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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

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Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#81

Post by kevin__ »

ehsankia wrote: post #46
nabla9 wrote: post #26

This is just once piece of growing evidence that poverty damages health, cognition, and productivity. * Being poor reduces raw cognitive capability including memory and decision making. * Being poor increases stress, leads to bad decisions and short term thinking. * Even relative poverty can have this effect. It may be because social status is so important factor in human well-being. It used to be a joke that you can…

So much of conservative policy just seems very shortsighted to me. Cutting the pandemic team, cutting the cybersecurity team; homelessness, prisons and so on costing orders of magnitude more than it would cost to eliminate or reduce them. It's just that people can't stomach less well off people getting a hand, or prisoners being treated nicely. But now we're left with the largest pandemic in a century, one of the lar…

I think a large part of the problem with conservative policy positions (at least in the US) is that they're mostly unchanged from 30-40 years ago. Despite mountains of evidence on things like work requirements for government benefits, multiplier effects of stimulus spending vs tax cuts, benefits of expanding healthcare coverage, and many more, the conservative positions remain the same.

I would guess this is likely because these positions are more based on philosophy than they are on actual economics or other evidence-based fields. This was a reasonable position when there wasn't strong evidence to either prove or disprove these arguments, but at some point the evidence becomes overwhelming, and those positions should no longer be considered serious. We're long passed that point on a number of issues, but it sure doesn't seem like anything will change anytime soon.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#82

Post by pbourke »

wyre wrote: post #39
fatsdomino001 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.

Advancements in technology lifts people out of poverty. There is no proof these advancements in tech would not have realized without capitalism. If anything China and the USSR turning their agrarian societies into world powers in the course of a few decades says otherwise. Whether or not the authoritarianism needed to accomplish this is worthwhile is another discussion. That said it is theoretically possible to achie…

This is a tremendous non sequitur. Being a world power and the level of poverty within a country have little to do with each other.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#83

Post by esotericn »

cccc4alll wrote: post #76
esotericn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way that my country has, and is handling the coronavirus pandemic, has meant that their vision of the future of society has diverged from something that I wish to be a part of. It's not about my accomplishments, but whether I feel like I have a stake in this. I have no stake in it now. They want a future that I don't want. No social ties, no bonds, no community. No counter-culture. No culture. No high street. No…

Be careful, you'll be called wrong thinker and censored and deplatformed. There's an old movie called They Live, starring wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's supposed to be satire on consumer culture, but looking at it now can be thought as time shifted documentary.

Amusingly, I actually rewatched this just last night. Brilliant movie.

Are you sure you're not the one that's spying on the wrongthinkers? ;) Just kidding.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#85

Post by refurb »

yulker wrote: post #21
fatsdomino001 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.

And created the very context for that poverty to exist in the first place as an extension of post ag society.

“By curing 99% of cancers you created the very context for people dying of cancer.”

Making some people rich doesn’t create poor people. They were poor before.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#86

Post by vmception »

esotericn wrote: post #10

This is going to sound egotistical, but it's not intended that way, just the experience of your average prole. The times that I have been the most successful, most motivated, most driven, most productive, and most useful, in study, career, relationships, and life, have tracked exactly with periods in which I've gotten out what I've put in. When I started my career and a company took a chance on me - we absolutely kil…

I like to imagine this is Gavin Newsom

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#87

Post by esotericn »

jart wrote: post #77
esotericn wrote: post #10

This is going to sound egotistical, but it's not intended that way, just the experience of your average prole. The times that I have been the most successful, most motivated, most driven, most productive, and most useful, in study, career, relationships, and life, have tracked exactly with periods in which I've gotten out what I've put in. When I started my career and a company took a chance on me - we absolutely kil…

This is the biggest steaming pile of bull I've seen on HN. Like a monologue from an Adam Sandler movie. https://youtu.be/LQCU36pkH7c

You're welcome. <3

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#88

Post by gregd »

As someone who grew up in extreme poverty (eating ketchup soup made with ketchup packets and hot water, extreme), there are so many ways that poverty affected me, outside of this simple article.

The best way I can describe it is that poverty makes you start out life in a giant hole and you're given nothing to help you dig out of that hole to reach the surface where you can then start thriving. I honestly feel that at 54 years old, I'm finally thriving and not merely surviving in this whole of poverty. Yes, it's taken me this long to get here.

I never went to the dentist on a regular basis. It wasn’t until I had an abscessed tooth and was in extreme pain, that my welfare mother took me to a backwoods, rudimentary small town dentist. I remember sitting in the dental chair with the high-pitched whine of the dentist drill and smoke that smelled like burning hair, pouring out of my mouth. It traumatized me. To this day, I still have issues with my mouth and am finally at a point where I can begin getting it taken care of.

I got a job working at the elementary school in 9th grade one summer. I spent the summer scraping gum off of the bottoms of chairs and desks using a container of something that froze the gum so I could scrape it. I also spent long hot summer days crouched over on the black tarmac, painting the foul lines with yellow paint. I was hunched for so long that I developed back problems and of course, couldn’t afford to get it taken care of. I’ve had back problems ever since and it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I could finally afford to see a Chiropractor and find some relief. And to top it all off, the State of California cut my moms welfare off because I managed to earn $2000 that summer. Guess how much I ended up getting to spend on new school clothes? Only about $200 from what I can remember.

It wasn’t until the past few years that I stopped looking at the price of things I was putting in my cart and making a mental calculation of the total cost of the shopping cart EVERY TIME I went shopping. I no longer do this and get whatever I want from the store.

I developed a weird sense of wanting to have choices. My wife couldn’t understand why I would open three different tubes of toothpaste until she finally realized what it was I was doing. I never had so many choices and I loved it.

I could go on and on but I won't. I think it's pretty easy from here to extrapolate just what poverty did to my productivity overall.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#89

Post by ip26 »

nextos wrote: post #25
esotericn wrote: post #10

This is going to sound egotistical, but it's not intended that way, just the experience of your average prole. The times that I have been the most successful, most motivated, most driven, most productive, and most useful, in study, career, relationships, and life, have tracked exactly with periods in which I've gotten out what I've put in. When I started my career and a company took a chance on me - we absolutely kil…

> The last year has been a period in which I've gone from wanting to take part in society, work on big problems like climate change, sacrifice for the greater good, donate my time and money [...] This might be the biggest problem human race has to solve. How to encourage and reward good behavior for the greater good. Economists would say it's a problem on how to price in externalities. It doesn't matter. I see it eve…

Having kids was a huge perspective shift towards doing my part & seeing the inherent value in other people. No silver bullet, of course, as plenty of people have kids yet act only for their own self interest.

But it is interesting to wonder if decreased birth rates could be both a symptom and cause of decreasing collectivism.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#90

Post by devdas »

kevin__ wrote: post #81
ehsankia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much of conservative policy just seems very shortsighted to me. Cutting the pandemic team, cutting the cybersecurity team; homelessness, prisons and so on costing orders of magnitude more than it would cost to eliminate or reduce them. It's just that people can't stomach less well off people getting a hand, or prisoners being treated nicely. But now we're left with the largest pandemic in a century, one of the lar…

I think a large part of the problem with conservative policy positions (at least in the US) is that they're mostly unchanged from 30-40 years ago. Despite mountains of evidence on things like work requirements for government benefits, multiplier effects of stimulus spending vs tax cuts, benefits of expanding healthcare coverage, and many more, the conservative positions remain the same. I would guess this is likely b…

Isn't that exactly the meaning of conservative? They want to preserve the status quo of that time.
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