51–60 of 358 posts
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> if you're a teenage girl, depending on your culture, your family seems to be peer pressuring you to be a mother Ironically, societies that do not steer girls to parenthood are subject to extinction. I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just the law of nature.
>Ironically, societies that do not steer girls to parenthood are subject to extinction. Which societies have gone extinct due to this?
The truth is, you probably don't understand poverty. It's both much simpler and much more complicated than your personal anecdata might lead you to believe. By far the best series I've heard on this is On The Media's 5-part series breaking down the biggest poverty myths and what the current science has to say[1]
[0] https://news.mit.edu/2021/tup-people-poverty-decade-1222
[1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/busted-ame...
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They are getting a decent education. In addition, they get for free perfect knowledge of English, work eligibility in the US and an extensive network of friends and relatives. Something that many immigrants can only dream about.
Educations are relative. Sure the inner city US education is good compared to Nigeria, but they arent going to be competing with Nigerians for college admissions and jobs. They will be competing with other Americans who got vastly superior free educations.
No it isn't, Nigeria remains a poor country since its population doesn't get proper education. That keeps them much poorer than for example USA. Poor people in USA can be relatively rich from a global perspective since they get so good education, you couldn't keep the wealth USA currently has if the bottom 40% couldn't read like is the case in Nigeria.
Given the generally accepted ideal of equality in the rich and educated world it strikes me as crazy that we continue to work hard to keep refugees out of our islands of wealth instead of structurally working on improving the chances of all people on earth. We seem to just turn a blind eye to this huge inequality or even increase and abuse it when it suits us. For example: Why don't we apply our minimum wage laws to…
Because we can't afford to do that, and if we tried, all that would happen is our own standard of living would go down the toilet.
There's more slaves today than ever before (some say even per capita). Pacific islanders are being enslaved for your fish, south american labor leaders are being assassinated for your bananas, and indigenous communities are being violently displaced for the minerals needed for your computers.
If what we currently have really isn't possible without the above happening, maybe we need to step back and ask if it's really right for us to have what we have
Given the generally accepted ideal of equality in the rich and educated world it strikes me as crazy that we continue to work hard to keep refugees out of our islands of wealth instead of structurally working on improving the chances of all people on earth. We seem to just turn a blind eye to this huge inequality or even increase and abuse it when it suits us. For example: Why don't we apply our minimum wage laws to…
> Why don't we spend a significant part of our riches The idea is noble and tempting, but the specifics of implementation (id est, who are "we", what is "a significant part" and how exactly should we spend it) are hard to decide.
For example, Elizabeth Warren wanted to throw out all our international trade agreements and renegotiate them to force the participants to comply with certain environmental and ethical standards. Some of those standards weren't even being met by the US
The idea has been given serious research, thought, and debate. It IS doable. The main issue is the will to seriously pursue it
So what does this say about the intergenerational poverty in the US?
Not much, the main problem is that the kids aren't getting basic education. Every kid in developed nations has access to free education and parents aren't allowed to make their kids work to feed the home instead of going to schools. In Nigeria kids often don't have access to free education, and even when they do parents often prefer having their kids work to bring home money over making them go to school.
"It is a sad and little-known reality that poverty tends to persist between generations". Is it? To me it's intuitively obvious and I can't think of any real person who would disagree? I can't even conceive of a different way this could work. Reducing the correlation to zero would require basically removing money's functional utility.
Sweden does it. It takes about a 30-35% tax rate.[1] Nigeria is a poor country which still has a high birth rate. Outside of Africa, almost all countries are past that. Even China and India. [1] https://borgenproject.org/poverty-in-sweden/
It's the legal framework, the laws being actually enforced (low corruption), and just the culture of the lay people who learned to trust each other after centuries of that. Formally Sweden is a kingdom while Nigeria is a democratic republic, but it does not change much.
Relevant: A study in India found that a one-time boost of capital could help families avoid poverty even decades later[0]. The truth is, you probably don't understand poverty. It's both much simpler and much more complicated than your personal anecdata might lead you to believe. By far the best series I've heard on this is On The Media's 5-part series breaking down the biggest poverty myths and what the current scien…
Fixing the kind of poverty you find in Sweden is much much harder though, we don't know how to fix that. They do better than poor people in many other countries, sure, but they still do way worse than people with wealthier backgrounds in just about every measurable way.
> Cultural norms can also encourage poverty cycles. I often wonder about these. Growing up I watched friends whose families had what you might describe as a cultural distrust of institutions, including schools, or even anyone who seemed to “think they’re better than us” (translation anyone who did well in school or a career). They constantly made self defeating choices and seemed destined to have the same problems/ p…
Many policy maker are born well off, so it's hard to relate. When the social workers are driving in BMW's and talking to you like you're retarded...
It's ongoing. I have done a bit of outreach work in the past and it's totally wacky on so many levels.
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Remote work requires an investment in space and equipment that can be quite expensive. Someone can be a great candidate, but can't afford the computer, tablet and space they need to interview or get work done, and they'll be skipped over for someone who can afford it.
One can buy a cheap laptop for the interviewing process, or borrow it. I personally did the latter, with a great success.