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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

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Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#171

Post by ehsankia »

zepto wrote: post #163
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…

“we're left with the largest pandemic in a century“ Sure, but not actually doing any worse than Western Europe. Also, those same conservatives actually did invest billions in vaccine development and production capacity in the US. Literally twice as much as the EU did, and the result is a vaccine rollout that at 5x the rate.

That wasn't my point. Obviously there is now way to know for certain, but there's a possibility that if Trump's administration hadn't cut the pandemic team, this whole thing may not even have happened in the first place. It may be a bold statement, but don't forget that said team's job was exactly to have people on the ground in China and other places, looking for new viruses and ringing the alarm early. Spending billions to come up with a vaccine is orders of magnitude more expensive than millions preventing the pandemic in the first place.

Similarly, one could argue that if Trump's administration hadn't gutted the cybersecurity team, we may or may not have caught the SolarWind hack much sooner. Again, there's no way to know for sure how well preventative measures work, all I know is that while those teams were in place, the hacks and the impact of viruses were much smaller.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#172

Post by djrobstep »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #158
djrobstep wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they haven’t done anything to create an income "People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics. > There’s no income from which to deprive them There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year. > How does that work? Property law creates property ownership. Ownership assigned to one person is deprived from others.

> "People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics. “People are entitled to other people’s labor” is ideology as well. However claiming that someone has been deprived of something that never existed in the first place is just nonsense. > There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year. So you’re suggesting we deprive people of their income because of your ideology? > Property law creat…

> “People are entitled to other people’s labor” is ideology as well.

You make a powerful critique of capital income and inheritance law.

> So you’re suggesting we deprive people of their income because of your ideology?

You're the one advocating we systematically deprive people of income. I'm the one advocating everybody receive an income.

> Negative, ownership creates property law.

Libertarian ideology has broken your brain. Property law is a government program - it requires enforcement to exist, aka the law.

> So how do you justify assigning ownership to certain people?

The principles of egalitarianism.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#173

Post by IntFee588 »

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…

There are quite a few studies that support this; higher earners generally work more hours, since their time is more valuable. The only exception is at extremely high income brackets. Minimum wage earners are being paid to show up.

https://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/why-high-earners-work-long...

Companies that are better to work at have generally seen more growth in their stock price:

https://www.glassdoor.com/research/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/...

Doubt these findings will change corporate policies however.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#174

Post by zepto »

ehsankia wrote: post #171
zepto wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“we're left with the largest pandemic in a century“ Sure, but not actually doing any worse than Western Europe. Also, those same conservatives actually did invest billions in vaccine development and production capacity in the US. Literally twice as much as the EU did, and the result is a vaccine rollout that at 5x the rate.

That wasn't my point. Obviously there is now way to know for certain, but there's a possibility that if Trump's administration hadn't cut the pandemic team, this whole thing may not even have happened in the first place. It may be a bold statement, but don't forget that said team's job was exactly to have people on the ground in China and other places, looking for new viruses and ringing the alarm early. Spending bil…

> there's no way to know for sure how well preventative measures work

This is true. It’s not a valid counterfactual to compare against an imagined ideal.

It’s just as possible to consider that the pandemic response team had degenerated into ineffectiveness, and by disbanding them Trump made things better.

This is why imagined counterfactuals aren’t helpful compared vs comparing with an actual benchmark.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#175

Post by chordalkeyboard »

djrobstep wrote: post #172
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics. “People are entitled to other people’s labor” is ideology as well. However claiming that someone has been deprived of something that never existed in the first place is just nonsense. > There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year. So you’re suggesting we deprive people of their income because of your ideology? > Property law creat…

> “People are entitled to other people’s labor” is ideology as well. You make a powerful critique of capital income and inheritance law. > So you’re suggesting we deprive people of their income because of your ideology? You're the one advocating we systematically deprive people of income. I'm the one advocating everybody receive an income. > Negative, ownership creates property law. Libertarian ideology has broken yo…

> You make a powerful critique of capital income and inheritance law.

You must have missed the part about entitlement to others’ labor, as inheritance is a transfer initiated by the owner of the property, and capital income is a voluntary exchange by all parties.

> You're the one advocating we systematically deprive people of income.

No, that was you who suggested that US GDP could be expropriated from its owners and redistributed to your favored recipients.

> I'm the one advocating everybody receive an income.

Yes, exactly. You’re advocating that some men with guns confiscate the income of the working class and give it to people whom you have deemed more deserving. You haven’t justified this, however.

> Property law is a government program - it requires enforcement to exist, aka the law.

Property is temporally and logically antecedent to property law.

> The principles of egalitarianism.

According to egalitarian principles, you have no such right.

> Libertarian ideology has broken your brain.

Less of this, please. Make your case on the merits or move on.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#176

Post by AnimalMuppet »

wyre wrote: post #126
pbourke wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The USSR could produce enough nuclear weapons to keep pace with the US, but they couldn't produce toothpaste for their people. When that sank in for Gorbachev, he decided that something was fundamentally broken with the USSR economy.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#177

Post by _y5hn »

ajmadesc wrote: post #106
ericmcer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I mean, economic systems that attempt to leverage human benevolence have all failed. Capitalism at its root leverages our base qualities (greed, fear, desire, etc.) to motivate members to be productive. It has been the most successful system thus far, despite its many, many faults.

Don't understand why this is down voted, it's being one paycheck away from poverty that keep 70% of Americans from telling off their bosses

The post includes opposite thoughts, and such gets downvoted on HN.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#178

Post by AnimalMuppet »

djrobstep wrote: post #149
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is literally what deprivation means - the thing you need is absent. “Deprivation” is the act or process of removing. You’re claiming someone removed the income, but they haven’t done anything to create an income. There’s no income from which to deprive them because they haven’t done anything to generate an income. > The deprivation happens through a large government program called "property law". That doesn’t…

> but they haven’t done anything to create an income "People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics. > There’s no income from which to deprive them There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year. > How does that work? Property law creates property ownership. Ownership assigned to one person is deprived from others.

Then hand over the computer you're typing this on. It doesn't belong to you, and I've got some people who want to use it.

That is, I'm pretty sure that on some level you operate as if private property is both normal and right, no matter what your theory says...

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#179

Post by _y5hn »

throwanem wrote: post #49
esotericn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire article is about people who are treated as human beings being more effective at their jobs. I'm saying that this applies at every level of the scale, in work, love, friendship, society, everything. We are wasting mind-bendingly tremendous amounts of talent in our world simply because of tunnel-vision mindsets. And it saddens me that as hard as I try, I can't change this. I've spent my career trying. The we…

Oh, I see. The culture in which you and I and many others live is, in the current historical moment, a deeply deranged one - 'deranged' not in the colloquial sense, but as an engineer might use it: we live within a giant machine which for a long time now has been operating dangerously far outside its design parameters, with all the metaphorical noise and smoke and flying bits of molten steel that entails. We're all d…

It's simple.

Human to human, one at a time.

Skip the interactions that discount you.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#180

Post by esotericn »

_y5hn wrote: post #179
throwanem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see. The culture in which you and I and many others live is, in the current historical moment, a deeply deranged one - 'deranged' not in the colloquial sense, but as an engineer might use it: we live within a giant machine which for a long time now has been operating dangerously far outside its design parameters, with all the metaphorical noise and smoke and flying bits of molten steel that entails. We're all d…

It's simple. Human to human, one at a time. Skip the interactions that discount you.

I like this sentiment. :)
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