31–40 of 68 posts
And I would venture that in general, this group of people thinks running around, chasing money 'cause the man says it's important, is a sad way to live your life.
Scott Alexander recently posted this study [0] that seems to show that stress is not linked to poverty:
> socioeconomic status has no relationship to hair cortisol level
> which complicates theories about how many body systems are
> affected by “the stress of poverty” since we might expect hair cortisol
> level to be an indicator of biological stress levels.
This article tries to shift perception from "poor people make bad decisions because they're intrinsically dumb" to "poor people make bad decisions because poverty makes them dumb." But this is also wrong; the decisions poor people make are, for the most part, sensible decisions given the circumstances they're in. Here's a list from the article: > "The poor borrow more, save less, smoke more, exercise less, drink more…
I don't think that's the real answer. Each of your bullet points has some truth to it, but is far from the whole story: > you only need to borrow if you don't have money. > you can only save if you have money. Certainly more income makes these easier. But consider the following impossible-to-conduct-in-reality-experiment: Set group A to be a set of 100 randomly selected poor folks who are only qualified to be cashier…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also reduces use (shown in peer-reviewed studies), particularly amongst children, of an addictive cancer-causing product.
You pull the child-card to justify discriminated taxation against the poor, but I pull the 47y/o free-willed bummed out waiter card. Shall we start unfairly taxing sugar as well, which is probably a bigger epidemic than tobacco amongst children[1]? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
This article tries to shift perception from "poor people make bad decisions because they're intrinsically dumb" to "poor people make bad decisions because poverty makes them dumb." But this is also wrong; the decisions poor people make are, for the most part, sensible decisions given the circumstances they're in. Here's a list from the article: > "The poor borrow more, save less, smoke more, exercise less, drink more…
I don't think that's the real answer. Each of your bullet points has some truth to it, but is far from the whole story: > you only need to borrow if you don't have money. > you can only save if you have money. Certainly more income makes these easier. But consider the following impossible-to-conduct-in-reality-experiment: Set group A to be a set of 100 randomly selected poor folks who are only qualified to be cashier…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also reduces use (shown in peer-reviewed studies), particularly amongst children, of an addictive cancer-causing product.
It reduces use, but the people stubbornly still using tobacco are likelier to be poorer. No peer-reviewed studies are required to demonstrate that it's a regressive tax, any amount of "Think of the children!" posturing notwithstanding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the last figure I saw for military spending was 650bn a year. Of course if you cut that by half you'd lose a lot of workers many of those with families (in one respect you could look at the military as a jobs program, what was the last time the US had more than 10% of it's total military personal actually fighting a war).
Imagine if the military was converted to be mostly Corps of Engineers, building schools and roads and cafes, instead of building stuff to blow up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also reduces use (shown in peer-reviewed studies), particularly amongst children, of an addictive cancer-causing product.
You pull the child-card to justify discriminated taxation against the poor, but I pull the 47y/o free-willed bummed out waiter card. Shall we start unfairly taxing sugar as well, which is probably a bigger epidemic than tobacco amongst children[1]? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
This article tries to shift perception from "poor people make bad decisions because they're intrinsically dumb" to "poor people make bad decisions because poverty makes them dumb." But this is also wrong; the decisions poor people make are, for the most part, sensible decisions given the circumstances they're in. Here's a list from the article: > "The poor borrow more, save less, smoke more, exercise less, drink more…
Gah, I hate this line of thinking. Buying healthy food and preparing it at your home is enormously cheaper than eating KFC 3 meals a day.
This article tries to shift perception from "poor people make bad decisions because they're intrinsically dumb" to "poor people make bad decisions because poverty makes them dumb." But this is also wrong; the decisions poor people make are, for the most part, sensible decisions given the circumstances they're in. Here's a list from the article: > "The poor borrow more, save less, smoke more, exercise less, drink more…
I don't think that's the real answer. Each of your bullet points has some truth to it, but is far from the whole story: > you only need to borrow if you don't have money. > you can only save if you have money. Certainly more income makes these easier. But consider the following impossible-to-conduct-in-reality-experiment: Set group A to be a set of 100 randomly selected poor folks who are only qualified to be cashier…
Yea, people who were formerly rich will have better financial habits. If you were born into poverty, who is going to teach you those good financial habits in the first place?
Yea, that would probably be better diet. But do they even know how to eat healthy? Do they have time to cook? Are they even able to get to a grocery store?
Yea, you could probably get a decent suit at a thrift store for $30. But some people literally can not spare that money. $30 could be the difference between your kids eating or having a roof over your head.