The problem with the video is all the discussion is abstracted. As I was typing my response, it's very difficult to represent the nature of the problems people face because the relationships that underpin economic access are themselves so complicated and abstracted. Generally speaking, which is really all one can do when one attempts to address one another via impersonal mediums like this, why are the rich generally economic active and successful? The answer is not merely because they are rich and have money. What does being rich and having money grant access to? A sphere of personal treatment that grants you access to experiences of being an effective human being. What do the poor get, even when there are institutions to serve them? They get an impersonal and anonymous process that is reproduced across much of the spheres they access. There simply isn't enough work done to look at the institutional processes.
There is Only One Way Out of Poverty
- Thread starter gwb-trading
- Start date
Sounds like you're young and have unrealistically high expectations of what you should be able to "just walk out of your home and have access" to.
Ever consider the notion that "access" comes after certain skills? Like going to school, learning English and a bit of math... and how about a work ethic? You first need those skills before you can access anything.
Yes, of course, it's an obvious point to consider, it's even presumed in what I said. Dispositions can't be formed without the means. If you didn't have a family, how would you learn to speak? Would you acquire a work ethic if you existed in isolation? If you existed in isolation because of the effects of devaluation, would you feel the desire to go out and do something that is so difficult to access anyway? How do you provide the grounds for people to acquire the dispositions you allude to? Why were they there in previous historical periods and why have they atrophied in contemporary conditions? I know an old man in his eighties, he learned to use mechanical digging equipment by buying a guy who drove one a bottle of whisky. Now, the poor are tracked from a schooling they find irrelevant because it relates to nothing onto more education because there is little they can aspire to do and then the education supposed to address their incompetence ends up being irrelevant and impoverished because anything worthwhile can't be accessed because of competition.
Just out of interest, do you seriously believe you can just walk out of your door and access anything? What isn't financially mediated? How do you learn to drive without income?
Just out of interest, do you seriously believe you can just walk out of your door and access anything? What isn't financially mediated? How do you learn to drive without income?
Of course you are correct. I have one hope that this state of isolation from true access to skills and employment in rural areas can change for the better without having to leave your own home area. That is, that corporations no longer require you to live near the "office". It is very possible for the corporation to be located in Colorado and be able to work remotely from for example Wichita, KS.
There are a few hurdles that can be overcome first for people without access to money or educators in order to attain real-world skills that demand a wage:
There are a few hurdles that can be overcome first for people without access to money or educators in order to attain real-world skills that demand a wage:
- Online education is fast becoming good enough
- The culture of the people around you has to be supportive. Nothing leads to ignorant children faster than parents that don't value skills outside of what has worked for them in the past but no longer works.
- Internet access is often much better in rural areas than in big cities
- Discipline and ambition
Ask yourself, will the credentials of those who learn from bedrooms or from educational contexts supported under state aid for them be valued? If people are stigmatised and segregated would this not impair them socially and thereby intellectually? If your experience is of irrelevant education that is undemanding because you really aren't that academic (unless it's work related training of course but this is ever more competitive and difficult to access) and of applying for work without ever hearing back, aren't you going to come across as limited and not-very-bright? If you have limited horizons and limited association, aren't you going to appear limited? If you can't access employment how are you going to manifest qualities required in the labour market, how are you even going to be able to refer appropriately to work-related aspects such that you'll appear as an attractive interlocutor? I think it's easy to overlook just how abstracted access to human contexts is in the contemporary labour market.
The republican party exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to keep my taxes low. Anything else they try to do out of fear CNN will speak harshly is always totally fucked up. They should just stick with what they know, and they're doing a pisspoor job of even that. The rest of those organizations only exist to steal money from me and give it to their friends.
Agreed. Good video. Welfare recipients of able body and mind should work for it. Even trash collecting on the side of the highway is fine. Whatever. The whole point is to remove the free lunch and light a fire under their ass.
Collect trash on the side of the road or enroll at a trades school and pull an 80 average towards an electricians certification. Both enable a welfare recipient to get paid. Both require them to contribute for their handout.
It's good and logical.
You know, I think America's entire social safety net scheme is totally outdated. 50 years ago, Americans were far more upright and self-reliant. Welfare was viewed as a thing of shame. People wanted to work. Nowadays, welfare is something to be taken advantage of. Slovenly bitches rule the roost. Only suckers work. So 'means testing', or some form of it, has to be instituted across every Government program/handout, cause we're a nation of leeches and parasites now. Few people actually give a damn or have allegiance to America/respect for the taxpayer.
The UK has gone through the same. In the 50s, 60s and seventies people just wanted to leave school as early as possible and get a job and few would claim but then in the late seventies jobs started to become scarce and people started to change. We moved towards societies in which large scale hidden unemployment was a key functional feature meant to keep wages down and mitigate against unionisation. Excess competition passifies workers but at the cost of destroying labour power. I agree that the best way to ensure the supply of labour is to do as you say, make sure people get work-relating training as soon as possible and connect them with employment as soon as they would prefer it to schooling. But can it be done? In the UK we create whole economic areas out of creating a need for people to 'need' credentials that support unnecessary institutional spaces where otherwise there would be nothing. As employment becomes more difficult to access people just are displaced. As employment becomes increasingly distant from people, they appear indifferent to what is remote to them and those in employment despise them and the stigma of worklessness becomes another structural feature of the economy. All this just arises from the need to sustain a hidden reserve whose economic function arises from their aggregative nature. As they appear feckless people want them to be made to work but they are something like a prison population, if you make them work then they just reduce wages and take up roles filled by others. In the UK there is resentment towards them because overtime disappears and they suffer abuse in the work place because they are perceived to be removing others overtime. So, we end up with lots of zero hours and part time jobs. The benefit system becomes the target of international organised crime as well and systematically exploited by groups. Maybe what was needed was localised labour markets within a national closed economic framework so that people could be ensured employment, pay-in, then take-out when required, that was the original idea. In reality, employment is monopolized and isn't evenly distributed and for some it will remain unavailable. If we have graduates £50 000 in debt doing non-graduate jobs, what happens to those right at the bottom? Where employment used to be used as a support system, people with learning difficulties and other problems could be fitted in, or, as people aged, they could be moved into easier work, now, anyone unusual will struggle. As there is more competition there are more barriers to labour market entry.
Of course, it would be better for people to be introduced to employment early, but why has this changed? At the end of the day, once you are in a particularly position, workless, you will be unable to appear competent not merely to employers but to other human beings who aren't in your situation. What you perceive about the unemployed that you despise is also what an employer finds unattractive so unless you can stop people from exhibiting such characteristics, what can you do? If you condemn them to poverty then they require policing, health-care and other provision merely because they aren't really part of the human race and therefore aren't appropriately socialised, it all costs. Sadly, in these economies, being signified as competent requires income. If you have people who are too poor, they will also be useless because everything is economically mediated.
Of course, it would be better for people to be introduced to employment early, but why has this changed? At the end of the day, once you are in a particularly position, workless, you will be unable to appear competent not merely to employers but to other human beings who aren't in your situation. What you perceive about the unemployed that you despise is also what an employer finds unattractive so unless you can stop people from exhibiting such characteristics, what can you do? If you condemn them to poverty then they require policing, health-care and other provision merely because they aren't really part of the human race and therefore aren't appropriately socialised, it all costs. Sadly, in these economies, being signified as competent requires income. If you have people who are too poor, they will also be useless because everything is economically mediated.
"The republican party exists for one reason and one reason only and that is to keep my taxes low. ...They should just stick with what they know."
20% of American corporations pay no taxes at all. I remember sitting in a class with a prof who said the key to what made the 1950's work -- in the sense of building a middle class and taking people out of poverty -- was one essential thing: Individuals and businesses who made more than (what in today's money is) $250,000... were taxed at a level so as to pay for half of all government: The military, infrastructure, social security, etc. etc.
So that professor would say that equitable taxing of the privileged is the essential way out of poverty.
Everything flows out of that, and without that... nothing works. All arguments and thought just go in circles.
BTW I'm not much for handouts and welfare. I'm for a safety net, but with limits.
20% of American corporations pay no taxes at all. I remember sitting in a class with a prof who said the key to what made the 1950's work -- in the sense of building a middle class and taking people out of poverty -- was one essential thing: Individuals and businesses who made more than (what in today's money is) $250,000... were taxed at a level so as to pay for half of all government: The military, infrastructure, social security, etc. etc.
So that professor would say that equitable taxing of the privileged is the essential way out of poverty.
Everything flows out of that, and without that... nothing works. All arguments and thought just go in circles.
BTW I'm not much for handouts and welfare. I'm for a safety net, but with limits.
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You know, we can't go back to the 50's. What if due to mechanization, robots, whatever... we just don't need that many workers? You don't need farm labor. You don't need a lot of people to manufacture things. There are not enough jobs in the traditional sense.
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