Why do we have Poverty in America

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-18 08:59:34

For SpaceNut re this topic in general ...

The concept that there might be an inverse relationship between the generosity of a culture and levels of poverty in that culture could be tested.

The test would be the province of the Social Sciences.

In fact, as your Internet searches have so often shown in the past, it seems likely someone has formulated a hypothesis, done the needed research, and published a paper or perhaps even a book on the subject.

Generosity as a human behavior has scope. It is greater close in (family, friends) and becomes less powerful as the range of interest increases.

A nation can be generous, and the United States has a history of generosity of prodigious dimensions, but right now it would appear the United States is in a period of contraction of generosity.

(th)

kbd512 · 2019-12-18 17:48:49

tahanson43206,

Apparently, expressing meaningful thoughts over the internet without real human interaction can't be done in 140 characters or less. Who knew?

The requirement to hand-wash items prior to recycling is inexcusably lazy engineering on the part of the people who designed the recycling plant, an absurdly inefficient use of potable water, and a likely precursor to poor quality control. If the recycling centers don't have the capability to sort and clean items, that says more about how poor the process control is than it does about our ability to recycle materials. Businesses that recycle their own materials have washing stations to clean those materials.

I assure you that the market for materials is quite strong, but unless you also want price increases for materials, there's a limit to how much can be paid for those recycled materials. Since prices vs wages are at least part of what's driving people into poverty, I contend that we don't want that. If it costs more to recycle than it does to obtain new material, that removes the incentive for recycling. If the process is executed correctly it actually costs less and the proof is in the prices paid for scrapped or recycled materials by manufacturers. We can always issue a government mandate to recycle, but that would only have the effect of increasing prices and making products more unaffordable to those with limited incomes.

How do you make the logical leap that "most" activities, of which recycling materials is but a single example, don't generate income in a capitalist society?

That seems like an incredibly overgeneralized statement to me that's lacking empirical evidence. In capitalist societies, we value competence over social status (or at least those of us who believe in hierarchies of competence over class warfare) and the evidence for that is in the general outcomes we experience. That competence is typically limited to some particular specialization.

The "Renaissance Man" fantasy that secondary education institutions engage in is doing a fantastic job of driving up the cost of education to unsustainable levels and bankrupting the students- as evidence by the fact that many of them are already buried under a mountain of debt before they've started their first job, but terrible for general productivity and the general utility of money- which is to do something of value to someone else with it. The entire stated purpose behind educating our students is to enable them to become more productive members of our society, but the system that our academics have set up is directly at odds with that purpose. Recall that all institutions exist to perpetuate themselves, not necessarily to do something of significant value for anyone else. And yes, I learned that from a college professor. All education has value, but that value is context-sensitive.

I value the competence of a homeless man with a 6th grade education who's been recycling Aluminum his whole life more than I value some academic with a PhD in metallurgy who's never recycled a single piece of Aluminum in her entire life. Knowledge has to be translated into useful end states in the objective world. If you've never actually done something before, then there's no way for you to be competent at doing it. It's not that I think our metallurgist isn't intelligent or capable, it's that she has zero practical experience with the specific process of recycling a specific material. The evidence for that is literally everywhere. After a surgeon has been through 10 to 12 years of schooling, they spend another 10 years actually performing surgeries under the supervision of more experienced surgeons before they're considered to be competent enough to perform surgeries without supervision. None of that should be taken to mean that I don't value education or think that it doesn't have very real and tangible benefits. That said, education is also on-going process that has to be, at least in part, derived from experience or actual application of knowledge to a specific task.

Social vs Individual Values

There is no such thing as "social value", if for no other reason than everyone values different things and to varying degrees, which is why I'm constantly at odds with our "social justice" people. Value is entirely context / time / person / place driven, so it's actually "individual value". Oddly enough, justice is also an individualistic concept. Take slavery, for example. It's not possible to right a wrong that was perpetrated against one group of people by another group of people more than half a century after absolutely everyone involved was buried. Pretending that someone else owes something to someone else they've done nothing to, because they were physically incapable of doing anything to that other person at any point in their life, is a very dangerous idea that also happens to be devoid of any moral value and distinctly anti-social in nature. It does very closely resemble the belief in moral superiority so prevalent in the various other religions, mostly proving that the majority of us don't know how to operate without some type of a faith-based belief system with a logos and ethos that we accept. Unfortunately, these well-intentioned (or so I chose to hope) belief systems are frequently very easy to pervert into profoundly anti-social activities.

If one particular person happens to have their head buried in their cell phone, hits a pedestrian because they weren't paying attention to see that person, and kills that person, then society as a whole is not affected in any significant way. The person who was driving and not paying attention will go to jail and the person who was killed can no longer support or otherwise be a part of their family, but society will still continue on without both of those people adding value to it.

The mere fact that one person died and another went to jail doesn't mean the rest of us need to go to jail or give up driving our cars. There's no such thing as universal / social competence when it comes to driving a car well enough not to accidentally kill someone else. However, the overwhelming majority of drivers manage to do just that- meaning not kill anyone else by driving their car. If the half of the people with the cars were running over and killing the other half without cars through poor driving habits, then that story would be very different, but that clearly isn't happening because the vast overwhelming majority of people, even if they value no one else but themselves, don't want to go to jail or injure / kill their fellow citizens.

The childishness of demanding that everyone else surrender their car to the state because someone else did something reckless is, at least to my way of thinking, more than a little asinine and utterly pointless. The car isn't evil or reckless and it's incapable of reasoning because it's a car- an inanimate object that will never be capable of human behaviors. Children masquerading as adults will frequently attempt to personify the car because they're too immature to truly accept that it's actually people who can be all of those things that they wrongly attribute to the car. They also bitterly dislike being told that their emotions don't validate their belief system about cars and don't constitute a valid reason for banning cars. It's just very unfortunate that they're unable to control their emotions and use their capacity for reasoning when they're upset over an outcome they don't like. The rest of us shouldn't be held hostage to other peoples' emotions.

Replace the word "car" with "money" or "gun" or "recycling" or "name the object" and my reasoning system about this regressive ideological / maturity issue present within a certain segment of our society doesn't change because my beliefs aren't based upon unchecked emotion lacking in basic reasoning. We invented cars, so now we use them, for better or worse, which is a subjective valuation derived from reasoning. Apart from what my car enables me to do, meaning travel great distances at significant speed, I don't like or dislike cars. If I could tap my chest and say "Beam me up, Scotty" and that was faster than driving my car to work, then I'd be inclined to do that instead. Since Scotty never responds when I tap my version of a Star Fleet communicator, better known as an iPhone, I purchased a car instead, which seemed like the next best thing. It's the poor man's version of teleportation- simple economy of time and energy. If someone runs over one of my own children because we live in a world filled with cars and people make mistakes, I'm not going to throw a temper tantrum and destroy my car, or their car, or demand that all cars be banned / destroyed, start categorizing certain cars as intrinsically more dangerous than others based upon superficial appearances and begin calling them "high-powered assault cars", or claim that cars are evil, or claim that people who drive cars are evil. Part of being an adult is accepting that you don't always get to choose the outcomes. Technology has its share of issues, but the way we lived before the new technology came along obviously presented enough of a problem to cause us to invent new technology to overcome it. In any event, setting expectations for behavior and then always following through with consequences, both good and bad, is the only way I know of to actually solve most of these human behavior problems.

So...

There's no such thing as something that benefits everyone equally everywhere and at all times, which means something with some particular value can never be applied to an entire society or in any other universal sense. That's simply an over-generalization in place of more nuanced arguments about how some activity or event or belief affects / benefits / hurts other people. I posit that recycling is another one of these things and yet I still believe there is a very substantial financial incentive to do it, especially for people who lack significant income, because our easily obtainable energy and materials are finite. We can't dump the equivalent of our entire fleet of commercial aircraft in a landfill each year, in terms of the embodied energy required to produce the processed materials or the valuable materials themselves, and then come back and complain that it costs too much to purchase the next beverage container or allotment of raw materials needed to construct new homes for people in need. We aren't lacking for anything, either in terms of energy or materials, to build whatever needs to be built next. I don't think we've actually been "short" or anything for the better part of an entire human lifetime. If we want our next Coke at an affordable price, then return the bottle or can it came in. This is how things used to be before computerized mass manufacturing could simply make another one at a slight cost increase. This issue of supplying everyone, rich or poor, is all down to we consumers. The businesses that make the products can't go to every store, house, or landfill to reclaim their packaging materials.

Why such a long post about this point?

1's and 0's are cheap. People and materials are not. This axiom will only apply to the nth degree on Mars.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-18 19:38:41

well, well 1,898 characters according to windows word.... nicely done...

My particular town has had to close the dump, turning it into a turnkey processing center and it costs $1.50 a bag of waste that is not recycled of the items that they will take. So my trash is compressed to save on bags. With the town selling off the recycles in a one stream collection process seperate for corrigated cardboard which is seperately collected. Items in the one stream are glass, plastics that have a grade number, aluminum cans and tin cans less the labels. So something like a pizza box from take out only the outer shell is in the cardboard collection while the parts with food grease are trash.

Sorry that was with a set of readers not quite to perscription to make use of that I could post with at all as I have more but could not write more as the others were stepped on after falling off the face.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-18 22:10:39

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wants to spend more than $300 million from the state’s emergency budget reserve to add 2,100 shelter beds and provide other help to combat homelessness

In addition to adding shelter beds, Inslee wants to give rental and other housing assistance to more than 3,000 people. His plan would cost $146 million during the 2019-2021 two-year budget cycle and ultimately cost $300 million over three years.
The governor said the state would work with local communities on issues affecting the homeless like mental health, drug addiction and job training.
Inslee said the state's booming economy driven by technology companies such as Amazon helped draw a half-million new residents over the last five years, driving up housing costs and exacerbating homelessness.
Inslee said he wants to reduce the number of homeless people by 50 percent over the next two years. The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness said as of January 2018 there were more than 22,000 people without shelter in the state.
The homelessness problem is particularly acute in the Seattle area, with an imperfect one-night count earlier this year estimating more than 11,000 homeless in King County and encampments in parks and freeway underpasses.

kbd512 · 2019-12-18 22:28:59

SpaceNut and tahanson43206,

Despite the self-evident fact that this problem doesn't have any simple or easy solutions, I think America in particular and humanity in general are moving away from the poverty cycle at a breathtaking pace. The only people who starve to death in America do so by choice. That is a far better outcome than even my grand parents could have hoped for when they were younger than I am now. Right now we're in the middle of another software re-write for capitalism because it turns out the capitalists are every bit as human as communists and still prone to making mistakes. This is something that typically doesn't go very well in communism, either, as Mark Blyth* would tell you. It's going to be very messy in the short term, but in the long term I truly believe we'll be much better off. As Peter Zeihan is so fond of saying, decades of bipartisan effort have yet to screw this up and we're not about to figure out how to do that in the next decade.

* Mark Blyth is a classical liberal economist, a highly articulate economic historian who has identified the various systemic economic failures in capitalist societies, and someone well worth listening to whenever you get a chance. He's one of those legal immigrants from Scotland, a naturalized American citizen, and if memory serves, his wife is German. He doesn't like President Trump very much, so he should be fairly popular with most of the people here. I find it fascinating to listen to someone with opposing political viewpoints who doesn't think we should burn everything generations have worked their hands raw or even bled and died for to the ground just because we're not currently getting everything we think we're entitled to. Real liberals like Mark and RobertDyck are becoming about as rare as hen's teeth these days.

Wealth is not a zero-sum game. That belief is only an artifact of zero-sum thinking. It's not written anywhere in our laws, our politics, nor our sacred Constitution- the expression of our logos and ethos. Amongst all the nations on this planet, America is completely unrestrained by anyone or anything except our imagination. The mere fact that we're permitted to continue to exist indicates that in some way that even we don't understand, the world desperately needs what we represent. Maybe it's that one quality that Churchill either commended or admonished us for, dependent upon your point of view, but who knows. If our experiment in self-governance goes terribly wrong, rest assured that there are an infinite number of ways to end our experiment, none of which bode well for us or the rest of the world. The mere fact that all of our personal, governmental, and moral failings have yet to tear it asunder is proof positive that we must be doing something right. And yet, we still can and should do better.

We've already tried many things that clearly don't work. Simply "trying harder", such as throwing more money at the problem, probably won't work. Each year we throw more money at the problem than most nations have as their GDP, yet the results don't seem to be measurably better. I've put forth some ideas that we're clearly not trying, and since they've never been tried before in any serious way, at least to my knowledge, there's at least a chance one of them will work. Reclaiming everything we make after we're done using it is a reasonably good start because it's kinda hard to push prices down when we're throwing away 2/3rd's of what we make each year. We're already squeezing as much money as we can out of the supply chain and I think I'd know a tiny bit about that after working for so many different multi-billion dollar corporations that make many of the consumer products we purchase every day. The actual margins range between 5% and 10% and yes, in aggregate that's still a hell of a lot of money. Such is the case for nearly all legitimate businesses. We can always raise taxes on these businesses, as Mark suggested we do, but ultimately that will only drive them out of business if we try to take that too far. Apart from trillions of dollars in wealth that's been parked overseas, there's not much left to take. President Trump has been trying to get businesses and individuals to repatriate that money to America as part of their patriotic duty to our country, so all of you wealth redistribution liberals who want to tax them to death need to keep your mouths shut at least long enough for him to entice them to bring their money back to America, which is the only way you'll ever get to tax any of it. Last but certainly not least, if anyone here thinks they have an actual solution, not merely some new way to screw over one particular group of people in deference to another, then in the words of Elon Musk, "Do it!".

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-18 22:51:56

kbd512 ... just a quick note to confirm that your long posts have been read by at least one person.

SpaceNut may well have access to statistics on how many distinct visitors have opened individual posts, but the only statistics I can see are for a topic as a whole.

For SpaceNut ... can you see statistics on how many site visitors call up individual posts?

***
On the outside chance anyone is curious about the statistics which ARE available, I see them on the main page:

Topic Replies Views Last post

The Views column shows (presumably) how many visitors have called up the topic.

To the best of my knowledge there is no information about individual posts.

Something else to keep in mind is that a "view' is counted if the "view" is by a robot collecting data for a search engine.

It would surely be interesting to ** someone ** to know how many "real people" look at a given post.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-18 22:58:29)

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-19 08:29:10

For kbd512 and SpaceNut ...

At the moment, the three of us are the only members of the forum laying bricks on this structure SpaceNut has been building since 2017-12-10 21:58:06.

The topic is young by forum standards, but it clearly has legs, and (I suspect) is likely to continue on for as long as the forum exists.

Today, I arrive having pondered kbd512's latest addition(s) to the topic.

The brick I'd lit to set in place today is for a new wing of the randomly projecting structure SpaceNut's been working on.

That new wing is to celebrate Job Creators! For the most part, this topic seems to have focused upon those who are in poverty, or complaints about employers, or observations about the behavior of the economy taken broadly.

Today, Yahoo popped up a candidate for the Job Creators wing:

https://www.intelligentliving.co/wild-grass-straws/

Here is a genuinely valuable contribution to the economy, which should lead to creation of thousands of jobs world wide.

The idea could have been thought of years ago, and for all I know, may well have been practiced for centuries, but NOW the idea has an excellent chance of success in the capitalist system.

Much to kbd512's apparent disapproval, countless competitors will inevitably join the marketplace as signs of financial reward become clear.

Great waste will accumulate, as unsold stock sit in warehouses.

Thankfully, it will ALL be biodegradable!

To bring this back to the Mars theme of this forum, the idea might as well be imported to Mars from the outset, along with many other similar ideas for efficient co-existence with the natural world.

Edit: Among the thousands of jobs created by this new product idea are those in the United States, after inspired entrepreneurs place orders for these straws and take the risks required to find willing buyers.

I am hoping such entrepreneurs will consider reporting their progress, if they have an affiliation with the NewMars forum.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-19 09:22:32)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-19 11:18:54

The equation is simple in that what you get paid per ton must be greater than the costs to process...on a personal not for the individual your costs are survival and not profit as you embedded costs to ready are not part of the equation as your time is not something one is paying out....

Continuing in the create a business topic

It is the season of charity and giving...
Man Who Once Spent Christmas Without Gas Pays Off Utility Bills For 36 Families

A Florida businessman is making sure some families in the Panhandle will have electricity and gas for the Christmas holiday. Michael Esmond paid off 36 delinquent utility accounts in the city of Gulf Breeze, the Pensacola

kbd512 · 2019-12-19 13:25:42

tahanson43206,

Competition is good and I approve of straight-up competitions. I don't support picking winners and losers. I also detest whining and crying about the fact that competitions have winners and losers. If you lose a competition, then figure out what you need to do better next time to win the next competition. If you're continually ending up with the short stick, that should be a clue that you're doing it wrong, rather than the rest of the world conspiring to cause you grief.

If someone can make biodegradable straws that don't grow mold or turn into jello before they get used, then great. If not, then back to the drawing board. Another possibility is that we quit throwing so much material away and start making things that are more durable and easier to recycle since they will inevitably be destroyed through use. We now have the excess manufacturing capacity, process automation capabilities, and reasonably priced high quality raw materials to make truly durable goods. The initial cost of a product will be higher, but the total cost over time is much lower. At a global or even just a national scale, disposable goods and excessive packaging don't favor the consumer and are ultimately unsustainable if we continue throwing most of that stuff away instead of recycling it. It may take decades to achieve un-sustainability, but eventually you'll get there. My own personal opinion is that we're already there. The proof for that opinion is that we have a growing number of young people who simply can't afford to live disposable lifestyles.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-19 16:20:30

If you can not tilt a cup with liquid up to your mouth then make a sippy cup top and get rid of the straw all together. You are right about the everyone gets a trophy due to hurt feelings these days in competition. I for one do not agree with that theory but insulting to win by over scoring is also an extreme that we do not need either as there is no competition being in a lopsided industry or event.

tahanson43206 wrote:

The "new" aspect of the offering described in the article at the link below is the economics.
Economics is very much a "technology" in an advanced culture.
https://store.hp.com/us/en/tech-takes/r … -a-service
(th)

SpaceNut wrote:

I have been in the for front of these types of demanning operations to remove the people, risk and pay for the non value adding services to move, transport, to address the item, sending it to where it needs to be at a future state.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-21 07:55:14

This post is in reply to a post by SpaceNut in the New Technology topic.

The New Technology topic was created to focus upon announcements of new technology.

However, a new technology can (and often does) stimulate emotions on the part of human beings, and it is natural for those emotions to find expression in a forum such as this one.

Begin Quotation from New Technology forum:

For SpaceNut re #15

It takes a mind shift of some significance, to move out of the victim zone and into the Job Creator mode.

I've been thinking about the concept of a Job Creator over recent days, as the conversation about Poverty in America continues in another topic.

In the beginning of my discussion (primarily with you but occasionally with others such as kbd512) I've been thinking of the Job Creator as an individual who starts a business from scratch and builds it up by hiring staff to amplify the productive efforts needed to create products and services for potential customers, to then find those customers through advertising or word-of-mouth promotion, and finally to manufacture or source the products and deliver them. As growth continues for the successful such Job Creator, additional demands by society impel addition of more staff to handle interactions with governments such as taxes and reporting requirements to be sure the enterprise is not poisoning animals, plants or people, as so many have done in the past.

However, in recent days, I've come to understand that almost inevitably, EVERYONE becomes a Job Holder, and the role of Job Creator transfers to the corporation. The founder often sells the going entity to an established corporation, and suddenly the person who had been an independent Job Creator becomes a Job Holder like everyone else.

This line of thinking has allowed me to develop more sympathy for your occasional rants against the practices which are observable in the economy we see in operation around the World. The corporation has a culture, and often that culture is defined by those whose souls are consumed with raw numbers of profit and loss, so that that needs or desires of workers become of lesser or even NO consequence to the corporate leadership.

End quotation from New Technology topic.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-21 07:57:14)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-21 19:13:03

In the 80's the many industry were trying to replace people with automation/ robotics and while some industries did retain a great many of there people with retraining in mind the end goal was always to reduce the number of personnel that they employed. This reduced overhead operations costs creating greater profits for the boards and CEO's which did not translatre down the ranks to those pouring in there life in a carreer to keep working.

Soul owner to single proprietor is the upside down pyramid of jobs while the corporate is the normal pyramid in which the first empowers its people to be creative to making the business successful while the other manages it out of the people unless they claim the idea as theres.

Soon your retirement plan could include new types of investments or not as 22% of Americans have less than $5,000 saved for retirement.

The Secure Act also raises the age that Americans must start drawing from retirement savings, known as the required minimum distribution age, from 70½ to 72, as people are living and working longer.
It creates new rules that could expand lifetime-income options within workplace plans, such as annuities. That's aimed at helping people establish reliable streams of income in retirement. It would also make it easier for employees to transfer retirement plan assets when they change jobs.

Now you have the 401K and the 401K Roth one is pretaxed pay reducing savings while it is taxed later when you retire with the roth coming out fully tax and not taxed at retirement. Some employers are matching one but not the other. Some are only giving stock to place into them which means you could lose your shirt before you can make a change on how its invested.

.
.

kbd512 · 2019-12-21 20:14:29

SpaceNut and tahanson43206,

There's nothing to stop workers from forming cooperatives in a capitalist system. There are a handful of very large cooperatives in Europe and elsewhere. However it is that they're run, at least from a management perspective, they seem to be able to make it work. We should probably copy success rather than reinvent the wheel. It's not written into law anywhere that employees aren't permitted to take a more active role in the management and profit sharing structure of a company.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-21 20:33:00

Another term for simular activity is a consortium but co-ops have working issues as well when by laws are not going to work to solve a problem of contention....

Americans are at risk of outliving their money.

Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 face a retirement savings shortfall of $3.83 trillion, with 41% of households projected to run short of money in later life, estimated 30% of private-sector employees work for employers that don’t currently offer a way to save for the future. The legislation paves the way for the growing number of Americans staying on the job into their 70s and beyond to continue saving in individual retirement accounts.

upping the 10% cap to 15 would aid in what can be put away but can you afford to do so if you are not middle class and not in poverty....

This may be an update to the same The income it takes to be in the middle class in each state

Cost of living in New Hampshire: 5.8% more expensive than than U.S. avg. interesting....
Cost of living in Texas: 3.0% less expensive than than U.S. avg.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-21 20:36:11

For kbd512 re #363

Thanks for a (to me) very interesting branch from SpaceNut's poverty topic!

I ran this past Google: what it takes to form a cooperative

and got page after page of what appear to be ** very ** appropriate responses.

The responses appeared to have a US focus, and that may very well be because the requester would have been identified as located in the US.

SpaceNut ... I'll be watching for your response to this suggestion.

Traditional capitalist corporations appear (as nearly as I can tell) to have earned your critical evaluation, but cooperatives are organized so that everyone who is a member has a say in operation of the entity.

I'd have to go back to check, but I ** think ** Lincoln Electric in Cleveland may be organized as a cooperative. It is noteworthy for its remarkable returns to workers, although (as I recall) it may be as demanding of workers as those rewards would justify.

SpaceNut ... I'll ** definitely ** be watching to see how you handle this suggestion.

It might represent a new way of thinking about the problem your topic addresses.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-21 20:47:08

This article has a twist in it as Federal homelessness chief has harsh words for California: 'You can't tell me it's working'

The local business community had banded together to hire Marbut in 2013 to do a top-to-bottom assessment of the city’s homeless resources.
It included Marbut going undercover and living on the streets for a time.
Marbut told one Fresno official that he would avoid bathing for a few days and then a pour a beer on himself so that he would fit in.
Marbut didn’t dispute this in his interview with The Times and said that he found that “becoming homeless” — as he called it in his report — offers insight that can’t be gleaned any other way.
The agency that Marbut now runs sits at the center of more than a dozen federal agencies that all have a hand in working on homelessness, including the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services. The Interagency Council doesn’t make direct funding decisions for programs, but it can create strategic plans to tackle homelessness, as it did under Poppe, and then roll those plans out to local communities and nonprofits.
For example, he has repeatedly told cities that panhandling, as well as feeding the homeless, must be stopped because both enable homeless people to stay on the streets. This has led him to push cities to crack down on loitering and sleeping in public places.

So he pretended top be homeless to see what being homeless was like but missed the points of how to correct the problem...

Some states and towns require a panhandly license to do so and it cost money to do so. That which is the way to stop the not looking for real work as some of the panhandlers feel that it is work to begt for a hand out...

Article did not go into how agencies help others to find jobs, get housing that is low cost for those to get restarted with ect....

SpaceNut · 2019-12-21 21:00:18

Recently homeless in Minneapolis, former businesswoman grateful for studio apartment

Jana Bonner, who once made $100,000-plus from her business-marketing and event-planning jobs, is thankful this holiday season for the new apartment building into which she and 43 other formerly homeless people moved recently at 30th Avenue and E. Lake Street in Minneapolis.
The site of Minnehaha Commons, affordable housing for the formerly homeless over age 55, was built on land made vacant by a 2010 fire that burned down the former Poodle Club, killing six staying in apartments upstairs.

Bonner was divorced and raising two children in Austin, Texas, and self-employed since 2003. She was hit in 2015 with a congenital spinal disease that required surgeries, bankrupting her after she lost her health insurance, and leading her to return to the Twin Cities in 2017.
She lived on $200 a month in public assistance, staying intermittently at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center shelter downtown.
“It’s been a tough few years. I never would have imagined that I would find myself in this situation. I used to make more than $100,000 a year — events and trade shows for high-tech companies. I never thought I would find myself without health insurance. I became vulnerable when I was working on my own. You’re subject to whatever insurance is available.
Rents for the 44 small apartments run $500 to $692 a month. But no resident is required to pay more than 30% of income, thanks to federal and state housing subsidies.

So one aspect is control rental costs based on income....

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-22 07:56:21

For SpaceNut re #367

First, thanks for finding this example of community support for a member.

However, the wording of your concluding comment might be misleading to some. I'd like to clarify that in NO way is rent CONTROLLED as that term is usually applied. The amount that the property owner charges is set by market forces (ie, competition). What the community is doing is subsidizing the rent with federal and state funds to achieve the 30% of income level.

My guess (without further information) is that the woman described in the report is just as willing (and wanting) to work as she ever was. The question she and the community have to ask is how that desire can be translated into activity that is beneficial to the lady and the community, without necessarily being financially valued. That is a quirk of the way we Americans have organized ourselves.

Yesterday, while engaged in volunteer activity, I was discussing volunteer opportunities with a visitor. She surprised me by telling me that her sister is a disabled vet, who became dedicated to volunteer work after a long period of recovery from injury. She now (I gather) puts nearly every moment she is physically able into volunteer work on behalf of a charity.

One of the current political candidates (I forget which one and the person may even have dropped out) was (as I recall) advocating compensation of community members for volunteer work like this. I like the idea, although in America as it exists in 2019, I am doubtful there is the willingness of the population to make the concept work. There is still to much lingering attitude that only economically valuable work should be rewarded.

In a rich society, with more than enough physical wealth to go around, distribution of that wealth through reward of non-economic activity would be a useful tool for insuring everyone in the society is free of primary wants.

In my opinion, much if not most activity by humans in American today is non-economic, and a lot of it is very well rewarded. I'm thinking of ALL the safety forces, for example, the ENTIRE clergy from top to bottom, the ENTIRE medical community, the ENTIRE education community, the ENTIRE arts community, and probably others I haven't thought of.

If we can support all those non-productive activities, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to adequately support similar activities that are currently of great value to society but which are rewarded in the most stingy manner possible.

Adding to the list of non-productive activities ... the ENTIRE political system and the ENTIRE judicial system.

By the time we are done listing all the non-productive activities engaged in by Americans, I'm guessing only about 1% of the population are actually doing anything in any way productive.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-22 07:56:42)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-22 12:35:07

Ah brain turns on that voluteering for a benefit is a quid pro quo arrangement but done in the efforts of work the organization needs to be registered as a 501c to allow for tax benefits to translate to the IRS forms but not as a wage...
https://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-d … r-work.htm

IRS’s definition. Organizations that qualify include:
Churches and other religious organizations
Nonprofit charitable organizations, such as Goodwill
Nonprofit educational organizations, such as museums
Nonprofit hospitals or organizations for conducting medical research
Public parks

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/oc_aug_ … 911_02.pdf

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia … 29659.html

Volunteers may deduct things like phone calls, postage, paper or other out of pocket expenses. If your volunteer work requires gear or a uniform, these may also be tax deductible. If you are volunteering at a hospital you may be able to deduct the cost of scrubs and having them cleaned. In fact, any volunteer of a §501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization is entitled to receive deductible charitable contributions. Although no tax deduction is allowed for the value of the services performed for this type of organization, some deductions are permitted for out-of-pocket costs incurred while volunteering.

Can I deduct the value of my volunteer service to a nonprofit? No monetary deduction for volunteer time and service. Volunteers cannot deduct the monetary value of their time volunteering to an organization.

https://form1023.org/what-are-employees … volunteers

For many nonprofits, the savings that come from not paying wages, benefits and taxes provide a great incentive to classify workers as interns or volunteers. But for the nonprofits that inappropriately classify workers as interns or volunteers, those misclassifications can lead to lengthy governmental investigations or costly lawsuits, including class action litigation.

SpaceNut · 2019-12-22 20:22:49

Most that retire find that its not for them and do work rather than staying on course with the early timing of it waiting for full benefits to come many years later.

When savings are meager, it might be time to unretire

I'm 67, retired and have $83,000 in a 401(k) that I left with my employer.
Based on my current income, I either need a job, or I have to start pulling $10,000 from my 401(k) each year, which will clean out my account in eight years

whats the level of social security and expenses?

of course article goes on to talk about insurance but not health...

other factors that have placed many into the poor house is the expense of food...
Here's how much grocery prices have changed in 10 years

seems that taking home the beacon has new meaning...with many of the slides showing not all that much has changed

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-23 07:42:25

For SpaceNut re topic and specifically recent observations about volunteer economic activity not valued by society ...

I ran a search of the FluxBB archive, and found NO/ZERO/NADA references to Maslow's hierarchy of needs

From this absence I deduce that no one in the (by now large) group of contributors saw a connection to the Mars enterprise and psychology.

However, after reading posts which appeared to postulate that people might engage in volunteer charity activities in order to secure tax benefits, I realized that there is a wide gap between understanding of what motivates such behavior, and the reality.

I'll start out with an assertion that invites rebuttal: No one in the United States, and probably anywhere, engages in volunteer charitable activity in hopes of financial benefits, such as tax relief.

With one exception that I know of, which I'll describe in a moment, ALL such activity is motivated by a deep felt human response to need that is NOT being met by the capitalist system of which we in the United States are a part, or by other systems in other places.

The exception (that I know of) is service work assigned by a judge to persons who have committed offenses against society, but who are not so far gone as to need confinement. Even in that case, hope of financial reward is NOT part of the equation.

I see both kinds of volunteer activity in a local 10 year old charitable organization with over 200 volunteers and (I suspect) many hundreds of low-dollar financial supporters and a few VERY generous high dollar volunteers.

As you pointed out, this is a 501(c)3 organization, and at the high end of the donation scale, I have no doubt the tax benefits are significant and are collected.

However, (I'm guessing here of course) the vast majority of donors are NOT able to donate at a level which exceeds the federal standard tax deduction, and therefore the donations they are able to make from their limited budgets are PURE charity in every sense of the word.

There are two kinds of psychological reward that I see at play in this organization. The primary and overriding motivation is caring for the target population, which is helpless and often VERY needy. A secondary motivation is more subtle. There is a psychological benefit to working as a member of a team which accomplishes some complex task in a specified amount of time with limited resources.

Interesting (to me at least) is Louis mention of members of a team helping each other in his imagining of an early economy on Mars. I predict that Louis will find (if he is still around to follow the Mars settlement team as it develops) that the spirit of "charitable giving without financial reward" will persist well into the future, and (if it is cultivated by the evolving culture) it will become a permanent part of the experience of living there.

The need to grub for money is demeaning. Anyone who can possibly do so gets away from it.

And THAT brings me back to Maslow:

SearchTerm:MaslowHierarchyofNeeds

Google came up with thousands of citations relating to an inquiry: maslow hierarchy of needs

For the purposes of the Poverty topic, I'll snip just two:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. ... From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. Wikipedia

I am interested in the hypothesis that a society which controls sufficient energy can afford to be generous to every member of that society.

Even in the United States, which is a VERY punitive society, those who are incarcerated are provided a minimal environment of security from weather, sufficient food to persist, minimal medical care and perhaps a few other minimums I've overlooked.

The United States is able to afford these amenities to the millions it incarcerates because it enjoys a sufficient abundance of energy to support the overhead.

However, if the United States were to achieve mastery over even MORE energy, it could afford to be generous to all the children growing up in deficient neighborhoods, without excellent or even adequate education and without excellent or even adequate nutrition.

The lacks evident in so many regions of the United States speak to me of a profound lack of sufficient energy to support the population.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-23 07:44:48)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-23 10:14:33

The court ordered volunteering of time for punishment retribution is not quite the same as a charitible contribution to others with no expectation of pay.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia … order.html
https://privacyrights.org/consumer-guid … ng-privacy
https://www.seminolesheriff.org/page.aspx?id=118

what might appear to be charitible is also a bartering system of fair consideration to value time in exchange for the assistence.

For the organization its difficult to maintain the 501.3c status if you need a cash flow to create the ability to give these funds to others in need. The not for profit also muddies the waters for paying people for a fair time work equation and or bartering for the work performed.

The mars topic with food, shelter, air, water was started by oldfart1939 with power not being put into the topics title but is a necessity on mars. Here on earth we can live ok without the power but it gives man a means to leverage what it can do for life to be simplified by allowing for communications, cooking with less work, heating to keep warmer, a means to make more hours out of a day that can be worked and so much more.

For the mars topic shelter is the next hurtle for man as without it we can not survive the cold of mars forever in a space suit and must be able to recharge it for continued use. Which means coupled very closely to shelter is life support of air plus water and food. With power a must to be able to be without the spacesuit in the shelter. Of course the shelter for mars is of a higher order of construction to what could be used on earth that keeps the elements out, you warm and safe within it.

So much like mars; earth needs are to provide the means to affordable shelter, power, food, water as the air is free.

The 1 item forgotten in both places is the sewage and waste removal for mars and earth as this as kdb512 did give a post for is critical for energy cost recovery but also for the financial aspects.

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-23 10:34:37

For SpaceNut re #372 and topic in general ...

Thanks for your point about unpaid service labor assigned by a judge as being in a different category from work done out of pure kindness.

Work done out of pure kindness is abundant in American society.

The point I was trying to lead toward is that work for which the capitalist system has no value SHOULD be valued by society.

That is exactly what one of the current crop of candidates is proposing. Which one is beside the point.

The point seems to me to have merit, because the charitable donation of time/labor/expertise is a significant part of the overall economy in the United States, and probably elsewhere.

An example often cited is the totally uncompensated devotion of stay-at-home-parents.

***
Directing this discussion back to Mars, as you have done ...

It should be possible to set up a Mars economy so that all labor/expertise/time is properly recognized and added into a system of value.

Louis has started a new topic dedicated to thinking out loud about how the Mars economy would work.

There has been plenty of discussion about this topic earlier in the history of the forum.

Louis has just restarted the discussion.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2019-12-23 17:38:16

'"tahanson43206" wrote:

The point I was trying to lead toward is that work for which the capitalist system has no value SHOULD be valued by society.

I could not agree more but thats the status of the IRS and laws which we currently work to.

The away around wages, salary ect is called a stipen for the work done.

https://www.forpurposelaw.com/appreciating-volunteers/

By allowing “nominal” stipends, the law recognizes that nonprofits routinely show appreciation to their volunteers with small amounts of money or benefits: The FLSA recognizes the generosity and public benefits of volunteering, and does not seek to pose unnecessary obstacles to bona fide volunteer efforts for charitable and public purposes.

https://www.ericperkinslaw.com/be-caref … employees/

Volunteer recognition gifts or stipends of limited value, fortunately, are considered a “deminimis benefit” and are not considered taxable income. If your nonprofit organization decides to offer stipends to volunteers: · Never pay more than a nominal 20% of what an employer would otherwise pay for the same service.

https://nonprofitrisk.org/resources/art … ifference/

Many nonprofit organizations offer some monetary benefit to their volunteers, such as stipends, reimbursement for out of pocket expenses, discounts on services, and so forth. “Bona fide” volunteers are those whose compensation is limited to reimbursement for expenses, reasonable benefits and/or nominal fees for services.

https://www.nonprofitpro.com/article/th … h-caution/

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia … teers.html

https://trust.guidestar.org/blog/2014/0 … t-interns/

Nonprofit Interns: IRS Regulations and Liability. By aligning your volunteer or internship programs with the DOL’s guidance, a nonprofit can reduce the risk of misclassification. In the event of misclassification, a nonprofit faces potential liability for overtime and back wages, liquidated damages, and attorneys’ fees.

https://www.hbclp.com/2018/02/should-vo … 1099-misc/

However, sometimes volunteers receive stipends, benefits, small fees or reimbursements for expenses. As long as the value is under $600 per year, the nonprofit organization is not required to issue an IRS Form 1099-MISC.

https://www.freechurchaccounting.com/staff-gifts.html

Gift(s) or stipends under a $100 TOTAL in a calendar year...would not require you to withhold and match FICA (but would still be taxable income for them)...but a stipend or gift of $100 or more could.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs14a.pdf
Fact Sheet #14A: Non-Profit Organizations and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) 2015

So there are limits and conditions for giving money in any form to a volunteer....

tahanson43206 · 2019-12-24 07:25:11

For SpaceNut re topic in general

This post is about the competitive nature of the capitalist system as it is right now in 2019 in a location close to the middle of the United States.

My duties in support of a charity (reported upon in earlier posts) bring me into contact with retail stores in a good sized shopping mall.

I confess that as a shopper, I have been oblivious to undercurrents of the stiff competition that is ongoing between stores themselves, and the looming ogre of online shopping.

However, in recent days, the pressure on a particular chain have begun to impact the charity operation.

To my knowledge, there have been no job losses, but (if I am reading the tea leaves correctly) upper management has been applying pressure that is leading to changes in behavior of the local management team. I'm told that the local store is the most profitable in the region, but apparently that is not good enough.

The chain has closed a couple of stores recently, and a manager of one of the closed stores landed here as a member of the local team. The manager of this particular store appears to be receding in influence, and a younger, more aggressive individual appears to be on the ascendant. None of this has been spelled out to me, but as a veteran of decades in American corporations of various kinds and sizes, my insights are probably close to whatever the reality may be.

Earlier in this long running topic, I reported preliminary thoughts about corporations having become Job Creators, as distinct from individual human founders.

Thanks to the unusual circumstance of my volunteer work, I am seeing the American version of the capitalist system up close and personal.

The feeling of comfort and well-being that existed over the past year under the previous manager is edging out the door.

The store initiated a large scale online support operation in recent months, and UPS trucks show up periodically to carry away cart loads of packages.

SpaceNut .... thoughts of giving employees extra benefits would appear to be far from the corporate focus on surviving right now.

Edit: After re-reading the post, I realized that I had failed to report the creation of one full time and a couple of part time jobs in support of the online operation.

Additional employment can be deduced from the flow of UPS vehicles which were NOT part of the operation a few months ago.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2019-12-24 07:28:29)

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