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Once poor, always poor?

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Re: Once poor, always poor?

#201

Post by causi »

duxup wrote: post #14

> 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…

That's a harsh truth that's easily ignored, especially by people who didn't grow up in diverse communities. During my education the "behavioral bell curve" for each culture was clearly not centered in the same place. One population had a lot less free time at home than the rest of us, and their grades and eventual careers reflected that. Another population made up a majority of the disruptive pupils who didn't seem to care all that much about their performance. A third was far less driven than the first but much better behaved than the second. The trajectories of these populations largely reflected the manner in which they were raised.

To be clear, there was nothing inherently superior or inferior about any of these kids. All the populations had outliers in both directions. That's also not to say the academically maladapted nature of some cultures are exclusively or even primarily the fault of those cultures. I do, however, believe the continued determination to not address these disadvantages represents a failure on the part of educators just as surely as a refusal to address visually-impaired students would be a failure.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#202

Post by [deleted] »

andrewjl wrote: post #136
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's just the law of nature. Not really, societies aren't natural because they are human constructs.

[deleted]

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#203

Post by ivanmontillam »

andrewjl wrote: post #136
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's just the law of nature. Not really, societies aren't natural because they are human constructs.

Societies aren't human constructs.

Bees, lions, ants, meerkats, and many other animals do have societies as well.

It just happens ours is more advanced, but it isn't anymore complex than a highly elaborated bee society for instance.

What would happen if we'd need to change our Queen Bee Kim Kardashian?

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#204

Post by boeingUH60 »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #115

The average number of children per Nigerian woman was something like 5 in 2019. No shit they’re always going to be poor. I would even be poor breeding at that rate.

As usual with all places, the fertility rate decreases among those with means (I reside there). The upper middle class usually have less children, often 2 or 3 at most, while the poor are the ones with the most kids.

As an anecdote, I personally know a low-earning home security guard who has 2 wives and about 10 kids. His kids are signed up for school but don't go most of the time, rather playing around and the parents just don't care. Sometimes, I wish there's something I could do about that, but I can't. We have no equivalent of CPS here to help such kids.

I dread to think of how those kids will turn out to be, because with minimal or no education at the foundational stage, they're bound to just continue the poverty cycle. Sad.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#205

Post by sp332 »

amcoastal wrote: post #41
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the fact that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth within 3 generations gel with wealth being lost to other rich people? That doesn't logically make sense. If that was the case then there would slowly be ever fewer rich people who become ever richer. But if you look at the richest people in the world that isn't the case.

Because the rich that arent losing their wealth are getting richer at ridiculous rates? And where is that money coming from?

If you own several similar assets, and sell one for a large profit, it brings up the value of the others on paper. Stock shares for example.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#206

Post by baq »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #169
jokoon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture of money can also be a taboo in politics. Money is a necessary tool and be well managed, but it should not be a priority.

>Money is a necessary tool and be well managed, but it should not be a priority. I have to disagree with you there. Money shouldn't be #1 priority, of course, but it's definitely up there. Allowing your kids to experience poverty because you're unwilling to provide for them is a form of negligence.

it's fine as long as you teach your kids that 'stop being poor' is not an option for poor people.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#207

Post by dredmorbius »

WalterBright wrote: post #137
dredmorbius wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you responded to is a small subset of the original framing: "Remote work requires an investment in space and equipment that can be quite expensive." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698736

I quoted what I was responding to. That's why I quoted it. It's the point of quoting. And my response was clearly to what I quoted.

Be that as it is, it remains a minimisation of a rather larger and more complex problem, and a minimisation which largely begins with your own contribution to this thread.

Which you still seem to be striving to neither acknowledge nor address.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#208

Post by yardstick »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #175
yardstick wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was only 30-35% to achieve this that would be great. Sweden has a ~55% marginal tax rate for everything over SEK 309,000 (approx 55k USD). 55k USD isn’t much in most US tech companies.

It's a lot more than the US median salary though (31 kUSD). And 309 kSEK is roughly the arithmetic mean income in Sweden so most people are paying less than that marginal tax rate.

Yes agree, but would disagree that most of the tax revenue comes from most of the people. Ie the top earners (1% or 10% or whatever) pay a significant portion of the tax take, well beyond their percentage of the population. I’m not making any judgment on if that’s right or wrong morally, just making the point that 35% isn’t the top tax rate for many but not most people.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#209

Post by ben_w »

dijit wrote: post #195
pjerem wrote: post #188

That’s where I can see the efficiency of free education. I live in France and I come from about the median class. I didn’t struggle in my education. But while I was a student, I saw quite a lot of people, who came from poor family being able to catch the opportunity to leave this poverty. Of course they still struggled more than me to pay their day to day expenses while I had the chance to be backed by my parents. So…

This is a harder problem than just "Free Education". I grew up in the UK (in "deprived" areas, to a single parent with no income other than jobseekers allowance and some childcare from the state) and I can formerly attest that my "free education" was atrocious. I am not sure if there was a negative feedback loop involved: School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test r…

I'm also from the UK, and I was lucky enough that my parents used a cunning trick to get me into a good school[0], I'd like to add that even when the school is good, the expectations people have for you can make a huge difference.

I am terrible at the French language. I could never get the verb conjugations into my head, and trying to do that is one of only three memories I have of the entire learning experience from Year 7 to the start of the exams. Somehow I managed to end up in the top class for everything, including French. I found it really stressful and asked to be moved down to the middle group, and the teachers agreed — but as soon as I did, I found nobody, students certainly and it felt like also the teacher, was even trying in the middle group. While it stopped me being stressed, I ended up with a GCSE grade D in French, my joint-worst with R.E. (guess who wondered into the New Age section of Waterstones and decided Wicca was a lot more interesting than the Bible, while still a student in a Catholic school with mandatory Mass attendance and R.E. lessons).

For university I went to Aberystwyth[1]; I never even considered applying to Oxford or Cambridge, because Oxbridge is the best-of-the-best. When I graduated and got a job which happened to be in Cambridge, all my new friends assumed I was a fellow Cam grad, and I rapidly developed a regret I hadn't even tried to get in[2]. I might still have failed if I had tried, but I didn’t even try.

I enjoyed learning German at school for the one year I was allowed to (hence moving to Berlin a few years ago), and like your general resentment, I resented having French GCSE forced on me when I sucked so much at it. And the R.E. lessons, too.

[0] A Catholic baptism because the best local school was Catholic.

[1] Owing to a misunderstanding, a friend said they had a lot of fun there when they were a student, but it turned out they were talking about the town and visiting friends as their university was a completely different one.

[2] Thanks to a convoluted series of events, I can technically say I studied in Cambridge university as part of my degree; but this is because my industrial year job sent me on a training course in the William Gates building. This is also how I was in New Hall despite my beard and it being a women-only hall.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#210

Post by as_i_fall »

dijit wrote: post #195
pjerem wrote: post #188

That’s where I can see the efficiency of free education. I live in France and I come from about the median class. I didn’t struggle in my education. But while I was a student, I saw quite a lot of people, who came from poor family being able to catch the opportunity to leave this poverty. Of course they still struggled more than me to pay their day to day expenses while I had the chance to be backed by my parents. So…

This is a harder problem than just "Free Education". I grew up in the UK (in "deprived" areas, to a single parent with no income other than jobseekers allowance and some childcare from the state) and I can formerly attest that my "free education" was atrocious. I am not sure if there was a negative feedback loop involved: School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test r…

I mean what's the alternative? I don't think dumping kids out of school is going to improve anything for anyone.
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