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Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

sticerd.lse.ac.uk

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Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#71

Post by oblio »

La1n wrote: post #67
oblio wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the noble savage myth. Go read up just how friendly relations were between those noble savages were and how high the incidence of violence was. If you think we're more violent now, in the age of plenty...

>If you think we're more violent now, Don't strawman me, I didn't say that, or anything about violence. All I was talking about was distribution of income.

Ok, let me rephrase this, because we now have inequality and some people still live like back in the Stone Age, things are worse now?

Keep in mind all people back in the Stone Age lived... like people in the Stone Age :-)

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#72

Post by adventured »

jcun4128 wrote: post #47
adventured wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language/s did you teach yourself during that several year learning time? What did you choose to focus on? (I noticed this: ReactJS/Node-Express/MySQL/Python in your profile, but I'm not sure if that's what you started with)

Short answer: at the time learned LAMP stack, able to build interfaces, auth, ssl, setup servers, make db schemas/make APIs, etc... I remember I had to learn how DNS worked haha. I wasn't learning specifically to get hired. My first stuff was trying to build high traffic websites/make money through ads but my ideas were dumb. But I still learned in the process how to build websites. Full answer https://i.imgur.com/uA…

I appreciate the story. Congrats on the excellent progress!

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#73

Post by jcun4128 »

adventured wrote: post #72
jcun4128 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer: at the time learned LAMP stack, able to build interfaces, auth, ssl, setup servers, make db schemas/make APIs, etc... I remember I had to learn how DNS worked haha. I wasn't learning specifically to get hired. My first stuff was trying to build high traffic websites/make money through ads but my ideas were dumb. But I still learned in the process how to build websites. Full answer https://i.imgur.com/uA…

I appreciate the story. Congrats on the excellent progress!

Thanks, yeah I am still not secure, always fear of incompetence. Not having a degree is a fear. But I just have to keep learning/save/make more money ha. Get that burn rate, entrepreneur, FiRe, etc... I'm fortunate to have gotten into this field though and enjoy it personally.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#74

Post by feralimal »

nicbou wrote: post #42
feralimal wrote: post #32

For the individual, the answer is Debt. And servicing repayments of debt. Eg, that on the typical mortgage you repay ~3 times what you borrowed.

3 times? How so?

Sorry - my mistake. I was going off memory.

2 times, including the principle.

Looking here: https://finance.icalculator.info/mortgage-calculator.html

I enter, Mortgage Amount: 100000 Annual Interest Rate: 5% Term of Mortgage: 30years

The interest paid is 93255.20

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#75

Post by foogazi »

asdff wrote: post #41
chrisco255 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is the base case. It's the default state. How does prosperity increase at all?

The whole idea of having any government at all is to pull resources to collectively advance beyond the base state. Clearly this prosperity is not very equally shared, and that is the problem.

> The whole idea of having any government at all is to pull resources to collectively advance beyond the base state.

Where do you get that from?

Government has been around for millennia and it has mainly been about security - not being invaded - than economic freedom

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#76

Post by narag »

claudiawerner wrote: post #69
narag wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is not a natural state. "Natural state" is not a very useful predicate because, even if you can define it (what hominid and what period) first you need to define poverty unambiguously. But I'll bite. If we settle on stone age, in my very humble opinion, poverty is a natural state. Someone can argue that paleo people were happy or in harmony with nature or whatever, but then they were at the mercy of elements,…

>This seems a description of a lawless society. GP specifically mentioned property law. >Property law is a cornerstone of civilization. This is a dubious claim, but I believe GP is specifically referring to property rights and law under capitalism, which until quite recently in human history was not the cornerstone of civilization. Property law worked much differently in pre-capitalist societies, and through the encl…

GP specifically mentioned property law.

Exactly.

"...capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt."

This is a way to look at things as useless as the "natural state" thing, and for the same reason: it's looking back, not forward. It's condemning the money and the production means as evil because of their origin, not their usefulness.

It's far more interesting to look at how societies evolve when you tweak the rules. It turns out that the results of abolishing capitalism are not pretty.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#77

Post by hprotagonist »

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes thought, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and _would still have wet feet_."

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#78

Post by AaronLasseigne »

hprotagonist wrote: post #77

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes thought, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots…

Yup, being poor is expensive.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#79

Post by blaser-waffle »

djrobstep wrote: post #64
TrackerFF wrote: post #46

This is something I enjoy about our jobs up in Scandinavia - the salaries are very compressed around the mean. Engineers, Lawyers, and other similar professions tend to earn 2x-3x of what the absolute minimum wage jobs earn. That's quite the difference compared to other countries, where Engineers can earn 5x-20x. People here are still motivated to seek higher education and better paid jobs, even though they could liv…

Other than the obvious equality benefits, even wages also have the advantage that people are much more likely to pick careers out of intrinsic interest rather than socio-economic status. How many unhappy people do you know do end up stuck doing work they hate because of money? There are many, and uneven compensation is a prime cause of their misery.

I loved doing background investigations and PI work. It could be exciting, ever changing, and often utterly fascinating. I loved the travel and, honestly, the drama.

But the hours sucked and the pay was weak. IT/Network Engineering pays me literally 4x what BI/PI did. There may be a happy medium there in cyber forensics or incident mgmt (or other security roles).

But if the pay was closer... I'd consider going back, for sure.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#80

Post by blaser-waffle »

feralimal wrote: post #74
nicbou wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 times? How so?

Sorry - my mistake. I was going off memory. 2 times, including the principle. Looking here: https://finance.icalculator.info/mortgage-calculator.html I enter, Mortgage Amount: 100000 Annual Interest Rate: 5% Term of Mortgage: 30years The interest paid is 93255.20

That's also a 30-year mortgage, paid off at the lowest rate possible, with no refinancing.

And also leaves out that the rate of inflation over 30 years means your monthly cost decreases; hopefully you're getting inflation adjustments to your salary...

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