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WhatthefoxsaysHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:41pm
The article starts off with a description of “tunneling” that affects the decision-making ability of poor people, but ends with the statement that poor people are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Contradictory, no?
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  BigPlopsWhatthefoxsays
  6/01/15 2:55pm
  Are you being willfully obtuse or do you seriously see a contradiction (serious question)? As in, do you intractably see “poor people” as an essential “class” of beings to the point where the description of a response to particular situation is changed in your brain to the description of a ingrained behavioral trait (of a particular social group you define yourself against)?
  
  To answer your question, no it’s obviously not contradictory, as having a guaranteed source of money to spend eliminates the scarcity that triggers tunneling.
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  WhatthefoxsaysBigPlops
  6/01/15 3:01pm
  Are you under the impression that a welfare cash grant eliminates scarcity?
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lieutenant_winslowHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:38pm
STOP saying “income”. it’s not about high “income” vs low income. it’s about high net worth. UHNW individuals almost uniformly do not have enormous “income”, but do have enormous assets, capital gains, dividends and other forms of wealth that are not “income.” this is where the the wealth gap lies. exponentially more so than a mere “income” gap.
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  Anachroniclieutenant_winslow
  6/01/15 3:05pm
  You seem to be confusing “income” with “salary”. The ultra rich earn far more from investments than jobs, sure. But investment income is still income. It may be taxed differently, sure, and that’s an important thing to keep in mind when discussing tax policy; raising the maximum income tax rate alone is probably not adequate, without addressing capital gains, estate taxes, and various other facets of the tax code. But in a broader sense, it is all still income, and if they literally had no income their wealth would eventually be lost to inflation, spending, and the dispersal of inheritance.
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  Hamilton Nolanlieutenant_winslow
  6/01/15 3:06pm
  http://gawker.com/income-inequal…
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prestocrazymwahahahahaHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:31pm
If we just give them money, how can we sufficiently shame them? Honestly, it seems like you haven’t thought this through.
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  amgarreprestocrazymwahahahaha
  6/01/15 3:29pm
  Yes. And if they stop tunneling, what if they get interested in things like politics or even, gasp, trade unions or the environment? You know, things that might make their lives better down the road.
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DJ NinjahHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:47pm
This article just made me realize yet another great example of conservative hypocrisy. Government telling the poors what to buy, down to which groceries are ok = just common sense. Government attaching terms to bailout funds = ridiculous overreach.
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  RealAmurricanDJ Ninjah
  6/01/15 3:35pm
  You’re confusing welfare with welfare.
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  illadelph halflifeDJ Ninjah
  6/01/15 4:24pm
  The difference between providing incentives to the poor vs these corporate institutions is that both conservatives and liberals can see a tangible return on their investment. Large financial institution returns from the brink and makes a killing, their stocks skyrocket and Wall Street looks good. While we could determine plenty of ways that providing assistance to low income families is rewarding, Washington doesn’t necessarily see the benefits from their seat in Congress.
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TheHoopoeHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:34pm
I've said it before and I'll say it again: raise the minimum wage to reflect the actual cost of living and these problems will mostly solve themselves.
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  cafeaulaitskintoneTheHoopoe
  6/01/15 2:55pm
  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: raise the minimum wage to reflect the actual cost of living and these problems will mostly solve themselves.
  
  Except that a lot of those jobs are just going away permanently because:
  
  (1) Technology allows people to hire as-needed for many services that previously would have had been provided by companies with permanent staff. We are moving from an economy with taxi-drivers to those who are Uber drivers (metaphorically speaking). Those positions have neither preset wages nor benefits.
  
  (2) Many positions are being replaced everywhere by robots. There are strawberry picking robots already in use in Japan. They work 24-7-365. Don’t require payment, only maintenance.
  
  (3) Many positions are being either off-shored or farm-shored to places where the cost-of-living is low and demands are low.
  
  That would have worked 25 years ago. It’s going to become irrelevant in the modern world.
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  Free Market Party CompanyTheHoopoe
  6/01/15 3:20pm
  Honestly, minimum wage only covers part of the solution, and the higher you set it, the greater the incentive for employers to hire “under the table”. This isn’t good for the employees at all, since they also tend to not get covered by worker’s comp, and it makes illegals easier to hide.
  
  I also buy the argument that a lot of minimum wage workers aren’t primary breadwinners so much as people supplementing a full-time income, students, retirees and such, and I’m not sure if there’s a massive societal benefit in raising a business’ payroll costs for their sake.
  
  Not saying we should abolish it, and it probably does need to come up some, but there’s definitely a point of diminishing returns.
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chetjesseHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:37pm
Interesting article, especially the concept of one’s thoughts “tunneling”. Having dealt with this same concept as it relates to depression personally, it always amazes me how options and solid decision making open up when you have enough and are in the right frame of mind.
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  ASneakierMailmanchetjesse
  6/01/15 5:32pm
  Definitely. Funny how poverty also behaves like trauma in this way.
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  browniesaregoodchetjesse
  6/01/15 8:45pm
  Yes...this struck me as well, as someone who simply has money problems but has never been out in the streets. I’d never actually read how it relates to scarcity - which can cover a range of conditions - before.
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BlatheringHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 3:15pm
The “earn your benefits” workfare stuff is the sort of thing that most people agree on, in theory, but when you see the bureaucratic practice of it once two or three levels of government get involved it’s a shitshow.

And I say this as a godless commie liberal who thrives on big government.

Locally, I’ve seen the nonsensical from having people so scheduled with meetings that they don’t have the ability to seek work to “job skills assignments” (ie, busywork) so full of favoritism and harassment that people are giving up benefits rather than report to the assignment.
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mmsfcHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 3:34pm
In San Francisco the problem with giving cash to the impoverished - who are administratively lumped in with the mentally ill - is that they are taken advantage of by drug dealers and all sorts of crooks like SRO landlords and fake health care workers who did/do “banking” for the poor. Attempts to set up a comprehensive health care system have been stymied by the same interests who gave tax breaks to Twitter and other tech companies and developers. Without the fiances do do so, there’s no way to create and maintain a much needed genuinely social network.

The essential truth, that poverty is a social condition, not a character flaw, will remain a political tag line until we demand a just tax system and enforceable political campaign funding restrictions. California and the US have underfunded social programs, gutted labor laws, and mis-characterized social pressure as personal failing since the 1980s. The full price of these choices is visible in a bankrupt Detroit, in the drug addicted mentally ill in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, and anywhere that’s cleaning up pollution.

I cannot figure out how anyone can argue that economics, that business takes priority over rather than serves our shared human condition. That billionaires and millionaires believe that they’ve done something morally worth that kind of money astonishes me. Why argue against 50% taxation on a billion dollars? Why allow tax havens for corporations, which are and are not people, but not for people who are people?
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Gawain23Hamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:38pm
I think these are the guys that wrote that book “Scarcity”. Really excellent if you want to understand tunneling and lack of bandwidth as an explanation for poor decision-making.
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  Brian TschieggGawain23
  6/01/15 3:16pm
  It's hard to be a rational, well-informed actor when you're hungry.
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  Gawain23Brian Tschiegg
  6/01/15 10:52pm
  Not sure if you understood what I meant, but you indirectly affirmed what I was trying to convey. Thanks.
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HoldenCashHamilton Nolan
6/01/15 2:58pm
Concrete proposals in the plan include encouraging anti-poverty programs to improve communication; reduce paperwork during the “onboarding” process, in order to avoid discouraging and driving people away; and make sure the programs are both geographically accessible, and have operating hours that make them accessible to working people

We don’t need another blue-ribbon social sciences ‘study’ to tell us what we already know...

Republicans are the why we can’t do the solutions we KNOW will work.

It is foolish and stupid to disconnect **policy decisions** from the study of “why poverty solutions don’t work”

All those suggestions, Republicans by policy vote oppose their implementation.

We know you need to be adaptable to help people...we know accessability is important...another ridiculous big honkin’ social science ‘study’ will not change the minds of the Republicans who vote to do (or not do) the things we know we need to do.
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  GrilledCheeseonSourdoughHoldenCash
  6/24/15 10:37am
  lol after seeing your incoherant post about republicans being responsible for the jail break, i had to see the rest of your posts.
  
  Yup.
  
  You are fit for a straight jacket.
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Republicans are the why we can’t do the solutions we KNOW will work.