Could Matt Bai have actually spoken to any poor people, or even advocates for poor people, in the course of writing this article? Access to satellite TV seems fairly irrelevant if you can't afford to buy gas or health care.

I don't know how it works as a political issue. Poverty and support for families seems very complicated.

Bai is echoing a favorite conservative trope -- that the decline in prices for consumer electronics like televisions and cable service somehow means that people aren't suffering. They are. Yes, the rising tide lifts all boats to some degree and it's likely better to be poor now than poor 100 years ago but that very argument misses the point, which is that too many people can't fully participate in our economy.

One could almost imagine Bai as a caveman, after the discovery of fire saying that the poor never had it so good because they're eating cooked meat.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Another great one, Maggie!

Clearly, we are dealing with two definitions of “middle-class.”

Writers of Bai's ilk (I almost wrote ick but decided against it) do this sort of thing all the time.  It drives me a little nuts.

He does it elsewhere in the article, as slick as a three card monte trickster:

“but it's also true that what we call poverty has changed strikingly. When Johnson stepped onto that front porch in Inez, there were still rural poor who had no electricity, no running water, no primary-school education. Now most rural towns have access to satellite TV,

Bait with "rural poor," patter away, and switch to "most rural towns".  Whether or not the town has satellite TV, dollars to donuts there are residents who don't have the cash to pay for it, and more often than one realizes, don't have electricity, either.

I suspect Bai is too sophisticated to watch documentaries on PBS...if he had, he might have seen David Sutherland's Country Boys, and become a wiser and less supercilious writer.

aMike

I'm so glad you posted this, Maggie. I wasn't sure if it'd get mentioned here, and the article left me so angry. In part, it isn't even the economics but the media bias and the politics. They cover the Democrats only when they assign it to Bai, whose interest is in telling them how they should be ditching any trace of liberalism. If that combination of who gets covered and how they get covered isn't media bias, I don't know what is. And in the case of Edwards, it seriously distorts not just the issues but his position, as well as helps sink his chances.

The article's thesis is basically that Edwards is reinventing government as the handout to the (undeserving) poor. So when we read elsewhere in the same day's paper that the lower three quintiles haven't gained much in 30 years, and only the fifth quintile not dramatically, something is wrong. When Edwards is quoted as having as centerpiece a health-care plan that is universal, rather than targeted at subsidizing the poor alone, something is wrong.

I could go on, but it's chilling, and Bai gives it away when he states that any identification of the poor with the middle class assumes that the middle class is so blue collar it never had schooling. It misstates the facts and, as Maggie says, also takes the perspective of a reporter from the magazineas the true middle class. 

I'm afraid we've lost Edwards's candidacy, but I fear just as much for 2008 and for a meaningful future for America beyond.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

No, it's all a piece of the "winning strategy" circular logic. It's this completely amoral valueless strategy that has turned Americans off. At least Republicans have a philosophy and vision they can sell. The Bai types want a strategy without any values of any kind. The only value is the latest result from a focus group.

If the Democrats are ever to have a philosophy, a unifying theme, a coherent agenda again, they must be willing to speak to issues like poverty. Will "the poor" vote for it? That's hardly the point. The poor aren't reliable voters. Bai types write them off. It's a Survivor based value system. Throw them off the island, they don't turn out at the polls.

Can't we again speak to all Americans on themes that don't throw the "losers" over board? Can we talk about poverty, class, fairness, equity? Can we speak about social justice and claim the moral values associated with social justice?

I would agree that Edwards needs a broader message that links a number of issues that the DLC types have abandoned and I'm not sure he's got the authenticity to be convincing. But some of us sure are looking for a candidate like that. I don't see one. People are too cynical. Unless someone can crack that cynicism and find an American heart again, I fear we cannot fight conservatism and the "it's all mine and it's all for me" philosophy.

I thought Katrina might do it, but Democrats were afraid of the issue (as with all issues). Yet even the MSM did a network piece the other night about the infant mortality rate among rural African Americans in Mississippi. You'd have seen a Bobby Kennedy pick up on that. But not our messaged Dems.

Is a campaign focused on poverty reduction a winning strategy for reaching the White House, especially one led by a very rich white guy? - I don't think so

Given that it's essentially impossible for someone to run for President unless they're rich, and given that the punditocracy have decided that they can dismiss whatever a rich person says about poverty ... let's see, that means ...

That means we can continue to essentially ignore the poor, at least in terms of Presidential campaigns. (Phew, close call.)

As a young child I lived in an isolated farm house without electricity and indoor plumbing.

It was a wondrous, magical time that my older sister remembers even more fondly and vividly than I - because she was older.

Matt Bai should have been so fortunate. Then he wouldn't make such a fool of himself.

Best, Terry

As a young child I lived in an isolated farm house without electricity and indoor plumbing.

Been there, done that, and got the tee shirt. As a child there was a outdoor privy a hand pump for well water, and I took baths in a big wash tub with well water heated on top of a wood burning cook stove. Clothes were washed in a big black kettle in the back yard. In the winter many is the time I awoke to find the glass of water set by my quilted feather bead the night before frozen. My mother and I were living with her parents while my pop was killing Nazis then commies in Korea. Matt Bai is an all too comfortable arse.

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Gen. Omar Bradley

Bluebell: "They must be willing to speak to issues like poverty." I'd say that's absolutely right, but also partial. The old model, whether one calls it the framers' government of/by/for the people or the New Deal or the new left or whatever, was about speaking for us all. But now to identify that "us" as encompassing the poor along with the broadest swatch of the middle class is derided as "class war" by the right and as unrealistic given how exceptional the poor are by Bai. No win.  He'd probably hate social security, too, as another waste of money: either it'd go to the poor, which is too idealistic, or to others, who so plainly don't need it. Dear, dear. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Edwards' anti-poverty campaign will be a winner, politically, if he can keep the Republicans from portraying him as Robin Hood. He can do this by making sure that the press never forgets a list of compelling reasons why The Wealthy and The Middle Class should want to eliminate poverty.

When people are unemployed, they do not stop consuming; they just aren’t producing any of the stuff they consume. Someone else is. As a society, we all become richer when all those who are idle become productive. If part of your productive output is no longer needed to provide for the basic consumption needs of the unemployed (because they are now producing for themselves), then that means more of your output becomes available to you. When/if we employ all those who are able-bodied and able-minded in real wealth producing activities, everyone else automatically gets a pay raise in real terms.

But there's more. Contrary to the mythology promoted by the Republican Party, The Government is actually a major producer of real wealth, real wealth that the rich get to consume as well as everyone else. When highways are built or repaired, the transportation experience is enhanced. When polluted rivers and lakes are cleaned up, the quality of life of rich people as well as poor people is enhanced. When people who grew up in uneducated families graduate from college, rich people benefit as much as the individual does. (After all, they are no longer plotting to storm your gated community with torches in hand.)

As rich as he is, Bill Gates cannot personally afford to reduce the traffic congestion he must deal with on the highways, nor the blight that he often sees from them. He can afford to keep his primary living environment clean and healthy, but he can't afford to buy pollution-free air and water wherever he goes in the U.S. He might feel a certain amount of pride in his ability to keep up the appearance of his own properties, but he can't personally afford the cost of beautifying his city, his state, or his country. The good news for wealthy individuals like Bill Gates is that they can afford to buy significant improvements in the quality of their lives through their national government.

When the government invests in public infrastructure and in the human capital that employers hire, the rich benefit as well as the poor. It is as much a real economic investment as any that are made by private sector firms. It expands our capacity for growth in the long term. If rich people were smart, they would start heavily taxing themselves through their government and have it use those funds to start spending heavily on more public investments. If Congress were to increase its spending enough, it could create and maintain a modest labor shortage, one that would eventually suck up all the unemployment in even the most blighted ghetto.

Nothing is going to enhance the welfare of the rich more than the complete elimination of unemployment. With everybody working, crime would drop dramatically; affluent people would be less fearful of being victimized by the rabble. Wealthy Americans would be able to brag to the rich people of other countries about how they know how to take care of their poor people. When the countryside and cities have been cleaned up, rich people will feel a special pride in how your nation appears to outsiders.

The best part of all of this is that it wouldn't cost the rich anything in real terms to make themselves richer in this way. That is to say, even if they were to agree to tax themselves through a steeply progressive income tax, it would actually cost them nothing in terms of lost purchasing power. It is not possible to deprive the rich of their claim on the scarcest goods and services that the economy produces, so long as they still have more money than anyone else after they've paid their tax bill. That's the beauty of a market economy.

This is the kind of message that the Edwards campaign needs to put in front of the eyes of the media. Don't listen to the political geniuses over at the DLC, John; you don't need to abandon the poor in order to get elected. Just don't let the Republicans brand you as the guy who wants to steal from the rich in order to give handouts to the lazy poor.

JamesK: "Edwards' anti-poverty campaign will be a winner, politically, if he can keep the Republicans from portraying him as Robin Hood." At present, he already looks like a loser, running a distant fourth behind Clinton, Obama, and Gore, who's not even a candidate. 

Now, put that down in part just to the early stage of the race, at which polls reflect name recognition, although a candidate in the 2004 election surely has some name recognition. And by all means acknowledge the strengths of the other, or wonder if Edwards is effective, or whatever one likes, although Edwards has been articulate, he jumped early on popular opinion against the war, he got some sympathy for his wife, and Clinton's negatives from right and left in polling still abound.

Still, the simple consonance of the poll results with the narrative that's kept playing out in the media for so long is frightening, just as it was with the narratives of the candidates in 2000 and 2004 or the run-up to war. Gore's article about the image culture is looking stronger all the time, only Bai shows that it extends past one's traditional idea of a TV image to shaping of opinion about real public matters. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

"Edwards' anti-poverty campaign will be a winner, politically, if he can keep the Republicans from portraying him as Robin Hood."

At present, he already looks like a loser

Sure does but still you are right it is early yet.

Even "inevitable" candidates have been known to stumble.

The question is whether Edwards can overcome the negative press that always attaches to those who aren't smitten with only the care and feeding of the elite.

Won't be certain for a while yet.

In the meantime, Obama may be a trojan horse for those who think he is just an alternative to Hillary's rightwing politics.

Best, Terry

I'm sure if they had phones he would have called. If I were extreme poor, I'd opt for a cell phone instead of sat TV--all those channels and nothing to numb the pain of hunger and an untreated skin rash from the bed bugs. I think the cell phone affords more opportunities to chat with journalists from the Times. If I got a phone with a camera (foregoing a few hundred calories each week), I could even take pictures of the squalor that I live in. I think this would give the journalists something like a visceral sense of the pit I inhabit, while not troubling them with the smell, heat/cold, and general dankness of my decaying abode. When we were finished discussing my woes, he could entertain me with NYT gossip, and describe his new motorcycle, the book he's writing, or what he had for lunch.

I'll laugh as I explain how I have to hang out of a window in an airshaft to get good reception, but that I have to shout over the noise of all the children crying above and below my apartment at the projects--they're always crying! I'll explain that that was actually a shot from a .45 and not a car backfiring. I can detail the differences so that he's in the know when it happens again and again; and so that he can discern the difference between a .22, a .33, a .45 and a shotgun. In time he'll come to appreciate how each group of drug dealers favor specific weapons, as well as detect the range of the gun blast from my window.

But I am sure Mr, Bai would have called a poor person had he had their number and they had a phone.

/c

In the blogosphere every one is an expert, so no one is an expert.

Personally, I just love reading the completely uninformed opinions of people like the Times writer who thinks poverty isn't much of an issue and that somehow poverty ain't so bad. I would venture to say the writer has never actually been poor, has little or no appreciation of what daily life for those in poverty is like, and that if he did he would never have reached the conclusion he did. Pointing out some material differences between the poor of 40 years ago and today is a meaningless, almost idiotic comparison. I'm sure the poor of the 1960's had more material goods than the poor of 1890, but they still were in the grip of a powerful and violent mix of forces that keep people in poverty. And I'm also sure that some of those forces in the 60's were more difficult than those of 1890.

I do work with those in poverty daily and if anything my observation is that poverty is a more violent, more desolate, and more unhealthy place to find one's self than at any time previously, certainly in the past 50 years.

The world of poverty in today's urban environment in fact IS Dickensian and worse! I am not simply offering my opinion here, I see poverty's violence daily and violence it is. I have seen scenes in the past 30 days that are every bit as bad and probably worse than the conditions found in appalachia 40 years ago.

The underworld of drugs, alcohol, mental illness, physical violence, sexual and emotional abuse, and all manner of other horrors is the daily reality for millions of people who do not need to be in poverty but who are unable to leave it by themselves. In short, they are essentially trapped and unable to escape. They need help to escape and that is John Edwards' point I think.

We know what is necessary to lift people out of poverty. We know that it is not easy, but that it is doable. We also know that it is easy to ignore our brothers and sisters in poverty because they have no political power whatsoever. There is no immediate price to be paid for neglecting the poor (something Republicans are very aware of)and since the 1960 election the political rewards for assisting the poor have been declining dramatically.

Our nation has lacked the leadership and committment to address poverty in this nation and does so at it's peril because we can ill afford to continue to breed a huge underclass of uneducated, physically unhealthy, desperate and unemployable people. Identifying poverty as an issue that must be addressed effectively and immediately is not just a warm, fuzzy liberal "do-gooder" cause but a hard-nosed, practical point that must be addressed if we are to maintain our nation's position in the world let alone our standard of living in the future.

The costs of poverty are much higher than the solutions but they are hidden and distributed throughout the federal, state, and local budgets and in society overall. John Edwards is to be commended (in my opinion) for having the courage to stand up for the poor and advocate doing something about poverty not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it is one of the hard things that must be done if we are to strengthen the nation for future generations. He is the first leader since Robert F. Kennedy who has really made poverty a central issue and put poverty on the national agenda.

Poverty is our enemy here at home on every measure possible as well as our enemy abroad. But, we must be willing to allocate the resources necessary to lift the poor out of their current environment and give them the tools they need to be self-sufficient, productive citizens. It will take all of us demanding this be done to make any real difference and we will need to continue to demand it be done or it will soon be once again pushed aside in the hurry by politicians to curry favor with more powerful constituencies.

I attended a soiree at the Four Seasons in DC last Saturday night. I and a few others; Tim Russert, David Broder, Bob Woodward, ex GE head Jack Welch, Henry Kissinger and Paris Hilton, discussed how far the poor have come in recent years. Henry suggested the availability of indoor plumbing to so many was an advancement far beyond many in poverty's dreams not so long ago. Timmy brought up the new Minimum Wage as a sign of more people leaving poverty and entering the middle class. David noted that his maid's clothing seemed to fit very well, which he feels shows how the growing economy is lifting all boats. Paris noted how many more of the poor are eating cake. Bob and Jack both agreed with me when I suggested that all signs pointed to an end to poverty in the next 5 years as the benefits of Globalization continue to filter down to those at the bottom.

Driving home that night it occurred to me that the discussion we had at the soiree might make for a good column in the NYT Magazine.

Note: This is an S & S post (Satire/Sarcasm)

It's only no win because we've allowed them to own the message. I think we ought to be building an inclusive message around "community" -- let them be divisive and call that "class warfare".

What Democrats have been doing wrong is buying their message and trying to reframe the same message. The one I particularly despise is Bill Clinton's "work hard and play by the rules". As if that applied to all Americans. Do little children work hard? Do the elderly? Do the disabled? Do the sick? You write off tens of millions of Americans and a huge percentage of the poor when you frame your message that way.

Of course, Hillary once talked about the "village" but she dumped the village and moved on to another frame. No wonder Americans don't trust us.

I guess computers, nuclear weapons, the space program, and TV don't count as innovations.

Well, I certainly recognize the prevalence of scurvy and pellagra in the American south. But this was due as much to a dysfunctional property regime which did its best to reproduce the practical conditions of slavery.

Actually, my model is based on the rural and poor populations of Canada, circa 1900 - 1960. Sociologists often in examining poverty groups would be struck by the relative plenty of the table, particularly compared to the overall economic destitution. Essentially, subsistence cultures were, unsurprisingly, quite good at subsistence. So poor indians in Canada often ate a wide variety of country foods or locally grown foodstuffs that supplemented the commercial diet and commercial foodstuffs. This is well documented.

I believe that you can find similar situations occurring in the United States, among subsistence cultures such as the 'hillbillies' of the Appalachian mountains, indian tribes which were able to retain a viable land base, and poor rural groups in the American west and west coast, new england, etc.

What occurred in Canada in the seventies, however, was the elimination of or colonization of subsistence economies by the dominant commercial economy. There were several routes used - new roads and increased access, fish and game policies which expropriated or eliminated subsistence hunting rights, transient jobs, increased expectations, residential schools.

What we saw in community after community was the breakdown of the subsistence economy, and the switchover to a marginal poverty money economy. As homegrown and country foods were eliminated from the diet, they were replaced with the cheapest storebought foods, starches and sugars increased in the diet, with corresponding epidemics of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other lifestyle illnesses.

In respect of your references to alcohol and tobacco abuse being rife. I'd say that alcohol abuse was a pernicious social problem then, and it still is now. I don't think that tobacco abuse has ever been a pernicious social problem of the same calibre as other drugs, like alcohol, heroine, crack cocaine etc.

Violence was rife, very true. But there were also social control mechanisms which normally kept most violence within acceptable parameters. How does this compare with modern Tek-9's, drive by shootings, and the Rodney King Beating?

This is actually part of my day job. I work in aboriginal development and social justice fields, and so I do have a real historical context for these comments.

I do not romanticise rural poverty, but at the same time, I do not dismiss it altogether. I'm simply saying that it is very difficult to compare the poverty of a past age with the poverty of the present. The variables are complex, there are very few one to one correlates, and the answer that a real investigation will give you will be highly nuanced and not at all like Bai's nonsense.

Take plumbing. Is it a matter of wealth that poor people in urban environments have plumbing and running water? Or is this a staple of this environment and should be assigned a null value. Consider a city the size of New York where half or more of the inhabitants do not have plumbing... Indeed, no need to imagine, look to the third world. What does plumbing mean? Sanitation, public health, avoiding of outbreaks and contagions that threaten the whole country. In whose interest is plumbing?

Thanks for the troll rating. I returned the favour. ;)

Still, I can't help but feel you've injected a note of unnecessary antagonism and conflict into the discussion.

>In terms of the reasonable comparability of poverty in Canada and the United States, I would argue that the two would probably track fairly closely. For much of both countries history, the population was predominantly rural, farms, villages, small towns. Urban population dominance of cities was, for the most part a post-WWII phenomenon. Hence, most of America's poor were rural poor. The appalachians are an example.

>Admittedly allowances need to be made for the toxic society and political economy of the south which through sharecropping, land ownership and manipulation and organized violence, instituted a political regime as close to slavery as it could get. But there, the issue of poverty in the south is indistinguishable from an organized and institutional racism. For that reason, I'd tend to discount it as an abberation. A massive abberation, but still an abberation.

>I'll also concede that the United States had and still has a greater problem with urban poverty, resulting in part from heavy immigration. But even so, Canada experienced similar heavy influxes of Irish and Italian immigrants who formed large urban poverty classes, groups only partially assimilated in both countries.

>Although poor people in cities were not hunting their own food, they were often growing. New York in the 19th century was full of 'truck gardens' or microgardens of produce used by poor people to supplement income or diets. Further, we can identify urban 'subsistence economies' based on extended ties of kinship and group affiliation, which served to keep people floating a lot longer and more readily. These kinship and affiliation networks have largely broken down in the modern day and have been replaced by social welfare networks.

>Nevertheless, my argument is that rural poverty in the past, which was the most widespread form of poverty then, provided a standard of living comparable to or better than modern urban poverty in at least some respects.

>My real argument, of course, is that these things are not easily comparable and don't get you clear and easy answers. I've said that three times so far, and it doesn't seem to be getting through your brain. I really don't know what your problem is.

>Your argument as to migration of people to the cities proving the efficacy of urban poverty over rural poverty is simply cracked. Any historian worth his salt can explain to you that urban migrations tended to correlate to collapse, sometimes catastrophic collapse of rural subsistence networks. The plainest example of course were the Irish migrations to urban centres in North America... which derived from the Irish famine. People will flee a famine. Prior to that, Scottish migrations were derived from closing of the commons and the dispossession and forcible eviction of tens of thousands of scottish tenant farmers as a result of industrialization. Subsequent to this we have the mass migration of rural southern negroes to northern cities, again as a result of the changes to and collapse of the agricultural economy of the south. Finally, in the Canadian context, we have the extension of the commercial economy to the remote regions, and attendant collapse of subsistence economies. None of this is rocket science.

>In respect of your comments on violence, I'm simply not sure where you are going. Domestic violence, child abuse, etc., were not recorded or reported then, and were not recorded now until relatively recently. There are no statistics, so any conclusion is entirely inferential and difficult to support. Having said that, there are some studies, including famous ones with rats, that seem to show that increasing population density and social stress produces increasing levels of violence within a population. Accordingly, while we can't ever know for sure, I think that there's a real argument to be made that the shift of poverty from rural subsistence economies to urban commercial was probably accompanied by increases of violence within the population.

> Certainly big cities have always been much better known for their reported rates of violent crime - mugging, murder, armed robberies, assaults with weapons, etc. If you'd like to, you could go look up the statistics. But you'll find that per capita rates of reported violent crime tend to be higher in cities. Sometimes much higher.

>You are correct in that America had far more racial violence, either formally organized through institutions like the KKK or informally. However, I think you miss the point that the violence you refer to was not an aspect of poverty, but of race. If you look to actual violence within poverty classes, I think you'll find that urban is consistently more violent. The whole gangsta culture, the bloods and crips, the Irish gangs of the early 20th century have no real rural counterpart. And before you mention the KKK, I'll make the point that this was part of a concerted social war by whites upon blacks. We are trying to talk about poverty issues, not race relations, and I think its worthwhile to make an effort to separate the two threads, intertwined as they are.

>As for plumbing, yes, a Null Value, although you seem to be working veryhard to misunderstand me. In whose interest was plumbing? Everyones. A city like New York could not sustain itself, could not deliver water effectively, could not process its wastes, without mandating strict sanitation, public health and plumbing codes. The city, in order to function, made substantial investments in both water and sewer, and further forced builders and property owners to make equivalent investments. The alternative would have been outbreaks of typhoid, diptheria, etc., and a city which does not function... as we see now in the third world. In cities, the poor receive indoor plumbing effectively for free, it is part of the critical basic infrastructure by which the society exists. It is not a sign of wealth among the poor.

But consider poverty in rural areas. There the issues of sanitation and water supply are not so pressing. Wells and outhouses are perfectly adequate solutions which are or were as efficient in their environments as plumbing and water delivery in cities. Indeed, the economics reverse, because in rural areas, with lower population densities and large geographic areas, centralized water infrastructure and sewer systems are much more expensive.

Now, for the fourth time comparisons between predominant modern poverty in urban environments and the predominant rural poverty of generations ago are complex matters which require careful evaluation. The results of such an investigation are likely to be highly nuanced. A real assessment will not give you the superficial but straightforward answers that Bai claims.

Is this so hard to get across?

JPF 311
Bai was comparing the rural poverty of the early 1960s (when Johnson launched his war on poverty) to the urban poverty of today.

By the 1960s, scurvy, rickets, pellagra, typhoid and malaria were no longer major problems.

By then the poor (including the rural poor) were eating canned foods--which provided variety in their diets, and better nutrition.

As for plumbing, while the poorest rural families still used outhouses, these outhouses were in fact, a reasonable solution to sanitation needs.

Lack of plumbing led to widespread disease many decades earlier when human excrement piled up in city streets and tenements.

Keep in mind, Bai is claiming that the poverty that Johnson was addressing in 1964 was
worse than the poverty that Edwards is addressing in 2007--and thus, today, the need for a war on poverty just isn't as urgent.

First, I did not troll rate you. I have only ever done that once to anyone on these boards (and that individual richly deserved it many times over-- you certainly do not merit any such rating and I'd be happy to give a tongue lashing to whoever thought you did)

Re: In terms of the reasonable comparability of poverty in Canada and the United States, I would argue that the two would probably track fairly closely.

Canada and the US are very similar cultures-- if you subtract Quebec from Canada and the South from the US. And there's the problem in the US: our poverty is largely tied to our legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, and there is simply nothing comparable in Canadian history. (And on a secondary note, I believe that Canada was also not so brutal toward its native peoples as the US) For this reason comparisons between the US and Canada on this issue are apples to oranges, except maybe locally: comparing the plight of the white rural poor of the UP of Michigan to their neighbors across the Soo, for example.

Re: Urban population dominance of cities was, for the most part a post-WWII phenomenon.

Outside the South the balance point in the US between rural and urban populations was reached about 1920.

Re: Although poor people in cities were not hunting their own food, they were often growing.

This is true. But in today's urban citiscapes, food growing is only minimally possible: maybe a rooftop garden with a few herbs and a tomato plant. (One reason I would hate living in an aprtment, I have to have my garden space.)

Re: Nevertheless, my argument is that rural poverty in the past, which was the most widespread form of poverty then, provided a standard of living comparable to or better than modern urban poverty in at least some respects.

Here I disagree. I might agree if you could update the past's rural poverty with modern technology and civil rights: vitamin and mineral additives in the food supply (and fresh fruit and vegetables year round), immunizations and antibiotics, indoor plumbing, central heating and AC, no KKK lynchings, social security and medicare/medicaid, women's rights, child abuse laws. The past was hard in ways we cannot imagine. A cousin ofmine has done exahutive genealogy reasearch on our ancestry. One thing that pops right out of it is how common it was for families to lose one or more children, or indeed, for children to lose one or both parents before adulthood (and these were middle class people).

Re: I've said that three times so far, and it doesn't seem to be getting through your brain. I really don't know what your problem is.

I don't have a problem. I just disagree with your assesments. I certainly don't think today's poor are free of grief and trouble, but the griefs they know are at least an order of magnitude less than what even non-poor people went through in ages past. That doesn't mean we take a "Let them eat cake" attitude, but it does suggest we should focus on their real problems, which involve not so much material deprivation, as profound insecurity (in every sense) and lack of opportunity to escape their plight.

Re: Your argument as to migration of people to the cities proving the efficacy of urban poverty over rural poverty is simply cracked. Any historian worth his salt can explain to you that urban migrations tended to correlate to collapse

Urban migration was always present throughout history. Nothing to do with collapse. One big reason: arable land is in limited supply and for families with more than two sons, the younger ones had no place else to go. And up until the 19th century most cities throughout the world had death rates that exceeded their birth rates; they sustained their populations and grew only because of continual in-migration from the hinterlands.

Re: Having said that, there are some studies, including famous ones with rats, that seem to show that increasing population density and social stress produces increasing levels of violence within a population

Many poor people in the past lived in very crowded environments, the extreme being the one room hovels and tenement flop houses in which whole families dwelled jammed in together. As for violence, we certainly do know something about the past's tolerance of it. The fact that torture survived as an acceptable practice until the 19th century, that public executions (and later, lynchings) were treated as holiday affairs, that animals, children and even wives were publicly beaten-- all of this speaks to a culture that was inured to violence as an acceptable fact of life.

Re: We are trying to talk about poverty issues, not race relations

These cannot be sundered in the US. The KKK moreover drew most of its membership and support from the white lower classes. The rich were not threatened by Blacks; they even cherished them sometimes as beloved "mammies" and family retainers.

Re: It is not a sign of wealth among the poor.

Of course it is. It is a form of public wealth which the poor share in more or less equally. Wealth is not always private (an oddly rightwing opinion if you in fact hold it). Now, if you are making a cross-class comparison today you may be able to discount such public wealth, but comparing across generations you certainly cannot.

First, I did not troll rate you. I have only ever done that once to anyone on these boards (and that individual richly deserved it many times over-- you certainly do not merit any such rating and I'd be happy to give a tongue lashing to whoever thought you did)

Dude,

1) You're flat out lying. Check out the rating on the 11:27 post above. Specifically:

User Rating Tom Wright 5 JPF311 0 Average rating: 2.5

JPF311... that's you, isn't it? That's the handle you post under? Yours and yours alone. Little monkeys don't sneak onto the internet and rate under your name while you sleep?

0? That's zero, right. Zero out of Five? Zero as in Troll. Zero=Troll? Troll rating.

2) If you're going to lie, you might cover your tracks and go back and change the troll rating.

To be honest, I don't care much for ratings. People can rate me whatever. In the long run, I say what I need to say, and generally people appreciate it. I don't sweat a troll rating, I generally find it humourous.

But lying about it dude? And lying about it in an obvious, couldn't be bothered to cover your ass, sort of way? That's both offensive and childish.

I really make an effort to try and assess and discuss the posts rather than the people. I acknowledge failing from time to time. But for the most part, I find it a useful rule of thumb to try and focus on the post.

But in this case for no clear reason you've made your personal integrity the issue, and you've done it in an appalling fashion. I can only conclude (a) You're an asshole, (b) You're dishonest, and (c) You're game playing.

Under these circumstances, I see no merit whatsoever to continuing a discussion with you.

Re: Check out the rating on the 11:27 post above. Specifically:

Nope, that's not me. At 11:27 I was not even online (note the times on my posts). In fact at 11:27 I was waiting for lunch to cook in the office kitchen microwave. Either there's a glitch in the system, or someone has hacked my ID (or is using one similar, but with a non-printing character which makes it look like my ID.)
I repeat: I have only ever rated one post on this website, troll or otherwise, andthat wasn't you. You'll just have to accept that-- webnsites like this are notoriously insecure (I probably should change my ID) and someone is trying to stir up a fight. Ignore the idiot. I have been trying to dialogue with you in a civil way, why would I try to anger you instead?

Look, I'm sorry you're upset but I did not troll rate you, someone using my ID did so. Use some common sense: why would I deny doing so if I had in fact done so given that the rater's ID is publicly posted? But there's also at least one post on another thread that I've found under my ID which I did not post (and which contains xenophobic rightwing opinions that are very alien to me). Someone is using my ID here, and this will be the last post I will make under this ID, since I am asking the moderators to cancel out this ID while I chose another.

A pity we could not continue our discussion, but that is your choice, not mine.