Poverty is also relative. A stone house, with a slate roof, glass windows, flagstones over the earth floor, chimney fireplaces, and whale oil lamps, but no running water or sewage was a symbol of wealth when my ancestor had it built around 200 years ago.
Today I’ve running water, sewage, gas, electricity, internet, double glazing, wall insulation, new flooring in that same house, but it’s NOT a symbol of wealth.
Maoraigh wrote:
Poverty is also relative. A stone house, with a slate roof, glass windows, flagstones over the earth floor, chimney fireplaces, and whale oil lamps, but no running water or sewage was a symbol of wealth when my ancestor had it built around 200 years ago.
Today I’ve running water, sewage, gas, electricity, internet, double glazing, wall insulation, new flooring in that same house, but it’s NOT a symbol of wealth.
Sure, government redefines poverty as technology, commerce and (for example) 3.7% unemployment progressively reduce poverty as judged by existing criteria. Today I think the standards have changed in developed countries to the point that the most critical political/social issue is people for reasons their own (often cultural in nature) choosing to live in relative poverty when they could choose otherwise. Go to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana and you’ll see what I consider poverty in the 2019 context, and its completely unnecessary if those people would move for employment or otherwise take individual action. Some of them do, many of them don’t. Same thing in inner cities in those areas where the economy has moved elsewhere. Other than unending handouts there’s not a lot that conventional thinking can do… and in fact many of the current problems are the result of conventional thinking. Campaigns to reduce drug and alcohol abuse are the best conventional solutions I can think of, if one thinks a solution is necessary, as substance abuse is often a significant factor.
In 1987 I drove past Window Rock in the Navajo Reservation. It made the pics of Apartheid South African townships look appealing.
Then mining gave jobs. It now looked like any prosperous US town, and the gas station staff were now as pleasant as anywhere.
Yes, many US Indian reservations have profited over the last few decades from uranium, gambling and from oil & gas. There are eighteen reservations within 50 miles of me, many of which are doing extremely well from having contracted with Vegas casinos to offer gambling on the reservations, taking advantage of a business opportunity not allowed to other surrounding areas. This provides payments to Indians who live on the reservation, with or without work. Many people including those in government aren’t terribly happy with the gambling situation but they unwittingly set up the legal framework that allowed the Indians to do it, and there’s nothing they can do now.
In the absence of those rather cushy opportunities, in the US we currently have extremely low unemployment. Over the last few years it has become the lowest in 50 years. You just need to go where the work is, and work. The other option, chosen by some for apparent cultural reasons is to live in relative poverty on Federal handouts collected from the working population. The fact that people actually do make that choice is an issue, notwithstanding the horrific history of Federal law that led those and other people into dependency.
Although the early history of how settlers treated the indigenous populations in the USA is appalling to the point of holocaust proportions, it was not a uniquely US thing. Canada, Australia and some parts of Central and South America were very similar.
Silvaire wrote:
Today I think the standards have changed in developed countries to the point that the most critical political/social issue is people for reasons their own (often cultural in nature) choosing to live in relative poverty when they could choose otherwise.
I think this is an interesting comment and often made.
I am not sure as to its veracity. Certainly in the UK we have a reasonably good support net. Those people seen sleeping on the streets probably could and would be provided with “better” alternatives by the local Authority if they choose to avail themselves of their help – often for various reasons they do not, albeit arguably the local Authority is not as active as it might be addressing the reasons.
My earlier comment was prompted by a lady on TV who lived alone, she was elderly, by all appearances made every effort to look after herself, and lived in a reasonably comfortable property. Never the less she made the point that her income barely enabled her to heat the house properly, never mind the other costs she was required to meet. She spent the winter desperately cold wearing at least four layers every day. Was she living in poverty – well obvioulsy by comparison with some people in the world she was not. Never the less she was cold, miserable and there was not sufficient money to provide her with any luxuries. She was reliant on electricity for heating becasue she did not have the capital to replace the central heating system, and so a very expensive source of heating. I dont know what help might be available, but clearly she was not receiving any, and probably did not know how to access what help might be available. I suspect this is a common story. I dont suppose she choose or wished to live in this way.
I suspect there is this forgotten sector of society which again for various reasons are hidden away, left very much to their own devices because that layer of support is almost non existent, unless they have the ability to search it out and know how to go about doing so (which they do not).
By western standards they are living in poverty, and I suspect they do not know how to change their circumstances. Being vulnerable and living in poverty are often unhappy bed fellows I suspect. I suspect sometimes it is too easy to blurr the line between those that could do something about it, and those who could not, even assuming the help is available, which I am not totally convinced is always the case.
I am not doubting this scenario Fuji but I think it is worthwhile getting somebody intimately familiar with the local DSS system (which – arguably as a result of decades of vote buying – is so complex that virtually no normal person understands all of it, let alone the bits they need to know) and get them to list all the benefits the old lady was entitled to.
I am familiar with two “old ladies” whose list of benefits is/was quite interesting (one of them is now dead). But there is no way either of them would have been able to find out about them alone. Both had daughters (yes; always the daughter, isn’t it? 
) who devoted many hours into chasing it all down. And with so many benefits not being means tested, there is a big incentive for the Will beneficiaries to get every last penny.
Starting with the basic State pension it is possible to make some 10k+ in total benefits. If you live alone in a small flat and have no debts, you can live on that, and do so with proper heating. With two of you it is “easy”. Our annual “essentials” spend is slightly above 20k and that’s not a small house. The challenge is when you live alone, with no private investment income, in the same big house you lived in for the last 40 years, and it needs lots of repairs, and lots of heating… The more common challenge is that you can’t smoke fags all day and go down the pub at night if you are on benefits… well not unless you have loads of kids
And I am sure the above is pretty similar in most of Europe.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Those people seen sleeping on the streets probably could and would be provided with “better” alternatives by the local Authority if they choose to avail themselves of their help
I work closely in this sector (my wife and I started the charity Refugees at Home which over the last three years has put homeless people into warm beds for over 105,000 bed-nights, so I know something of what I speak) and I can tell you that, at least in my part of the sector you could not be more wrong.
Just to take refugees who have been given status (ie have the right to remain and work), they are thrown out of government provided accommodation (which itself is often unfit for human habitation, with cockroaches, mice, rats, mould and non-functioning plumbing) after 28 days. It is impossible to get even an NI number, let alone an address, job or bank account, in 28 days. No-one could do it, but it is even worse for people with poor English, some of them suffering with PTSD.
Although we try to catch people in these circumstances, there are still hundreds, or thousands, who are not in touch with us who are sleeping rough, under bridges or in night buses. No local authority will take them on, as they have no connection with any particular Borough, and anyway, most local authorities simply do not have the accommodation or resources to cope, so families and children (quite rightly) get the few spaces available and single young people (mainly men, but women as well) end up on the streets with almost no protection against cold, starvation, violence or rape.
I would beg anyone, particularly those who live in cities (within the London Tube, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham especially) who has a spare room to think about offering it to a refugee or asylum seeker. Bear in mind that the people who have made it this far from their homes in Syria, Iraq, Eritrea etc are those with the greatest physical and intellectual resources – in our own home we have hosted surgeons, lawyers, teachers, engineers and many other professionals. They are generally excellent company and good to have around. They might even introduce you to a wonderful new cuisine! Just press the Host button on the website and the office staff will be right on to you!
I am also, to a lesser extent, plugged into the homeless issues of the native population, through The Passage . You only need to spend a short while there to realise that only a small number of homeless people are voluntarily in that position. Yes, there are a few, and the Daily Mail loves to find them and tell their stories, so that the dim and reactionary can tell themselves that this must be true of the majority of the homeless, but in truth the large majority of homeless people are desperate for help, which they can’t access either because it is not available or because they do not have the mental well-being to jump through the required hoops.
The concept of the “Undeserving Poor” was a foul calumny introduced by the Victorians to justify the appalling conditions introduced by the Poor Laws in the middle of the 19C, and one that we should have grown out of by now.
There are many angles on this stuff…
Yesterday I was talking to a significant size local employer and he told me 2/3 of people who recently came from a certain area east of here have fake passports. The fine for employing one is apparently £15k. Some of these have held previous jobs at, ahem, certain very large airport, airside, so this employer thought they must have been vetted. Ho, hum. Since for ever a valid NI number was good enough but not any more.
It is easier for an employer to simply not employ them.
What made me smile was the number of very clever spammers who create work for me here on EuroGA (around 10-20% of new joinups are spammers, hence major recent changes in that area) who sell fake passports. Their IPs are not in Nigeria, either… and one recent one put a Cessna 172 for his aircraft so 10/10 for imagination and for research methods which would probably get him a Masters in Multimedia at a suitable second tier univ These characters wait a week after the signup and then drop in the spam, which defeats most forums’ defences. Some start off by submitting a classified ad… they then get the paypal form, but obviously won’t pay, so they wasted all the effort. Clearly there is a lot of business around.
Not so very long ago, whilst helping an aquaintance with some admin work, he had a visit from Border Security who wanted to see all the usual paperwork for employees, many from other countries. Copies of passports etc were shown in accordance with the legal requirements and lo and behold some were fake. sadly the employer was fined EVEN THOUGH THE PASSPORTS HAD PREVOUSLY BEEN VETTED BY THE APPROPRIATE GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT.
Is there no civil servant who carries the can for errors?
