How many of that 40 percent have a game system, flat screen tv and smart phone?

Priorities people.

Greetings Charles from Baton Rouge, LA, the state Capitol,
I read your post.

"A $400 Dollar Emergency Would Overwhelm the Budgets of Nearly 40 Percent of Americans"

I'm dubious of that based on one survey. Nonetheless, what do you mean by "richest country on earth"? Yes, that could mean strictly speaking that a country's GDP or other numerical or monetary measure is the ONLY defining measure.

But, that is where I part with you. That is too restrictive. Wealth or "richest" can be defined otherwise. Yes, I get that plenty of Americans can't afford to come up with $400 reserve in the immediate. But 40%?

And no, I don't believe America the "richest country on earth". There are other measures.

@2

As far as the 40% figure goes, the data are pretty robust. Study after study have shown that around half of Americans have zero or negative wealth; this is the part of Piketty's book that nobody is arguing with.

I'm not sure what axe you're grinding when you argue about definitions of "wealthiest," but the United States does clearly come out on top when you use some of the most common measures of national wealth. If you don't like those measures, that's fine, but it doesn't make them go away, either.

lark, you live in LA now?

The deep meaning of this finding?
Many Americans do a very poor job of managing their finances.
And their lives in general.

Traditional Marriage was the most effective anti-poverty program ever;
and the benefits grew exponentially as succeeding generations followed the plan.
As America buys into Leftist Propaganda and abandons Traditional Marriage wholesale economic deprivation and social chaos inevitably follow.

Cause and Effect.

Good Morning Charles,
No, I reside in still Seattle. I'm in Louisiana on a road trip to the Deep South. I'm visiting Civil War and Civil Rights' historical sites. I'm also viewing state Capitols. Baton Rouge is one of them.

It's a delight so far. I trust you're well.

@3,
I don't have an ax to grind. I haven't read Piketty's book. I'm merely challenging 40% of Americans. I tend to be wary of the phrase "study after study".

@1,

What, you think you're better than them?

@8,

Americans are trained from birth to consume more than they can afford. How are you supposed to combat that?

@5 hogwash. Plenty of counties have less traditional marriage than the USA and more economic security. Plenty of countries with more traditional marriage and massive issues with economic security. You got so much Astroglide on that Bible you can't see the world straight.

@9: Easy. Better education on handling money and budgeting. Apps that show how your cash flow is spent. BOA, for example, will show your transaction history into categories that one can easily establish a budget.

Rich or poor, if people can't budget they're essentially lazy and unmotivated to do so and will continue sliding into debt. No excuses.

@11,

Better education? You mean the same education that half this country derides as "elitist?"

Apps that show budgeting? You mean apps on smart phones that people like @1 say poor people waste their money on?

People who can't budget are lazy and unmotivated? Are you sure it's not that this country indoctrinates its citizens from birth to Buy! Buy! Buy! And don't worry about the future? Try and shield children from predatory advertising, I dare you. It's a cancer. You can't get away from it. Hell, this country was founded on capitalism... Free markets... Hook them early.

Lazy and unmotivated. You don't know what you're talking about. The hardest working, poorest people out there are stuck in a system that's rigged against them, rigged to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. It takes all the cognitive power they have to make it through a day AND still try to avoid the ads telling them "the Jones's are doing better than they are."

Lazy and unmotivated has nothing to do with it.

@8 I think you'd be surprised about Japan. They cannot spend more on individual housing because not only is their space limited, but housing (not land) depreciates in Japan (unlike here). When someone buys the land, the old house comes down and the new one goes up. They sure as hell do spend quite a bit on electronics, way more than we do. They also spend a pile of money on automobiles. One car per family is the norm due again to space limitations, but that car will be a nice one.

@12: Oh please. You're insulting the very people you claim to champion. Blaming it on advertising or "keeping up with the Joneses' is really pathetic and insulting to those whom know how to limit or curtail their "nice to haves" for the "must haves."

If you ain't got $400 you're fucked. Also imo Antoine can get a 400 loan. Terrible interest rates, but it's better then being sunk. I know, I used to have to take payday loans out just to cover rent from time to time. It's the best of a number of bad alternatives

And next Thanksgiving when elitist libs are tee-heeding over those "stupid" folks lining up at midnight for Black Friday sales - I'll be saying "good on them" for stretching their dollar.

10
We are discussing Americans and in this country not having kids until you married and staying married give you and your kids an enormously better chance of avoiding poverty and making it into the middle class. Look it up.

A recent workplace injury had me in the E.R. I received a band-aid and 10 minutes of a doctor's time--part of which he needed to arrange for the billing of one antibiotic, single-use, gel packet. I received a bill for $987. Charle's article is not hollow anecdote. Worker's comp saved my sorry ass. Many are not be so lucky.

@14,

If you think everyone's a bastion of individual strength and responsibility, that only the weak and lazy are susceptible to social forces, then you know nothing of how society and civilizations function.

And you're saying "good on them" to people shopping for gifts when they don't have enough to live on? What about the lazy and stupid people that @1 says waste their money on smart phones and big screen tv's? Why are they buying gifts at all if they're living paycheck to paycheck? Isn't that poor financial planning? Oh right... they're lazy and unmotivated.

@6

I understand that wariness, but I also get very tired of the "citation needed" argument when a quick internet search will turn up dozens of examples:

https://www.google.com/search?q=inequality+united+states+abstract

@5, @8, @11

The question of whether or not bad budgeting is the cause of poverty can be answered pretty easily with data; all you need to do is tally up necessary vs. discretionary household spending figures and compare the results to income.

Here's what happens when you do just that:

https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-poverty-myth/

Of course @18. The USA doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your claim is that lower rates of traditional marriage cause economic instability. I'm arguing against that by asserting that there are places in the world with lower marriage rates and much higher economic security, and places with higher marriage rates and much worse economic security. Which means that traditional marriage rates in themselves are not absolute causes of economic instability.

As suck it's extremely likely that you are citing a correlation as causal. Marriage has dropped and economic vulnerability has increased. You see the world through a conservative Christian dogma, and so these thing appear to naturally be linked.

But of course correlatives aren't necessarily related causally. Sometimes there are confounding factors effecting both variables. For instance there is an undeniable positive correlation between ice cream consumption and shark attacks. Does eating ice cream cause sharks to attack? Of course not. But if the Bible said: "And the Lord Jebus spaketh of finned fish demons and their love of creamed ice, and he commanded 'though shalt not ingesteth creamed ices, not through moutheth, nor noseth, nor bungeth holeth,'" you'd be like, fuck, probably those sharks are smelling the rocky road on those sinners.

And sometimes thing are correlated and there is simply no connection.

Anywho, let me give you that there's something in the USA that made the fall in traditional marriage cause the rise in economic instability. I think that's a huge reach but I'll be generous to your argument. Because traditional marriage doesn't globally correlate with economic stability, that means there have to be other factors specific to the USA at work, likely sexism, discrimination, anti-family workplace policy, lack of affordable healthcare, brutally inequal GINI index, etc. Why don't we change those other things instead of pine for a past when people, mostly women, needed to suffer though shitty marriages to survive economically? Or do you prefer shut up and make me a sandwich?

@20: Folks get by paycheck to paycheck but still manage to treat themselves now and then. People deserve fun in life, and when I say "good on them" it means they're the ones that don't have the money for an entertainment center or a new dishwasher throughout the year until they saved up for a sale or great deal.

You're hanging your hat on misconceptions of how the working poor live.

Let me add real quick what I think, since I've focused on what you think. Economic instability is hard on marriages. The causal relationship between the two is there, but functions exactly opposite to how you posit. It's not that people who get and stay married then have more money, it's that more money makes it easier to get and stay married. If you are a religious person who wants more marriage, then what you want to foster is economic equality.

@21: It is ridiculous to imply that bad budgeting causes poverty and I didn't imply it. If the income is insufficient I'm only saying budgeting makes the most of it and can prevent wasting money.

@25

If you agree that the root cause of poverty is insufficient income, then I have to wonder why you're arguing about anything else.

If a given job does not pay enough to cover the basic necessities of the worker, then whoever holds that job is going to be mired in poverty, regardless of their marital status or accounting acumen.

@26 - Yup - that's what I just said.

@28

Whatever it takes, so long as they don't ask their employers for more money, right?

@23,

And say one of those people living paycheck to paycheck saves up and gets a great black friday deal on a big screen tv... and then falls from a roof on a job that pays shit, and has no insurance, and they break their back and the hospital bills drive them into insolvency? As @1 would say, "They're poor and they have a big screen tv??? Priorities People!"

Your speech about the noble poor saving up to buy a luxury item goes right over the heads of nearly half the country, people with zero empathy... who see a poor person with an electric coffee maker and scream "why are they wasting my hard earned tax money on luxuries?!?"

When THEY fall on hard times, it's bad luck, it's not their fault, it was the economy, or some one else's fault. When someone ELSE falls on hard times it's because they're a lazy, unmotivated moocher.

@28,

I lol'ed

@30: You're conflating my commentary in @17 and @23 with those who say "They're poor and they have a big screen tv??? Priorities People!" - big difference. I'm not criticizing such purchases, am I? In fact, I think it's important for anyone to reward themselves if they can.

Others in your narrative are calling the poor "unmotivated moochers", not me. I have no qualms, however, calling anyone lazy (most-of-all myself) for not budgeting. It's advice that shouldn't ruffle the feathers of anyone's delicate sensibilities - rich or poor.

And let's not forget, all this is in response to your astute question in @9!

21
In the study you cite the bottom 20% household average income is $11,000 per year.
We noted that many people manage their finances poorly, and also manage their lives poorly.
A household making $11,000 will have to make a lot of changes to escape poverty.

22
We do not cite 'rates' of Traditional Marriage, but abandonment of the institution itself.
Traditional Marriage is(/was) a lifestyle that included preparation for adulthood before marrying and having kids and also respected innate gender characteristics.
The high rates of out of wed birth are a large component of our economic and social disfunction, but the quality of the marriages in current society is also much lower than in the past and is reflected in the quality of the adults those marriages produce when the children of those marriages grow up.
Traditional Marriage was a productive social institution that delivered huge benefits to the individuals in it and the society they lived in; modern marriage, when practiced, does not deliver the same beneficial results.
Staying in school, getting a job and working, and marrying (and having kids after marrying) are a proven pathway to the middle class for the overwhelming majority of people who practice it, regardless of what social class they start in.

Excerpts from a NYT piece:

"Among today’s young adults, the “success sequence” is insurance against poverty....

The success sequence... is this: First get at least a high school diploma, then get a job, then get married, and only then have children. Wang and Wilcox, focusing on millennials ages 28 to 34, the oldest members of the nation’s largest generation, have found that only 3 percent who follow this sequence are poor.
A comparably stunning 55 percent of this age cohort has had children before marriage.
Only 25 percent of the youngest baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) did that. Eighty-six percent of the Wang-Wilcox millennials who put “marriage before the baby carriage” have family incomes in the middle or top third of incomes. Forty-seven percent who did not follow the sequence are in the bottom third.

...Another problem is that some of the intelligentsia see the success sequence as middle-class norms to be disparaged for being middle-class norms. And as ... says, too many of the successful classes, who followed the success sequence, do not preach what they practice, preferring “ecumenical niceness” to being judgmental.

In healthy societies, basic values and social arrangements are not much thought about. They are “of course” matters expressing what sociologists call a society’s “world-taken-for-granted.” They have, however, changed since President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed “unconditional” war on poverty. This word suggested a fallacious assumption: Poverty persisted only because of hitherto weak government resolve regarding the essence of war — marshaling material resources.

But what if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral — bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance....

the Brits get it as well;
from a piece in The Telegraph;

"Dig deep enough in the figures, and you can see a pattern of behaviour among those who prosper, as well as those who don’t. In fact, four basic rules can be established. Those who observe them are highly unlikely to end up in poverty. Those who break them are unlikely to avoid it.
"The first rule is to finish school: don’t drop out....
The next rule is to avoid teenage parenthood ...
The third rule is to avoid long-term unemployment before your mid-20s. No one can help being made redundant: about a million jobs were shed during the crash. But taking another job, even lower-paying or part-time, is far better than signing on. Unemployment can become self-reinforcing after a certain period: those who stay active stand the best chance when the recovery comes. It’s bad enough being the victim of a slump. But it’s worse to be the victim of an unreformed welfare state, which can still ensnare those for whom it was set up to help.
But the fourth and final rule is rather different: stay in a long-term relationship.... What matters is the ability to stick together. And when it comes to fighting poverty, this matters even more than finishing school.
For those who kept all four rules, the chance of falling into poverty by the age of 34 was just 13 per cent. For those who broke all four rules, it was 78 per cent. Obeying each rule significantly reduces the chance of poverty."
(the British study followed people from all economic classes, btw)

Brookings Institute

"Policy aimed at promoting economic opportunity for poor children must be framed within stark realities.... poor children are more likely to make bad decisions that lead them to drop out of school, become teen parents, join gangs and break the law.

...we should figure out more ways to convince young people that their decisions will greatly influence whether they avoid poverty and enter the middle class. Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities:
at least finish high school,
get a full-time job and
wait until age 21 to get married and have children.

Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year).

Consider an example. Today, more than 40 percent of American children, including more than 75 percent of black children and 50 percent of Hispanic children, are born outside marriage.... As hard as single parents try to give their children a healthy home environment, children in female-headed families are four or more times as likely as children from married-couple families to live in poverty. In turn, poverty is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes in children, including school dropout and out-of-wedlock births."

Same report:

“When asked about their finances, 75 percent of adults say they are either doing okay or living comfortably. This result in 2018 is similar to 2017 and is 12 percentage points higher than 2013.”

Kind of reminds me of the time the wife asked to go to a new restaurant and we got pinged with a $500 bill! Unexpected indeed.

Three simple things you can do in life to stay out of poverty:

graduate high school.
get a job.
don't have kinds until you are married.

If you do those 3 things you will not stay in poverty 99.8% of the time.

kinds = kids

Having children out of wedlock is the number one cause of poverty.

@40

Everything will be free!

@33

Ah, I see. You believe that one fifth of all American households don't deserve even the basic necessities of life, regardless of their marital status or budgeting skills. And another fifth, earning ~$29k, don't deserve any income above the level of necessity, i.e. do not deserve any discretionary income which they might save.

You're saying 40% of American households deserve only the very minimum income which can support subsistence, or less. They simply do not deserve income levels which might allow them to save anything at all.

40%.

At least you're honest, I suppose.

42
Ah,
you don't see at all or, more likely, see but choose to distort.

Five fifths of Americans 'deserve' all they go out and earn.
And they are blessed to live in a nation that still rewards effort and prudent choices with some measure of success and material comfort.
Those struggling, because of poor choices or circumstances beyond their control, deserve our help; help given freely by individuals and non-government entities that choose to assist them (many of which exist in a nation that still has elements that strive to live up to the teachings and ideals of Jesus Christ).

And, remembering that this is the greatest nation on earth with a system of government that best enables mankind to reach his potential, Americans deserve the right to strive, to try; to fail sometimes but to try again and again until they succeed.
Indeed, a society that fosters the Pursuit of happiness.

@43

Or maybe Glavset is just paying you by the word for this project?

@43

In the United States not all success is earned. Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and many others were handed success by their parents.
In the United States effort and prudent choices do not guarantee financial success or comfort. This nation is filled with working class people who work multiple jobs but are still pushed into debt by necessary expenses like housing, healthcare and transportation.

Jesus Christ instructed his followers to renounce the world, especially wealth and political power, and to dedicate themselves to care for the poor, the sick and the stranger. These teachings are opposed to conservative principles and values.

In my opinion, the United States is a great nation, but greatness is subjective; and there are nations in this world with citizens who are healthier, wealthier and happier.

“ there are nations in this world with citizens who are healthier, wealthier and happier.”

Lemme guess, you’re talking about the racially, culturally and ethnically homogeneous Nordic countries.

@47

Many of those countries are on the list, and so are lots of others.

@Low Dog,

Correlation is not causation. You cannot say "having children out of marriage CAUSES poverty." It could easily be that poverty causes people to have children out of marriage. Or it could be some other factor causing both of those (e.g., where you live, how good your schools are, who your parents are, etc.).

I know those studies you cite very well. In my post-doc work, I did research with several of the principle investigators of those studies and similar ones. I agree, those are three wonderful suggestions for people to follow to stay out of poverty, no argument. But you keep throwing around the words "bad choices, bad decisions." You're leaving out all the social factors that contribute, and there are a LOT. What choice does a kid make when he's told he can either join a gang or they'll kill him? What choice does a girl have when she finds out she's pregnant because nobody ever gave her any useful information about sex and reproduction, her parents are evangelical christians against abortion, and she lives in a state with only one abortion provider that requires parental notification? What choice does a married woman with kids have when her husband is shot and killed during a traffic stop because he was black?

Your "good ole' days" of "happily married husbands and wives with obedient children" is a myth. Wages were higher then. Now, both parents have to work. Husbands controlled everything their wives could do. Women couldn't even get a loan without their husband's approval. You say "Traditional Marriage was a productive social institution that delivered huge benefits to the individuals in it." Huge benefits to the man, sure. The woman? Not so sure.

"Those struggling, because of poor choices or circumstances beyond their control, deserve our help; help given freely by individuals and non-government entities that choose to assist them (many of which exist in a nation that still has elements that strive to live up to the teachings and ideals of Jesus Christ)."
And there's the money shot!
Individuals and non-government entities that CHOOSE to assist them. And the inclusion of Jesus Christ at the end there tells you exactly what "individuals and non-government entities" we're talking about... clergy. Christian clergy.
You need help? Stop in and we'll decide if we want to help you. Are you gay? Fuck off. Are you christian? No? Then you'd better convert or you can fuck off too. Are you a woman? Where's your husband? You're not having sex are you? If we choose to help you, what's in it for us? Some volunteer work? Some evangelizing? Some protesting at Planned Parenthood? Maybe when you're back on your feet, some regular tithing? Oh, and vote republican too. No, we can't actually force you to do that, but trust us, we'll know how you feel by what you say, so you'd better keep in line.

There's a reason the founding fathers wanted to keep religion out of government. It's a poison.

@45

You're free to read to study for yourself, they're not exactly hiding their methodology or withholding caveats.

But yes, you're right, it's much cheaper to forgo a rental apartment and instead pitch a tent under a highway ramp, which is a perfectly adequate place to sleep "in terms of human survival."

I think this is the first time I've ever seen you suggest that we'd be better off as a nation if more people had the budgeting skills and modest expectations necessary to make that particular decision.

@17: Not me, sugarlips. You can fight like a trapped rat in line for a $5 microwave if that turns you on. I'd rather have a good night's sleep without catching pneumonia in a parking lot from freezing my ass off outside just because household goods mostly made in China got marked down by 95%.
@28: Yours is a good argument for sustainable wage jobs rather than relying on the Bank of Mom and Dad, Ken. How long have you been flipping burgers at McDonald's and living in your parents' basement?
@33, @34, @35 & @36 Low Blow: FOX-TV and Sinclair aren't reliable news sources.

@52

I suppose it's not nothing that you at least believe that the people who fill our nation's lowest-wage jobs deserve nice, clean tent encampments to live in while they save and invest to the point where their capital gains can cover the rent on a bunk in a flophouse, and maybe some day a studio apartment.

But I do find it odd that you have trouble seeing why some people might consider that unrealistic, or uncivilized, or even a little bit cruel.

49
A girl who has not finished high school or married and has a child (or two, or three); and her children; are going to live a much poorer life, in all respects, than a woman who has her children after getting some an education and married.
BECAUSE she had her kids before she acquired useful skills.
She may get those skills/training later but the odds are enormously against her and even if she does she and especially her children will suffer much more than if she had waited.

Yes, social factors that contribute a LOT.
Which is why it is all the more important that children in socially challenging circumstances be taught how critically important making those good choices are.
And the least advantaged children are not victims of their skin colour, they are the victims of the bad choices their parents and grandparents and so on made; we are four and five generations into the abandonment of Traditional Marriage...

"useful information about sex and reproduction"; like how effective abstinence is? Don't see that in the Left's 'abortion can solve all your reproductive oopsies' curriculum...

"..a married woman with kids have when her husband is shot and killed during a traffic stop because he was black?"; unspeakably terrible, totally unacceptable, and incredibly rare.
For every one there are a thousand shot by gang members who grew up without a father. The Left focuses on the rare statistically unmeasurable occurrences that feed it's twisted destructive political narrative and TOTALLY ignores the mayhem actually destroying communities, TOTALLY ignores the root causes that create and feed the mayhem.

You are negative about women and traditional Marriage, and no doubt in our society crafted by toxic 'feminist' values you have had life experiences that leave you cynical and bitter but many women found joy and satisfaction in a society that valued their incredible gifts as mothers and fostered opportunities for them to mother their children; something current society does not even pretend to pay lip service to...

Sorry, you missed the money shot; here is a tissue...
"elements that strive to live up to the teachings and ideals"
People, organizations that try to do what Jesus taught.
Some, many, are associated with organized religions; but not all, or even most.
Some "Christian" clergy are some of the evilest people in our society.
Many of those elements are good people/organizations, unaffiliated with organized religion, trying to do good work, inspired by the ideals Jesus taught.
The Left highlights the frauds who parade under the flag of 'religion';
it ignores (and often never comes in contact with) the millions doing great service.
Sure, whenever there is a good thing evil people try to weasel in and take advantage of the opportunities trust creates. You would recognize someone who condemned all members of a particular race because of the misdeeds of some as a bigot, you do not see that condemning the concept of religion because of some who fraud in the name of religion is also bigotry.
The founding fathers did not want to keep 'religion out of government';
they wanted to keep government out of religion.
They recognized, and explicitly stated, that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams)
Not religion compelled by government;
religion freely chosen by the people, who practice it of their own free will.
Not 'charity' compelled by government,
funded by coercive confiscation from the people who earned it;
Charity given freely and willingly.
The good that has been done in this civilization, and there is much of it, was done by people and organizations striving to live up to the teachings and ideals Jesus taught.
Assistance rendered by government; automatic handouts, 'entitlements'; cripple self initiative and inevitably enslave the recipients.
Assistance rendered by individuals and organizations seek to assist the helped in ordering their lives so they can take care of themselves. The old "give a man a fish.../teach him to fish..' story.

The increasing chaos and disfunction in our civilization directly flows from Adams' observation above; our society is/has abandoned its 'moral and religion' foundations and is increasingly ungovernable, and unable/unwilling to care for itself.

Ultimately individual responsibility is the only paths to success in life;
and must be the core principle of any civilization that is to endure;
alas- The Left flees it like a vampire from garlic.

@54

What you're saying, Ken, is that the working poor -- Americans who are doing low-skilled but necessary labor and getting paid less than a living wage for it -- would be better off if only they had a lower standard of living.

I think you're going to have to forgive people for laughing at your efforts to shore up that argument.

@55: Is it not also Donald's Trump "individual responsibility" to obey the law himself, much less preserve, protect, and defend the constitution that he swore to do?

@55
"The founding fathers did not want to keep 'religion out of government';
they wanted to keep government out of religion.
They recognized, and explicitly stated, that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams)"

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

Surely if you’re getting paid less than a living wage, you wouldn’t be living?

@55,

You choose to believe what you want to believe.

Answer this though...

If Jesus Christ were alive today, what would he do about immigrants from Mexico moving north? Would Jesus Christ turn them away? Would he tell them to go back where they came from?

Or would Jesus Christ be merciful, and giving, and loving, and give to all people, anywhere, everything they needed, that he could give them?

Would Jesus Christ give up all his possessions to the needy? Would Jesus Christ do everything in his power to help the needy, no matter what?

What would Jesus Christ do? What would Jesus Christ do about the needy? The poor? The helpless? The starving?

Just answer that.

@59

Possibly, but far more likely you'd simply be growing your debt, going deeper into negative net worth. You can read the study yourself: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-poverty-myth/

As far as "getting skillz yo," you could train up every single American in modern high-tech disciplines, but that won't make your supermarket start hiring med techs instead of stockers and cashiers, and your favorite brunch spot isn't going to be looking for mobile application developers when what they need are short-order cooks.

You need thousands of people working low-skilled jobs all around you, and millions more across the country. The secure, comfortable, and enjoyable life you live would end immediately if these people were whisked away from their jobs to write javascript somewhere all day instead.

You depend utterly on the work these people do, yet you balk at even the suggestion of paying them enough to sleep in their own private apartments when they're done serving you at the end of the day.

You and Ken are mad as hell, and you want the poor to take it, to take more and more and more of it.

"far more likely you'd simply be growing your debt, going deeper into negative net worth."

Most people don't consider having a $200,000 mortgage and only $100,000 in assets to be a big problem.

"your favorite brunch spot isn't going to be looking for mobile application developers when what they need are short-order cooks."

Isn't that why we happily let latin americans flood the labor market?

@63

Ah yes, all those people who set aside a percentage of the negative number of dollars available to them after living expenses and then pull $30k out of their magical cookie jars after 40 years and make down payments on their own homes? What about them, huh? Why aren't we talking about these totally real and mathematically possible and not at all make-believe home-owners? Is it maybe because they don't have anything to do with the discussion you're trying to avoid?

As for immigrants, and whether or not they deserve a living wage, too: I'm pretty sure that's an internal inconsistency in your own political and economic preferences, not mine.

Do keep going, I can't wait to see what you've decided to change the subject to next.

61
We don't speak for him,
but we'll play your 'what if' game;

the needy? The poor?...
He would teach us as individuals to be generous and tireless in helping the poor.
He did not advocate that government take on that responsibility.
He also had no place for showy ostentatious displays of 'charity' and feigned concern for the poor; he would not be fooled by 'advocates' who enrich themselves and puff themselves up in their pious pride while they claim to serve, the poor and homeless and those trapped in unsafe communities, sink in ever increasing despair and want.
He would remind the needy that they have a responsibility to nurture and enlarge and cultivate and use their god-given talents to better themselves, to care for themselves and their families and in turn help others. He would be disappointed at folks who do not work to develop their skills, who wallow in their neediness and 'helplessness'.
He would remind us that the poor will always be among us, so long as people are free to make choices, because a lot of need is created by poor choices (were eliminating the poor simply a matter of throwing money at the problem he might have turned stones into jewels and gold nuggets and bought prosperity for everyone...)

(illegal) immigrants from Mexico (and anywhere else...) moving north?...
He would remind them they have a responsibility to make their communities and nations safe righteous places, he would tell them not to flee and leave those less well of than them helpless but to stay and fight and work to fix their home countries.
He would tell them it is wrong to break the law, to steal what is not yours; that breaking the laws of our nation and stealing the privilege of living here is wrong.
He would remind them that there are billions in the world who fear and want, many far worse than they, he would ask them what arrogance makes them think they should break in front of all those who play by the rules and seek to enter the country legally.
He would express white hot fury at those who exploit children to game the system, who subject precious little ones to unspeakable hardship and suffering just so they can get preferential treatment at the border, who exploit our nations humanity and compassion and generosity in this way.
He would also be disgusted at public officials who refuse to enforce the laws of the land to suit their personal whims and political objectives; he reserved his harshest condemnations for public officials abusing their position and not acting fairly and impartially and justly.

58

I see we agree;

'christianity' is not, nor should be, written into our laws.
As it is not.
Neither for that matter should Leftists force their religious definition of 'marriage' on the rest of society thru the nation's laws. Or tax the rest of society to fund their religious version of 'charity'.

And all the smart kids for centuries have recognized that Catholicism and it's evil Priests (speaking as a group and not individually) were an evil oppressive enslaving institution to be overcome if men were to be free.
The religious values of those who founded this nation were broadly Protestant, and in fact the founding of this nation as a place of Religious Freedom was the next step in a process going back to the renaissance/reformation wherein men sought top free themselves from the stifling oppression (religious, but also secular/governmental) of Catholicism.
The next step, from nations that had thrown off the chains of Catholicism but had state Protestant religions to a society that recognized how vital it was than man be free to study and choose for himself his religious practice.
Recognizing that religion is vital to a free enlightened society but only if it's citizens are free to choose and practice freely of their own will.
Not freedom from religion; but freedom to practice religion, as they choose.

@66:

Marriage is a civil institution; it predates religious practice by some several thousands of years, if not more, and was commonly practiced well before the advent of written history. It's primary social function was to solidify tribal cohesion and to secure alliances with other tribes, as well as to expand tribal and family units for the purpose of providing additional labor. Religion simply co-opted existing practices as a way of consolidating the power of priests and to confer on such arrangements an imprature of authority; but that is neither required in order for the practice itself to exist, nor does it grant any special rights or privileges (aside from those strictly demanded by the religious institution itself) that cannot be derived from civil practice.

If you don't prefer the Leftist (by which one presumes you actually mean secular, in the sense of legally, but not religiously sanctioned) version of marriage you are of course free to eschew it - as if any female of reasonable intelligence would consider you a prospective object of matrimony in the first place.

@66 - the right to practice religion as you choose necessarily includes the right t practice no religion. Ad the "traditional marriage" that you espouse included girls no going to college and getting married out of high school (if they went that far), taking on the roloe of homemaker and not working, thus guaranteeing that they could not possibly support themselves if something happened to their husbands, and wholly left non-straight people out of whatever benefits DID flow from it. I say we're better off now. If you want to eep people out of poverty, work for policies that discourage child-bearing until you are old enough and secure enough to properliy care for them.