This is how society dies

[Admiral Yi]

Why is the notion of responsibility so important?

It's an aspect of virtue.

[Oexmelin]

How so?

[Malthus]

I understood the article as lamenting the decline of public services, infrastructure and social state with the cause being a breakdown of social cohesion and too much focus on individual wealth. So stating individual wealth indicators went up does not address the point if the article as I understood it.

Way I read it, the article is claiming that the average person has gotten more poor, can't take care of basic needs, and that this is something that has developed over time - meaning that presumably people in the past were less poor and more able to take care of basic needs.

I do not dispute that there are problems, I just think the article focuses attention, in part, in the wrong place. Leaving aside the off-putting comparison to the Soviet Union.

Example quote:

" just like in the Soviet Union, basics are becoming both unavailable and unaffordable. What happens? People...die."

The idea expressed is that basics *were* available and are *becoming* unavailable - in short, that people are becoming poorer (to the point where they will begin to die).

The problem with this narrative is that it simply is not true, by any measure. Poverty was highest towards the end of the 1950s (ironically enough, the decade in which Americans felt most wealthy). It sharply declined, then flatlined (not great, but not in accordance with this article).

https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states

Historically, the official poverty rate in the United States had ranged from a high of 22.4 percent when it was first estimated for 1959 to a low of 11.1 percent in 1973. Since its initial rapid decline after 1964 with the launch of major War on Poverty programs, the poverty rate has fluctuated between around 11 and 15 percent.

As someone whose job includes using statistics to confirm whatever is convenient in a given moment, I'd be wary of dismissing those claims based on standard measurements alone.

For example, in Spain the official inflation index gives a low weight to housing (about 14%). Yet most working and middle class households have to dedicate a lot more of their income than that. If you weighted inflation by net worth you might actually find that middle and working class income has indeed fallen in the last 20-25 years.

A similar analysis in the US should probably look into the evolution of healthcare (or lack of thereof) and education costs (access to which is quite important for social mobility).

If you follow the links, you will see that they discuss that. They talk about something known as the "Supplemental Poverty Measure". Here's an article linked to the second one, which is entitled "The Supplemental Poverty Measure: A Better Measure for Poverty in America?"

https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/policy-brief/supplemental-poverty-measure-better-measure-poverty-america

An extract:

The official measure has further been criticized for not considering the significant demographic, economic, and welfare policy changes that have occurred over the past five decades. Food, for example, comprised about a third of the average family's budget when the official measure was instituted in the 1960s. Today it comprises less than half of that.

The official thresholds are also left insensitive to other expenditures such as housing, health care, and child care that today make up a larger percentage of a typical family's budget than it did before. The measure also does not account for the increasing number of poverty alleviation programs that have been launched to help low-income families since the 1960s that provide in-kind or after-tax benefits (Blank, 2008).

Point being that the whole reason why poverty advocates liked this measure is that it showed considerable improvements as a result of new programs in the US, improvements which were not tracked by the "official" poverty line:

The Supplemental Poverty Measure

Although Orshansky developed her measure of poverty based on the best data available at that time, the question is if it provides a clear picture of how economic, social, and policy changes affect economic need in the United States today. The official poverty rates may in fact lead us to believe that "public spending on the poor had little effect" (Blank, 2008, p. 238).

In the early 1990s, Congress commissioned a panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to address key shortcomings of the official measure. In early 2010, the Obama administration adopted the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) that largely follows the methods recommended by the NAS Panel.

Following the Panel's recommendations, the SPM defines poverty as the lack of economic resources for consumption of basic needs such as food, housing, clothing, and utilities (FCSU). To determine family resources, gross money income from private and public sources is supplemented with benefits such as food stamps, housing subsidies, and tax credits. Deducted from family income are medical out-of-pocket expenses including health insurance premiums, income and Social Security payroll taxes, child support payments, work-related expenses and child care costs.

Instead of using a food plan, the SPM poverty thresholds are based on expenditures on FCSU plus a small amount to allow for additional expenses. These thresholds are further adjusted for different family sizes and compositions, housing status, and geographic differences in housing costs (Short, 2012).

- Emphasis added.

A more nuanced understanding of poverty was created to actually track the impact of various poverty alleviation programs in the US, to avoid reaching the conclusion that they did not impact on poverty, which conclusion could be rationally reached based on the old stats. Some expenses, like housing and health care, have increased over time, while others (namely, food) have radically decreased (which is in part why the US can have simultaneous poverty and obesity among the same population).

I agree that social mobility is a huge problem in the US, which is exactly why I believe the article has put the emphasis in the wrong place. Poverty is not radically increasing in the US; it has largely decreased since the 1950s. Nor have people in the US grown more 'cruel and uncaring', whatever that means. The problem is that social mobility has become much more difficult and the classes more static. This will not, contrary to the article, result in people dying in large numbers, but it will lead to (and has lead to) all sorts of social ills.

[Admiral Yi]

How so?

I don't understand the question.

[crazy canuck]

It is though. If enough of his trainees say fuck this noise I am listening to this punk, he will eventually lose his job as a trainer. A trainer who fails to train anybody will not be a trainer for long.

And if only one trainee says that, who's responsibility is that?

GM: coach, the team did not do well this year

Coach: Yeah, but I was great.  My game plans and practices were amazing.  That was my responsibility.  How the players performed on the field was their responsibility.

GM: but this is a team sport!

Coach: you don't get it.  If I help them to achieve greatness it will undermine their sense of self worth.  It is important that the players succeed on their own.

GM: I am beginning to realize why this team performed so poorly. 




Insert society for team.

[The Brain]

Does anyone actually read these days?

[crazy canuck]

Does anyone actually read these days?

Why do we have to accept Yi's false dichotomy.

[Sheilbh]

I understood the article as lamenting the decline of public services, infrastructure and social state with the cause being a breakdown of social cohesion and too much focus on individual wealth. So stating individual wealth indicators went up does not address the point if the article as I understood it.

Yeah, same. And in particular the the erosion of the common good has reached the point that basic services people need are no longer being delivered.

I think there is some truth to that in the UK case (mainly due to austerity's focus on local government).

[crazy canuck]

I understood the article as lamenting the decline of public services, infrastructure and social state with the cause being a breakdown of social cohesion and too much focus on individual wealth. So stating individual wealth indicators went up does not address the point if the article as I understood it.

Yeah, same. And in particular the the erosion of the common good has reached the point that basic services people need are no longer being delivered.

I think there is some truth to that in the UK case (mainly due to austerity's focus on local government).

I wonder how much urbanization plays a role.  Think about the bystander effect.  If many people see someone who needs help it is very unlikely anyone will help.  If there are few people around the chances of any of those people helping goes up dramatically.  Perhaps in smaller communities there is a greater sense of the over all social good and helping someone out is not viewed as something that will harm them or society.  But in a more anonymous large urban environment people may be more apt to only think about themselves?

[Sheilbh]

I think the opposite though in terms of urban/rural. I think there's far less sense of rugged individualism in a city. There may be less individual philanthropy/charitable efforts to help people in cities (though that might be wrong), but I think cities tend to support (and pay for) government providing basic services, the more rural a community the more likely they are to oppose (and rely on) those basic services.

[The Minsky Moment]

Willing to bet on a per capita basis that rural US residents receive more public money and subsidies then urban residents.  Especially when farm subsidies are taken into account.  Of course the perception - and the self-perception in particular - may diverge significantly from the reality.

[Malthus]

I understood the article as lamenting the decline of public services, infrastructure and social state with the cause being a breakdown of social cohesion and too much focus on individual wealth. So stating individual wealth indicators went up does not address the point if the article as I understood it.

Yeah, same. And in particular the the erosion of the common good has reached the point that basic services people need are no longer being delivered.

I think there is some truth to that in the UK case (mainly due to austerity's focus on local government).

The problem with the article is that it is largely fact-free and based on purely subjective impressions. Many of them are incorrect (as in, that poverty is getting worse; as already stated, this is untrue - it got much better in the early 1960s and has stagnated since).

My guess is that if you polled people as to who spent a greater percentage of their GDP on social spending of the following nations - the Netherlands, Canada, and the US - most people would say the Netherlands spend the greatest percentage, followed by Canada and lastly, the USA. The truth is that the order is exactly the opposite. The USA spends most, followed by Canada, and lastly, the Netherlands.

https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/social-spending.htm

the UK is almost exactly at the OECD average (and higher than the US).

[Sheilbh]

Sure, but that's not quite what I mean and it can be misleading - the US government spends more on healthcare than the UK government does. Also, obviously, a large and increasing chunk of "social spending" is pensions. So to take the UK examples there's a triple lock on state pensions - they will increase annual by the highest of: inflation, wage growth or 2%. There are also other benefits for the elderly which tend not to be means tested (free TV licence, fuel etc).

In the UK the coalition decided to cut local government spending hugely, on average by 20%. But they did in a way that was meant to be "fair" but actually cut budgets for poor council areas a lot more. So on average it's 20% but there's a lot of variation. Basically it was a political play - austerity by stealth because they'd just be cutting the local government budget, it would be up to all of those councils to make the difficult choices.

Councils in the UK mainly spend money on education, roads, social care (adults and children), environment, public health, housing, plus culture (typically libraries, parks, playgrounds etc) - most of this is for services they are legally required to provide, but that central government isn't legally required to fund. Because they've had their budget cut so much councils used up their reserves pretty quick and had to make fairly deep cuts. Generally they understandably chose to protect children's social care, but every other category has been cut on average from about 10% (adult social care) to over 50% of the budget. And these cuts are affecting things that people think are really basic government services: collecting the bins, maintaining the roads, environmental stuff (like street cleaning, preventing fly-tipping), providing shelters for rough sleepers (which has increased by over 150% since 2010).

When those sort of basic universal services fray I think that has an impact on social cohesion, which is distinct from overal social spending which tends to be far more noticed by affected people.

[Admiral Yi]

What does social care mean?

[Sheilbh]

Loads of different things. For children's social care it's stuff like child placement through fostering or adoption, support etc for kids taken into care, support (outside of schools) for kids with physical or mental disabilities, social workers for families.

For adults it's similar so support for people with physical or mental disabilities, social workers, support for carers, support for women (and children) escaping domestic violence and also caring for the elderly, especially if they have dementia, this is a big growing cost pressure on councils.