Reddit mentions: The best povery books

We found 128 Reddit comments discussing the best povery books. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 58 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

1. In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State

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In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State
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2. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

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3. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform
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4. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

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Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
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8. The Homeless

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The Homeless
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9. Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco

Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
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10. Below the Line: Living Poor in America

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Below the Line: Living Poor in America
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11. Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality

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Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality
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12. Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts

Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts
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13. Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle (Chicago Studies in American Politics)

Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle (Chicago Studies in American Politics)
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Release dateSeptember 2014
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15. The Tragedy of American Compassion

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The Tragedy of American Compassion
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Release dateFebruary 1994
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17. More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)

More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)
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18. Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair: One Family's Passage Through the Child Welfare System

Life for Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair: One Family's Passage Through the Child Welfare System
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Height8 Inches
Length5.25 Inches
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Release dateSeptember 1994
Weight0.4 Pounds
Width0.4 Inches
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19. Poverty, Ethnicity, And Violent Crime (Crime & Society Series)

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Poverty, Ethnicity, And Violent Crime (Crime & Society Series)
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🎓 Reddit experts on povery books

The comments and opinions expressed on this page are written exclusively by redditors. To provide you with the most relevant data, we sourced opinions from the most knowledgeable Reddit users based the total number of upvotes and downvotes received across comments on subreddits where povery books are discussed. For your reference and for the sake of transparency, here are the specialists whose opinions mattered the most in our ranking.
Total score: 122
Number of comments: 4
Relevant subreddits: 4
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Number of comments: 2
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Total score: 1
Number of comments: 2
Relevant subreddits: 2

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Top Reddit comments about Poverty:

u/bobthereddituser · -8 pointsr/BasicIncome

You are spouting meaningless socialist drivel.

Capitalism isn't terribly effective? Effective at what? I suppose that would depend on what your end goals are, but since the advent of free markets the world has seen an exponential increase in standards of living, health, education, and technology wherever it is adopted, not to mention that countries which peacefully trade with each other are less likely to go war. Capitalism has done more to help the poverty of mankind than anything else in history. But call it ineffective if you wish.

You cannot "destroy capitalism" without destroying freedom. A free market at its very core is simply two individuals agreeing on an exchange of goods or services in a way that benefits them both. If you "destroy capitalism," you must either prevent people from having the freedom of association and ability to trade without violence or coercion, or you have eliminate the property that permits trade - which is impossible.

Having workers own "the means of production" is an antiquated, hollow phrase that has no meaning. I can go to any online stock company and buy the means of production in any company on the planet that I wish, thus becoming a worker who owns the means of production. That phrase was coined by Marx in the middle of the industrial revolution, when he misread the movement to factory production as the future of mankind.

What if I can only get a job at the mills, but I want to be an owner of Google? Or I own the mill and it and goes out of business through no fault of mine? Should all workers in the mill own the means of production but be prevented from owning the means of production of anything else?

That phrase also misunderstands what property is. There are other forms of wealth besides "means of production" that he harped on about. Even animals understand the need for a nest or a den that is theirs. Property and wealth are the natural outgrowth of human work:

>The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.

  • George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921

    If everyone has "according to his needs" but must work "according to his ability," you remove incentive to work and people simply do not produce, because most people work for their "wants" not their needs - and the only one who can define what those are is the individual. Wealth is stored labor (work) of those who perform it, which they can then trade with others for the labor those other people perform. In a market, the ONLY way to get money is by offering services or goods to other people that they voluntarily give you their own stored labor for - you MUST serve others to gain wealth.

    The only way to destroy capitalism is to destroy freedom by enslaving everyone.

    Since this article was about education, you might be interested to know that even the poorest people on the planet can educate their children through the freedom of association, because parents everywhere want their children to be educated. No "bourgeousie" involved.

    Give people freedom and they prosper. Try and make people prosper and you destroy freedom and destroy prosperity.

    People like you scare me.

    Edit: clarity
u/saladatmilliways · 1 pointr/slatestarcodex

> I benefit from the efficiency gains.

What efficiency gains?

(fair warning: all numbers made up)

I keep hearing about efficiency gains from low-skill international migration from open-borders economists and I've yet to be convinced that there's much there there.

Consider some Mexican dude named Oscar. He works in the outskirts of Mexico City and is able to generate, say, $10,000/year of wealth. He then gets it in his head to move to a place with richer people because working for richer people will get you more money, so he heads to a suburb within driving distance of La Jolla and generates $50,000 of wealth because he's cutting the lawns of power couples who net over $1M/year. That's a massive efficiency gain! For him, at least!

On the other hand, this only looks good if you forget that there are unemployed black and white Americans who could be doing this sort of work if only they'd move to someplace within driving distance of La Jolla. Instead of consuming, say, $20,000/year of taxpayer-funded public assistance, they'd be making $30,000 a year or so cutting lawns. Can you convince me that there are massive efficiency gains to be had by hiring immigrants instead of unemployed black and/or white Americans?

---

> If you let in both low-skill immigrants and high-skill immigrants, it's actually possible for virtually every native person in the US to benefit.

Theoretically, if you think of only money. Money's great, but it's not a substitute for doing useful things for people. I don't want to live in a country where going on welfare is just as good, social-standing wise, as having any sort of job. Do you think it's a good thing, or at least a neutral thing, that there are people in the US who've been on welfare for generations? If you're curious what these people's lives are like, I suggest American Dream by Jason DeParle.

I want to live in a place where work pays more than idleness. Do you think it's better to pay people to be underbid by immigrants?

u/DrPollak · 3 pointsr/Indiana

Thanks! As an economist (and not native-born in the region) I do my best to stay objective and let economic data lead me to conclusions as much as possible.

A book is something I'm interested in doing in the future. A historian colleague and I have discussed maybe doing a kind of economic/historical ethnography to capture interviews with current/former Gary residents that experienced the decline while they're still around and then coupling that with economic data.

I do have a peer-reviewed journal article on the socioeconomic and demographic trends of Northwest Indiana from the 1970s to today that you can download and read for free here, but this focuses more on the entire Northwest Indiana region and barely touches on the tip of the iceberg that is the economic history of the region.

If you're looking for a good data-driven book on the history of Gary you might want to check out The Cost of Being Poor by Sandra L. Barnes (who was born and raised in Gary).

If you want some excellent insight into the current state of manufacturing and union jobs in the United States here are two articles from Ben Casselman (one of my favorite reporters) from when he was with FiveThirtyEight (he's now at the NY Times). They are from during the presidential primaries in 2016 so they are a bit dated but the insight is excellent and still highly relevant:

u/everapplebutter · 1 pointr/politics

If you do want to go the personal route: I make minimum wage and can afford luxury groceries. I also pay all my own bills including rent. Maybe you should move somewhere less expensive. <---Yes I realize this is myopic of me to say, but so is everything about your post. If you are truly interested in learning about welfare systems and the like please educate yourself with some well-researched media on the subject. http://www.amazon.com/Flat-Broke-Children-Welfare-Reform/dp/0195176014 As a starting point, this book is likely available at your local library and does a wonderfully thorough job of addressing a lot of your concerns and will give you some context/a bigger picture. I also think you would be much happier if you kept your eyes on your own grocery basket.

u/Variable303 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Regarding some of the other suggestions so far: Reading Payne's book is fine, but keep in mind that her work is quite controversial. Moreover, much her work is self-published. There are many who feel her research lacks the academic rigor typically found in a field where research is peer-reviewed/published. Plus, there's also the profit motive, since she sets up workshops around the country and does quite well for herself. I'm not saying this is inherently wrong, but just to keep this in mind.

"The Invisible Thread" was an enjoyable read, although I found it to be a bit contrived. It's a feel good story, but I don't think you'll learn all that much from it.

Here are some additional suggestions going from more academic to less. Honestly though, to truly understand poverty from a big picture standpoint, it's best to draw from a wide range of topics and scholars.

The Origins of the Urban Crisis, by Thomas Sugrue. Pretty much required reading for those studying the roots of poverty in America. You'll learn about various factors like segregation, redlining, and other urban policies have formed the historical foundation for the cycle of intergenerational poverty that reverberates to this day. It's academic, but not nearly as bad as a lot of journals.

More Than Just Race, by William Julius Wilson. He actually has numerous books in this field that are great. As an African American and Harvard sociology professor, he has quite a bit of credibility in this field. That said, he does face some criticism, as his approach leans heavily toward structural factors and is said to be overly deterministic. Note, however, that just about every scholar has critics.

Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market, by Katherine Newman. This is a bit more accessible and personal, as she uses ethnographic portraits to complement facts and figures, giving the narrative a more personal feel, and offering readers real people they can empathize with.

There Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz. This is a non-fiction book by an investigative journalist that is meant to be read by the masses, making it far more accessible. Great stuff.

The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore. An accessible autobiographical account of two boys name Wes Moore, both of whom grew up minutes away from each other, but ended up taking very different life paths.

By the way, where in the midwest are you? I just moved to Iowa City a week ago. The weather here is...weird. Everyone is warning me of the winters here.

u/DerpyGrooves · 5 pointsr/BasicIncome

This one by Allan Sheahen is considered to be one of the best books on the topic, and Allan Sheahen is one of the oldest supporters of UBI in America.

This one is also great, from a more libertarian perspective. Charles Murray is a well-respected libertarian thinker.

If you're looking for something academic, these textbooks are pretty awesome- one and two.

u/MelissaClick · 4 pointsr/UpliftingNews

Well, I actually read that in this book:

  • http://www.amazon.com/The-Homeless-Christopher-Jencks/dp/067440596X

    I read that book about 10 years ago, and I don't have a copy on hand. But from memory, "long-term homelessness" is defined as over 2 years of continual homelessness and constitutes approximately half of the homeless at any given time. The other half is constituted of people whose time in homelessness is typically much shorter than 1 year (something like 3 months if I recall but like I said, it was 10 years ago, so my figures are likely rough).

    I remember that particular fact pretty well because it altered my preconceptions about homelessness.

    -----

    EDIT: Those stats are out of date. Now an even smaller percentage of the homeless are "chronic" homeless. Cite:

    > It’s a common misconception that this group represents the majority of the homelessness population. Rather, they account for less than 15 percent of the entire homeless population on a given day.

    > Fortunately, there has been significant progress to address chronic homelessness in the last decade. The number of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness has declined by 21 percent since 2010.

  • http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessness
u/Hynjia · 1 pointr/PoliticalScience

>The dominant political entities of the future will be those which are able to best inform their decisions by extracting wisdom from their crowd.

I disagree. I believe the dominant political entities of the future will be those that are able to control information by producing data to manipulate the crowds. Even today, this is what data is increasingly about: controlling people through data and algorithms. Politics will become less about gathering data from crowds, but how crowds fit certain ranges of data. Analogously, it's like how Hillary Clinton was said to be quick to respond to polls that showed the crowd wanted one thing over another, while Donald Trump caters to a specific demographic regardless of polls. I think there will be a general movement toward the latter style on both sides of political spectrum.

​

At least that's my opinion informed by reading books like To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism and Society of the Spectacle and Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco, among others.

u/evilfollowingmb · 6 pointsr/changemyview

I think you have a very distorted understanding of Republicans.

Republicans, broadly speaking, believe in limited government. This stems from view that the private sector usually does thing better, that we should have less government influence over our lives, a basic belief in fiscal solvency, and belief that low taxes drive prosperity for all.

None of these is "love of money". Indeed, I think there have been studies that Republicans give much more to charity than Democrats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-democrats-charity-philanthropy.html

Yet further, rejecting the welfare state does NOT mean leaving the poor to starve etc. Indeed, before the modern welfare state, Americans had a rich and robust tradition of charity. The book at the link gives great detail...but in any case charity used to be much more humane and "high touch"...and more effective than the impersonal welfare machine we have now.

https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-American-Compassion-Marvin-Olasky/dp/089526725X

I think this is where Rs and Ds have such a huge gap. Ds often can't seem to imagine that charity can happen without the government being involved. But it has and can.

u/robshookphoto · 3 pointsr/photography

My favorites are:

Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue


Below the Line: Living Poor in America

Really anything by him is great. His books are consistently on lists of the best documentary photography books available.

He's got a new one coming out via kickstarter.

Anything by Sebastiao Salgado, too. Workers is my favorite.

u/invectiv · 1 pointr/changemyview

I would challenge the method of setting up social housing. I agree that there is totally a need for more housing supply in cities where rent in many neighborhoods is high, and vacancies are low, but using social housing (at least, only social housing) as your policy solution leads to many situations where the poor are not upwardly socially mobile and neighborhoods become stigmatized, leading to ghettoization.

What problems exist to social housing?

Social housing is often constructed in specific urban neighborhoods where there is less legitimate economic activity, higher crime, etc. This is because of a few reasons:

(1) Often, there just isn't a lot of available land where rents are high and economic activity is booming. Think of Manhattan, San Francisco, or a place like the center of Toronto/Vancouver. Social housing would be built in the urban periphery or ghetto, where there exists less opportunity for residents.

(2) Let's assume, for the sake of this point, that some level of government is going to control the social housing corporation you mention. That level of government is going to be pressured against building social housing in neighborhoods where more wealthy households/individuals or even middle-class households/individuals live. Those citizens are likely to rally against whatever level of government is in charge of locating the social housing, and those citizens have far more political capital than the poor citizens who would be benefiting from social housing. They understand how to call their representatives at municipal, provincial, whatever level of government and to complain. They understand (better) the process of zoning and constructing new housing projects. They will raise a fuss and the government, either in anticipation or in response, is likely to build social housing somewhere else. Somewhere where residents won't complain about it.

Because social housing ends up in poorer neighborhoods, the poorer citizens in those neighborhoods often do not have access to a lot of economic opportunity. Their schools may receive less funding (especially in the USA). Violent crime (whatever its cause) may prevent kids from receiving a productive education from day to day (see example of the South Side of Chicago). There are likely to be fewer legitimate businesses. And public services which give residents upwards mobility are few, because most public service expansions tend to go to those parts of the urban populace that has political capital and knows how to use it (above argument, #2). Things like libraries, public transport, even parks and recreation, all sponsored by the municipal governments of the kinds of cities we're talking about, end up in middle-class or wealthy neighborhoods, not poor ones. And the public services that do go to these neighborhoods might be more poorly maintained than the public services that go to wealthier neighborhoods. All this contributes to the creation of a relatively socially immobile poor neighborhood.

You may not agree that that is a problem, but I think it is. Governments have a duty to all citizens -- not just the citizens who have political capital and know how to use it -- to make possible the conditions of social mobility. Coming from an American perspective, I believe the government ought to allow all citizens to have equal opportunities, so that the American Dream can be more of a reality than it is at present. Immobile urban neighborhoods, which can be considered in a number of cases ghettos, strip opportunities away from residents. That's a horrible thing in my book.

Furthermore, creating socially immobile poor neighborhoods creates a social stigma related to a specific place. This affects the confidence and psyche of the inhabitants. See https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Outcasts-Comparative-Sociology-Marginality/dp/0745631258 and Wacquant's related work (libgen has the pdf).

What policy solutions help alleviate the problems created by creating social housing?

If you agree that creating ghettos is a problem, there have to be some solutions:

(1) Reducing crime. Unfortunately, there is not much consensus / some amount of heated debate about how reducing crime actually happens. Should there be more policing, or less? I personally believe that policing should be less aggressive, but others can disagree. This is a tangential point anyways.

(2) Increasing the public services which help these neighborhoods access economic opportunities. Extending public transport, so that residents can access jobs around the city. Creating more libraries and maintaining them better. Unfortunately, these solutions are often unlikely to be put in place. Promises are made and then broken. I wish I could find a better source for you; I've heard plenty of stories and researched quite a bit on this subject, but don't have access to many resources right now. That being said, the following link might help.

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-04-24/transit-deserts-a-growing-problem-in-the-us

What alternatives exist to social housing?

The government can also mandate that private developers set aside a certain number of rent-controlled units for middle- and lower-class citizens to be distributed by lottery or by a comparable, equitable program. This solution avoids ghettoization and allows residents to access public transit in other neighborhoods. This might also be an unpopular policy, but certainly not AS unpopular as constructing all the housing for the poor in one middle-class or wealthy neighborhood.

The city of Boston has such a policy for middle-income residents called IDP http://www.bostonplans.org/housing/overview

This requires a fair amount of monitoring, and in my opinion Boston's municipal government is struggling a bit, but I think that this is a much fairer solution than constructing social housing, which isolates the poor. Note that Boston also has social project housing; but both solutions is certainly better in my opinion than doing social project housing alone.

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/europe

You are just seeing the tip of the iceberg friend. As many as they deport, round up, lock up, or let them be beaten by Golden Dawn members, the influx of immigrants won't stop.

EU law has deliberately turned Greece into a buffer zone of immigration while they (edit: I mean the states of EU) also struggle with maybe the biggest issue in the planet nowadays. These waves of immigrants were created by the western economic system and civilization that capitalized and exploited for centuries the third world. Now that there is a surplus of people there are no more places for them to go. So now they knock on your door but you say "I don't care, let them go somewhere else" while your country contributed to this (as a western country and a member of the EU - and even practically, we are in the NATO you know, NATO attacks Afghanistan and Iraq, immigrants fled to Greece). We buy our iPhones and iPads and our cool trendy shoes that are made by child labor in Asia but when these people knock on our doors, no, no, we don't want them here.

Who are you and our politicians to deem a human being as "legal" and "illegal'? Have you ever thought about that?

I can't really use a reply on reddit to convince you to see the bigger picture. I will link some books for you to read though and maybe these will change your mind:


Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts

The End of Human Rights

Europe's 21st Century Challenge

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life - this book really sheds a light on the "legal" and "illegal" issue for humans.


Guests and Aliens

>[...] our freedom depends on the severity of other states, especially, but not only, neighbouring states whose populations wish to leave their own country. Our freedom supposes more controls at the borders and more suspicion against tourism of the poor. Tourism as the freedom to move is for the rich but the poor are by definition a threat against the order as they are supposed to want to stay in a host state in order to profit from social benefits.

EU (and the western civilization in general) speaks a lot about freedom and liberty but it can only comprehend that freedom in a context of banishment of the "others". Raising walls, patrolling the borders stricter, rounding up people to lock them up in hideous detainment centers all around Europe won't stop them from coming. We are only making their road more difficult resulting in more of them being drown or frozen to death.

Oh and by the way even if you drive away from Greece all the "foreigners" that won't solve the crisis. Immigrants in Greece nowadays are just the scapegoats for anger to be unleashed and votes to be gained by the same people that brought you here and by the people that today are speaking of driving away "foreigners" but after will also speak of driving away the ones that aren't "pure Greeks" - if you catch my drift.

u/EternalDad · 0 pointsr/Libertarian

You are now getting closer to the real argument, I applaud you.

Getting rid of Medicare seems like a bad idea. In fact, society as a whole would likely be better off if everyone had healthcare (cost per person goes down, less health-induced poverty related crimes, etc) - but getting to that point is hard in a nice libertarian fashion. Charles Murray's idea to have a UBI coupled with a requirement to spend some on healthcare might be better than our status quo, but probably has some externalities that make it undesirable.

As for the other issues, I think many UBI advocates would handle the Social Security problem as an issue that will eventually phase out. You take anyone getting SS >1000/month and you give them their 1000/month in UBI plus the difference in SS. 1000 from UBI, 400 from SS. All people retiring after some cutoff don't get any SS top-up. Eventually phases out as an issue. Yes, if UBI stays at 1000/month and costs increase, this can be bad for the elderly. But it is also bad for the elderly to have an entire youth generation living in poverty, unable to get training. How do people retire? By purchasing the labor of the young with assets they acquired while young. One can't retire by hoarding assets unless there are people willing to do work to get those assets. Unless fully robotic retirement facilities pop up.

As for the gross price tag still being large, there are many arguments to be made on how to handle that issue, but I won't make them here as they typically require increased taxes of some kind and such discussions don't go far in this subreddit.

I would bring up the issue with treating money as a scarce resource. I like to look at money as valuable tool that helps facilitate market operations and allows a measuring of the value of a thing to a person. It measures a slice of goods owned to the holder. What does giving every adult 12k/year really mean? It means we think everyone deserves at least a small piece of the total goods produced; a base minimum before any productivity. No longer does anyone deserve 0%, even if they produce nothing. The real question is whether we want to move that direction as a society - and not whether X trillions of dollars is too costly.

Can society as a whole produce enough food, housing, and healthcare for all? Definitely. Many non-essential goods while doing it? Sure. We have a distribution problem, not a production problem.

u/1tudore · 2 pointsr/SandersForPresident

You can reach out to u/ocherthulu on Reddit, and in addition to offering his own insights, he can refer you to colleagues at RIT and elsewhere. His comment here (link) might be a good starting point.

 

The link in the above comment goes to the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (link), and they should be able to provide you with some policy insights.

 


The Autism Self-Advocacy Network (link) also offers guidelines for policy makers and can refer you to experts with relevant knowledge and experience.

 

You may also benefit from the insights offered by Administration for Community Living's (link) public affairs officers. You should get in contact with them.

 

The link on Medicare is an essay by Andrea Louise Campbell at MIT (link), so that may be another place to look for good public policy research.

 

Of course, there are disabled people in your local community who should be at the forefront of any policy discussion, but these are good resources for giving you some background in the policy conversation so you have some grounding to prepare for meeting with them.

u/Produent · 1 pointr/AskReddit

That sounds like a great book, but you hit the nail right on the head when you said that it didn't relate to our discussion on sales tax. There's nothing in that writeup that helps us understand scale, which is very important here. There is also nothing addressing whether or not illegal immigrants are the driving force behind the black market economy in the US. Plus, we end up right back at the same problem I had with your earlier post: this book is about a single neighborhood in Chicago. Maybe if we both read the book, rather than the synopsis on Amazon, we would find some useful data.

u/BumblingHypotenuse · 14 pointsr/breakingmom

First, u/Flewtea, please understand that I am not attacking you or your opinion or experiences, I am simply offering some thoughts from my own personal experience.

Also, to avoid derailing your post u/throwawayisnotgreat, I have tried to make it informative for your perspective. I am not sure I have succeeded, and it did get long. My apologies!

If I'm remembering my reading correctly, this book and/or this book (I'm sorry, it has been a while since I cracked them open) state that welfare's original purpose was to allow mothers to stay at home to parent their children effectively when other options became untenable. This purpose has been twisted and tangled over the decades through laws and interpretations into a dungheap of epic proportions which is used to negatively influence public/political opinion toward the poor and further constrain their ability to function effectively within our society.

A welfare queen, in my humble opinion, is someone who utilizes and abuses the system for her own benefit, without concern for her children's upkeep and well-being.

In this instance, OP is being instructed to utilize the system under the original intent of the Welfare system - in order to care for her child - because other options are not apparent, and it would be a viable solution. However, within the system that currently exists, OP would need to understand that the red-tape and political atmosphere of today would make it as difficult as possible for her to "go on the system" and find a comfortable solution.

OP should know that the process itself can be humiliating and degrading. The solutions provided are not intended to provide for anything beyond basic means and support. It is not a matter of waltzing down, getting a hug, and being handed a check. They make you beg.

Additionally, OP should exhaust every option before applying, and be advised that the answer may still be "no."

OP would then be advised to remember that, upon qualification, retention of assistance is not guaranteed. In fact, the system has been engineered in such a way that a qualifying individual or household can be denied or suspended from the system at any time without any forewarning. There is an appeals process available. It puts the burden of proof on the applicant, who generally does not understand the system. The people who work there have trouble understanding it.

OP should also be aware that getting off the system is even more difficult than getting access to it. The difference between allowance and affordability is a hard line which leaves empty bellies and unpaid heating bills, and no more help - unless one falls below the line or becomes homeless. Then, you have an existing file and new circumstances, and they can just plug in the new information and the dance resumes.

People who use this system more than prove that they need it. Is it possible to work the system for personal benefit? Of course it is. People who live by working any system exist in every system, not just welfare and assistance. They are present in government offices, school buildings, retail stores, corporations, banks, prisons, food suppliers, casinos, union halls - if it exists, someone has figured out how to work it for their personal benefit to the detriment of others. I am going to say "Bernie Madoff" to make this point. There are dozens of others whose actions have been untested in a court of law, or tested and mildly punished or unpunished altogether (think Enron, cigarette companies, the banking system) or even rewarded...

The main differences between these individuals and people on assistance of any kind is the amount of money involved, and the ability to hide or fight back.

I (personally) think "welfare queen" might be a bit strong for this occasion.

____

edit, fixed typos, tried to address better, and further apologies to u/Flewtea and u/throwawayisnotgreat because I'm not trying to attack anyone or any position, and as usual I mucked it up.

u/bames53 · 2 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

Well, I guess if that's what parents think is a good education for their kids...

One thing I hear about sometimes is that often lower class parents really don't care about education for their children. I always wonder about the degree to which that's true, or if it is true if it's not just a cultural phenomena localized to the regions where I'm talking to the people telling me these things.

Anyway I found this book to be a fascinating account of private schools that pretty much the poorest people in the world are paying to educate their kids.

u/Camellia_sinensis · 0 pointsr/hillaryclinton

Yes.


William Julius Wilson would agree.

Great book and thinker on this topic:

http://www.amazon.com/More-than-Just-Race-Issues/dp/0393337634

u/CinematicUniversity · 1 pointr/news

UBI, in the way Murray wants, it is not an expansion of the social safety net. He wants it to replace all other social services.


>This is the Plan, a radical new approach to social policy that defies any partisan label. Murray suggests eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant to everyone age twenty-one or older. In Our Hands describes the financial feasibility of the Plan and its effects on retirement, health care, poverty, marriage and family, work, neighborhoods and civil society.


The libertarian version of UBI is a massive reduction in the benefits the average person uses

u/1nfiniterealities · 28 pointsr/socialwork

Texts and Reference Books

Days in the Lives of Social Workers

DSM-5

Child Development, Third Edition: A Practitioner's Guide

Racial and Ethnic Groups

Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording

Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond

[Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life]
(https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Feelings-Harbinger-Self-Help-Workbook/dp/1608822087/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3ZW7PRW5TK2PB0MDR9R3)

Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model

[The Clinical Assessment Workbook: Balancing Strengths and Differential Diagnosis]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534578438/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_38?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ARCO1HGQTQFT8)

Helping Abused and Traumatized Children

Essential Research Methods for Social Work

Navigating Human Service Organizations

Privilege: A Reader

Play Therapy with Children in Crisis

The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives

The School Counseling and School Social Work Treatment Planner

Streets of Hope : The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

Deviant Behavior

Social Work with Older Adults

The Aging Networks: A Guide to Programs and Services

[Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society: Bridging Research and Practice]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415884810/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy

Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change

Ethnicity and Family Therapy

Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Perspectives on Development and the Life Course

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Generalist Social Work Practice: An Empowering Approach

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook

DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents

DBT Skills Manual

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets

Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need

Novels

[A People’s History of the United States]
(https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511070674&sr=1-1&keywords=howard+zinn&dpID=51pps1C9%252BGL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)


The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Tuesdays with Morrie

The Death Class <- This one is based off of a course I took at my undergrad university

The Quiet Room

Girl, Interrupted

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Flowers for Algernon

Of Mice and Men

A Child Called It

Go Ask Alice

Under the Udala Trees

Prozac Nation

It's Kind of a Funny Story

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Bell Jar

The Outsiders

To Kill a Mockingbird

u/irritatingrobot · 1 pointr/Jokes

When Hannity and TV cop shows are your only source of information about this stuff a lot of well reasoned ideas can seem pretty crazy at first.

Edit: For anyone who wants a pretty good starting point for understanding this stuff "Off The Books" by Sudhir Venkatesh is worth a look. That chapter in Freakenomics about the drug war talks about this same guy's work.

u/not_from_chattanooga · 3 pointsr/IAmA

If you've read this book (which you probably haven't) what do you think of it ?

http://www.amazon.com/Off-Books-Underground-Economy-Urban/dp/0674023552

Alternately, would you consider reading this book and comparing it with your present surroundings? I'd love to know what you think.

u/rynplm · 2 pointsr/Ask_Politics

Since the creation of TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) in 1996, benefits are capped at 2 children and 64 months. To receive these benefits mothers must comply with strict work requirements. If they get a job, they aren't allowed to leave it without being penalized.

A great read on the topic from a sociological perspective would be 'Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform'. I read this a few years back and it did a great job of explaining the current US welfare system with the data to back it up.

To answer your question - there are no incentives to have more children assuming you are already on welfare.

u/smudgeofwhimsical · 251 pointsr/news

She's presided over UC Davis at a time of tuition increases and the expansion of a food bank program within UC Davis. While doing so, she employs her own personal chef. All this despite UC Davis leading in food policy as the #1 agricultural college in the world. Which, advocates for better food policies amongst inequality in American society. She is disconnected from the reality that students face--of being unable to afford tuition and feed themselves.

During the Occupy Protest, a call against the 1% , students were pepper sprayed to disperse protest. Despite a tradition of protest on college campuses. She has a history of ignoring calls for resignation from UC Davis faculty.

>Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, November 2011

>I have....taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

>You are not.

>I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

>1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

>2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

>3) to demand your immediate resignation

>-Professor Nathan Brown,

In the 2015 CAES graduation speech, she spoke of Thomas Edison's genius and struggle to discover technology while making several mistakes. Her words. "Everybody makes mistakes."

I guess that's right Chancellor Katehi.

Edit: Added Links. If you would like to learn more about the rise of food banks and inequality, Sweet Charity is a great read.

u/noelsusman · 1 pointr/dataisbeautiful

Of course it's redistribution of wealth, and that's not against libertarian principles. Charles Murray wrote a whole book about it. The Cato Institute has thoroughly discussed the idea in mostly glowing terms. It's far from universally supported among libertarians, but it has solid traction.

u/0ptimal · 33 pointsr/Futurology

First, I don't have anything to say about the UK, but someone already ran numbers for replacing the US welfare system (the entire system mind you; welfare, TANF, disability, SS, medicare, medicaid) with an unconditional basic income system that provides 10k per year per person for everyone over 21, starting in 2010 or so, and it was roughly even. The book is In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0844742236 . Some countries, such as Australia and Brazil already have some degree of basic income systems in place, so just because such a thing might not be viable today, or for everyone yet, doesn't mean the concept has no merit.

Second, an economy runs on the flow of money. I don't find it terribly complex to understand the following argument: a) increasing automation will lead to higher capital/investment costs and lower ongoing costs for businesses b) businesses will need less employees and spend less money over time to produce their products c) wealth will collect in the accounts of the people that own the capital and businesses because they have minimal costs to pay; no employees, production costs are paid upfront, etc d) economy grinds to a halt as the owners continually make more money than they spend or lose through taxes until no one else has any money.

We're already seeing this happen to some degree; corporations are sitting on stacks of cash because they have no reason to invest it because there's no one left who can/will consume more of their products. Inflation seems by far to be a minor concern compared with this kind of problem, where we have the effective capability to provide for the needs of everyone, but we don't because of the mechanisms of our economic system isn't capable of dealing with our technological progress. In such a world money is much less important as a means of storing value than it is as a means of efficient resource distribution/allocation.

And finally, I'm missing the issue with corporate taxes. Corporate taxes are on profits; I don't see how this affects consumers, and I don't see how its a bad thing or affects investment. Corporate taxes should encourage investment by my measure, because it means you're better off spending a chunk of cash on R&D or whatever instead of putting 70% of that in your bank account and sending the other 30% to the government. Unless I'm missing something, in which case by all means, enlighten me.

u/hershey-kiss · 1 pointr/slavelabour

https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Charity-Emergency-Food-Entitlement/dp/0140245561

Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement

ISBN-10: 0140245561

ISBN-13: 978-0140245561

Paying Venmo. State price

​

EDIT: ty for so many responses. currently talking to bookselller10

EDIT2: done

u/35mmFILM · 1 pointr/PoliticalDiscussion

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0844742236/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

Great minds think alike... some of the details are different but the general idea has been out there for a while. Also google "basic income guarantee."

u/Sail2525 · 3 pointsr/PoliticalVideo

I don't know about this particular law, but laws governing charity handouts have existed since colonial times. It was more common than not to criminalize what was known as "bad charity" because it was believed to do more harm than good.

This book discusses the history of it rather extensively:

u/Sidewinder77 · 3 pointsr/BasicIncome

There are lots of other great documents and videos of Murray explaining his idea that he details in his book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State

u/jakt_ · 2 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Charles Murray (conservative) wrote a book about universal minimum income, at 10K/adult https://www.amazon.com/Our-Hands-Replace-Welfare-State/dp/0844742236

unsure if that would work, but he put the idea out there

u/rubsomebacononitnow · 5 pointsr/news

You should read Off the books It's the guy that Levett and Drubner are talking about.

Kids just want respect and they see money or violence as a way to get it. They'd take the money over the violence no question. They just run hand in hand.

Dope dealing has the same appeal as all the dumb shit that surburban moms sell they just have a bit more commitment.

u/andkon · 5 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism
  1. Bad decisions are NOT diluted. They are magnified. It's not one person making one bad decision diluted to everyone else. It's that same one person who then makes bad decisions for everyone altogether. Has Bush been prosecuted for the Iraq War?

  2. "Providing free public education for children in poverty is a key part of giving those kids opportunity to succeed." What's the mechanism, what are the results, what are the opportunity costs? This is just pro-state propaganda that ignores the means and gushes about promised fluffy ends.

  3. You're using current stats about current dropouts under current laws. 12-year-olds are not allowed to work, period. In those six years, what skills do students actually learn that they could not learn on their own without cost to taxpayers?

  4. "Then again I could have been honing my latte making skills at Starbucks." Well, how about you having both a job and education, without cost to taxpayers? That's what a job would do. A barista makes about $20,000 a year. Given that a 12-year-old could make coffee for six hours a day and learn how to make websites on the side, that's then at zero cost to taxpayers AND the kid has money leftover AND is learning something else.

  5. The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People are Educating Themselves: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939709121/

u/HunterIV4 · 3 pointsr/FeMRADebates

Interestingly, I'm not totally opposed to it, as long as it is implemented as a replacement for current welfare systems (or at minimum a massive reduction). I actually really like Charles Murray's version in his book In Our Hands, and would actively support it.

The problem is most conservatives oppose it "morally" (people don't deserve my money) for the same reasons they oppose welfare, and most liberals oppose it because they want it in addition to our current welfare system, which is economic suicide and doesn't actually fix any of the problems with welfare as is. For many liberals, people deserve a basic income, and welfare, and basically whatever they want, because rich people have "too much" money, so they're unlikely to support a replacement of welfare with UBI, which is (in my opinion) the only viable solution.

Murray sells it really well, but sadly I don't see how either political view would buy it. Which is too bad.

Side note: I also believe we should drop half of our mandatory humanities programs in school and replace them with finance education. Giving people money when they don't know how to use it is pointless, and it's insane we give more attention to Oliver Twist than budgeting, paying bills, avoiding debt, and investing.

Giving the poor money is necessary to eliminate poverty in the short term, but if you want to keep them out, we need to be teaching people personal finance. It's more universally applicable than sex ed (not everyone will have sex, but everyone will deal with money), yet we spend even less time on it.

A UBI combined with basic finance education minus our horrid welfare state would be, in my opinion, a huge economic bonus to the United States and those in poverty. It only helps the poor, not special interest groups and voting blocks, however, so it'll probably never go anywhere.

u/LawlAbx · 5 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

No, explicitly they didn't but the repercussions of policy making and the white flight post-WWII definitely did influence the problems inner-city blacks face today. This book by WJW details these problems and the intersectionality effects these individuals are facing daily, you should read it.

But, I realize you probably won't, so here's a tl;dr history lesson.

During WWII, factory work in midwestern and northern cities, such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and the like, was in high demand due to wartime production quotas. Many poor blacks from the south and around the united states migrated to these regions in order to gain reliable work in production facilities. Post-war, these factories closed or many workers were laid off, especially minorities, in favor of the returning GI's looking for jobs. At the same time, the white flight was occurring, leaving the only affordable housing in the run down, previously white-owned inner city housing, which became concentrated centers of poverty as these areas in cities became ignored.

An interesting note is that suburbs are mostly built to be a sprawling network of streets designed for an automobile culture. Poor blacks, at the time, and still today, had a hard time affording a decent car, and this poses a significant barrier in finding any sort of reliable employment outside of these neighborhoods, and thus these poor neighborhoods became even more isolated than they were.

Of course, there is a lot I'm leaving out; Incarceration culture, economic illiteracy, the implications and process of welfare and similar programs (which affects everyone across the race and gender spectrum, but women and minorities the most), and disproportionate use of resources by way of the city and state, to name a few.

But whatever, keep believing in your black president = no more racism guize! sentiment, because it is utterly false. Just because policy doesn't explicitly reveal a racist motive, it can easily be argued that lots of policy, intentionally or not, has created a racist outcome.