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

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

#661

Post by aussieguy1234 »

fullstop wrote: post #91
wishigotitfree wrote: post #25

Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success sto…

Starting conditions help tremendously, and I'm not doubting that in the least. One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn. They didn't have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly. It has to be extremely difficult to focu…

The wealthy are only wealthy in comparison to everyone else.

So if everyone else gets less poor say from free school lunches or free college, then it makes the wealthy relatively less rich even if their bank balance remains the same number.

It also means that the general population is harder to exploit.

So there are multiple motivations why some would like to perpetuate this myth and not fund social programs.

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

#662

Post by j_walter »

fatbird wrote: post #655
j_walter wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, a class size of 35 is a problem. So are a lot of factors that can lead to kids not learning. However the city I currently live in has a 20:1 ratio...and there are plenty of kids not succeeding (better than average though). Another local school in Portland has a ratio of 19:1...and they are 22% proficient in math. Thornwood HS in Chicago...13:1 ratio, but 8% proficient in math. It's not always about staffing...

Staffing is a pipeline problem: a good ratio might not help a particular issue, but you'll never be able to address those issues without it.

To what end though...I'm sure 1:1 ratio would be a huge improvement, but at what cost. You always get diminishing returns in these cases which seems heartless...but like with anything there is only so many resources to go around.

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

#663

Post by ewmiller »

bluGill wrote: post #615
ewmiller wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> certain important things like housing, education, and healthcare have gotten far more expensive This is what classist "but they have refrigerators" arguments love to obfuscate. Yes, a poorer person might still have a roof over their head and a smartphone. But they're spending a huge chunk of their income on rent. They want to move somewhere cheaper, but there are fewer opportunities, or their pay would go down too.…

Adam Smith observed many years ago that if you give people more money they tend to spend it on better dwelling places. Medical care has always been expensive. We have made a lot of progress: 200 years ago those ER bills would be zero: because everyone just died from what we consider solvable today.

1. Have you observed that almost every other developed, first-world nation on earth has some kind of nationalized health care service for its citizens, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves?

2. Have you considered that Adam Smith's anecdata from 200 years ago may not be accurate anymore?

Having made progress since 200 years ago is no excuse for piss-poor progress compared to where we could be.

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

#664

Post by caf »

clipradiowallet wrote: post #560
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do my own plumbing. I'm quite good at it. I occasionally fix issues for friends. I am about as far from being a professional plumber as the plumber who tinkers with python is from doing what I do.

The professionals have the same attitude about their trade as we do about (from your post) python. EG... no matter what required work is, I'm 99.9999% confident I can have it working in very little time. It's all that experience/confidence in the field that let's a good engineer give the warm-and-fuzzy feeling to a client. The client _knows_ you are going to knock it out of the park, because that's your level of fami…

I'm 99.9999% confident...

That's a lot of nines.

It means if you were doing 5 of these tasks a day, for 250 working days a year, you'd expect only a 50% chance of finding a task too curly to do easily in the first 550 years of your working life.

I feel like there's very few people, in any field, who've earned that level of confidence.

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

#665

Post by codyswann »

kangnkodos wrote: post #599
codyswann wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a mid-level manager, upper-level manager and now run my own company. I simply won't hire or promote someone who isn't a hard worker. Does it guarantee success? Nope. Is it a requirement for success in many circumstances? Yep.

What if I came to work at your company as janitor? And I did a great job. Worked hard. Attention to detail. Polite, and easy to work with. Arrived early every day. Stayed late. The best janitor in every way. What are the chances I would move into another position at your company? My guess is 0%. You might keep me employed, and not fire me. Maybe pay me a little more. But there would be no realistic hope to jump up to…

You're 100% wrong.

If you showed that much initiative, I would absolutely try to train you in other skills.

I own a software company, and while we don't have a physical office, I'm always offering education material to employees who want to learn new skills.

My mentor had a saying that I agree with fully - skill can be taught. Effort can't.

If you're willing to put in the effort, I'll make sure you're rewarded.

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

#666

Post by RickJWagner »

I guess as (mostly) programmers, we have good reason to have hope. And we have a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that people who do work hard (or at least show good productivity) earn good rewards.

Maybe we should look for ways to publicize it? I hate to think others might give up and not find paths to prosperity.

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

#667

Post by ZephyrBlu »

treis wrote: post #477
rawtxapp wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching people get a bunch of money over and over for no work starts to make you question things. You're ignoring risk. Do you feel the same way when people win lotteries? Because everybody has access to Robinhood, so nothing is stopping you from gambling on penny stocks or random crypto and you just might get retirement money or lose it all.

>Do you feel the same way when people win lotteries? I mean that's the point. Lotteries are supposed to be lotteries. The economy is supposed to be an economy where people earn what they receive.

Crypto, the stock market and startup equity are not the economy. They are far closer to lotteries.

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

#668

Post by ZephyrBlu »

ryandrake wrote: post #487
rawtxapp wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Watching people get a bunch of money over and over for no work starts to make you question things. You're ignoring risk. Do you feel the same way when people win lotteries? Because everybody has access to Robinhood, so nothing is stopping you from gambling on penny stocks or random crypto and you just might get retirement money or lose it all.

There is something very wrong with a society where a major driver of success and wealth is risk taking and gambling, in its various forms.

What is very wrong? High risk, high reward.

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

#669

Post by bluGill »

ewmiller wrote: post #663
bluGill wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith observed many years ago that if you give people more money they tend to spend it on better dwelling places. Medical care has always been expensive. We have made a lot of progress: 200 years ago those ER bills would be zero: because everyone just died from what we consider solvable today.

1. Have you observed that almost every other developed, first-world nation on earth has some kind of nationalized health care service for its citizens, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves? 2. Have you considered that Adam Smith's anecdata from 200 years ago may not be accurate anymore? Having made progress since 200 years ago is no excuse for piss-poor progress compared to where we could be .

I've seen lots of people follow what I think are stupid things. You think national healthcare is a good idea, I don't. (I think we went wrong by making health insurance come from your job, and all the things you hate about our system are a result ofthe current system being good for the employers)

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

#670

Post by bluGill »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #618
bluGill wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ask a random lower or middle class American if their quality of life has gone up in the last 20 years What people say is often very different from the truth. It is hard to measure make an objective measure of quality of life, but that doesn't mean the subjective measure is actually correct.

Subjective measures are everything when considering quality of life.

Fine, then subjectivity I conclude they are liars. Since you don't accept objective facts you have to agree I'm right for me and we are done.
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