Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life (2013) • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 12:41 PM UTC

cdoxsey wrote: post #65

Poverty can also be a trap because the simple solution (just giving someone money to alleviate poverty) isn't the same as earned success. When you feel like you've earned money through hard work and you feel like you're a contributor and needed and respected by your peers it brings a significant amount of satisfaction and happiness in life, which in turn drives you to be more productive and alters the way you think a…

Working menial jobs isn't the same as success either. Giving someone shelter, food, and other basic things that society expect folks to have - such as transportation, for example, or clothes that are up to par - isn't exactly wealth to be squandered.

These are the sorts of things that help. We aren't talking riches, just an actual safety net. That way, when your employer decides to close shop, you get sick and miss work, have a low-paying job.. you can actually devote resources into the things that will make a tight situation better rather than trying to decide if you need to eat one less meal a day to be able to afford a doctor's appointment. Things alike that.

I'll even argue that menial work set aside for poor folks has its own stigma, one similar to working at a fast food place. Not only does the public treat you badly for working there, but management often treats you as disposable as well.

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

#92

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 12:44 PM UTC

In his influential book on Universal Income, "Utopia for Realists", Rutger Bregman discusses this at some length (referencing the same study).

I have to say I have experienced it myself, and not having enough money for the essentials is so all consuming that you cannot possibly perform well at work and make good life decisions. I have succeeded at work under these conditions, but I gave up everything else, hobbies, leisure time, and worse of all time with my children. Maybe my kids will do worse in their exams because I didn't have the mental capacity left to see where they needed help. Maybe this will make them poorer too.

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

#93

Post by xstartup » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 12:45 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #87

xstartup wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you apply Norway's policies to any other country, it will not magically become as prosperous as Norway. It's a resource-rich nation, highly homogenous and part of EEA. Norway is able to ship low-value hazardous work to poor European countries without paying for their welfare/infra expenditure. Imports janitors and healthcare (the work which local aren't willing to do like wiping the ass of disabled people) wo…

As someone else pointed out: The US is wealthier. If it was down to wealth alone, we'd expect the US to have far fewer problems.

Wealth, relatively small population and homogeneity (cultural/religious/economic) does make a lot of difference, See: Qatar.

US might be wealthier (I've not vetted this statement) but it still doesn't have many of the above.

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

#94

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

jVinc wrote: post #38

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.

> whether you personally need it or not. The point of basic income is that everyone needs it to be there. You personally may not need the added income as the head of a multinational hugely successful electronics company selling luxury mobile phones and reaping in billions. But who's going to have enough money to buy your phones when 50% of people are out of work because your companies like your own have cut workforce…

How does society prevent rioting when we reach 50% labor participation? How about 10% or 1%. Each will happen, possibly within our lifetimes, because of automation and extreme efficiency improvements.

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

#95

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

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.

"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."

That very much depends on your immigration status, honestly. I'm American and my spouse is Norwegian: I'm eligible for most of these benefits. The same is true for my friend who is British married to a Norwegian woman - and their child gets all benefits. And again, the same is true for the friend from Poland who is here raising her Norwegian son (father has died). Most folks that are here for work aren't as eligible for certain things. Levels depend on where they are from, but there are ways to earn similar rights as well, if you go through immigration. Of course these won't apply to folks living in other countries.

"The US is very large..."

Sure, but they also aren't poor overall and this is just an excuse. If it is a constitutional issue about federal government powers, well, that document was meant to be changed. The instructions on changing it are in the document itself, after all.

Canada is very large and manages to have healthcare. There isn't a good reason why government agencies in different states cannot have an easy-to-navigate system for a safety net that actually works while meeting basic threshholds set up by the national government. Norway itself has municipalities administer many of the benefits, such as language courses for immigrants and adult education. This way the folks up north can meet the needs of its people, which can differ from the needs of folks down south.

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

#96

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

cdoxsey wrote: post #65

Poverty can also be a trap because the simple solution (just giving someone money to alleviate poverty) isn't the same as earned success. When you feel like you've earned money through hard work and you feel like you're a contributor and needed and respected by your peers it brings a significant amount of satisfaction and happiness in life, which in turn drives you to be more productive and alters the way you think a…

> Poverty can also be a trap because...

Actually there is contrary evidence. A study was carried out on the streets of London where they gave larger sums of cash no-strings-attached, and it showed that people in general took that money and used it to set themselves up in a job. One started a gardening business, for instance [0]. The idea that work is what people need is very Victorian, and reminds me of the tread-mill in the workhouse. Surely we should be looking for ways to remove the tyranny of physical labour. I most certainly do not need to be working in a regular job to feel successful.

On the matter of terminology the poverty trap as I have seen it looks very different. There is a trap that means in the UK if I am out of work I can get job-seekers allowance and housing benefit and child benefit. If I can find a single days work I lose all of it (although I may get some working tax credit it will not cover the loss), so anything other than a full time job has to be avoided at all costs. That is the poverty trap, benefits systems that penalise attempts to get off them.

[0] : https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/providing-personalised-support...

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

#97

Post by chongli » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #36

gaius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women typically make less than men. They routinely marry men who are wealthier than them. Maybe back in the 1950s when a doctor married a nurse and a businessman married his secretary. Nowadays it is far more likely that two doctors will marry, or two business executives.

Everything I have read indicates that female doctors still typically make less than male doctors, etc. The gap is smaller, not gone.

Instead of the doctor marrying the nurse it's now the surgeon marrying the pediatrician.

People tend to marry others of similar status, not necessarily income level.

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

#98

Post by crdoconnor » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

dd36 wrote: post #52

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…

And debt is an intergenerational tax that fully offsets your argument. The young didn’t run deficits.

Deficits are not an intergenerational tax. They are funded by issuing bonds, which are assets that will get passed down through the generations.

There is not really any such thing as an inter-generational wealth transfer. There are transfers from poor to rich that the rich are (successfully) scapegoating old people for.

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

#99

Post by jimnotgym » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #94

jVinc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether you personally need it or not. The point of basic income is that everyone needs it to be there. You personally may not need the added income as the head of a multinational hugely successful electronics company selling luxury mobile phones and reaping in billions. But who's going to have enough money to buy your phones when 50% of people are out of work because your companies like your own have cut workforce…

How does society prevent rioting when we reach 50% labor participation? How about 10% or 1%. Each will happen, possibly within our lifetimes, because of automation and extreme efficiency improvements.

The answer is right above you. Universal Income. However I suspect that instead society will let the owners of the automation become staggeringly wealthy while 50% of the working population are on the bread-line. Then there will be riots, then perhaps we will get a more equitable sharing of the value that society has created.

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

#100

Post by tomjakubowski » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

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.

Most (all?) of GP's points also apply to Finland, which is nowhere near as wealthy as Norway. Their government is able to provide their citizens with these services because it is massively invested in the country's economy; as of 2012, total market capitalization of state holdings in Finnish companies is $115 billion, against $256.7 billion GDP. For the United States in 2012, the figures are $6 billion in SOEs against $16 trillion GDP.

source: https://www.oecd.org/corporate/oecd-dataset-size-composition...