[smirksirlot]

> The fear is that if we implement a basic income in the USA, that, well, to put it bluntly, blacks and latinos, and, to a lesser extent, whites will simply stop working.

That's ridiculously racist. Poverty being tied to race doesn't necessarily have to do with innate work ethic.

[billmalarky]

At first I thought he was being unfairly racist too, but after a second reading I think he has a strong point. His point being that in order to make it politically achievable we need data that proves it works with the type of people that bigots believe it will fail with. People might be publicly politically correct, but they vote they way they truly believe. Prove without a doubt that it works with poor minorities in America, and you prove without a doubt that it works.

[notdrunkatall]

Precisely. If it is a workable system, the experiment will be a success, a community will have benefited, and you will have your political ammunition to have it scaled up.

If it is a failure, well, it would be much preferable to know this before implementing it on a large scale, for obvious reasons.

Let's not politicize something which can be easily and cheaply tested with scientific rigor. If it works, it works. If not, then okay.

[notdrunkatall]

You're right about the second statement, and quite wrong about the first.

Poverty is tied to race because race is tied to subculture. Work ethic is no more a racial quality than is the propensity to dance like a fool (edit: by this, I mean white people dancing like fools) or to enjoy eating burritos. But it is well known that the so-called 'Protestant work ethic' is a strong component of white American subculture, whereas it exists less strongly in the black subculture. Other races (such as Asians and Jews) have similar cultural values which encourage a strong work ethic. The American black subculture, on the other hand, does not seem to instill nearly as high a value on hard work in its children as do the others. On the contrary, the system is perceived as being a white construct, and black children who are perceived as trying to join that system are often shunned for 'acting white.' That is not a racial issue, it's a cultural issue, but its genesis has no bearing on the final result where basic income is concerned, at least not in the short run. I do think that the black subculture is beginning to appreciate the value of hard work more, but according to the data, it still has a ways to go.

Latino subculture as it exists in the USA is similar, but perhaps to a lesser extent.

If you think that's a racist statement, I suggest you look up the definition of racist, remove your emotions and preconceived biases from the issue, google some things ('acting white', 'black work ethic', etc) focus on what I actually said rather than reading between the lines, so to speak, and reevaluate accordingly.

[dragonwriter]

> But it is well known that the so-called 'Protestant work ethic' is a strong component of white American subculture, whereas it exists less strongly in the black subculture.

To the extent that this popular belief reflects reality (which is much less, I think, than you imply), I suspect it is not so much a durable, independent artifact of different culture so much as a difference in experienced utility of work that is reinforced through continuous experience in each generation.

[smirksirlot]

You're saying a black person who grows up in a white subculture then is less at risk of poverty? I call bullshit on that.

It doesn't matter what subculture you grew up in or are exposed to. It is what other people perceive of you that influences the likelihood of you falling into poverty. Skin color has a lot to do with that. Maybe the reason black people don't appreciate the idea of hard work is because no matter how hard they work, they don't come up ahead?

By subscribing to the idea of these subcultures being responsible for work ethic, you're still placing work ethic innate to the race - and that's flat out racist.

And for the matter of preconceived biases, I'm not the person coming into this suggesting that certain cultures have work ethic issues.

[notdrunkatall]

>You're saying a black person who grows up in a white subculture then is less at risk of poverty? I call bullshit on that.

Do you mean they're less at risk of poverty than a black person who grows up in typical black subculture? Of course they are.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/rich-black-flunking/Co...

Allow me to give you a little insight into my insight. I live in the ghetto, in a place that is 75% black, in the deep South. I grew up here, I still live here, and I know the people. They're typically good people, but as a whole, they don't have the same mindset about work, about frugality, about financial success that your typical middle class white guy does. And the reason isn't that they're black per se - it has nothing to do with their skin color, with their race. It does, however, have everything do with their culture, and it's not racist in the slightest to acknowledge that! If you don't acknowledge a problem, how can you ever hope to fix it?

Allow me to enlighten you a little bit. A people are brought to a foreign land and forced to work. Their culture that they knew is destroyed, so they build another one, but as any people who've been subjugated will do, they develop a strong resentment towards those who subjugate them and they integrate that sentiment into their new culture. They see the entire establishment as the creation of their oppressors, of their enemy, and for a long time, they were right! Post-slavery, racism was rampant, and it was damn hard to be a black person in America. I don't blame them one bit for initially thumbing their noses at the system that 'whitey' built, for telling us to fuck off, for generally believing deep down in their soul that white people were their arch enemies.

But times have changed. Yes, racism still exists (it exists everywhere, and is arguably the mildest in the USA, believe it or not), but post the civil rights movement and affirmative action, there is really no excuse for anyone - man, woman, white, black, whatever - to decide to be a leech on society. Well, outside of permanent disability, of course. Opportunity exists for everyone, and if you're a black person, it exists even more so for you. There are a plethora of excellent black-only schools which take low-income black kids who show a willingness to work hard to succeed. MIT absolutely loves to give free rides to the underprivileged minorities, as it improves their diversity figures, and the same goes for just about every college. We have a black guy as our President, for pete's sake. The difference was that his parents raised him to embrace the establishment, not to rebel against it. They taught him to follow the rules, to work hard, to join 'our' system and to change it from the inside, if he so pleased. And he did. A black guy.

Finally, acknowledging that a subculture is different from your own isn't racist. You're just a dumbass.

[mcv]

> Poverty is tied to race because race is tied to subculture.

You don't think discrimination might be a factor here?