seen rapid growth with pretty stable home prices. It's not only possible, it was the norm before exclusionary zoning became widespread in the 1980's.
If we were serious about wanting to reduce the cost of health care, we would stop trying to increase the demand for it via subsidized insurance schemes and instead get rid of the restrictions on supply. We could easily double the supply of new doctors on the market every year without lowering quality noticeably, and that would force prices down. Increased supply always does that. There is no reason to think the medical market is magically different.
I could go on all day. The one thing you'll notice about all of this policies that would reduce poverty is that they are all opposed by most Democrats. Some of them are also opposed by most Republicans.
The poverty in the US is a result of people fleeing countries with the very left-wing policies the UN report wants us to adopt. I guess they’re right: if we confiscated wealth and destroyed “income inequality” we’d descend from a developed to an undeveloped country, a la Venezuela, and be off the hook. Our poor, and the world’s poor, would then move to the most capitalist country at that point, and the UN would harass them instead of us. Problem solved!
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