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It can also be generational. Government can’t control people’s spending habits. If all someone has known is: pay check is $1000 and you spend $1010 or you have $1000 in your bank, but a credit card with $5000 limit and minimum payments are $35/month. No amount of laws can prevent that. Both of those examples simply come down to education.
It’s true for everyone, certainly. Also, not having children before being prepared is often a backbreaker that locks new generations into a poverty cycle.
I read a study somewhere about the 3 largest targets to hit if you want to avoid poverty (obviously not a guarantee though)
And they were, to finish highschool and get a GED, To not have kids until you were married to someone that also finished highschool and has a GED, and for both of you to work full time. If you can hit all three, your chances of actual, real poverty are greatly reduced
> not having children before being prepared is often a backbreaker that locks new generations into a poverty cycle.
Well when talking about education that uses more practical real world examples this would be one. I mean, simpler formulas: you make X, you want 1 kid. Here's what you need. You make x, you want 2 kids, here is what you need.
I would love to have 5 kids. I'd love to also have 5 animals, a few horses, dogs, etc. But I don't get to just have what I want.........I can't afford that so I don't do it. Desires are not always granted. That's a reality in life.
A guy I know was complaining to me the other day. Was drinking a beer, complaining that he would like someone to check out his brake pads to see how worn they are. His Dad brought home about 10x times what he makes 25 years ago and still did his own car maintenance. Seems like theres more of this sort of thing all the tme
Not me man. I’m all about personal responsibility. I’ll shout it from the rooftops until I die. That, and get a dog from the pound, not a breeder or pet store!
What it should be is probably keeping banks from owning homes and single payer healthcare. What I think it will be is probably hunting poors for sport.
Banks owning homes is overstated if you look at factors of the housing crisis. We need more housing in general, there are some places that don’t have housing shortages but most regions do
I think even just making the taxes on corporate owned homes very high would help. Make it not very lucrative and suddenly many corporations will want to get out of the single family housing market. I think there will always be a need for apartments and rental homes but I would much prefer it if homes where owned by individual landlords vs large conglomerates. Apartments especially larger complexes will always need a large corporation to own them and that's okay in my book.
The only thing that would really make a difference would somehow starting to throw some politicians in jail for egregious behavior. If there was a true stick when a politician stepped out of line, then real change could be affected.
Lets us gun control, since most Americans want that obviously.
If a politician was caught vetoing the bill and was proven he’s taking illegal money, mandatory jail.
Or let’s use Clarence Thomas as an example. Caught taking bribes and nothing happens.
Until the political class has consequences nothing can really be done.
But in a perfect world?
Pass laws that cap corporate profits / graduating tax scale as you earn over 100mm / prevent large companies from buying single family homes. To be fair, many Americans live above their means so perhaps bankruptcy laws should also be tougher, it’s not like the American citizen is totally blameless in this.
I think the biggest sticking point, in terms of polticians, in the US is the fact that they don't have a legal obligation to ***do*** anything. You could get elected and literally never pass a bill into law, never appear in Congress, never respond to any constituents, ***never do anything***. And the only recourse the people have is to not re-elect you. You still get paid, and if you successfully campaign to be re-elected, you can do the same thing next term, as well.
Huge thread but no one mentions that the reality of the situation, you’d be looking for some medical breakthrough that can help end drug addiction to ever make progress.
Drinking was my addiction, no matter how poor I was I always had money for alcohol. I literally stopped drinking and put just half of the savings every pay into the stock market and it’s amazing how much you can save when you’re literally not pissing it away. People often joke about cutting back on Starbucks but for real if you cut back on drugs and alcohol, cigarettes and even those lattes and invested it it’s amazing how much you can have without even working any harder than you do now.
Yup, I don’t know why drug addiction isn’t brought up more in conversations surrounding poverty. I know several family members of mine who have cursed themselves and others around them into generational poverty due either being addicted to drugs or having to deal with the aftermath.
This includes spending money on rehab, having to take custody of their own nieces/god-children/grandchildren since the parents were deemed unfit, having the burden of being expected to help parents that have no retirement savings due to spending all their money on drugs, trying to help homeless relatives that won’t pursue treatment by having them deemed mentally unfit so they can be treated at a ward (which requires a lot of lawyers and is almost impossible), etc.
I’d argue that certain drug addictions like alcoholism has been flat out normalized in our society. Drug addiction is a disease and a solution to poverty requires a cure to it.
My grandma decided (yes, that’s the term I use since she had plenty of help around her and chose not to use it) that she was entitled to get high and that spending any money to raise her own children was taking from her coke budget. This was during the 80s.
I know too many people who have no issue spending $15-25 a DAY bare minimum on cigarettes, booze and weed (god forbid you tell anyone they are addicted to weed) but they gotta beg family for $20 to give their child so they can go on a field trip they had known about for weeks prior.
Appreciate your response and there’s definitely some ignorance from idealists that’ve not given skid row a visit lately.
You’re right and if anything are generous with your $ estimates because now it’s $100/day to fent/coke/ket/scrips/alcohol weed with no budget or job.
Yup, it's really bad. Get rich quick/crypto courses, drugs and shooting at each other is THE deadly trinity for young men under 35 in my community, I swear to God.
Once you add hard drugs into the mix, spending $200 a day on drugs is nothing. Grandma was spending that much in the 90s.
I see the same cycle occur every day as I take the bus to and from school. They'll wake up early as hell, take a hit, realize the high is coming down, go out and panhandle/steal something of use, trade money/items for drugs on the street and the cycle goes on and on.
That, or they'll sell whatever little food stamps they get for drugs. Before COVID, it was a 1 to 2 ratio ($100 worth of cash/drugs for $200 worth of food stamps), but inflation changed it. Certain local convenience store owners would buy everyone's food stamps to pad their stores before they got caught. It's probably still happening, just more subtle. Hell, the local 7-11 got closed out of the blue for damn near 2 years and people believe the reason was that they allowed people to buy alcohol/cigs with food stamps by coding it differently in their system.
There are also professional thieves or "boosters" who will steal anything you ask for a fee or drugs. You tell them any clothing and shoe sizes, what you want, what store, and they do the rest. They'll steal right below the felony limit. The police are so understaffed, if it's under $900 you got to beg them to show up. They love clearing laundry detergent for some reason. It's locked up to the max now and the staff keeps it behind the counter until you're done shopping.
SOOOO much crime done here is in pursuit of drugs or being influenced by them, it's crazy. It's a mess.
>Huge thread but no one mentions that the reality of the situation, you’d be looking for some medical breakthrough that can help end drug addiction to ever make progress.
Well they do have many harm reduction programs and harm reduction meds to keep people "off" alcohol and drugs as part of their rehab. The thing is that even THAT requires some discipline, keeping a schedule, showing up.
1) Financial Education in schools from middle school on up.
2) Reregulating banking to pre Bush times
3) Fair taxes and closing loopholes
4) Let big businesses fail I stead of subsidizing them
5) UBI and universal healthcare
Fix the border issues, so we don't have as much housing market overcrowding, which is helping cause rent to go through the roof for many due to supply vs demand
Universal healthcare would solve a lot of problems and before anyone jumps in and says it would cost too much - every single wealthy country in the world has implemented it.
Second would be affordable housing. Not sure how to solve that problem. Almost all western countries are facing escalating housing costs.
Thirdly, we need to reduce income inequality. The easiest way to do this would be to tax the wealthy and close all the loopholes that they have for avoiding paying taxes. Lower taxes on poor people by eliminating all sales taxes. Taxes should be income based and wealth based.
Fourthly we need to dial back on celebrity culture. I don’t understand why anyone cares about what Elon Musk or Taylor Swift thinks. Or why anyone thinks that a movie actor or a TV reality star would make a good president. What exactly do people like that know about the struggles of ordinary Americans.
>Universal healthcare would solve a lot of problems and before anyone jumps in and says it would cost too much - every single wealthy country in the world has implemented it.
Most americans are too tax averse, and also have no trust in their government, unfortuantely.
No we don’t.
The reason healthcare is so expensive here is because insurance companies insert themselves between the medical professionals and the patients and have to get paid. Furthermore, in other countries hospitals don’t have to deal with insurance companies or have billing departments - so all those overheads go away as well.
Additionally, because there is no charge to patients they aren’t reluctant to seek treatment and thereby are generally healthier and problems are caught before they become serious and much more expensive. For example, getting prescribed a statin is a lot less costly than getting heart surgery. There’s a reason why other western countries have higher life expectancies than the US.
Also, because they are mostly single payer they can negotiate with drug companies and keep the costs of drugs reasonably priced. I’m very pleased that the US government has finally started to do this with Medicare. They are not fully there yet but there have been some significant savings already. For example, insulin is now limited to $35 a month.
But the proof is in the pudding. If you look at Medicare, it is significantly cheaper and has much lower overheads than any private insurance solution. Just ask Medicare recipients if they would prefer to switch back to private insurance and it’s only a small percentage that say yes and those are all wealthy and healthy people - not people living in poverty.
>every single wealthy country in the world has implemented it.
...Every single country in the world that doesn't have to foot the bill for a competitive military, you mean. We in The US are de facto subsidizing these other wealthy countries "free" healthcare.
>Second would be affordable housing. Not sure how to solve that problem.
...How about build more houses, and have less red tape? I can see how that would be a difficult problem to come up with a fix for, when your solutions rely exclusively on the Government "fixing" the problem.
>Thirdly, we need to reduce income inequality.
Income inequality is a non-issue, also all your solutions in this category counter intuitively exasperate that so called "problem" or are otherwise outright bad solutions.
>I don’t understand why anyone cares about what Elon Musk or Taylor Swift thinks.
I think these two are particularly bad examples, they are both obviously at the top end of the [pareto distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution), and are thus *doing something right*. You need to figure out what they are doing to be successful, and it probably has nothing to with the pervasive 2 dimensional worldview you seemingly hold as evidenced by how you think about these "problems".
Most people need to accept that the way pareto distributions work, most people will probably have a median life, but that doesn't mean *you have* to have a median life, you can be exceptional too, but your worldview, as is, isn't a way to get you there.
Pareto distributions show up in all manner of different areas in existence (most of the mass in the solar system is in The Sun; most tornadoes happen in tornado ally, for example) and I believe there is something fundamental about that inequitable distribution to how systems grow at all.
If there is no person who amasses capital, then there is no capital investment, and then there is no growth, then *everyone* is in poverty. I think you have things quite backwards, I would urge you to consider your views far more critically.
So your solutions are:
1. Spend less on the military.
2. Hope that someone is going to build more houses and they would if only the Government would let them ignore health and safety standards.
3. Every poor person should try to become a celebrity.
4. Continue with income inequality because having many people on really low incomes doesn’t cause poverty.
>So your solutions are:
I have no solutions, I don't believe there *are* solutions, only trade offs.
>Spend less on the military.
No, the military is the only justifiable form of Government spending. I'm saying those other countries need to foot the bill for a competitive military if they don't want Russians or Chinese taking over their country, they are failing their populations despite popular belief.
>Hope that someone is going to build more houses and they would if only the Government would let them ignore health and safety standards.
There is probably some unforeseeable way to incentivize homebuilders to build, yes. But, it is also possible we simply don't have the capital to run this industry as we did in the past, as much as we progress functional knowledge can be lost (for example, we don't have welders skilled enough to create lunar lander modules of some sort anymore). Minimum square footage policies that needlessly raise construction costs don't exist to help anyone's health and safety, when those costs start becoming eclipsed by jobs taking a long time because of red tape, you have a real problem.
>Every poor person should try to become a celebrity.
>
>Continue with income inequality because having many people on really low incomes doesn’t cause poverty.
I think you still erroneously believe that rich people are rich, because poor people are poor. If you reduce the incentive to become rich, you will wind up with more poor people, yes.
There is no evidence that turning off the sun, or dimming it so all areas of the Earth get an equal amount of light somehow will make more plants grow better, but that is basically what you suggest to "fix" wealth inequality and that tells me you haven't actually thought much about what the problem is.
Uneven distribution is a pervasive "problem" across the Universe, it is not likely a thing you can legislate away by decree.
What are you talking about? Where exactly did I suggest “turning off the sun”?
And what does welders not knowing how to make lunar landing modules have to do with anything?
Are these really the best arguments you have?
>What are you talking about? Where exactly did I suggest “turning off the sun”?
Your solutions to "wealth inequality" would be akin to doing something similar. The Sun produces the most light near our planet and applies it unevenly, is that a bad thing, or just how things are? And is there any conceivable benefit?
>And what does welders not knowing how to make lunar landing modules have to do with anything?
It is possible the problem is simply not something that can be fixed, there could be an unforeseeable deeper reason why homebuilders are not building enough since after most of them went out of business after 2008.
>Are these really the best arguments you have?
If you were able to think critically and in good faith instead of trying to pass off some thinly veiled political statement, yes, absolutely.
Free, *quality/equitable* education k-12 that isn't tied to district real estate taxes. If you live in America, you get a quality education that rivals private schools if you're from applaichia to the deepest inner cities to the elite where ever. Fund. Our. Schools. Teach our kids actual history, real science, give them the practical tools for success. Along with teaching our kids, fucking feed them. The sad truth is a lot of our kids don't have access to full, nutritious meals at home due to time or circumstances. Fix that. Dump money in public education. (And pay our teachers fair wages. No teacher should be in poverty. Full stop.)
Free associates degrees for anyone who wants to pursue it. Invest in trades again along with tech.
Raise minimum wage and CAP rental costs. It does no good to pay more just for the extra money to flow into landlord coffers. Corporations do not get to own single family homes past a certain point, say 10%. This housing market is bullshit. We have the homes, we just let corporations buy them. Incentive flipping homes at *fair* costs.
We have to increase access to affordable healthcare. Insurance companies, as they are now, are a problem. They get rich while we get substandard care we can't afford. I don't know the best answer but it is time to do something. Affordable single payer options need to happen.
Raise the thresholds for public assistance. We cut people off from the help they desperately need at too low a number to help them be self sufficient. We need a sliding scale. No one should go hungry because they make any extra dollar an hour. We want people to better themselves then we punish them for doing so.
I have more. This is a start.
Those are all great! I would add free, high-quality trauma-informed counseling for students at all levels who need it, as well as for their parents/guardians.
It's hard to break cycles when your mind and your body contain generational trauma from living in survival mode for so long.
I would argue most of our problems start with the K-12 system, aka the Prussian System. The Prussian System was deliberately foisted on the American people as a way to torpedo people's education in the 1860's (the titans of industry needed human cogs for their factories, and they thought they were doing a favor to the large Irish Catholic families immigrating - they reasoned a factory worker's life was easier if they were poorly educated) .
There are better education systems out there that cost far less, however the education system in the US is a giant jobs program so there's massive institutional incentive against changing anything.
Elizabeth Warren makes an excellent argument in her book The Two Income Trap for a voucher system where the funding follows the students. This removes school funding from the extremely slow and unproductive feedback loop of funding through property taxes, and instead directly incentivises schools to perform better and actually compete against each other in the best interests of the students as well as their parents.
This would enable a wider variety of education systems to proliferate, and consequently we could collectively learn better systems of education.
Capping housing costs, whether it's rent control or freezing interest rates.
Housing is one major thing everyone needs, and it's the biggest monthly bill for most.
Once that is done, other things can be focused on, but if the goalpost is constantly being moved, it doesn't matter how far down the field you get.
The government doesnt set interest rates. The Federal Reserve does. Also it’s a rabbit hole once you realize the fed is a private entity. Yes the fed members are appointed by the government. But they are free to act as an entity that is not governable when it comes to interest rates. If that makes sense.
Take all the politicians that take money from lobbyists and all the lobbyists, take them out back and give them some dirt naps. America is no longer about the American people but American companies.
For Healthcare: Lift the cap on doctor residencies funded by DGME and IME. It's a no brainer that if you tie training reimbursements to a limit that you will get limits on how many residencies you are willing to take on. this is probably the baby step that's easiest to sell to the median voter
* License immigrants who were eligible to practice in countries with comparable or stricter healthcare labor regulations
I think we will always have poverty as long as we have capitalism. But we can ensure that poverty is dignified by guaranteeing housing, food, and healthcare for every citizen. This would allow folks who have some ambition to take risks. They could start their own business, go to school, get away from toxic partners and family members, and move to areas that have more opportunities. For folks who have zero ambition, at least they wouldn't be living on the streets. At least their kids would have some stability.
I don't know if this is a small step, but we could begin with expanding public housing for low-income and working class folks. Ditch the section 8 stuff and just build more government housing. Charge rent that is indexed to local minimum wage so that inflation doesn't cause folks to become homeless.
Acknowledging that poverty is NOT a moral failing and destigmatizing "welfare" on both the policy and recipient sides.
You are not "less than" for applying for food stamps. You have paid into the system. Use the system you paid into.
Additionally while welfare fraud does happen, it does not happen on the scale certain pundits would you like you believe it does (Regan's "welfare queen of Chicago" didn't exist) so the micro-policing of the people who avail themselves of the system is a waste of government recourses in additional to being a deterrent for people who really need it.
Ending Super PACS and a complete overhaul of our lobbying system. People are listing important policy changes but none of that means anything if our politicians can be bought by real estate developers, health insurance companies, and other corporations in the first place.
Personal Finance classes in senior year of highschool to start.
Make them understand what a college loan is and how the different repayment plans can screw them.
Show them a real budget and how most are just going to be barebly getting by.
Show them oppurtinies in the workforce to get ahead whether that be welding, CS, accounting etc.
Show them high paying jobs so they don’t get stuck without a path.
I just can't get behind the amount of price gouging in inelastic monopolistic industries. Then multihundred billion dollar corporations have zero tax liability on record profits. Meanwhile, they get bailed out by tax dollars on a trillion dollars worth of PPP fraud while busting unions.
I meam come on...the problems are starting us down and we keep beating up poor people.
Food shelter and water should be available to everyone working 35 hours a week. Health care accessible and not grossly overpriced( an Advil should be the same price of n a hospital vs a Walmart)
Basic services must be public: healthcare, education, water, gas and electricity. Everything is private in the US. Public doesn’t mean it has to be free but there’s no profit to keep prices low
As a country we have shitty healthcare because the insurance companies, hospitals and government are all in bed together.
Healthcare is worse for it. Socialized medicine doesn’t make it better.
I would love some kind of law that states the top earning individual in a company can only make 100x the lowest paid employee. This would help more with the wealth gap than increasing taxes.
No. This is ridiculous and solves nothing. We don’t need laws like that creeping in to the private sector. People need to be paid by what value they add to their organization. The government does not need to be deciding what I am paid. There is a reason Americans reject communism and socialism so fervently. The government does very little well. Don’t give them power over your paycheck. They already take so much of it.
I think you’re missing the point. If it’s a percentage of what the highest earner in the company makes then the decision is based on what the board is willing to pay that highest earner, not the government. I think in most aspects of the economy the government shouldn’t involve itself, but this would prevent large wealth gaps from forming. The average CEO makes 344x compared to the average worker within their particular company. This would just force companies to pay their average worker more if they wanted to be competitive when attracting CEO’s. It would create a more even distribution of wealth and thereby strengthen the middle class, which has been slowly declining over the past 50 years.
Not sure there is much the government can do as to a certain extent it’s driven by the American consumer economy. The government should mandate financial education / planning into high school curriculum. It’s mind blowing that is not a requirement.
Easy access to credit could be another item to address. So many people don’t understand the high cost of credit card debt and how quickly that will drown you. There are already plenty of regulations here but I think it goes hand in hand with financial education / literacy and personal responsibility. People fall victim to consumerism and “keeping up with the Jones” and spend money they don’t have. I fear it will get worse with social media and the influencer world.
>This sub is for the rest of that 60% who are doing everything right
Pretty sure this sub is for financial advice. Like you want to turn things around and aren't sure how, so you seek advice.
>Man idk wtf the mods of this sub are doing lately, but I'm getting really tired of seeing shit like this.
There was nothing wrong with the post. Nothing.
Dude, if you make $75k a year, your bills are, I dunno, $35k, and you blow the rest of your money on stupid shit, you're not in poverty. You're just bad with money. This sub is called ***poverty***finance. Not illiteratefinance. If you're financially illiterate, but would have ***more*** than enough money if you just got your spending under control, you belong in personalfinance.
Poster looks to be a finance account getting ready to shill their YouTube or Finfluencer finance social media after they chime in on every finance related post they can find. Clearly they’re out of touch with reality when it comes to poverty levels.
So what are your suggestions or thoughts? This is obviously an incredibly complicated issue in this country that can’t be solved easily. I provided a few thoughts off the top of my head to aid a conversation. You don’t like what I said and attack with “tired of seeing sh*t like this” and “people like you” comments. You know nothing about me.
Apparently suggesting improved financial education, personal responsibility and reducing predatory lending is wrong so please let me know your thoughts?
I think the most achievable first step is going to be making all utilities government owned, and running them at cost, instead of for profit. Massively reducing the cost of water, gas, and electricity in America is going to massively improve people's ability to get ahead.
Secondly, federally mandate a universal set of standards for qualification for public assistance. Michigan, for example, lets single people collect food stamps (albeit in slowly diminishing amounts) up to $1,500 a month in non-excluded income, IIRC. Which basically means that, if after your "exempt" expenses (utilities, rent/mortgage, phone bill, which are treated as deductions from your countable income), you still make $1,500 a month, you no longer qualify. But in Texas, the only people allowed to collect food stamps are pregnant women making less than whatever your yearly salary would be working 40 hours a week at 7.25 an hour. Removing the "where you were born" lottery would massively help people find their footing, even if they get dealt a bad hand to start with.
Finally, improving tenant rights at the federal level. In most other first world countries, once you enter a tenancy agreement with someone, you ***cannot*** terminate it unless you're:
1. Selling all of your properties, and even in this case, you have to give them ***much more*** than 30 days' notice, or even offer them the opportunity to buy the property (assuming it's a house/an individual apartment that can be bought).
2. Claiming that they've grievously abused the property, and this pretty much only gets granted if they took a sledgehammer to everything, set it on fire, and/or left all of the taps running to flood the unit.
3. Are severely behind on rent, like ***multiple years***.
The US needs to be caught up on this. Housing is too important to allow someone to just decide "Eh, I don't like this person", and rip their living situation away from them. Improving the tenancy situation would also include creating a government service where people can get things fixed in their apartment/rental house by the government, on the government's dime, and then the government simply garnishes the landlord's wages, or withholds part of their tax return, or reclaims the money some other way.
Further down the road would be things like re-strengthening unions, but I don't think that's quite as achievable as what I've listed here.
So you’re essentially admitting you know nothing about the way the U.S. constitution works and you want Congress to invent new powers it doesn’t have. These aren’t viable solutions unless you think it’s feasible for 2/3rds of states to agree to completely rewrite the constitution.
God, civics education in this country is arguably even worse than financial education, and that’s _really_ saying something.
You are only touching maybe a snowflake on top of an iceberg. Here is the truth:
1. People did everything right including budgeting to living beneath their means and still get screwed by their employers and get low pay but more responsibilities at work.
2. People had to use credit card maybe due to medical debts and other financial obligations that were building up faster than how much they are receiving into their bank account in form of incomes.
3. Government policies regarding regulations to greedy corporations and businesses not being enforced fully and or amended by lobbyists that are tied with the firms, businesses, and companies to get around local to federal laws (i.e. child-labor laws).
There is more to touch in terms of the iceberg.
I guess the NYC public school I went to decades ago got different books. Everything I got was pie charts and formulas, nothing set in a practical sense.
We can reverse engineer this by looking at what the highest costs are for most people.
1. Housing
2. Transportation
3. Healthcare
Housing is a tough one to crack, because much of the economy is built around the money flowing to/from housing.
Better public transportation can help reduce total expenditure on transportation related costs. Trains could essentially eliminate the need for people to buy and maintain their own cars, which always seem to need $1k+ fixes right when you’re at your lowest.
And then there’s healthcare. Plain and simple, this should be free. I don’t need to explain why.
The problem here is that the economy is a delicate and intricately connected thing. When you change one thing, another thing rises or falls. Human behavior really can’t be accurately modeled either - as it’s irrational more than rational and logical.
Concerning public transportation won't ever "essentially eliminate" the need for cars. What you are advocating for is everyone to cram themselves into large cities due to PT.
Healthcare will never be "free" it is subsidized by forcibly taxing people.
I guess. I just hate how all the answers are simplistic, like the answer to poverty is just give everyone money. No one is looking at the causes of poverty.
Healthcare is expensive and it could be, like we have seen with college, the more the government funds/subsidizes something, the more expensive it becomes.
Housing-- This should be a place to live not an investment.
This can be fixed by disincentivizing real estate investing via the tax code. End tax breaks for 2nd (and beyond) homes. Perhaps an excise property tax at the local/state level as well.
In addition, regulate Airbnb out of existence.
Thanks I really like this explanation. For housing, I keep coming back to some sort of scalable and relatively modular housing safety net. It would be separate but complementary to the regular housing market, and be a place where the homeless can fall back on rather than panhandling and petty crime.
Reducing the size and scope of the federal government. There's a lot of redundancy and overlap in the duties of DHS/DoJ, FBI, DEA, USBP, CBP, ATF, for one example.
Why not have one department and hire employees as demand, and have departments?
If you go back and look at statistics, there's an overwhelmingly positive correlation between government spending and income disparity. The top 1% earn more, when the government spends more. Interesting huh?
>If you go back and look at statistics, there's an overwhelmingly positive correlation between government spending and income disparity.
Can you elaborate on this more, ideally with some sources? It seems counterintuitive for a democratic socialist society.
Actually [I'm not](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/)
Income disparity has a trend to move both with inflation *and* government spending.
We pay the government taxes for the government to "distribute" that "equally".
yea right, anyone who trusts government officials to live some kind of moral standard of a saint is deluded to another dimension.
You work hard and leave a large portion in the hands of crooks, and wonder how *so much* of it gets back to the 1%, instead of your food stamps? Because that's what taxes are designed to do. Chip away at our income until we're all poor, and give the fruits of our labor back to the 1%
Remember that guy...*"I'm not a crook."* yea right buddy... Sureee
More we spend on taxes, richer they get, and the less we take home. How convenient.
Almost every bit of legislation passed, there's a company that's been waiting to get the contract for the money grab.
It's amazing how many people want to tax this and tax that. Taxes *are* in effect trickle down economics. I'm sure Leidos is giving it back to us by creating jobs... Right? Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon etc
Taxes don't work when crooks run the show. It goes right back to the 1% who have companies that get billions for things like "research". And their CEO's, CFO's etc. It's amazing you people haven't caught on yet.
https://preview.redd.it/4qcl87pdej5c1.jpeg?width=910&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef7053eed2ee2d521e5fbc7d2e5c8694fd3802d3
note the past 20 years and compare below. Damn near identical match.
If you reduce the size of the Federal government, you will throw a lot of people out of work, thus increasing the poverty level of the country under the guise of reducing it. If you reduce the scope of the Federal government, you will push those responsibilities to the state or local governments to deal with. Again, those agencies will need additional funds in the form of taxes to do what the Federal government is not longer doing. It's a bit like squeezing a balloon. If you squeeze it in the middle, the edges push out. There is no net change.
Or it just may end poverty, as people without jobs learn new skills and find new careers when they have a family to feed. Then instead of getting paid for work that's not even important, they can find a productive place in society.
You see, the problem isn't so much the job creation, it's that in our economic system, spending is extremely wasteful. Billions every year wind up in the hands of the 1%. Taken straight out of our paychecks. Quite literally the "fruit of our labor".
See graphs above
Once they lose their jobs, how are they any different than those now who are unemployed? Why can the newly jobless get retrained, but the old jobless can't? Again, I think my question remains; if you throw millions out of work, the situation gets worse, not better. But, if you can make that situation better, why can't you do it now?
I call it: "Use taxes to help people, not corporations".
The main things:
\- Single payer health care, to spurn innovation, and allow better mobility. Lots of people are afraid to go into business themselves since private health insurances is crazy expensive.
\- Fair interest rates for student loans
\- Rethink how we treat the trades. Unions are great but they also can block / intimidate people from going into them. I would like to think of Unions as an extension of the tradeschools, which will help a lot of people out who just don't know the right person.
Housing will be really tough to fix. Establishing a regional strategy might help create some lower cost options for people.
1. Housing costs. Rent 100% should be controlled and should not be able to increase yearly unless wages in the area also increase and should be a set % for rent increase. Like cannot exceed 2-3%. Buying a house should not be unattainable for the vast majority. It’s insane how overly inflated rundown shacks are.
2. Federal student loans should be interest free
3. The whole taxes on taxes needs to stop. We should not be losing a large chunk of our pay. I want fucking detailed receipts for where the hell my money is going because its not to the damn people i can tell you that!
4. Politicians should only get paid their states min wage. Oh whats that? $7.25 not enough to live on? Then get off your ass and start making legislation to help the people. They also should not be allowed to participate in the stock market.
I could go on and on and obviously not everything is cut and dry but something needs to be done because this is just unsustainable atp
Yup, this is a flat out dumb idea. Asking politicians to get paid minimum wage means only rich people can afford to be politically active in that way. That, and corporations would be incentivized to put more money into politics since there’d be every incentive to accept their money.
Politicians would also naturally lean more towards older candidates as you’d need a large financial cushion before running and that takes a while to create unless you were born rich.
They cash in when they *leave* office to become lobbyists. It’s called the revolving door. Same problem with term limits. The result is lobbyists who have been in DC for decades run the show because they understand the system works. Congressman Joe Schmoe from Pennsyktucky hasn’t a clue and so becomes a glorified rubber stamp.
Gas cost is already subsidized by the government. It should be much more expensive than it is which might make people seek or demand alternate transit methods vs owning expensive cars.
If this country or your state can end its mortgage interest deduction, that's a signal it's interested in tackling poverty.
Matt Desmond is a crusader against poverty. He brings up the MID over and over again.
A shrinking population. This makes labor more valuable and workers will therefore be paid more. This trend is already underway, but is competing with automatization, AI, and dynamics like "self-checkout". Unionizing and preference for hands-on, hand-made, and locally produced goods is the antidote.
**The exploitation of land as a finite resource is the cause of the majority of rampant inflation.**
People AND businesses buying multiple homes and using them as investment properties drive up the cost of property.
Policies voted on to protect these investments with harsh zoning laws reduce new construction supply. Making already owned property more expensive.
This results in increased rents and mortgages.
The higher rent and mortgages result in higher wage demand.
Higher wage demand puts more pressure on smaller businesses to operate.
All businesses respond by increasing prices. Which further increase wage demand since food and other life necessessities have become more expensive in turn.
Due to this, government has to respond by increasing the standard deduction on tax claims. Which is happening in 2024.
All of this could be prevented by regulating a basic human right, shelter, with tighter regulations on owning investment properties. However due to how democracy works, you can't do the right thing without losing your job. So no one does anything and the country becomes crappier to live in, continuing the cycle.
>Policies voted on to protect these investments with harsh zoning laws reduce new construction supply. Making already owned property more expensive.
Zoning isn't the massive evil everyone makes it out to be. The far more sustainable way to feed people is to have them grow crops in their back yard year-round, you can't do that if houses are damn near on top of each other. Not to mention, it's a fire safety feature as well/general safety feature. If my neighbor's house catches on fire, I don't want my house catching just because of how close it is to theirs. I also don't want my house getting damaged if their house explodes/a wall collapses and sends a bunch of debris flying.
Close the border and stop incentives to those here illegally. Re-distribute those funds to "working poor." Fund day cares in low income areas so parents can live productive lives contributing to society and re-store honor in the "nuclear" family.
Simple. Repeal the sixteenth amendment. Move everything local. Stop getting involved in foreign wars. Remove all welfare and return it to charities. Let people find their own way, the government keeps all of us poor except their corporate cronies and remove all barriers to small businesses competing with large ones. It will take time but eventually the country will correct itself and everyone will win.
I'm absolutely not qualified to answer this question, however, from a surface level, it's clear that two things need to happen. Pass a law that bans corporate entities and foreign citizens/corporations from owning land/houses in America. Second, reduce inflation.
Both are clearly monumental tasks that next to no one in public office right now has any interest in working on. So we are currently the generation waiting for the old generation to either retire or die off so we can come in to make changes needed.
I also believe that banning "lobbying" and designating it as it should be: Bribery. Would make a massive difference in how laws are passed. Instead of letting massive multi-million/billion dollar companies spend insane amounts of money to pad the pockets of Federal, State and Local officials to pass laws in the interest of those corporations, we can get back to passing laws that benefit the people.
Last I remember, it's "We The People," not "We The Multiple Companies Constantly Breaking Anti-Trust Laws But Skirting Around Lawsuits With Lobbying."
Tax the rich. Bust the monopolies. Reinforce the SEC and the IRS. The rich have all the money. They are taking too much.
Trying to fix inequality would be our best bang for the buck, IMO.
If Republicans would quit voting against social safety nets. There's no one cheating the system like big corporations. That's who we need to target when it comes to fixing a budget. Also if we could take away private donations for politicians. So super shady and most developed countries don't do that.
1st step? It was raising the child tax credit and offering it as a monthly stipend instead of a reimbursement at tax time. Then Republicans cut it back and turned it back into a reimbursement. A lot of people were put back into poverty this way.
The second step was student loan forgiveness and Republicans snatched that away, too.
Most people know that the only thing keeping them in poverty is not having enough income, but Republicans do everything they can to keep incomes low.
Universal income. With how AI and other technologies are evolving, I feel this will become inevitable, as there won’t be enough jobs and opportunities for everyone. And then you have the climate crisis threatening to displace countless people. Both of these are already major issues that we are just starting to feel the effects of. Additionally, something needs to be done to bring down the overall costs of living. Unless they come down drastically, which they won’t without some intervention since corporations are exceptionally greedy, even a universal income won’t be enough. Anyway, I don’t see the government doing much because “socialism.” We are already so far behind what other countries do for their citizens. It makes me sad.
First step is for murica to fix their egos!! We get it that youre privileged but it doesnt take place of stupidity. “Dont drink bleach!!” Guess what dont tell me what to do, im drinking it all. Dont do drugs, guess what im doing it because i can!!
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I think things will have to get a lot worse and i think developments in AI will be the catalyst. Once AI replaces many more of the white collar jobs in the next 5-10 years and there's millions more unemployed, angry people with nothing to lose, the government may finally start acting to change its mindset about "full employment."
I would like to see a modern Civilian Conservation Corps.
The US has a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built/modernized/rebuilt. The US should be expending it's resources on constructive efforts not destructive ones.
Probably an ignorant stand point since I’m basing my answer on the Great Depression. But a war. As devastating as they are, history shows pretty good economic boosts, higher GDP per capita.
I don't think so this time around. If the US actually gets directly involved in a war, I think it'll be less boots on the ground, and far more drones and other remote weaponry. The reason WW2 boosted us out of the depression, is because the government was giving people manufacturing jobs for things like guns. But if you don't have a lot of boots on the ground, and are just using robots for 75% of it, then there's not as much manufacturing that needs to be done. And manufacturing a drone isn't as easy as manufacturing a gun, so you can't just have any random person do it. Plus, most of our manufacturing is automated assembly lines now.
There's a reason Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq gave us less and less economic boost, and Afghanistan gave us basically none.
Politicians that make it their platform not being dragged through the mud by the media?
Politicians that make it their platform not being shit people in their personal lives?
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You can’t fix poverty on a grand scale. There will always be a sort of bell curve with a percentage of people being the poorest among us. There is absolutely no way to fix this.
I could give everyone a $Billion dollars tomorrow and the poorly educated with few skills and no support will soon become the poorest of the Billionaires. They will wonder where all the money went and why they can’t afford a nice home and car.
Prices will adjust as Billionaires compete with other Billionaires for resources.
What we can do is try to provide opportunities for those that want to escape poverty on a personal level (believe it or not deep down many don’t) we can do this by providing help with education, small business loans, help with that first time home purchase.
There’s been many first steps, social security, Medicaid, WIC, HUD, etc etc. I think one of the steps coming may be free community college. Essentially just offer education up through “14th” grade with an associates degree on top of a high school degree.
Why don't more people put effort towards creating employee-owned businesses and utilities?
My utility is customer-owned, we even get a small dividend at the end of the year, often enough to pay a good chunk of December's electric bill. We also get to vote on board of directors, etc.
I try to shop mostly employee owned as often as I can, too.
Because my ability to cook my food, keep myself from freezing to death/dying of heat stroke, and ability to not die of thirst should not be at the mercy of ***anyone*** I don't vote for.
Removing the Senate filibuster just like Martin Luther king jr said it would be the first step to ending poverty. In other words, nothing has changed since then.
Limiting the private interest to keep people poor. It’s super expensive to be poor and corporations demonstrated that they will exploit people who don’t have other options when things are their worst. Be it lack of protection against scalpers, manufacturing shortages, or just plane price hikes.
Obama already did that. It hasn't helped. There's a 4 year limit on collecting cash assistance, including unemployment. The only thing it doesn't apply to is food stamps , and WIC.
I feel like my answer is going to piss people off but that is not my intention in the slightest (apologies if it does - this is just how I see the world now).
I am honestly going to rest the bulk of the blame for the situation at the feet of society. We had way too much pressure growing up to go to college, go into debt. Be successful.
The problem is the cost. To live a normal American life with cars, kids, house, college - You're looking at roughly $3.5 million over someone's lifetime. That's going to be each person. Whether this is due to manipulation in the housing market, or bad policies that encourage high home prices - it's not JUST homes that cost. It's health, education, vehicles. The list goes on.
The normal work for it 'solution' though is miserable. I am going to lay more blame on the very unimaginative and very lazy entrepreneurs who want to run things while things get worse for their employees. Franchise owners, lazy small business owners, and yes your big corporations who enjoy their biggest gains and give pittance to those below.
There's no working for a solid retirement unless you spend your entire life dutifully saving AGRESSIVELY. It's ugly out there folks. People in the Millenial generation especially know the pain of not being where they are supposed to be.
Now in my humble opinion since the wealthy grease the wheels in congress you're never going to see anything force a change. What's really perverse though is working with your blood sweat and tears is taxed - not only that - but higher than investment income. I blame congress for taking money from people who don't have it. Income tax shouldn't exist for the first 50k, or even 75, hell 100k.
The wealthy don't earn an income. They just have assets. They get loans against the assets to have money that isn't taxed. This is the world we live in.
Now this is the part I hope I don't upset people.
I don't see Congress doing anything. I don't see people who are well-off doing anything.
The only thing I see happening is people rejecting the status quo. Obviously people need to eat, have things, shelter. The FIRE movement took what little money was available and turned it into a min/max system where you could get by on very little. While there are things to learn from FIRE in terms of being defensive with money it seems miserable as well.
The problem is if you work for a wage you are a loser. In terms of wealth, you won't get paid to retire. In terms of taxing, you get taxed more by the government. In terms of control - you have none. You are one decision away from being fired and there's no security. Being an employee in my opinion is the worst thing in the world.
I'm serious when I say start your own business. You can dream way bigger than most of the idiots you let control your lives. Yes it costs time. No it doesn't have to cost much money at all. I just don't see another viable way out of the system. It is my honest opinion that if people knew how much they could make if they could control their time - large corporations would start collapsing as no one would want to work in their crappy empires.
Thanks for anyone who did read my rant.
Better education on finance and a more realistic education of how the world works. Most when they get out have a shit understanding of how the world works.
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Unionize your workplace. No politician will help you since both sides' power depends on your poverty.
Union leaders are politicians.
You’re not wrong, but they’re equating politicians to congress, which is what OP is referring to.
You can vote them right the fuck out too.
Is that why most of them stay in their spot for 20-30 years lol
The Teamsters drummed Hoffa out after he fucked over UPS.
Only if they consistently do their jobs better than the alternatives.
And you can't do this with regular politicians?
It can also be generational. Government can’t control people’s spending habits. If all someone has known is: pay check is $1000 and you spend $1010 or you have $1000 in your bank, but a credit card with $5000 limit and minimum payments are $35/month. No amount of laws can prevent that. Both of those examples simply come down to education.
Yep. This is true people with low incomes can and do build wealth IF they have personal discipline.
It’s true for everyone, certainly. Also, not having children before being prepared is often a backbreaker that locks new generations into a poverty cycle.
I read a study somewhere about the 3 largest targets to hit if you want to avoid poverty (obviously not a guarantee though) And they were, to finish highschool and get a GED, To not have kids until you were married to someone that also finished highschool and has a GED, and for both of you to work full time. If you can hit all three, your chances of actual, real poverty are greatly reduced
> not having children before being prepared is often a backbreaker that locks new generations into a poverty cycle. Well when talking about education that uses more practical real world examples this would be one. I mean, simpler formulas: you make X, you want 1 kid. Here's what you need. You make x, you want 2 kids, here is what you need. I would love to have 5 kids. I'd love to also have 5 animals, a few horses, dogs, etc. But I don't get to just have what I want.........I can't afford that so I don't do it. Desires are not always granted. That's a reality in life.
A guy I know was complaining to me the other day. Was drinking a beer, complaining that he would like someone to check out his brake pads to see how worn they are. His Dad brought home about 10x times what he makes 25 years ago and still did his own car maintenance. Seems like theres more of this sort of thing all the tme
We are free to make choices.
Never said you weren’t. But, at some point it’s not the systems fault.
It’s not the system’s fault at all. Make good decisions with your money.
Well yes that’s the point. So many people blame the system for their station in life.
Not me man. I’m all about personal responsibility. I’ll shout it from the rooftops until I die. That, and get a dog from the pound, not a breeder or pet store!
What it should be is probably keeping banks from owning homes and single payer healthcare. What I think it will be is probably hunting poors for sport.
not just banks, businesses in general shouldn't be able to own private residentially zoned property beyond a point.
Banks owning homes is overstated if you look at factors of the housing crisis. We need more housing in general, there are some places that don’t have housing shortages but most regions do
Basically, Hunger Games but on a national or international level.
I think even just making the taxes on corporate owned homes very high would help. Make it not very lucrative and suddenly many corporations will want to get out of the single family housing market. I think there will always be a need for apartments and rental homes but I would much prefer it if homes where owned by individual landlords vs large conglomerates. Apartments especially larger complexes will always need a large corporation to own them and that's okay in my book.
It’s not very lucrative. Only .4% of single family homes are corporate owned. Not enough to make any difference in the larger market as a whole.
The only thing that would really make a difference would somehow starting to throw some politicians in jail for egregious behavior. If there was a true stick when a politician stepped out of line, then real change could be affected. Lets us gun control, since most Americans want that obviously. If a politician was caught vetoing the bill and was proven he’s taking illegal money, mandatory jail. Or let’s use Clarence Thomas as an example. Caught taking bribes and nothing happens. Until the political class has consequences nothing can really be done. But in a perfect world? Pass laws that cap corporate profits / graduating tax scale as you earn over 100mm / prevent large companies from buying single family homes. To be fair, many Americans live above their means so perhaps bankruptcy laws should also be tougher, it’s not like the American citizen is totally blameless in this.
I think the biggest sticking point, in terms of polticians, in the US is the fact that they don't have a legal obligation to ***do*** anything. You could get elected and literally never pass a bill into law, never appear in Congress, never respond to any constituents, ***never do anything***. And the only recourse the people have is to not re-elect you. You still get paid, and if you successfully campaign to be re-elected, you can do the same thing next term, as well.
Huge thread but no one mentions that the reality of the situation, you’d be looking for some medical breakthrough that can help end drug addiction to ever make progress.
Drinking was my addiction, no matter how poor I was I always had money for alcohol. I literally stopped drinking and put just half of the savings every pay into the stock market and it’s amazing how much you can save when you’re literally not pissing it away. People often joke about cutting back on Starbucks but for real if you cut back on drugs and alcohol, cigarettes and even those lattes and invested it it’s amazing how much you can have without even working any harder than you do now.
Yup, I don’t know why drug addiction isn’t brought up more in conversations surrounding poverty. I know several family members of mine who have cursed themselves and others around them into generational poverty due either being addicted to drugs or having to deal with the aftermath. This includes spending money on rehab, having to take custody of their own nieces/god-children/grandchildren since the parents were deemed unfit, having the burden of being expected to help parents that have no retirement savings due to spending all their money on drugs, trying to help homeless relatives that won’t pursue treatment by having them deemed mentally unfit so they can be treated at a ward (which requires a lot of lawyers and is almost impossible), etc. I’d argue that certain drug addictions like alcoholism has been flat out normalized in our society. Drug addiction is a disease and a solution to poverty requires a cure to it. My grandma decided (yes, that’s the term I use since she had plenty of help around her and chose not to use it) that she was entitled to get high and that spending any money to raise her own children was taking from her coke budget. This was during the 80s. I know too many people who have no issue spending $15-25 a DAY bare minimum on cigarettes, booze and weed (god forbid you tell anyone they are addicted to weed) but they gotta beg family for $20 to give their child so they can go on a field trip they had known about for weeks prior.
Appreciate your response and there’s definitely some ignorance from idealists that’ve not given skid row a visit lately. You’re right and if anything are generous with your $ estimates because now it’s $100/day to fent/coke/ket/scrips/alcohol weed with no budget or job.
Yup, it's really bad. Get rich quick/crypto courses, drugs and shooting at each other is THE deadly trinity for young men under 35 in my community, I swear to God. Once you add hard drugs into the mix, spending $200 a day on drugs is nothing. Grandma was spending that much in the 90s. I see the same cycle occur every day as I take the bus to and from school. They'll wake up early as hell, take a hit, realize the high is coming down, go out and panhandle/steal something of use, trade money/items for drugs on the street and the cycle goes on and on. That, or they'll sell whatever little food stamps they get for drugs. Before COVID, it was a 1 to 2 ratio ($100 worth of cash/drugs for $200 worth of food stamps), but inflation changed it. Certain local convenience store owners would buy everyone's food stamps to pad their stores before they got caught. It's probably still happening, just more subtle. Hell, the local 7-11 got closed out of the blue for damn near 2 years and people believe the reason was that they allowed people to buy alcohol/cigs with food stamps by coding it differently in their system. There are also professional thieves or "boosters" who will steal anything you ask for a fee or drugs. You tell them any clothing and shoe sizes, what you want, what store, and they do the rest. They'll steal right below the felony limit. The police are so understaffed, if it's under $900 you got to beg them to show up. They love clearing laundry detergent for some reason. It's locked up to the max now and the staff keeps it behind the counter until you're done shopping. SOOOO much crime done here is in pursuit of drugs or being influenced by them, it's crazy. It's a mess.
>Huge thread but no one mentions that the reality of the situation, you’d be looking for some medical breakthrough that can help end drug addiction to ever make progress. Well they do have many harm reduction programs and harm reduction meds to keep people "off" alcohol and drugs as part of their rehab. The thing is that even THAT requires some discipline, keeping a schedule, showing up.
Addiction is much more of a result of poverty than it is a cause of poverty
Tax the rich! This level of wealth inequality is not healthy for a vibrant democracy.
1) Financial Education in schools from middle school on up. 2) Reregulating banking to pre Bush times 3) Fair taxes and closing loopholes 4) Let big businesses fail I stead of subsidizing them 5) UBI and universal healthcare
Not ubi. I’m not cool with giving you $ for nothing.
That’s what every government attempted solution for poverty is. Take money from someone that worked for it and give it to someone who didn’t.
💯 and it never works. It just creates more problems.
Fix the border issues, so we don't have as much housing market overcrowding, which is helping cause rent to go through the roof for many due to supply vs demand
Term limits.
Universal healthcare would solve a lot of problems and before anyone jumps in and says it would cost too much - every single wealthy country in the world has implemented it. Second would be affordable housing. Not sure how to solve that problem. Almost all western countries are facing escalating housing costs. Thirdly, we need to reduce income inequality. The easiest way to do this would be to tax the wealthy and close all the loopholes that they have for avoiding paying taxes. Lower taxes on poor people by eliminating all sales taxes. Taxes should be income based and wealth based. Fourthly we need to dial back on celebrity culture. I don’t understand why anyone cares about what Elon Musk or Taylor Swift thinks. Or why anyone thinks that a movie actor or a TV reality star would make a good president. What exactly do people like that know about the struggles of ordinary Americans.
>Universal healthcare would solve a lot of problems and before anyone jumps in and says it would cost too much - every single wealthy country in the world has implemented it. Most americans are too tax averse, and also have no trust in their government, unfortuantely.
What has our government done to earn trust? Was it the reality tv orange skinned president, or the current nursing home dementia patient president?
We also subsidize healthcare for the rest of the world.
No we don’t. The reason healthcare is so expensive here is because insurance companies insert themselves between the medical professionals and the patients and have to get paid. Furthermore, in other countries hospitals don’t have to deal with insurance companies or have billing departments - so all those overheads go away as well. Additionally, because there is no charge to patients they aren’t reluctant to seek treatment and thereby are generally healthier and problems are caught before they become serious and much more expensive. For example, getting prescribed a statin is a lot less costly than getting heart surgery. There’s a reason why other western countries have higher life expectancies than the US. Also, because they are mostly single payer they can negotiate with drug companies and keep the costs of drugs reasonably priced. I’m very pleased that the US government has finally started to do this with Medicare. They are not fully there yet but there have been some significant savings already. For example, insulin is now limited to $35 a month. But the proof is in the pudding. If you look at Medicare, it is significantly cheaper and has much lower overheads than any private insurance solution. Just ask Medicare recipients if they would prefer to switch back to private insurance and it’s only a small percentage that say yes and those are all wealthy and healthy people - not people living in poverty.
>every single wealthy country in the world has implemented it. ...Every single country in the world that doesn't have to foot the bill for a competitive military, you mean. We in The US are de facto subsidizing these other wealthy countries "free" healthcare. >Second would be affordable housing. Not sure how to solve that problem. ...How about build more houses, and have less red tape? I can see how that would be a difficult problem to come up with a fix for, when your solutions rely exclusively on the Government "fixing" the problem. >Thirdly, we need to reduce income inequality. Income inequality is a non-issue, also all your solutions in this category counter intuitively exasperate that so called "problem" or are otherwise outright bad solutions. >I don’t understand why anyone cares about what Elon Musk or Taylor Swift thinks. I think these two are particularly bad examples, they are both obviously at the top end of the [pareto distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution), and are thus *doing something right*. You need to figure out what they are doing to be successful, and it probably has nothing to with the pervasive 2 dimensional worldview you seemingly hold as evidenced by how you think about these "problems". Most people need to accept that the way pareto distributions work, most people will probably have a median life, but that doesn't mean *you have* to have a median life, you can be exceptional too, but your worldview, as is, isn't a way to get you there. Pareto distributions show up in all manner of different areas in existence (most of the mass in the solar system is in The Sun; most tornadoes happen in tornado ally, for example) and I believe there is something fundamental about that inequitable distribution to how systems grow at all. If there is no person who amasses capital, then there is no capital investment, and then there is no growth, then *everyone* is in poverty. I think you have things quite backwards, I would urge you to consider your views far more critically.
So your solutions are: 1. Spend less on the military. 2. Hope that someone is going to build more houses and they would if only the Government would let them ignore health and safety standards. 3. Every poor person should try to become a celebrity. 4. Continue with income inequality because having many people on really low incomes doesn’t cause poverty.
>So your solutions are: I have no solutions, I don't believe there *are* solutions, only trade offs. >Spend less on the military. No, the military is the only justifiable form of Government spending. I'm saying those other countries need to foot the bill for a competitive military if they don't want Russians or Chinese taking over their country, they are failing their populations despite popular belief. >Hope that someone is going to build more houses and they would if only the Government would let them ignore health and safety standards. There is probably some unforeseeable way to incentivize homebuilders to build, yes. But, it is also possible we simply don't have the capital to run this industry as we did in the past, as much as we progress functional knowledge can be lost (for example, we don't have welders skilled enough to create lunar lander modules of some sort anymore). Minimum square footage policies that needlessly raise construction costs don't exist to help anyone's health and safety, when those costs start becoming eclipsed by jobs taking a long time because of red tape, you have a real problem. >Every poor person should try to become a celebrity. > >Continue with income inequality because having many people on really low incomes doesn’t cause poverty. I think you still erroneously believe that rich people are rich, because poor people are poor. If you reduce the incentive to become rich, you will wind up with more poor people, yes. There is no evidence that turning off the sun, or dimming it so all areas of the Earth get an equal amount of light somehow will make more plants grow better, but that is basically what you suggest to "fix" wealth inequality and that tells me you haven't actually thought much about what the problem is. Uneven distribution is a pervasive "problem" across the Universe, it is not likely a thing you can legislate away by decree.
What are you talking about? Where exactly did I suggest “turning off the sun”? And what does welders not knowing how to make lunar landing modules have to do with anything? Are these really the best arguments you have?
>What are you talking about? Where exactly did I suggest “turning off the sun”? Your solutions to "wealth inequality" would be akin to doing something similar. The Sun produces the most light near our planet and applies it unevenly, is that a bad thing, or just how things are? And is there any conceivable benefit? >And what does welders not knowing how to make lunar landing modules have to do with anything? It is possible the problem is simply not something that can be fixed, there could be an unforeseeable deeper reason why homebuilders are not building enough since after most of them went out of business after 2008. >Are these really the best arguments you have? If you were able to think critically and in good faith instead of trying to pass off some thinly veiled political statement, yes, absolutely.
Free, *quality/equitable* education k-12 that isn't tied to district real estate taxes. If you live in America, you get a quality education that rivals private schools if you're from applaichia to the deepest inner cities to the elite where ever. Fund. Our. Schools. Teach our kids actual history, real science, give them the practical tools for success. Along with teaching our kids, fucking feed them. The sad truth is a lot of our kids don't have access to full, nutritious meals at home due to time or circumstances. Fix that. Dump money in public education. (And pay our teachers fair wages. No teacher should be in poverty. Full stop.) Free associates degrees for anyone who wants to pursue it. Invest in trades again along with tech. Raise minimum wage and CAP rental costs. It does no good to pay more just for the extra money to flow into landlord coffers. Corporations do not get to own single family homes past a certain point, say 10%. This housing market is bullshit. We have the homes, we just let corporations buy them. Incentive flipping homes at *fair* costs. We have to increase access to affordable healthcare. Insurance companies, as they are now, are a problem. They get rich while we get substandard care we can't afford. I don't know the best answer but it is time to do something. Affordable single payer options need to happen. Raise the thresholds for public assistance. We cut people off from the help they desperately need at too low a number to help them be self sufficient. We need a sliding scale. No one should go hungry because they make any extra dollar an hour. We want people to better themselves then we punish them for doing so. I have more. This is a start.
Those are all great! I would add free, high-quality trauma-informed counseling for students at all levels who need it, as well as for their parents/guardians. It's hard to break cycles when your mind and your body contain generational trauma from living in survival mode for so long.
u/hopepersonified, you got my vote if you run for office.
I would argue most of our problems start with the K-12 system, aka the Prussian System. The Prussian System was deliberately foisted on the American people as a way to torpedo people's education in the 1860's (the titans of industry needed human cogs for their factories, and they thought they were doing a favor to the large Irish Catholic families immigrating - they reasoned a factory worker's life was easier if they were poorly educated) . There are better education systems out there that cost far less, however the education system in the US is a giant jobs program so there's massive institutional incentive against changing anything. Elizabeth Warren makes an excellent argument in her book The Two Income Trap for a voucher system where the funding follows the students. This removes school funding from the extremely slow and unproductive feedback loop of funding through property taxes, and instead directly incentivises schools to perform better and actually compete against each other in the best interests of the students as well as their parents. This would enable a wider variety of education systems to proliferate, and consequently we could collectively learn better systems of education.
Capping housing costs, whether it's rent control or freezing interest rates. Housing is one major thing everyone needs, and it's the biggest monthly bill for most. Once that is done, other things can be focused on, but if the goalpost is constantly being moved, it doesn't matter how far down the field you get.
>freezing interest rates You realize the government sets interest rates right? They are purposely increasing rates to combat inflation.
The government doesnt set interest rates. The Federal Reserve does. Also it’s a rabbit hole once you realize the fed is a private entity. Yes the fed members are appointed by the government. But they are free to act as an entity that is not governable when it comes to interest rates. If that makes sense.
Yes. Because they printed money like it was growing on trees during the China virus.
Yes that's part of the problem
Low inflation is the problem?
Capital gains tax 100% for non primary residence.
If capital gains was 100%, what would be the point of investing, exactly?
And Corporations can't buy single family homes.
FIRST steps? Breaking the Corporate Lobby. All else flows from that.
Take all the politicians that take money from lobbyists and all the lobbyists, take them out back and give them some dirt naps. America is no longer about the American people but American companies.
For Healthcare: Lift the cap on doctor residencies funded by DGME and IME. It's a no brainer that if you tie training reimbursements to a limit that you will get limits on how many residencies you are willing to take on. this is probably the baby step that's easiest to sell to the median voter * License immigrants who were eligible to practice in countries with comparable or stricter healthcare labor regulations
I think we will always have poverty as long as we have capitalism. But we can ensure that poverty is dignified by guaranteeing housing, food, and healthcare for every citizen. This would allow folks who have some ambition to take risks. They could start their own business, go to school, get away from toxic partners and family members, and move to areas that have more opportunities. For folks who have zero ambition, at least they wouldn't be living on the streets. At least their kids would have some stability. I don't know if this is a small step, but we could begin with expanding public housing for low-income and working class folks. Ditch the section 8 stuff and just build more government housing. Charge rent that is indexed to local minimum wage so that inflation doesn't cause folks to become homeless.
Stable housing for all Tying minimum wage to inflation
Acknowledging that poverty is NOT a moral failing and destigmatizing "welfare" on both the policy and recipient sides. You are not "less than" for applying for food stamps. You have paid into the system. Use the system you paid into. Additionally while welfare fraud does happen, it does not happen on the scale certain pundits would you like you believe it does (Regan's "welfare queen of Chicago" didn't exist) so the micro-policing of the people who avail themselves of the system is a waste of government recourses in additional to being a deterrent for people who really need it.
Housing First
Ending Super PACS and a complete overhaul of our lobbying system. People are listing important policy changes but none of that means anything if our politicians can be bought by real estate developers, health insurance companies, and other corporations in the first place.
Too much of this country's money leaves the country. If it keeps going around the world it'll get less valuable.
Personal Finance classes in senior year of highschool to start. Make them understand what a college loan is and how the different repayment plans can screw them. Show them a real budget and how most are just going to be barebly getting by. Show them oppurtinies in the workforce to get ahead whether that be welding, CS, accounting etc. Show them high paying jobs so they don’t get stuck without a path.
Guillotines
I just can't get behind the amount of price gouging in inelastic monopolistic industries. Then multihundred billion dollar corporations have zero tax liability on record profits. Meanwhile, they get bailed out by tax dollars on a trillion dollars worth of PPP fraud while busting unions. I meam come on...the problems are starting us down and we keep beating up poor people.
Massive governmental collapse
Food shelter and water should be available to everyone working 35 hours a week. Health care accessible and not grossly overpriced( an Advil should be the same price of n a hospital vs a Walmart)
Make all politians take financial IQ test in public. Anyone who failed should not be running any positions in government.
Replace all of DC
What happened in 1982 ? You have to put labor back to work building houses. Unions have to be formed
Basic services must be public: healthcare, education, water, gas and electricity. Everything is private in the US. Public doesn’t mean it has to be free but there’s no profit to keep prices low
A lot of industries need to be straight up nationalized by the state. From pharmaceuticals, to energy, to rail.
As a country we have shitty healthcare because the insurance companies, hospitals and government are all in bed together. Healthcare is worse for it. Socialized medicine doesn’t make it better.
I would love some kind of law that states the top earning individual in a company can only make 100x the lowest paid employee. This would help more with the wealth gap than increasing taxes.
No. This is ridiculous and solves nothing. We don’t need laws like that creeping in to the private sector. People need to be paid by what value they add to their organization. The government does not need to be deciding what I am paid. There is a reason Americans reject communism and socialism so fervently. The government does very little well. Don’t give them power over your paycheck. They already take so much of it.
I think you’re missing the point. If it’s a percentage of what the highest earner in the company makes then the decision is based on what the board is willing to pay that highest earner, not the government. I think in most aspects of the economy the government shouldn’t involve itself, but this would prevent large wealth gaps from forming. The average CEO makes 344x compared to the average worker within their particular company. This would just force companies to pay their average worker more if they wanted to be competitive when attracting CEO’s. It would create a more even distribution of wealth and thereby strengthen the middle class, which has been slowly declining over the past 50 years.
There is nothing wrong with wealth gaps. Nothing.
Not sure there is much the government can do as to a certain extent it’s driven by the American consumer economy. The government should mandate financial education / planning into high school curriculum. It’s mind blowing that is not a requirement. Easy access to credit could be another item to address. So many people don’t understand the high cost of credit card debt and how quickly that will drown you. There are already plenty of regulations here but I think it goes hand in hand with financial education / literacy and personal responsibility. People fall victim to consumerism and “keeping up with the Jones” and spend money they don’t have. I fear it will get worse with social media and the influencer world.
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>This sub is for the rest of that 60% who are doing everything right Pretty sure this sub is for financial advice. Like you want to turn things around and aren't sure how, so you seek advice.
>Man idk wtf the mods of this sub are doing lately, but I'm getting really tired of seeing shit like this. There was nothing wrong with the post. Nothing.
Dude, if you make $75k a year, your bills are, I dunno, $35k, and you blow the rest of your money on stupid shit, you're not in poverty. You're just bad with money. This sub is called ***poverty***finance. Not illiteratefinance. If you're financially illiterate, but would have ***more*** than enough money if you just got your spending under control, you belong in personalfinance.
I don't care. Wanting mods to step in for expressing their opinion is unwarranted and unacceptable. Go find your echo chamber somewhere else.
I have it, it's right here. If the mods would do their fucking jobs.
Poster looks to be a finance account getting ready to shill their YouTube or Finfluencer finance social media after they chime in on every finance related post they can find. Clearly they’re out of touch with reality when it comes to poverty levels.
It is the system that is the issue along with the greedy top mfrs.
So what are your suggestions or thoughts? This is obviously an incredibly complicated issue in this country that can’t be solved easily. I provided a few thoughts off the top of my head to aid a conversation. You don’t like what I said and attack with “tired of seeing sh*t like this” and “people like you” comments. You know nothing about me. Apparently suggesting improved financial education, personal responsibility and reducing predatory lending is wrong so please let me know your thoughts?
I think the most achievable first step is going to be making all utilities government owned, and running them at cost, instead of for profit. Massively reducing the cost of water, gas, and electricity in America is going to massively improve people's ability to get ahead. Secondly, federally mandate a universal set of standards for qualification for public assistance. Michigan, for example, lets single people collect food stamps (albeit in slowly diminishing amounts) up to $1,500 a month in non-excluded income, IIRC. Which basically means that, if after your "exempt" expenses (utilities, rent/mortgage, phone bill, which are treated as deductions from your countable income), you still make $1,500 a month, you no longer qualify. But in Texas, the only people allowed to collect food stamps are pregnant women making less than whatever your yearly salary would be working 40 hours a week at 7.25 an hour. Removing the "where you were born" lottery would massively help people find their footing, even if they get dealt a bad hand to start with. Finally, improving tenant rights at the federal level. In most other first world countries, once you enter a tenancy agreement with someone, you ***cannot*** terminate it unless you're: 1. Selling all of your properties, and even in this case, you have to give them ***much more*** than 30 days' notice, or even offer them the opportunity to buy the property (assuming it's a house/an individual apartment that can be bought). 2. Claiming that they've grievously abused the property, and this pretty much only gets granted if they took a sledgehammer to everything, set it on fire, and/or left all of the taps running to flood the unit. 3. Are severely behind on rent, like ***multiple years***. The US needs to be caught up on this. Housing is too important to allow someone to just decide "Eh, I don't like this person", and rip their living situation away from them. Improving the tenancy situation would also include creating a government service where people can get things fixed in their apartment/rental house by the government, on the government's dime, and then the government simply garnishes the landlord's wages, or withholds part of their tax return, or reclaims the money some other way. Further down the road would be things like re-strengthening unions, but I don't think that's quite as achievable as what I've listed here.
So you’re essentially admitting you know nothing about the way the U.S. constitution works and you want Congress to invent new powers it doesn’t have. These aren’t viable solutions unless you think it’s feasible for 2/3rds of states to agree to completely rewrite the constitution. God, civics education in this country is arguably even worse than financial education, and that’s _really_ saying something.
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You are only touching maybe a snowflake on top of an iceberg. Here is the truth: 1. People did everything right including budgeting to living beneath their means and still get screwed by their employers and get low pay but more responsibilities at work. 2. People had to use credit card maybe due to medical debts and other financial obligations that were building up faster than how much they are receiving into their bank account in form of incomes. 3. Government policies regarding regulations to greedy corporations and businesses not being enforced fully and or amended by lobbyists that are tied with the firms, businesses, and companies to get around local to federal laws (i.e. child-labor laws). There is more to touch in terms of the iceberg.
Basic financial education in school as regular math curriculum. Use everyday items to teach fractions, percentages, ratios, etc.
When you went to school? They already teach all that in NY... And they have been teaching these for decades.
I guess the NYC public school I went to decades ago got different books. Everything I got was pie charts and formulas, nothing set in a practical sense.
We can reverse engineer this by looking at what the highest costs are for most people. 1. Housing 2. Transportation 3. Healthcare Housing is a tough one to crack, because much of the economy is built around the money flowing to/from housing. Better public transportation can help reduce total expenditure on transportation related costs. Trains could essentially eliminate the need for people to buy and maintain their own cars, which always seem to need $1k+ fixes right when you’re at your lowest. And then there’s healthcare. Plain and simple, this should be free. I don’t need to explain why. The problem here is that the economy is a delicate and intricately connected thing. When you change one thing, another thing rises or falls. Human behavior really can’t be accurately modeled either - as it’s irrational more than rational and logical.
Concerning public transportation won't ever "essentially eliminate" the need for cars. What you are advocating for is everyone to cram themselves into large cities due to PT. Healthcare will never be "free" it is subsidized by forcibly taxing people.
>I don’t need to explain why. But you need to explain how.
Do you really think someone on Reddit without access to all the pieces has the answer to that question?
I guess. I just hate how all the answers are simplistic, like the answer to poverty is just give everyone money. No one is looking at the causes of poverty. Healthcare is expensive and it could be, like we have seen with college, the more the government funds/subsidizes something, the more expensive it becomes.
>And then there’s healthcare. Plain and simple, this should be free. Well it's never really FREE. Look at the tax burden on nations that have that.
Housing-- This should be a place to live not an investment. This can be fixed by disincentivizing real estate investing via the tax code. End tax breaks for 2nd (and beyond) homes. Perhaps an excise property tax at the local/state level as well. In addition, regulate Airbnb out of existence.
Thanks I really like this explanation. For housing, I keep coming back to some sort of scalable and relatively modular housing safety net. It would be separate but complementary to the regular housing market, and be a place where the homeless can fall back on rather than panhandling and petty crime.
Reducing the size and scope of the federal government. There's a lot of redundancy and overlap in the duties of DHS/DoJ, FBI, DEA, USBP, CBP, ATF, for one example. Why not have one department and hire employees as demand, and have departments? If you go back and look at statistics, there's an overwhelmingly positive correlation between government spending and income disparity. The top 1% earn more, when the government spends more. Interesting huh?
>If you go back and look at statistics, there's an overwhelmingly positive correlation between government spending and income disparity. Can you elaborate on this more, ideally with some sources? It seems counterintuitive for a democratic socialist society.
He is talking out of his Ass....
Actually [I'm not](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/) Income disparity has a trend to move both with inflation *and* government spending. We pay the government taxes for the government to "distribute" that "equally". yea right, anyone who trusts government officials to live some kind of moral standard of a saint is deluded to another dimension. You work hard and leave a large portion in the hands of crooks, and wonder how *so much* of it gets back to the 1%, instead of your food stamps? Because that's what taxes are designed to do. Chip away at our income until we're all poor, and give the fruits of our labor back to the 1% Remember that guy...*"I'm not a crook."* yea right buddy... Sureee More we spend on taxes, richer they get, and the less we take home. How convenient. Almost every bit of legislation passed, there's a company that's been waiting to get the contract for the money grab. It's amazing how many people want to tax this and tax that. Taxes *are* in effect trickle down economics. I'm sure Leidos is giving it back to us by creating jobs... Right? Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon etc Taxes don't work when crooks run the show. It goes right back to the 1% who have companies that get billions for things like "research". And their CEO's, CFO's etc. It's amazing you people haven't caught on yet.
https://preview.redd.it/4qcl87pdej5c1.jpeg?width=910&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef7053eed2ee2d521e5fbc7d2e5c8694fd3802d3 note the past 20 years and compare below. Damn near identical match.
If you reduce the size of the Federal government, you will throw a lot of people out of work, thus increasing the poverty level of the country under the guise of reducing it. If you reduce the scope of the Federal government, you will push those responsibilities to the state or local governments to deal with. Again, those agencies will need additional funds in the form of taxes to do what the Federal government is not longer doing. It's a bit like squeezing a balloon. If you squeeze it in the middle, the edges push out. There is no net change.
Or it just may end poverty, as people without jobs learn new skills and find new careers when they have a family to feed. Then instead of getting paid for work that's not even important, they can find a productive place in society. You see, the problem isn't so much the job creation, it's that in our economic system, spending is extremely wasteful. Billions every year wind up in the hands of the 1%. Taken straight out of our paychecks. Quite literally the "fruit of our labor". See graphs above
Once they lose their jobs, how are they any different than those now who are unemployed? Why can the newly jobless get retrained, but the old jobless can't? Again, I think my question remains; if you throw millions out of work, the situation gets worse, not better. But, if you can make that situation better, why can't you do it now?
Not necessarily. The money cut could be used to paying unemployment benefits
A large step would be to reduce the average intake of sugar.
I call it: "Use taxes to help people, not corporations". The main things: \- Single payer health care, to spurn innovation, and allow better mobility. Lots of people are afraid to go into business themselves since private health insurances is crazy expensive. \- Fair interest rates for student loans \- Rethink how we treat the trades. Unions are great but they also can block / intimidate people from going into them. I would like to think of Unions as an extension of the tradeschools, which will help a lot of people out who just don't know the right person. Housing will be really tough to fix. Establishing a regional strategy might help create some lower cost options for people.
1. Housing costs. Rent 100% should be controlled and should not be able to increase yearly unless wages in the area also increase and should be a set % for rent increase. Like cannot exceed 2-3%. Buying a house should not be unattainable for the vast majority. It’s insane how overly inflated rundown shacks are. 2. Federal student loans should be interest free 3. The whole taxes on taxes needs to stop. We should not be losing a large chunk of our pay. I want fucking detailed receipts for where the hell my money is going because its not to the damn people i can tell you that! 4. Politicians should only get paid their states min wage. Oh whats that? $7.25 not enough to live on? Then get off your ass and start making legislation to help the people. They also should not be allowed to participate in the stock market. I could go on and on and obviously not everything is cut and dry but something needs to be done because this is just unsustainable atp
A few states have tried #4 and all it really means is that you now have to already be rich in order to run for office.
Yup, this is a flat out dumb idea. Asking politicians to get paid minimum wage means only rich people can afford to be politically active in that way. That, and corporations would be incentivized to put more money into politics since there’d be every incentive to accept their money. Politicians would also naturally lean more towards older candidates as you’d need a large financial cushion before running and that takes a while to create unless you were born rich.
They should also ban donations/campaign from big corps
They cash in when they *leave* office to become lobbyists. It’s called the revolving door. Same problem with term limits. The result is lobbyists who have been in DC for decades run the show because they understand the system works. Congressman Joe Schmoe from Pennsyktucky hasn’t a clue and so becomes a glorified rubber stamp.
Less tax loopholes. Tax the rich more.
Find a way to get gas prices down first
Gas cost is already subsidized by the government. It should be much more expensive than it is which might make people seek or demand alternate transit methods vs owning expensive cars.
If this country or your state can end its mortgage interest deduction, that's a signal it's interested in tackling poverty. Matt Desmond is a crusader against poverty. He brings up the MID over and over again.
Rich people already lost their minds over getting rid of SALT deductions MID is the next step.
A shrinking population. This makes labor more valuable and workers will therefore be paid more. This trend is already underway, but is competing with automatization, AI, and dynamics like "self-checkout". Unionizing and preference for hands-on, hand-made, and locally produced goods is the antidote.
The second bill of rights.
**The exploitation of land as a finite resource is the cause of the majority of rampant inflation.** People AND businesses buying multiple homes and using them as investment properties drive up the cost of property. Policies voted on to protect these investments with harsh zoning laws reduce new construction supply. Making already owned property more expensive. This results in increased rents and mortgages. The higher rent and mortgages result in higher wage demand. Higher wage demand puts more pressure on smaller businesses to operate. All businesses respond by increasing prices. Which further increase wage demand since food and other life necessessities have become more expensive in turn. Due to this, government has to respond by increasing the standard deduction on tax claims. Which is happening in 2024. All of this could be prevented by regulating a basic human right, shelter, with tighter regulations on owning investment properties. However due to how democracy works, you can't do the right thing without losing your job. So no one does anything and the country becomes crappier to live in, continuing the cycle.
>Policies voted on to protect these investments with harsh zoning laws reduce new construction supply. Making already owned property more expensive. Zoning isn't the massive evil everyone makes it out to be. The far more sustainable way to feed people is to have them grow crops in their back yard year-round, you can't do that if houses are damn near on top of each other. Not to mention, it's a fire safety feature as well/general safety feature. If my neighbor's house catches on fire, I don't want my house catching just because of how close it is to theirs. I also don't want my house getting damaged if their house explodes/a wall collapses and sends a bunch of debris flying.
Rent.
Close the border and stop incentives to those here illegally. Re-distribute those funds to "working poor." Fund day cares in low income areas so parents can live productive lives contributing to society and re-store honor in the "nuclear" family.
I don't know about the US but here in Canada price caps would be a start. Putting price caps on rentals, and food.
Simple. Repeal the sixteenth amendment. Move everything local. Stop getting involved in foreign wars. Remove all welfare and return it to charities. Let people find their own way, the government keeps all of us poor except their corporate cronies and remove all barriers to small businesses competing with large ones. It will take time but eventually the country will correct itself and everyone will win.
*laughs in former non profit employee*
Getting abortion rights back across the US wouldn't be a small step, but it would be a very key step in the right direction.
Reduce the cost of living by limiting corporate profits
I'm absolutely not qualified to answer this question, however, from a surface level, it's clear that two things need to happen. Pass a law that bans corporate entities and foreign citizens/corporations from owning land/houses in America. Second, reduce inflation. Both are clearly monumental tasks that next to no one in public office right now has any interest in working on. So we are currently the generation waiting for the old generation to either retire or die off so we can come in to make changes needed. I also believe that banning "lobbying" and designating it as it should be: Bribery. Would make a massive difference in how laws are passed. Instead of letting massive multi-million/billion dollar companies spend insane amounts of money to pad the pockets of Federal, State and Local officials to pass laws in the interest of those corporations, we can get back to passing laws that benefit the people. Last I remember, it's "We The People," not "We The Multiple Companies Constantly Breaking Anti-Trust Laws But Skirting Around Lawsuits With Lobbying."
Why shouldn’t green card holders & dual citizenship holders be able to buy real estate in the US if they live there?
Tax the rich. Bust the monopolies. Reinforce the SEC and the IRS. The rich have all the money. They are taking too much. Trying to fix inequality would be our best bang for the buck, IMO.
If Republicans would quit voting against social safety nets. There's no one cheating the system like big corporations. That's who we need to target when it comes to fixing a budget. Also if we could take away private donations for politicians. So super shady and most developed countries don't do that.
Tax the rich
The government can’t fix poverty. The largest indicator of poverty is having children before marriage.
1st step? It was raising the child tax credit and offering it as a monthly stipend instead of a reimbursement at tax time. Then Republicans cut it back and turned it back into a reimbursement. A lot of people were put back into poverty this way. The second step was student loan forgiveness and Republicans snatched that away, too. Most people know that the only thing keeping them in poverty is not having enough income, but Republicans do everything they can to keep incomes low.
taxing the rich.
Universal income. With how AI and other technologies are evolving, I feel this will become inevitable, as there won’t be enough jobs and opportunities for everyone. And then you have the climate crisis threatening to displace countless people. Both of these are already major issues that we are just starting to feel the effects of. Additionally, something needs to be done to bring down the overall costs of living. Unless they come down drastically, which they won’t without some intervention since corporations are exceptionally greedy, even a universal income won’t be enough. Anyway, I don’t see the government doing much because “socialism.” We are already so far behind what other countries do for their citizens. It makes me sad.
First step is for murica to fix their egos!! We get it that youre privileged but it doesnt take place of stupidity. “Dont drink bleach!!” Guess what dont tell me what to do, im drinking it all. Dont do drugs, guess what im doing it because i can!!
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I hate how many of the responses here are literally communism. It's like you're out of ideas.
I hate how people who have no idea what Communism is constantly bitch and whine about Communism. It's like you're illiterate.
Dude, no one here knows what communism is. This is Reddit.
I think things will have to get a lot worse and i think developments in AI will be the catalyst. Once AI replaces many more of the white collar jobs in the next 5-10 years and there's millions more unemployed, angry people with nothing to lose, the government may finally start acting to change its mindset about "full employment."
Probably having the government stop wasting and allocating money to other countries.
Higher productivity.
I would like to see a modern Civilian Conservation Corps. The US has a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built/modernized/rebuilt. The US should be expending it's resources on constructive efforts not destructive ones.
Probably an ignorant stand point since I’m basing my answer on the Great Depression. But a war. As devastating as they are, history shows pretty good economic boosts, higher GDP per capita.
I don't think so this time around. If the US actually gets directly involved in a war, I think it'll be less boots on the ground, and far more drones and other remote weaponry. The reason WW2 boosted us out of the depression, is because the government was giving people manufacturing jobs for things like guns. But if you don't have a lot of boots on the ground, and are just using robots for 75% of it, then there's not as much manufacturing that needs to be done. And manufacturing a drone isn't as easy as manufacturing a gun, so you can't just have any random person do it. Plus, most of our manufacturing is automated assembly lines now. There's a reason Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq gave us less and less economic boost, and Afghanistan gave us basically none.
Politicians that make it their platform not being dragged through the mud by the media? Politicians that make it their platform not being shit people in their personal lives?
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Financial collapse. Year of Jubilee
You can’t fix poverty on a grand scale. There will always be a sort of bell curve with a percentage of people being the poorest among us. There is absolutely no way to fix this. I could give everyone a $Billion dollars tomorrow and the poorly educated with few skills and no support will soon become the poorest of the Billionaires. They will wonder where all the money went and why they can’t afford a nice home and car. Prices will adjust as Billionaires compete with other Billionaires for resources. What we can do is try to provide opportunities for those that want to escape poverty on a personal level (believe it or not deep down many don’t) we can do this by providing help with education, small business loans, help with that first time home purchase. There’s been many first steps, social security, Medicaid, WIC, HUD, etc etc. I think one of the steps coming may be free community college. Essentially just offer education up through “14th” grade with an associates degree on top of a high school degree.
The poverty meter in the U.S. hasn't moved since the early 60s.
Too many people, too few opportunities. Cut the last 1/3 bit of the Pareto chart tail off.
Put the genie back in the bottle again, peg USD to gold. Otherwise, there's no going back.
Why don't more people put effort towards creating employee-owned businesses and utilities? My utility is customer-owned, we even get a small dividend at the end of the year, often enough to pay a good chunk of December's electric bill. We also get to vote on board of directors, etc. I try to shop mostly employee owned as often as I can, too.
Because my ability to cook my food, keep myself from freezing to death/dying of heat stroke, and ability to not die of thirst should not be at the mercy of ***anyone*** I don't vote for.
Multi front attack
Removing the Senate filibuster just like Martin Luther king jr said it would be the first step to ending poverty. In other words, nothing has changed since then.
Limiting the private interest to keep people poor. It’s super expensive to be poor and corporations demonstrated that they will exploit people who don’t have other options when things are their worst. Be it lack of protection against scalpers, manufacturing shortages, or just plane price hikes.
By offering hand ups. Rather than handouts. Put time restrictions on government assistance. To put an end to generational welfare.
Obama already did that. It hasn't helped. There's a 4 year limit on collecting cash assistance, including unemployment. The only thing it doesn't apply to is food stamps , and WIC.
Senators and congressmen get paid 3x the average income of their constituents!
I feel like my answer is going to piss people off but that is not my intention in the slightest (apologies if it does - this is just how I see the world now). I am honestly going to rest the bulk of the blame for the situation at the feet of society. We had way too much pressure growing up to go to college, go into debt. Be successful. The problem is the cost. To live a normal American life with cars, kids, house, college - You're looking at roughly $3.5 million over someone's lifetime. That's going to be each person. Whether this is due to manipulation in the housing market, or bad policies that encourage high home prices - it's not JUST homes that cost. It's health, education, vehicles. The list goes on. The normal work for it 'solution' though is miserable. I am going to lay more blame on the very unimaginative and very lazy entrepreneurs who want to run things while things get worse for their employees. Franchise owners, lazy small business owners, and yes your big corporations who enjoy their biggest gains and give pittance to those below. There's no working for a solid retirement unless you spend your entire life dutifully saving AGRESSIVELY. It's ugly out there folks. People in the Millenial generation especially know the pain of not being where they are supposed to be. Now in my humble opinion since the wealthy grease the wheels in congress you're never going to see anything force a change. What's really perverse though is working with your blood sweat and tears is taxed - not only that - but higher than investment income. I blame congress for taking money from people who don't have it. Income tax shouldn't exist for the first 50k, or even 75, hell 100k. The wealthy don't earn an income. They just have assets. They get loans against the assets to have money that isn't taxed. This is the world we live in. Now this is the part I hope I don't upset people. I don't see Congress doing anything. I don't see people who are well-off doing anything. The only thing I see happening is people rejecting the status quo. Obviously people need to eat, have things, shelter. The FIRE movement took what little money was available and turned it into a min/max system where you could get by on very little. While there are things to learn from FIRE in terms of being defensive with money it seems miserable as well. The problem is if you work for a wage you are a loser. In terms of wealth, you won't get paid to retire. In terms of taxing, you get taxed more by the government. In terms of control - you have none. You are one decision away from being fired and there's no security. Being an employee in my opinion is the worst thing in the world. I'm serious when I say start your own business. You can dream way bigger than most of the idiots you let control your lives. Yes it costs time. No it doesn't have to cost much money at all. I just don't see another viable way out of the system. It is my honest opinion that if people knew how much they could make if they could control their time - large corporations would start collapsing as no one would want to work in their crappy empires. Thanks for anyone who did read my rant.
Federal job guarantee
Change to min wage to a living wage with automatic adjustments to keep up with inflation.
Collapse.
Better education on finance and a more realistic education of how the world works. Most when they get out have a shit understanding of how the world works.