Genius Move Against Shoplifters

[Carborendum]

 

[NeuroTypical]

Yeah, I'd have to see a prosecution work it's way through the court system before I formed an opinion.    

Somewhere between "stealing $3 in gum is a felony", and "stealing stuff worth $950 won't be prosecuted" is where the actual law should be.

 

[Traveler]

Dealing with crime is a simple math problem.  If a crime is being repeated it is obvious that the associated punishment is insufficient.   Rather than focus on crime – perhaps we should consider the criminal.  If an individual continues any particular crime (including shoplifting gum) then to change the intent of the criminal, the punishment needs to be increased.

We can also take into account survival of the particular individual and determine if they need to be institutionalized for their benefit or offer a better survival opportunity.

 

The Traveler

[Just_A_Guy]

Yeah

44 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Yeah, I'd have to see a prosecution work it's way through the court system before I formed an opinion.    

Somewhere between "stealing $3 in gum is a felony", and "stealing stuff worth $950 won't be prosecuted" is where the actual law should be.

 

Yeah, it would create interesting questions about "who defines what the *value* really is?".  I suspect that when it got to the California Supreme Court, the prosecution would have to prove that the shopowner really had an arm's length buyer willing to pay $951 for the item.

Props for creativity, though.

[Phoenix_person]

Or. OR. We could address the root cause of petty crimes like shoplifting rather than turning single moms onto felons because they can't afford baby food.

This was put on my radar by a libertarian leftist friend of mine in Chicago. He doesn't know if it's a good idea or not (neither do I), but he likes it in theory a lot more than using city police resources to criminalize hungry poor people. I'd be interested to hear if/how people think stronger enforcement would work better than making food more accessible to vulnerable populations.

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2023/september/MayorJohnsonAnnouncesTheExplorationOfAMunicipallyOwnedGroceryStore.html

[Just_A_Guy]

7 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

Or. OR. We could address the root cause of petty crimes like shoplifting rather than turning single moms onto felons because they can't afford baby food.

This was put on my radar by a libertarian leftist friend of mine in Chicago. He doesn't know if it's a good idea or not (neither do I), but he likes it in theory a lot more than using city police resources to criminalize hungry poor people. I'd be interested to hear if/how people think stronger enforcement would work better than making food more accessible to vulnerable populations.

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2023/september/MayorJohnsonAnnouncesTheExplorationOfAMunicipallyOwnedGroceryStore.html

The thing is, we already have a federal program geared towards making sure that women, infants, and children have enough to eat.  And that’s above and beyond a broader program of food stamps/TANF.  The programs are not particularly well-administered, in my experience; but they do exist and they do work.

Moreover, I’ve been a desperately poor parent[*].  I would venture to guess that a lot of folks—especially LDS folks, who are encouraged to start having children early—have been.  I never resorted to crime.  In that time of poverty it was my upbringing and values and social network, not my need, that determined my life choices.

It’s certainly dangerous to over-generalize; but on the whole I don’t think people steal because they are hungry.  Rather, I think they steal—and fail to succeed professionally—through a combination of entitlement, a lack of self-discipline, and a rejection of the possibility of (or the character traits, skills, and activities that enable) social mobility.  That sounds like a moral judgment, and I don’t mean it to—a lot of folks, especially these days, just weren’t raised to know any better; and political/“community” leaders have tended to cater to and exacerbate these traits, rather than working and demanding accountability to see that those traits are extinguished.
 

*EDIT:  on a re-reading, what I should have written is “I’ve been desperately poor *as a* parent.”

Though, I’m a pretty poor parent, too. 

Edited November 2, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[NeuroTypical]

2 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

Or. OR. We could address the root cause of petty crimes like shoplifting rather than turning single moms onto felons because they can't afford baby food.

Or we could address the root cause of poverty.   We could internalize the truth that if you graduate high school, get a job, and don't have children until you get married, you won't be in poverty.  And since we just can't stand to look at ourselves in the mirror without feeling the need for government programs to help solve society's ills, we could target our government programs to encourage stuff like graduating high school, getting a job, and encouraging traditional marriage.

[JohnsonJones]

Accordingly it appears 90% of the inhabitants of Provo, Utah are LDS.

Census.gov

It also appears almost 25% of Provo lives in poverty. 

I'd imagine many of them (and I may be wrong) graduated High school, didn't have children until they got married, and have or have tried to get a job and yet are living in poverty. 

Graduating High school, not having children until you get married, and getting a job (especially if it's just the type of job one can get out of high school these days sometimes, such as a Walmart Cashier) doesn't necessarily mean one is not going to experience poverty. 

Statistics can point that your odds of not being in poverty are better if you are not a single parent, have a College degree (times have changed, sure a High School degree means you have better odds with it than without, but many with HS degrees are in poverty these days then even 20 years ago), and have a job, but it being statistics...means there's no guarantee.  It's like your chances of rolling a 6 or better are greater with two dice than one die, but you are probably going to have a lot rolls that are lower than that anyways. 

[Phoenix_person]

 

On 11/2/2024 at 12:05 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

In that time of poverty it was my upbringing and values and social network, not my need, that determined my life choices.

A lot of people didn't have your upbringing, especially in cities like Chicago.

On 11/2/2024 at 12:05 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

a lot of folks, especially these days, just weren’t raised to know any better; and political/“community” leaders have tended to cater to and exacerbate these traits, rather than working and demanding accountability to see that those traits are extinguished.

Extinguishing traits is one thing. What traits do we replace them with? Our penal system is slowly coming around to balancing punishment with rehabilitation. We still have a long way to go, and having a prison system that profits from high incarceration rates doesn't help. A lot of petty criminals, I'd say probably a modest majority, didn't have your upbringing and the values that came with it. Our penal system was built on the idea that adults with bad programming can't be reprogrammed. Hence, we have people trapped in infinite loops of legal trouble because they made an unfortunate mistake or two when they were young and it didn't go away after they "paid their debt to society".

For a good example of this, look at Michael Vick. He did heinous, absolutely appalling things in his early 20s, possibly (probably) going back to his teenage years. He was arrested, charged, convicted, and finished his prison sentence at age 29. A strong case could be made that his prison sentence was too light, but in the eyes of the law, Michael Vick is a rehabilitated former criminal. He has spent his time since his imprisonment advocating and raising money for after-school programs for at-risk youth. He's also supported legislation that would make it a felony to bring minors to a dogfight and define legal repercussions for adult spectators (which hurts the demand for fights). It seems to me that he identified the root cause of his past criminal behavior and has chosen to use his platform to try to prevent today's kids from upending their lives the way he did. 

Vick is 44 now and a talking head on Fox Sports. His athletic legacy is well-renowned and an inspiration to many of today's mobile quarterbacks, including Lamar Jackson, who has broken a few of Vick's rushing records and will almost certainly break his all-time rushing record this season. Mentioning his name outside of football circles, however, will rile up some strong opinions. I don't doubt that mentioning him here will do so, and I get it (and I'm certainly interested in your legal take, in particular). Would I let him watch him watch my pets? No. Does it bother me that he's my favorite quarterback's favorite quarterback? No. Does he deserve to keep his fortune, fame, and NFL accomplishments? As disgusted as I am by what he was involved in, I have to believe that people are capable of coming back from incredibly dark places, having been to an incredibly dark place myself not that long ago (though I never put anyone other than myself in physical danger). 

On 11/2/2024 at 1:25 PM, NeuroTypical said:

Or we could address the root cause of poverty.   We could internalize the truth that if you graduate high school, get a job, and don't have children until you get married, you won't be in poverty.  And since we just can't stand to look at ourselves in the mirror without feeling the need for government programs to help solve society's ills, we could target our government programs to encourage stuff like graduating high school, getting a job, and encouraging traditional marriage.

I definitely think we should do most of those things. I also think we should be prepared to rehabilitate people who (inevitably) fall through the cracks. Otherwise, we're essentially telling people that if they don't accomplish x and y before they reach age z, then their future is f'd. X and y make things a heckuva lot easier, but there are millions of Americans right now who don't know where their next meal is coming from, or their children's next meal. That's a. Millions of Americans are a single ER visit away from a financial crisis. That's b. Millions of Americans struggle to make rent. That's c. Fix a, b, and c, then x and y will be a lot easier. In the meantime, we still have plenty of letters remaining to bridge the gap. You don't need to starve a man before teaching him how to fish.

Edited November 3, 2024 by Phoenix_person

[Just_A_Guy]

16 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

Accordingly it appears 90% of the inhabitants of Provo, Utah are LDS.

Census.gov

It also appears almost 25% of Provo lives in poverty. 

I'd imagine many of them (and I may be wrong) graduated High school, didn't have children until they got married, and have or have tried to get a job and yet are living in poverty. 

Of course it is.  It's a college town.  Most college students are living independently with little or no income and are therefore, definitionally, in poverty.  That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just a stage of life.  The real problem is chronic poverty--by which I mean, an individual remains stuck in the bottom quintile of income, decade after decade, for most of their productive lives. 

I believe what @NeuroTypical was driving at, is that people who do those things will not stay in poverty.  

9 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

A lot of people didn't have your upbringing, especially in cities like Chicago.

Indeed, but that's kind of my point.  Crime doesn't follow poverty, it follows culture.  So you won't solve it by giving people free stuff even as their moral values remain unchanged.  (If it were, then people getting food stamps and Section 8 would never commit crimes, right?)  Truly addressing crime requires a level of social and community engagement that is far more universal, and far harder, than just voting to give away the tax revenues of the people who didn't commit crimes.  Frankly, I'm not sure it can be done except through the auspices of a Judeo-Christian religious renaissance--any government rapprochement with which, would throw half the country into conniptions while also creating genuine Constitutional issues.  

Quote

Extinguishing traits is one thing. What traits do we replace them with? Our penal system is slowly coming around to balancing punishment with rehabilitation. We still have a long way to go, and having a prison system that profits from high incarceration rates doesn't help. A lot of petty criminals, I'd say probably a modest majority, didn't have your upbringing and the values that came with it. Our penal system was built on the idea that adults with bad programming can't be reprogrammed. Hence, we have people trapped in infinite loops of legal trouble because they made an unfortunate mistake or two when they were young and it didn't go away after they "paid their debt to society".

For a good example of this, look at Michael Vick. He did heinous, absolutely appalling things in his early 20s, possibly (probably) going back to his teenage years. He was arrested, charged, convicted, and finished his prison sentence at age 29. A strong case could be made that his prison sentence was too light, but in the eyes of the law, Michael Vick is a rehabilitated former criminal. He has spent his time since his imprisonment advocating and raising money for after-school programs for at-risk youth. He's also supported legislation that would make it a felony to bring minors to a dogfight and define legal repercussions for adult spectators (which hurts the demand for fights). It seems to me that he identified the root cause of his past criminal behavior and has chosen to use his platform to try to prevent today's kids from upending their lives the way he did. 

Vick is 44 now and a talking head on Fox Sports. His athletic legacy is well-renowned and an inspiration to many of today's mobile quarterbacks, including Lamar Jackson, who has broken a few of Vick's rushing records and will almost certainly break his all-time rushing record this season. Mentioning his name outside of football circles, however, will rile up some strong opinions. I don't doubt that mentioning him here will do so, and I get it (and I'm certainly interested in your legal take, in particular). Would I let him watch him watch my pets? No. Does it bother me that he's my favorite quarterback's favorite quarterback? No. Does he deserve to keep his fortune, fame, and NFL accomplishments? As disgusted as I am by what he was involved in, I have to believe that people are capable of coming back from incredibly dark places, having been to an incredibly dark place myself not that long ago (though I never put anyone other than myself in physical danger). 

I think the problem is even more complicated and multifaceted than that. 

• Originally you would only go to prison (defined as:  be incarcerated for over one year) if you were convicted of a "felony", and there were only nine felonies:  Murder, Robbery, Manslaughter, Rape, Sodomy (which at the time, meant male-on-male rape), Larceny, Arson, Mayhem, and Burglary (hence the law student's mnemonic, "Mr. & Mrs. Lamb").  We've had at least a century of politicians at both the state and federal level who want to be seen as "tough on crime", and who thus have moved more and more offenses into the realm of "felonies"; and in general I think that's a bad thing.  Under classical common law, Michael Vick would never have gone to prison at all.  I like animals, and I have no particular objection to laws against cruelty to animals or dogfighting or whatever Vick was convicted of.  But I would agree with you that it shouldn't be a felony.  
•  I don't think I would quite agree with your notion that "our penal system was built on the idea that adults with bad programming can't be reprogrammed".  Classical discussions of criminal justice all the way back to the Enlightenment have talked about the need to balance retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation.  But there was certainly more of an emphasis on deterrence.  I think that was due to the twin factors that a) there just wasn't a lot of science about human psychology and rehabilitation [which candidly, even now, I find is often not repeatable on a patient-to-patient basis] and b) in an era where science hadn't provided us with marvelously addictive substances--in most cases deterrence just plain worked on that subset of people who didn't drink themselves to an early death or eventually starved through their own indolence.  Jail sucked, prison sucked worse, and people who were released really didn't want to go back there and were willing to change their lives accordingly.
• Speaking anecdotally and for my own jurisdiction (I have no idea what happens in others):  People don't do prison, or even jail, for first- or second- or, often, even third-time drug offenses--even when the drug involved is the hard stuff like meth or heroin.  What generally happens is they miss a hearing (maybe a pretrial hearing, or maybe a post-sentencing review on a piddling little diversion or a plea in abeyance agreement), the court issues a warrant, the criminal calls the court and sets a hearing in exchange for the warrant being vacated, and then the criminal blows that hearing too, and then we rinse and repeat three or four more times; and finally the judge says "Screw it.  I'm issuing a $5,000 warrant, cash-only."  If we can't get the people who need help to even show up to meetings with people who sincerely want to help them--what then?  
• We still don't really know what to do with drug addicts.  I'm too lazy to look up the stats, but I seem to remember being at a CLE recently where it was suggested that generally, residential drug treatment programs are something like 35-45% effective over the long term.  For all our talk of rehabilitation, in many/most cases we just plain don't know how to do it reliably and well.

None of this excuses our simply resigning ourselves to the status quo, or choosing to look the other way at a failing system.  But I do think this is another example of the phenomenon I mentioned in another recent thread whereby

1.  Progressives get their way and their values become commonplace (in this case:  secularization, de-stigmatization of fornication and adultery and casual divorce, trivialization of abortion, acceptance of gangsta culture, erosion of academic standards and teachers' disciplinary authority in schools, de-stigmatization of gateway drug use, and a general deliberate rejection of any cultural traits that seemed to WASP-y);

2.  A slough of second-order consequences ensues that leaves us worse off than we were before; and

3.  My friends on the left demand we Do Something™, with with that Something (in this case, one that sounds an awful lot like trying to bribe criminals not to break the law) generally tending to limit my rights or dig into my pocketbook while, coincidentally, being something that past experience and precedent suggests is unlikely to yield a palpable improvement.

This all makes me pretty reluctant to allow the left to set the agenda on future systemic reforms.  Perhaps, as a certain president once suggested, we should agree that the people who created these problems "can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."

Quote

I definitely think we should do most of those things. I also think we should be prepared to rehabilitate people who (inevitably) fall through the cracks. Otherwise, we're essentially telling people that if they don't accomplish x and y before they reach age z, then their future is f'd. X and y make things a heckuva lot easier, but there are millions of Americans right now who don't know where their next meal is coming from, or their children's next meal. That's a. Millions of Americans are a single ER visit away from a financial crisis. That's b. Millions of Americans struggle to make rent. That's c. Fix a, b, and c, then x and y will be a lot easier. In the meantime, we still have plenty of letters remaining to bridge the gap. You don't need to starve a man before teaching him how to fish.

I don't oppose rehabilitation in principle.  I work in my state's child welfare system and I see parents go through the best rehabilitative services that our government has to offer, every day.  But I also see, on an individual level, that there is a point at which (if you'll forgive the use of economic lingo to discuss a social problem) the marginal utility of additional services doesn't justify the marginal cost of additional services.  That will naturally vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; but from a federal standpoint--after sixty years of a War on Poverty in which the poverty rate only went from 19% to a shade below 15% (and it's not even clear whether that was primarily due to government policy or market forces), I'm leery of demands (particularly, ones laden with emotional pleas) to simply put more money into the problem. 

So when I see an argument like the above, my initial gut reactions are:

• To put things bluntly:  given the availability of food stamps and Pell grants, it's difficult for me to imagine why a mentally competent adult in this country would a) sincerely not know where their own or their children's next meal was going to come from [They might not know where their meals next month will come from, pending the results of the paperwork-intensive re-application process that many government programs put their clients through periodically; and yes, that is stressful.  But, their next meal?  No, I don't believe it.] or b) not be able to get into, and get funding for, a community college program.  Additionally, in many urban areas, an alphabet soup of county and municipal level agencies offers everything from parenting courses to resume workshops to financial management and general life-skills classes.  Before we go about creating new programs, I think we need to study why the programs we have seem to be such abysmal failures at reaching so many of the people who need them the most.
• PPACA was supposed to fix the problem of medical bankruptcies for lower-income families.  If I understand the CBO website on PPACA correctly, the federal government provided $1.8 trillion in health insurance subsidies last year (my per capita share of that was around $5,400; and since I'm the sole breadwinner in a family of 8, that's actually $43,200).  That's twice what I plan to give each of my kids as a combined college/mission/wedding fund--in three years, on one program alone (and a program that doesn't even work, to boot), the federal government will have frittered away everything I'll ever be able to save for my kids' futures.  I sympathize with any family that continues to struggle with medical debt 14 years after the passage of PPACA.  But frankly, the Democratic Party has shown itself incompetent to the point of malevolence at addressing this particular issue. 
• Housing shortages and prices are certainly an issue.  But again, traditional progressive policies including regulatory hostility to suburban expansion, various layers of red tape and occasional whining about "gentrification" in urban renovation/renewal, manipulation of the mortgage industry to favor pet constituencies, rent control in some urban areas, making eviction more difficult (thus deterring landlords from putting properties on the market in the first place), and competition with immigrant families who are often willing to pool resources and accept a lower standard of housing, all tend to exacerbate these issues.  Additionally:  Salt Lake City experimented with a "housing first" approach to chronic homelessness a few years ago.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  

 

Edited November 4, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[Carborendum]

On 11/3/2024 at 6:56 AM, JohnsonJones said:

Graduating High school, not having children until you get married, and getting a job (especially if it's just the type of job one can get out of high school these days sometimes, such as a Walmart Cashier) doesn't necessarily mean one is not going to experience poverty. 

Do the math.

Today's poverty level is $15,060 for an individual (healthcare.gov).  You can make more than that by working 40 hrs at a minimum wage job.  My children make more than that working fast food part time (around 35 to 39 hrs).

Tell me: aside from handicapped people, who do you know that cannot hold down a service industry job?  You'll find that over 90% of them are because they didn't graduate high school or they had a baby outside of marriage.

Since only 11.1% of Americans are in poverty (2023 census bureau) that means that if we are able to treat that particular root cause, then we only have to help 1.1% of the population to raise them out of chronic poverty.  That's a number that we can work with.

*******************************

As far as young adults struggling in the early years, I consider going through poverty during their young adult life to be a rite of passage.  It's a temporary condition with a timetable and plan for getting out of it.  This is not a bad thing.  It is a good thing. It tends to wake up the young to realize that they have to work for a living.  Why would you want to discourage it?

[Phoenix_person]

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Truly addressing crime requires a level of social and community engagement that is far more universal, and far harder, than just voting to give away the tax revenues of the people who didn't commit crimes. 

I agree with you, as do an overwhelming majority of policy makers on the left. Our social programs are often characterized as handouts because that makes it easy to rally poor people against them. The reality is far more complicated. Yes, there is waste and fraud (Hello, Mr Favre) in those programs that should be identified and dealt with. 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Frankly, I'm not sure it can be done except through the auspices of a Judeo-Christian religious renaissance-

I think often about the LDS teachings about the Law of Consecration and what Zion will actually look like. Even to a cynical atheist, I have to admit it sounds pretty swell. I grew up on stories of Nephites and Lamanites coming together to (however briefly) form vibrant classless societies. In those stories, it always fell apart because the people would get corrupted by material greed. I don't believe in God, Zion, or Nephites, but those stories had a profound, lasting impact on my worldview. I *do* think it's possible, if not to replicate the societies described in the BoM, then to at the very least emulate them in some ways.

My LDS upbringing also taught me that we won't lose the essence of who we are in the Millenium. We'll still be the same people we are now, but I'll no longer be an atheist if that time ever comes. Yes, I've thought about it. ADHD and all. I'm curious how people who dedicated their lives and ideology to protecting capitalism will adjust. If the LDS teachings are true, then they *will* adjust. Will they regret their greed-inspired lives the way that I will inevitably regret my atheism? If paradise is what you promise it to be, I think the answer will be yes. As I said, money is the root of all evil. I learned that from your scriptures, not Karl Marx.

Do I think we can reach Law of Consecration levels of kumbaya without the literal return of a divine being that I believe to be fictional? No. But what's stopping us from trying to do better than we are now? The Constitution? That's not nothing, obviously. I spent ten years of my life sworn to protect it, and I took that oath very seriously. But it takes us right back to the idea expressed in another thread that maybe the nearly 250 year-old document that's been amended a couple dozen times isn't as infallible and timeless as we pretend it is. 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

-any government rapprochement with which, would throw half the country into conniptions while also creating genuine Constitutional issues.  

I think there's plenty of wiggle room to build up communities with government subsidies. Maybe not to the extent that some leftists want, but certainly more than what we're doing now. As I said, I personally love Chicago's government grocery idea. Will it reduce crime? No one knows. It's never been tried before in the US, as far as I'm aware. What's the argument against trying it? We're talking about something that would directly benefit at-risk families while literally paying for its own ongoing costs. It can't be worse than the status quo. 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I don't think I would quite agree with your notion that "our penal system was built on the idea that adults with bad programming can't be reprogrammed".  Classical discussions of criminal justice all the way back to the Enlightenment have talked about the need to balance retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation.  But there was certainly more of an emphasis on deterrence.  

Fair enough, and I agree. I think historically there could have been far greater emphasis on rehabilitation for a lot of poverty-driven crime. And again, I don't trust a for-profit prison system to genuinely be interested in keeping people OUT of the prison system.

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

in an era where science hadn't provided us with marvelously addictive substances--in most cases deterrence just plain worked on that subset of people who didn't drink themselves to an early death or eventually starved through their own indolence.  Jail sucked, prison sucked worse, and people who were released really didn't want to go back there and were willing to change their lives accordingly.

There's a reason why I'm so passionate about this issue. My uncle was a heroin addict. Without going into details, he and my mom both had incredibly messed up childhoods. My mom turned to religion. My uncle turned to drugs. He robbed my grandmother at knifepoint one time for drug money. He did time in prison for that, and rightly so. He shot himself in the head when I was 12. He had been sober for almost two years and was making amends with my grandmother. To this day, we don't know why it happened. One of my closest LDS friends on the East Coast lost her mother (also LDS) to addiction to oxycodone. At one point in 2022, I was being given enough fentanyl daily to knock out a horse. I firmly believe that intervention with cannabis treatment after my hospitalization saved me from her fate. There's no amount of weed that will kill me, and I can't imagine a reality where I would shake down a family member or ANYONE for weed money. Is it a gateway drug? Sure. But a gateway to what? For a lot of people, it's a gateway to healing. The conversation I'm about to have with the VA (who won't have anything to do with my cannabis treatment because of federal law) about clinical MDMA wouldn't be possible without cannabis paving the way. You want to win the war on drugs? Learn how to use them properly and make that knowledge mainstream. Imagine putting a homeless smack addict on the path to success because he was able to heal decades of trauma by eating a mushroom or taking a pill whilst talking to a therapist. My uncle might still be alive if he had that option, and I might still have all of my original skin in tact instead of 55% of it.

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

• Speaking anecdotally and for my own jurisdiction (I have no idea what happens in others):  People don't do prison, or even jail, for first- or second- or, often, even third-time drug offenses--even when the drug involved is the hard stuff like meth or heroin.  What generally happens is they miss a hearing (maybe a pretrial hearing, or maybe a post-sentencing review on a piddling little diversion or a plea in abeyance agreement), the court issues a warrant, the criminal calls the court and sets a hearing in exchange for the warrant being vacated, and then the criminal blows that hearing too, and then we rinse and repeat three or four more times; and finally the judge says "Screw it.  I'm issuing a $5,000 warrant, cash-only."  If we can't get the people who need help to even show up to meetings with people who sincerely want to help them--what then?  

Well, I never said we should tear down all the prisons, did I? Yes, individual will comes into play, and there's only so much we can do to help people who don't want help. I'm not ignorant of that fact. I was sitting in front of a mental health clinic (which also has a veteran support office) when I lit myself on fire. I gave myself a choice and chose the fire. I've spent the last 2.5 years trying to figure out why so it never happens again. 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

• We still don't really know what to do with drug addicts. 

Send them to therapy. Yes, that means more tax burden, but treating drug addicts as mentally ill instead of criminals (just because they have/do drugs) has done a lot of good. I've seen it first hand plenty of times.  

If the tax burden bothers you, consider the tax burden of our prison system. Most conservatives don't blink an eye at the $30B+ we spend annually to keep people incarcerated, but those same conservatives will throw a fit if they see a single mother use food stamps in a way they don't approve of. "War on Poverty", indeed. 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

 

• I'm too lazy to look up the stats, but I seem to remember being at a CLE recently where it was suggested that generally, residential drug treatment programs are something like 35-45% effective over the long term.  For all our talk of rehabilitation, in many/most cases we just plain don't know how to do it reliably and well.

Agreed. But 35-45% effectiveness isn't nothing when you consider how many people struggle with adddiction.

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

This all makes me pretty reluctant to allow the left to set the agenda on future systemic reforms.  Perhaps, as a certain president once suggested, we should agree that the people who created these problems "can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."

I saw a far more blunt variation of this statement recently from a former DFL treasurer with whom I probably agree about 60% of the time. He's out of line, but he's not wrong. There are quite a few Republicans currently at the Dem gates looking for a seat at the table because they committed the unforgivable GOP sin: they stood up to Trump. I want the future of the Democratic party to be decided by organizers, not politicians, and dead sure not Republican infiltrators who haven't earned their place. Do you want your party being shaped by Democrats who haven't shown commitment to the party platform? How much do you trust people like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema?

 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I don't oppose rehabilitation in principle.  I work in my state's child welfare system and I see parents go through the best rehabilitative services that our government has to offer, every day.  But I also see, on an individual level, that there is a point at which (if you'll forgive the use of economic lingo to discuss a social problem) the marginal utility of additional services doesn't justify the marginal cost of additional services.  That will naturally vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; but from a federal standpoint--after sixty years of a War on Poverty in which the poverty rate only went from 19% to a shade below 15% (and it's not even clear whether that was primarily due to government policy or market forces), I'm leery of demands (particularly, ones laden with emotional pleas) to simply put more money into the problem. 

4% of the US population is over 13 million people. I think it's worth exploring whether they got out of poverty because of government assistance or in spite of it. If it's the former, I think 13 million people getting out of poverty is a worthwhile public investment. 

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

• I sympathize with any family that continues to struggle with medical debt 14 years after the passage of PPACA.  But frankly, the Democratic Party has shown itself incompetent to the point of malevolence at addressing this particular issue. 

I have yet to see a good alternative presented by the GOP. The Dem solution has its flaws, but at least they've shown a willingness to take an honest stab at it. The one time I can remember Republicans actually trying to come up with something better was under Trump, with a legislative majority, and we all know how that went.

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

• Housing shortages and prices are certainly an issue.  But again, traditional progressive policies including regulatory hostility to suburban expansion, various layers of red tape and occasional whining about "gentrification" in urban renovation/renewal, manipulation of the mortgage industry to favor pet constituencies, rent control in some urban areas, making eviction more difficult (thus deterring landlords from putting properties on the market in the first place), and competition with immigrant families who are often willing to pool resources and accept a lower standard of housing, all tend to exacerbate these issues. 

That sounds like a lot of problems that could be helped by strengthening our working class through wage reform.

11 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

• Additionally:  Salt Lake City experimented with a "housing first" approach to chronic homelessness a few years ago.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  

I've read quite a bit about that, actually. As I understand it, it failed because "Housing First" turned into "Housing Only". Getting impoverished people in stable housing is a crucial first step, but it's supposed to be the first of many. But I'm guessing there probably wasn't enough support in a place like Utah to fund the necessary full measures. I won't deny that a lot of social welfare programs are plagued with issues of logistics, competence, and fraud and that there's plenty of people in my camp to blame for it. But a lot of those programs also suffer from political kneecapping because the amount that conservatives are willing to spend on people in crisis is less than what is actually needed to provide comprehensive assistance. You mentioned programs like food stamps and SNAP being critical resources for people struggling with food insecurity. Which party has the better track record of keeping those essential programs funded?

Edited November 4, 2024 by Phoenix_person

[Traveler]

@Phoenix_person :

I will make a very short post to counter your previous posts.  But to understand the problems we currently face we must go back in history to the founding of the “Great Society” initiated by President Johnston in 1960.  This political theory changed the political landscape for how we deal with poverty and environmental concerns.

Using the data then given by liberals (democrats) the initial need has been surpassed by more than 90% of what was needed in tax dollars.  This means that all our poverty and environmental issues have corrupted our government and created an exponentially increasing government debt and spending.  To prove what I am saying it was agreed that only 2% of the GDP was necessary to implement all the needed Great Society programs - we are currently spending 30%.

We know that the current policies are a complete failure because of the data provided by the government that runs these programs (both poverty and the danger to our environment).  Poverty and environmental concerns are categorically worse today than before these programs were initiated.   And yet the cry of the left is to increase taxes, and the problems will all magically disappear.

One definition of insanity is to continue on the same course doing the same things – expecting different results.  Before an intelligent discussion can take place, it must be recognized that the current programs are failing and must not be continued.

Once we can agree  on what is not working - then we can begin to move forward to discuss possible solutions.

 

The Traveler

[Phoenix_person]

4 hours ago, Traveler said:

@Phoenix_person :

I will make a very short post to counter your previous posts.  But to understand the problems we currently face we must go back in history to the founding of the “Great Society” initiated by President Johnston in 1960.  This political theory changed the political landscape for how we deal with poverty and environmental concerns.

Using the data then given by liberals (democrats) the initial need has been surpassed by more than 90% of what was needed in tax dollars.  This means that all our poverty and environmental issues have corrupted our government and created an exponentially increasing government debt and spending.  To prove what I am saying it was agreed that only 2% of the GDP was necessary to implement all the needed Great Society programs - we are currently spending 30%.

The US population has more than doubled since 1960, and we've seen over 900% overall inflation since then. Are those facts being taken into account when we measure the success of the Great Society in modern terms?

4 hours ago, Traveler said:

We know that the current policies are a complete failure because of the data provided by the government that runs these programs (both poverty and the danger to our environment).  Poverty and environmental concerns are categorically worse today than before these programs were initiated. 

Where are you getting your data? I'm not necessarily challenging it. I just want you to show your work. 

4 hours ago, Traveler said:

 And yet the cry of the left is to increase taxes, and the problems will all magically disappear.

Not magically, no. Tackling issues like generational poverty doesn't happen overnight, and the solutions look a lot different today than they did in 1960.

4 hours ago, Traveler said:

Before an intelligent discussion can take place, it must be recognized that the current programs are failing and must not be continued.

That's not how politics works. Offer up an alternative. The government is not going to cut off support to millions of Americans, many of them in red states, without a viable alternative plan.

4 hours ago, Traveler said:

Once we can agree  on what is not working - then we can begin to move forward to discuss possible solutions.

 

The Traveler

I typically see conservatives offering up buckets of discourse about why our current social safety network doesn't work, but without offering viable alternatives. They couldn't defeat Obamacare under Trump, and he had a legislative trifecta. I'm not convinced that Republicans have any viable counterproposals to any major current welfare programs. They just hate what we're doing now.

[LDSGator]

45 minutes ago, Phoenix_person said:

Not magically, no. Tackling issues like generational poverty doesn't happen overnight, and the solutions look a lot different today than they did in 1960.

I totally agree that combatting generational poverty will take more than four years. Where we disagree is that liberals/leftists want people to remain poor because class envy brings out voters. 

Sadly, I think the war on poverty is like the war on drugs. The war is over. Drugs won. Poverty won.
 

If you want to avoid poverty, first do what 90% of people have done. Graduate high school. Second, use birth control or be celibate before having a child.  Finally, have that kid over 25. 
 

Those choices don’t eliminate poverty, but they help out greatly. 

[Just_A_Guy]

12 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

I think often about the LDS teachings about the Law of Consecration and what Zion will actually look like. Even to a cynical atheist, I have to admit it sounds pretty swell. I grew up on stories of Nephites and Lamanites coming together to (however briefly) form vibrant classless societies. In those stories, it always fell apart because the people would get corrupted by material greed. I don't believe in God, Zion, or Nephites, but those stories had a profound, lasting impact on my worldview. I *do* think it's possible, if not to replicate the societies described in the BoM, then to at the very least emulate them in some ways.

My LDS upbringing also taught me that we won't lose the essence of who we are in the Millenium. We'll still be the same people we are now, but I'll no longer be an atheist if that time ever comes. Yes, I've thought about it. ADHD and all. I'm curious how people who dedicated their lives and ideology to protecting capitalism will adjust. If the LDS teachings are true, then they *will* adjust. Will they regret their greed-inspired lives the way that I will inevitably regret my atheism? If paradise is what you promise it to be, I think the answer will be yes. As I said, money is the root of all evil. I learned that from your scriptures, not Karl Marx.

Do I think we can reach Law of Consecration levels of kumbaya without the literal return of a divine being that I believe to be fictional? No. But what's stopping us from trying to do better than we are now? The Constitution? That's not nothing, obviously. I spent ten years of my life sworn to protect it, and I took that oath very seriously. But it takes us right back to the idea expressed in another thread that maybe the nearly 250 year-old document that's been amended a couple dozen times isn't as infallible and timeless as we pretend it is. 

Greed is part of the issue; but I think the broader issue is "pride".  Remember, in LDS doctrine a "Zion society" is the result of a rare alchemy of pervasive values/character traits goes far beyond mere economic communitarianism.  It is characterized by communal worship, submission to a religious hierarchy, rigorous adherence to revealed scripture, rigid honesty, extraordinary subjugation of personal beliefs in favor of simply having peace (in both a temporal and spiritual sense), and sexual probity (see 4 Nephi 1).  To the extent that scripture or history provide lessons, it seems that Zion societies tend to unravel when people a) don't trust the leadership and/or b) there is a pervasive feeling that a certain number within the community aren't even trying to do their fair share (and this feeling can be either among the "have-lots" looking downwards, or among the "have-lesses" looking upwards). 

If consecration in the Millennium functions as the United Order did--where private property and free enterprise do exist, and the consecration of excess income is voluntarily extracted through love rather than fear--then I think the old-fashioned capitalists (well, free marketeers, anyways) will do just fine there.  (After all, it is the love of money, not money itself, that Paul describes as the root of all evil).  The catch, though, is that the Millennium only happens after both the wealthy who are greedy and the poor who are shiftless, are . . . shall we say . . . "purged" from society; and indeed, from the earth itself.  That's the problem with communitarianism . . . human nature being what it is, sooner or later you've got to start purging the deadweight.  Who do we trust to implement the purges, and what happens to those who are purged?  

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I think there's plenty of wiggle room to build up communities with government subsidies. Maybe not to the extent that some leftists want, but certainly more than what we're doing now. As I said, I personally love Chicago's government grocery idea. Will it reduce crime? No one knows. It's never been tried before in the US, as far as I'm aware. What's the argument against trying it? We're talking about something that would directly benefit at-risk families while literally paying for its own ongoing costs. It can't be worse than the status quo. 

"It can't be worse than the status quo" often leads us into situations that are, indeed, far worse than the status quo ante.  I have no problem with individual cities trying stuff like a community-owned grocery store to fill the gaps left by a food desert--it's not my tax dollars on the line.  But I'm not optimistic it will work.  I think the likely result is, it gets robbed with the same frequency as the private stores that previously existed and were run out of town by thieves.  And then the mayor brings in the cops to protect this store, because it's government-owned--but then you think "gee, maybe if we'd just beefed up police protection in the first place, we wouldn't have had to go through all this rigmarole of setting up a state-owned store".  (Plus, you get equal protection questions as to why this store, but not that store, gets government protection.  It sounds awfully corrupt . . . )

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There's a reason why I'm so passionate about this issue. My uncle was a heroin addict. Without going into details, he and my mom both had incredibly messed up childhoods. My mom turned to religion. My uncle turned to drugs. He robbed my grandmother at knifepoint one time for drug money. He did time in prison for that, and rightly so. He shot himself in the head when I was 12. He had been sober for almost two years and was making amends with my grandmother. To this day, we don't know why it happened. One of my closest LDS friends on the East Coast lost her mother (also LDS) to addiction to oxycodone. At one point in 2022, I was being given enough fentanyl daily to knock out a horse. I firmly believe that intervention with cannabis treatment after my hospitalization saved me from her fate. There's no amount of weed that will kill me, and I can't imagine a reality where I would shake down a family member or ANYONE for weed money. Is it a gateway drug? Sure. But a gateway to what? For a lot of people, it's a gateway to healing. The conversation I'm about to have with the VA (who won't have anything to do with my cannabis treatment because of federal law) about clinical MDMA wouldn't be possible without cannabis paving the way. You want to win the war on drugs? Learn how to use them properly and make that knowledge mainstream. Imagine putting a homeless smack addict on the path to success because he was able to heal decades of trauma by eating a mushroom or taking a pill whilst talking to a therapist. My uncle might still be alive if he had that option, and I might still have all of my original skin in tact instead of 55% of it.

I hear ya, and appreciate your perspective.  I personally have a lot of skepticism about medical cannabis--I'd like to see scientific study of the substance legalized so that we can get some reliable data; but experientially it seems like for every four clients I see who have a medical marijuana card, two or three of them are pretty obviously using recreationally.  I understand that clinical MDMA for processing trauma was looking pretty promising, and then it seems like the FDA randomly pulled approval--I haven't followed the issue closely, but it sounds like a shame.  

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Well, I never said we should tear down all the prisons, did I? Yes, individual will comes into play, and there's only so much we can do to help people who don't want help. I'm not ignorant of that fact. I was sitting in front of a mental health clinic (which also has a veteran support office) when I lit myself on fire. I gave myself a choice and chose the fire. I've spent the last 2.5 years trying to figure out why so it never happens again. 

I tend to get pretty pedantic and sometimes prickly in the rough-and-tumble of debate, but please know that I'm glad you're still here.  

(By the way--we used to have a forum member who went by the moniker of "Godless" whose life story sounded a little like yours--former LDS, then agnostic/atheist; former military; socially progressive.  Are you him, perchance?  If so, welcome back.)

Quote

Send them to therapy. Yes, that means more tax burden, but treating drug addicts as mentally ill instead of criminals (just because they have/do drugs) has done a lot of good. I've seen it first hand plenty of times.  

If the tax burden bothers you, consider the tax burden of our prison system. Most conservatives don't blink an eye at the $30B+ we spend annually to keep people incarcerated, but those same conservatives will throw a fit if they see a single mother use food stamps in a way they don't approve of. "War on Poverty", indeed. 

. . .

Agreed. But 35-45% effectiveness isn't nothing when you consider how many people struggle with adddiction.

We *should* bat an eye at the costs of incarceration, for sure.  And to our credit, we conservatives been trying to limit them--by suggesting we not fund gender transition surgery for prisoners, for example.  😎

In all seriousness--this is a situation where we should probably be running the numbers and doing whatever's cheapest.  But where people just point-blank refuse to go to treatment--incarceration is all we've got left.  (And of course, lots of addicts commit other crimes that do merit incarceration, even if their addiction in and of itself shouldn't.)

 

Quote

I saw a far more blunt variation of this statement recently from a former DFL treasurer with whom I probably agree about 60% of the time. He's out of line, but he's not wrong. There are quite a few Republicans currently at the Dem gates looking for a seat at the table because they committed the unforgivable GOP sin: they stood up to Trump. I want the future of the Democratic party to be decided by organizers, not politicians, and dead sure not Republican infiltrators who haven't earned their place. Do you want your party being shaped by Democrats who haven't shown commitment to the party platform? How much do you trust people like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema?

I guess my thought on that is:  "Not my circus, not my monkeys."  To my mind, the GOPers defecting to the Democratic Party are out of their ever-lovin' minds if they think they can nudge it back to the right.  Systemically, the Democratic party is going to be a leftist organ.  Since Jeffersonian days, they are the ones who have championed what Robert Bork called "radical [economic] egalitarianism" and "radical [moral] individualism".  Iconoclasm, deconstructing and reconstructing society in pursuit of utopia, and giving short shrift to the experiential wisdom of the past, is practically baked into their DNA.  

Quote

4% of the US population is over 13 million people. I think it's worth exploring whether they got out of poverty because of government assistance or in spite of it. If it's the former, I think 13 million people getting out of poverty is a worthwhile public investment. 

It has been said that the "war on poverty", since 1964, has cost of $25 trillion. Assuming arguendo that it has indeed rescued 13 million people from poverty, then that's nearly $2 million per person.

We could have given every one of those 13 million people an education at a private university for a cost of $50K per student per year, and had $22 trillion left over.

This is insanity.  

Quote

I have yet to see a good alternative presented by the GOP. The Dem solution has its flaws, but at least they've shown a willingness to take an honest stab at it. The one time I can remember Republicans actually trying to come up with something better was under Trump, with a legislative majority, and we all know how that went.

Saying that PPACA "has its flaws", in light of the figures I've posted, seems like a study in understatement. 

And maybe there's a philosophical difference here.  It seems to me that for progressives, doing something that inadvertently makes a situation worse is considered to still be better than doing nothing; whereas for conservatives, the reverse is generally true.  

What needs to happen, of course, is a free market.  Use antitrust law to go after HMOs and health care providers that engage in anti-competitive behavior.  Make them post prices.  Let health care consumers shop for the best bargains.  Prices began spiraling out of control when we decided we could improve health care by insulating both producers and consumers from the natural consequences of their own actions.

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That sounds like a lot of problems that could be helped by strengthening our working class through wage reform.

I don't see how *any* of those could be helped by wage reform.  The housing crisis is fundamentally a problem of supply and demand--too many people (and dollars) chasing too few dwellings.  If you arbitrarily increase wages, then all you do is mean that there are even more dollars chasing the same finite number of dwellings; and prices go even higher.  The only sustainable solution is to create more dwellings, and eliminate barriers to construction/development where we can responsibly do so.  

Quote

I've read quite a bit about that, actually. As I understand it, it failed because "Housing First" turned into "Housing Only". Getting impoverished people in stable housing is a crucial first step, but it's supposed to be the first of many. But I'm guessing there probably wasn't enough support in a place like Utah to fund the necessary full measures. I won't deny that a lot of social welfare programs are plagued with issues of logistics, competence, and fraud and that there's plenty of people in my camp to blame for it. But a lot of those programs also suffer from political kneecapping because the amount that conservatives are willing to spend on people in crisis is less than what is actually needed to provide comprehensive assistance. You mentioned programs like food stamps and SNAP being critical resources for people struggling with food insecurity. Which party has the better track record of keeping those essential programs funded?

I dunno, brother.  I think I just showed earlier in this post that, vis a vis the war on poverty--assuming it even worked, we spent $25 trillion ($83,000 per American alive today) to get a result that we could have gotten for under $3 trillion.  The amount that Americans are willing to spend on people in crisis, is not the problem.  The American welfare state, while well-intended, is quite simply a boondoggle on a level that seems unparalleled in modern history.  

And while we've had a number of budgetary brouhahas in which the GOP has thrown occasional tantrums over programs whose costs spin wildly out of control while yielding sub-par results--can we really point to large numbers of people who were turned down for federal programs like SNAP, or TANF, or WIC, or Medicaid, on the grounds that "you meet the criteria for eligibility, but we just don't have the money right now"?  I don't believe so.

Edited November 5, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[LDSGator]

2 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

but please know that I'm glad you're still here.  

We all are. 

[JohnsonJones]

On 11/3/2024 at 8:45 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

I don't oppose rehabilitation in principle.  I work in my state's child welfare system and I see parents go through the best rehabilitative services that our government has to offer, every day.  But I also see, on an individual level, that there is a point at which (if you'll forgive the use of economic lingo to discuss a social problem) the marginal utility of additional services doesn't justify the marginal cost of additional services.  That will naturally vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; but from a federal standpoint--after sixty years of a War on Poverty in which the poverty rate only went from 19% to a shade below 15% (and it's not even clear whether that was primarily due to government policy or market forces), I'm leery of demands (particularly, ones laden with emotional pleas) to simply put more money into the problem.

It is interesting then that you work within the Child Welfare System.  You probably would not work in the Child Welfare system if it were not for progressives.  I do not know if that is your primary form of employment, but if it is, without progressives you would not even have a job.  The Child Welfare system (and in fact, most of the child laws that have been created over the past 100 years) have been created by a Progressive movement.  It is curious one is so opposed to those responsible for the very system of which they work with.

There are some Conservatives that think this system is evil and wrong.  They feel that many of the things it is involved in should be done away with, and that discipline, parent's rights, and the respect children have for adults have been eroded by the very system you work within. 

I'm not saying this is a correct view, but it is curious how one works in the system, but is against those who made the system.

On 11/3/2024 at 8:45 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

So when I see an argument like the above, my initial gut reactions are:

• To put things bluntly:  given the availability of food stamps and Pell grants, it's difficult for me to imagine why a mentally competent adult in this country would a) sincerely not know where their own or their children's next meal was going to come from [They might not know where their meals next month will come from, pending the results of the paperwork-intensive re-application process that many government programs put their clients through periodically; and yes, that is stressful.  But, their next meal?  No, I don't believe it.] or b) not be able to get into, and get funding for, a community college program.  Additionally, in many urban areas, an alphabet soup of county and municipal level agencies offers everything from parenting courses to resume workshops to financial management and general life-skills classes.  Before we go about creating new programs, I think we need to study why the programs we have seem to be such abysmal failures at reaching so many of the people who need them the most.

This is easy to talk about to a degree.  I have at least one of my children that are not wealthy, but not poor enough to qualify for food stamps, grants, and other items (for example, the ACA free healthcare, though they get insurance from work, as well as sometimes supplemented by parents).  They know where their children's meals can come from, but school lunch in general has gotten so expensive it's too expensive for them to have their children buy it every day.  Every so often a child forgets their lunch, and that's when there is no idea when that child will get their meal next.  A parent can try to rush to the school and get their kid their lunch, but sometimes lunch will be over before they get there. 

When every child had free meals this wasn't a problem (though there was an incident with their kindergartner at the time crying because they didn't know meals were free and didn't know where to get food), this would be a difficulty today.  This has somewhat opened my eyes and my opinion on whether schools should offer free meals regardless of economic situation. 

On 11/3/2024 at 8:45 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

• PPACA was supposed to fix the problem of medical bankruptcies for lower-income families.  If I understand the CBO website on PPACA correctly, the federal government provided $1.8 trillion in health insurance subsidies last year (my per capita share of that was around $5,400; and since I'm the sole breadwinner in a family of 8, that's actually $43,200).  That's twice what I plan to give each of my kids as a combined college/mission/wedding fund--in three years, on one program alone (and a program that doesn't even work, to boot), the federal government will have frittered away everything I'll ever be able to save for my kids' futures.  I sympathize with any family that continues to struggle with medical debt 14 years after the passage of PPACA.  But frankly, the Democratic Party has shown itself incompetent to the point of malevolence at addressing this particular issue. 

Once again, in reference to the family above, they don't qualify for ACA due to how much they make.   They also get insurance from employment.  They still only get 80% off of medical bills.  This means if they ever have cancer (average cost is around 150K according to this site Average cost of Cancer Treatment ) they would still end up owing 30K or more.  That is before other bills or if they lost their job or not.  If they lost their job (and hence medical insurance halfway through, and even worse, they no longer have a source of income), it could very easily cause them bankruptcy, even if they got the ACA pretty quickly (as no money coming in means that even with insurance, they don't have a way to pay off any other bills). 

Even if it were available to them, they have not been educated in how to obtain the benefits of the system.  I imagine in an emergency as above they would be desperate enough to figure something of the system out, but I still could see how they could easily go into bankruptcy in that situation (once again, no money coming in means they cannot pay bills they already incurred, as well as new bills that may happen).

I think that for many, it is a matter of not understanding the system or how to obtain benefits in the first place. 

On 11/3/2024 at 8:45 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

• Housing shortages and prices are certainly an issue.  But again, traditional progressive policies including regulatory hostility to suburban expansion, various layers of red tape and occasional whining about "gentrification" in urban renovation/renewal, manipulation of the mortgage industry to favor pet constituencies, rent control in some urban areas, making eviction more difficult (thus deterring landlords from putting properties on the market in the first place), and competition with immigrant families who are often willing to pool resources and accept a lower standard of housing, all tend to exacerbate these issues.  Additionally:  Salt Lake City experimented with a "housing first" approach to chronic homelessness a few years ago.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  

 

I remember some of that.  I remember someone that area victoriously declaring that there were no more homeless in the city, or something similar to that.  I think someone countered that claim almost immediately.  At least Salt Lake City did better than they did in Prove/Orem for a while where their idea was simply to kick them out of the city.  That cures the homelessness in the city (because you kicked them out) but doesn't actually solve anything except to make people's lives worse. 

Many of the items you list in your complaint list (regulatory hostility to suburban expansion, red tape, manipulation of the mortgage industry) actually are arguments I've heard about Conservative governments and why, even in areas which are not urban, there are housing difficulties and rising prices. 

The biggest problem with houses in the US I feel is that we started to see them as investments instead of a place to live.  Take away any appeal they have to be investments (for example, though housing prices are far higher overall than in the US, they have kept them pretty decent in relation to population size and land available in comparison to similar scenarios elsewhere in the world and the US where you still have a first world society, Japan makes it basically something you won't invest in as houses decrease in price, similar to what used cars used to do) and you may help solve the housing crisis, at least as far as making it so that certain groups are being priced out of the market. 

The only other solution is to try what I think the Utah Governor is trying (and I use Utah a lot because I believe that is where you are from so you may be able to relate to it) which is to build more houses.  The problem is not having enough builders to build fast enough (plus those builders probably want to make a living, so they want to charge money for that labor), and how much supplies are also running at (once again, people want to make a living, not build things for free and then die from starvation and exposure along with their families).  Due to those external pressures I'm not sure how well his plan will work out or whether it will effectively make a long enough or big enough impact to change the direction of the housing market in Utah. 

I don't know what solution can be come up with that will solve it, except that we curb the greed in society and love our neighbors as ourselves, but that's not happening in society anytime soon (unless the millennium comes quickly).

Edited November 5, 2024 by JohnsonJones

[JohnsonJones]

21 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Do the math.

Today's poverty level is $15,060 for an individual (healthcare.gov).  You can make more than that by working 40 hrs at a minimum wage job.  My children make more than that working fast food part time (around 35 to 39 hrs).

Tell me: aside from handicapped people, who do you know that cannot hold down a service industry job?  You'll find that over 90% of them are because they didn't graduate high school or they had a baby outside of marriage.

Since only 11.1% of Americans are in poverty (2023 census bureau) that means that if we are able to treat that particular root cause, then we only have to help 1.1% of the population to raise them out of chronic poverty.  That's a number that we can work with.

*******************************

As far as young adults struggling in the early years, I consider going through poverty during their young adult life to be a rite of passage.  It's a temporary condition with a timetable and plan for getting out of it.  This is not a bad thing.  It is a good thing. It tends to wake up the young to realize that they have to work for a living.  Why would you want to discourage it?

For an individual.

But, we are talking about someone who graduated High School and is married with kids (not a single mom).

So, for a Dad, a Mom, and two children that is actually $31,200 (or approximately $15/hr) on the very link you produced. 

Average Rent in Provo Utah appear to be $1,189/month currently.  That is approximately $14,268 a year.  That's a One bedroom apartment.  Ironically a studio apartment goes for more ($1193/month).  For the individual, that you are talking about, that leaves around $1200 a year for utilities, gas, and food.  I guess you survive on $20 a month in food, and use less than $50 a month in gas (which leaves $30 in utilities which is ridiculous as even my water bill is higher than that, but hey, we are talking fantasy land here).  rent market trends, provo utah

A family of four would probably want at least a two bedroom apartment.  That averages to ($1,442) a month.  This is ~$17,304 a year. 

They'll probably want to have water and electricity, which is probably an average of around $150 a month, so another $1800 a  year.  (it may be a little more, but we are giving you the benefit of the doubt).

That brings us up to $19K in living costs a year before figuring out food or gas.  Boiling down food costs is a little bit harder.  I found that it says it's around $400 on average per person in the US, but Utah is not the US.  This link lists the average costs in Utah per month, but only in SLC.  Groceries are probably comparable between the two so around $359.65/person/month.  average cost of food in the US

That's around $4,315.80 per person per year.  For our poor person above in poverty, that means they suddenly don't get enough food (14,268+4,315.80  = 18,583.80).  That's before utilities and gas.  However, we are talking about our married, high school graduate.  They are going to need around $17,263.20 a year to feed that family. 

That puts their bill for housing and food (not utlities, no cable, no gas, no phone, etc) at $34,567.20 a year.  That's more than the poverty level listed on the site.  Here we have a married, high school graduate with a $15/hour job (and of course they aren't paying for the insurance with this job because...they can't even afford to feed their family) who has a family that has no power, no water, no gas, no phones, and still do not have enough money for food according to the averages. 

What do they need to live comfortably in Provo, Utah?  According to the site I linked above before, rent market trends in provo utah , that should be something around $47,556 a year.  The high school graduate should be making at least $22.87/hour to be able to live comfortably.

cost of living in Provo

Provo is ranking 79/273 cities in America.  It is at 102% the cost of living, putting it almost at what it would cost most other locations to live (2% above average).  Median individual income is at $16, 820.  Median Household income (meaning 50% are lower then this) is $57,943.

Yes, I did the math, did you?

 

(Of interest, the cost of living for food is more expensive in Houston, which is closer to you, than it is in Salt Lake City).  SLC is cheaper than anyplace around it with the exception of Cheyenne, Wyoming.  It's the 6th cheapest City in the chart (linked above with food costs) in the nation. 

 

 

[Traveler]

23 hours ago, Phoenix_person said:

The US population has more than doubled since 1960, and we've seen over 900% overall inflation since then. Are those facts being taken into account when we measure the success of the Great Society in modern terms?

You will note that I tied my facts to the GNP (gross national product) rather than dollar amounts.  I would also point out a basic understanding of economics (Milton Friedman – noble prize winning internationally famous economist) that government spending is the single most driving engine of inflation (according to history referenced by Milton Friedman).

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Where are you getting your data? I'm not necessarily challenging it. I just want you to show your work. 

I have a book published in the 60’s (now out of print) titled, “The Economics of Poverty”.   This book covers the data from the 1960 census from which the Great Society was initially founded.  This establishes the initial spending.  For current spending – I have accessed official government data.  You will also note that I have referenced the works of Milton Friedman.

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Not magically, no. Tackling issues like generational poverty doesn't happen overnight, and the solutions look a lot different today than they did in 1960.

I believe it is interesting that you reference generational poverty.  The poverty of 1960 was very different – it was primarily rural.  The current poverty is almost entirely inner-city poverty.  The reason I find this interesting is because rural poverty is able to find some relief from the land where people can grow and share food stuffs.   Inner-city poverty has no such resources and is entirely dependent on charitable handouts.  I believe two aspects are very important in the development of current poverty.  First is that generational poverty is much more prevalent.  Those receiving government subsidies are somewhat generationally locked that was not so much previously.  Also, there is a greater correlation between poverty, mental illness and drug use.  The other (or second) is that prior to 1960 poverty could be mostly overcome by education.  But the government has also become involved in procuring educational loans.  This has caused a tremendous debt in seeking advanced education rendering a new kind of poverty among the well-educated. 

Harris said she would go after price gouging – I would submit that one of the greatest gouging in our economy since 1960 has been in the cost of higher education.  While Harris said she would prevent gouging – the administration she belongs to has added fuel to rising costs of education by forgiving the excessively higher educational loans.    The political party mostly behind this are the democrats but with the help of republicans that have promised one thing and provided the exact opposite in league with the democrats.

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That's not how politics works. Offer up an alternative. The government is not going to cut off support to millions of Americans, many of them in red states, without a viable alternative plan.

I typically see conservatives offering up buckets of discourse about why our current social safety network doesn't work, but without offering viable alternatives. They couldn't defeat Obamacare under Trump, and he had a legislative trifecta. I'm not convinced that Republicans have any viable counterproposals to any major current welfare programs. They just hate what we're doing now.

You are so correct – it is not how politics work.  Which is exactly why politics always fails – especially with social programs.  Your approach is why things are doomed to get worse and will never get better if left to the political.

I would point out that there are historical alternatives.  Milton Freidman offered the best possible approach to poverty I have encountered.  But I see no reason to discuss details until individuals like yourself are willing to admit current failures.  In essence your thinking is very good, but we must realize that with any effort there will be shortcomings.  Those and the lower levels of any economy will always suffer the most economically.  

I believe we could replace all our social spending with a “negative income tax” program offered by Milton Friedman.  If you were aware of his genius, we would not have to discuss this in detail.  I would be glad to open a discussion with you but there must be a paradigm shift before we can resolve problems that are currently causing not just greater poverty but contributing to the very rich getting richer and the very poor getting worse off from what is taking place.

If you cannot realize that things are getting worse for both the middle class (that is shrinking) and the poverty class (that is not only growing but suffering more) there really will not be reason (especially in your mind) to make radical changes of improvement.  I do not think it is a matter of fixing but rather applying methods that work.

 

The Traveler