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[Helgoland]

If you'd rather live in prison in exchange for food and shelter then make 500-1000$ a month then that's your prerogative

Yeah, but what I gathered from the thread was that it's apparently normal to work ten hours a day, six days a week and practically out of a car. Maybe not eating out of dumpsters, but with only 50$/month for heating (30$/month if you're Hispanic). That seemed to make prison a viable alternative.

For most people, in flat honesty, they'd probably be better off with lead twixt the eyes.

They might be, but they themselves wouldn't see it that way. The will to live is incredibly strong - just look at Aron Ralston.

[Frumple]

Well... yeah, when given the choice between freezing to death and prison, there's folks out there that do petty crime/minor felonies to get somewhere warm for winter. It pretty much wrecks any chance they may have had going forward, and possibly ruins them in the process, but sure.

Given pretty much any other option, though, most people are going to take the other option. Prison in the states is not a good place to be, and when/if you get out of it, it makes whatever's left of your life much worse off. Even if it means sixty hour work weeks and living half or better your life out of a car. Possibly even especially then, because doing prison time would bloody close to guarantee there's no chance you're going to get better than that. May be a little exaggeration in that, but... not much.

I know solid handful of few ex-cons, some of them family, and they're part of the demographic my mother teaches. In the states, if you have absolutely any bloody choice whatsoever between prison/a felony record and something else, you almost certainly take the something else. Prison is a viable alternative IFF the other option is death... and even then, you're gambling on a fate potentially worse.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah... the abuse of solitary confinement in our prisons... *shudders*

From what I've read, that is a fate worse than death.

[Helgoland]

IFF

Part of the reason why I love these forums.

I didn't know that prisons in the US are that bad - in Europe, you know prison's rough, but you never hear those kinds of horror stories.
Anyone here familiar with the (a) European penal system?

[scriver]

I can tell you about the Swedish (and generally Nordic, they're pretty alike though I'm uncertain on specifics for the other four) one. In Sweden, it's not the prison's that's fucked up, it's the jails. Somebody mentioned abuse of solitary confinement, I believe? Yeah, Swedish law can keep you in jail for basically as long as they want, provided the case is still ongoing. They can also opt for solitary confinement if they believe you might somehow interfere with the case in some way. This is a technique that has been used to force admission of guilt before. Luckily, admission of guilt is basically meaningless in the Swedish court system, unlike how I think it is in the Common Law-based systems.

Also, yeah, it's also lucky Swedish police and law is generally a lot nicer than, say, American ones. Abuses do still happen, of course, and even if they're uncommon they're still horrible when they do.

[Max White]

Australia treats its petty criminals pretty well. Minimum security is similar to what you might expect from a backpackers lodge. Your not going to be getting a maid to clean your room, but the carpet is soft enough, or so I have been informed from a first hand source. I can't speak much for higher security, but it certainly isn't an issue of debate, so either it is hidden very well or a reasonable standard is maintained. After Stanford, I'm willing to say it could be either.

[GlyphGryph]

From my own experience the worst part about being poor is that there's no obvious way out of it by yourself. Even if you can save up some cash it takes a long time to save up enough to take a chance and no chance is guaranteed. It doesn't help that our society has a lot of laws that disallow people from taking any sort of risk to improve their situation while only providing alternatives guaranteed to lock those they claim to "help" into poverty. I spent a lot of time hating the government, who seemed to see me as an undesirable and just wanted me to go away while  making everything about my life harder ostensibly for my own good. I still strongly suspect a lot of that legislation actually exists explicitly to keep the poor poor - I didn't want to believe people were that cruel but I experienced that attitude personally too many times to discount it. 

[SalmonGod]

And that's how republicans convince the poor to vote against their own interests...

[10ebbor10]

I didn't know that prisons in the US are that bad - in Europe, you know prison's rough, but you never hear those kinds of horror stories.
Anyone here familiar with the (a) European penal system?

Well, it strongly varies between nations. From what I've heard, the Scandinavian prisons are fairly alright, with decent options of rehabilitation.
Don't know much about the UK system, except that they apparently invented the private prison*.
Belgium currently suffers from severe overpopulation. (Ranging between 150%-200% of normal capacity), so we're currently exporting prisoners to the Netherlands, and investing in alternative solutions. (Which sometimes causes upheaval when certain prisoners apply for early release, though with electronic monitoring)

Don't know about the rest of Europe. It's generally better than the US though. Entirely different focus. The US system is focused on keeping as much people locked up for as long as possible, while much of Europe strives for some form of social reintegration.


*Which might be the number one person of the UK system. Private prisons + the ability to make your prisoners work for 0.19 cent/ hour = Prison industrial complex

[GlyphGryph]

And that's how republicans convince the poor to vote against their own interests...

AND how the Democrats to convince the poor to vote against their best interests. I've never seen evidence that either party has the interests of the poor at heart. I live in a state that's absolutely dominated by Democrats, and nearly every social effort still manages to get "compromised" until it's worth less than nothing for the poor. To most politicians, the poor are not constituents. They are problems.

You want an easy, straightforward piece of legislation that would greatly benefit the poor? Ban companies from charging their employees money to receive and spend their paychecks, a growing predatory practice that makes life just a little bit harder. And yet there doesn't seem to be the slightest interest in actually doing this - instead, regulations are passed to "protect businesses" by making it impossible for a poor person to work without working for one of these abusive corporations.

This is why we have such large chunks of welfare that are emphatically denied to the poor while being proffered to the middle class. This is why there is general bipartisan agreement that the most important goal when dealing with the poor is to keep them invisible, and the second most important goal is to make them somebody else's problem (while looking like they are actually being sympathetic, if at all possible).

The thing is, the Republicans are often CORRECT when they claim that nothing, an absence of government effort, would be better than the alternative being proposed. They often leave out the fact that they are often a major reason why the alternative is so bad.

The Republicans are assholes, and the Democrats are either assholes or idiots who honestly think their fuckups are supposed to help.

[DWC]

From my own experience the worst part about being poor is that there's no obvious way out of it by yourself. Even if you can save up some cash it takes a long time to save up enough to take a chance and no chance is guaranteed. It doesn't help that our society has a lot of laws that disallow people from taking any sort of risk to improve their situation while only providing alternatives guaranteed to lock those they claim to "help" into poverty. I spent a lot of time hating the government, who seemed to see me as an undesirable and just wanted me to go away while  making everything about my life harder ostensibly for my own good. I still strongly suspect a lot of that legislation actually exists explicitly to keep the poor poor - I didn't want to believe people were that cruel but I experienced that attitude personally too many times to discount it.

There are ways out of poverty, a lot of them are non-obvious and it's entirely up to you to figure something out.

Like you said, there is a disconnect between upper-middle class and working class mentalities. Why you'll be some kind of social pariah if you are living in your car, people judging you on what you wear, the shit you own, cops endlessly harassing people not conforming to the unwritten laws of middle class sensibilities.

Also, they don't need legislation designed to keep people poor. There will be 'losers' in capitalism and any other kind of economic system. Although things like car insurance, tags, all the little nickle-and-dime shit. Zoning laws, HOA's, ordinances and little things that try to force people to conceal their poverty or fine the shit out of them if they don't. These things impact poorer people more then anything else. That doesn't seem like a government conspiracy to me though, it's a product of the materialistic cookie-cutter suburban middle class culture in America. The kinds of people that go to municipal council meeting to complain about shit not conforming.

Yeah, they'd like the poor to be invisible, but the system isn't so inequitable that it's really that difficult to escape poverty, I've done it. That is assuming you haven't made alot of mistakes with your credit history or criminal record. Then you are fuuuucked, especially if you have both.

[GlyphGryph]

Like I said, it's definitely possible if you haven't gotten yourself into debt or had criminal problems or suffered medical issues or made any enemies.

But every one of those ways out requires you to be lucky and continue to avoid all three of those problems, which gets markedly more difficult when you are poor, and not everyone is lucky. you've admitted yourself that succeeding when poor basically requires you to break the law, and while most of those probably won't result in a criminal record, they certainly can if someone with a bit of power decides they don't like you.

There is only one relatively quick and fairly reliable way out of poverty - that is, to sign yourself into slavery by taking out a whole heap of debt and invest it into supporting yourself while building your skills in the hopes you can get a better job. (The route I took, by taking out big-time student loans to go to state college - even though my grades were good enough to get a scholarship and I worked through the experience while living out of my car or cheap apartments with no heat or electricity, I still ended up with quite a bit of debt. I could have done better, but it would have required me to know about the better options, which isn't exactly easy)

And that seems less likely to succeed as time goes on, and you're usually gambling with limited knowledge to accomplish even that.

There are ways out of poverty, a lot of them are non-obvious and it's entirely up to you to figure something out.

If you've been in poverty for a while, your resources for "figuring them out" are pretty limited. A lot of people in poverty don't even get the government assistance that might help them because they honestly don't know about it. I think education, free and widely available and made obvious to those who need it, is one of the best uses of our government we could use to help the poor. There are ways out of poverty - most of them hard, none of them guaranteed, the best all but unknown to those who could best make use of them - but they exist.

Saying "they'll just have to figure it out on their own" is pretty simplistic, because there's always going to be a lot of guesswork when you're operating from such a disadvantaged position, and mistakes are costly.

[Moghjubar]

The Republicans are assholes, and the Democrats are either assholes or idiots who honestly think their fuckups are supposed to help.

Obligatory Lewis Black: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZGk_wVgq_0

It is often said that Democrats and Republicans are basically just representing the same interests (same thing, different name).  In reality though, they overlap on a lot of stuff so Democrats seem to end up mostly 'Caring Republicans who are progressive on certain social issues'... and yet still have a few real progressives, which end up being labeled as the 'fringe' aka 'same as those crazy fundies from the right'.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, if you look at Republicans losing elections lately), the Republicans are pushing crazy right harder and faster, so the Democrats are also swinging further right and basically it leaves us with a choice between evil and bad (with some random good stuff).  In our current system though, its pretty rare that any large vote for third parties work, and therefore voting anyone independent (except in very specific circumstances, say, Bernie Sanders, who has all my respect) just elects the other party when theres a moderately strong independent foil on either side.... I can only hope eventually the whole party system explodes on itself while in the meantime new voters / youngins get taught (as facts have a liberal bias, the more education the better).

[Helgoland]

The Republicans are assholes

Hey! Many assholes I know would be offended to be compared to the Republicans!

As for the Democrats... They are the progressive, the more liberal party of the two, that's for sure. But I believe they suffer from similar problems: Lobbyism, reelection pressure, having to respond to crazy right-wing fucknuts (AKA tea-party, which I gather is unpopular with many Republicans too) and so on. That all makes it hard to do actual politics; but at least the Democrats are not in the grips of the likes of Norquist.

For information on the inner workings of the Republican party and the position of  the American people on the left-right spectrum please read "The Conscience of a Liberal" by Paul Krugmann and ask your doctor or pharmacist. (Seriously, it's a good - and very polemic! - book.)

NINJAEDIT:

as facts have a liberal bias

Three thumbs up to that!

[DWC]

Like I said, it's definitely possible if you haven't gotten yourself into debt or had criminal problems or suffered medical issues or made any enemies.

But every one of those ways out requires you to be lucky and continue to avoid all three of those problems, which gets markedly more difficult when you are poor, and not everyone is lucky. you've admitted yourself that succeeding when poor basically requires you to break the law, and while most of those probably won't result in a criminal record, they certainly can if someone with a bit of power decides they don't like you.

There is only one relatively quick and fairly reliable way out of poverty - that is, to sign yourself into slavery by taking out a whole heap of debt and invest it into supporting yourself while building your skills in the hopes you can get a better job. (The route I took, by taking out big-time student loans to go to state college - even though my grades were good enough to get a scholarship and I worked through the experience while living out of my car or cheap apartments with no heat or electricity, I still ended up with quite a bit of debt. I could have done better, but it would have required me to know about the better options, which isn't exactly easy)

And that seems less likely to succeed as time goes on, and you're usually gambling with limited knowledge to accomplish even that.

There are ways out of poverty, a lot of them are non-obvious and it's entirely up to you to figure something out.

If you've been in poverty for a while, your resources for "figuring them out" are pretty limited. A lot of people in poverty don't even get the government assistance that might help them because they honestly don't know about it. I think education, free and widely available and made obvious to those who need it, is one of the best uses of our government we could use to help the poor. There are ways out of poverty - most of them hard, none of them guaranteed, the best all but unknown to those who could best make use of them - but they exist.

Saying "they'll just have to figure it out on their own" is pretty simplistic, because there's always going to be a lot of guesswork when you're operating from such a disadvantaged position, and mistakes are costly.

Really, I didn't think it was that hard to figure out what to do, I spent a lot of time at the public library on the internet and I went and got a decent paying job that didn't require much education, but I had a pretty clean slate to work with. If I was married or had kids, had too many felonies or DWI's, drug addiction or serious health problems or an extremely derogatory credit history or whatever I'd be so screwed right now. Yeah, it's no joke you have to be extremely wary around police or extremely clean if you are broke, they will always want to harass and dig around until they find something.

I've never been in any kind of substantial debt, I'm debt-adverse. Credit for opening a business or something, not for personal uses. I spent my own money and some grant money to go to college and it was a complete waste of time of money and I immensely regret going to college. The degree led to an entry level position that paid less then what I made driving taxis it required 6 months of internship! So I know what you mean about not always being able to 'figure it out' because as far as I could tell, I had really good prospects but the whole thing was a massive mistake and I'm lucky to have not gone into debt over it, but I did piss away 4 years worth of savings.

I don't really believe in college for economical mobility. It consumes way too much of your time and money and the value of a typical BA or AA degree is very low in terms of getting you a job. A degree is no promise of employment. A better bet would be a 2 year technical degree in something with more obvious demand. Even something simple like getting a CDL or learned a vocation like welding. These jobs pay more then what a teacher makes holding a BA and are significantly less expensive and time consuming. Just my opinion, universities are for kids with rich parents, but your results may vary.

But yeah, there are plenty of opportunities to stop being poor. Unless you made some mistakes and nobody wants to hire you because of them. Too easy to slip up and have your opportunities vanish instantly over something dumb like a DUI or having a baby.