Poverty Trap

Via Free Exchange, an interesting Drake Bennett article about Charles Karelis's idea that some poor people are so burdened by problems that it's not rational for them to address any particular problem:

Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.

The implication is that, basically, you need to intervene forcefully enough with spending, etc. to get poor people over the hump and into the "normal" range of economic behavior.

Comments

So in other words, it's about hope.

People who understand poverty have long talked about the dispair of poverty as an obstacle in and of itself. Many things already known by wise and observant people get "discovered" by economics all the time, and everyone acts as if it's revelation. Economics might or might not be the "dismal science" but it is certainly the "dim science".

Posted by Alex Broner | April 1, 2008 5:50 PM

President Bush thinks he can transform Iraqi society and overcome generations of bad patterns.

Solving poverty in the rich USA should be easy by comparison

Posted by Comment | April 1, 2008 5:54 PM

When I read stuff like this, I ALMOST understand why Pol Pot tried to kill every intellectual in Cambodia...and recruited plenty of help.

Posted by wobbly | April 1, 2008 5:54 PM

Or you just let them be irrational.

Posted by jpe | April 1, 2008 5:56 PM

Alex. In science, proving even basic and easily understood things is of fundamental importance. Everyone knows that A > B and B > C then A > C, but it is still useful to prove that basic fact.

Posted by Grogor | April 1, 2008 6:00 PM

not much data behind his assertions but it does seem to fit the problem -- it seems like an okay hypothesis to me. As far as the "dim science", sometime science, like the law, can be an ass.

I think an economist would presume one would attack the problem with the highest perceived cost. Ameliorating that problem would give one a better utility than the status quo. Now simply interject executive DIS-functioning (in this case too many competing problems to just pick one) and you have a major part of the problem.

Is it simply more money that is required or is it better/more caseworkers with more resources-- helping to solve the job, childcare, housing, food, medical, criminal, educational, etc. problems?

Posted by mike c | April 1, 2008 6:05 PM

"The implication is that, basically, you need to intervene forcefully enough with spending, etc. to get poor people over the hump and into the "normal" range of economic behavior. "

Well, one way to partially deal with that would be to remove the healthcare problem from the poor and near-poor via universal healthcare. As has been amply demonstrated, universal healthcare would be the largest progressive redistribution of income since Social Security.

But trust-fund scumbag Matthew Yglesias thinks Democrats who vote for universal healthcare are racists. Yglesias knows his daddy will pay for any problems that come up in his life, so he's fine with telling everyone else to go fuck themselves.

Posted by Petey | April 1, 2008 6:10 PM

The analogy to a car's dents made a certain amount of sense--if you have one dent, you're motivated to fix it. If you have 7 dents, it's overwhelming.

Of course, my minivan has had one large dent below the front bumper since its first year, and I never felt motivated to fix it, so the analogy does break down.

Posted by Deborah | April 1, 2008 6:13 PM

Addressing poverty all starts with adequate, safe and healthy housing, even if it is small. Our parents did fine with a 2 bedroom, 1 bath cottage style home under 900 sq.ft. It was cheap to heat and cool, gathered the family all under one roof, and even permitted mom to stay at home. We must find ways to enable people to get into and stay in housing and then support those neighborhoods with adequate schools, public conveniences, transportation and things like supermarkets and churches. We can then help people to address their issues from the safety of being at home and imbue them with dignity and respect, for themselves and others.

Posted by Mike Evans | April 1, 2008 6:14 PM

Let's take a poll: who do you think is posting under Petey's name: Don Williams, Richard Steven Hack, or SLC?

Posted by too many steves | April 1, 2008 6:16 PM

I couldn't agree more. the more problems bubble up with no amount of energy or time to solve them, the more unlikely one is to know where to begin to tackle them. I never forget that I am fortunate to be able to pay my bills and have a roof over my head. God forbid I ever get sick or my history of mental illness pokes its ugly head over my shoulder, lacking health insurance and making too much money to receive any government benefits. The knowledge that the overwhelming calamity of poverty lurks just around the corner is enough to keep me awake at night. I have complete empathy for those that struggle without being able to see a light at the end of the tunnel. In so many cases, it is not their fault.

Posted by courtney | April 1, 2008 6:23 PM

The semi-homeless drug culture people might also furnish an example of this. The world they live in is one where incremental improvements boot little.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | April 1, 2008 6:37 PM

I get what he's saying, but the bee sting analogy makes no sense. Most people can survive a single bee sting and therefore don't even need treatment (a few shots of whiskey will suffice). It's when you have many bee stings that you face the risk of death, in which case you REALLY need treatment. So for most people the analogy is the opposite of what he says.

Now, it's different for someone like me. One bee sting is fatal for me, but I have about 40 minutes to get to the hospital and still live, so it's definitely worth trying to get there in time. If I have ten bee stings, I'll just die on the way to the hospital, so it's probably not worth the effort. So his analogy only really applies to someone like me who has an extremely unusual reaction to bee stings.

Posted by fostert | April 1, 2008 6:43 PM

Let's take a poll: who do you think is posting under Petey's name: Don Williams, Richard Steven Hack, or SLC?

The epithet "trust-fund scumbag" leads me to suspect it's Chris Ford.

Posted by James Gary | April 1, 2008 6:51 PM

The contrary example cited in the article towards the end, namely that giving poor no strings attached checks, doesn't seem to me to disprove Karelis' ideas. Because the amount of money was dependent on the level of poverty, it is entirely rational that people would work less. Although unseemly, and I'm not saying I support this, the way to find out if this were to really work would be for a state or local government to give every resident an equal sized check. Then there is no disincentive to work more.

Posted by lfv | April 1, 2008 6:58 PM

I don't know whether I would put it exactly this way, but it is true that rational decision making may result in different choices for poor people. My husband always cites the following example: It is economically irrational to play the lottery on anything approaching a routine basis because the money would almost certainly gain a better return when added to some other investment, whether it's an IRA or a college education. But if you are poor and perceive that the meager amount that you could save by not playing the lottery would never materially alleviate your condition, you are probably not much worse off playing the lottery. In other words, the odds of you getting MATERIALLY ahead through investment are so long that they approach the odds of winning a significant lottery. It is thus more if not entirely rational for the poor to play the lottery.

You can look at various other expenditures, for instance, cable tv or a cell phone, in similar fashion. It certainly makes sense to cut back when there is an offsetting gain, like being able to save for a downpayment to buy a house or even go on vacation, but does it make sense when the offsetting gain is de minimis if nonexistent?

Posted by Barbara | April 1, 2008 6:58 PM

I can definitely relate to that concept, at least on a personal level.

One starts by spending money on necessities, then graduates to spending it on problems, and then and only then do you spend it on desires or improvements.

Of course, that's not entirely consistent. Even when you're near broke, sometimes you put off solving a problem until next month and take in a movie instead.

But in general, this is correct. Necessities, then problems, then other things.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 7:01 PM

Toomanysteves: Are you nuts?

My posts bear no relation to Petey's. And I'd have to say neither do Don's. And SLC is a one-trick pony - if it doesn't say Israel in it, or some insult to me, it's not an SLC post.

Ford, I could believe, except that his rants are always at least ten paragraphs long, and Petey's tend to be short.

I think Petey is Petey, more's the pity, heh, heh.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 1, 2008 7:05 PM

"Well, one way to partially deal with that would be to remove the healthcare problem from the poor"

Already done: it's called Medicaid. Lefties like you who are fixated on fully socializing American health care like to pretend that the poor lay untreated in the streets in this country. Talk to any nurse who works in a hospital or clinic that treats the poor and you'll learn the reality is quite different.

More generally, plenty of resources are already available to the poor: welfare, WIC, food stamps, the EITC if they work at all, etc. All the money in the world won't stop people with low intelligence and poor impulse control from ruining their lives; and in some cases, government aid has negative consequences. For example, the NY Times Magazine published a study a year or two ago about why the poor don't save. The biggest reason was that they were afraid that having a few dollars saved would make them ineligible for welfare.

Posted by Fred | April 1, 2008 7:12 PM

Fred, Medicaid recipients have woeful access to physicians in many communities. They are, in effect, stigmatized for their coverage.

Beyond that, Medicaid recipients have virtually no access to dental care, and perhaps not surprisingly, it is dental care that ranks among those services cited most often by the uninsured and poor as desirable in a universal health care plan.

Posted by Barbara | April 1, 2008 7:15 PM

Fred

You said, "the NY Times Magazine published a study a year or two ago about why the poor don't save. The biggest reason was that they were afraid that having a few dollars saved would make them ineligible for welfare."

Do you know where I might be able to read that?

Posted by cemmcs | April 1, 2008 7:16 PM

The biggest reason was that they were afraid that having a few dollars saved would make them ineligible for welfare.

Posted by Fred | April 1, 2008 7:12 PM

This is entirely rational behavior on their part, if they believe this is the case (I don't know whether it is or not). You say they are incapable of making good decisions, but a good decision would not be saving enough to get off the government dole only to have to run through a meager amount of savings.

Posted by lfv | April 1, 2008 7:20 PM

"There's not much evidence in the book, and there are a lot of bold claims, but it's great that he's making them," says Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University. It "was a really great book, and it was totally neglected."

Maybe I don't have the secret economics professor decoder ring, but when I read this, I thought "that's a psuedo-backhanded compliment."

Posted by Klug | April 1, 2008 7:20 PM

When you're fucked by life, you deal with getting to the end of the day, the week, and then the month. This is not a new observation:

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd, Slow rises worth, by poverty depress'd. -- Samuel Johnson

Also, read his remarks on poverty in his review of Soame Jenyns.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | April 1, 2008 7:30 PM

This idea is by no means novel. Jeffrey Sachs has been defending it for some time now. The problem is that without a massive scaling up of foreign aid on the part of rich countries, people living in dire poverty will not be able to reach the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Unless these people are able to do this, it will be all but impossible for them to rescue themselves from their perpetual suffering. It is incumbent upon us to start helping them do just that, right now.

Posted by R. Vangala | April 1, 2008 7:36 PM

"Fred, Medicaid recipients have woeful access to physicians in many communities. They are, in effect, stigmatized for their coverage."

Sorry, not buying it. My sister is an RN who has worked in ghetto hospitals. Not only do the poor get excellent medical care at no charge, but they know what benefits they are entitled to. She has seen illegal immigrants who speak no English (and are even illiterate in Spanish) who know about "Week" (WIC).

"Do you know where I might be able to read that?"

Here: "Idea Lab: Can Poor People Be Taught to Save?".

Posted by Fred | April 1, 2008 7:40 PM

Once again, Fred pulls out his one-trick pony: it's all the fault of Those People. He has framed photos of Archie Bunker in his living room.

But if you are poor and perceive that the meager amount that you could save by not playing the lottery would never materially alleviate your condition, you are probably not much worse off playing the lottery.

Or, the small pleasure of playing the lottery is worth the investment. See The Road to Wigan Pier, rather than Nineteen Eighty Four. Also, this:

Once or twice it has happened to me to meet unemployed men of genuine literary ability; there are others whom I haven't met but whose work I occasionally see in the magazines. Now and again, at long intervals, these men will produce an article or a short story which is quite obviously better than most of the stuff that gets whooped up by the blurb-reviewers. Why, then, do they make so little use of their talents? They have all the leisure in the world; why don't they sit down and write books? Because to write books you need not only comfort and solitude — and solitude is never easy to attain in a working-class home — you also need peace of mind. You can't settle to anything, you can't command the spirit of hope in which anything has got to be created, with that dull evil cloud of unemployment hanging over you.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | April 1, 2008 7:51 PM

The fact that a tiny subset of a population can occasionally achieve success over long odds is no reason in and of itself to favor policies which continue to keep those long odds in place.

Posted by El Cid | April 1, 2008 8:03 PM

I don't get this at all. You cannot do economics without assuming people are rational, but rationality is defined as a set of consistent preferences. Doesn't mean that you agree with those preferences. So if there are economists saying that a poor person's choices are not rational, they are not doing standard economics. So what are they doing? I have read some of the articles and I think they are doing oversimple unrealistic economics.

One can make the case that the average middle class working guy is irrational using the same reasoning. Why so many fat eating unhealthy diet? Why so many smokers? Why so many not exercising? Do we say they are irrational?

I think adding uncertainty to the analysis solves these problems of supposed irrationality that is rigorous and also intuitive. Saving, investing in education and training, etc, usually requires some immediate sacrifice of funds, some immediate and definite unpleasantness. The results are uncertain, down the road, and eventual. Add enough uncertainty in outcomes, and risk aversion in the poor person, and you can get a perfectly rational person making what seems to be irrational choices to just stay put in their routine.

For fat middle class guy, I say he is irrational because I can estimate what I think is the expected value for him of going to the gym. But he thinks, OK, maybe or maybe not I will realize better health, longer life, lower insurance premiums, lower life insurance costs, whatever, some day, maybe. But I know for sure I gotta get up and go over the gym every day and sweat and hurt and pay gym fees to get this fitness project going. Naah, I'll just sit here for just one more day. Maybe he has a better estimate of what the jargon calls the certainty equivalent today of the uncertain future reward, and calculates that is less than the certian upfront investment he has to make today, and does not undertake the project.

So, is he irrational? What am I missing?

Posted by I don't understand | April 1, 2008 8:25 PM

The ones who make it through the door get reasonable care. Presumably, even RNs don't see every person who can't get an appointment with the doctor in the first place.

Posted by Barbara | April 1, 2008 8:27 PM

Well John Kenneth Galbraith figured out long ago that it's unnecessary to advertise bread to a starving man. So Karelis's ideas don't sound that radical to me. In fact they seem rather obvious.

Posted by Aatos | April 1, 2008 8:30 PM

Winds of Change is possibly the greatest song ever.

Posted by Scorpion | April 1, 2008 8:33 PM

My comment above does not imply any particular approach to social policy is best. Except that, I do recommend actually getting real data on the probability distributions of good and bad outcomes of self-improvement projects and costs and problems of the poor before going around calling them irrational. The should get as much consideration as the fat middle class slob.

For example, research shows that the unhealthy diet of the poor can be explained by minimizing the costs of nutrition given poor peoples' budgets and foods available in poor neighborhoods. So actually many poor people are not stupid for eating the way they do, they are being clever budget stretchers gvien the choices available. And health consquences of diet are not observable for awhile.

Posted by I don't understand | April 1, 2008 8:36 PM

this thesis clearly goes against the Notorious BIG thesis that "mo money" means "mo problems". discuss...

Posted by djslippyb | April 1, 2008 8:38 PM

"Sorry, not buying it. My sister is an RN who has worked in ghetto hospitals. Not only do the poor get excellent medical care at no charge, but they know what benefits they are entitled to. She has seen illegal immigrants who speak no English (and are even illiterate in Spanish) who know about "Week" (WIC)."

Sorry to you, but you have no clue what you're talking about. My sister is a nurse practitioner and a Franciscan nun who has spent her whole adult life working in free and low income clinics both here and abroad (funny, don't recall her ever referring to them as "ghetto hospitals").

What people "get" is subsistence healthcare focused on immediate heath-care with little or no continuing treatment or follow-up. None of which addresses the underlying issues of long-term illness, pre and post-natal care, dental health, poor nutrition, drug abuse, mental health issues, and access to pharmaceuticals. The level of this subsistence "healthcare" varies dramatically by location and the availability of compassionate healthcare workers.

In addition, there are the "working poor" and the underinsured that daily make choices between their health needs, employment, housing, etc., because they are not eligible for government assistance.

Perhaps if you spent more time educating yourself and less trying to fit your prejudices to the occasional second hand anecdote, you’d be less likely to make such uniformed statements.

Posted by Rihilism | April 1, 2008 8:50 PM

Well, one way to partially deal with that would be to remove the healthcare problem from the poor and near-poor via universal healthcare.

I agree, Petey. Isn't it tragic that John Edwards and Hillary Clinton decided to advocate for an unworkable, immoral individual mandate rather than pushing for universal health care coverage provided by the state?

Posted by Dilan Esper | April 1, 2008 8:51 PM

Krug:
I think the gist is "I may not be buying this idea--it might even be totally wrong--but at least it's some new thinking on a problem that usually attracts stagnant bromides."

I don't understand:
But people are very irrational in economic decisions. Look at price point fixing: have 100 college students write down the last 2 digits of their social security numbers, then what they would pay for 3 things (e.g. a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates). Those with low SS #s give low estimates, middle give middle estimates, and high high estimates.
My favorite example of an economist not getting this was one who had just run across the fact that, across societies, people will incur a loss to punish a cheater. I thought that was an interesting finding about the glue and tradeoffs that make societies function; he thought no one who incurred an unnecessary cost should be allowed to vote.

Allow for rationality. But don't assume it blindly in all cases. Look at how much we exercise, which almost all Americans could stand to do more of.

Posted by Deborah | April 1, 2008 9:04 PM

Wait...if one has multiple bee-stings how is it not rational to get one treated? Even if you only one treated ever then at least you have one less bee-sting. If it's a matter of getting them treated one at a time then of course you do that. Only a true idiot leaves all the stingers in because they don't all come out at once.

Posted by bakum | April 1, 2008 9:11 PM

Agree with bukum - this doesn't make any sense at all. If I have six bee stings, I am going to gett all six taken care of; why would I only want to take care of one?

Posted by Al | April 1, 2008 9:25 PM

Man, now I really want Matt to do that podcast interview with Petey he was talking about a while back. Maybe even a Bloggingheads thing.

Posted by live | April 1, 2008 9:31 PM

Re: The biggest reason was that they were afraid that having a few dollars saved would make them ineligible for welfare.

The solution of course would be to remove the limitations on savings of moderate amounts for welfare recipients.

Re: But I know for sure I gotta get up and go over the gym every day and sweat and hurt and pay gym fees to get this fitness project going.

Fitness does not require going to a gym or paying gym fees (though it may still require a bit of sweat and effort of course).

Posted by JonF | April 1, 2008 9:40 PM

this thesis clearly goes against the Notorious BIG thesis that "mo money" means "mo problems". discuss...

That's just a data-point on the graph. The curve of money/problems is, of course, a parabola extending asymptotically at "no" and "mo'" on the x-axis.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | April 1, 2008 9:50 PM

I used to work a crisis hot line in St Louis. I always found it interesting the lowest suicide rates, demographically, were in the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Basically, when one lives in poverty they are too busy trying to stay alive to think about killing themselves.

Posted by pwillhoft | April 1, 2008 9:50 PM

If you want to eliminate poverty, the solution isn't rocket science. There are two key steps: stop importing poor immigrants, and give poor Americans cash incentives to have fewer or no kids. It's that simple. As long as low-IQ women like Rahmana Muhammad have four low-IQ kids, we will always have an intractable underclass in America.

"THIRD grade has always been a hard year for Rahmana Muhammad’s children," the article says. If asking the Muhammads (assuming all her children have the same last name) to pass third grade is like asking them to split the atom, wouldn't society have been better off if, after a teacher realized how dull the first Muhammad kid was, she could have notified a social worker who offered Ms. Muhammad $10,000 cash if she got Norplant?

Posted by Juan | April 1, 2008 10:11 PM

The problem with the "Hump" idea are two-fold:

1) The amount of money necessary to raise people over the "hump" out of poverty is most likely prohibitive. I say this because there is not a single society(Scandinavia included) that has managed to eliminate poverty. And for the very government centric among us, I want to remind you that Scandinavia represents essentially the maximum level of social spending you can wring out of an economy(above that, Laffer curve stuff starts to get into play)

2) Poverty is relative. People who are poor today would have been solidly middle class 3 decades ago. By any reasonable metric, the poor have access to food, health care, and housing, which is quite a bit more than most of the world.

Honestly, I'd prefer to direct any additional social spending to the third world, where the need is far greater.

Posted by David Shor | April 1, 2008 10:45 PM

Juan:Two HUGE mistakes.

First, reducing the number of immigrants will do next to nothing for lower wage workers. Is it more competition? Sure. What you have to understand, that under NO circumstances are the central economic planners going to allow actual competition for labor. That is seen to be the cause of "inflation" which is bad, and must be limited at all costs..usually on the backs of the working class.

Second, changing the IQ/educational makeup of said labor pool will do very little to adjust the IQ/educational requirements of the jobs available to the work force. Access to education is great for social reasons, and allowing families to move ahead. But as a wide-spread economic policy, it's irrelevant. When employers complain about a lack of "qualified candidates", they're complaining about having to pay actual competitive wages.

The solution is a ground-up rethinking of modern economic theory and policy, starting with real-world observation of supply and demand and labor fluidity, and going from there.

Posted by Karmakin | April 1, 2008 10:49 PM

This analysis fits my experience as a (former) legal services attorney. We had a word for our clients: "non-copers." They had a very hard time coping with even the most basis aspects of life, such as showing up for appointments. We often debated the Catch-22: were they poor because the were non-copers or were they non-copers because they were poor? Few middle class people have any idea how hard it is to be poor and dependent on the government [if you're lucky] for your survival. The rules, the burdens, the stress that it imposes is enormous. Add to that, physical and mental illness, drug or alcohol dependency, lack of a formal education and a couple of kids and its a recipe for giving up.

Posted by mert7878 | April 1, 2008 10:58 PM

"Wait...if one has multiple bee-stings how is it not rational to get one treated?"

It seems I have a different concept of 'treatment.' What kind of idiot wouldn't pull out all of the stingers? But the poison goes in pretty quickly. The real issue with bee stings is how much poison did you get and how much trouble is that going to cause you. I've never left a stinger in longer than five seconds, and I've still arrived at the hospital paralyzed and, once, unconscious. For some of us, 'treatment' is a super powerful dose of steroids mixed with nor-epinephrine and administered very quickly, and possibly CPR (I still have deformed ribs from my first bee sting). The stingers are pretty much irrelevant. But you still take them out because they might cause an infection. For me, it's to determine the bee species so I know how much time I have and maybe to give the doctor a little advice if I can still talk. But, again, I'm unusual in this aspect (among others, of course).

Posted by fostert | April 1, 2008 11:07 PM

Kudos Mathew, this is very true.

Posted by patience | April 1, 2008 11:27 PM

"Agree with bukum - this doesn't make any sense at all. If I have six bee stings, I am going to gett all six taken care of; why would I only want to take care of one?"

Can you imagine the difference between having 5 bee stings and having 6? Not much of a difference, if you think about it. You'd have to really focus on the pain to tell the difference. That's the point. The example may not be perfect, since it's not much effort to pull out one stinger; but it is a lot of cost and effort to solve one major problem if you're an underemployed person who has a family member with a drug problem, kids in school, a mentally ill spouse, a health problem yourself, serious debt problems, and/ or a problem at work. And yet solving one of these problems doesn't always make your life palpably better. For middle class people, it's very different. If you work some overtime, you can get that new car or pay off that credit card, and you can feel the difference. Economic rationality works in a much more straightforward way.

I saw an unemployed guy on the news a few years back buying $200 in lotto tickets when Powerball was up past $100 million. His explanation was, "That $200 is just going to go to some bill, a little chunk of debt, a little bit of food anyway." I've never played the lotto and never would, but I was a poor, debt-laden grad student with a family at the time and I perfectly understood what he meant, even though to most people it probably sounded stupid. That $200 is not going to make your life feel any better if you use it "rationally". You're going to have five other things to worry about, or else six. So you feel like spend it on something that does help you feel better, until you get a bigger break.

Redistribution to help people get that big break sounds good to a point, but a lot of the problems we're talking about are not strictly financial. There was a survey of the poor done about five years ago, where they asked poor people why people become poor. A plurality cited drug abuse. When middle class and rich people were asked these questions they cited the typical abstract left-wing and right-wing explanations for poverty.

Posted by Colatina | April 1, 2008 11:36 PM

1. The caprice and power of the monetary flow.

2. When you're "broke" our society has inculcated the notion that you're supposed to keep your head down, shuffle softly away, and if forced to go out for any reason - pleae skulk away like the vermin you are. "Broke" as my Apache shaman/ actor/musician /former AIM leader buddy John Trudell (forgive the name-dropping) once said to me over coffee:

"Broke" - it's an interesting word. It's what we do to wild horses in America. We break 'em, break their spirit until we no longer have any use for them".

I asked him if a wild horse could regain their
Spirit.

Trudell: "Open the gate, horse runs out. It'll be wild again."

Posted by Trevor | April 1, 2008 11:53 PM

These discussions are generally stupid if they treat the US in isolation to the rest of the world. Where the black underclass and all its pathologies are unique to America, where all the "problems" are blamed on poverty, being Less Like Glorious Sweden, etc.

Charles Karelis's idea that some poor people are so burdened by problems that it's not rational for them to address any particular problem.

Which is horsecrap because poor people in other nations work their problems rationally. They plan responsibly, develop networks for bad times, disasters because there is little or know state aid for guaranteeing a comfortable life for dependent parasites. So whatever the problem is in America with a population of generally low IQ, contrary "attitude" people given more for sitting on their asses than 5 billion people on the planet get for working hard - it isn't pverty.

Fred - Plenty of resources are already available to the poor: welfare, WIC, food stamps, the EITC if they work at all, etc. All the money in the world won't stop people with low intelligence and poor impulse control from ruining their lives. Add to Fred's list some things absent in many 3rd world countries - free public schools that when they don't work its generally a function of lazy, disruptive kids and their primitive scumbag parents. Free libraries. One of the last countries that still lets in wretched refuse from other teeming shores. More private charity aid to dependent bums, welfare mammies, homeless than any other nation has, though they add some things we don't through Government.

Now, the other thing is the 40 year old song and dance that high criminality and other pathologic behavior was due to racism, legacy of slavery, colonialism, poverty...and only MORE Great Society spending is needed. But again made stupid my not comparing those criminal, pathological behaviors to "minorities" long rid of or never experiencing the above mentioned "It's Whitey's Fault" excuses.
In Glorious Sweden, land of perfect socialism - black imports from Africa display the same patholgies on display in Africa, the US, Caribbean, the rest of Europe, Brazil slums: all of Karelis's problems, plus astronomical levels of criminality.
Put us under the very best cradle to grave welfare state, and you still have black thugs running amok in public schools or on the streets unable to handle their "multiplicity of problems".

On the other hand, Asians born in greater poverty with fewer government benefits, like whites in the same boat 200 years ago, show discipline and initiative, little pathology or criminality. No sign they are so "overwhelmed" by prblems that they can't deal with them.

The AVERAGE person in Mumbai India lives at a standard of living 1/8th of the worst black parasite or thug in America. There are virtually no government benefits or payments to the indigent. Yet when Mumbai, with 12 million was flooded for weeks in 2005 in a 200-year level Monsoon, with water 6-8 feet high - they behaved orders of magnitude above NOLA scum. There were only 6 INDIVIDUAL instances of looting. Neighborhoods pitched in to cleanup because no Indian Feds were coming to do the work while NOLA people.

This leads to the conclusion that Karelis is wrong and that all benefits, to work, must come with expectations of behavior and even reciprocity.

"Yes you get free medical care as a member of the underclass, but in return for that we want you to mop floors at the Clinic or one of your relatives if you cannot work - otherwise you get none next time you are ill. Want food stamps? Great, you and your neighbors must clean up your Project, including your pissed filled elevators and now garbage-festooned free apartment. Or you and the "chilluns" can go sleep under a bridge. More than 3 kids out of wedlock? You get less and less money for each one after 2...Kids don't do well in school? No sports. No clothes allowance. No dental for them.."

Posted by chris ford | April 2, 2008 12:54 AM

I have an alternative theory of poverty. It's very simple and even kids get it. Adults with PhDs will reject it for the same reason. They don't like simple theories that laymen can understand, because such theories don't require a PhD to understand.

The theory is The Ant and the Grasshopper Theory of Poverty, and assuming you know the fable, the name is self-explanatory and you can immediately grasp the theory.

Posted by Tim | April 2, 2008 12:55 AM

Shorter Chris Ford: It's all about being white (or Asian - when he's not recommending we bomb China or Vietnam (again).

See, Chris? Didn't take your eight paragraphs to express that.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 2, 2008 1:02 AM

Related to this discussion, ABC news announced today that the graduation rate in Detroit high schools is 25%. Last week Rahm Emanuel (D, Haifa -- as Obama's campaign might put it) had an op/ed in the WSJ about how we needed to make a 13th year schooling mandatory and free, as part of the his grandiose economic plan. For highly-educated liberals, education is always the panacea. Never mind that three quarters of Detroit 'students' can't even make it through high school.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 1:19 AM

Two words: Robin Hood. Nice and neat.

Posted by Trevor | April 2, 2008 1:30 AM

"Two words: Robin Hood. Nice and neat."

That's been tried. The poor and oppressed in Newark broke into all the shops in the 1960s and stole everything they wanted. Their kids are still poor, and now those shops are all gone.

You could do it through income redistribution and it wouldn't change anything. You could take half of Matt's money from his new book and give it to a random poor person. Odds are, they'd be poor again soon enough. A fool and his money and all that.

Posted by Fred | April 2, 2008 1:45 AM

Sweden up in flames huh? 'Cause of those blacks, huh?
There are some scare stories up on the internet on Swedish crime explosion. Murder rate higher than in US now because 30% of country is Muslim crazies now, you know (figures seem to say 2.5% is acutal figure). After clicking through a couple and looking at comments, found a link to a correction the Economist published to a recent article -they mistakenly multiplied the Swedish crime rate by a factor of 5.

Almost all African immigrants to Sweden come from the Somalia and Ethiopia, so whether that is a black menace or an Islamic menace or some mixture of the two, or the sub-saharan bunch has gone totally hog wild is unclear. Maybe some one could get back to us on that to clarify.

Reports from Sweden do indicate an upswing in crime, and assault particularly among Muslim youth, especially in the south of the country. And 37% think crime has increased dramatically over last 3 years (Table 8). But large majority (79%) feel very safe or fairly safe when they go out at night where they live (Table 5)

Click on Swedish Crime Survey 2007
http : // www.bra.se/extra/pod/?action=pod_show&id=1&module_instance=11

---
So then damn Swedes got some difficulties I suppose but looks like the place is hanging in there for now. We will have to postone the long awaited and hoped for Swedish apocalypse and sudden complete catastrophic disintegration another year or two.

Posted by I don't understand | April 2, 2008 3:47 AM

Re: Which is horsecrap because poor people in other nations work their problems rationally.

Care to document this? I suspect bneing poor in America is not much different than being poor in any other industrialized country. Yes, the poor in much of Europe have better healthcare, and of course being poor in a third world country is brutal beyond anything that our poor (even our homeless) experience. But I don't think there's anything unique about America's poor.

Re: One of the last countries that still lets in wretched refuse from other teeming shores.

Unless you are Native American your ancestors could once have been described that way. However, America is certainly not the only country with immigrants. Visit Vancouver or Toronto sometime for a lesson there. And don't rightwingers tell us constantly that Europe is being overwhelmed by its immigrants. And let's be fair to the immigrants, OK: most of them work their butts off, from the Hispanic guys working at construction sites to the Arab would buys a local 7-11 franchise to the Indian programmer in your IT department.

Posted by JonF | April 2, 2008 6:30 AM

"The theory is The Ant and the Grasshopper Theory of Poverty, and assuming you know the fable, the name is self-explanatory and you can immediately grasp the theory."

But you see, bee-sting economics also applies to ants and grasshoppers. (ants can retreat to their underground nest and . . . no, no, that's not what I meant). For the ant - probably for reasons of social structure, life history, and evolution - it makes sense to work very hard throughout the warm months to gather food for the winter. (After all, to go beyond the story, the individual ant barely matters; what matters is the colony). More relevantly, there's a meaningful payoff - the fable-ant is able to store enough food to last through the winter. The assumption is that the grasshopper is in the same situation, but we don't know that this is actually true! For example, the grasshopper needs to find, attract and reproduce w/ a mate, ceaselessly defend itself against enemies, etc., etc. - its seemingly carefree life may largely be a projection of species resentment. It may also be that resources for the individually much larger grasshopper are scarce/ scattered/ perishable enough that attempting to gather a large enough surplus to last through the winter, combined with the factors above, would offer minimal benefits at best, and possibly even significant costs.
---

As for Juan's bellcurvish suggestion (other issues aside), it's kinda been tried (for Homes, it was that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough.", Juan, not nearly as patient, insists that 'four 'low-IQ' kids are enough!'). Didn't go that great. Yes, one might insist that our understanding of genetics has advanced a great deal, and it wouldn't be compulsory, but given actual reality and the way such things work . . .

Posted by Dan S. | April 2, 2008 7:32 AM

If your society is concerned only about helping the poor you will get more of them. If your society has a welfare system that includes everybody the real winners will be the poor.

This is no big secret, being the fundamental logic behind the scandinavian (european) socialist cradle to grave welfare state.

The US has chosen another model and obviously you get another result. Why we have chosen differently is an interesting qustion but the racists in here are providing us with a good example of the thinking behind one of the more convincing explanations - its all about race.

And no, we are not consumed by immigrant hordes running amok on our streets and neither is the collapse of our devastatingly socialist country very near.

/Greetings from Sweden

Posted by PoP | April 2, 2008 7:37 AM

Poverty is relative. People who are poor today would have been solidly middle class 3 decades ago. By any reasonable metric, the poor have access to food, health care, and housing, which is quite a bit more than most of the world.

The poor today, thanks to stagnant wage growth, would have been solidly poor three decades ago.

The food they have access to is largely crap - junk food and dollar menu filler that results in obesity, diabetes and other health problems.

The healthcare is largely emergency-based and financially debilitating.

The housing is arguable - usually poor quality, in undesirable neighborhoods and surrounded by financial traps like higher-priced and lower-selection grocery stores, check-cashing places and a lack of reliable transportation.

This falls into the "everyone has a TV these days" fallacy. Compared to 50 years ago, a TV is a household item. This leads us to erroneously conclude that being poor isn't nearly as bad because what was formerly a luxury item is now commonplace. Of course, the main issue with this is that the cost of that luxury item keeps falling. You can get a used TV for $20-$25...it's simply not a luxury anymore. However, the cost of necessary goods keeps going up - food, housing, healthcare. As necessary goods become more scarce, former luxury items, now cheap, become substitutes to supplant what would be otherwise missing.

In short, I may not be able to get food with vitamins and minerals in it, but at least I'm able to watch ABC and forget about how hungry I am or how crappy I feel for a little while.

Posted by Starscream | April 2, 2008 8:20 AM

If conservatives aren't out-and-out denying the phenomenon described by Karelis, they generally believe that the despair cycle is a good one because it is a threat with which they can hang over the heads of the barely-making-it.

Meanwhile, people like mert7878 who have direct experience observing the issue tend to agree with Karelis, while those who don't resort to facile "counter-arguments" appealing to children's fables.

I confess that the "appeal-to-facile-argument" from Al and Fred is more effective in a political campaign, but none of you guys is running for office. the ability to come up with a clear understanding of the problem with an eye towards finding solution seems to lie closer to Karelis's mindset.

However, Fred, Al, and Juan probably make a more compelling case from the standpoint of being the angry conservative uncle talking politics at the dinner table, though.

Posted by Tyro | April 2, 2008 8:30 AM

And a better analogy than the beestings, perhaps:

Imagine you're at work, and you have one big project due. You sit down, work on it, get it done, and move on to the next thing.

The next week, you have three big projects due - each as big as the one project you had last week. You work overtime, don't see your family, live on sandwiches and coffee until they're all done. You stumble home Friday night, sleep through Saturday afternoon, and then start dealing with everything you left the previous week.

The week after, you have five big projects due. You have only your own resources to work with, and you know that you can't get them all done. You try working on each, but every time you work on one someone else comes by and tells you that you need to get cracking on another one. By the end of the week, you might have one or two done, and most of the company on your ass.

The next week, you get another five projects. At that point, you pretty much figure that it doesn't matter what you do and what order you do it in, because you're screwed regardless.

That last step is pretty much the experience of poverty - with all the obstacles in your path, it doesn't really matter what order you do things in, because you're effectively screwed regardless.

Then imagine that people are complaining that since you're not getting the work done, you have too nice of an office, too new of a computer, too shiny of a cell phone. Some asshole starts talking about all the handouts you get, and then comes up with the stereotype of the overtime queen, the person who takes a slight bit of extra work to claim unjustified overtime pay.

Bee stings my ass.

Posted by Starscream | April 2, 2008 8:31 AM

"Wait...if one has multiple bee-stings how is it not rational to get one treated? Even if you only one treated ever then at least you have one less bee-sting. If it's a matter of getting them treated one at a time then of course you do that. Only a true idiot leaves all the stingers in because they don't all come out at once."

If you are the one who has a near fatal level of bee-stings (assuning you're not allergic), morphine probably seems like a much more rational step than getting one stinger out. If you are not the one suffering from the stings, getting one stinger out seems like it would do more good.

Posted by Njorl | April 2, 2008 9:54 AM

Juan,

You are a racist troll. The difficulty the Muhammad children are having in school has nothing to do with IQ (a meaningless concept) -- it has to do with a lack of funding for inner-city education. Maybe if the Muhammad kids had access to the same schools Matt Yglesias had when he was growing up, they would be learning better.

As for your suggestion that we should bribe the mother into not having more kids, she has the right to have as many kids as she wants. It's in the Constitution.

Maybe we should learn from the Swedes and spend more on education and other programs.

Posted by Steve D. | April 2, 2008 10:04 AM

Chris Ford has clearly never spent much time in rural areas where poor people are almost all white - like Maine, PA, NY and New Hampshire, or Northern England, or Russia. The pathologies don't seem to me to be any different from what you see in poor black communities - drug use, violent home life, children born out of wedlock, seemingly stupid and irrational financial decisions, etc. I have a friend who's a cop in a small NH town, and the idiocies he sees on a daily basis aren't much different from what I hear the right constantly decrying in African-American communities.

Changing the topic a bit - but it does seem to me that small town America is beginning to suffer from the same problems the black inner city had in the 60s and 70s. Every generation more and more smart ambitious people leave to go elsewhere. The people who remain behind have fewer and fewer positive role models, are quite possibly genetically less well adapted to success in modern life, and the communities are gradually stripped of productive creative leaders, which seems to create a vicious cycle of poverty and violence.

Posted by vanya | April 2, 2008 10:07 AM

"You can get a used TV for $20-$25...it's simply not a luxury anymore. However, the cost of necessary goods keeps going up - food, housing, healthcare."

Thank you. Jesus Christ, anyone still citing the "poor people have color TV's!!" argument truly needs to get their robo-hack settings updated.

Stephen Moore and John Stossel: Immediately report to the Heritage Foundation for immediate replacement of your talking point chip.

Posted by Waingro | April 2, 2008 10:48 AM

Anecdote warning: I've heard that some prototype projects which give indigent folks subsidized apartments, instead of first making them jump through "work-fare" hoops like counseling, job "training", etc. have better results than one might expect. The thinking is that providing a secure residence goes a long way toward easing a feeling of being overwhelmed.

It's not at all surprising that economists wouldn't comprehend how too many problems can lead to a kind of debilitating paralysis. But don't blame that oversight on "scientists" -- economics is emphatically NOT a science. It's more like alchemy or astrology than anything else.

Posted by sglover | April 2, 2008 11:34 AM

I think it's clear that some chosen behaviors make it almost impossible not to be poor for either your entire life, or at least for a pretty long time.

1. Dropping out of high school.
2. Having a child as a teen as a single parent.
3. Having a criminal record.

All of these, with the possible exception of #2, are choices people make. If people stayed in school, didn't have children before they could afford them, and stayed out of jail, then they at least have a fighting chance to be able to support themselves and take care of themselves.

So, I guess I'm a "social conservative." But I'll be damned if there is a government policy that is going to make a 15 year old mother, who has dropped out of high school, into a middle income professional. For her, the bee sting analogy is worthless. We need a "punches self in the face" six times analogy, instead.

Posted by Chris | April 2, 2008 12:58 PM

Chris, I would argue that those are necessary but insufficient to avoid poverty. It strikes me that it is highly possible that those 3 behaviors are common for people in poor communities simply because there's little incentive to do otherwise.

You know what else makes it almost impossible not to be poor for either your entire life, or at least for a pretty long time? Being poor.

Posted by Tyro | April 2, 2008 1:22 PM

Tyro, I would assume that the incentives are the same for everyone. Namely, to live a decent life where you can support yourself and your family.

I agree that you can avoid the three things I listed and still remain poor. My point was that it's very, very hard to do those three things and not be poory, and, further, that those three things are most often choices people make that screw up their own lives. Personal choices, not vast, impersonal forces forces someone to do something that don't want to do.

The "being poor makes you poor" meme is meaningless because it refuses to analyze what causes poverty, and therefore refuses to look for solutions to decrease poverty. It's a liberal lament; it's not a constructive policy that will actually help someone.

Posted by Chris | April 2, 2008 1:44 PM

I would assume that the incentives are the same for everyone. Namely, to live a decent life where you can support yourself and your family.

The latter is a "goal." An "incentive" is something you have a chance of getting if you do something. If there is little if any chance of receiving something, then there is no incentive.

My point was that it's very, very hard to do those three things and not be poor

That is true. However, for people who live in poverty, odds are that they will remain poor even if they don't do those things you discuss. If, when I was growing up, I had dropped out of high school, committed a crime, and had to raise a child as a teenager, I'd be much, much worse off than I am now. However, that's because I had a huge number of opportunities ahead of me otherwise. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that a large number of people who grew up in poverty who graduate high school, don't have children as a teen, and don't commit crimes are still poor-- and this is precisely the problem. When you have nothing to lose, and your outcomes are going to be similar regardless of what you do, what point is there to follow the rules that work best for those who aren't living in poverty?

This conundrum is the entire point of MattY's post-- that you can enter a "trap" where following the "rules" of responsible behavior serve no purpose, so there's no point in following them because they don't provide any easily measurable benefits, so a vicious cycle is created.

Posted by Tyro | April 2, 2008 1:56 PM

I found this article demeaning and insulting. Everyday, I work with families and individuals receiving assistance. My job is to prepare them for the workforce. The clients that I work with run the gamut from college educated professionals, small business owners, young mothers, blue collar professionals, and white collar workers. This is the face of the new poor.

It is not just an issue of spending, but how those dollars are used wisely to eliminate poverty. For example, housing, transportation, and childcare are some of the key barriers preventing employment. I even work with the homeless. It amazes me that they are still able to attend a job readiness program. There are programs in place to address the transportation and housing problems, but more is needed.

The hardest candidates to find employment for have legal, domestic, and health issues. I suspect these are the people that Karelis is referring to. Despite all the hardships, most of them want to work and support their families. For these families, intensive services are offered to break down cultural differences to overcome employment barriers.

Posted by EWard | April 2, 2008 6:42 PM