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Home Front: Culture Wars
A Weird Sort of Depression (VDH)
2010-08-04
Prof. Hansen nails a topic that I've often discussed with my colleagues at the University.

The American poor live better than many, many people on this planet. We have more affluence and use that, in the ways Prof. Hansen describes, to provide our poor, even our illegal immigrant poor, with a live that they simply couldn't have in most of Africa, much of South and Latin America, and big chunks of Asia. Be it medical care, food, clothing or cell phones, our poor do better than the poor of the world, and as Prof. Hansen notes, better than the upper middle class of the 1960s.

It's progress, I suppose, though at some level it is also grating, since as an upper middle income person (for which I make no apologies) I am to a fair extent supporting this. A progressive person would point out that it's the price I pay for my own success.

But I fear that our poor, precisely because they live a life in America that they couldn't live elsewhere, are being robbed. Robbed of their incentive, robbed of any desire to get ahead, robbed in the end of their own dignity.

I take care of the poor in my clinic at the University. Frequently my interview with such a patient is interrupted. By their cell phone. "I'm with the doctor now, honey, hush," they say, as they answer and then look at me with some embarrassment. I shrug. It's just the way things are.

I'm grateful that we don't have starving beggars on our streets (we do have professional beggars in our intersections, and I wish the Chicago cops would do their jobs). I appreciate that only the hard-core are homeless. I pitch in and provide medical care. This is all good.

But I wish we had a better ethic about it. In that I think Prof. Hansen and I would agree.
Posted by:miscellaneous

#13  But we don't have enough money to treat the mentally retarded properly.

We won't be able to treat anyone properly if this continues much longer. The heart of a liberal is suicidal.
Posted by: gorb   2010-08-04 23:02  

#12  Cities will burn, that's what. Total anarchy.

No worse than in the past. The usual 'bright spots' will ignite themselves. There may even be some spreading of the behavior into 'gun free zones'. However, the last big riot in LA, the Koreans who armed themselves were generally left alone. One can see the effect come into play when the local 'authorities' are unable to deal with the situation. The distribution system will certain collapse in some neighborhoods as it did in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, but this will be a self inflicted wound. Unlike Katrina, the only sympathy the perps will find, regardless of color, race or creed will be the entry in the dictionary between sh*t and syphilis. Collective guilt will have have a zero effective range in those conditions. Push the middle class into self preservation and just step back and watch the show. It won't be nice but it is predictable.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2010-08-04 23:00  

#11  This is that we are now, since the end of WWII, living in a Keynesian economy, an experimental economy, fundamentally different from the economy that existed before the Great Depression.


Not quite true. We have been debasing our currency since 1916, the era of the glorious segregationist and warmonger Wilson. We did not deflate after WWI as we had after all our other wars. We did suffer some deflation in the early Depression, but it's been inflation ever since. It is inflation and the growth of the credit (as opposed to the savings) economy that have been our Achilles heel. The rest of the results come from having too much money as a result of being able to print it with a press instead of earn it with labour.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2010-08-04 21:06  

#10  #8 And what do you think the poor will do when the gravy train ends? Posted by CrazyFool

Cities will burn, that's what. Total anarchy.
Posted by: Besoeker   2010-08-04 20:42  

#9  Moose #5

I nominate your comment as one of the two or three best ones I've seen on the 'burg, period.

Sums it all up, our hubris regarding the ability to fix all problems and create a world in defiance of the physical laws of the universe.
Posted by: no mo uro   2010-08-04 20:09  

#8  And what do you think the poor will do when the gravy train ends? Eventually they will run out of other people's money.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2010-08-04 13:12  

#7  This is exactly why the left shifted from bemoaning poverty to bemoaning the vast difference between the rich and the poor.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2010-08-04 11:30  

#6  -- #5 - excellent summary of the current crisis
--- But this highly illegal technique only works until there is some economic crisis. Lots of other highly illegal things have been &/or are continuing to be done to perpetuate and exacerbate the current crisis. The administration and DOJ is doing nothing to stop the looting and start prosecuting using the laws we already have against some of the greatest malefactors in world history (based on dollar value of their crimes). The recent financial regulations passed have been carefully devised to look good on the surface and do essentially nothing about the core of the problem.
-- Should the gravy train Steve mentioned run out for a sufficient number of our poor, life in the US will take a turn for the worse, for all of us.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2010-08-04 10:46  

#5  Steve: There is one element of all of this, of which most people are blissfully unaware. This is that we are now, since the end of WWII, living in a Keynesian economy, an experimental economy, fundamentally different from the economy that existed before the Great Depression.

And the experiment is collapsing.

This is not so much because of the generosity of the wealthy, but generosity far beyond anyone's means. Easy credit taken to a nonsensical degree, and indifferent to the debt it created.

For a long time it worked. It was responsible for America's profound growth after the war. It allowed us to build a military that dominates the world, while at the same time giving vast largess to everyone.

And for a long time it worked. The money was used for tangible and efficient ends. But ironically, its death knell began, not with uplifting the poor, but efforts to equalize their prosperity with those that had earned their prosperity.

No sane or tangible reason to do this--it was based in a flawed and failed philosophy of equalized ends, not equalized means to different ends.

Things like subprime loans come to mind. But at the same time, and far worse in consequences, the wise investment of careful debt was forgotten. Instead, vast debt was accrued solely to satiate the gambling of speculators.

There was no will or effort to stop this, or even to get control over it, or mitigate it. It became an orgy of spending, for the sake of spending. Of debt accumulation for no reason. Because if you are in such debt that you can never repay it, why not double, triple, or quadruple that debt?

So what will come of this, because most certainly it is soon coming to an end? To start with, the poor were given their chance. And for most of the poor, they blew it, as one would expect them to do, having already shown incapability for prosperity. But some succeeded.

Yet at the same time, there are now in the middle classes many people who are themselves too incapable to remain in the middle classes without support. And many of them are soon to augment the poor.

Millions of people, right now, are becoming "99'ers", in that they have used up all 99 weeks of extended unemployment compensation. And each one of them now has only their meager resources left before they become part of the poor.

Now someone, likely the government, is blatantly manipulating the stock markets to sustain stock prices. With little effort at concealment, offers for huge blocks of shares are made by computer, driving up prices, then the orders are canceled within a few fractions of a second, before sell offers arrive.

But this highly illegal technique only works until there is some economic crisis. These days, most likely, something like a sovereign default by some country.

So, what of the poor? The gravy train is ending, so they will be in a sink or swim proposition, and soon. Likely there will be an end to cash payments, free medical care, perhaps all other aid but food aid.

They will back where they started from, before the government decided to uplift them.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2010-08-04 09:54  

#4  But we don't have enough money to treat the mentally retarded properly. We just turn them out on the streets to meet whatever fate awaits them with no protection. Maybe they should vote more often.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2010-08-04 07:27  

#3  If you go to the four corners area to see the Navajo or the Dakotas to see the Sioux, there in the hinterland you can still see and feel real 'traditional' poverty, greatly assisted by one of the oldest 'progressive' governmental organizations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The problem for society in addressing such poverty is 'guilt'. It obstructs real progress which can not come without some pain.

Now there are other locations which have such 'traditional' poverty but in such small numbers as to be blended into the social economic landscape. The fundamental problem with 'traditional' poverty is that to over come it requires that the individual take responsibility to do just that. The bulk of such poverty can be distilled in four major categories; substance abuse, creating children before one has the means to support them, wasting one's existence (being a zombie) in educational opportunities, and keeping to the 'old' ways. Each is a choice for there are others in the exact same social economic conditions who 'choose' not to follow those patterns who do succeed. Other people's choices should never be your guilt.

Seven trillion dollars spent on anti-poverty programs and initiatives since the War on Poverty was declared by President Johnson in the 60s. Time past to declare victory and get out.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2010-08-04 07:20  

#2  Good commentary, Dr. Steve.

It has always bothered me when some limo lefty who can't imagine not living in their lovely suburb in a 4000 square foot house with all the accoutrements spouts self righteously about how being on welfare brings its own shame and disincentive to continue living in "squalor". Based upon the experiences of humans over millions of years, EVERY welfare recipient in the U.S. is living better, with better nutrition, medicine, and shelter than about 98% of all the people who have ever lived.

For individuals who only care about being clothed, fed, and housed, welfare is paradise, and there is NO incentive to do anything else. As long as welfare in its current state exists, they'll literally never do anything to change or improve.
Posted by: no mo uro   2010-08-04 06:09  

#1  The poor here are going to get a lot poorer if everyone joins the ranks of the poor and there's no more loot left to pass around.
Posted by: gorb   2010-08-04 00:40  

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