Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by merpnderp 3591 days ago
But poverty in the US is better than it has ever been. As a percentage there are fewer people in poverty than quite some time if ever, the social safety nets have never been this generous, crime is relatively low, especially compared to the 1980's and 1990's. As for criminal justice reform, I'm not sure how we could reform it in a way to stop shoplifting without just throwing more people in jail for petty crimes.

Laws can't force people to be civil. Civility is part of culture. And when civil society starts to break down it really can't be fixed by anything other than a cultural change.
3 comments
ircody 3591 days ago
I don't think the statement that there are fewer people in poverty is true. Especially if you are counting numbers and not percentages. But going by percentage you can see on this chart [1] that we seem to be at levels similar to the mid-90s and that the current trend is upward. Specifically it seems like ages 18-64 in 2011 are fairly close to the highest rates since 1959 (when the chart starts). Another chart that doesn't separate by ages [2] seems to show that we haven't had significant drop in poverty since the 60s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#/...

link
antisthenes 3591 days ago
This mantra gets repeated on HN and elsewhere quite often, but it is factually incorrect if only from the fact that poverty guidelines have definitely not kept up with the cost of housing and healthcare.

You could argue that people in poverty live in places where housing is dirt cheap, but those places have almost no jobs and especially no jobs for people with criminal records.

link
merpnderp 3591 days ago
So your complaint is with the definition of poverty as a percentage of the medium income?
link
duncan_bayne 3590 days ago
I don't know about the OP but I certainly have a problem with it myself.

It's a definition of poverty that a) means you can 'fix' poverty by making rich people poorer, and b) morally legitimises envy.

link
Avshalom 3591 days ago
Crime is also the lower than ever so...
link