Study Highlights Plight of Europeans

[General_Tao]

Actually BBS, the article uses The Grapes of Wrath as a historic reference point to focus on the current poverty in the landscape covered by the novel. It presents issues like homeless lower middle class families, struggling farmers and appalling prison conditions.


TGD, actually the poor in W. Europe are better off than their American counterparts, they have better access to subsidized housing, free healthcare and free or very affordable higher education. The poor in Canada also are better off than in the US for much of the same reasons.

[thegreekdog]

TGD, actually the poor in W. Europe are better off than their American counterparts, they have better access to subsidized housing, free healthcare and free or very affordable higher education. The poor in Canada also are better off than in the US for much of the same reasons.

I admittedly don't know much about subsidized housing in western Europe. We do have subsidized housing here and according to statistics something like 25% to 40% of poor people in the United States own their own homes. We do have free healthcare in the United States and very affordable higher education, so I'm not sure about those two. Perhaps by "free healthcare" you mean government subsidized or provided health insurance. We don't have that.

But hey, our poor people have two or more color televisions, cable, air conditioning, motor vehicles, personal computers, and video game systems... so I suppose it depends upon what your poor's priorities are. Clearly, our poor people prioritize personal entertainment and comfort over such dreary, uninteresting things like healthcare or education.

[BigBallinStalin]

Actually BBS, the article uses The Grapes of Wrath as a historic reference point to focus on the current poverty in the landscape covered by the novel. It presents issues like homeless lower middle class families, struggling farmers and appalling prison conditions.

When discussing poverty in the US, it's extremely important for the author to use a more empirical approach; otherwise, it's just talk, which is not nearly as meaningful. Basically, it's like reading saxitoxin's thread minus ONE measured variable.

[saxitoxin]

TGD, actually the poor in W. Europe are better off than their American counterparts, they have better access to subsidized housing, free healthcare and free or very affordable higher education. The poor in Canada also are better off than in the US for much of the same reasons.

The poor in the U.S. also have access to subsidized housing (Section Eight), free healthcare (Medicaid) and affordable higher education (80% of undergraduates receive tuition aid).

• Ultimately, however, these are non-points and don't merit consideration. The social welfare argument is the last silly distraction to which Europeans resort in their hysterical shrill of hurt pride. On this basis the residents of a homeless shelter are better-off than the residents of the 9200 block of Sunset Boulevard, because the former don't pay for things. Obviously this is beyond ridiculous but is what we're supposed to believe so we don't hurt the feelings of Manchester chav culture.

But hey, our poor people have two or more color televisions, cable, air conditioning, motor vehicles, personal computers, and video game systems... so I suppose it depends upon what your poor's priorities are.

This is statistically true: http://www.disinfo.com/2011/07/how-woul ... n-america/

The continual romanticizing of European poverty by Europeans themselves is one way capitalists maintain the cycle of continental poverty and control. People who think they have it well-off - or who, as in the case of General Tao, acknowledge poverty but excuse it with descriptions of the "quaint", rural deprivation in Bradford or Provence (which are popularly described as traditional simplicity rather than the more accurate abject poverty) - are less likely to complain.

This thread is a good example. Instead of addressing the surgically proven and endemic problems of the horrific poverty of Europe, the only reaction we are proffered is the knee-jerk squeal of anti-Americanism (even though this wasn't a US-vs-Europe thread, it was a Europe-vs-Anyone thread and we can as easily juxtapose European poverty against superior individual wealth in Canada or Australia).

• Fanatic, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism - a la Tao - was created and has been promoted by United States imperialists themselves to help them subjugate Europe. Instead of blaming the U.S. for their poverty, Europeans will simply and stubbornly insist they're not poor in the first place, regardless how much evidence of their deprivation is showed them. This is why people in Angola are brighter than your average Dane. The former don't stubbornly insist they're the most well-off people in the world, but freely acknowledge their poverty and lay blame where blame is due: on colonial manipulation of their resources.

[BigBallinStalin]

• Fanatic, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Americanism - a la Tao - was created and has been promoted by United States imperialists themselves to help them subjugate Europe. Instead of blaming the U.S. for their poverty, Europeans will simply and stubbornly insist they're not poor in the first place, regardless how much evidence of their deprivation is showed them. This is why people in Angola are brighter than your average Dane. The former don't stubbornly insist they're the most well-off people in the world, but freely acknowledge their poverty and lay blame where blame is due: on colonial manipulation of their resources.

Since there seems to be a various between the performance among post-colonial countries, then can we boldly claim that colonial manipulation of their resources is the primary factor for their current poverty?

Does not the responsibility largely fall with those countries' governments?

[General_Tao]

This is the best data set/graph to properly and objectively address the kooky premise of widespread extreme poverty in Europe, which seems to be the giant windmill that saxi obsesses about in his sleep...

BBS, you're starting from the premise that there really is a big poverty problem in Europe. That premise (saxi's mantra) is bull$hit.

the graph on the left illustrates the relative position of income levels broken up in population deciles (ie, left-most circle in US line represents the bottom 10% of the pop.)

What this graph shows is:

-the richest 10% are much better off in the US (which we knew)*

-the poorest 10% in the US are worse off than their counterparts in Canada, France, Germany, UK. W. european countries like Sweden, BeNeLux, Austria, Finland and so forth have similar distribution profile than France, Denmark or Germany. Only Spain and Italy have worse poverty levels than in the US...

-Strikingly, the bottom 10% in the US are worse off than the OECD average. This really kills the notion that the poor are worse off in the rest of the industrialized world. Only someone who is blind and/or stupid would believe saxi's outrageous hyperbole.


*note that this skewed income distribution has an important effect on the lives of those at the poorer levels, as it leads to things like very high real estate prices (see NYC, San Francisco Bay Area)

[BigBallinStalin]

I thought I made myself clear enough with the following post:

Actually BBS, the article uses The Grapes of Wrath as a historic reference point to focus on the current poverty in the landscape covered by the novel. It presents issues like homeless lower middle class families, struggling farmers and appalling prison conditions.

When discussing poverty in the US, it's extremely important for the author to use a more empirical approach; otherwise, it's just talk, which is not nearly as meaningful. Basically, it's like reading saxitoxin's thread minus ONE measured variable.

Hint: I held your link and saxi's argument in equal esteem.

[BigBallinStalin]

This is the best data set/graph to properly and objectively address the kooky premise of widespread extreme poverty in Europe, which seems to be the giant windmill that saxi obsesses about in his sleep...

BBS, you're starting from the premise that there really is a big poverty problem in Europe. That premise (saxi's mantra) is bull$hit.

the graph on the left illustrates the relative position of income levels broken up in population deciles (ie, left-most circle in US line represents the bottom 10% of the pop.)

What this graph shows is:

-the richest 10% are much better off in the US (which we knew)*

-the poorest 10% in the US are worse off than their counterparts in Canada, France, Germany, UK. W. european countries like Sweden, BeNeLux, Austria, Finland and so forth have similar distribution profile than France, Denmark or Germany. Only Spain and Italy have worse poverty levels than in the US...

-Strikingly, the bottom 10% in the US are worse off than the OECD average. This really kills the notion that the poor are worse off in the rest of the industrialized world. Only someone who is blind and/or stupid would believe saxi's outrageous hyperbole.


*note that this skewed income distribution has an important effect on the lives of those at the poorer levels, as it leads to things like very high real estate prices (see NYC, San Francisco Bay Area)

Are my eyes playing tricks with me or are most Americans better off than those beneath them (in the top right graph)?

Even if the bottom decile of Americans is very close to Italy's, Spain's, and slightly below Germany's, so what? Look beyond your extreme examples and tell me what the other deciles say compared to the non-US ones.

[saxitoxin]

Tao, Tao, Tao ... still clinging to the income inequality argument - "everyone in Belgium is poor, so it's okay!" Whatever shall we do with you?! *tickle tickle* *Saxi Tickles Tao!*

Anyway, back in the land of the lucid ...

Poverty Riots Engulf UK as Impoverished Masses Rise-Up from their Squalor

Tottenham had been "massively" affected by steep spending cuts ordered by the 15-month-old coalition government to try to balance its books, he said. Youth services had been cut and unemployment had risen as public sector workers were laid off. A 26-year-old man, who gave his name only as Jason, said the riot was a "cry for help."

"I have no job, no prospects, no anything. Then they wonder why there's crime," he said, adding he had been unemployed since he left school.

"This is the ghetto, this is the slums, they don't care about us. I've been stopped outside my house by the police for no reason. There's no jobs ... but still they want to cut benefits. We ain't got no way to survive and it's like no-one don't care about us.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/08/0 ... 8Y20110807

[saxitoxin]

Income Drops 10% in 5 Yarrrrs

As you can see, earnings growth have consistently trailed inflation, and if you analyze the data in the release, as I have, you'll find that during the latest 5 year period the average real earnings of people with jobs in Britain has fallen as much as 10%. So while Britain's more inflationary path seems to have limited its unemployment problem, it hasn't helped overall growth, and has contributed to a greater decline in real wages for the employed.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Stefa ... r-10-years