Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society • Hacker News Board

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#141

Post by matwood » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 1:32 PM UTC

throwaway399 wrote: post #78

analog31 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough, I'm the first to admit that I've achieved my level of income by luck, and without hard work. I was lucky to have two educated parents, their wealth to fall back on, and an affluent, healthy environment to grow up in. My parents paid for my undergraduate education, and the government paid for my graduate degree. I "work" in a nice office, by playing with equations and gadgets, and talking to people. Mean…

I guess my history is almost opposite while achieving similar results. However, I get bunched in the same group and expected to feel privileged and guilty. I grew up in another country and went to end of junior + high school in a US school in the inner city where nobody studied in my class except for me. 65% of the class never graduated. My parents, although very educated in our home country never paid for school and…

> I guess my history is almost opposite while achieving similar results. However, I get bunched in the same group and expected to feel privileged and guilty.

My history was also the opposite, and I do not like getting bunched in with privileged.

I've had a job since I could push a lawn mower up and down the street at the age of 12 or 13. In HS, I worked overnights in a grocery store during the summers. My family only had 1 car, so during the school year I had to get up at 5am and take my mom to work so I could go to work right after school. Then I would pick her up on my break and go back to work. I didn't have a computer at my house until I was a freshman in college, and it just happened to be during that time when they gave everyone credit cards (I guess that was lucky?).

The point is that people get to where they are in life all sorts of ways. Some win the lottery, some work their ass off, but most get there through some combination of both.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#142

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 1:37 PM UTC

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #132

wyager wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived all over the US, I believe that small homogenous rural towns are the most empathetic/friendly places available. The human brain didn't evolved to form strong, productive social bonds in the presence of millions of people. It seems to wear on people after a while. Whenever I visit little towns in ID/MT/WY/TX I always smile at how nice people are. Unfortunately, those small towns are intellectually underst…

Small, homogenous rural towns aren't so bad if you fit into the culture that is there. You'll always be an outsider, but it'll go well enough. It'll be a bit harder if you seem like an outsider, but if you are normal enough, this'll pass. Lots of folks will act friendly to you in the meantime. However, if you are weird or alternative enough? Perhaps you aren't keen on religion? Or something similar? Yeah, these place…

This is true, but I don't see it as a bad thing. Any community with a solid social structure has a homogeneous culture. This makes communication and social expectations among everyone a lot easier to predict. I think part of the reason bigger cities fail to form a sense of community is because of a lack of a common, positive culture. I think in an attempt to make abnormal people feel comfortable, we've ostracized the majority of normal people in the process.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#143

Post by matwood » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

throwaway76543 wrote: post #45

dlp211 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average student loan debt in 2016 was $37,172. And while there are those that do take on significant amounts of debt, they typically are those seeking professional degrees, eg: M.D. or J.D. There are of course those who both take on large amounts of debt AND don't get a professional degree, and those people certainly made a mistake in their lives, but they are not your average graduating college student. Addition…

"The average student loan debt in 2016 was $37,172" To be clear, the opportunity costs of unearned and non-debt payments generally would be in north of 150k range. Assume 30k/year income 4x years is 120k, plus the 37k debt, plus non-debt spending. " An Associates will net you about $400M over your lifetime, a Bachelors about $1MM," And the same monetary investment in a fund earning 7% interest will be worth more than…

> To be clear, the opportunity costs of unearned and non-debt payments generally would be in north of 150k range. Assume 30k/year income 4x years is 120k, plus the 37k debt, plus non-debt spending.

Do people no longer work while in college?

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#144

Post by mch82 » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 1:42 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #96

andai wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we make our own destiny, or does our destiny make us?

Both, with some effort i could get good a poker. Some games I will lose no matter what because you can only play the hand you are dealt

And you can only buy in with the money you have to start with.

Everyone should experience losing to a worse player who won by starting with more chips and therefore had more hands and more opportunities to recover from error.

Then they should experience a fixed buy in, no rebuy tournament where each player starts with equal opportunity.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#145

Post by mch82 » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 1:50 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #115

rainbowmverse wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is being born to those parents not luck? I had to learn self-control, personal finance, investment, entrepreneurship, and so on by myself because no one taught me. I learned it very, very late and it's likely set me back decades. I had to be exposed to people who knew these things, and who were willing to teach me despite my upbringing. The fact that I'm where I am with growing savings, a small but growing music…

> I had to learn self-control, personal finance, investment, entrepreneurship, and so on... Other people have to do this and other similar things. When they have kids and raise them successfully, is that luck? Or is it payoff for that effort carried into the next generation? Some people are just lucky. Some are just privileged. But it's reductionist and just not good advice to say the whole world is random and decisi…

Yes, because having healthy kids who will be able to make use of the good decisions is luck.

People aren't saying decisions don't matter. They're saying trying to equalize opportunity does matter by mitigating the effects of luck. People are also saying we're best able to mitigate bad luck when we work as a larger society.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#146

Post by throwaway76543 » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 2:07 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #143

throwaway76543 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The average student loan debt in 2016 was $37,172" To be clear, the opportunity costs of unearned and non-debt payments generally would be in north of 150k range. Assume 30k/year income 4x years is 120k, plus the 37k debt, plus non-debt spending. " An Associates will net you about $400M over your lifetime, a Bachelors about $1MM," And the same monetary investment in a fund earning 7% interest will be worth more than…

> To be clear, the opportunity costs of unearned and non-debt payments generally would be in north of 150k range. Assume 30k/year income 4x years is 120k, plus the 37k debt, plus non-debt spending. Do people no longer work while in college?

They necessarily do not work as much as they might otherwise. Even if we lower the wage opportunity loss to a mere $15k/yr, a 4 year degree falls short by a factor of two -- or a cool million dollars over one's lifetime.

And that's without factoring in the non-debt costs. Realistically, the gap is much greater.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#147

Post by frenchpress » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 2:11 PM UTC

hal9000xp wrote: post #71

As a person who was extremely poor by western standards (in 2002, I earned 10 USD per month in Uzbekistan) and who lived among poor people for 22 years, I can say that poverty is a personal choice, period. Here is my answer on Quora with more details: https://www.quora.com/Are-poor-people-lazy/answer/Eldar-Gayn... I copy this answer here: I born in Uzbekistan in relatively poor family. At age of 18 (2002 year), I sta…

Your description of 'laziness', in part, sounds similar to lack of mental bandwith – although the latter is not so much a choice or an implied character defect.

http://thepsychreport.com/essays-discussion/scarcity-excerpt...

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#148

Post by syshum » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #121

jimnotgym wrote: post #100

For anyone who wants to investigate the connection between poverty and society further, I can highly recommend, Rutger Bregman's book 'Utopia for realists'. It is funny to see cases in history where well researched,cost effective and progressive social programs have been stopped due to plain prejudice from those in power. I keep hearing Ayn Rand mentioned these days. Reading those long tedious books can give you fodd…

Regarding Rand, I hear her referenced more by libertarian detractors than any actual libertarians.

Largely because Ayn Rand was not Libertarian, she founded Objectivism and has complete disdain for many Libertarians of the time.

Objectivism shares many things in common with small subset of Right leaning Libertarian Philosophy Anarcho-Capitalism, but not all Libertarians are AnCaps despite what they (anCaps) claim

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#149

Post by johngarrison » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 2:31 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #100

For anyone who wants to investigate the connection between poverty and society further, I can highly recommend, Rutger Bregman's book 'Utopia for realists'. It is funny to see cases in history where well researched,cost effective and progressive social programs have been stopped due to plain prejudice from those in power. I keep hearing Ayn Rand mentioned these days. Reading those long tedious books can give you fodd…

Admirers of Rand making appeals to authority? That's an obvious contradiction to anyone who had even read one page of the cliff notes of her philosophy. Someone, you or they, are confused.

Re: Poverty is not a personal choice, but a reflection of society

#150

Post by AlecSchueler » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 2:42 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #82

dlwdlw wrote: post #54

I'm not sure the proportion, but there do exist certain people who are self destructive yet also self entitled. It's the state of mind that drives a person to gamble everything they own. Either the universe agrees with then and they do become the greatest person they think they are, or more likely, they fail and wallow in rage. In a way, it's like a child throwing a tantrum, threatening all sorts of things, knowing t…

> Note that money in the end will always be spent on meaning regardless of rich or poor. . The poor don't save because they can't see what to do with it. The type of "easy come, easy go" behavior is way more prevalent among poor than rich. I remember reading an article (impossible to dig out with generic keywords I can come up with) describing a study in savings pattern where they distributed small amounts of extra c…

It could also be that the frivolous purchases mean more to the poor, that they are something to be excited about and not just an arbitrary indulgence.

I used to be a lot more careful with my money before a few years ago, when I experienced being too poor to feed myself and routinely went for several days without even a small snack, just looking at pictures of food for hours on end.

Ever since that time I've found that as soon as I have surplus cash I have a strong desire to spend it on expensive food or eating out etc. and I often do. Even the cheapest meal from the local takeaway feels like a huge thing for me now and fills me with a joy I struggle to communicate.