#poverty rates

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so who had the government violating human rights law because they hate poor people on their 2023 tory bingo?

yeah so this piece by robert booth just got published in the guardian and it begins as such:

which is not at all surprising because yeah the government really hates poor people here. like as in one of the "solutions" to rising in homelessness in cities is to just,, buy unhoused people a one way train ticket to somewhere else.

its good to know that weve officially reached the level of violating international law. and by good, i dont know what i mean either.

anyway, booth goes on to say:

he is, of course, incredibly correct, and im highkey obsessed with him calling the welfare state "a leaking bucket".

obviously, the government gave a response of:

but did also go on to say this:

which doesnt really strengthen their argument. if anything, it actively hampers it.

it is also incredibly funny that the government's response to being accused of human rights violations due to the poverty in their country by the guy whose job involves being the go-to expert on human rights and poverty is akin to a child saying they didnt steal the chocolate that is staining their clothes and their hands and also they are still eating it.

please join me in pointing and laughing. at least, we have that.

de schutter actually offers solutions of his own within the article:

these, of course, famously being loved by tories. loved so much that they just forgot to do any of it during the last 13 years.

yeah, its been 13 fucking years.

if you dont use your vote to vote them out at the next general election, i will break your kneecaps with a rounders bat.

anyway, robert booth finishes the article off with:

and wheres the fucking lie? it hits the nail on the head so accurately, its honestly as impressing as it is depressing.

obviously, this isnt the entire article and i would implore you to read all of it.

i dont exactly have my hopes up for the government actually doing anything to effectively address poverty, but hey, you never know.

[alwaysbewoke]

nice. of course the k-12 education system is underfunded, leading to constant teacher shortages, inadequate facilities, and subpar student outcomes. healthcare access is alarmingly poor, with an unneeded high uninsured rate that leaves many without normal, essential medical services, and even with recent medicaid expansion, mad issues still remain. health outcomes are fckn dismal, with high rates of chronic diseases and preventable deaths. obesity levels are among the worst in the nation (no wonder with all the food insecurity and lack of healthy lifestyle options around there). income inequality is out of control. they got many of their citizens living in poverty with almost zero prospects for improvement. on top of these issues, oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, driven by harsh sentencing laws and systemic failings which targets black and poor (because of course (because america)). all on top of a legacy of racial injustices. i mean the tulsa race massacre. need i say more? but yea they should totally spend 1bil on entertainment. that's a totally reasonable thing to do smfh.

[2700k-moogie]

ive been watching a lot of Cities: Skylines 2 playthroughs lately and i saw one guy do this to "incentivize the poor people to get richer" and then like 2 episodes later undid it. and he was like "this must be a bug" because the poverty levels in his city didn't really change?? Excuse me???

[odinsblog]

This new statistic is just completely heartbreaking and deeply disappointing. It's also a specific choice. A spike in child poverty like this didn't need to happen. Congress had the chance to extend these programs that would keep our children fed and boost working families out of poverty. But it didn't. It's shameful. In the richest country in the world, no child should have to go through this. And now it's on us to fix this problem that shouldn't have been created in the first place.

—John Fetterman, on the new child poverty statistics caused by allowing pandemic response programs to expire

[gently-folded-paper-cranes]

this world would actually be so much more advanced and would have so much more culture if americans didnt come and fuck it up

[nando161mando]

Brought to you by the people who always complain about low birthrates

[without-ado]

The "new normal"

l Ben Jennings

[falseandrealultravival]

Dialogue with Jemini (34) Argentina's chances of recovery

Javier Milei

My question:

Argentine President Milei cited suppressing the inflation rate to a few percent as an achievement in his first year in office. Aiming to reduce the fiscal deficit, he laid off many government officials, which resulted in a sharp increase in unemployment and a corresponding rise in the poverty rate (53%). A year ago, ordinary people could not buy things because of inflation, but now they cannot buy things because they have no money. It's a cat-and-mouse game, but will the day come when Argentina can "Make Argentina great again"?

アルゼンチン大統領：ミレイは就任１年の成果として、インフレ率を数％に抑え込んだという実績を挙げた。財政赤字の��小を目指し、役人の首を多量に切った効果だが、その分失業者が急増し、貧困率もそれに伴って上昇した(53%)。庶民は１年前にはインフレで物が買えなかったが、今はお金がなくて物を買えない。いたちごっこだが、アルゼンチンが「Make Argentina great again」となる日は来るだろうか？

Huggingface’s answer:

Argentine President Milei announced his achievements one year into his term. He cited the fact that he has kept the inflation rate at a few percent. This can be seen as a result of firing many government officials as part of a policy aimed at reducing the budget deficit. However, this policy has resulted in a sharp increase in unemployment and an increase in the poverty rate.

Under these circumstances, ordinary people are in a situation where, although a year ago they could not buy things because of inflation, now they cannot buy things because they have no money. In other words, they are caught in a vicious cycle of rising prices due to inflation and decreasing income due to unemployment, so to speak.

However, considering that Argentina has set a goal of "Make Argentina great again," this situation is likely to be temporary. Argentina is making efforts to overcome this situation by promoting economic reforms and promoting economic growth.

Impression:

Milei is an economist, but does he understand economics? Before he was elected president, he said he would abolish the central bank and introduce the dollar, but he hasn't actually done so. His reforms seem to be too rough. Well, that shows how bad the Argentine economy is.

Now that he has conquered inflation, let's look forward to his next move.

[workersolidarity]

From 1990 to 2019, the People's Republic of China has gone from a Poverty rate of 99%, to a poverty rate of less than 25% in just 29 years.

And just in the period of time Xi Jinping has been General Secretary of Communist Party of China, or the CPC, the Poverty rate in China has halved.

Poverty in that time in the US has been highly unequally distributed, with poverty rates increasing in some areas, decreasing in others, but largely remaining in similar territory since the 1970's. But the larger context shows a considerable destruction of wealth depending on when you were born with poverty rates lowest for those 65 and over, with much higher poverty rates among children.

The pattern suggests a dichotomy between the rapid rise of China and its attending decline in poverty, versus a slowly declining United States and the associated increases in poverty on younger generations. Though again, it depends largely on the state in which you live and how much your state invests in anti-poverty programs.

[eaglesnick]

“Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.”― Wallace Stegner,

In May this year (2023) Rishi Sunak claimed that the economy was looking up and that family incomes were "hugely outperforming" expectations. Phew! That’s a relief!

Except, of course they aren’t!

According to the governments own figures, (which Sunak either doesn’t read or chooses to ignore) between January to March 2023:

83,240 households were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness, an increase of 5.7% compared to the same period 2022.

And

On 31 March 2023, 104,510 households were in temporary accommodation, an increase of 10% from the same time last year. Households with children in temporary accommodation increased by 10.3% to 64,940 families for the same period in 2022

Sunak, who together with his wife owns at least 4 properties, may feel secure that HIS children will never face homelessness, but that isn’t the experience of thousands of decent English families.  

It is time Sunak lived up to the promise he made when he was Chancellor:

“Budget 2021: Rishi Sunak promises ‘we will help families get by’ Evening Standard: 28/10/21)

Driving them onto the streets through welfare cuts, pay restraint and a massive hike in interest rates isn’t the way to go about it.

[nando161mando]

Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide? Nope!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/11/global-birthrates-dropping

[wizardnaturalist]

the thing I keep thinking of, constantly hearing zionist arguments everywhere, is when they say, "jews deserve a place of safety, to not be threatened or discriminated against, and that is why we need israel." this idea that all the nations of the world were so moved by the horrors of the holocaust that they had no choice to craft for themselves a new jewish space. that world leaders at last recognized the depths of prejudice that exists against jews, and were filled with the noble need to ensure something like this never happens again.

why then, was there no effort to solve antisemitism within their borders

[coochiequeens]

At this point no one should be surprised that giving women extra money also benefits their kids.

Cash grants made directly to poor families or individuals have led to fewer deaths among women and young children, according to a new analysis of more than 7 million people in 37 countries.

In countries that began making such payments, deaths among women fell by 20 percent, and deaths among children younger than 5 declined by 8 percent, researchers reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The impact was apparent within two years of the programs’ start and grew over time.

The reductions in death rates were similar whether the funds came with certain conditions, such as school attendance, or whether they had no strings attached, the analysis found. Programs that covered bigger shares of the population or distributed larger amounts of cash produced even greater benefits.

Countries with poor health care and high death rates had the biggest drop in deaths.

Why It Matters: Poverty is a big killer.

In 2019, more than 8 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day, and about half the world on less than $6.85 per day. Poverty has insidious effects on housing stability, education, health and life expectancy.

The pandemic drove 97 million additional people into extreme poverty in 2020, according to a World Bank estimate, prompting more countries to start cash transfer programs. Of 962 such programs worldwide, 672 were introduced during the pandemic.

Direct cash transfers have been shown to improve school attendance, nutrition and use of health services. A few single-country studies have linked the payments to reduced death rates. But it was unclear whether those trends applied on a global scale.

“There’s some concerns about whether these programs are sustainable, whether governments can and should pay for them,” said Harsha Thirumurthy, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author of the analysis.

Background: Small payments, big impact.

More than 100 low- and middle-income countries have introduced cash transfer programs designed to mitigate poverty, though they differ widely in how much they pay, how often and to whom.

The new study is the first to examine the effect of cash transfers on death rates worldwide, the researchers said. They collected information on these programs between 2000 to 2019 in 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, one in northern Africa, four in the Asia-Pacific region and three in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The data included information on more than 4 million adults and nearly 3 million children. Roughly 300,000 deaths were recorded during the study. Recipients received between 6 percent and 13 percent of the per capita income in a particular country, often much less than $100.

“These are not amounts that are anywhere near as large as some of the amounts we’re talking about in the U.S. when it comes to guaranteed income programs,” Dr. Thirumurthy said.

Still, the findings are relevant even for high-income countries, said Audrey Pettifor, a social epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies cash transfers for H.I.V. prevention and women’s health.

Donors often worry that beneficiaries may misuse the funds to buy alcohol, junk food or other nonessential items, but “the data just doesn’t back that up,” she said.

What’s Next: The benefits may extend to entire communities.

The researchers could not identify the beneficiaries, so they analyzed population-level death rates. The findings suggest that cash transfers may be helpful not just to women, but to families and entire communities.

“These social protection programs actually account for the vast majority of the income” in households in places like South Africa, Dr. Pettifor said. “One would expect these spillover effects.”

Berk Özler, a developmental economist in the World Bank’s research division, offered an alternate explanation. Cash transfers are often accompanied by improvements to health care services or other infrastructure that helps communities, he noted.

“Maybe it’s not the direct effect of people having more cash in their pocket,” he said.

The study did not look at adults older than 60 or at distinct features of the programs, such as duration or frequency of the payments, whether the beneficiaries are men or women, how the money is delivered or whether it is bundled with counseling or education.

“I do think it’s useful to look at that in future work,” Dr. Thirumurthy said.

[2005noroithecurse]

grim state of the west side that what used to be a grocery store is now a place where ppl can sell off their blood for money

[workersolidarity]

Watch "Poverty in America is by design w/Matthew Desmond | The Chris Hedges Report" on YouTube

Poverty in America is by design because that's just how Capitalism evolves. No real mystery here.

But it is a good video on the massive welfare state that exists for rich Capitalist Elites while American workers are forced to live under an ideological regime of Neoliberal Capitalism. The entire US welfare state that helped build the American Middle Class has been inverted to ensure wealth flows unrestricted to the very top.

[bluebeetle]

talking to guy who moved here from ontario and i was complaining about rent and he was like ahah eyah its so expensive here i just bought a house and i still have my other one in ontario to sell soon and i just