Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life • Hacker News Board

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#461

Post by ewmiller » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #449

ewmiller wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then? Picture a first-generation immigrant family in America where the parents are older, don't speak English very well, and spend almost all their time working multiple jobs to pay bills and provide food and shelter for their kids. They then push their kids to do well in school because they know it's practically too late for themselves, but…

Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that? Education doesn't fall out of the sky.

That's very true. Widespread, high quality public education is a must.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#462

Post by simiones » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

unishark wrote: post #413

simiones wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plumber sends his kids to community college and all that. This is precisely the wrong model, one which accepts that there is no guarantee of equal opportunity. You're describing a promise almost as unworkable as the promise of heaven: if you're born poor, and you do everything well in life, your grandchildren's grandchildren will have a chance to enjoy the good life! That is not what a democratic free society shoul…

It's traditionally three generations, not six. And it's just human nature to look at things in a relative sense. If you are living a lot better than when you grew up, you are very likely to be comfortable and stop there. Similarly your parents might just be happy to see you reach that next rung, rather than pushing for more. Immigrants doing it in one generation, working blue collar jobs while sending their kids to t…

This is not about barriers (fortunately, most of us do not live in a feudalistic or caste-based or apartheid society, where this would be literally the case); it is about probabilities and effort, even when accounting for genetic differences.

It is extremely clear that our society, nowhere in the world, doesn't offer equality of opportunity; based on your birth, even accounting for genetics, your mid-life expected income could be predicted with decent accuracy.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#463

Post by fullstop » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #375

fullstop wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would encourage you to look into food insecurity a little bit more. I live in a fairly nice area and there are kids in my school district who often don't eat when there are snow days and in the summer. It is significantly more prevalent than you think. A lot of the food that lower class families have available, stuff which is non-perishable, tend to have empty calories and less fiber. Soft drinks are a problem, and…

Having grown up around it, I can tell you that, if you had to pick one, a parents attitude has a much bigger impact on success in school than food insecurity. That isnt to say that we cant or shouldnt do more about food insecurity, but wrt the GP post, it isnt the biggest factor.

Right, perhaps I wasn't 100% clear. My point was that obesity does not mean that a person is well fed, and that if a parent had to choose between eating and education, eating will win.

The parent's attitude is absolutely a factor which was what my original message (up a bit from here) was about, but I don't think that you can deny that food insecurity plays a part in their attitude toward education.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#464

Post by nitrogen » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #259

TheTrotters wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be equally likely for a child born in a trailer park to become high income earner as it is for Bill Gate's child. That is the normal social mobility we should expect in a democratic society with no class structure. We are so laughably far off from this everywhere in the world... That’s only if you assume there isn’t a generic component to traits that influe…

Genetic or learned behavior? The behaviors that help you successfully move between lower rungs may (spoiler: they do) hinder you at higher rungs.

I'm inclined to agree with this, but could you elaborate on some of these behaviors? The ones that come to my mind are punctuality and subservience. Absolutely critical for a bottom-tier laborer, but nobody is upset if the CEO is late for a meeting.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#465

Post by PragmaticPulp » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #291

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #235

I mentor college students as part of a structured mentoring program. Some of the young people who come through the group have wildly pessimistic views on the world, especially as it pertains to jobs and capitalism. Part of our job is to defuse some of the more self-defeating views, but it’s increasingly difficult to compete against the non-stop onslaught of pessimism that comes from their subreddits and Twitter follo…

> /r/antiwork on Reddit, that have a stated goal of ending work This got me interested, so I checked it out. The top thread is literally about r/antiwork NOT having this goal: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/o032ek/for_anyone... And "not wasting your life working for something you don't believe in" is quite a different beast. I believe even Paul Graham could say this, albeit with totally different idea abo…

> This got me interested, so I checked it out. The top thread is literally about r/antiwork NOT having this goal:

It's the same way that incel communities insist they're NOT about hating women, but rather something deeper and more respectable: It's a veneer of misdirection so they can justify their continued complaining about having to work.

Like I said, they want to end "work" but they don't ever explore ideas for how society would function or how they'd get their food, clothing, and housing if work was abolished. They tend to romanticize primitive, pre-industrialized societies as the easy times, while assuming we could abolish work and still maintain our iPhones, internet, food, and shelter simply by [other] people's innate desire to build these things for free.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#466

Post by simiones » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

hashmymustache wrote: post #211

simiones wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have very, very, good odds of doing better than your parents if you manage to get to age 25 without incurring a felony record, addiction to something that will likely kill you or too many child support payments. That is a laughably low bar, and it is unlikely for the trend you are describing to continue past the move from poor to lower middle class. In a fair society, with equality of opportunity, it should be…

How about high income through athletics or modeling? Should any two children be equally likely to make it professionally?

Sure, genes and other accidents of birth make the model more complex. But still, in our current society, if you were to take two identical twins and separated them from birth and made various income families raise them, and repeat this experiment 100s of times, you would still see remarkably little mobility.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#467

Post by pkulak » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #434

esens wrote: post #37

Working hard but doing so for someone else can often not lead to significant gains. Many services like Uber or InstaCart or even McDonalds or Amazon Warehouse or Walmart or Retail Sales or call center, you can work hard but there is no where to progress to. Your rewards are capped. You need to find a way to work hard such that your rewards are not capped artificially. Startups were you get equity. Large companies whe…

IMHO, this misses the point. How the fuck can Elon/Tesla buy bitcoin, do a pump and dump, and walk away with enough money to cover 300 lifetimes of me working. Or some kid in a basement that bought GME options gets to retire and not work a day in their life. Also the guy that VC gifted 6 figures (multiple years of me working) of equity just because he wanted more money from the acquisition. Watching people get a bunc…

It's not gaming the system, it's having money. That's the system. People with money can get more of it. Start with it, and you can get more of it. Lots more of it if you know what you're doing. If you don't, you'll die with about the same millions you started with.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#468

Post by afpx » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #174

afpx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be nihilism? A person's purpose in life doesn't have to be tied to working hard (especially if that strategy has diminishing returns).

I was raised to believe certain truths, such as hard work and sacrifice pays off. It's guided much of my life, from pursuing education, building a career, settling down and starting a family. I couldn't imagine what my life would be if I had believed that I am incapable of changing the circumstances of my being. It would be incredibly hard to live in an arbitrary society. That would likely lead me to the idea of nihi…

That's an admirable life. But, then, there are people like me: Mostly lazy, but focused on creative expression, learning things, helping friends and family, and supporting community.

My life still has purpose. I just don't work very hard.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#469

Post by everdrive » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #442

everdrive wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely correct. Suspect you started with a Tabula Rasa society where everyone began with the same resources. You would still see differentiation after n generations: wealth and influence can compound over time and groups of people would gain influence, power, and money. And this is the expected outcome of a perfectly meritocratic system.

> wealth and influence can compound over time and groups of people would gain influence, power, and money. And this is the expected outcome of a perfectly meritocratic system. It is not. In a meritocratic system, children wouldn't inherit resources, access to education would be conditioned purely by merit, and so would access to jobs, finance opportunities etc. The nepotism rampant (edit: was "inherent") in corporati…

This is interesting, and I've never heard this definition of egalitarian. It certainly does solve the philosophical problem I've raised. I'm curious (genuinely) if large numbers of people are seriously suggesting such a system. How would it even be implemented? Well-off parents cannot buy their children clothing or food? They cannot give their used car to their children? Etc? That rich parents could not pay extra for the health care needs of their children? I could understand (if potentially not really agree with) something more limited, such as a specific inheritance tax. But I don't see how you prevent rich parents from sharing their resources with their children in the broad sense.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#470

Post by masklinn » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

sershe wrote: post #440

masklinn wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it’s because a fraction of immigrants does do with means and for the express purpose of this, essentially self-selecting for the task? Immigrants also make up a disproportionate portion of poverty population.

But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American? And if it's smth like ability, then how is it not well deserved? :)

> But that would contradict the premise, wouldn't it? If an immigrant can "self select" from much worse conditions, why didn't an average poor American?

They did not. They self-selected from largely good opportunities at home which they leveraged into good opportunities in the US.

Successful indian-americans are not generally dalit. In fact relatively few indian americans originate from lower-caste families.

And there are too many different kinds of american poor to average them. Who is the "average poor american"? A black american? A native american? A resource or industry-cursed white? An invalid vet? The opportunities, or lack thereof, are different for all of them.