> Now, what does adequate mean? I guess a place to sleep, a place to clean oneself, food and clothing seems like a reasonable bar for a wage above poverty. Are there many full time jobs in the US that do not allow that?
I would say, a place where you don't have to share quarters with strangers, be exposed to violence, drugs, have your sleep interrupted, where the housing is stable enough that you don't need to leave work in the middle of the day to attend an emergency court petition to prevent your immediate eviction due to landlords non-payment of mortgage and interception of mailed eviction notifications, where you don't have to leave under cover of darkness with colleagues who know how to handle themselves as your bodyguards so that you can spend a month or two sleeping on a friends sofa while you try and wait for a room to open up in something resembling a half-way house for recently released prisoners.
Cos I mean, those were about the best conditions I could afford while working for a profitable multinational tech company while I was developing a key piece of the Internet infrastructure that everyone on this site uses daily (in a wealthy area of the UK).
I won't name the company, but it rhymes with "Clit Tricks"
> Are there really only two options? Is not that a bit simplistic? ... should we provide them with the exact stuff that people who work 40h a week get ... ?
Is _that_ not a bit simplistic? Is it really so difficult to imagine a world where working 40 hours a week is either a) dignified enough not to be totally demeaning and exploitative _and_ meaningful enough to carry some intrinsic reward, or b) pays noticeably more than the bare minimum required for an existence at least befitting the dignity of animals in a zoo, never mind human beings?
A lot of the issues you reasonably want to avoid seem like they could be solved more directly by other means. The argument seems to be, "America is a hell hole, so everyone needs enough money to escape it." There are poor countries where people dont live in fear of eviction and the slums arent full of violence and drugs. Maybe it's too difficult to change culture though, and we should just throw money at the problem.
The fact that it can be done in a poor country is all the more reason that it's a scandal that it is not being done in a rich country.
These poor countries don't have any special techniques or mystical cultural powers. For example, the fact that south Korea has adequate flood defences and the UK does not is not because Korean culture lends them a racial character uniquely cognizant of water management passed down from their ancestors over generations of rice cultivation or whatever... There is absolutely no reason the UK is unable to "throw money" at constructing flood defences (altering planning policy, etc.) if they were to so chose.
The idea is not to "escape the hellhole" but to transform it in to "not a hellhole", through the direct, rational application of readily available, and completely straight-forward policy mechanisms.
But maybe it's too difficult to use political policy as a tool to achieve desired outcomes and we should blame the victims, turning it in to a nebulous cultural or moral failing and then wait around for the culture to just spontaneously change itself, eh :)
I would say, a place where you don't have to share quarters with strangers, be exposed to violence, drugs, have your sleep interrupted, where the housing is stable enough that you don't need to leave work in the middle of the day to attend an emergency court petition to prevent your immediate eviction due to landlords non-payment of mortgage and interception of mailed eviction notifications, where you don't have to leave under cover of darkness with colleagues who know how to handle themselves as your bodyguards so that you can spend a month or two sleeping on a friends sofa while you try and wait for a room to open up in something resembling a half-way house for recently released prisoners.
Cos I mean, those were about the best conditions I could afford while working for a profitable multinational tech company while I was developing a key piece of the Internet infrastructure that everyone on this site uses daily (in a wealthy area of the UK).
I won't name the company, but it rhymes with "Clit Tricks"
> Are there really only two options? Is not that a bit simplistic? ... should we provide them with the exact stuff that people who work 40h a week get ... ?
Is _that_ not a bit simplistic? Is it really so difficult to imagine a world where working 40 hours a week is either a) dignified enough not to be totally demeaning and exploitative _and_ meaningful enough to carry some intrinsic reward, or b) pays noticeably more than the bare minimum required for an existence at least befitting the dignity of animals in a zoo, never mind human beings?