Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#81

Post by blaser-waffle » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

La1n wrote: post #19

oblio wrote: post #11

I'll probably read the whole thing at some point, but I'd say that it's due to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle , basically "don't assume you're special". Or "don't assume any one sample of a thing is special", from the start. And since the natural state of humanity is poverty (after all we all started as hunter-gatherers), breaking out of it on your own is extraordinary. I wouldn't be surprised…

>And since the natural state of humanity is poverty (after all we all started as hunter-gatherers), breaking out of it on your own is extraordinary. The natural state was sharing resources and taking care of a small group of people. Not working for a boss.

According to Karl Marx, who had a reason to believe that; it backed up his ideology.

Hobbes thought that man in the state of nature had a life that was "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".

Watching nature documentaries about the lives of lions (and other critters) have me leaning towards the latter.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#82

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

emsign wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Please don't post unsubstantive comments and please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. These are repetitive, therefore uninteresting, and usually turn nasty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#83

Post by drbojingle » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

off the top of my head I think it depends on the type of poor you are.

Some people are poor because of their situation and some situations are more difficult to escape than others.

Some people are poor because of their habits and inclinations and they just don't change those habits (for one reason or another), so they stay poor.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#84

Post by Kye » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #39

asdff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of perspective is very important, especially here on HN where I see plenty of ignorance on this topic. When you work these jobs, often the local cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages, where you stagnate and are unable to save. How can you possible afford to move when your rent increases? You have no savings to rent a vehicle to move your things, nothing to put down up front for a new apartment, an…

People vastly underestimate how hard it is to do anything without capital/savings. If you are one missed paycheque from going hungry, you can't afford any risks. No going back to school, no going freelance, no interviewing, no investing in anything. You can't afford the means to make money, whether it's a car, a computer or nice clothes. You can't afford them breaking down, but you also can't afford maintaining them.…

I try not to think too hard about how my recent progress toward not being completely hopeless depended on a few inflection points that could easily have gone another way or could have been inaccessible had a few earlier events gone a different way. Luck is a force multiplier that can go wrong as easily as it goes right. Circumstances determine how much you can prepare for either type.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#85

Post by simonh » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

jcun4128 wrote: post #73

adventured wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really cool story. One of the best engineers I ever worked for started as a psychiatric nurse. He got to know the guys in the computer department at his hospital and got a job doing desktop support. When he hired me, he was running application support at a fin tech startup. He wrote their distributed application monitoring system from scratch in Perl (this was a while ago when that actually made sense).

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#86

Post by theodric » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

I also know some people who have a poor mentality. That is, they consistently refuse to seek out better-paying opportunities despite abundant mental ability in the name of "happiness," complain that their series of low-paying roles deserve more money, and advocate for hard socialism to enable redistribution to make that possible. The problem, you see, is all the other people.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#87

Post by nimbius » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

A sterling argument could be made that Capitalism as a concept requires a permanent underclass of low income workers. for example, Guardiola-Rivera believes that poverty and inequality are political issues that can only be solved when the poor organise and come up with a solution to liberate themselves.

Rising income inequality is breeding more inequality in educational opportunity, which results in greater inequality in educational attainment. That, in turn, undermines the intergenerational mobility upon which Americans have always prided themselves and perpetuates income inequality from generation to generation. This dynamic all but guarantees a permanent underclass.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#88

Post by rayiner » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

This is why Booker/West-style baby bonds could have a significant chance to alleviate structural poverty. Beyond a certain threshold (and I think we’re past that in the US) equality of opportunity (better education, etc.) won’t make up for starting out poor. What people need is seed capital.

For a fraction of the cost of universal healthcare, we could endow each child born in the US with a $250,000 trust fund at birth. That would be game changing.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#89

Post by jcun4128 » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #85

jcun4128 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really cool story. One of the best engineers I ever worked for started as a psychiatric nurse. He got to know the guys in the computer department at his hospital and got a job doing desktop support. When he hired me, he was running application support at a fin tech startup. He wrote their distributed application monitoring system from scratch in Perl (this was a while ago when that actually made sense).

> distributed application monitoring system

Dang that sounds nuts, I haven't made anything nearly that complex haha. There is something about architecting something and seeing it work "on its own". It's a cool feeling.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#90

Post by adaisadais » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #28

jcun4128 wrote: post #10

Without making the jump from washing plates/factory work to software I don't know how I would have escaped(still haven't) considering my pay increased 4 times. Just brutal when you trade hours for money directly at a low rate, I was doing 70hrs washing plates before and it was nothing ha. Edit: there is the thought of living within your means, personally with a roommate I could live on $10-$20K a year which you can m…

This sort of perspective is very important, especially here on HN where I see plenty of ignorance on this topic. When you work these jobs, often the local cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages, where you stagnate and are unable to save. How can you possible afford to move when your rent increases? You have no savings to rent a vehicle to move your things, nothing to put down up front for a new apartment, an…

Extremely well put. One of my favorite quotes from fiction comes from The Great Gatsby’s first page, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had."”

How dare we assume we would be who we are (good or bad / rich or poor) without the life events that exist outside of our own domain (who our parents were, education, income levels etc) of control!