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Once poor, always poor?

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Re: Once poor, always poor?

#331

Post by imtringued »

difosfor wrote: post #23

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…

I don't really think your ideas are particularly good but that's not really the point. The real question is why we accept the flaws of our current system. It's not very difficult to solve them. E.g. homeless need homes to not be homeless. Yet it is extremely difficult to actually want to solve them.

Californians in particularly prefer having homeless people over giving them homes even despite the fact that the government isn't lacking in resources.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#332

Post by imtringued »

wiseowise wrote: post #120
curiousgal wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a Catch 22. Are they poor because they have too many children or are they having too many children beacsue they are poor?

Are you implying that having many children might lead to better outcome financially?

If you assume that you cannot afford education and that manual labor is all you and your kids will be useful for then yes, it's better than nothing.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#333

Post by danans »

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…

> School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test results... which people from this kind of background will not have good ones.

That's exactly backwards from how it should be funded but is the sad result of trying to implement "market based" solutions to sociological and historical problems.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#334

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

wobblybubble wrote: post #243
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, obviously, that's not the case with all education, but my next gripe with it is the seemingly insurmountable debt that said education brings. Literally, all of my friends that have gone to college are no where near paying their debt off and I'm in my late 30s. I grew up lower middle class - not poor - took on a healthy amount of debt to get a CS degree from a crappy college in West Virginia. Most of my classma…

What are you doing to make the world more fair?

Voting for things that I think are good for equality?

Look, I'm not Joan of Arc - didn't claim to be. There's not a whole lot more else you can do...

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#335

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

rbanffy wrote: post #293
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, obviously, that's not the case with all education, but my next gripe with it is the seemingly insurmountable debt that said education brings. Literally, all of my friends that have gone to college are no where near paying their debt off and I'm in my late 30s. I grew up lower middle class - not poor - took on a healthy amount of debt to get a CS degree from a crappy college in West Virginia. Most of my classma…

> Most of my classmates are doing quite well, and I'm working at Google - with a fellow classmate, literally in the 1% now (both of us, out of a class of only 8). What happened to those who didn’t study CS? How are they doing? We far too frequently look into our bubbles as if they reflected the world around us. They don’t.

Since I went to a shitty school, there weren't many rich kids.

The rich kids I knew are all doing way worse than their parents. Not surprising? It's hard and takes a lot of luck to be in the 0.1%.

All of my friends are doing quite well, almost all of them better then their parents.

Is this anecdata helpful? Did I self-select to be friends with successful people? I don't know...

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#336

Post by throwaway55421 »

jokoon wrote: post #275
throwaway55421 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statements are not symmetrical, though. Let's use the less emotionally charged example of the gym rat. An individual who sets out with the goal and drive to become strong can be successful with high probability. But not everyone will do that. Most will give up or just not even bother in the first place.

It improves the probability, but it's not a requirement, and sometimes it doesn't increase the probability at all.

I mean, sure, if we want to abandon the concept of cause and effect entirely because John went to the gym and ... got hit by a bus on the way, oops.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#337

Post by andrewjl »

math_denial wrote: post #200
andrewjl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fact that something is a social construct does not mean that it is not important and has not rules by which the members of said society have to live by. Money and democracy are social constructs too.

I agree that money and democracy are also human or social constructs.

Can you clarify what you mean by rules members of society have to live by?

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#338

Post by provobro »

To me the article seems to be more about the challenges of growing up in 3rd world communities specifically, not about being born poor in general. There are many people born poor in 1st world countries that can rise out of poverty through education and discipline. In first world countries being poor is often about poor money management and going into poorly paid fields - https://www.askthesavingsguy.com/2021/09/16/why-youre-broke-... but in third world countries it seems to be much more of a systemic problem

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#339

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #216
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, obviously, that's not the case with all education, but my next gripe with it is the seemingly insurmountable debt that said education brings. Literally, all of my friends that have gone to college are no where near paying their debt off and I'm in my late 30s. I grew up lower middle class - not poor - took on a healthy amount of debt to get a CS degree from a crappy college in West Virginia. Most of my classma…

I am also bothered by the rise in income inequality. Specifically, in many highly developed nations, the likelihood one can jump up income deciles has greatly decreased generation-over-generation. As someone who grew up lower middle class and leapt many, many income deciles, what ideas do you have to decrease income inequality? For example, you say that you are in the top 1% now. Do you favour increasing your own per…

I'm of the belief that income is less relevant - wealth is what really matters.

My marginal tax rate is ~48%. I think that's already high enough.

The idea that there is no wealth tax - and that the Fed arguably gives people a negative wealth tax - that seems a little off to me.

The median home owner has about 3:1 leverage on their house - with a home value that's 4x their income. The Fed has been pumping up house prices by a couple percent per year for 13 years.

.02x4x3=.24

The average home owner with a mortgage is getting an ~24% negative income tax. The median tax payer has a ~22% federal tax rate. Effectively, this is a -2% income / wealth tax.

This seems incredibly broken. We've created a society of haves and have nots. People willing to speculate on government handouts on their mortgage are wealthy. People not willing or unable have almost 0 wealth.

I'm in the 1%. Do I deserve to be? I don't know. But by definition, someone does. I make ~4x the median laborer after taxes and transfers. This doesn't seem broken. In my state, I make ~9x minimum wage after taxes and transfers. This also doesn't seem broken. Maybe others think differently?

Before taxes and transfers, the numbers seem much more extreme. That seems irrelevant to me.

The top 1% in wealth have ~100x the wealth of the median person in my state. That seems broken.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#340

Post by andrewjl »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #203
andrewjl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There is a qualitative difference between human and animal societies.

"One morning, working alone in the attic, I came across some boxes of skeletons that had been dug up from a monastery. I was soon to be reminded of a lecture given by the anthropologist Margaret Mead, who spent much of her life studying primitive culture. She asked the question, What is the earliest sign of civilization?” A clay pot? Iron? Tool? Agriculture? No, she claimed. To her, evidence of the earliest true civilization was a healed femur, a leg bone, which she held up before us in the lecture hall. She explained that such healings were never found in the remains of competitive savage societies, There, clues of violence abounded: temples pierced by arrows, skulls crushed by clubs. But the healed femur showed that someone must have cared for the injured person – hunted on his behalf, brought him food, and served him at personal sacrifice. Savage societies could not afford such pity. I found similar evidence of healing in the bones from the churchyard."

from Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

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