A new poll finds most U.S. adults think personal choices are a major driver of poverty and homelessness, while fewer blame a lack of government support.
About 6 in 10 Americans say personal choices are a “major factor” in why people remain in poverty, while just under half say unfair systems are a major factor and about 4 in 10 blame lack of government support.
I think a lot of people in the comments are acting as if there is only one cause, and individual choices cannot be it because it doesn’t account for everything. Admittedly, the headline does frame it as if people believe it is the sole cause, rather than just the most popular. Personally, I would say both personal choices and unfair systems are major factors.
For lack of Government support, I am not sure how I would answer. The government actually does spend a lot on assistance for the poor relative to other countries, but I believe it is not done so efficiently to lift people out of poverty. It is very reactive and focuses on treating symptoms of core issues, so you end up with a lot of people in a constant state of being just barely able to keep their head above the water. It’s largely half measures that end up with worse outcomes and being more expensive in the long run than proper investment into making things better would be.
Individual choices can land you in poverty but poverty does not exist because of individual choices. Ergo, there will ALWAYS be people in poverty no matter what they do who got there for no fault of their own. This is a social issue that should be viewed through a social lense. Individual choice is irrelevant to the existence of poverty. Yes some people are impoverished because of things they did but poverty should not exist and nothing you do should put you in such a position.
Besides, capitalism has many incentives to keep people impoverished. Desperate people are far more willing to accept dangerous, shitty jobs with low pay if it means meeting just a few of their needs. They are also great for breaking strikes. I see poverty as a condition imposed upon the people and one of the greatest crimes of our time
Add in the fact that most welfare literally requires you to remain under a poverty threshold to continue receiving those meager benefits and you get the results we have. If you are disabled and receive disability payments you cannot work or you lose your coverage. There is an income cap of something insane like $1000/month for disability recipients. Its a deliberately evil system that forces families to divorce their sick spouse simply to allow them the access to insurance benefits they otherwise would be disqualified from.
How can anyone honestly recover from that? You make $1 more this month and the half of your income that paid for food and rent is gone, now youre worse off than someone on welfare just because you “arent poor enough.” Its like the exact myth they tell about tax brackets only it actually exists and happens to people in real life all the fucking time.
The day I learned this was the last day I made fun of poor people doing various stereotypical things that are considered “bad financial habits” in middle class upbringings. For example, buying lottery tickets with your welfare money is NOT evidence of poor people being bad at math. It’s a rational financial decision in their existing regulatory environment. A lottery winner can fly right over the welfare cliff, while the people saving up for a car repair get punished and pulled back into poverty. Maybe they’ll enjoy a few years of luxury until they squander it all because they never learned that staying off the dole requires different strategies than getting off the dole.
The poorer you are born the more choices are bad choices for you because you either can’t afford them or if they fail can’t recover from them and the whole system is far more likely to punish you for it.
If you’re a scion of the rich you can chose to be a totally fucked up Nazi-loving ketamine user and still be wildly successful by this society’s metrics, but try, say, going into the Arts as the child of working class parents with zero connections in that environment and see how well that turns out.
Having genuine Options without massive risks of horrible outcomes is only for rich people.
And this is without going into the whole Mental Health domain and how people who live a life of strife are for more likely than the rest to tend to seek to escape if only for a short while by taking stuff they shouldn’t really be taking.
The overall idea behind this article, headline and poll is that we have constructed poverty in our society. We have made a system that creates homeless people and children starving.
It’s a false dichotomy created by the wealthy that our only options in life are to fail or succeed, if we all really wanted it bad enough we could build a system that guarantees basic needs and rights for every last person. It’s not personal choice that lands people in poverty, it’s the fact that poverty is allowed to exist at all.
The government actually does spend a lot on assistance for the poor relative to other countries but I believe it is not done so efficiently to lift people out of poverty
I mean, we’ll spend $200k employing a handful of life coaches to tell poor people they just need to work harder and submit to any abuses bosses want to inflict on them instead of giving poor people $200 to pay their bills, but I wouldn’t even call that “assistance for the poor,” it’s just subsidized hassling. When it comes to actual tangible assistance for poor people (e.g. nutrition healthcare housing etc.) I think we’re actually very skimpy.
I haven’t heard of hiring life coaches for poor people but I agree that would be an example of inefficient spending. I meant things like healthcare. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country, and so when a government program like Medicare or Medicaid covers a bill that means a very large subsidy. College is likewise exceptionally expensive, so need-based scholarships become a big expense.
If there was more of a focus on making these affordable in the first place, the cost for each covered individual would go down for taxpayers. This would free up the budget to expand coverage and offer more quality assistance in other places. Instead, it’s just a reactive policy of paying whatever the bill is when someone does qualify. This creates pressure to restrict who qualifies and what’s covered to keep prices down, while hospitals and colleges get away with charging absurd amounts since the beneficiary doesn’t feel the cost individually.
Our culture doesn’t lend itself to critical thinking or even critical reading, plus it’s hurry hurry hurry, parents’ modeling of skills and availability to children are paramount to the development of decision making skills, even with the best decision makers, and that’s not taking into account trauma, LDs, divergences, etc.
I’ve often thought our educational system would better serve Montessori -style with more in-depth subject study.
I think a lot of people in the comments are acting as if there is only one cause, and individual choices cannot be it because it doesn’t account for everything. Admittedly, the headline does frame it as if people believe it is the sole cause, rather than just the most popular. Personally, I would say both personal choices and unfair systems are major factors.
For lack of Government support, I am not sure how I would answer. The government actually does spend a lot on assistance for the poor relative to other countries, but I believe it is not done so efficiently to lift people out of poverty. It is very reactive and focuses on treating symptoms of core issues, so you end up with a lot of people in a constant state of being just barely able to keep their head above the water. It’s largely half measures that end up with worse outcomes and being more expensive in the long run than proper investment into making things better would be.
Individual choices can land you in poverty but poverty does not exist because of individual choices. Ergo, there will ALWAYS be people in poverty no matter what they do who got there for no fault of their own. This is a social issue that should be viewed through a social lense. Individual choice is irrelevant to the existence of poverty. Yes some people are impoverished because of things they did but poverty should not exist and nothing you do should put you in such a position.
Besides, capitalism has many incentives to keep people impoverished. Desperate people are far more willing to accept dangerous, shitty jobs with low pay if it means meeting just a few of their needs. They are also great for breaking strikes. I see poverty as a condition imposed upon the people and one of the greatest crimes of our time
Add in the fact that most welfare literally requires you to remain under a poverty threshold to continue receiving those meager benefits and you get the results we have. If you are disabled and receive disability payments you cannot work or you lose your coverage. There is an income cap of something insane like $1000/month for disability recipients. Its a deliberately evil system that forces families to divorce their sick spouse simply to allow them the access to insurance benefits they otherwise would be disqualified from.
How can anyone honestly recover from that? You make $1 more this month and the half of your income that paid for food and rent is gone, now youre worse off than someone on welfare just because you “arent poor enough.” Its like the exact myth they tell about tax brackets only it actually exists and happens to people in real life all the fucking time.
The day I learned this was the last day I made fun of poor people doing various stereotypical things that are considered “bad financial habits” in middle class upbringings. For example, buying lottery tickets with your welfare money is NOT evidence of poor people being bad at math. It’s a rational financial decision in their existing regulatory environment. A lottery winner can fly right over the welfare cliff, while the people saving up for a car repair get punished and pulled back into poverty. Maybe they’ll enjoy a few years of luxury until they squander it all because they never learned that staying off the dole requires different strategies than getting off the dole.
The thing goes even further back than that:
If you’re a scion of the rich you can chose to be a totally fucked up Nazi-loving ketamine user and still be wildly successful by this society’s metrics, but try, say, going into the Arts as the child of working class parents with zero connections in that environment and see how well that turns out.
Having genuine Options without massive risks of horrible outcomes is only for rich people.
And this is without going into the whole Mental Health domain and how people who live a life of strife are for more likely than the rest to tend to seek to escape if only for a short while by taking stuff they shouldn’t really be taking.
The overall idea behind this article, headline and poll is that we have constructed poverty in our society. We have made a system that creates homeless people and children starving.
It’s a false dichotomy created by the wealthy that our only options in life are to fail or succeed, if we all really wanted it bad enough we could build a system that guarantees basic needs and rights for every last person. It’s not personal choice that lands people in poverty, it’s the fact that poverty is allowed to exist at all.
I mean, we’ll spend $200k employing a handful of life coaches to tell poor people they just need to work harder and submit to any abuses bosses want to inflict on them instead of giving poor people $200 to pay their bills, but I wouldn’t even call that “assistance for the poor,” it’s just subsidized hassling. When it comes to actual tangible assistance for poor people (e.g. nutrition healthcare housing etc.) I think we’re actually very skimpy.
I haven’t heard of hiring life coaches for poor people but I agree that would be an example of inefficient spending. I meant things like healthcare. The US spends more on healthcare than any other country, and so when a government program like Medicare or Medicaid covers a bill that means a very large subsidy. College is likewise exceptionally expensive, so need-based scholarships become a big expense.
If there was more of a focus on making these affordable in the first place, the cost for each covered individual would go down for taxpayers. This would free up the budget to expand coverage and offer more quality assistance in other places. Instead, it’s just a reactive policy of paying whatever the bill is when someone does qualify. This creates pressure to restrict who qualifies and what’s covered to keep prices down, while hospitals and colleges get away with charging absurd amounts since the beneficiary doesn’t feel the cost individually.
Our culture doesn’t lend itself to critical thinking or even critical reading, plus it’s hurry hurry hurry, parents’ modeling of skills and availability to children are paramount to the development of decision making skills, even with the best decision makers, and that’s not taking into account trauma, LDs, divergences, etc.
I’ve often thought our educational system would better serve Montessori -style with more in-depth subject study.