Saotome On Public Housing And Poverty

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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It’s not going away anytime soon.

I’m tired of people giving crackpot arguments about how it could be stopped. There will always be a poverty line and there will always be starvation (and I’m speaking in a general sense).

The whole poverty thing is like one big paradox. No matter how many food drives we have, no matter how many welfare programs we set up…

Poverty will be rampant.

Heck, I’d be damned if the current working class people (those who make more than 40,000 dollars a year) are considered “bums” by in a few decades. The cost of living is going up every year. I mean, a lot of places here (in Chicago, at least) have rent that’s rising in neighborhoods that were once considered “low income”.

People are buying out these properties and improving the neighborhood. They’re also kicking out the people who once lived there (well, not openly, but they’re trying to set the income boundary by raising property values / rent / lease requirements). Take the Chicago Housing Authority for example…

(If anyone is familiar with the Cabrini Green housing projects, the CHA is in the middle of tearing them down to put “mixed income” housing in its place. (The same can be said for many of the CHA’s housing projects.) It’s pretty much going to be a mix mash of people from all income backgrounds-- or so they want you to think. We all know good and well that property near the downtown area will mostly be taken up by those who have the money to live there, and that property’s price will soon rise to match the surrounding area. The lower income residents of the new housing will eventually move to the mid or far west side (an area in which majority of the people there are African-American with low income; considered a slum) or the south side of Chicago (not as bad as the west side, because it is slowly improving as property values are rising). Oddly enough, they are moving many of the former public housing residents into the nearby suburbs into similar apartments.

Woah. Kinda got off track… dusts myself off

As much as the government tries to improve the poverty situations, they’re not really doing much good. I don’t know if they’re really planning with good intentions, but as far as I can see, the whole mixed income housing thing is just another way for the poor to become concentrated into another side of the town and the process begins all over again. (Maybe it’s a way to drive the poor away from highly demanded properties…)

Then there’s welfare. Food stamps, the Link card, checks…

I think that instead of feeding these people money, why not offer employment assistance? (And for this, I’m speaking about this from what I see around this city o’ mine.)

What’s the point of letting the people “leech” off of other’s tax money then complain about it? If you’re not going to help the people get jobs, then why bother? Of course, there are even some wealthy people who abuse the welfare system. The system is flawed to me. Very flawed. And once I find some time to rewrite what I had in mind down, I’ll explain exactly what needs to be fixed…

But for now, in a nutshell: welfare does more harm than it’s supposed to.

But then again, the people who are using such things don’t have to rely on it. Sadly, those who do use the service usually urge their children to sign up for it so they could have some income; just enough to live from month to month. It’s sad.

sigh Crazy world of ours…

This has been a Saotome Momento. Any thoughts?

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Is it your position that ‘poverty’ is a sort of ‘necessary’ part of every society, in the same way that it is said;

‘there has to to be evil in order for there to be good’

??

I don’t really agree with this, though I do agree with this;

Anyway, I enjoyed the post, though I don’t really have anything cogent to offer in return. :slight_smile:

Regards,

James

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Poverty represents the state of being worse-off after emerging from ongoing evolutional social competition. To put it into capitalist terms, poverty is the victim of men exploiting men. Being under the poverty trap, the individual is inclined to seek spiritual as substitution to material wealth by way of ruminating over the possible befallen existence of a “doomed fate”, or the like. On one hand, the individual appears to be content and thank Jesus for a meatless meal full of potatoes, while their anarchic hand sweats and trembles when the cashier of the supermarket is in the toilet. Some of them actually become Dr Strangelove losing complete control.

The reason that theoretical tackling on poverty possesses little faith from the general public is that political is entirely another matter of concern: Marx rolled flat the underground of Highgate cemetery because of his theoretical wise contorted advocates such as Lenin; many Germans are going to tighten their belts because perhaps Angela Merkel has never heard of Karl Marx. There are countries in Europe where absolute the poverty line is difficult to be drawn: the poorest Lietchensteinese farmer’s pigs are probably too heavy for his shinny BMW truck. Housing manoeuvres in Chicago, looks as though the CEO of the housing authority is upper class white Harvard graduate with his professional knowledge overridden by political ambition, possibly with the help of his former classmate investment sponsors’ numerous “cooperative gestures”.

Welfare is nothing fair. It’s supposed to benefit a certain groups at the expense of others. The government defines welfare partially as beneficiary to the poor, but there is a problem at the core: the majority government is where rich businessmen switching their career. It’s no miracle that the authority acts in a way so that after a welfare programme, the poor feels rather bewildered and continually cultivating their Christian affluence more frequently. The government is always keen to spend on decorating the church in the ghetto, and it calls this its support for “faith for all” or some other catch phrases which it never runs short, while in fact it’s merely another way to keep the wealth gap open and poverty trap up, hoping so that according to the law of natural selection the ghettoes will evolve themselves out in a few decades - that’s the secret justification of the most enlightened of them, for whatever moral scruples that have left in their conscience for power.

Freedom of speech, you can say it: “not crazy, but bloody, nasty and dirty”, personally I would add: “racist, snobbish and power crazy”. America’s long history of capitalist economy has already practically starved myriads of poor people to death. Nowadays few poor individuals starve, the rich makes sure of that, they’ve got the poor running around in their paws for Jesus, but Jesus is nowadays so under excessive demand and out of fashion so that substitutes are provided, these could be goods including legalisation of pornography.

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I have a few point I’d like to adress
1. No one in this country can be on ADC (aid to dependant families) for more than 5 yrs (or so) of their entire life anymore. The rules were changed several yrs back. It is almost impossible to get a check even then. many states require the enrollee to enlist in a work fare program which often pays only minimum wage for the very worst jobs. Not enough to live on for one person much less suport children.
2. Single adults with no dependants cannot get a check unless they are handicapped and can prove it with extensive medical documentation. They can get food stamps but again they must participate in a workfare program. If they do draw a check it is not much more than $200 mo at least in Ohio. The will recieve $140 at most per mo. in stamps and a limited medical card
3. Public housing and housing vouchers in most areas are next to impossible to get. In this area there is subsidesed housing apts that are very nice but you must have perfect credit to get into one. Yea like you have perfect credit on fixed income? This rule applies even to the disabled.
4. Which brings me to disability payments. Most ppl who recieve SSI which is need based recieve a base payment of $667/mo. Some states augment that but the recepient is still 100% below the poverty level. They only get limited food stamps and medical care. Those on SSD recieve $870/ base with some augmentation in some states and $10/mo in food stamps. In most cases they do not get a medical card and have no vision or dental care.
5. Wealthy ppl recieving welfare is a MYTH! If someone on welfare does have money then it is from illegal activity such as drug selling or prostitution. When they are caught they will also face welfare fraud charges.
6. There was no mention of corp welfare. Every year the gov’t gives hundreds of millions in corporate welfare to companies like Pillsbury etc. to help them develop and promote their company. There is 2x as much $$ given to corp welfare than to private welfare.
Rent a movie called The Big One that Micheal Moore did in 96. It is nearly 10 yrs old but it is still eerily relevant to our current economy. If you’re not a Mike Moore fan then google it but plz don’t respond to tell me you don’t like him. I don’t wanna hear it.