The middle class once had a material standard of living like that of today's wealthy-country poor, and average incomes in many poor countries today are far below those of the wealthy-country poor. The lowest income quintile we shall always have with us, but to raise the wealthy-country poor to a higher income quintile, one need only re-draw boundaries for statistical purposes to aggregate wealthy and poor countries.
"Poverty" across time and space correlates has noxious aspects that are insensitive to the absolute material wealth. These include correlation with crime and a spectrum of behaviors that fall short of crime. The wealthy-country poor often live in dangerous and unpleasant circumstances because of how their neighbors behave (I may be biased here by thoughts of the high murder rate in urban America).
To the extent that this syndrome is a tail-of-the-distribution problem, rather than a lack-of-material-wealth problem, the term "poverty" is profoundly misleading. Narrowing the income distribution may help somewhat, or be a necessary part of policies that help a lot, but it is important to recognise how much of the human misery "poverty" has little direct relationship to a lack of access to goods and services. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
you are the media you consume.
But does that mean that..say...my children, cruelly denied access to soap operas and reality television, should be classified as destitute despite their perfectly adequate material situation? Or do they belong to a different culture and would poverty be defined differently for them?
Well, it still correlates with starvation too, but the latter is just so much less frequent.
These include correlation with crime and a spectrum of behaviors that fall short of crime.
Actually, this is not so much of an absolute as it appears to you: crime can be considered a social construct, too. And one could say that feudal lords or capitalists or a state bureaucracy and generals are much bigger 'natural criminals' than the poor with their petty crimes, but have the law o their side.
I may be biased here by thoughts of the high murder rate in urban America
And, may I suggest, also the false sense of being sheltered from anarchy elsewhere given by suburban mentality.
it is important to recognise how much of the human misery "poverty" has little direct relationship to a lack of access to goods and services.
Depends on whether you consider lack of access on absolute or relative terms. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
feudal lords...are much bigger 'natural criminals' There is indeed a continuum between organised crime and governments (which doesn't deny the vast difference between the ends of the spectrum). What I have in mind is the universally recognised, more narrowly defined kind of unorganised crime that (for example) makes people fearful of others on the street, afraid to go out at night, etc.
Depends on whether you consider lack of access on absolute or relative terms It is indeed important to recognise that relative want has consequences apart from those of absolute want, and the difference between these cases is what motivates my observation. Expressing this perhaps more clearly, I'd say that much of the human misery of relative "poverty" (far from all!) has little direct relationship to a lack of access to goods and services. If raping and stealing from others in the community were a direct consequence, I'd expect these to be widely practised, rather than being merely common enough to cause terror.
With respect to relative poverty within a society, one would expect social sorting processes to aggregate disfunctional people, and that for many disfunctional people, low earnings are just one aspect of a syndrome. Causality between poverty and disfunction obviously runs both ways. (I emphasise that this is a statement about statistical patterns, not a generalisation that applies to everyone in a group.)
Writing this suggests a hypothesis to me, which is that societies that are more meritocratic tend to have a greater incidence of social pathologies among members of their low-income quintiles. This seems testable. -------
A related observation is that efficiently identifying, collecting, and educating young people with unusual potential (including the potential for unusually effective, intelligent leadership) is an efficient way to ensure that broad occupational, income, and social classes lack effective, intelligent leadership. This amounts to a decapitation attack on groups outside the elite, operating on a generational time scale. Perversely, it is precisely the pursuit of equal opportunity for members of disadvantaged groups that reduces the power and opportunities of the groups themselves -- yet any other policy seems unjust.
(It might, I suppose, be argued that providing university educations for children of working-class parents provides better-educated leaders for the working class. -- Sometimes? Of course. Net? I don't thing so.) Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
Well, peasants were afraid when feudal lords cruised up with their troops, or just tax collectors. While 'all politicians steal'/'all bureaucrats are corrupt' are more real and pressing concepts of crime for many (especially poor) people than a general fear of being robbed. BTW what you describe is not 'universally recognised', I'd think it is not valid in at least some isolated cultures. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I do, however, think that there are universally recognised crimes (or equivalent severe wrongs in societies where the concept of "crime" doesn't quite fit), at least in societies that aren't in the process of destruction. One might, however, have to specify that the victims have a status that we'd regard as irrelevant (e.g., preferred race, higher class, virginity), and that the perpetrator likewise lacks a status that we wouldn't regard justifying the action (e.g., father, noble). Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
I'm saying that poverty is about relative> differences in access to goods and services.
If raping and stealing from others in the community were a direct consequence, I'd expect these to be widely practised, rather than being merely common enough to cause terror.
Why so? Why do you assume that a non-deterministic but statistical consequence has to have a high frequency? If there are multiple factors to a behavior, and say one results in only 2% of people being 'naturally' [whatever that means] supceptible to it, while poverty as a second factor results in 0.1% of middle-class but 1% of working-class people (that is 5% vs. 50% of supceptible people) exhibiting that behavior, then I'd say it is very much significant.
This amounts to a decapitation attack on groups outside the elite, operating on a generational time scale. Perversely, it is precisely the pursuit of equal opportunity for members of disadvantaged groups that reduces the power and opportunities of the groups themselves -- yet any other policy seems unjust.
That's a good point. Comes close to why I am against elite schools (now pursued in Germany). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
You make a good point regarding non-deterministic but statistical consequences. My remark was made off-hand, and not as the result of any long (and wrong) consideration.
What I had in mind (but didn't express) was a contrast between this sort of criminal behavior and rational, adaptive behaviors of the sort that one would find in groups at a similar level of material wealth, regardless of whether this level was or wasn't low relative to the rest of local society. These behaviors (e.g., shifting consumption toward inexpensive foods and clothing) are direct consequences, and are, of course, widely practised. Crime, in contrast, seems more related to relative that absolute wealth, and thus can't be seen as a direct consequence of the level of wealth per se. This, of course, ties back to your point regarding the importance of relative vs. absolute levels. Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
I'd be careful with this if I were you, lest the bona fides of (presumably anti-social) pathologies be determined by the dominant class(es) in said societies. Tyranny of the majority and all that... Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
