"A Cheap, Race-Neutral Way to Close the Racial Wealth Gap..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We offer financial aid for college. That is a lot better than just throwing 50k at every poor kid born without regard for what dumb things they're going to do with it.

+1. College is already free for those in poverty. You're expecting poor families who have made bad decisions for generations to suddenly start making good decisions when $50,000 falls in their lap? Have you ever heard of moral hazard? There would just be a bunch of entry level cadillacs appearing outside of peoples' houses when their kids turned 18.

Yeah no it is not “basically free”. I grew up poor and had to take out loans for college. It’s even harder today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we incentivize people not to work hard and rather just to be lazy and crap out more kids they can't afford. Great.

Time and time again the research has shown that the best way to lift people out of poverty is...to give them money! There is no actual evidence to support the idea thag doing this incentives laziness and other vices. It's actually been shown that it helps tremendously. I would really suggest looking at the facts on this instead of parroting this knee-jerk reaction perpetuatinf this harmful myth.

Please cite some of this research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not have like another social security? It starts when you're born and you can start receiving payments when you are 18.

Social Security is an insurance program -- old-age, survivors and disability insurance. You're talking about something different, which is putting an annuity structure on OPs' proposal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does it have to be race blind? Why can't we acknowledge that we screwed a specific race of people out of their income and the ability to build generational wealth for hundreds of years, and that it's high time we made it right?

+1

And all the jerks saying that it would worsen drug problems and subsidize Cadillac can GTFO with that bullshit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we incentivize people not to work hard and rather just to be lazy and crap out more kids they can't afford. Great.

Time and time again the research has shown that the best way to lift people out of poverty is...to give them money! There is no actual evidence to support the idea thag doing this incentives laziness and other vices. It's actually been shown that it helps tremendously. I would really suggest looking at the facts on this instead of parroting this knee-jerk reaction perpetuatinf this harmful myth.

Please cite some of this research.

Does your Google not work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We offer financial aid for college. That is a lot better than just throwing 50k at every poor kid born without regard for what dumb things they're going to do with it.

+1. College is already free for those in poverty. You're expecting poor families who have made bad decisions for generations to suddenly start making good decisions when $50,000 falls in their lap? Have you ever heard of moral hazard? There would just be a bunch of entry level cadillacs appearing outside of peoples' houses when their kids turned 18.

OP here. I am sure that would happen at least 50% of the time, maybe more. But there might also be thousands of kids who are able to expand their dreams. And I don't mean that in a hypothetical way.

You know when you get pregnant, that suddenly it seems like everyone around you is pregnant, and you can hardly help but suddenly start absorbing all of this knowledge about pregnancy? Or when you first learned about the Greek Gods and suddenly you started seeing references to the ancient myths in everything?

I think that if you grow up with some kind of opportunity, you will start noticing places where you can capitalize on it. Your brain will pick those up instead of filtering them out.

And yes. A good number of people will just filter them on back out again. And there are a small number of people who will see those without any money and will find a way. But maybe, for a huge number of people, this would help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we incentivize people not to work hard and rather just to be lazy and crap out more kids they can't afford. Great.

Time and time again the research has shown that the best way to lift people out of poverty is...to give them money! There is no actual evidence to support the idea thag doing this incentives laziness and other vices. It's actually been shown that it helps tremendously. I would really suggest looking at the facts on this instead of parroting this knee-jerk reaction perpetuatinf this harmful myth.

Please cite some of this research.

Does your Google not work?

I'm a liberal economist. I haven't seen this research. We all know that "paternalistic" policies, grants and things that have strings tied to them, are sometimes out of vogue because they don't maximize the recipient's utility. There have been studies showing that people think they are better off because they get to do/buy what they want with the money, but from a public policy point of view we wouldn't necessarily get the investment in education/housing that we're looking for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does it have to be race blind? Why can't we acknowledge that we screwed a specific race of people out of their income and the ability to build generational wealth for hundreds of years, and that it's high time we made it right?

Well, there are millions of poor whites. Did they get screwed out?

The particular problem with today's race-baiting, race-centric world is that it places all AAs into a particular category and all whites into another particular category. It refuses to allow the possibility that many AAs are poor not because of race but because of other factors (just like how millions of poor whites are not poor because of their race). And, in a perverse way, it's also demanding that AAs can't help themselves and can only "advance" with the support and help (and financial subsidy) of enlightened white people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does it have to be race blind? Why can't we acknowledge that we screwed a specific race of people out of their income and the ability to build generational wealth for hundreds of years, and that it's high time we made it right?

Well, there are millions of poor whites. Did they get screwed out?

The particular problem with today's race-baiting, race-centric world is that it places all AAs into a particular category and all whites into another particular category. It refuses to allow the possibility that many AAs are poor not because of race but because of other factors (just like how millions of poor whites are not poor because of their race). And, in a perverse way, it's also demanding that AAs can't help themselves and can only "advance" with the support and help (and financial subsidy) of enlightened white people.

They don’t get screwed. This program just isn’t for them. I don’t complain about not being able to get a VA mortgage or the GI bill because those programs aren’t for me. It’s the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does it have to be race blind? Why can't we acknowledge that we screwed a specific race of people out of their income and the ability to build generational wealth for hundreds of years, and that it's high time we made it right?

Well, there are millions of poor whites. Did they get screwed out?

The particular problem with today's race-baiting, race-centric world is that it places all AAs into a particular category and all whites into another particular category. It refuses to allow the possibility that many AAs are poor not because of race but because of other factors (just like how millions of poor whites are not poor because of their race). And, in a perverse way, it's also demanding that AAs can't help themselves and can only "advance" with the support and help (and financial subsidy) of enlightened white people.

NP. Also a race-tied legislation would NEVER pass in our mostly white male membered congress. Also a disproportionate amount of blacks are poor (because of historic and systemic racism).

And to counter PP - the unfortunate truth is that most blacks will not be able help themselves in our current society that stacks the odds against them. Yes, a few exceptional, lucky, and/or exceptionally greedy ones will make it. But most will not, not without the help of those who currently hold the power and the privilege.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So we incentivize people not to work hard and rather just to be lazy and crap out more kids they can't afford. Great.

Time and time again the research has shown that the best way to lift people out of poverty is...to give them money! There is no actual evidence to support the idea thag doing this incentives laziness and other vices. It's actually been shown that it helps tremendously. I would really suggest looking at the facts on this instead of parroting this knee-jerk reaction perpetuatinf this harmful myth.

Please cite some of this research.

Does your Google not work?

I'm a liberal economist. I haven't seen this research. We all know that "paternalistic" policies, grants and things that have strings tied to them, are sometimes out of vogue because they don't maximize the recipient's utility. There have been studies showing that people think they are better off because they get to do/buy what they want with the money, but from a public policy point of view we wouldn't necessarily get the investment in education/housing that we're looking for.

There have been studies at MIT and Harvard showing that there is no actual evidence to support the idea that direct cash transfers encourage less work. There were also a few pilot programs done in the 70s that show that direct payments to the poor led to them investing in their education, starting businesses, and generally investing in their lives. The small decreases seen in on the clock work was attributed to young women taking longer maternity leaves and going back to school. Utah was able to decrease chronic homelessness in their state by...giving homeless people free houses. They decreased chronic homelessness by something like 90%. We have this belief in our society that people who are poor somehow deserve it, but in reality, when they are simply given the resources they lack (which is actually cheaper than all the programs and games we play to do everything but) they make major changes because they WANT better for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Wow, the racism and classism in this thread is STRONG. Some of you people have some really nasty stereotypes that you need to get rid of. Or maybe look at how we subsidize predominantly rich white men and the behavior that drives. Yuck.

While it's well-intentioned to suggest something race-blind, the problems in our society aren't race-blind. There's a great chapter in "So You Want to Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo that addresses this topic that you might find helpful.

[Anonymous]

Lol. $50,000 for each poor baby. What could possibly go wrong?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You really think people are going to use this responsibly?

Do you find superyachts to be "responsible"? What about all the coke that gets snorted on them?

[Anonymous]

Why does it have to be race blind? Why can't we acknowledge that we screwed a specific race of people out of their income and the ability to build generational wealth for hundreds of years, and that it's high time we made it right?

Because there are poor whites, latinos, etc. (many of which are immigrants who came in 60s and 70s) who also do not have the benefit of generational wealth for hundreds of years.

And I take offense to the whole "we" in your statement -- my parents immigrated to the US in the 70s...with no generational wealth. They worked hard and sacrificed for me and my brother to go to college - my cousins and I were the first to go to college in our family. "We" didn't screw any specific race.

There is a big difference in supporting "systemic poverty" versus "systemic racism" both of which I agree exist. But it's ignorant to say only people of a certain race have systemic poverty.