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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]

#91

Post by q845712 »

rorykoehler wrote: post #44
jcun4128 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I didn't have a car for a while, I didn't get a job back in 2015 or so for PHP because of that ha. First in office web developer job after restaurant, I had to bike 30 miles a day lol [1] round trip, that was brutal. On the plus side, 3 hrs of podcasts. I listened to the book Eccentric Orbits then that was good. Uber was like $60/day so yeah... although I only made it 4 days straight, never 5 days of bike riding…

OT Graeme Obree biked 60 miles round trip for work. Due to the fitness gained he was able to come out of nowhere to break the hour record in cycling on a bike he built himself out of miscellaneous parts from things like washing machines.

that's super badass, but my recollection of having a commute slightly over 30 miles roundtrip is that it was thoroughly exhausting. Or in other words, the same difficult circumstances that inspire one person to remarkable success will still grind many other people down. We can all aspire to be great, be by definition most of us will hew pretty close to average for our circumstances. I think this thread is pointing out how difficult some circumstances can be, which doesn't need to discount the possibility for someone to transcend them, but you're pointing out an outlier in a discussion about median results.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#92

Post by domnomnom »

Toine wrote: post #8

TLDR; "We have shown that poverty traps exist. People are poor because of a lack of opportunity. It is not their intrinsic characteristics that trap people in poverty but rather their circumstances. Poverty is not an innate condition. This has implications for how we think of development policy and for the value of eliminating global poverty."

That sort of epistemological tone is quite painful to see.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#93

Post by corpMaverick »

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…

As fortunate as I am, being a software engineer in the US. I rather live in place with a good safety net. I feel we all are one sickness away from being broke. In any case, you can't really enjoy life when everybody else living day by day.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#94

Post by centimeter »

Wealth is mean-reverting along genetic lines. I.e if your removed ancestors were poor, but your immediate ancestors were rich, chances are you or your descendants will revert to being poor. Together with available data conditioned on factors like geography and ethnic background, by far the most likely hypothesis is that expected wealth is mediated by factors like intelligence and time preference, which are strongly genetically heritable.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#95

Post by jeffbee »

rayiner wrote: post #88

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 birt…

What would be the point of such trust funds? Assuming they were not intended to pay out until higher education (age 18?) it would just look exactly like Social Security: a supposedly-funded massive future liability that the federal budget borrows against and/or repeatedly attempts to privatize. Except your idea would receive even higher contributions than Social Security does.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#96

Post by js2 »

adaisadais wrote: post #90
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…

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 (g…

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA - I mean, my values, in terms of what I think my obligation – my personal obligation – Michelle Obama – is that it is not enough that I succeed on my own. I have to care about the kid in the desk next to me at school because he’s just as smart but his mom works. And my father always kind of taught us to take in everybody’s full story. Not to judge people, the drunk uncle or the cousin out of work...

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA – Cause you didn’t know what was happening...

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA – You didn’t know what happened to them. You know, we weren't special. And as a result, you know if something good happens to you, if you have an advantage, you don't hoard it. You share it. You reach out. You give back. And I can say that my family, my neighborhood, my notion of community growing up shaped that view and shaped the choices that I made in life as I felt your experiences shaped yours.

https://spoti.fi/TMOPtranscripts

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#97

Post by frank_bb »

Simply, because of banksters, rotten owners of manipulated 'financial system' - the rothschilds & their bitch€s, institutions, and so on. Killuminati. That system is very easy to manipulate (for them, not for us)... They've created the most powerful currency ever. No, not USD, but the DEBT. With this, they can do everything today, as they owe also governments and the rest. They can create 'crisis' just like that, usually to rob working people of valuable assets (that comes from real work, not from usury), to cover their worthless (melting since '71) "money". And tell the people that's their fault. Again and again. Decade by decade. The sad thing is that so many people still believes in that whole rotten, satanic system; only some people have their minds open enough to understand this, to know that's our sad reality (it's not about what we believe in, but what we SEE); the others are blind, 'too busy' or 'too lazy' even to think, so it's easier to call it 'conspiracy, theories, etc'. Today, if mainstream fng media call something as 'conspiracy', you should think about that twice and analyze why. Same about pseudo "law", that concerns us, but doesn't apply to them... Which promotes deviation, but banishes almost everything that is actually good for us.

That why people do stay poor - because of corrupt puppet governments owned by these 'elites'... The humanity should have much bigger, much better, beautiful achievements so far! But that's impossible in this system, which makes the people focusing mainly on bullshit, instead of things, that really matters! What people can do? Well, nothing special, just WAKE UP and start to think! The more the better. This is what the system fears: awake, thinking people. People who have the potential to be free... The system needs slaves! That's why the world looks what it looks like, that's why people suffer - needlessly! Thank you & good luck (we all need it).

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#99

Post by jyounker »

lazyjones wrote: post #33
Toine wrote: post #8

TLDR; "We have shown that poverty traps exist. People are poor because of a lack of opportunity. It is not their intrinsic characteristics that trap people in poverty but rather their circumstances. Poverty is not an innate condition. This has implications for how we think of development policy and for the value of eliminating global poverty."

Based on data from the Third World and destined to be used to argue for policy changes (towards wealth redistribution) in the First World.

This is anecdotal, but having grown up poor, I can tell you that the research is perfectly applicable in the first world.

Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]

#100

Post by rayiner »

jeffbee wrote: post #95
rayiner wrote: post #88

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 birt…

What would be the point of such trust funds? Assuming they were not intended to pay out until higher education (age 18?) it would just look exactly like Social Security: a supposedly-funded massive future liability that the federal budget borrows against and/or repeatedly attempts to privatize. Except your idea would receive even higher contributions than Social Security does.

Are you asking what people would be able to use $250k for?
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