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Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

princeton.edu

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Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#71

Post by gaius »

glangdale wrote: post #60
gaius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing about the "young people" argument: the young, because time, live in a world built by the old. Everything from the physical infrastructure to the social institutions. So if paying for pensions is a wealth transfer from young to old, usage of the built environment is the opposite flow. In other words, the people who built say the roads did so for a package of renumeration that included a salary and a p…

This is an appealing argument, it's only flaw is that it is nonsensical. The current 'old' also inherited a built environment and a great deal of basic research, and if you project back far enough (not far!) they barely paid anything for it either. Those working in the 40s and early 50s paid almost nothing (in terms of having to pay taxes for other people's benefits) for the infrastructure that they inherited. It als…

The current 'old' also inherited a built environment and a great deal of basic research

The current generation of pensioners paid towards the previous generation of pensioners without quibbling.

It’s only millennials who take it all for granted and don’t want to pay what’s fair.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#72

Post by DoreenMichele »

saintPirelli wrote: post #66
DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means it isn't a chicken and egg problem. It isn't a question of which came first: bad decisions or poverty? You can be comfortably well off, do all the right things and find your life suddenly coming unraveled through no fault of your own.

You can also be uncomfortably poor, win the lottery and find your life suddenly becoming amazing through no fault of your own. You shouldn't use edge cases to discuss a general rule.

The last statistics I saw indicated that more than half of all US bankruptcies were due to high medical bills and even having "good" insurance by American standards was no guarantee of protection. That hardly constitutes an edge case.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#73

Post by jb1991 »

dorchadas wrote: post #62
adynatos wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Agreed. Capitalism and the prioritized pursuit of profits have only created the problem of poverty and wealth gaps that we now find affecting everyone.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#74

Post by blablabla123 »

This is discriminating.

Articles with a similar sentiment have been posted here recently, authored by people on the other end of the capital spectrum. So count in that bias.

One doesn't really need a study to show that accumulating more problems, one needs more brain power to deal with that. In fact it's part of the collective common sense things are like that.

I'd rather like to see articles that summarize hiring and admission biases based on socio economic background. Especially also when it comes to management positions, there the gap is even more extreme. Ironically people there earn extra money, so they can buy the problems away...

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#75

Post by glangdale »

gaius wrote: post #71
glangdale wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an appealing argument, it's only flaw is that it is nonsensical. The current 'old' also inherited a built environment and a great deal of basic research, and if you project back far enough (not far!) they barely paid anything for it either. Those working in the 40s and early 50s paid almost nothing (in terms of having to pay taxes for other people's benefits) for the infrastructure that they inherited. It als…

The current 'old' also inherited a built environment and a great deal of basic research The current generation of pensioners paid towards the previous generation of pensioners without quibbling. It’s only millennials who take it all for granted and don’t want to pay what’s fair.

OK, now you're just ranting and/or making stuff up. It's not actually true that the current generation of pensioners paid towards the previous generation, as social security taxation didn't really exist back then or was trivial in comparison in terms of #s of dependents and amount paid out.

Every generation takes stuff for granted, true. Also, they play their music too loud and disregard the eternal verities (c.f. ancient Greeks).

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#76

Post by yellowapple »

saintPirelli wrote: post #59
jl2718 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There go those poor people with their defective brains making bad decisions again. Bullshit. Poor people make bad decisions because they have more opportunities to do so, and less opportunities to make good decisions. Rich people don’t have to decide a damn thing to end up on top, just do what you’re told, work hard, and go with the flow; have your quarter-life identity crisis after you get your MBA and take that VP…

Rich people have it easier, that shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. But on the other hand it shouldn't come as a surprise either, that if you make decisions that propagate poverty, you will be more likely to end up poor.

More importantly: your children will end up poor through no fault of their own, and once you're there, the increased cognitive load of having to get by on less makes it much harder to break the cycle. The association between poverty and things like poor nutrition, fewer school choices, etc. certainly does not help, either.

Not to mention that, as others said, making the "right" choices may not be financially feasible; when you're poor, you're more often than not stuck in a "lesser of evils" situation.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#77

Post by johnchristopher »

hueving wrote: post #43
jernfrost wrote: post #37

I think this is why social democracy works so well for reducing poverty. When I compare poverty relief programs in the US with how it works in Scandinavian countries (I live in Norway) I notice a very big difference in how it is delivered. The US uses a large patchwork of a multitude of smaller means tested programs. You frequently read about how people are telling each other about what programs one can apply to and…

Norway is extremely wealthy though. Your benefits don't apply to citizens of Greece or other countries in the EU so it's not clear that it's a scalable solution. The US is very large, comparing it to a single country in Europe makes little sense. If you compare it to the EU itself you will see why there are so many disparate systems throughout the country.

> [..] it's not clear that it's a scalable solution.

What a big word. `s/scalable/reproducible`.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#78

Post by yellowapple »

saintPirelli wrote: post #66
DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means it isn't a chicken and egg problem. It isn't a question of which came first: bad decisions or poverty? You can be comfortably well off, do all the right things and find your life suddenly coming unraveled through no fault of your own.

You can also be uncomfortably poor, win the lottery and find your life suddenly becoming amazing through no fault of your own. You shouldn't use edge cases to discuss a general rule.

Last I checked, it's significantly more likely to become poor through no fault of one's own than to become rich through no fault of one's own.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#79

Post by cimmanom »

gaius wrote: post #28
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is so much to gain by doing so, for everyon Not for everyone. For young people. The way we’ll get UBI is by repurposing Social Security and possibly Medicare funds for its purpose. That, in turn, requires millenials turn out to vote.

Here's the thing about the "young people" argument: the young, because time, live in a world built by the old. Everything from the physical infrastructure to the social institutions. So if paying for pensions is a wealth transfer from young to old, usage of the built environment is the opposite flow. In other words, the people who built say the roads did so for a package of renumeration that included a salary and a p…

But the roads and that salary and pension are often paid for with debt - meaning that the younger generation is paying for it twice: both the taxes to pay that debt and the pensions for the people who did the work. Pensions that won't be there for the younger generation when they reach retirement age.

Re: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013)

#80

Post by mynameishere »

adynatos wrote: post #41
hellofunk wrote: post #12

Basic income. The older I get the more I strongly hope that the future finds some version of the ideas currently in research and testing regarding basic life support to all peoples. There is so much to gain by doing so, for everyone, whether you personally need it or not.

[flagged]

You can't just call something a nightmare. You have to point out to these blindly privileged rich knuckleheads that the garbage man won't be taking out the garbage if UBI comes to pass.

No shit. He won't. Not unless you pay him 300,000/year and that's a whole other kind of economic catastrophe.

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