"working poor" is an oxymoron in comparable countries. Like it should be. I'd be laughing at it if it wasn't so bloody tragic. How is this not a top political issue?

There was a study posted on HN or reddit the other day showing that when people don't like the political implications of a solution to a problem, they minimize the existence of the problem.

There is an easy solution to the plight of the working poor in the U.S. Raise the minimum wage, and establish legal restrictions on the schedules companies can assign workers. To the extent that pushes people out of the work force (i.e. companies choose to not hire certain marginally-qualified workers rather than give them better shifts), expand welfare to cover those people.

This is a politically untenable solution here in the U.S. because even our economic liberals aren't liberal enough to be comfortable with telling Wal-Mart that there is no reason to have stores open 24-hours a day.

It's very strange if both political parties try to uphold the image that it is in peoples' best interest to be anti labour and anti-union, or even that pro-business implies anti-union.

The one time they do hire a guy to fix things, it turns out he can't do it because Congress obstinately blocked his way at every pass. His political rivals turned a compromise, non-universal health care plan into a three ring circus that somehow made the poor think things were getting worse for them, despite how many have been able to get access to healthcare for the first time in their lives.

Unfortunately for us, the guy we hired just doesn't have a strong enough backbone to stand up to the legislature and the FCC and the corporations and tell them in no uncertain words that this situation is no longer acceptable. Polite, articulate words simply won't cut it anymore.

I come from Kentucky, the state with one of the most successful deployments of the health care program in the nation, and Mitch has actively campaigned on repealing it, right to their faces, and yet they supported him at the polls. That's how fucked up this situation has become. It's quite hard not to be disenfranchised and think there's nothing we can do.

Early voting seems to be possible in most states, and with at least 4 days of voting before the tuesday, most people should be able to do it. How can it not be a requirement for all states to provide early voting?

Only about half the states require citizenship to vote, this can be trivially verified on wikipedia. Its technically illegal at the federal level to vote in a federal election if you're not a citizen but that's only enforced politically "making examples of" and voter intimidation purposes and so forth.

It seems among the young HN participants, or maybe foreign participants, there is culturally almost no understanding of whats federal and whats state level in the USA. I would assume this is an intentional goal of the educational system, to make control of the population simpler. There is also an undercurrent of those who actually understand this simple fact not saying much, because "everyone knows" that you get 50 states into a big pile, anything you say about them can and will be wrong in some minor detail in one state and your entire argument will be viciously attacked because being only 98% right is the same as 0% right.

There is also at least a three step game being played where the first step is "demand ID to vote" rather than the existing "we trust you" system. The second step is state ID is technically free if you have the documentation required. The third step is making the documentation required change annually and sometimes be very expensive, almost impossible to obtain and you can always blame the victim for not having all the right paperwork.

My wife doesn't have a "real id" because it would just cost too much and be too much of a PITA to fix, so when a "real id" level license is required to vote, she'll be disenfranchised from voting. Eventually it will be enough of a PITA for her to obtain the docs she needs and we can certainly afford it, its only $100 or so, but that's a weeks labor for other social classes... very much intentionally.

And no, as a European I very frequently do not understand what is governed on your federal or state level. In fact, this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education,and I only know of it because I frequent places like HN.

Its that taxation without representation thing, still an issue two centuries later, if you pay taxes, even just road taxes via gasoline for your car, you get to vote on who spends the tax money ... More practically we use voting as a propaganda technique to calm the voters... "we don't have an oligarchy or dictatorship, you get to choose between two carefully chosen (by us, not you) candidates, and they do have different PR firms... see? thats real freedom so stop complaining!"

"Also, the problem with US citizens not being just given IDs is also bizarre"

We've historically had problems with J Random Criminal walking up to the counter and asking for someone else's ID and then doing very bad things with it. My own mother supposedly bought a truck in Texas last seen at the border crossing to Mexico, that's only 1000 miles away. Culturally we have a lot of people who work on commission and don't really care about much other than collecting that commission check. We could have .gov bankroll the substantial costs of identity paperwork, but 1) technically you're not supposed to throw away your birth certificate, so the guy who "lost" it should have some skin in the game, so bill them $100 and 2) Obvious voter suppression. At least poor voter suppression. Also aside from cost its a confuseopoly type of situation.. profiting off people being confused. Another thing we're really into culturally.

"demanding such paperwork is seen as discriminatory"

By a subset of the population with a political axe to grind, yes. Everyone else (maybe 80% of the population?) sees it more as common sense other than it has been used for oppression, stopping people on the street and only demanding papers from certain racial groups.

"this separation has never ever been mentioned in my own education"

Join the club, which unfortunately includes most Americans who've lived here their whole life and don't understand which laws are local, state, or federal. If you think our laws are confusing, try the building codes some time (ugh).

This also is comical because there is a cultural meme on HN that "we" all live in SV or Manhattan even though most of us actually do not. Like us two. So someone will comment about electrical codes for 3-phase wiring for the NAS in their basement in Mountain View as if the whole country works the same way, which it certainly doesn't. Or voting, which is regulated by state.

I will add one more thing to this discussion:

" if you pay taxes, even just road taxes via gasoline for your car, you get to vote on who spends the tax money"

Interesting you say this, because this is one thing that should work like this in EU, but it doesn't. As a EU citizen living in a country that is not the country of my birth, I am in a situation where I pay all the taxes like everybody else, I pay income tax, I contribute to national insurance, pay road tax with my petrol, once I get old I will receive a state pension from this country, the whole deal - I literally don't pay anything in my home country anymore, so from the "tax" point of view, I am no different than any other "citizen" of the country I currently live in. However, I cannot vote in parliamentary elections of this country, because my passport has the wrong country on it, even though for all other purposes it doesn't(and in fact, it by law cannot) make any difference as long as we are inside the EU.

So no amount of resources or effort will ever convince that party to adopt a policy requiring ID's since that will result in the loss of at least some votes which would hurt them.

If you include voting rights for ex-convicts or even voting in prison you'd more than counter the effect of voter ID (this I assume would not be a popular opinion among R?)

An issue only becomes political in the US if the two major parties disagree on it, which is to say if different sectors of American big business disagree on it. It's important to remember that there is no major political party in the US that does not represent big business interests, so concerns around income and wealth inequality, poor working conditions and so on do not rise to the level of "political issues" despite almost universal agreement by actual citizens that they are a problem.

It's important to realize that you're making all of this up in order to rationalize your position. You can't just claim that this is true without research or reference.

edit: You could find out how many of the working poor match your internal fantasy of them, and how many don't, if you really wanted to know. The answer would cause you a lot of painful cognitive dissonance, though, because you like to think of yourself as a good person while explaining why people who work full time jobs don't deserve to eat, and how even if they had the money, they would spend it all on booze anyway.

In essence, you're also making claims about the state of the poor, yet you also didn't provide any research or reference (which you accuse the OP of not doing either). I'm not saying you are, but it's equally likely (from our point of view, assuming it's unbiased) to think that you're also rationalizing your view of the poor to match your own position.

In essence, I'm not. I'm responding to a bad argument. You can't just go on a rant about unicorns on the South Pole, and when people tall you you don't know what you're talking about, ask them all to prove you wrong. That's not how reason works.

edit:

>Why not start the discussion by asking him what he means by "poor choices and personal vices"?

Because there's nothing in this ancient, stereotypical rant of the comfortable since antiquity that gives me the indication that I have something to learn about the poor from the person who happens to be reciting it in this thread. I've been poor, and I know poor. If there are some statistics that tell me that I've just accidentally been in a bubble of the wonderful, hardworking, generous, and thoughtful poor (mixed with a few spoilers) I'm open to it and happy to read it.

And if I had no prior-opinion OR evidence on unicorns in the South Pole, I'd equally be skeptical of your claims that there aren't any, as I'd be of the guy that claims there are. I'd ask you both for some basic stats/research on the matter, which is what I tried to point out.

Agreed, especially if you have a more controversial viewpoint. I know that all too well.

However if you want numbers just go look at the census data. Here is an analysis by kidscount (http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/107-children-in-...) and I can tell you from my experience that number is low. There are many other families where they are not "single" parents, but the second adult is just a boyfriend who may or may not be the father of the children in question.

Not having parents to pay for college isn't a "poor choice".

Since finances are the leading cause of divorce, it would be reasonable to expect that lower income families have more single-parent homes.

It's frankly immoral to consider marriage (and divorce) a luxury the poor are somehow less deserving of.

If I were to get a divorce, it wouldn't ruin me.

I have seen a number of middle class kids make "poor choices" that would have devastated a poor family. The children of poor families don't "fail upwards" in the way that upper middle class kids do.

I worked very hard to achieve what I have. But I recognize that without the help of family who could afford to help, the work alone would not have been enough. I've found a healthy dose of success in spite of some poor choices.

Your POV is typical of people who've had the luxury of not having to depend on a two hour bus commute to get to a job that offers no vacation hours. Where every trivial emergency is one that hits you twice: Once to pay for the event itself, and once for the lost work hours. It's a position of privilege.

1. a very low percentage of minorities even get married. Meaning divorce is a statistical outlier [http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21569433-america...]

2. Low income teens are likely to get pregnant while in high school. This has nothing to do with mommy and daddy not being able to pay for college and them getting stuck in a dead end job while trying to raise a family. These kids are dropping out of school and having kids before any prospect of a job is on the table. Then they have to deal with the fact that they have kids and it limits their choices ( can I go to school and work two jobs while raising kids ? )[http://www.nber.org/papers/w17965.pdf]

Yeah right some kids can get away with more poor choices but that doesn't mean they are not poor choices, and while I don't think there is a good body of evidence for this exact situation, even kids who are middle or upper middle class who have kids early in life and have their parents who can cover for them, their kids are statistically likely to make the same poor choices and the parents are not as likely to be able to support them. So the first generation might be able to "fail upwards" but the second generation which is statistically likely to fail as well will be much less likely to do the same thing.

25% is not insignificant. And of course the lower on the socioeconomic totem pole you go, the more divorce you find.

And when you don't have prospects, then maybe you're a little more careless about behavior that would interfere with those nonexistent prospects. I feel like it's no great secret that many young people these days delay starting a family for college and career.

It seems reasonable to expect that the opposite might be true as well for people who don't have the same opportunities.

As for your last point, that doesn't nullify anything you know? If you start out on 3rd base, you will face fewer consequences. No surprise. You might not slide into home, but the people who started out at-bat are still unlikely to catch up with you. See wealth-gap, class mobility, etc.

However I while I can't find the numbers for that specific town I imagine they don't deviate from the national statistics of 70+% of minority children in single parent households. The social structure _has_ broken down and we keep ignoring it like its not a problem.

Also, whether a household is one-parent or two-parent is irrelevant to the childcare situation. Two parents with late night shifts aren't going to have an appreciably easier time than one parent. And your point about grandparents is also inapposite. If you have small children, it's unlikely your grandparents are old enough to already be out of the workforce.

So your numbers make sence. First generation Immigrants typically move as family units. They would also lack the social net to assist with kids, so they might be prime candidates for this kind of service.

This is just one example of how poorly drafted the Affordable Care Act is. The lobbyists who wrote the bill (remember, the President provided almost no leadership on the detailed provisions of the bill while it was in Congress) ignored the certainty of elasticity of demand for labor by employers. If it becomes more expensive to provide full-time employment, because of a mandate to provide health insurance to full-time employees, then employers will offer fewer full-time jobs and more part-time jobs with few enough hours not to trigger the health insurance mandate. The drafters of the Affordable Care Act forgot Economics 101, or maybe never learned economics at all. "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

I still don't like it much. The article's projections just left my head shaking.

Someone needs to tell these programmers/marketers that there's a wee factor called "humanity" that they need to use when creating their algorithms. I wish it was as easy as that. :( Could someone enlighten me around this? I'm not in the US, and I have a hard time even thinking about everything being open 24/7. (New Zealand is where I reside)

Though, the people who run these wee centres are doing some selfless work. Absolutely amazing, and good on them for doing it. It makes me happy there's still people like that around. (I realise not everyone would be like the daycare in the article but I'd like to think so.)

I'm not surprised! When I worked in NZ for a few months, years ago, I found very few businesses open outside of "business hours". This made e.g. grocery shopping a challenge. A few touristy places were open on Saturday morning.

Please don't take this as a criticism; run your country however you want to run it. It's just that cultural differences go both ways, and the other side looks weird no matter which direction one is looking.

Mind you, banks that shut at 4.30pm are kind of annoying for many people and I can't blame them (even though my wife is a banker). There's only _one_ small branch open in a city of 140,000 people on a Saturday. No other banks open in the weekends here at least.

That being said, and on topic with the article... it'll be much easier for a single mum to stay at home with her kids and collect money from the govt, rather than to work nightshift at a supermarket most likely. I don't even think we have these extreme daycares in NZ. She may not get more money than someone who stacks shelves, but it's definitely much better than her losing out on her children growing up or the children missing their only parent from their lives.

Many parents like this will normally go back to work once the kids start full-time school, but still receive maybe $100 for accommodation help if they're not making enough. I like this a lot better than them having to be in the same circumstances as the women in the article.

(I know men fall into this too, I just used women as an example as the article primarily did)

They're not the norm in USA either. As TFA implied, this is not just a failure of the state (although it is that), but also of the social structure. The single parents described have no one to whom they can turn. I know a family (parents not married, but together for a long time) that had a hard time over the summer. They camped in a state park for over a month. (The younger son loved it.) The good news is that now both parents are working, incidentally at jobs that allow them to still eschew daycare. (Not that daycare is bad for other families; this is just an indication of this family's views.)

My time in NZ was almost entirely in Wellington, and was over a decade ago, so maybe everything is different now. One challenge for me was living and working downtown without an automobile. When walking absolutely wouldn't work, I found the buses to be less convenient than buses I've ridden elsewhere.

What have programmers, marketers, and algorithms to do with this, since you explicitly pointed them out?

" Working people who live below the poverty line are particularly afraid to say no to these unusual schedules. They may have no one to say no to, anyway—those schedules might have been created by computers, rather than human managers, in the hopes of saving a corporation money. Many companies now use data and algorithms to schedule employees so fewer hours will be spent sitting around. The software doesn’t care if a shift falls in the middle of the night, or that it might tear a big hole in an employee’s family life."

Speaking about parents: I really wonder how they got to this point. Clearly creating two children while in need of two low paid jobs seems like the opposite of a risk averse strategy.

Having kids is a fairly fundamental part of being a human being (imho, ymmv), just below keeping yourself alive.

If everyone had to wait until they could afford kids before having them, many people would be too old to reproduce by the time they could (if ever).

This is a function of the wealth inequalities in our society, not the fault of those parents specifically. While it's easy to blame some of them, we get need get societies house in order first.

[1] Article 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights

I'd posit that this is endemic to our "credit/loan" society, where everyone feels the need to have things that they can't (yet) afford. If they just hold off on their self-indulgence for one generation (or x-amount of years) until they can afford to have that item, then they will improve the lifestyle of their following generations by an unmeasurable amount.

Conversely, not making sure that every family feels comfortable creating >= 2.0 children surely isn't a good strategy for the society as a whole either.

This means calculating a decent minimum wage is simple: it's what a single parent needs to support two kids (including healthcare, holidays, ...) with some margin, while working just one single full time job.

Higher minimum wages could mean higher unemployment of course, but it isn't a right to employ people without paying them a living wage. Raised minium wages would need to be coupled with increased spending on social benefits/welfare.

This said I won't belive all of this to be rooted in reasons beyond control.

Most definitely. If America had a proper social safety net and income equality, this would've never happened. But heh! Bootstraps!

"Diana and Ivette’s mother, Marisol, for instance, is raising the girls on her own, working at a supermarket from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. and at Home Depot from 6 to 10 p.m., six days a week. "

"This clock has highlighted weakness in our social networks. In 2013, 28 percent of children were living with a single parent; 77 percent of those single parents are mothers."

Sounds like at some point, people are going to have to make a specific choice between raising kids on their own (potentially) or not having them at all; and vote for Governments that favor the policy they prefer.

Any time you have, say, 20M McJobs and 40M applicants, its not going to suck just for the 20M not currently working, but its going to suck for all 40M. Come in to work at 3:30am and stop complaining or I'll find someone more cooperative. You're now on 24x7 pager duty and you will respond in 5 minutes and begin working within 30 minutes or be fired.

The US is supposed to be a nation of immigrants, after all.

Do you really want that?

Why do you think this crack won't widen? Because wealth gap won't repair itself.

I think this 29 hour per week loophole was supposed to be fixed in the ACA but it was one of the things that got left on the negotiating table.

I thought.