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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

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Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#121

Post by giantg2 »

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…

At least you've had good money coming in. I've been burnt out. I've knocked it out of the park. But I've never seen really good pay or even authority.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#122

Post by nickthemagicman »

chillfox wrote: post #98
esotericn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Those are the most minor, trivial aspects of what has happened over the last year in the UK, and what continues to happen as we speak. How about we make a trade. I'll wear a mask in situations where others are concerned, take my vaccine, and you may distance from me as much as you'd like. You know, like I am and have been doing for eleven months now. In return - I want my life back. Let's reinstate the de…

Ah, the UK, It has been interesting to watch your "circus" from the other side of the planet. IMO, the UK handled Covid exceptionally poorly by repeatedly being afraid to act until it was too late. Here in Australia (Specifically the Northern Territory) we locked down hard early on while we had around 20 cases, I think it was for 2 months, after which no further lock downs have been required. Quarantine for travelers…

You have more chance of dying from car accidents than Covid if you're under 55 years old.

By locking down hard on age groups who aren't vulnerable to the virus you're enabling the clown world that OP is referring to.

Sure lock down the elderly that's fine but making national health policy based on one demographic is full on straight clown world stuff.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#123

Post by diob »

liamwire wrote: post #73
diob wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still early in my career (around 32, 8 years in), and I can heavily relate to what you said at the beginning. The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed to one of "fuck the engineers, only contracts matter, engineers are just butts in seats, the more the better (quality not required)". My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slig…

I think this thinking is, at least in part, a result of assuming that the decision makers are optimising for the same outcome as you might expect them to, eg. long-term growth, profitability, etc. rather than, say, bleeding the company of its human equity for short-term increases in monetary profit, that otherwise wouldn’t be attainable, and likely as a result likely furthering that decision maker’s career, assuming…

You're exactly right, and I actually called them out on these tradeoffs early in the acquisition.

They were talking about how they were surprised we were able to charge so much for our engineers on our contracts, when all of theirs had much tighter margins.

I told them it was probably because they optimized for winning contracts at any cost vs winning contracts that were worth it.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#124

Post by eyelidlessness »

pgsimp wrote: post #27
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…

Presumably companies that don't pay you well are already struggling, so their problems (that you were put to work on) were also more of a struggle. Of course companies who are doing well can also afford to pay more and give all sorts of perks to their employees. I suspect often that is the actual causation, not vice versa. People like to point at successful companies and say "see, if you would treat your employees li…

I think this is more than a bit naive. Companies have a wide variety of values. Some certainly do the best they can for their hires as they’re able, others very shrewdly extract every bit of value they can. Most fall in between in a variety of ways.

But assuming the best intent is just plain ahistorical. We’re only a century out from when companies routinely hired armed security services to threaten and ultimately murder people organizing to get their share of what wealth they created. That’s widely understood to be excessive now and those of us in privileged career positions take that for granted, but I think it’s worth remembering that some people still have that to survive and most of the rest of us are navigating a kinder gentler version.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#125

Post by nickthemagicman »

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…

Basic income experiments show that you can remove poverty by giving people money.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#126

Post by wyre »

pbourke wrote: post #82
wyre wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you give me an example? The only world power I can think of with high levels of poverty is the US, but I live here so I don’t have experience in other world power countries.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#127

Post by treeman79 »

refurb wrote: post #79
wongarsu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something East-Germans are lamenting about when comparing East-Germany to West-Germany. Of course some of this self-serving behaviour exists everywhere, but as a society or even community you can put a focus on the "we" or on the "me". Our society happens to mostly stress the "me" part, which leads to the outcomes you describe.

The basis of capitalism is that under most circumstances, focusing on “me” also produces the best outcomes for “us”. And a pure focus on “us” can lead to poorer outcomes as there is no immediate reward for the person doing the work.

Wrong. Focusing on “us” ends in ruling class and endless poverty everywhere.

Alternatives to capitalism have been tried and it always fails.

Venezuela is the most recent example.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#128

Post by ajmadesc »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #20
_qulr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also a surprising number of people in the US believe that poverty is a moral failure of some sort. Yep, there's a marriage in the US between business and religion that seems contradictory until you realize that these people believe the "invisible hand" of the market is God.

> that these people Who? I’ve never met anyone who believes that.

Look up prosperity gospel. There are dozens and dozens of mega churches across the US.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#129

Post by ajmadesc »

wilsocr88 wrote: post #6

I agree with this on principle, but I just can't shake the feeling that this sort of conveniently "incidentally" leftist NPR story is slanted, and therefor untrustworthy. I've been gaslit by too much media for too long to trust anything I read from anything even slightly mainstream. Everything is politically compromised, with few exceptions (WHO, CDC, UN, the list goes on).

I mean, WHO tried to convince people that cov19 wasn't transmissible through the air for a couple months, and they accepted fake infection /death numbers from CCP no?

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#130

Post by TameAntelope »

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…

GOP actions have not been in line with conservative ideology for some time now. A conservative concept is, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." but as you pointed out, even something as basic as that has zero support in the current American political climate on the right.

I want to support ideas that deal with issues at their source, in targeted and specific ways that have exponential payoffs later, but I'm forced to support sweeping "just give them houses and they're not homeless" solutions because at least those folks are trying to help, and anything is better than nothing.

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