This quote has always bugged me. It might be because I fall into the category of people only able to work around 20 hours a week, so the inhumanity of implying it's okay if we live in poverty is...
Even stalwarts of the progressive movement seem to reserve economic prosperity for the full-time worker. Senator Bernie Sanders once declared, echoing a long line of Democrats who have come before and after him, “Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.” Sure, but what about those who work 20 or 30 hours, like Vanessa?
This quote has always bugged me. It might be because I fall into the category of people only able to work around 20 hours a week, so the inhumanity of implying it's okay if we live in poverty is more obvious to me. The article mentions caretaking responsibilities or employers not offering enough hours as reasons people can't work full-time, but mine is a chronic illness/disability.
I know the focus of this article is on one family, and the author does go into SSI a little bit in regards to her friends' daughter, but I think disability get missed in a lot of discussion about work and poverty. Many people assume that if you are disabled that means you can't work and you get benefits. That's untrue is so many ways; some of us can work part time (or even full time!), and even people who can't work at all can struggle to qualify for benefits (which, in the case of SSI, keep you stuck below the poverty line once you get them).
No one should live in poverty. Not the disabled person unable to work, the chronically ill person who would get sicker if they worked full time, the parent who needs to take care of their kids, the student taking classes part time while working, the person addicted to opioids (regardless if they are in recovery or not)... No one.
Poverty is one of those issues of class that Democrats have often been disturbingly glib about, for me. There is a sense of uncritical truth to a lot of democratic positions when it comes to how...
Poverty is one of those issues of class that Democrats have often been disturbingly glib about, for me. There is a sense of uncritical truth to a lot of democratic positions when it comes to how to address poverty, even when the evidence is much more complicated than the position would imply (not that I'm talking about the minimum wage or anything).
The left is a wide umbrella, so I don't want this to read like I'm being critical of the entire left or anything (that would include me), but when it comes to campaign season there is often a push to forget nuance in favor of simple and easy to understand positions. That has always been a mistake to me, and it will continue to be a mistake. If people care about the details, there should be details to follow and arguments to engage with. Instead it often feels lately like there are things that are inarguable if you're going to be of the left. Minimum wage has long felt like an inarguable part of responding to poverty.
Bernie Sanders is particularly vulnerable to what I'm talking about. He has always insisted on economic ideological purity, to an extent that I actively despise his leadership style. Poverty has always been a complicated creature that requires many tools and responses to help alleviate. Pretending that there is one cure-all does the people who experience it a disservice, and it makes you look at best a fool in the process. Reviling Hillary for saying that raising the minimum wage suddenly will have a negative effect on those who earn between the old and new minimum wage is actually outrageous.
The left should know shame for its glibness in trying to address poverty. The right being no better does not absolve it.
This article actually made me think of some things you've said (on this issue, and on incrementalism in general). Particularly this part, which really struck me: (This is a very short comment,...
Poverty has always been a complicated creature that requires many tools and responses to help alleviate. Pretending that there is one cure-all does the people who experience it a disservice, and it makes you look at best a fool in the process.
This article actually made me think of some things you've said (on this issue, and on incrementalism in general). Particularly this part, which really struck me:
Because liberals have allowed conservatives to set the terms of the poverty debate, they find themselves arguing about radical solutions that imagine either a fully employed nation (like a jobs guarantee) or a postwork society (like a universal basic income). Neither plan has the faintest hope of being actually implemented nationwide anytime soon, which means neither is any good to Vanessa and millions like her. When so much attention is spent on far-off, utopian solutions, we neglect the importance of the poverty fixes we already have.
(This is a very short comment, mostly consisting of quotes, but I don't know how much I have to add, haha.)
I'm not even sure it's a matter of letting conservatives dictate terms of the poverty debate. Liberals are often willing participants in the myths and distortions that lend themselves to this...
I'm not even sure it's a matter of letting conservatives dictate terms of the poverty debate. Liberals are often willing participants in the myths and distortions that lend themselves to this glib, extreme proposal making that the article highlights.
It's also really hard to talk fluently or coherently about the sorts of success stories you can have in a good anti-poverty set of policies, because they're so ... bottom up in a lot of cases. When a community notices that their impoverished working parents can't afford childcare that would let them go get the resources their children need (like CHIP or food stamps, or any of the more state or national level services available), how often does anyone hear about that? When communities create farmers markets that are designed and maybe even subsidized to be set up in the middle of food desserts, how often does that get highlighted? These are hugely important parts of this complicated problem.
Complicated things are hard to break down, sure. But if a liberal wants to do that problem justice, talking about things in terms of what extreme and likely destabilizing policy they stole from a republican who thought it would be a good way to cut back on other state services twenty years ago isn't the greatest way forward. That's likely what you and this article's authors mean by "letting conservatives dictating terms," but I think that's as much Democrats lacking the ability to break complicated things down well like Bill Clinton used to as anything. Blaming conservatives for the way you talk helps nothing and no one, even if it leans into partisan nonsense.
This is one of those instances of the left folding to try and woo folks on the right. I doubt Bernie legitimately believes people should still even have to work 40 hours to survive, but even a...
This is one of those instances of the left folding to try and woo folks on the right. I doubt Bernie legitimately believes people should still even have to work 40 hours to survive, but even a hint of a shorter work week would have the right wingers fuming. The left hasn't been able to operate in a no-compromises type of way and this is a symptom imo.
It's just pandering. A general statement even those on the opposite side can get behind somewhat, even if it falls apart under critique on the actual left.
I like the understanding that "full time" is over 30 hours a week. I think we overwork ourselves in the US. And we have terrible work-life balance as a society.
I like the understanding that "full time" is over 30 hours a week. I think we overwork ourselves in the US. And we have terrible work-life balance as a society.
The work week has shrunk a lot in the not-so-recent past. We went from a nation of mostly farmers, where the workload is "whatever it takes, especially during harvest time", to factory workers who...
The work week has shrunk a lot in the not-so-recent past. We went from a nation of mostly farmers, where the workload is "whatever it takes, especially during harvest time", to factory workers who had set schedules and eventually unionized to demand 8-hour shifts, to office or service workers with schedules that mostly still mirror factory workers "8 hours a day and two days off" schedule.
It's leveled off at 40 hours a week, but that's completely arbitrary. We've reduced it before and society didn't collapse. Far from it, it improved hugely.
In the Jetsons cartoons from the 50s, George complained about working one whole hour out of the day, and from that he supported a middle-class family. Because of course in the future (as seen from the 50s) people would barely need to work to enjoy a luxurious standard of living.
Just as a side note, there are researchers that claim that it's now still longer than it used to be (both the work week and the work year). I've found some critiques as well but nothing as...
Just as a side note, there are researchers that claim that it's now still longer than it used to be (both the work week and the work year). I've found some critiques as well but nothing as substantiated as this original work so...
This is not in opposition to your post, I just think it would be interesting to rethink the workload of this age and the industrial age and why were they so long? I was reading "The slavery of our time" by Tolstoi and it's interesting, he talks of 35-hour physical work"days" with 50-60 people sleeping in a single room, he talks about how the only complaint the workers had was that sometimes they didn't have space to sleep. He talks about how slaves had shorter and fewer work days because they were property and therefore less replaceable than workers. It made me wonder what is wrong with us, and whether we can rise above this vicious greed that some of us seem to have.
This quote has always bugged me. It might be because I fall into the category of people only able to work around 20 hours a week, so the inhumanity of implying it's okay if we live in poverty is more obvious to me. The article mentions caretaking responsibilities or employers not offering enough hours as reasons people can't work full-time, but mine is a chronic illness/disability.
I know the focus of this article is on one family, and the author does go into SSI a little bit in regards to her friends' daughter, but I think disability get missed in a lot of discussion about work and poverty. Many people assume that if you are disabled that means you can't work and you get benefits. That's untrue is so many ways; some of us can work part time (or even full time!), and even people who can't work at all can struggle to qualify for benefits (which, in the case of SSI, keep you stuck below the poverty line once you get them).
No one should live in poverty. Not the disabled person unable to work, the chronically ill person who would get sicker if they worked full time, the parent who needs to take care of their kids, the student taking classes part time while working, the person addicted to opioids (regardless if they are in recovery or not)... No one.
Poverty is one of those issues of class that Democrats have often been disturbingly glib about, for me. There is a sense of uncritical truth to a lot of democratic positions when it comes to how to address poverty, even when the evidence is much more complicated than the position would imply (not that I'm talking about the minimum wage or anything).
The left is a wide umbrella, so I don't want this to read like I'm being critical of the entire left or anything (that would include me), but when it comes to campaign season there is often a push to forget nuance in favor of simple and easy to understand positions. That has always been a mistake to me, and it will continue to be a mistake. If people care about the details, there should be details to follow and arguments to engage with. Instead it often feels lately like there are things that are inarguable if you're going to be of the left. Minimum wage has long felt like an inarguable part of responding to poverty.
Bernie Sanders is particularly vulnerable to what I'm talking about. He has always insisted on economic ideological purity, to an extent that I actively despise his leadership style. Poverty has always been a complicated creature that requires many tools and responses to help alleviate. Pretending that there is one cure-all does the people who experience it a disservice, and it makes you look at best a fool in the process. Reviling Hillary for saying that raising the minimum wage suddenly will have a negative effect on those who earn between the old and new minimum wage is actually outrageous.
The left should know shame for its glibness in trying to address poverty. The right being no better does not absolve it.
This article actually made me think of some things you've said (on this issue, and on incrementalism in general). Particularly this part, which really struck me:
(This is a very short comment, mostly consisting of quotes, but I don't know how much I have to add, haha.)
I'm not even sure it's a matter of letting conservatives dictate terms of the poverty debate. Liberals are often willing participants in the myths and distortions that lend themselves to this glib, extreme proposal making that the article highlights.
It's also really hard to talk fluently or coherently about the sorts of success stories you can have in a good anti-poverty set of policies, because they're so ... bottom up in a lot of cases. When a community notices that their impoverished working parents can't afford childcare that would let them go get the resources their children need (like CHIP or food stamps, or any of the more state or national level services available), how often does anyone hear about that? When communities create farmers markets that are designed and maybe even subsidized to be set up in the middle of food desserts, how often does that get highlighted? These are hugely important parts of this complicated problem.
Complicated things are hard to break down, sure. But if a liberal wants to do that problem justice, talking about things in terms of what extreme and likely destabilizing policy they stole from a republican who thought it would be a good way to cut back on other state services twenty years ago isn't the greatest way forward. That's likely what you and this article's authors mean by "letting conservatives dictating terms," but I think that's as much Democrats lacking the ability to break complicated things down well like Bill Clinton used to as anything. Blaming conservatives for the way you talk helps nothing and no one, even if it leans into partisan nonsense.
This is one of those instances of the left folding to try and woo folks on the right. I doubt Bernie legitimately believes people should still even have to work 40 hours to survive, but even a hint of a shorter work week would have the right wingers fuming. The left hasn't been able to operate in a no-compromises type of way and this is a symptom imo.
It's just pandering. A general statement even those on the opposite side can get behind somewhat, even if it falls apart under critique on the actual left.
Is UBI the only way to tackle this problem?
Killing the notion that a 40-hour, 5-day work week is "full-time", or ideal (it's not) would be a good start.
I like the understanding that "full time" is over 30 hours a week. I think we overwork ourselves in the US. And we have terrible work-life balance as a society.
The work week has shrunk a lot in the not-so-recent past. We went from a nation of mostly farmers, where the workload is "whatever it takes, especially during harvest time", to factory workers who had set schedules and eventually unionized to demand 8-hour shifts, to office or service workers with schedules that mostly still mirror factory workers "8 hours a day and two days off" schedule.
It's leveled off at 40 hours a week, but that's completely arbitrary. We've reduced it before and society didn't collapse. Far from it, it improved hugely.
In the Jetsons cartoons from the 50s, George complained about working one whole hour out of the day, and from that he supported a middle-class family. Because of course in the future (as seen from the 50s) people would barely need to work to enjoy a luxurious standard of living.
Just as a side note, there are researchers that claim that it's now still longer than it used to be (both the work week and the work year). I've found some critiques as well but nothing as substantiated as this original work so...
This is not in opposition to your post, I just think it would be interesting to rethink the workload of this age and the industrial age and why were they so long? I was reading "The slavery of our time" by Tolstoi and it's interesting, he talks of 35-hour physical work"days" with 50-60 people sleeping in a single room, he talks about how the only complaint the workers had was that sometimes they didn't have space to sleep. He talks about how slaves had shorter and fewer work days because they were property and therefore less replaceable than workers. It made me wonder what is wrong with us, and whether we can rise above this vicious greed that some of us seem to have.
Why would it need to be U to have a conditional BI based on someone's ability to work full time?