throw rotten tomatoes at gus...

poverty

To the risk of being ridiculed and making an idiot of myself I am going to ponder about poverty in Australia... I will start here to say that I saw poverty and sickness in Africa beyond the imaginable. Actually, my indigenous cook was paid far more than I was (I was getting peanuts), though it was ridiculously low moneys, but she had six kids to look after and I had none....

So I will keep my crooked analysis of the subject on Australian median poverty in a somewhat "ruthless" calculated manner... Which is very rotten of me as there are real needs out there...

Not everyone in poverty is equal.
As Ross Gittins tells us — and I trust Ross Gittins assessments like the back of my hand — (he is that good, except on Tony's budget analysis here):
In the developing world they measure ''absolute poverty'' - whether you're so poor you're at risk of death from malnutrition.
In rich countries few people, no matter how poor, are starving. So we measure ''relative poverty'' - how many people or households have incomes well below what's typical in our community. And how low is ''well below''? Usually, that's a case of drawing an arbitrary line, and drawing it so low there isn't much room for argument.
This study sets the poverty line at a level commonly used in comparisons between the rich countries. It ranks the disposable (after-tax) incomes of all households from highest to lowest, then draws the line at 50 per cent of the median (dead-middle) income.
The study finds almost 13 per cent of households fall below the line. Hold that thought.
The main way people avoid poverty is by having a job and earning income from it. So you'd expect that, unless people were on particularly low wages, or could find only part-time work, or had a lot of others depending on them, working households would avoid poverty.
The main way governments seek to avoid poverty in the community is by paying a range of social security benefits to those people who, for one reason or another, are unable to work.
Those too old to work get the age pension; those too sick get the sickness benefit; those physically or mentally unable to work get the disability support pension; those too busy minding children get the single parenting payment; those too busy caring for a relative get the carer payment. And those who just can't find a job get the dole.
The federal minimum wage - increased each year by Fair Work Australia - is comfortably above the poverty line which, in 2010, was $358 a week for single adults.
And, most people with children to support get the relatively generous family tax benefit.
So why do 13 per cent of people fall below the poverty line? The biggest single reason is that the levels of the various social benefits fall below the line. Way below in the case of the dole; a little below in the case of the single parenting payment and the age pension.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/poverty-always-the-poor-relation-20121016-27ozv.html#ixzz29V9ABGC6

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One astute mathematician knows that should a country get richer, the median line of poverty will go up, thus median poverty will stay at the same proportional level by definition under such calculations... or end up by adding more poor without changing the status of people.
Thus here we need to look at the levels of goods affordability, of employment, of real employment, of what people need and want, of their ability to provide for themselves, including paying the bills and their willingness to walk that extra mile, and we also have to study the industry of charity as well as the value of social benefits.

In Africa, I now remember... and it still makes me cry... There was this young fellow in his early 20s who had leprosy... He had walked that extra mile to come to us... Actually he had walked more than 50 kilometres on stumps (no bush-taxi would take him on board)... He had no feet (and other lesions including some on his face). My heart sunk and I spoke to him at length about his life... Even touching him, hugging him to make sure he did not feel rejected by all... We organised for him to be taken to a hospital, another 100 kilometres south, where he could be looked after... Then, doctors used sulfones to treat leprosy... It sort of stopped the progression the disease. Thalidomide is also now used and seem to stop the disease with some success... Leprosy is a form of tuberculosis that affect the entire body, especially the extremities, slowly...
In America, poverty is compounded by very little social benefits availability and perceptions. I've witnessed there some old people, white, using food coupons and being looked upon by cashiers as if they were diseased with the plague...
What I meant to tell here — no-one is immune — Illness and poverty often go hand in hand, even in the most affluent of countries on earth...

I will add here that a few years ago, Noel Pearson, himself, blasted the charity and handout industries... he was also furious at government social services, because it was rotting the brains of his people who basically were getting something for nothing, creating idleness... And he knows Idleness breeds... The problems here are also complexed by racism and other factors, such as isolation, which prevent Aboriginal people getting employment — unless they start doing things for themselves. This was soon made more complicated by the "Wild Rivers" legislation which to a great extend shut Aboriginal people of Cape York from exploiting their own resources on their own land... This also divided (and still does) Aboriginal people into pro-"wild rivers" and others who see this as a restriction of trade...
On the other hand, should the Aboriginal people need nothing from social services, then these "services" become unnecessary — inducing unemployment in such "providores" service. It sounds like I am making this up, but no... This was exactly the view of Noel Pearson about 10 years ago and possibly the same now... People have ways to protect their jobs by fostering the "need" for their services... I will add here Noel Pearson is a personal friend of Tony Abbott and Noel is more inclined towards the right side of politics.
One can see some conflicting arguments here between social justice, charity, business opportunities and slavery (including happily delegating our manufacturing to Chinese sweat shops).

All in all, poverty is not a simple subject... unless one is poor and being in real trouble...

The government is committed to "give" around 25 billion dollars in social services, charity and charitable organisation and, as I talk to people (CEOs et al) in the charity business, it is always a battle to find the next dollar, though, on average, across all charitable organisation it is my understanding (I could have missed a page) from reading papers on Non Profit Organisations that about 70 per cent of their funds come from government...
But believe me here... there are some discreet but powerful battles, imbued with jealousies, between various charitable organisations.
As a simple and relative rule, the more meals a charity serves, the more it's going to get funding from the government. Thus some of these charities will spend some of their time and cash to drum up business — even when they are "not really needed" — to show the government they deserve more money... Far fetched?... I am not sure....
Am I saying that the charitable industries are fostering poverty in order to justify their existence? Hum, hell... I did not mean it like this... There ARE real needs out there, but I know some rich dudes who buy their shirts at St Vinnie... and are counted as a sale to a "poor" person... Why not...
Please note, before you throw rotten tomatoes at me, that I know and I repeat there are some really needy people out there... and I personally know some poor people who are trying hard to stay above the "poverty line", and are doing it so successfully, they are not counted as poor —though really they have nothing much but a broken window to let galahs fly in to share the remnant of the core of an apple (the fruit variety).
It's also a question of why some people become rich and others cannot get an even break...
On this there are many issues that are involved, including the illusions of wheeling and dealing, and other issues often parodied by foot in the door journalism who will try to show (the exception of course) of a couple of people abusing the system of hand-out — as if everyone on a hand-out was rorting the system... That's TV journalism for you...
In the creation of Australia's poor, one needs to consider many "human relation" factors, including:

Employment
Workers protection against employers
Employers being protected from bad workers behaviour
Employers being given a better financial climate to operate in
The currency exchange rate, which influence the export capability of industries
The teenage unemployment rate
The increasing teenage behavioural problems
The export of jobs overseas
The perceived devaluation of making things manually
The temptation and illusion of making money by selling and buying money
The "if you get more, I will take more" merchants, landlords and state government syndrome...
The new technologies focused on pressing buttons rather than using hands to make things
The lack of activity including long hours working while sitting on one's bum
The habit of idleness
The promotion of "fast-food"... Lack of preparation — instant get, no anticipation... low ritual value except in the hunger habit.
Instant gratification of wants that have been modified into needs, by advertising
The old, the infirm, the sick, caring...
Insurance
Interest rates
And many more such subjects.
Such as the way supermarkets create new poor by providing cheap groceries to help poor people but screw producers below the poverty line at the other end...

In the end, governments cannot dwell on all specific personal issues in all cases, though I personally know some MPs who have tried to get a fix on personal problems, not for their own aggrandisement or get a vote, but for genuine concerns... But in the end, one has to define criteria that will become unfair to some and beneficial to others...

For example I am still stunned that no journalist has properly lauded the Labor government for giving a full $900 tax refund to all people below a certain income (including those on the dole) when the GFC hit the fan — while in the rest of the world, most (all) of the money went to salvage the banks, of which many CEOs took their cuts in lavish bonuses... Sure, the said CEOs got slammed a bit for helping themselves, but BANKING SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE GOVERNMENT OWNED... The derivative market should have been cleaned up, down to nothing, while presently it's still a Damocles sword above our head. Outrageous.
Most of the journos went on about the $900 as if it was a waste of money... From personal observations, I can tell you it was not... many poor people I know, at the time would have gone under from subsistence to deep crisis... With the tax refund, despair was suddenly turned around into hope... Whether people bought a new Chinese made TV, tools, paid debts or spend the money at the pub is irrelevant, it helped the cash flowing...
The journos, especially of the economical kind, went on singing alleluias to the governments who rescued the PRIVATE banking system with PUBLIC moneys... Meanwhile those poor people who had lost their homes, their savings etc. were being given a lesson in how their sacrifice would pay off, by telling them to efff off....

In the days of John W Howard, the value of housing was extorted and of course property sellers pushed for higher prices while cash was handed out from government for people to buy properties that were a notch above what they could afford... As soon as the property market, thus artificially inflated, went down, most people started to be in trouble with the repayments. Same with the "baby bonus"... soon to be more than offset with massive increase in... education costs. Cynical...

Thus, here I am in my castle, pontificating about poverty... Throw me more rotten tomatoes please...

The government can do more, sure, and yet again one relies on the public service for assessments. And should the present government be too generous, then the opposition will do anything to tell of money waste... Like the insulation caper... Remember?
Let's say here that, like the $900 tax refund, the insulation program helped Australia stay on an even keel during the GFC, though many business sharks tried to profit quickly from the scheme. Even many Labor MPs knew the scheme would be abused, they decided in favour of it quickly as urgency was the key then. In the end, it was a success — except for journalists and the opposition still denigrating the scheme... More than one million houses were insulated with benefit of up to 30 per cent reduction of power bill and only a few problem cropped up: 400 houses had faulty installation and a few people died from these... Many poor people I know were really please with the insulation paid for by the government, and whether the government paid too much for it, there was no time to haggle... and it provided employment.
Yes poverty still exist in the richest countries on earth, including Australia... And if some poor people find ways to exploit hand-outs beyond their basic needs, so be it...

One of the major secondary factor that often enters the poverty equation is depression... I am an "expert" on depression... Depression is hard to shake. This is a very difficult subject on which I have written about on this site, in various articles, some written about 20 years ago but still on song now. Solutions? Yes, there are a few presented and explained.

Disclosure: Gus Leonisky supports a few charities and directly (hopefully temporarily) helps a few poor people help themselves out of poverty... until they don't need him. That is the way he wish: becoming redundant, but having a relationship in which no one owes for whatever... It's letting karma go around which for existentialists and atheists has no other value but the present.

By Gus Leonisky at 17 Oct 2012 - 3:00pm
Gus Leonisky's blog
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despair...

poverty2

By Gus Leonisky at 17 Oct 2012 - 3:32pm
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congratulation to independent Australia...

Independent Australia proudly announces the inaugural and exclusive global 500 Poor List.

by contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence

And we are asking you to submit nominations.

Who are the world’s poorest individuals?

There are no age limits, no geographical imposts, no political, cultural, racial or religious boundaries.

Thanks to Forbes Magazine, we know the names of the world’s richest people but, let’s be honest, we haven’t got a clue about the poorest.

It’s time to balance the books on this one.

There are a few conditions on nominations.

Judges will not tolerate any poseurs.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/life/satire/independent-australia-announces-its-inaugural-global-500-poor-list/

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While it is a easy job to pick the 200 world richest geezers out of a small clique of finance claptrap that often borders on gambling luck and stealing, it is extremely difficult to choose the poorest of all amongst the 2.5 billions people who ain't got much but misery, on this planet.

About time we (as a variety of social group we call counties) as well individuals came to the realisation that some people are less fortunate than others. War, famine and pestilence have never quit bothering humanity, except they have displaced themselves to our former world-carving we used to call colonies and are now places on our highway robbery itinary.

Thank you, independent Australia for the inaugural global 500 Poor List... It will make some unenviable reading and hopefully will make us dig deeper in our pockets and adjust our brains to a different reality.

By Gus Leonisky at 6 Mar 2013 - 3:26pm
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our new "christian" stingy government...

The Federal Government's plan to cut $4.5 billion from its foreign aid budget has been criticised at a star-studded anti-poverty concert in New York.

The Australian chief executive of the Global Poverty Project, Hugh Evans, told an audience of about 75,000 people in Central Park that there was still time for the new Australian Government to think again.

"Reverse course, Prime Minister," he told the crowd and an internet audience of an estimated 15 million people.

"Reverse course, or this simple act of political indecency will define your government and your legacy on the global stage.

"This is not a legacy the people of Australia want."

Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, John Mayer and the Kings of Leon were the headline acts at the Global Citizen Festival, an initiative of the Global Poverty Project, which aims to end extreme poverty in the world by 2030.

U2 frontman Bono also spoke to the Central Park crowd, along with Princess Mary of Denmark, Australian actress Deborra-Lee Furness and economist and anti-poverty campaigner Jeffrey Sachs.

A number of world leaders were also there, including United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, Malawi's president Joyce Banda and Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Ms Sirleaf told the concert her government plans to increase the number of community health workers in Liberia to 27,000.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-29/poverty-campaigners-urge-abbott-to-rethink-foreign-aid-cuts/4987794

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And remember that Joe Hockey's god is benevolent and... Ah crap, Joe is an idiot for supporting Abbott, but what's new?...

By Gus Leonisky at 29 Sep 2013 - 8:42pm
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going to the food bank...

The number of people resorting to food banks for emergency help to feed their families has more than tripled following the squeeze on benefits which intensified in April.

David Cameron’s own poverty tsar warned last night of the danger of food banks becoming an “institutional part” of the welfare state – and urged the Prime Minister to set up an inquiry into the issue. Frank Field, a welfare minister under Labour, told The Independent he was shocked by the steep increase in their use and added: “Something very serious is happening to people at the bottom of society.”

The Trussell Trust, the country’s biggest food bank operator, said it distributed food to 355,985 people, including nearly 120,000 children, between April and September compared with 113,264 during the same period in 2012. It handed out food to more people during those six months than in the whole of 2012, the trust said.

It released the figures days after the Red Cross announced it planned to distribute food aid to the needy in Britain this winter for the first time since the Second World War.

The trust attributed the increase to above-inflation food and energy price rises and pay freezes, as well as the impact of welfare changes in April, including the introduction of the so-called “bedroom tax”, cuts in council tax benefits and changes to the rules governing crisis loans.

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/hungrier-than-ever-britains-use-of-food-banks-triples-8882340.html

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Gus: the complexity of food banks:
There are strange dynamics about charitable donations in the western world, including food banks... I know rich geezers who get their Pierre Cardin shirts for five bucks at St Vinnies... The shirt is clean, ironed and ready to go... It may not have ever been worn...
The food banks dynamics are complex. First, as the government hit the poor on the head by making sure their "benefits" are destroyed or diminished by whatever mechanisms and that the poor's ability to find work is usually on slavery wage conditions, the poor might die off or revolt which would be a bad look for affluent societies. Thus the food banks and other charities for clothing provide safety valves in a system that could explode quickly...
In time of need such as Christmas, we're often asked to give a few tins of food and some toys to charitable outlets for the poor and needy...
As well we all know that about 40 per cent of the food "we" produce is wasted...
So, there are also arrangements between food banks and supermarkets. Daily, on the shelves of supermarkets, new products are brought in to entice consumers to spend on NEW products. With limited shelf space, the old stock needs to be discreetly shifted, even if it has not passed it used-by-date... Some of this old stock will be re-routed to smaller supermarket chains or your local store and made available at a hefty discount in which everyone makes a buck since when the food is first shifted, it's more or less written off and given for near to nothing... Some of these "old" products, by the truck load also go to "food banks" to help the poor... Either the products are given away as is or some good souls will cook a few good meals for the needy...
And everyone win... Except as the article suggest it tends to be habit forming. First from the people getting fed for nothing but far worse, it gives the government a certain legitimacy to keep the poor in their place....
Food banks around the western world have become mega multimillion dollar businesses... and like any business it needs to grow... In the long run, such charity should become obsolete by providing proper equality and opportunities, but pigs might fly before this happens in our capitalistic system...
Read articles from top...

By Gus Leonisky at 16 Oct 2013 - 1:02pm
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the great 'poverty reduction' lie...

The world's governments first pledged to end extreme poverty during the World Food Summit in Rome in 1996. They committed to reducing the number of undernourished people by half before 2015, which, given the population at the time, meant slashing the poverty headcount by 836 million. Many critics claimed that this goal was inadequate given that, with the right redistributive policies, extreme poverty could be ended much more quickly.

But instead of making the goals more robust, global leaders surreptitiously diluted it. Yale professor and development watchdog Thomas Pogge points out that when the Millennium Declaration was signed, the goal was rewritten as "Millennium Developmental Goal 1" (MDG-1) and was altered to halve the proportion (as opposed to the absolute number) of the world's people living on less than a dollar a day. By shifting the focus to income levels and switching from absolute numbers to proportional ones, the target became much easier to achieve. Given the rate of population growth, the new goal was effectively reduced by 167 million. And that was just the beginning.

After the UN General Assembly adopted MDG-1, the goal was diluted two more times. First, they changed it from halving the proportion of impoverished people in the world to halving the proportion of impoverished people in developing countries, thus taking advantage of an even faster-growing demographic denominator. Second, they moved the baseline of analysis from 2000 back to 1990, thus retroactively including all poverty reduction accomplished by China throughout the 1990s, due in no part whatsoever to the Millennium Campaign.

This statistical sleight-of-hand narrowed the target by a further 324 million. So what started as a goal to reduce the poverty headcount by 836 million has magically become only 345 million - less than half the original number. Having dramatically redefined the goal, the Millennium Campaign can claim that poverty has been halved when in fact it has not. The triumphalist narrative hailing the death of poverty rests on an illusion of deceitful accounting.

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And by the way, I wrote this in the article at top:

There ARE real needs out there, but I know some rich dudes who buy their shirts at St Vinnie... and are counted as a sale to a "poor" person... Why not...

and today we get the perfect example of what I mean:

op shop recycling... (by Margie Abbott)

"Whether it's for clothing, books, household items or resources as an early childhood educator, op shopping is the first port of call.

"When our daughters were young, and even now as young women who are earning their own income, they quickly realised that the buying power of their money was far greater in an op shop than it was anywhere else."

The scarf she was wearing was a recent purchase from a local northern beaches op shop, she said, and her very first op shop purchase more than 20 years ago (a jacket with a slight Mexican flavour) was still in her wardrobe.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/first-family-loves-an-op-shop-bargain-pms-wife-margie-abbott-reveals-20140823-107jlt.html#ixzz3BChLn1lb

Not only this but a couple of "his" daughters got some mighty preferential treatment in the age of the end of entitlements... Makes you laugh yellow...

And please note that the security around Margie Abbott when she goes "op shopping" is costing you about a thousand times more than the garment she's buying... Total delusion of this "First" family that off course should come last on your next ballot....

By Gus Leonisky at 24 Aug 2014 - 10:06am
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tony abbott is an example why free education does not work...

Above I posted this:

"Whether it's for clothing, books, household items or resources as an early childhood educator, op shopping is the first port of call.

Not only this but a couple of "his" daughters got some mighty preferential treatment in the age of the end of entitlements... Makes you laugh yellow...

To this we need to add:

The cost of police to look after our turd-in-chief when he goes "on tours" like speaking down to students in Adelaide, possibly about his crummy education programme is beyond the pale...

The major difference between Hitler and Abbott is that Hitler never tried to make jokes about thanking the "white horses of the police"... while Tony is also ruining the future of the next students. Hitler encouraged education in his own way... Tony-the-Turd got his education "free"... Ipso facto, because he's doing such a crummy job, he must be thinking that "free" education DOESN'T WORK... That's why he wants you to pay through the nose and faster...

By Gus Leonisky at 24 Aug 2014 - 10:43am
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the detritus of instant miracles...

"Unfortunately, this misunderstanding severely undermines the fight against global poverty: Simple problems beget simple solutions. The field of anti-poverty policy is littered with the detritus of instant miracles that proved less than miraculous."

The need was, they observed, "to stop reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness".

So the couple decided to begin work on the world's poorest and how markets and institutions work for them. In 2003, they founded the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-Pal) at MIT to study poverty. (The two worked together for a long time before getting married in 2015.)

Over the years, helped by field studies using randomised trials in India and Africa, they tried to make sense of what the poor are able to achieve and where and for what reason they require a nudge. Mr Banerjee says he and Ms Duflo have been involved in about "70 to 80 experiments" in any number of countries.

Inequality in India can be seen from outer space

They looked at what the poor buy, what they do about their children's health, how many children they choose to have, why their children go to school and yet not learn much and why microfinance is useful without being a miracle that some people make it out to be. Or whether the poor were eating well, and eating enough.

Some of their work on how the poor consume food is fascinating. They questioned assumptions like the poor eat as much as they can. Using an 18-country data set on the lives of the poor, the economists found that food represented 36-70% of the consumption of the extremely poor living in rural areas and 53-74% among their urban counterparts. Also that when they did spend on food, they spent in on "better-tasting, more expensive calories" than micronutrients.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50048519

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