Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 449 posts

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#291

Post by tpeo »

dsr_ wrote: post #273
tpeo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, that's a problem too. I mean, I take that 90% of jobs aren't specialized positions. Once you need a college degree for a position that only requires general skills, or in which the employee can do just fine on-the-job training and experience, then what are those years in college for exactly? As far as I know, people could get by with a high school degree in the 1970s: there was no significant wage differenc…

Degrees are not reliable signals of productivity. I would much rather hire someone who didn't finish college but has had five years of progressive responsibility in the right area, than someone who had just finished a four or five year degree course but had never worked.

I didn't say they were. They aren't, that's the issue. A college degree overshoots the level of qualification necessary for a general skills job and comes short of the qualification necessary for a specialized position.

Also, your crosswise comparison between an experienced candidate without a degree and an inexperienced candidate with a degree only tells me that you put more weight into experience than having a degree. It really doesn't tell me much about whether a degree is a good signal, but only that it's worse than experience. Now, if you had told me that you don't consider whether a candidate has a degree at all then I'd be able to infer that they are terrible signals and carry no information at all.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#292

Post by [deleted] »

3pt14159 wrote: post #42
KirinDave wrote: post #9

For those who have university degrees, this should be a difficult read. Next time you say to yourself, "Sure, I went to college. I know that's a privilege, but I worked hard there and made it because of my hard work and nothing else!" Remember this article. This isn't a new phenomenon, but it's a phenomenon that's becoming more acute. Even if we ignore the adjuncts, the brilliant folks who taught us all what we know…

In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it. Lately, I've been finding myself frequently thinking: "That's Texas." Let me get this straight. Take a course load of 4 double semester courses per year with 200 hours of class time total in the given year. Let's double it to 400 hours just to be safe to include exam marking and office hours. A s…

[deleted]

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#293

Post by wallace_f »

phkahler wrote: post #270
wallace_f wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works. Why wouldn't it? In the US, we spend roughly 4-10k* per capita in welfare, housing and transfer payments. That means we already spend enough to instead give 4-10k/person/year in BI. In NY, homeless people cost the city over $40,000 per person! And there isn't even much to show for it! Wars on and Poverty and Drugs have spent billions, also without improving living conditions of the most vulnerable economic…

BI is generally talked about as giving money to everyone, not just those in need. You're talking about something different that has not actually been tried anywhere. A lot of things would change if you gave BI to everyone. A lot of things.

Basic Income Experiment is in the title of the first link, so no, what I said is not something entirely different that has never been tried.

Giving it to everyone elsE besides those in need would just be like a progressive tax break.

If your concern is it will disincentivize work: it is true there will be some drop in the labor participation rate. However, that drop is unappreciably small in comparison to the amount of corruption and number of total jobs in the economy that do not add any value to society. If your concern is that "people won't produce things we need," you should be focused on bankers, healthcare lobbyists and insurance companies, a significant part of corporate America, academia, government, teacher's unions(see: 1), etc.

In fact, removing the above corruption in the labor market and replacing with BI may actually increase incentive to work by opening up opportunities for innovation, and creating good faith in governance within the labor market.

1-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VObBmEBSTXU

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#294

Post by s73ver_ »

sol_remmy wrote: post #148
vidarh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it. According to this article [1] in Washington Post, the first occurrence of Texas as "crazy" in Norwegian dates to 1957. Makes me wonder if it's used this way in other European countries too, and whether or not the etymology is independent. It's worth noting that unlike the term "Amerikanske tils…

Actually Texas has cheap, well-funded state schools. It is financially a well-managed state. Maybe you should switch to saying "That's Illinois" or "That's Chicago", they're the dysfunctional state now.

In some aspects. In others, such as public health, it is not.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#295

Post by kevmo »

> “I live paycheck to paycheck and I’m deeply in debt,” she > said, including from car repairs and a hospitalization for > food poisoning.

While there are many iterations, it is always this same story. Medical debt, job loss, and/or divorce precede something like 90% of consumer bankruptcies.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#296

Post by technofire »

coldcode wrote: post #125
dave_sullivan wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is the market so broken? Student debt. Look at the housing market: in the 70s you could buy a house for much less because houses cost less because people didn't have more money to overpay. With a thirty year explosion of the mortgage industry and the idea that anyone should qualify to own a home, suddenly consumers had extra money to outbid people on buying houses. This broadly increased property prices with no…

What a programmer centric view. 99+% of people are not programmers. You want to be in any other STEM job you need a university degree(s). Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education.

> Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and education.

Interesting; this contrasts with the claim of liberal arts graduates who maintain that simply being competent critical thinkers is all that's required for almost any job.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#297

Post by lucozade »

scandox wrote: post #140
happy-go-lucky wrote: post #117

> an adjunct professor of Romance languages > precarious academic jobs > a teacher of English composition > teaches history > teaching English composition and critical thinking > began teaching English composition > published a poem > with one novel under her belt, is working on a second I see a pattern. I think those jobs are not much in demand.

> Romance > Critical Thinking > English composition > poem > history The good things in life are unpaid

> The good things in life are unpaid

At the risk of being somewhat obtuse: poetry, English composition and history can be exceptionally well paid. Ask Taylor Swift, JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel resp.

Now, if you mean poetry, English composition and history that no-one is particularly interested in reading, well. I would have to agree with you.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#298

Post by nrhk »

soVeryTired wrote: post #265
anonacct37 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true in software. Source: mid 6 figures principal engineer w/ high school diploma. Other jobs are pickier.

I'd say it used to be true in software. Try repeating that achievement starting out today. You'll be lucky to get any sort of tech job at all.

Meh, if you're passionate about technology as a kid and end up building lots of useful things I don't see why you can't get internships which will inevitably lead you to higher paying jobs.

My company offered an internship to someone who was 17. At Digital Ocean one of the interns was 16.

Tech moves quick and the less outside responsibilities you have the more time you can commit to building and learning.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#299

Post by jacquesm »

david927 wrote: post #181
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Reminds me of the former Eastbloc countries where you will find scientists as janitors and living in terrible conditions. Not that people who are not scientists don't live in terrible conditions but you would never expect a maths or physics professor to be unemployable. Even here in NL there are niche websites that pretend to be dating sites but that actually are sites where students are hooked up with 'sugar daddy's…

In Eastbloc countries that was done as a form of punishment, often for not toeing the party line. It was true across disciplines: medicine, law, etc, when otherwise they would have "good" jobs. (I'm clarifying, not justifying.) I thought in The Netherlands that higher education was effectively free.

> I thought in The Netherlands that higher education was effectively free.

But life is not.

Re: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

#300

Post by mattashii »

david927 wrote: post #181
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Reminds me of the former Eastbloc countries where you will find scientists as janitors and living in terrible conditions. Not that people who are not scientists don't live in terrible conditions but you would never expect a maths or physics professor to be unemployable. Even here in NL there are niche websites that pretend to be dating sites but that actually are sites where students are hooked up with 'sugar daddy's…

In Eastbloc countries that was done as a form of punishment, often for not toeing the party line. It was true across disciplines: medicine, law, etc, when otherwise they would have "good" jobs. (I'm clarifying, not justifying.) I thought in The Netherlands that higher education was effectively free.

Higher education in NL is about 1800 euros/year for citizens (limiations apply in age, etc.). Living costs, study materials etc. are not included. You can loan ~1100/month max from the government, which currently is at 0% interest, but starting 2 years after finishing your studies you'll be required to pay it off in the next 30 years. (? unsure about this timespan)

I hadn't heard about said hot topic, but one of the reasons might be that recently the government stopped remitting part of the student loan as a gift after graduation.

Post reply on HN