Why do we have Poverty in America

kbd512 · 2019-12-04 22:54:06

SpaceNut,

Speaking of people who are out-of-touch, Bloomberg said we needed to tax low-income families more. Apparently, he believes that governments, or other arrogant self-righteous a-holes like himself, know how to better spend their money than they do.

As dilapidated as so much of our national infrastructure has become, I'm honestly starting to believe that the government needs to start repair jobs using the labor of those who can't otherwise hold a job. I was never a fan of FDR, but the labor to fix our infrastructure hasn't materialized out of thin air and these people clearly need reliable jobs to go to.

If Houston started road repairs now, then we might be caught up some time in the next few decades if we had a labor force in the low hundreds of thousands. I've been to cities all across America and the condition of much of the basic infrastructure is not exactly what I would call "confidence inspiring". The waste water treatment facilities and power grid are two other services in need of a massive overhaul. Frankly, I'm a little dumbfounded by how we could ever possibly run out of decent paying construction / trade / transport jobs.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-05 08:23:42

For kbd512 re #326

Your suggestion deserves support. There is a need for a "job creator" who can collect all the unemployed people in this country and meld them into a productive work force. Who better than you to take that on?

The financial and social rewards would be (or certainly ** should ** be) substantial.

SpaceNut ... Would you be able to support a bid by kbd512 to become a job creator along these lines?

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-05 20:20:02

While there are many jobs for some which are capable of working and while the unemployment offices ask are you searching and of what list of business they typically stop at that point with only some assistence to education or a job learning program but they do not employ you.
The government jobs programs that got you a job are not in existance any longer. For a period of time the jails were part of that work on infrastructure but its been done away with. There are some companies that like manpower, peace corp, which are not the same sort of program.
I agree that there needs to be something but its got to spread out to all counties, towns and cities big and small. It should be part of the unemployment food stamp cross connection of programs that serve those that are in need. If homeless then a small tiny home is granted to the worker until they are stable to pay for a rental. You smoke, do drugs, drink to a drunk and you are bounced out of the programs assistance. The whole point is to et you on your feet and heathly to be able to stay and get better work.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-06 05:51:09

For SpaceNut re #328

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I like the scope of your concept.

However, I think the focus on a tiny part of the population that needs work is to miss the bigger picture. There won't BE any jobs without JOB Creators!

We are facing a time when fewer and fewer jobs will be available, for anyone, regardless of their education, high moral character, or connections to people in high places.

The nation (and the world for that matter) need JOB CREATORS! Our education systems would do well to focus on that need, because ** real ** job creators can take care of whatever supplemental education is needed by a prospective worker.

In the age of robots, we need millions and millions of jobs that robots cannot do, or that customers would prefer to be done by humans who WANT to do whatever those jobs are going to be.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-06 19:16:01

The jobs that are created fall into categories of job titles, duties or responsibilities, functions or service, design or engineering ect....so lets start with a career job title list:
Learn About the Different Types of Job Titles
Business Careers: Options, Job Titles, and Descriptions

List of Careers and Job Titles:
Architecture and Engineering Occupations
Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations
Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance Occupations
Business and Financial Operations Occupations
Community and Social Services Occupations
Computer and Mathematical Occupations
Construction and Extraction Occupations
Education, Training, and Library Occupations
Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations
Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations
Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations
Healthcare Support Occupations
Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations
Legal Occupations
Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations
Management Occupations
Military Specific Occupations
Office and Administrative Support Occupations
Personal Care and Service Occupations
Production Occupations
Protective Service Occupations
Sales and Related Occupations

List of Careers and Job Titles:

A list of 1200 on this page
https://www.careerplanner.com/ListOfJobs.cfm

Career Pages include Description, Activities, Education Requirements, Colleges offering related programs, Skills, Knowledge, Work Styles, Work Values, and Salary Information on the above page but these are more like active filters to weed out those that look like the cookie that they want to employ.

Kbd512 suggested infrastructure which covers roads of all sizes, bridges, rail car, water, sewer, electrical transmission plus creation as well as home residential buildings as well as destroyed businesses....Its also an area of action that is not only repair or rebuilding due to aging weather caused conditions but also from the impacts of the many storms, floods, tornado, huricanes, forest fires and more....

edit:
Mars is also a jobs program for all that can go as they create earth support jobs as well.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-07 07:14:02

For SpaceNut re #330

Thank you for another of your productive and helpful collections of information. I am trying to bring the focus to job CREATORS instead of job holders.

Job holders are in the category of victims, because their fate is opened up by a job creator. Job holders take a small risk compared to that taken by a job CREATOR. Job holders invest at most two weeks of their time in a venture. If they are not paid after that period of time, they are not obligated to continue service.

The job CREATOR on the other hand, has so many risks to manage there is not time or space here to list them. However, the FIRST is the risk of hiring an individual to fill a job opening. That person may not work out at all, or may start well but fail later, or may even quietly cause havoc within the organization.

Meanwhile, the job CREATOR has assumed all the risks of trying to manage a flow of activity that leads to satisfied customers and a flow of income sufficient to cover expenses (of job holders, for example) and to generate a small return to sustain the business, if the activity is a business, or benefit to society if that is the focus of the enterprise.

This morning, after thinking about your post overnight, I asked Mr. Google to deliver a list of occupations that create jobs.

Google came close, but it is just a computer program, and it missed the mark. Below is my feedback to the programmers at Google, and the top page of results delivered in response to the search request:

Google search string: occupations that create jobs

Feedback to Google:
In hopes that this comment will reach a human being, I'd like to ask for help with the google request I entered this morning. The request was for "occupations that create jobs". I observe that the Google algorithm betrays the almost universal mind blockage that I find in almost every person I meet or talk to. The general mind set is to think like a victim. A person looking for a job is a victim of circumstances defined by others. Those others are the job creators, who are an indispensable element of the human economy, but I find/observe that most humans have not met a job creator, and worse, cannot imagine becoming one. The results I would have liked to have seen would have listed automobile service shop operator, as just one example of thousands that should have shown up.
(th)

Actual results delivered by Google 2019/12/07:

10 Careers With the Most Annual Job Openings: 2016-2026
Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers. Getty Images. ...
Retail Salespersons. Getty Images. ...
Cashiers. Getty Images. ...
Waiters and Waitresses. Getty Images. ...
Personal Care Aides. ...
Hand Laborers and Material Movers. ...
Customer Service Representatives. ...
General Office Clerks.
More items...

Careers With the Most Job Openings - 2016-2026
https://www.thebalancecareers.com › careers-with-most-job-openings-4587335
Search for: What careers are in demand?

People also ask
What jobs have the most vacancies?

What jobs are in high demand 2019?

What jobs are easy to get and pay well?

What jobs are needed in the future?

Occupations with the most job growth : U.S. Bureau of Labor ...
https://www.bls.gov › emp › tables › occupations-most-job-growth
Sep 4, 2019 - Table 1.4 Occupations with the most job growth, 2018 and projected 2028 (Numbers in thousands). 2018 National Employment Matrix title and ...

Most New Jobs - Bureau of Labor Statistics
https://www.bls.gov › ooh › most-new-jobs
Sep 4, 2019 - Most New Jobs. Most new jobs: 20 occupations with the highest projected numeric change in employment. ... Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Most New Jobs,
Careers with Largest Employment | Careers | CareerOneStop
https://www.careeronestop.org › Toolkit › careers-largest-employment
See which careers have the largest number of jobs, in any state or nationally.
Careers with Most Openings | Careers | CareerOneStop
https://www.careeronestop.org › Toolkit › Careers › careers-most-openings
These are the occupations expected to have the most annual job openings over a 10-year period. You can view this list for any state by changing the location ...
Careers With the Most Job Openings - 2016-2026
https://www.thebalancecareers.com › ... › Basics › College Majors
Career One Stop.). Most of these occupations require no more than a high school or equivalency diploma, and employers usually provide on-the-job training.
The 100 Best Jobs in America | Best Jobs Rankings | US ...
https://money.usnews.com › Money › Careers › Rankings
US News ranks the 100 best jobs in America by scoring 7 factors like salary, ... to advance throughout our careers and provide a satisfying work-life balance.
The 25 Best Jobs of 2019 | Careers | US News
https://money.usnews.com › Money › Careers
Jan 8, 2019 - Health care jobs require years of higher education. But workers willing and able to make that investment see it pay dividends in the form of high ...

The 25 Best Jobs of 2019 | Careers | US News
https://money.usnews.com › Money › Careers
Jan 8, 2019 - Health care jobs require years of higher education. But workers willing and able to make that investment see it pay dividends in the form of high ...
25 Highest Paid Occupations in the U.S. for 2019 - Investopedia
https://www.investopedia.com › Careers › Salaries & Compensation
According to the BLS, employment of healthcare occupations is projected to grow 14% from 2018 to 2028—adding about 1.9 million new jobs. This growth is ...
[PDF]Opportunity Occupations - Philadelphia Fed
https://www.philadelphiafed.org › identifying_opportunity_occupations
by a high degree of opportunity employment — jobs ... occupations, the share of jobs available to ... reports do provide estimates for states (Carnevale,. Strohl ...
21 Future Jobs the Robots Are Actually Creating | Inc.com
https://www.inc.com › jessica-stillman › 21-future-jobs-robots-are-actually-c...
Dec 6, 2017 - What will these new gigs look like exactly? The report imagines detailed job ads for 21 future careers that Cognizant thinks may emerge in the ...
Searches related to occupations that create jobs
what careers will have the most job openings
most in demand jobs
highest paying jobs
fastest growing careers
bureau of labor statistics
fastest growing jobs by state
fastest growing careers florida
bureau of labor statistics job growth chart

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-07 10:38:32

tahanson43206 wrote:

10 Careers With the Most Annual Job Openings: 2016-2026
Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers. Getty Images. ...
Retail Salespersons. Getty Images. ...
Cashiers. Getty Images. ...
Waiters and Waitresses. Getty Images. ...
Personal Care Aides. ...
Hand Laborers and Material Movers. ...
Customer Service Representatives. ...
General Office Clerks.

these are general job types of which from the list are service providing services and what we desire is general business types..

business or company types list: mining, drilling, repair, ect..

The Seven Most Popular Types of Businesses

Types of business structures

SpaceNut · 2019-12-07 12:36:55

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-bu … structures

Legal and tax considerations enter into selecting a business structure.
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/r … usinesses/
Sole Proprietorships
Partnerships
Corporations
S Corporations
Limited Liability Company (LLC)

Small Business Administration's Choose a business structure web page.
https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/laun … -structure

kbd512 · 2019-12-07 13:41:36

tahanson43206 and SpaceNut,

Bravo!

You've done more to explain the fundamentals of the legal peculiarities of operating a particular type of business than I've seen collected in internet posts elsewhere. I would add that the process of learning the various laws and regulations can take several months, sometimes longer, so before you decide to quit your job and work for yourself, there's a lot to learn. All of it is stuff that anyone who will be successful in business can and must learn. Here in America, there are minimum standards for nearly everything. Working knowledge of the various applicable laws is no different in that regard. Although it is a barrier to entry, it's by no means insurmountable and protects everyone involved from needless injury or loss of life or property. Ignorance of the law will never be an accepted excuse for failing to follow the law. We should split all of this stuff out into its own topic, perhaps entitled, "So, you want to start your own business..."

At a federal level, the other two very important things you need to know about are our labor laws and environmental laws. State and local laws can vary substantially, which is where you really should seek expert legal advice before undertaking activities that may run afoul of local-level laws. The IRS / DoL / EPA are all pretty responsive to inquiries, or at least I've always found them to be very courteous and helpful, and the laws your business will be subject to are relatively straightforward. However, compliance is often less straightforward. There are summaries on the various federal websites to explain the minutia of the various laws.

Apart from that, then dependent upon what you're making or providing services for, you may also need to know about laws specific to your line of business. For example, if you make and sell food products, then you'll need to comply with various federal and state laws regarding health and human safety, typically governed by the FDA and the state's health and human safety department where your manufacturing operations are located. Even if a third party manufactures a baked good for resale by your business, you can still be in legal jeopardy for failing to comply with the laws where the product is sold. Package labeling immediately comes to mind. For employee safety, OSHA regulations will, more or less, always apply. If your business makes heavy use of tools or chemicals or industrial processes, then you'll definitely want to know those regulations inside and out, and appropriate PPE to employees. In general, it's a good idea to know the applicable OSHA regulations, no matter what kind of business you're running.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-07 14:33:19

Thank you kbd512 and tahanson43206 to which I have copied posts to a topic of the title so as to get a consolidated reference for what we know much change.
=Creating a Bussiness for Jobs

SpaceNut · 2019-12-07 21:31:07

From what I have seen in my local area its the service provider industries that are under the most strain for business types. This covers stores, restaurants, mini-marts, gas stations and so many more...There seems to be plenty of help wanted ads but just as many unfilled in places that have them. The business that have relocated are within miles of there last location while others have gone out of business. For me the effects are in higher property taxes as we lose business that are part of the supporting income stream.
States that have gained or lost the most jobs in 2019

When unemployment is low, many businesses have a hard time finding workers to fill open jobs.
When this happens because of a lack of skilled workers, businesses or state officials may try to narrow the gap by providing jobs training.

52 slides showing how each state is doing

from the Maine slide:

Community college enrollment usually spikes when unemployment is high. But that’s not the case in Maine, where low unemployment has still seen an enrollment bump in the state’s community colleges—which should make graduates all the more competitive when they receive degrees.

I have noted this before in that education does not garentee a wage to comensurates with the level you obtain.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-12 19:52:44

A part of that poverty picture is that which are recieving SSDI or SSI.

Many confuse the terms used for social security and forget that there is a provision that covers the disabled. Typically, Americans who are too physically and/or mentally impaired to work may be eligible for one of two kinds of benefits: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

While SSDI is for people who have worked at least 10 years, they are typically 50 to 65 years of age, in poor health, without much education or many job skills. They often suffer from maladies such as debilitating back pain, depression, a herniated disc, or schizophrenia.

SSI is for low-income recipients who have seldom, if ever, been employed most starting as children which carries on into adulthood with little change to the ability to do active work. One example is a low-birth-weight baby, on the other hand, is categorized as “Medical Improvement Expected,” and the case is reviewed every six to 18 months, because growth and change are anticipated such that you grow out of any disability.

More than 16 million Americans receive either SSDI (8.5 million) or SSI (8 million).

SSI benefits can run to $770 a month; SSDI payments, which are based on lifetime earnings, can range from $800 to $1,800 monthly, government figures show.

Merely getting benefits is an extraordinarily difficult task, often taking years and requiring applicants to compile reams of documents, then state and restate their cases in front of hearing officers, adjudicators, and judges.

Those already receiving disability benefits are subject to so-called continuing disability reviews, which determine whether they are still deserving of compensation for an injury, illness, or other incapacitating problem as their lives progress.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-12 22:28:36

California city weighs housing the homeless on cruise ships

This just sounds silly when we can 3D print a home on governement land and start the recovery process..

SpaceNut · 2019-12-15 18:18:55

Interesting list:
What are we wasting money on?

Throwing out leftovers or expired food.
Buying fast food.
Purchasing overpriced beverages.
Giving in to impulse buys.
Dining out in restaurants.
Paying needless interest, such as on a credit card.
Not returning unneeded items after buying them.
Buying name-brand goods over comparable generics.
Not comparing prices when shopping.
Overpaying for digital services.

claimed total "throw away $139 a month, on average, which translates to $1,668 a year. Seeing as how 60% of Americans don't have enough money in the bank to cover a $1,000 emergency expense, and 42% of Americans have less than $10,000 in retirement savings, that's a lot of money to be losing out on."

Saw one of the local NH papers today and its from page had this article: "No vacancy: Housing crunch has shelters full and homeless camps growing"
While a new report shows a drop in the number of people experiencing homelessness in New Hampshire this year, advocates say the numbers don't tell the real story

This is the face of the new homeless:
5df3e7e99b922.image.jpg?resize=750%2C501

The coalition’s 2019 “The State of Homelessness in New Hampshire” report, which will be released on Wednesday, found that 1,382 people were homeless during a 24-hour census of both sheltered and unsheltered individuals conducted last January. That’s 68 fewer people than were counted the previous January, Kuhn said, and 74 fewer than were counted in 2017, which amounts to a 5% decrease over the past two years. Longer stays and lower turnover aren’t limited to the winter, she said. “This is a year-round thing,” Kuhn said. “‘Our shelters have been at capacity for many, many years. We do know people are getting turned away and there really are very few options for them.”

5df3e7e951017.image.jpg?resize=750%2C542

Left overs from the night before....

“Homelessness is occurring year-round, and we are typically seeing demand exceed our normal bed capacity for the majority of the year,” she said. “You’ve got increased lengths of stay, which means our beds are not opening up as quickly as they could for new people in need.” According to the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, the monthly median gross rent statewide for a two-bedroom unit is $1,347; meanwhile, the vacancy rate is less than 1%. That’s what is really driving the homelessness situation in New Hampshire, advocates say.

5df3e7e96aa64.image.jpg?resize=750%2C547

Housing experts say the best way to combat homelessness is to prevent evictions in the first place. The goal is to address the underlying reasons for why people end up losing their housing, including physical and mental illnesses and substance use disorders, “It doesn’t mean that people won’t fall into homelessness, but that you have a system in place that can make that experience as brief as possible, as rare as possible and only one time,”

Not a good thing in winter to be in the situation during winter....

A tiny home set on land with a keycard interlock that is given would work to monitor the structures and to make it so that all could be servered in a way to which keep the cycle from continuing for them.

I see one thing in the images which they need help with and that is smoking which is very costly for health reasons and for financial as well depending on the level of the habit....

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-15 19:10:04

For SpaceNut ...

Thanks for showing the link to this story.

SpaceNut wrote:

California city weighs housing the homeless on cruise ships
This just sounds silly when we can 3D print a home on governement land and start the recovery process..

I was curious about this proposal, so found this citation:

Oakland, CA, Considers Moving Homeless Onto a Cruise Ship
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/12/oakland-ca...
2 days ago · “Cruise ships have been used for emergency housing after natural disasters and for extra housing for things like Olympics.” Like many California cities, Oakland has a serious homeless problem. Leaders there are considering the unique approach of providing housing for the homeless by parking a retired cruise ship on one of the city’s docks.

The key word there is ** retired ** ... A ship that is never going to sea again will (most likely) be scrapped, which would cost a LOT of money!

I caught in one of the citations a complaint that the city would be using dock space.

However, that needn't be the case, if the ship is hauled up a river where it can draw power, clean water and supplies for residents from a community, and deliver sewerage to (properly enhanced) sewage treatment facilities.

On the whole, this sounds like a creative idea from a category of folks who seem (to me at least) to suffer from a lack of ideas for solving problems.

All that said, I'd like to try to encourage you to develop further your opening suggestion of using modern high capacity 3D printers to make large numbers of sturdy housing facilities for large numbers of people who are willing to live in communities where the minimum wage predominates.

I've actually offered that idea to a local real estate professional, although I would be astonished if she were to find a way to move the idea in the community where we reside.

The idea would be (if fully implemented) to find a block of turf not otherwise encumbered, where city utilities could be installed or upgraded if already present, to allow walk-only living in individual homes 3D printed rapidly and then finished by the residents, much like the habitat-for-humanity homes you've already shown us elsewhere in the forum archive.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-15 19:11:24)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-15 22:37:18

Materials and methods for a 3d printing of that type of structure here in the north would not work out so well but maybe it could be modified as we talked about in the construction topics as if we were testing sealing for mars on such a build in a wet and cold climate.

The same could be said of RobertDyck's construction of fire proof homes for others to build for housing.

Since the MDRS is in UTAH why not build building of a simular design to create the novelty market for different open concept home designs...

What I am finding is that when savings are not more than a months bills we can run the risk of being homeless in short due to no income being earned in short order after losing a job. That when we are reaching retirement age that if that income can not pay the bill that it will not take much to become just another statistics on the street.

So its seems that affordable housing is the issue for where these people live as they are paying out to much of the income to keep a roof over there heads.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-16 08:03:09

For SpaceNut re #341

Because you are a local expert on your immediate environment, I'm hoping to encourage you to think about, and perhaps talk to others about, how 3D Printing might be enhanced to work well in your climate. I'm using that term in this instance to include more than just the weather, although that is certainly important.

3D printing is in its earliest stages of evolution. It started small because the needs addressed by the inventors were at a small scale.

History of 3D Printing: It's Older Than You Think [Updated]
https://www.autodesk.com › redshift › history-of-3d-printing
Apr 13, 2018 - Three years later, in 1984, Charles Hull made 3D-printing history by inventing stereolithography. Stereolithography lets designers create 3D models using digital data, which can then be used to create a tangible object. The key to stereolithography is a kind of acrylic-based material known as photopolymer.

The brief history cited above reports 1981 as the "official" start date for additive manufacturing.

I would argue that constructing objects by adding clay to a form is very much a form of additive manufacturing, and that goes back thousands of years. However, the mechanization of additive manufacturing would seem (to me at least) to be a recent development.

In other words, the fact that there are challenges for design of large scale 3D printers to successfully build strong, comfortable living quarters in your region of the United States does most certainly NOT mean they cannot be addressed.

The key is ALWAYS leadership. There are (surely) plenty of energetic young people in your part of the country who would be persuadable to start thinking about how to address whatever problems there may be, in order to create living spaces for people who have modest skills and who therefore can only earn a modest income.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-16 20:01:51

Not an expert by any means just a home owner of a split level cinder block foundation with a neighbor up the hill from me that has a pour concrete foundation. Both of our homes suffer from the seasonal ground water table rise which comes in any small crack that it can find...

Such an investor will be a large property owner wanting to subdivide but control the home styles built on the parcels and even sometime being the contractor for the building.

Update on law Supreme Court won't revive homeless camping ban in Idaho

If this was heard it would Sound like there can be no camping of any type whether you are homeless or rich wanting to get in touch with your wild side...

Annual Homeless Assessment Report, as of 2018 there were around 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night and is on the rise as its effecting not just the dope adicts or drunks. It is now on the rise for the young adult to the aging senior...

It needs to start at the town and city levels for this help with the state and federal govenment making the needed remediation possible for those effected.

Towns and cities need to create controlled shelters that can be used not just for a short term because its cold during the night but more of a long term while the occupant is getting help for permanent residence.

The temporary structures require heat, light at a minimum for shelter from the elements for single persons.
For a family you would need an upgrade of the ability to maybe cook, bath ect might be possible for those needing shelter.
There may need to be a fee for staying based on income or ability to pay to be put towards the operational costs of such a housing system. There needs to be rules for the stay and time limits to solve what issue is present.

This is poor "With two children and a third on the way, Ciera Dismuke worked five jobs last year while earning just under $15,000."
The Tax Break for Children, Except the Ones Who Need It Most

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-16 21:46:29

For SpaceNut re #343

Thanks for the link to the camping non-decision story.

For those who might not have time to read the article, it reviews a number of similar court cases from around the country, all of which have been struck down.

Thus, the Supreme Court's decision NOT to take the case seems to reinforce the prevailing view that it should not be considered a crime to sleep outside if one does not have any other option. This current discussion started with the announcement that a city in the US is considering buying a retired cruise ship to make low income housing. I think that managing such a housing situation would be a challenge in its own right.

Your follow up to my pitch for a built community of VERY inexpensive 3D printed houses was/is interesting .... your wording suggested an investor might take on the challenge of trying to create such a community, with the implication that there might be some income after expenses were paid. In the community where I live, there is a perennial problem of landlords who run fleets of very inexpensive properties and invest almost nothing, so the city has to chase after them all the time, and simultaneously, renters are destructive at worst, and disrespectful as a norm.

An ownership model would seem best, if the goal is to enlist dwellers to take an interest in maintaining or even enhancing the value of the property.

However, trying to live on minimum wage at current prices would seem to be impossible for one person, let alone a family.

An interesting challenge for a class on community design would be to lay out a concept where everyone lives in modest comfort on a minimum wage.

Food, water, sewerage, housing, medical care, education, library services .... the whole suite of features expected in a modern culture could be delivered if prices were low enough.

Ultimately, that vision would depend upon availability of an abundance of energy, such as might be produced by a decent sized modern fission reactor.

In recent times in this forum, Calliban and kbd512 have made that point.

The title of your/this topic stays visible just a few inches above this typed line: Why do we have poverty in America?

An answer may be that we simply do not have enough energy available to go around.

We allocate a scare resource to those who are best able to grab as much as they can, so they end up with most of it.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-17 07:48:42

Repost to include:

tahanson43206 wrote:

For SpaceNut re #154
Today I ran across a story (video) about a Russian builder who created a machine large enough to build a decent sized house/apartment in 24 hours. I noted that the gaps in the 3D printed wall were filled by human workmen using two different insulation materials designed/selected to withstand Russian winters.
I also noted that the horizontal braces between 3D printed wall elements were plastic rods, which (I am deducing) would NOT conduct heat from the exterior wall to the interior wall.
These observations are reported here because a recent post in the forum (possibly by RobertDyck) pointed out the obvious unsuitability of a research demonstration 3D printed wall for a cold climate.
What the Russian video demonstrates is that a combination of insightful design engineering and judicious use of supplemental human participation can yield a 3D Printed accommodation that can (or at least ** should ** ) hold up to a Russian winter.
The video included cost comparisons showing that the 3D printed design is modestly less expensive than a comparable structure built with all traditional methods.
As another side note which may be of interest to forum members ... the 3D Printing was performed inside a canvas tent.
(th)

Canvas tent was suggested in construction topic...

kbd512 · 2019-12-17 15:34:16

tahanson43206,

I think I can tell you where a substantial portion of the requisite excess energy went- packaging. We should also call it marketing, since that's most of what anything that came from a store actually is. Note how much energy-intensive packaging material is simply being buried, year after year, decade after decade:

Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling - Containers and Packaging: Product-Specific Data

Glass and Aluminum are very energy-intensive to simply bury after a few days to weeks of use, at most, but even wood and plastic require considerable energy input. There's more than enough material to go around, but not if we toss half of what we make into a landfill each year.

Affordable resources are definitely not scarce here in America, but there are more wasted resources than you can shake a stick at. Industrialization and computerization of nearly everything have made production so fast and efficient that we've wildly over-produced disposable commodities with meaningless minor variations that do nothing to improve upon the function of a product. This comes at terrible expense to efficiency and therefore cost. Many Americans can't afford to purchase the nth meaningless variation of some product or the packaging that the product comes in, even though that clearly doesn't stop them from trying. The added expense in the form of the labor, machines, and materials that were used to package / market the product is too much for the customer to afford.

Do we really need hundreds of different types of toothbrushes, or do we just need manufacturers to figure out which ones do the best job of cleaning peoples' teeth at an affordable price and then produce nothing but what does the job most effectively? Why do we need to throw away or recycle an entire toothbrush after the bristles have been damaged? Why can't we just replace the head with a new one? Is it more expensive in terms of resources and energy to make a completely new toothbrush or just the head? The answer should be pretty obvious, shouldn't it? Now apply that same disposable commodity thinking to far more energy / resource / labor intensive artifacts of modern society, like cars, ships, aircraft, and buildings. Is it any wonder that we don't have enough energy and resources to keep pace with the increasing rate of consumption?

We now have an endless variety of meaningless choices that do not make our society more effective at progressing through our technological adolescence and it costs so much that a growing number of us simply can't afford it anymore. At some point, ultimate durability or the energy consumption associated with new manufacture or reuse has to be taken into account.

If it's faster and cheaper to 3D print small houses with concrete, do we really need to mess around with an endless variety of less cost-effective / more resource-intensive alternatives, or are our finite time and monetary resources better spent figuring out how to crank out as many as we can, as fast as we can, so that people aren't living outside when it's cold enough to turn them into ice cubes? We don't need ten different floor plans and thousands of different color variations to choose from. If white paint is cheaper than red paint, then we use white paint. If no painting at all is required, even better. If we could pre-fab the entire structure at a factory and plop it down wherever, that's probably the cheapest way. Fancy is for people with plenty of disposable income from long-term stable employment. I think effective is better than fancy in this case.

Here's a rather simple final closing thought. The American consumer has paid for the packaging costs associated with burying enough Aluminum each year to completely rebuild every commercial aircraft in our current fleet, and has done so every year since at least 1990. The fleet of commercial aircraft was estimated to be around 7,400 aircraft in 2018. From just the Aluminum that we've buried in landfills each and every year since 1990, that's enough material to source more than 324,000 pounds of Aluminum per airframe. The majority of commercial aircraft, by numbers, don't weigh that much when fully loaded with passengers or cargo and fuel. That is a staggering amount of waste. If we can actually afford to do that, although I opine that we can't, then there shouldn't be any issue with obtaining cheap resources because we've literally buried billions of tons of the wood, metal, and glass required to make houses.

kbd512 · 2019-12-17 18:49:25

Many of these homeless people could be recovering the 2/3rds of materials that are otherwise wasted each year. It may not be glamorous work, but you don't need any sort of advanced education to do it and they clearly need the work to provide an income for themselves. If we wish to continually manufacture new products that are minor variations of existing products, then nearly complete recycling needs to be in full effect. If you look at the numbers from the EPA in the link I provided, we're nowhere close to that.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-17 21:58:42

For kbd512 re recent posts

This post is mostly to acknowledge the time and effort you put into #346 and #347

Because your view is from the Southwest US, there may be (probably are) some differences in how things are done ...

Your comments about finding work sorting discarded/waste material reminded me of stories I have read recently about efforts to employ persons released from penal institutions doing sorting, so from both a humanitarian and economic point of view, at least ** some ** efforts are being made along those lines.

Since this topic is SpaceNut's inquiry into poverty, I'll add that a local station just ran a story about people trying to help single mothers to improve their educations while juggling low paying work and child care. The story was carefully non-judgmental. The subjects beat up on themselves. The gist of the story, as nearly as I could discern it, was to suggest that poverty literally starts in the womb for some children. The stress of the mother's situation makes gestation problematic for the child.

Your point about waste in the capitalist system we've developed is interesting, but some people regard that as a feature and not a bug << grin >>.

Entrepreneurs make investments in hopes of snagging enough share of the consumer budget to sustain their business, and apparently the system works well enough so it continues despite all the bankruptcies that occur in the background.

Low cost retailers of excess merchandise are abundant in the area where I live. This is a major metropolitan area, and I live literally on the dividing line between rich to ultra-rich folks, and great numbers of those who are just barely getting by.

Your mention of sorting waste in #347 is a real phenomenon where I live. People drive or walk through the allies, lifting the lids of the waste receptacles to try to find something worth carrying away. When i'm out in the alley and one of these folks goes by, I'll often engage in conversation. For the most part these folks are industrious and of good spirits despite their circumstances.

A while back in this topic, I observed to SpaceNut that what is needed is a set of Job Creators who can figure out how to make a buck hiring all the folks who need work and who are willing to make an honest effort. The challenge to such a job creator is non-trivial.

A local non-profit provides employment opportunities to disabled folks. What I've observed in my encounters with teams of such workers is that the key to their effectiveness is the team leader. That person MUST be of remarkable personality. My observations of this type of situation are limited, so no conclusions are possible, but of the teams I have seen, only ONE featured a team leader who took an obvious interest in helping the clients to be productive. Others apparently saw themselves as just glorified baby sitters who went off to look at their cell phones while the clients meandered about just getting in the way.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-17 22:35:14

Town waste transfer station collects some of the packaging but it can not all be sold and have stopped some items from being put into the one stream collection location. Such examples of paper or cardbox paper that is waxed and has food on it will not be collected and is waste. All plastic grades need to be clean of liquids that it once contained or its not recycleble.

A few of those in the area do visit trash bins to collect cans and plastic bottles from the waste as a means to earn cash from clean turn in of each item as a junk yard salvage locations for the aluminum by weight. Even sorting and cleaning of a delivered volume of materials would not earn the hourly wage for what is the processed value for good retrieved.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-18 08:26:23

For SpaceNut re #349

Thank you for your follow up regarding waste sorting. Your point about investment of time and energy to hand wash items is interesting. If the market for such materials were strong enough to support the investment, then it ** would ** pay off for the worker who takes this on.

The bottom line seems to be that much if not most human activity does not generate income in a capitalist society. The value of investments in social value is NOT measured in some societies, yet I suspect that such investments are what make life worth living.

I notice that in some older cultures, generosity toward those in the bottom tier is what lifts the entire society. The United States is a mixture of older cultures and brash new ones without any graces, so generosity is unevenly distributed.

I suspect this topic will continue on forever, because there will always be poor folks in the mix.

That is NOT an original idea, of course.

(th)

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