https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/10/my-time/#like-water-down-the-drain
if you live in most American cities, public transit is slow, infrequent and overcrowded. Without a car, you lose hours every day to a commute spent standing on a lurching bus. And while a private car can substantially shorted(sic) that commute, people who can afford taxis or Ubers get even more time every day.
This makes sense, although the effect of hiring a car over having your own seems like it would be marginal. Obviously having a private driver would be the most effective, and also least accessible. There’s a later paragraph that describes a similar situation with air travel.
Means-testing for benefits means that poor people spend endless hours filling in forms, waiting on hold, and lining up to see caseworkers to prove that they are among the “deserving poor” – not “mooches” who are defrauding the system
No one should have to justify their needs. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but there it is…
Also, means-testing is also non-free in terms of both time and money for the organization providing the benefit. I would wager than eliminating means-testing would reduce costs overall.
A person from a low-income household (sic)“an hour more waiting for the same set of services than people from high-income household.” That’s 73 hours/year.
That’s nearly 2 weeks of time, in addition to the fact that most of those affected likely receive little or no paid time off.
A larger determinant of the gap (25%) is working flexibility. Poor people work jobs where they have less freedom to take time off to receive services, so they are forced to take appointments during peak hours.
You know, I’m pretty sure this is one of the major impediments to voting as well. I’m not going to go so far as to say that it was designed that way, but more that a subset of the population (around 1%, I’d guess) certainly take advantage of it.
If a poor person and a wealthy person go to the doctor’s on the same day, the poor person waits 46.28m to receive care, while the wealthy person waits 28.75m. The underlying dynamic here isn’t hard to understand. Medical practices that serve rich people have more staff.
And the wealthy person is likely angrier for having to wait that long too. The gap there is smaller than I would have expected, but I’m not sure what their definition of wealthy is, which might account for some of it.
“Low-income White and Black Americans are both more likely to wait when seeking services than their wealthier same-race peer” but “wealthier White people face an average wait time of 28 minutes while wealthier Black people face a 54 minute average wait time…wealthier Black people do not receive the same time-saving attention from service providers that wealthier non-Black people receive”
I’m not surprised, but I’d be interested to know what the reason behind this discpreapancy is.
“Low-income women are 3 percentage points more likely than low-income men and high-income women are 6 percentage points more likely than high-income men to use common services” – it gets even worse for low-income mothers, who take on the time-burdens associated with their kids’ need to access services.
Surprisingly, men actually end up waiting longer than women to access services: “low-income men spend about 6 more minutes than low-income women waiting for service…high-income men spend about 12 more minutes waiting for services than high-income women.”
That’s a seemingly counterintuitive result. I wonder what the explanation for that is as well.
I didn’t read the referenced paper, which might answer some of my questions above, but I do recommend reading Cory’s entire essay, despite the fact that I quoted probably too much of it above.