Terrorism, Crime: How Does Poverty Factor In?

nimh wrote:

Scrat wrote:
nimh - Inherent in my comments is the notion that we are speaking of those who are measurably impoverished below what is attainable given their circumstances. I would therefor only measure Botswanians against other Botswanians, but believe that my argument would be born out; that you would likely find that in general the poorest Botswanians were those who made bad choices.

That sounds logical, but yet somehow it isn't.

You seem to be acknowledging that the fact that Botswanians are so much poorer than Americans is not necessarily the consequence of their personal choices - that they are limited by "what is attainable given their circumstances".

What would those circumstances be?

"Those circumstances" would be the relative freedom of life in their country, the availability of resources in their location with which to create wealth for themselves and whether or not they are able to emigrate to a place where opportunities are greater. (There are probably more, but that's a good list.)

Many people complain about the wealth of America. To a person those who complain fail to acknowledge that it is the freedom our country affords its people that has made us wealthy.

BTW, whether you agree or do not is NOT a valid measure of the logic of a person's statements.

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Scrat wrote:

"Those circumstances" would be the relative freedom of life in their country, the availability of resources in their location with which to create wealth for themselves and whether or not they are able to emigrate to a place where opportunities are greater. (There are probably more, but that's a good list.)

And none of the ones I listed above counts? (Cause those would happen to all be circumstances that could apply to communities within the US too)

Scrat wrote:

Many people complain about the wealth of America.

Well, I don't know about "many people", you're talking with me now. I for one am not complaining about the wealth of America, but about the poverty of Botswana - or of some Americans ... and unlike you, I believe there is a correlation.

America and the EU are also rich thanks to trade conditions that allow them to demand of developing countries to 'open their markets' for Western exports, but leave the many (and deeply impactive) tariffs and barriers they themselves put up against third world imports intact. For example.

Scrat wrote:

BTW, whether you agree or do not is NOT a valid measure of the logic of a person's statements.

come again? <frowns>

I was referring to the lack of logic in allowing for standards of "circumstances" in explaining relative poverty on a global level, but insisting on the orthodoxy of exclusive personal responsibility when it comes to explaining relative poverty on a national level.

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What we today call terrorism is a form of warfare that has been practiced by peoples across the world for many centuries.

One of the very early well organized forms was the original Assassins of what is now Iraq in the late 12th century. Spanish guerilla resistance to Napoleon's armies would count as terrorism today, as would the actions of the various anarchist and revolutionary movements of mid 19th century Europe. We even had a bit of that here in the U.S. The history of the Irish revolutionary movement after the uprising of 1799 is one of alternating terrorism and organized political resistance. In the end it was terrorism and revolution that gained Ireland her independence and terrorism that set the stage for political reform in the six counties of the North. The early actions of the post WWII Zionists involved a good deal of terrorism as practiced by the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Now after conquering the West Bank and wasting 30 years of occupation the Israelis find the same tactics practiced against them. Thomas and others here have given other examples of 20th century terrorism.

Terrorism is a favored form of warfare by the weak against the strong. It is not much better or worse than any other form of warfare, and one can readily cite examples of terrorism in support of causes now regarded as good by nations, such as ours that profess to be opposed to terrorism. In fact what we are opposed to is terrorism directed against ourselves: nothing more.

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Good to see you George. I think we are in agreement, check my two postings on p. 1. Don't be a stranger.

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nimh wrote:

I was referring to the lack of logic in allowing for standards of "circumstances" in explaining relative poverty on a global level, but insisting on the orthodoxy of exclusive personal responsibility when it comes to explaining relative poverty on a national level.

Then I can only respond that if you you inferred from my comments that I believe that every instance of poverty is always the fault of the individual you inferred wrongly.

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Just for precision's sake.

I think you picked the wrong African country.

According to the CIA factbook, Botswana had in 2002 a per capita GNP of $8500. That's higher than Brazil, Bulgaria, Oman or Thailand.

I guess Botswana sounds a little like bwana.

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fbaezer wrote:

I think you picked the wrong African country.

According to the CIA factbook, Botswana had in 2002 a per capita GNP of $8500. That's higher than Brazil, Bulgaria, Oman or Thailand.

But a lot lower than the US! Razz

(What is "bwana"?)

I'd already noted about thinking the educational level there is in fact relatively high, by the way, by ways of caveat, noting that "I chose that country randomly" - so yeah, sure.

It wasn't quite randomly, though, in fact. One could say - and in fact this was part of the underlying reason why I chose Botswana, and why, say, Zimbabwe would have been a worse example - one could say that the acute difference in prosperity between Botswana and neighbouring Zimbabwe is a clear indication of where better or worse political choices take you; but that the fact that even Botswana's wiser political choices still can't take it up out of the, say, Southern-hemisphere bracket indicates the extent to which good choices alone can't take one out of poverty. There are systemic elements at work, too.

Kinda the same like with poor people in the States.

----

Scrat,

Well, you did react to Sofia thusly: "Horse and cart question for you: [..] Perhaps the horse is bad decision making, and poverty and crime are riders sharing the cart."

Confronted with a thesis that implied that poverty has its "victims", you opposed it and instead submitted that poverty was merely the consequence ("rider") of bad decision-making.

I think that's way too simplistic. But of course, if that wasn't in fact what you had meant to write, I'm glad to hear so.

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nimh wrote:

(actually, I think educational level in Boswana is relatively high, but then I chose that country randomly)

That explains a lot, because Botswana is one of the richest countries in Africa, and the fastest growing in the world since its foundation. You have chosen the worst possible country to make your case. Botswana is poorer than the industrial north simply because it started growing 180 years after we did.

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Ah. post crossed.

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nimh - Your copy-and-paste of my comments missed a bit there. Here's what I wrote that you neglected to include:

Quote:

Horse and cart question for you: Is it possible that a sizable percentage of those living in poverty are impoverished precisely because they make poor choices, and that poor choices are more likely to threaten the safety of the individual and others?

That phrase in bold sort of shoots your pretense--that I somehow claimed that it was the only cause of poverty--in the foot.

My point was not to argue that all poverty is caused by bad decision making (a point I quite clearly did not make), but that bad decision making might lead both to poverty and to criminal action, as opposed to poverty itself leading to criminal action. Sofia suggested that since we see A and B together we can assume that A causes B. I suggested that we may see A and B together because--in those instances where we see both--both are being caused by C.

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Scrat wrote:

My point was not to argue that all poverty is caused by bad decision making (a point I quite clearly did not make)

No, the point you made was that "a sizable percentage" of all poverty is caused by bad decision making (lit.: "a sizable percentage of those living in poverty are impoverished precisely because they make poor choices") - as opposed to whatever contrary submission you saw in Sofia's post.

Well, I dont know what "a sizable percentage" is, of course. 80%? 20%?

80% I dont buy. I've seen the odds people from discouraging backgrounds have had to face to get anywhere like on the level that someone from a progressive, middle-class background like me, if favoured with not all too dumb a brain, kinda automatically slips into.

As long as many of the "good brothers" from poor families - the ones that made the better decisions - still end up lower (say, in a steady, but low-wage job, without criminal record or any kind of addiction) than many of the "dumb brothers" from rich families (say, where GWB was before he mended his, eh, more hedonistic ways), the "good/bad decisions" criterion is of only limited use in explaining poverty. That's why there is such a thing as "the working poor".

(Anecdotal elaboration: If you're from a comfortable enough background (you don't have to be a Kennedy), you can make your bad decisions, and still come out back on top once you get your head screwed back on right - cause you had a support system in the meantime to help you through (money, contacts, whatever). You can make quite a lot of bad decisions (say, drug addiction, dropping out school) without ever truly ending up down&out, cause your parents pay for the therapy sessions or recovery clinic, and thanks to how you were raised you can still talk the talk well enough to land some in-the-meantime none-too-challenging office job, etc. Whereas the same kind of mistakes could well be lethal to someone from South Central. On the other hand, if you're from a bad place, you can be a whole lot more sensible than all that, and still be generally considered lucky by friends & family with your "working poor" wage.)

The only thing I'll buy is what you said earlier about how you would "only measure Botswanians against other Botswanians". I think you can only judge the impact of individual choices this or that way when comparing people from the same place. E.g., people from East LA, or people from Yonkers. When comparing on a national scale, the criterion just doesn't hold up much - the differences in what is generally attainable, barring the rare, awe-inspiring exception, in their circumstances are just too big. So, if with "sizable percentage" you meant 80% rather than 20%, I don't buy it.

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Scrat wrote:

bad decision making might lead both to poverty and to criminal action, as opposed to poverty itself leading to criminal action. Sofia suggested that since we see A and B together we can assume that A causes B. I suggested that we may see A and B together because--in those instances where we see both--both are being caused by C.

Basically, you're seeing a lot of A, B and C: people who are poor, make bad decisions and - to a lesser extent - commit crimes.

The crime, for example, is a bad decision. So why are the poor more likely to commit crimes - or stupid crimes, in any case, the kind that ends you up in jail? Because we are - to a "sizable" extent - just talking bad-decision makers here, and that's what ended them up both poor and in jail? Sure, there'll be of those. But is it really so unreasonable to suggest that the other correlations in this triangle work, as well?

In casu, the proposition you originally objected to: that something in a life of poverty will "leech [the] hope" out of someone - the hope (expectation that a better life is possible) that is the fundamental precondition for even trying to move up? And that those who "devalue their own lives" in that way will be more likely to devalue others' lives (and goods) as well?

One problem with promoting safe sex in Africa for a long time was, that people had close-by experiences of so many other illnesses that kill you early - and with so many chances of dying young anyway, why go out of your way every night to protect against yet another risk?

Same logic here - if prospects somehow seem generally hopeless, anyway, you're more likely to shrug at yet another thing that could get you in trouble, too. NOT doomed to do so (this just before I get any indignation about there being enough poor people who don't enter a life of crime) - but more likely.

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Thomas wrote:

That explains a lot, because Botswana is one of the richest countries in Africa, and the fastest growing in the world since its foundation. You have chosen the worst possible country to make your case. Botswana is poorer than the industrial north simply because it started growing 180 years after we did.

Rich perhaps (because of the diamonds), GDP per capita is higher than any African (south of the Sahara) nation except South Africa. However the economy produces little of value to its people: unemployment is above 40%. Worse Botswana has the lowest life expectency on the continent (32 years) and the highest rate of HIV infection (39%). The median age is 19 and the population is declining. Such demographics hardly permit the transmission of basic cultural values from generation to generation, much less growth and economic development.

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On the "working poor" ... elsewhere I already pasted in this straightforward, scary quote (from TNR again):

Quote:

It remains a national scandal that a person can work 40 hours a week at the current federal minimum wage and be impoverished by the poverty-line definition. (The 2003 Census Bureau poverty line for a childless couple was $12,120; 40 hours for 50 weeks at the current federal minimum wage brings home $10,300, minus taxes.)

As long as entire categories of workers can dive under the poverty line without having made any blatantly bad decisions - you've got yourself a full-time job, a legal job, a job that someone will have to do - I don't think the framing of poverty in terms of to a sizable percentage resulting from bad individual decisions is appropriate.

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Nimh,

Both the minimum wage and the 'poverty level' are based on arbitrary (and often politically motivated) standards that generally make no allowance whatever for local variations. In a country the size of the United States these variations can be very large. It is hardly a surprise that there is little logical connection between them.

Minimum wage laws decrease the economic mobility of business enterprise and do very little indeed to help the poor. They decrease employment and promote the underground economy every bit as much as they raise the wages of existing workers.

I can think of no nation that has successfully legislated itself out of poverty for at least some of its citizens. One can make a strong case that it is more important to make policies that raise economic mobility, encouraging those with the will and initiative to improve their condition through work and savings. Europe has better social safety nets than does the U.S., however it also has more permanently stratified societies, less flexible labor markets, and a much lower GDP per capita than the U.S.

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georgeob1 wrote:

I can think of no nation that has successfully legislated itself out of poverty for at least some of its citizens.

No, but legislation obviously effects the degree to which their number and their degree of poverty varies. That is why you can see a higher standard of living for the poor in countries like the Scandinavian countries and the Lowlands than in the US, even as the overall standard of living in the US is higher.

The difference is not only between countries but also over time. The same TNR quote noted that ...

Quote:

the federal minimum wage is worth nearly a third less in real-dollar terms that it was in the 1960s. (In 1963, the federal minimum wage was $7.25 an hour in current dollars; the 2004 federal minimum wage is $5.15.)

I.e., the minimum-wage stratum in the US is now less well off than fourty years ago. Your argument against propping up minimum wage standards submitted that it "promotes the underground economy". But are we really seeing fewer illegal workers in the US now than in 1963, when minimum wages were de facto significantly higher?

georgeob1 wrote:

One can make a strong case that it is more important to make policies that [encourage] those with the will and initiative to improve their condition through work and savings.

The minimum wage would be there to guarantee those who are demonstrating their will to improve their condition through work a minimally decent living wage. As for saving, the above-cited minimum wages already leave little opportunity to save anything - how would that be better without minimum wage?

georgeob1 wrote:

Minimum wage laws decrease the economic mobility of business enterprise and do very little indeed to help the poor.

That they put some limitations on the manoeuvring opportunities of business enterprise is obvious, yes. (Of course, so do - say - taxes.) If President Bush's new plan on the illegal workers is realised, it will involve businesses having to meet legal working conditons, paying taxes and contributing (I assume) to their workers' pension and/or social security funds and whatever else there is in legal regulations. That will burden them some, but the example of illegals shows that unlimited "economic mobility of business enterprise" is not, in itself, necessarily a guarantee for employees' best interests.

Which leaves minimum wages doing "very little indeed to help the poor". How so? If your submission on increased economic mobility is true, that would, only in the long term, hold true only for those who in the end do manage to benefit from it.

In the meantime, in the short term (and in the long term, too, for anyone who happens not to be born with the brains to get much more than a minimum-wage job), of course minimum wages help the poor. They get you at least something barely approaching a decent working wage, rather than what your employer would freely choose to pay you in what is still an overcrowded low-wage job market. The wages illegals get serve as an example of about how much that would be ...

Furthermore, is your submission that lowering or abolishing minimum wages makes for less socio-economic stratification true? An English columnist unfortunately didn't include a footnote with citation when he quoted a recent study showing that "social mobility in America is actually decreasing. Comparing the incomes and occupations of 2,749 fathers and sons from the 1970s to the 1990s, it was found that mobility had decreased." Decreased, even though minimum wage purchasing power apparently hasn't exactly gone up, these last decades. I can't judge the quote without citation, but at least the question apparently is open.

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Found a citation. The English columnist in question was Gary Younge in The Guardian (see here), but what he cited was a study by Earl Wysong, Robert Perrucci and David Wright:

Quote:

Research co-authored by Earl Wysong [..] was cited in a January 18, 2003, New York Times article

A period that coincided with a scaling down of social programs, apparently featured a decreasing social mobility. The suggested inverse relation might thus be more of a question of ideological belief.

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Not a very convincing argument. There are limits on mobility and forces at work to preserve economic and social class structure everywhere. However, they are generally much less in the U.S., compared to Europe. We absorb three times the number of immigrants as does Europe on a per capita basis. In general the upward mobility of these people is quite high.

Europe faces rather grim prospects when one reflects on the rigid labor markets, the very expensive social programs that prevail, the low rates of productivity growth, and the rapidly declining population of workers. The demographics for Europe are not good - female fertility about 25% below what is required to maintain equilibrium, Population under 15 years of 14%-18% of the total, and over 65 years also 14% -18% , compared to 21% and 12% respectively for the U.S. It is simply a fact that Europe will not be able to sustain its current social policies.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Not a very convincing argument.

Which one?

Since I wasn't really interested in another Europeans vs Americans thread, I actually mostly kept that comparison out of the picture this time, apart for the truism that the poor enjoy better living standards in Scandinavia than in the US. American conservatives have predicted the imminent demise of the European "social market economy" some twenty-odd years now, but how does that address any of the points I brought up?

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Well, I was responding to your comments concerning the minimum wage and the definition of poverty income levels, as well as your comments about poverty generally. Perhaps I have not understood the central issues on this thread well enough.

I believe there are close relationships between the available natural resources of a country, the political and cultural norms that prevail, and the actions of government, all of which determine the economic fate of the place. There are many interesting examples out there - for example Singapore which has very few natural resources (apart from an interesting location on a major trade route),. but which has achieved extraordinary economic success through free market policies and the hard work of its people. Alternatively there is Nigeria, rich in natural resources, but which has squandered untold millions in wealth through the actions of a kleptocracy that has long misgoverned the country and has thoroughly corrupted the commercial ethics of its people. A generation of African leaders who chose socialist models for their post colonial development has likewise condemned its people to continued poverty and suffering.

I also believe it is idle to blame developed countries for the poverty of others. India is at last reducing the bureaucratic and protectionist structures which have for so long hindered its economic development. Both the problem and the solution have always been internal. The list of wasted opportunities in Latin America is long and similar. Reform must come from within. Blaming others is merely an excuse for inaction.

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Terrorism, Crime: How Does Poverty Factor In?

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