(Part 2) Best povery books according to redditors
We found 128 Reddit comments discussing the best povery books. We ranked the 58 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
>The parents are often ignorant/thick/selfish and incapable of managing money. This is why I don't support income redistribution in the name of child poverty.
I suggest you read Ruby Payne's Bridges Out of Poverty. It addresses this incapacity to manage their money and their lives that you mention. And it's less about being "thick and selfish" than it is about not having the same intellectual resources instilled in them by their parents that middle-class kids get.
If you're truly interested in alleviating poverty in this country I suggest you stop thinking of them as "thick and selfish" and instead recognise the very real developmental disadvantages that lead them to make the decisions we find so ridiculous.
General sociology? Or...something specific...
Because I've read several sociology books that were rather interesting about specific issues (usually feminism)
Let's see here:
Hobos, Hustlers,and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street
Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women's Self-Defense
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty: not technically sociology, but explains how proposed economic solutions to problems are tripped up and prevented in some way by sociological issues.
Personally, all of these books were hella interesting. I think Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders was the most sociological book I read. I had no idea wtf symbolic interactionism was when I read it...but I got the gist of it because the author writes lucidly.
One I haven't read is Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It's received nominations for awards and was very popular at one point.
Thanks! As an economist (and not native-born in the region) I do my best to stay objective and let economic data lead me to conclusions as much as possible.
A book is something I'm interested in doing in the future. A historian colleague and I have discussed maybe doing a kind of economic/historical ethnography to capture interviews with current/former Gary residents that experienced the decline while they're still around and then coupling that with economic data.
I do have a peer-reviewed journal article on the socioeconomic and demographic trends of Northwest Indiana from the 1970s to today that you can download and read for free here, but this focuses more on the entire Northwest Indiana region and barely touches on the tip of the iceberg that is the economic history of the region.
If you're looking for a good data-driven book on the history of Gary you might want to check out The Cost of Being Poor by Sandra L. Barnes (who was born and raised in Gary).
If you want some excellent insight into the current state of manufacturing and union jobs in the United States here are two articles from Ben Casselman (one of my favorite reporters) from when he was with FiveThirtyEight (he's now at the NY Times). They are from during the presidential primaries in 2016 so they are a bit dated but the insight is excellent and still highly relevant:
My favorites are:
Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue
Below the Line: Living Poor in America
Really anything by him is great. His books are consistently on lists of the best documentary photography books available.
He's got a new one coming out via kickstarter.
Anything by Sebastiao Salgado, too. Workers is my favorite.
Well, I guess if that's what parents think is a good education for their kids...
One thing I hear about sometimes is that often lower class parents really don't care about education for their children. I always wonder about the degree to which that's true, or if it is true if it's not just a cultural phenomena localized to the regions where I'm talking to the people telling me these things.
Anyway I found this book to be a fascinating account of private schools that pretty much the poorest people in the world are paying to educate their kids.
[Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant] (http://www.amazon.com/Waltzing-Doomsday-Ball-Best-Bageant/dp/1921844515/ref=sr_1_2?)
Most of which can still be found at [his old website] (http://www.joebageant.com/joe/essay-list.html). The late, great redneck socialist gets more relevant with every passing year.
Check out a book called Good Company: A Tramp Life by Douglas Harper. I read it when I was at uni, it’s a very interesting read!!
I think this collection by Bourdieu and a bunch of his colleagues might be of interest on this front: https://www.amazon.com/Weight-World-Suffering-Contemporary-Society/dp/0804738459/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542553848&sr=8-3&keywords=the+weight+of+the+world
No, there are homeless in small towns Here is a book documenting it. Here is another article about it. Homeless exist everywhere, they are just better hidden in small towns.
I haven't read it, but it was my University's campus wide book club choice last year. http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Home-Helping-Kids-Homelessness/dp/1118230477/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404788893&sr=1-4&keywords=almost+home
But the lower and underclasses of the big Victorian cities led hellish lives with death and disease a constant companion.
Mayhew: Lives of the London Poor. http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lives%20of%20the%20london%20poor
Jack London: People of the Abyss. http://www.amazon.co.uk/People-Of-The-Abyss-Illustrated/dp/1482642964/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1383163979&sr=8-2&keywords=people+of+the+abyss
9 year olds typically can't have babies. Education is important, but isn't really related to getting a high school diploma. Many people don't finish high school but get training and education in many other ways that allow them to make their living. This book is a great introduction to the lives of young mothers in the black United States. You would be surprised at how narrowly defined the dominant beliefs about what is "good" and "desirable" are. Not everyone wants to live in White Suburbia and wait until they are 30 to have children, and we should respect that desires dominant in other cultures are different and not any better or worse than ours.
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Call-Us-Out-Name/dp/0807042099
If you're looking for something to lament, lament this: http://photoninjas.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/vulture-stalking-baby/
>people who mismanage their resources, or make poor life choices dont exist and everyone who is in poverty is a victim of literally anything else besides themselves and there aren't any routes out of poverty that exist. No one could be in poverty of their own poor life choices. Anyone who is suited for college but poor is SOL because they cant afford to pay outright like the 1% can. There arent any financial aid for specifically the impoverished and they cant take out loans like everyone else does to go to college. Lacking foresight for ones future is societies fault and we all need to literally pay for their mistakes. Identifying other negative attributes of people in poverty must be insensitive.
Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professional and Communities https://www.amazon.com/dp/1934583359/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_f05uCbFAD27QH
You could use a good read, but WARNING it identifies areas which keep people in poverty such as poor life choices like substance abuse or not taking secondary school seriously.
> I benefit from the efficiency gains.
What efficiency gains?
(fair warning: all numbers made up)
I keep hearing about efficiency gains from low-skill international migration from open-borders economists and I've yet to be convinced that there's much there there.
Consider some Mexican dude named Oscar. He works in the outskirts of Mexico City and is able to generate, say, $10,000/year of wealth. He then gets it in his head to move to a place with richer people because working for richer people will get you more money, so he heads to a suburb within driving distance of La Jolla and generates $50,000 of wealth because he's cutting the lawns of power couples who net over $1M/year. That's a massive efficiency gain! For him, at least!
On the other hand, this only looks good if you forget that there are unemployed black and white Americans who could be doing this sort of work if only they'd move to someplace within driving distance of La Jolla. Instead of consuming, say, $20,000/year of taxpayer-funded public assistance, they'd be making $30,000 a year or so cutting lawns. Can you convince me that there are massive efficiency gains to be had by hiring immigrants instead of unemployed black and/or white Americans?
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> If you let in both low-skill immigrants and high-skill immigrants, it's actually possible for virtually every native person in the US to benefit.
Theoretically, if you think of only money. Money's great, but it's not a substitute for doing useful things for people. I don't want to live in a country where going on welfare is just as good, social-standing wise, as having any sort of job. Do you think it's a good thing, or at least a neutral thing, that there are people in the US who've been on welfare for generations? If you're curious what these people's lives are like, I suggest American Dream by Jason DeParle.
I want to live in a place where work pays more than idleness. Do you think it's better to pay people to be underbid by immigrants?
These are long term solutions, if they are even possible, being we have a big mess in the USA with obtaining healthcare, a growing homeless population, huge debts....
in the meantime, what should we do to mitigate this immediate crisis?
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I've only just looked up our record of providing aid in the direct form of food, and I found that someone has written a book on how we've been doing just that for awhile and if we've been doing it right:
https://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Crisis-Policy-Central-America/dp/0803260954
If group A gets something and groups B, C, and E are not allowed, that's a privilege. If things change and group B gets something and groups A, C, E, and H are not allowed, there is still privilege.
The definition of oppression keeps changing. Arguably things were worse for "blacks" in the 1920s after Woodrow Wilson re-segregated the civil service and the military. Not to mention all the Jim Crow laws that were still on the books. While there are issues today, they are no where near what they once were.
One of the biggest issues today is the prison population. This is usually one key argument about how the US is still a racist society. Before we can really look at that though, we should consider if there are some laws that in and of themselves might be unjust. Personally I think it's stupid to arrest people for being under the influence but not arresting people for being drunk. So if we take out all non-violent drug offenders, that reduces the prison population quite a bit. We're left with the violent offenders.
We know that a strong family, especially one with at least two parents, usually means the kids don't break the law. We also know that "black" inner city children in single mother households used to be about 7%, at one point that rose to well over 70% and is still a majority today. We know that this was made possible by well meaning government programs meant to provide. In other words, "the Man" paid single mothers not to get married and raise kids on their own. Yet any talk of reducing these benefits is immediately called racism. It's privilege, it promotes dependency, and yet it's seen as "compassionate." There's racism and oppression for you, but in popular opinion it's a "right." That doesn't mean that single mothers are evil or wrong. It just means that when a majority of households in a given population are single mothers, the kids (and especially the males) are much more likely to push the boundaries and get into trouble.
These aren't the only two things that put more "blacks" in prison, but they are two of the biggest. Yet instead, we hear how cops are racist. These are also two things that would take years, maybe decades to fix.
There are many other things too. Inner city public schools which are more and more like prisons. Public housing projects that displace neighborhoods and quickly become crime infested. Licensing laws that make it almost impossible for small household businesses to get started. These are real oppressions with absolutely devastating results, and yet we're arguing over who gets a slice of the pie. The oppressed demand action from the government and the institutions that are keeping them down. Star Parker does a much better job explaining this is her book Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It.
Maybe the pie isn't limited. And maybe the person on the street isn't the oppressor.
http://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Ethnicity-Violent-Crime-Society/dp/0813320143
That's a good read, give it a try :)