LVTfan wealthandwant

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  LVTfan commented on the article | over 1 year ago

  Want to Be Poor? Work One of These 8 Jobs

  Taking Mary Scott's reasoning a step further, who IS it who will have the "minimum wage" jobs, and how are they to live?

  
  

  Will it only be students, say, age 16 to 24, living with parents who can support them?  Will it only be non-students age 16 to 24, who don't mind living in dormitory-type housing, or sharing a house or apartment with the maximum number of people legal in that particular municipality, in order to afford to live there?

  
  

  Some of the 16 to 24 year olds will have parents who can support them, without them holding down one of these jobs, so perhaps these jobs will be for the 16 to 25 year olds, after which age someone will judge that they have enough experience to move into a job which provides an income on which they can help support one or more children, as long as their spouse is employed full-time, too.

  
  

  Maybe we will reserve these minimum wage jobs for our seniors, who need to supplement their retirement income.

  
  

  These jobs will continue to be needed, and the need for some of them will increase.  Education is not the answer, at least not as we usually construe it.

  
  

  (I think the kind of education which WILL help is if more people acquaint themselves with the ideas associated with Henry George, author of "Progress and Poverty" and "Social Problems" -- both available online -- but I'm not all that optimistic that most people will bother.  They're too busy working.)

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  LVTfan commented on the article | over 1 year ago

  Want to Be Poor? Work One of These 8 Jobs

  Do you really think a loving God would structure the world this way, so that most of us must struggle and a few can float?

  
  

  Henry George didn't.  I commend his ideas to your attention.  Start with "The Crime of Poverty." Move on to "Thou Shalt Not Steal" and "Thy Kingdom Come," and see if you agree.

  
  

  The structures which impoverish so many of us and enrich a couple of subgroups are manmade, not of God's creation.   We can move much closer to the sort of world in which all of us can flourish, and you don't have to give up cheap fast food to live in it.

  
  

  And, incidentally, those whose orientation is not theological will find little to disagree with in these ideas.

  
  

  On earth as it is in heaven.   Why not??

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  LVTfan commented on the article | over 1 year ago

  Want to Be Poor? Work One of These 8 Jobs

  You point about the demand for labor in these kinds of jobs never disappearing is an important one, and one which most people in this discussion seem to have missed.  So how do we get these jobs to the point where they pay a wage on which one can support oneself adequately, and to the point where one can help support a family adequately without putting in double shifts several days a week?

  
  

  It seems to me that "minimum wage" and "living wage" legislation is well-intended, but is not going to make the problem better.

  
  

  What we need are measures that will create jobs, and keep money flowing around.  Right now, a small percentage of us control a huge percentage of the money.  When the high-income folks catch cold, the rest get pneumonia.  The credit card companies are reaping what the rest of us are working for, startin with payday loans, student loans, credit card fees and interest, car loans (are you old enough to remember, or even have heard someone talk about the days when one saved up to buy a car, rather than financing it??), mortgage interest and fees and brokerage costs and private mortgage insurance, which are mostly to pay not for houses (whose construction and maintenance create jobs) but to pay off the previous owner of the land, which is generally worth far more than the depreciating structure on it.

  
  

  The consequences of failing to recognize this last point are diverse and far-reaching, and few of us know there is a better way.  Dig out your college economics textbook, and look for Henry George in the index.  You'll be taking the first step to educating yourself about a better way.  Then start reading some of what he wrote, and what contemporary Georgists are writing.  Mason Gaffney and Fred Foldvary are two names to start with.  Fred Harrison (UK) is another.

  
  

  Or just go on enjoying living in a society where 1% of us have over 1/3 of the net worth, and 10% of us have 71.5% of the net worth.  (Is this a great country, or what?!?   Surely, I'll be part of that top 10% someday, won't I??  Therefore, I want to be sure to defend their privileges against anyone who might suggest that this structure is "suboptimal.")  [Data source: 2007 SCF, reported at lvtfan on typepad.]

  
  

  The folks whose income placed them in the top 10% hold 59.4% of the net worth. [Source: same -- 2006 income.]  Do you think this is wonderful, or something whose causes we might want to examine more closely?

  
  

  Read Henry George.  You might find you agree with his analysis.

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  LVTfan commented on the article | over 1 year ago

  Want to Be Poor? Work One of These 8 Jobs

  If you're open to a different way of taxing, among whose benefits is that it sets us on a far more level playing field, you might look into the ideas associated with Henry George.  Start with Bob Andelson's "Henry George and the Reconstruction of Capitalism"  available online at wealthandwant, among other places.

  
  

  I'd be curious to know what in it turns you off, and why.

  
  

   

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  LVTfan commented on the article | over 1 year ago

  Want to Be Poor? Work One of These 8 Jobs

  Perhaps we need to dig deeper to understand why we have poverty.  As we do things now, workers outnumber jobs, and their competition for the limited supply of jobs drives wages downward, impoverishing us all, except for the employers who own their own land, and the landlords who rent property to them.   The rich keep getting richer, and the rest of us keep getting less.

  
  

  Suppose there were a way to turn this upside down, and have jobs chasing workers.

  
  

  If you think this might be a desirable situation, I encourage you to take a look at Henry George's book, PROGRESS AND POVERTY, after 130 years still the best-selling book ever on political economy.

  
  

  Minimum wage and living wage distort the economy.  They're well intended, but ultimately not particularly helpful.

  
  

  We've got to seek the root of the problem and pull poverty out by the roots. 

  
  

  Henry George provides the roadmap.

  
  

   

  
  

   

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  LVTfan commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Attitudes About Poverty Need to Change

  I'm glad that you recognize that many of the causes of poverty are structural, and not due primarily or initially to what individuals do or fail to do.
  
  But many who sense that "structuralness" of poverty don't fully understand the structure, and don't realize that there is a rich literature on the subject, AND, equally important, that it includes a simple, wise, elegant, just and efficient solution.
  
  A rich literature?  Why don't we all know about it?  Hmmm. 
  
  The rich literature comes out of Henry George's 1879 book, "Progress and Poverty" which essentially asked the question, "why do we have so much poverty despite awesome technological progress?"   He laid out the problem and the answer in painstaking detail, and while some have not liked his answer, no one has refuted it.  His book was the #2 bestseller of the 1880s, and within 20 years had sold at least 6 million copies (so you'll find it on ebay).  All literate people knew his ideas; besides elected officials, he was, with Edison and Twain among the best-known public figures of his day.  (Search the free NYT archives on him for a sense of this.)
  
  You can read "Progress and Poverty" online in its unabridged version, or in a modern-language abridgment (at http://www.progressandpoverty.org/) and you can begin to read the rich literature on these ideas at http://www.wealthandwant.com/ (which also has a lot of data on wealth concentration) and at http://lvtfan.typepad.com/ which speaks to these ideas in a 21st century context.
  
  We CAN end poverty, but not in the ways we're going about it now. 
  
  Read Progress & Poverty, and you'll have new lenses for understanding why we have poverty in the US and in the world.   In August, the Council of Georgist Organizations is holding its annual meeting in Cleveland (home of Tom Johnson, mayor of Cleveland and congressman, as well as Dennis Kucinich, who is familiar with these ideas).