Study finds that giving cash to poor people creates positive ripples

Siri Kirpal

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The city of Eugene actually gives homeless phones. They have to recharge them themselves. But it does suggest that new phones aren't necessarily a sign of wealth.

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Siri Kirpal
 

Roxxsmom

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wow...pardon my intrusion

*leaves feeling pretty lousy :(

I think everyone has stories about times we tried to do the right thing by someone and got duped. It makes us feel like chumps and it sucks.

But there's evidence that using purse strings to control behavior doesn't work. Statistically, generosity is beneficial (even if some individuals cheat), and it benefits society overall when we are more generous. I'm not sure why Americans are more punitive than other cultures. Maybe it's because we developed a national identity and culture when we were a young country with lots of natural resources and a wide-open frontier, plus we were in an enviable economic position after WWII.

We had several generations of "low hanging" fruit where it seemed like anyone with any initiative and work ethic at all had a good chance of doing quite well for themselves. That's dried up now, but the belief that people who are unfortunate have only themselves to blame is still entrenched.

We also seem to be a lot more violent than other wealthy democracies--in terms of crime (a homicide rate https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26551975 than other western democracies), in terms of protecting ourselves from other people, in terms of punishing criminals, and in terms of things many of us think are acceptable to do to those we love in everyday life. That seems to be an endless feedback loop too.

I wish we could become a kinder, more forgiving, and less violent country.
 
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Introversion

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That's dried up now, but the belief that people who are unfortunate have only themselves to blame is still entrenched.

I do think that’s the root of it. That, and the religion-based beliefs of some that wealth is a sign of God’s favor.

My father once asked me, didn’t I find my politics becoming more conservative as I aged? No, because the more I live, the more I understand how fundamental luck is to anyone’s success. Hard work alone is no guarantee. I was born white, to middle-class parents, who emphasized education, at a time when public college was still cheap, my degree was in high demand, and too young to be drafted to Vietnam. Hard work? Sure, but I had the great fortune to be born on 3rd base.

I really get irritated at assumptions that people “deserve” their financial success or lack of it.
 

lizmonster

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I do get it. There are people who take advantage. There's the very famous "bug people desperately for gas money in the parking lot" scam that kicks up around here now and then. It's hard to take someone at face value when the media prefers to talk about all the folks trying to rip you off.

And it's stressful, giving money to people on the street. Dealing with strangers is fraught at the best of times. I'm not going to judge someone for walking on by.

I will, though, judge society as a whole for walking on by. We like to brag to the world about how rich we are, except when we talk about people who are actually in need. The problem isn't who does or doesn't give directly to the homeless on the street; the problem is a society that refuses to act on the problem of homelessness because "they should just get a job like the rest of us."

I was walking with an ex once, and I gave a dollar to a guy I passed on the street. Ex sniffed, and said "He needs to get a job." I looked at him and said "Do you have a job to give him?" He shut up after that, but I don't think I changed his overall opinion. Thing is, Ex was indeed a hard worker, and had overcome not poverty, but a fair amount of income instability as a child. He was also functioning despite some pretty insidious mental issues. Humans tend to extrapolate from very small data sets; in his very small data set, the guy I gave the dollar should've just tried a little harder, like he had.

And it's fine for individuals to hold these views. But as a society? We need to be smarter, and ignoring the growing income inequality we've got is the opposite of that.
 

Siri Kirpal

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The violence bit may have something to do with those wide-open spaces too. Easier to hunt than grow a crop when you're on the move.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Roxxsmom

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I do think that’s the root of it. That, and the religion-based beliefs of some that wealth is a sign of God’s favor.

My father once asked me, didn’t I find my politics becoming more conservative as I aged? No, because the more I live, the more I understand how fundamental luck is to anyone’s success. Hard work alone is no guarantee. I was born white, to middle-class parents, who emphasized education, at a time when public college was still cheap, my degree was in high demand, and too young to be drafted to Vietnam. Hard work? Sure, but I had the great fortune to be born on 3rd base.

I really get irritated at assumptions that people “deserve” their financial success or lack of it.

Churchill (I think it was Churchill, anyway) famously said, "A young man who is conservative has no heart, but an old man who is liberal has no brain" or something like that. I suppose he was saying young people have nothing to lose yet, so they understandably tend towards idealism, while older folks are more invested in their society and have a lot to lose, so they tend to be more about protecting the status quo.

Maybe this was true when conservatism and liberalism were just about finances, and older people could reasonably be assumed to have "made it" and to live somewhat stagnant lives, surrounded by people like themselves. This is no longer true, and political conservatism in the US is about actually going back to an earlier era where many people would have fewer rights, not just about protecting a certain status quo, and about ignoring science and letting the planet go to hell.

Nowadays, liberals can be said to be protecting the status quo when it comes to things like reproductive rights, laws barring discrimination based on race of sex etc. They could also be said to be protecting the status quo when they oppose dismantling environmental protection or existing social safety nets and when they express concern about how quickly the climate is changing. Nothing can be "status quo" anymore in a warming world.

As for how politics shift with age, I suppose it depends on the person and on the community they live in, but I personally have grown more liberal in some respects (and I was always fairly liberal), and I see this happening with other family members too, save one, who was always more conservative than the rest of us (and now he's really far off in Trumpsville). The issues one cares most about can change out of shifting self interest, but personally, my job has broadened my sense of what young people are going through today, since I teach at a community college for a living. Maybe this is why academics tend to be more liberal? I consider myself a strong liberal, because I do favor adopting stronger protections for human rights and promotions of economic equality, not just opposing the changes backwards the GOP wants to make.

I also have non academic friends who used to be Republicans but no longer are, but I can only think of one former Democrat in my wider circle who has turned conservative.

One female friend who used to be fiercely conservative is now fiercely liberal. I think it's because she has experienced gender discrimination firsthand in her life and profession, and she has also experienced what happens when a public-sector IT department outsources its workforce. Basically, she was laid off then hired back at a fraction of her former salary with no benefits. That would tend to shake anyone's faith in the powers of the free market.

Sometimes living one's life shifts one's views towards a more liberal stance, rather than the opposite. Or maybe the current political climate has simply tossed old-school conventional wisdom on its head.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I, too, am more liberal than I once was. Not because of my profession, not because I've been shafted by the system, but because it took awhile to grow the compassion that was always there.

My mother used to tell us that she was a Republican because she felt that side of the aisle could do more harm (this was back in the days when there were moderate and even liberal Republicans), and she wanted to have some say in which one got on the ballot. But I note that she did change her registration the moment Dad died. My MIL did the same thing.

I knew people who became much more liberal when they got out from under their conservative families. Men, mostly.

My husband, I'd like to note, is still registered with an R, but that's because his conservatism amounts to keeping his registration the same. Has nothing to do with how he votes in the general election.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 
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neandermagnon

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This caller to a talk show belongs on this thread: https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/heartbreaking-james-obrien-compulsory-listening/ - explaining how he escaped poverty when he was young and how all the schemes to help people out of poverty have been stripped away and that had he been in the same situation 5 years ago instead of 30 years ago he wouldn't have stood a chance. As it is he's successful and attributes that to being paid £30 a week so he could go to college and get an education and get away from his background. He grew up in one of the poorest parts of the UK with drug addict parents.
 

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An article on Trump's changes to SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) that will mean 700,000 lose benefits, because Trump just wants to help poor people that seems relevant.

The Wonkette said:
When people do think about poverty, they like to think that it is something people bring upon themselves by being lazy or morally failing in some other way. They like to say things like "Whenever a homeless person asks me for money, I always go in and buy them a sandwich, because if you give them money they'll just spend it on booze" (as if you wouldn't want a drink if you were homeless), or talk sneeringly about homeless people who have rejected their sandwiches (maybe they don't like that sandwich! Maybe they're a vegetarian! Maybe some other person just bought them a sandwich! You don't know!).

It's practically superstition, in a way — people like to think that as long as they are good and not lazy, it will never happen to them. That is a very comforting thought. It is a very appealing thought.

Another appealing thought is the idea that if we simply stop helping poor people, they will learn to fly on their own, discover the joys of personal responsibility, and become heartwarming bootstraps tales to inspire us all. That is, truly, what this whole thing is about. It is about making people feel good, about allowing them to believe in that fairy tale. It doesn't matter that it's not true because most of the people who believe that bullshit are never actually going to meet anyone who uses SNAP or any other government program. The important thing is that they get to believe it is true.

The fact is, if you are poor enough to be on food stamps, it is likely that you are practically too poor to go job hunting. Job hunting, as I learned when I was on unemployment (and thus, technically, making "too much" to qualify for food stamps), is not cheap. Also, most of the jobs you can get quickly are jobs with unpredictable hours that do not pay a living wage. This means that not only could taking one put you in a worse position financially than you are currently in, it would also prevent you from being able to interview for a better job that actually would pay you a living wage. These are the kinds of things you need to calculate when you are poor. When you don't have money, every single thing you do is a calculation, every step you take, one way or another, is a gamble.
 

Roxxsmom

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I think individuals often become more socially liberal as they move through their lives, if they live lives that expose them to different ideas and people. Where you end up depends a lot on where you started, though, and on the core values you started with. My grandmother would have been horrified if my mother and father had lived together before being married in the early 60s, but she didn't bat an eye when several of her grandchildren co-habitated with their significant others for years before getting married in the 90s. But her objections to cohabitation back in the day weren't because of religion or anything like that (she wasn't religious at all), but simply because she didn't really know anyone who did things that way.

I think older people seem more socially conservative to young people, even though the old people are personally more liberal than they started out, is because the younger folks don't always have an appreciation of where their grandparents (or parents) started out.

I've seen people go the other way too, sometimes because of something that happened that shook their faith in other people, or because of compassion fatigue or something.

Some people definitely become more fiscally conservative as they age. They don't want to pay taxes to support schools after their kids are grown up, which is (imo) selfish. They may also more understandably worry about how rising property taxes (if their home value is increasing) will affect them when their own income isn't rising proportionally (this drove prop 13 in California).

People sometimes change political focus once they have kids too. For instance, people may be all for low income housing, and integrating schools, and affirmative action etc. etc., but when they have kids of their own, they suddenly want policies and resource allocations that are best for their own children, even this means other (poorer) families don't get what is best for them.

This creates cognitive dissonance, which has to be dealt with in some way. For some, it entails a shift towards more conservative politics.
 
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Marian Perera

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And it's stressful, giving money to people on the street. Dealing with strangers is fraught at the best of times. I'm not going to judge someone for walking on by.

A couple of days ago, I was on the subway going home from work, and it was past midnight because I work the evening shift. I was dozing off with my hood pulled halfway over my face, when I heard someone get on the (nearly empty) subway.

The person stopped in front of me, and although I could only see him from the waist down, he looked, well, homeless. He asked for money, then waved a hand in my line of sight. I'm happy to pay taxes that will fund programs to help homeless people, but I really don't want to take out my wallet in front of a stranger if I'm alone. So I didn't react. Then he patted my knee.

Unfortunately I don't respond well to that sort of thing, so I yelled, "Don't touch me!" and he jerked back. After that he left me alone and wandered down the rest of the train.

I feel sorry for people like this, but I also find contact of this kind stressful, as lizmonster said. I don't know what the solution to this is, other than, as others have said, to become kinder and more inclusive in our political choices.
 

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I've always figured that what and when I give is between God and me, and what folks do with it afterwards is between them and God. But I'm one of those strange ducks who looks to Christ as an example of how to follow... um... Christ. ymmv