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Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

nytimes.com

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Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#421

Post by lr4444lr »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #390
hhjinks wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not absolve her of her irresponsibility. 99% of 16-year-olds realize having a kid is a bad idea. She made her bed, and now she sleeps in it. I can empathize with her situation, but I can not empathize with anyone saying she is not herself at least partly responsible.

Why are we making motherhood something that cuts into someone’s career at all? Furthermore why are we making motherhood something that should punish the mother? Is it okay that a mother go without resources because she mothered too young? Is it fair/meritocratic to her child?

In the USA, and most developed countries, you don't have a career at 16. You are either just starting your first job or still finishing your education. You do not start popping out children as soon as or shortly after sexual maturity begins.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#422

Post by SolaceQuantum »

akvadrako wrote: post #419
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we making motherhood something that cuts into someone’s career at all? Furthermore why are we making motherhood something that should punish the mother? Is it okay that a mother go without resources because she mothered too young? Is it fair/meritocratic to her child?

To some degree most cultures do give assistance to new mothers, at least if they are poor. It seems you are arguing for more of that; the issue is it creates bad outcomes. The poorer you are, the more practical sense it makes to have a child. Then the next generation is more likely to have grown up in less than ideal circumstances. The only kind of children society should encourage is those in stable financially-secu…

You may notice I didn’t argue for any of that. I merely argued against the viewing of motherhood as a punishment to the woman, and that it is right for her career to be stunted therefore. “She made her bed” as it were.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#423

Post by oftenwrong »

m_fayer wrote: post #410
hhjinks wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not absolve her of her irresponsibility. 99% of 16-year-olds realize having a kid is a bad idea. She made her bed, and now she sleeps in it. I can empathize with her situation, but I can not empathize with anyone saying she is not herself at least partly responsible.

A modern wealthy society that allows a bad-but-understandable move by a 16 year old girl to basically wreck her entire life, is a cruel society. Also don't overlook that America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances, and that we as a society derive strength from that. We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up - but rather capitalize on the fact that those…

>America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances

>We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up

These are things some Americans would like to be true, but are actually far from true, and far from universally supported. America IS a cruel society in many ways. Many Americans blame the poor for being poor, and do not support any form of public assistance. The nation does "throw away" people who screw up - the nation has a high incarceration rate.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#424

Post by kaybe »

empath75 wrote: post #385
anoncoward111 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll call you inhumane then. Despite record employment levels and rising average net worth in the USA, millions of people are still starving and struggling with drug addictions and so on. Averages and generalizations only tell a portion of the story. Anecdotes can shed light on "noise".

There are not millions of people starving in the us are you mad.

You'd think so, but a little googling shows me that an optimistic estimate is that 1-2% of US Americans that go hungry once in a while because they cannot afford food. Some sources, such as those cited by wikipedia [0], put the number as high as 5-6%.

(Now we could have a debate on the meaning of 'starving', but let's just say there is a broad area between skipping a few meals and dying from lack of food that is all covered by how people use the word.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#425

Post by dzdt »

dgudkov wrote: post #238
noobermin wrote: post #18

It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…

>you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. This is a traditional, stereotypical belief that in order to escape poverty you have to work harder. This is old understanding of meritocracy and it's no longer valid. The new meritocracy is that you have to learn harder. And now, given all the learning resources available for free on the internet (which is also very accessible nowadays) it's probably the best t…

There is a pretty high threshold before book learning provides any payoff. The minimum cutoff that some employers take seriously is 12 years of school or the equivalent. Lets guess the guy selling pens is at a grade level of half that. If he could self-teach at the same rate as the education system would advance him (unlikely), that is still 6 years of sitting in a library before reaching the first threshold of significance (GED). Self-teaching is not a likely road out of a desperate situation!

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#426

Post by zero_intp »

lyzan wrote: post #416
baq wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you 1) had a job 2) had access to the internet now trying learning anything for free online when you don't have money for food because you're jobless and don't have access to the internet because you don't have money for that either.

Yes, for (1) I had a $10/hr job working as a cashier until I saved up enough for a laptop and got an unpaid internship in tech. For (2) as I said: libraries are free, coffee shops are free. hotel lobbies are free, heck some whole areas have free Wi-Fi. Internet is very easy to find. I'll be the first to admit I had a good education, caring and supportive family, and my story would be different and harder without them…

try being a person of color in a coffee shop or hotel lobby. Maybe you heard about some difficulties for a pair of young men had in a Philadelphia Starbucks?

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#427

Post by sintaxi »

michaelmrose wrote: post #306
sintaxi wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why hasn't the market solved this problem? The market did solve the problem and then we blew it by undermining the family unit so we have people dependent on the state with no significant family support. > Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures. The soviets tried this approach…

"The correct approach is to develop as much high end housing as possible which pushes all other houses down the depth chart. We want the poor living in houses that the rich used to own - not shittier houses." This entire statement just blows my mind. Getting people to build enough expensive homes for rich people seems to be an already solved problems. People already build homes as expensive as the market will bear an…

You're too focused on money and you may be misunderstanding my point. Price is always based on supply and demand so the nicest house is going to command the same price on the open market regardless how nice it is. The same is true for low end housing. Keep in mind its production which improves peoples life. Money is just a tool to help an economy function.

Think of it like a hockey team. If your 4th line Center isn't good enough (or you don't have one) you're better off to add a player that is better than your BEST Center because that improves your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th line. Improving your worst Center only improves your 4th line. Its like that but houses instead of players.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#428

Post by boulos »

A few threads seem to believe that the minimum wage is high enough / need not be increased. I don’t actually want to argue about mechanism, but think that it’s imoortant to note that the math says our (current) minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty.

With the Federal minimum wage currently at $7.25/hr, that’s just $15k/year at full-time. That puts many minimum wage workers below many countries’ average wages [1]. But that’s before adjusting for purchasing power parity.

Being a single earner on minimum wage effectively guarantees you and your family will be in poverty in the US. That is effectively not true in most countries in Europe, even the poor ones. You don’t get to live well or anything, but you certainly aren’t planning on poverty.

[1] California, and San Francisco in particular, have a higher minimum wage but also higher expenses. Worse, many low-education workers are waitresses, which often have a “tipped minimum wage” as low as $2.15/hr before tips (again, San Francisco doesn’t do this, but it’s expensive to live here).

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#429

Post by sidstling »

kgwgk wrote: post #139
sidstling wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more complicated than that though. In Denmark where I live, we have trouble staffing certain industry jobs. Jobs like gutting, freezing and packing fish or general slaughter houses. It used to be that these were low paying jobs, packed with immigrants. Since you need a social security number to work, and we’re rather good at finding people who cheat the system, illegal immigration workers isn’t really a thing in…

Your story is very confusing. If (legal) immigrant workers were willing to work for a lower pay (because of the low-pay loopholes) why wouldn't they be willing to work now for a higher pay?

The story isn’t about immigrants, they are still willing to work the jobs, as you point out. Instead it’s an example of how the narrative of “if immigrants didn’t cause low wages then Danes would work the jobs” isn’t always true.

It’s not just that it’s hard labour either, it’s also that handling fish is extremely low prestige.

So the story is more about the nuances and complicated nature of the job market. It’s easy to blame immigration, and it’s not like immigration doesn’t have an impact, it’s just that there are a lot more forces at play.

Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not

#430

Post by m_fayer »

oftenwrong wrote: post #423
m_fayer wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A modern wealthy society that allows a bad-but-understandable move by a 16 year old girl to basically wreck her entire life, is a cruel society. Also don't overlook that America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances, and that we as a society derive strength from that. We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up - but rather capitalize on the fact that those…

>America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances >We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up These are things some Americans would like to be true, but are actually far from true, and far from universally supported. America IS a cruel society in many ways. Many Americans blame the poor for being poor, and do not support any form of public assistance. The nat…

Yes, you're absolutely right. I guess what I should have said is that those things are parts of the American mythology, and I would really like the country to start living up to them.
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