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The lowest income quintile, across all age/race/gender demographics, has the highest incidence of smoking, obesity, sedentary living, lottery gambling, heavy drinking and illegal drug use.
Data doesn't lie. The lowest income quintile leads virtually every "bad choice" category in existence.
I'd love to see your source data for "sedentary living and lottery gambling" but I did a little research on some of your other claims
Obesity "Poorer women are the most likely to be obese among all ethnicities. But there are a few counter-intuitive surprises here. The richest men were, overall, more likely to be obese than the poorest groups. The groups with the lowest rates of obesity were rich white women and poor black men. Obesity rises with income for black and Hispanic men, but it falls with income for black and Hispanic women. The relationship is clearly more complicated than "a disease for poor people in a rich country."https://www.theatlantic.com/business...besity/281434/
smoking
Education seems to have a greater influence than income level with 26% of people with income below the poverty level being smokers and 34% of those with a GED. Also, the disabled smoke at a rate nearly as high as low income individuals with 21% of the disabled being smokers. Also, Kentucky has the highest percent of smokers @ 26.1% while California and Utah have the lowest percent of smokers. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_sta...king/index.htm
Drug use But contrary to widespread belief, 2011 statistics show that the rate of alcohol use was over 10% higher for employed people than it was for the unemployed. Further, in 2010, 9.6% of full-time employed people used illicit drugs compared to only 2.6% of unemployed people. However, regular use by the unemployed was double that among those employed full time: 8.4% vs. 17%. In other words, employed Americans use alcohol and drugs at a far higher rate than the unemployed. But when the unemployed do use drugs and alcohol, they tend to use them more consistently. For welfare recipients, the statistics are mixed. While heavy alcohol use is lower among aid recipients than the rest of the population (5.9% compared to 6.4%), drug use is higher (9.6% compared to 6.8%). In both cases, however, the percentages are below 10%. Further, if the rate of drug use was reduced to the same level as non-aid recipients, the decrease in participation in welfare programs would be only about 1%.https://archive.samhsa.gov/data/NSDU...ts2011.htm#Ch2
That said, have you actually dealt with the poor in regard to giving them money? I have. Call me a fool if you want. I have given many thousands and watched them blow through it without spending a dime of it on the emergency that[b] they asked me for. I don't blame them because they have no idea on how to spend the sudden extra cash and I can afford to lose that.
The vast majority of people start off "poor".
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Look, I'm a liberal who believes in basic income. But poverty is as much a mental and psychological state of mind as it is the lack of wealth. You can't just give money to the poor and expect them to be responsible with it.
My husband and I were poor once. I know what the hell I'm talking about.
Better to have people strive to improve their standard of living through work and education. Give them enough to live on without them having to do anything or being given the opportunity to accomplish more will have them settle in a pretty sad state of existence. Which is what the 1% no doubt want.
Kind of like giving farm animals food and water and a nice pen to live in. Or zoo animals. Then you don't have to worry about them, you can keep them there and have people to make sure they don't leave the area where you want them to stay.
We are automating as many jobs as we possible can over the next few decades. There are not going to be any jobs to get.
You know your own experiences. You do not know every single poor person in existence.
To say that all poor people think and behave this way is just as narrow-minded and foolish as to say that all rich people are greedy, heartless jerks.
You are very fond of talking about how you were once poor. Do you really think that you and your current success in life are some kind of magical exception, never again to be repeated?
I never said we were the magical exception. I did say many times that we earned our way up. Money was not suddenly given to us.
Let me make it more simple for you to understand of what I'm trying to say.
Nowadays, I'm an engineering project manager. Did I start out my career as a project manager? No. I started out at the bottom and worked my way up. Through the years, I gained experiences and the more experiences I gained the more I became equipped to deal with problems and evolving situations in my trade.
Can you name me a single successful CEO or business owner that started out on the top right away? All started out somewhere and failed many times before they succeeded.
There is nothing in life that started out at the top and succeed right away.
Managing money is the same way. People have to learn to manage money from the bottom up. If they are given money, especially when they were struggling to manage money before, chances are they will fail spectacularly. You can't just give money to people who have never managed it correctly and expect them to be all wise about it.
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Also, I would like to point out that by saying that you believe in basic income, but also that it is never, never a good idea to give money to the poor, you have contradicted yourself in a most spectacular way. I know that you pride yourself on your logical thinking, but you kinda lost all of your points with that one.
False dichotomy. Either I believe in giving people money or I don't. You seem to have this simpleton idea of everything being black and white.
I believe in basic income given that people who are involved know how to manage the money properly. And this means they have to either go through a training program first or they have proven to whatever authority involved that they can manage the money properly. But simply giving everybody a basic income is doomed to fail.
Only in the mind of simpletons do I seem to contradict myself.
I believe basic income is a great idea. Really, I do. Just like having the right to drive and own guns is a great idea. I really really do. But I also believe that comes these rights people have to be responsible in some way and licensed.
I have been poor. I have dealt with poor people all my life. The one thing that is universal among poor people is their lack of being able to manage money beyond the scale of struggling from paycheck to paycheck. This is why so many lottery winners become broke after just a few short years. Also why 70% of NFL players go broke 2-5 years after they retire. This is not just my opinion. It's a fact of life.
If you're going to give a car to someone who has never driven before, chances are he will crash it. Same thing with money. You can't just give money to someone who has never gone beyond struggling paycheck to paycheck and expect them to handle it responsibly.
We were poor. I remember back then I often thought to myself if only I had an extra $1k everything would be all right. If I ever meet my younger self and watch him struggle, I would never give him money. Why? Because I know with absolute certainty he would have blown it on some nonsense.
This is why basic income is a great idea just like driving is a great idea. We license people to drive. Why can't we license people to manage money properly before we give them basic income?
Right wingers want everybody to be able to have as many guns, regardless of what kind, without any string attached. They don't even like the idea of licensing gun ownership.
You seem to want to give people free money without any string attached. In other words, you're just as bad as the right wing gun nuts. I'll be damned if I'm going to let you ruin the basic income ideology with your left-wing nutness.
Again, I think basic income is a great idea given that we make sure people know what to do with it first instead of just giving them money. I have seen the results of poor people being given money many many times. More times than you can imagine. The result was always the same. They didn't earn the money so they did not feel obligated to be responsible with it.
Only in the mind of simpletons do I seem to contradict myself.
You said you were once poor but now you aren't but the poor are not capable of doing the same.
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I believe basic income is a great idea. Really, I do. Just like having the right to drive and own guns is a great idea. I really really do. But I also believe that comes these rights people have to be responsible in some way and licensed.
I have been poor. I have dealt with poor people all my life. The one thing that is universal among poor people is their lack of being able to manage money beyond the scale of struggling from paycheck to paycheck. This is why so many lottery winners become broke after just a few short years. Also why 70% of NFL players go broke 2-5 years after they retire. This is not just my opinion. It's a fact of life.
If you're going to give a car to someone who has never driven before, chances are he will crash it. Same thing with money. You can't just give money to someone who has never gone beyond struggling paycheck to paycheck and expect them to handle it responsibly.
We were poor. I remember back then I often thought to myself if only I had an extra $1k everything would be all right. If I ever meet my younger self and watch him struggle, I would never give him money. Why? Because I know with absolute certainty he would have blown it on some nonsense.
This is why basic income is a great idea just like driving is a great idea. We license people to drive. Why can't we license people to manage money properly before we give them basic income?
Right wingers want everybody to be able to have as many guns, regardless of what kind, without any string attached. They don't even like the idea of licensing gun ownership.
You seem to want to give people free money without any string attached. In other words, you're just as bad as the right wing gun nuts. I'll be damned if I'm going to let you ruin the basic income ideology with your left-wing nutness.
Again, I think basic income is a great idea given that we make sure people know what to do with it first instead of just giving them money. I have seen the results of poor people being given money many many times. More times than you can imagine. The result was always the same. They didn't earn the money so they did not feel obligated to be responsible with it.
It matters NONE of what I want. It's inevitable. I can want all sorts of things and none of it matters.
We are automating as many jobs as we possible can over the next few decades. There are not going to be any jobs to get.
The same arguments were being put forth in every generation. Yes, the printing press put all those hand-written copiers out of the job, but new jobs got generated. The industrial revolution put a lot of tradesmen out of the job, but new sectors of the economy got created and grew.
Let those jobs get automated. New sectors of the economy and new kinds of jobs will get created.
70 years ago, did anyone think IT was going to support hundreds of thousands of jobs? 150 years ago, did anyone even envision there'd be people working from home on their computers? So, if you're going to demand I give specific examples of what kinds of jobs that will get created, my answer is I'm not a fortune teller. I just know that history has always shown us every time something gets automated new sectors of the economy also got created which provided new kinds of jobs. There is no reason why the incoming automations will be any different.
You said you were once poor but now you aren't but the poor are not capable of doing the same.
Strawman.
I said I was once poor but I worked my way out of poverty. I didn't say someone gave me money and I somehow magically was able to manage the money and stopped being poor.
In other words, we worked out way out of poverty. I became an engineer while at the same time started a real estates business. No free money from the sky here. That's how we learned to properly manage money.
You can't just give free money to people who have always struggled paycheck to paycheck and expect them to know what the hell to do with it.
Edit.
I have told you some things about myself, like how we started dirt poor and managed to climb out and are doing well financially nowadays.
I'm curious to know what you do for a living, what are your experiences, etc. I'm trying to understand where you are coming from. Because from what you have said, it doesn't seem to me like you're a working professional. Surely, no working professional is this naiive?
none of them from what I can find, ever give money "equally" to middle class/wealthier people, they all seem to focus on the poor people
reason it fails? the premise of basic income means it frees up someone so they can be "productive", guess what, it takes skills to be productive to do what you want, and those are middle class and up
if someone gave income for middle class people, do they open up their own business?
if they gave money to wealthier people that don't need the money, do they give it to a charity?
what do they gain by giving it to poor people? it doesn't get them out of poverty, nor does it grant them better grades in school or skills in the real world
You can't just give free money to people who have always struggled paycheck to paycheck and expect them to know what the hell to do with it.
maybe you are thinking of yourself when you say that but the working poor I've known don't need money management lessons, they simply need more money. Lack of money is why they live paycheck to paycheck, not because of some character defect.
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