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What is poverty? The late political scientist Edward Banfield provided four degrees of poverty:
destitution, which is lack of income sufficient to assure physical survival and to prevent suffering from hunger, exposure, or remediable or preventable illness;
want, which is lack of enough income to support essential welfare;
hardship, which is lack of enough to prevent acute persistent discomfort or inconvenience. To this he added a fourth:
relative deprivation which is a lack of enough income, status, or whatever else may be valued to prevent one from feeling poor in comparison to others.
This is a good question, what exactly is poverty? I think Edward Benfield gives a much simplified answer. and I agree to disagree.
Is poverty an absolute or relative condition? What exactly is a decent standard of living? Poverty definition is highly individual and is much trickier, in my opinion.
In Europe, the poor are those whose income falls below 60% of the median. In American, poverty can simply be defined as somebody who are on public assistance. e.g. food stamp.
I've never met anybody who are on public assistance, but I have known ONE absolutely poor person. He was poor because he received nothing from no one. That to me is the real definition of poverty.
For example, n the past 10 years, many men and women have been discharged from military service with this label called bad paper. And as a result, they are not eligible to receive benefits from the Veterans Administration.
MANY people use drug and alcohol to mask the pain of PTSD, there are these so-called bad discharges. People call them bad paper. This is an administrative discharge where your command can essentially kick you out simply because you failed a drug test because you wanted to use some drugs to help you sleep (masking the horror and pain of PTSD). To some extent. It's kind of a scarlet letter.
On a job application, for example, it's worse than having no military service. If you have military service, they ask you, how'd you get discharged. It's very hard to get a job. You lose all sorts of benefits. Which employer would even bother to give you an opportunity knowing that you got kicked out of the military with a bad paper.
These people ended up losing all hope, they are homeless and suicidal. They don't want the government to give them a fancy cell phone, they want to earn their living with hard working just like most others do. But they are not even given an opportunity because they are labeled forever.
I call that real poverty.
Is the military now taking a closer look at this? Because in certain cases where it was the actual service and the PTSD that might have caused the bad behavior, I mean, it seems as if, perhaps, those veterans should be given some sort of exemption. Are they even considering that? No, they are not interested in change the system.
I find it unfair because we have changed law for illegals.
That's because the "unnetworked poor" --- grown, abled-bodied adults with no children or other ties preventing them from moving, training or developing skills to obtain better position --- choose their life of poverty, or are too comfortable with little.
And that's why nobody feels sorry for them. Last person I'll ever give a dollar to are able bodied male beggars on the street. I can go to Home Depot right now and find 10 illegal guys, can't speak a lick of English, willing to do any work that comes their way, and who would jump at opportunities presented to them to move up.
For example, n the past 10 years, many men and women have been discharged from military service with this label called bad paper. And as a result, they are not eligible to receive benefits from the Veterans Administration.
MANY people use drug and alcohol to mask the pain of PTSD, there are these so-called bad discharges. People call them bad paper. This is an administrative discharge where your command can essentially kick you out simply because you failed a drug test because you wanted to use some drugs to help you sleep (masking the horror and pain of PTSD). To some extent. It's kind of a scarlet letter.
I find it unfair because we have changed law for illegals.
I'd rather take from breeders and dead beats who think they are entitled and give to the men and women who suffer from PTSD and help them all we can. I could not have gone through what they did and they need more help. I also think we should give much more to people coming home even if they came home ok.
I'd rather take from breeders and dead beats who think they are entitled and give to the men and women who suffer from PTSD and help them all we can. I could not have gone through what they did and they need more help. I also think we should give much more to people coming home even if they came home ok.
The guy who pretty much wrote the handbook on capitalism, who coined the term "an invisible hand", whose "Wealth of Nations" is arguably the most influential text on economics and to some extent politics?
Here's some of what he has to say on poverty and why relative poverty still causes a very real degree of suffering. Shirts are mentioned.
Quote:
Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard.
Quote:
The poor man … is ashamed of his poverty. He feels that it either places him out of the sight of mankind, or, that if they take any notice of him, they have, however, scarce any fellow–feeling with the misery and distress which he suffers. He is mortified upon both accounts;
Quote:
A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.
In modern parlance, we'd say that humans are social creatures and that being excluded - on any grounds, including relative poverty - is stressful.
This is a good question, what exactly is poverty? I think Edward Benfield gives a much simplified answer. and I agree to disagree.
Is poverty an absolute or relative condition? What exactly is a decent standard of living? Poverty definition is highly individual and is much trickier, in my opinion.
In Europe, the poor are those whose income falls below 60% of the median. In American, poverty can simply be defined as somebody who are on public assistance. e.g. food stamp.
I've never met anybody who are on public assistance, but I have known ONE absolutely poor person. He was poor because he received nothing from no one. That to me is the real definition of poverty.
For example, n the past 10 years, many men and women have been discharged from military service with this label called bad paper. And as a result, they are not eligible to receive benefits from the Veterans Administration.
MANY people use drug and alcohol to mask the pain of PTSD, there are these so-called bad discharges. People call them bad paper. This is an administrative discharge where your command can essentially kick you out simply because you failed a drug test because you wanted to use some drugs to help you sleep (masking the horror and pain of PTSD). To some extent. It's kind of a scarlet letter.
On a job application, for example, it's worse than having no military service. If you have military service, they ask you, how'd you get discharged. It's very hard to get a job. You lose all sorts of benefits. Which employer would even bother to give you an opportunity knowing that you got kicked out of the military with a bad paper.
These people ended up losing all hope, they are homeless and suicidal. They don't want the government to give them a fancy cell phone, they want to earn their living with hard working just like most others do. But they are not even given an opportunity because they are labeled forever.
I call that real poverty.
Is the military now taking a closer look at this? Because in certain cases where it was the actual service and the PTSD that might have caused the bad behavior, I mean, it seems as if, perhaps, those veterans should be given some sort of exemption. Are they even considering that? No, they are not interested in change the system.
I find it unfair because we have changed law for illegals.
Agreed and HOW!
I DON'T believe in "affirmative action" but; I'll def make an exception for our Veterans. Especially those who got booted out for trying to do the right thing by NOT going AWOL even if it meant taking illegal drugs to function while in.
I DON'T believe in "affirmative action" but; I'll def make an exception for our Veterans. Especially those who got booted out for trying to do the right thing by NOT going AWOL even if it meant taking illegal drugs to function while in.
Thank you.
I personally want to start a non-profit organization helping these people. But in the veterans community, people start recognizing the veterans problem and they are working on it I believe. So it is good news. The problem is, if you have no job, you have severe PTSD, you don't trust anybody. There's these piles of paperwork, their own story they need to put together, telling why they believe this discharge happened — which is re-traumatizing.
There is always hope. Once a warrior, always a warrior, even though he is wounded...
What is poverty? The late political scientist Edward Banfield provided four degrees of poverty:
destitution, which is lack of income sufficient to assure physical survival and to prevent suffering from hunger, exposure, or remediable or preventable illness;
want, which is lack of enough income to support essential welfare;
hardship, which is lack of enough to prevent acute persistent discomfort or inconvenience. To this he added a fourth:
relative deprivation which is a lack of enough income, status, or whatever else may be valued to prevent one from feeling poor in comparison to others.
Only the last and by most nations other than the Europe, the white British Dominions (Australia, and Canada), The Asian Tigers and Japan. America as negligable poverty for the UN defines poverty is having an income of less than $1.50 a day. In the up can coming BRICS nations Americas poor would have twice the income of their Middle class!
I personally want to start a non-profit organization helping these people. But in the veterans community, people start recognizing the veterans problem and they are working on it I believe. So it is good news. The problem is, if you have no job, you have severe PTSD, you don't trust anybody. There's these piles of paperwork, their own story they need to put together, telling why they believe this discharge happened — which is re-traumatizing.
There is always hope. Once a warrior, always a warrior, even though he is wounded...
I wasn't in the Service; but, I do have PTSD. It's no fun so I can understand why a Vet would be scared, especially when dealing with mountains of "BS".
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Do I need to go all Adam Smith on this crowd?
