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Why do you think people are poor?

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Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#121

Post by Produce »

Jun8 wrote: post #115
Produce wrote: post #107

She's completely correct that it's the culture of the rich which make them rich. What she's completely wrong about is that it's their morality that makes it so. We, the rich, the middle and upper classes, are the ones who fund prisons, we are the ones who do not share our food with our neighbors, we are the ones who refuse to mix with them and share our culture. It's like Terrence McKenna said - "Culture is not your…

I don't know what the exact unutterable "dangerous" solution you have in mind, but I can assure you, that's not it. The concept of inequality is bred into the human psyche (our hardware or software), you cannot get rid of simplistic social constructs such as communism, etc. Even if technology advances to the level of creating robots to do all menial tasks, our concepts and need for inequality will not go away (for a…

>The concept of inequality is bred into the human psyche

If it's inherent then why are there examples of societies which lack it?

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#122

Post by greedo »

pron wrote: post #88
mindcrime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a good school does provide the opportunity, from stories I've heard from people who have worked at or attended bad schools it would be an environment where it would be basically impossible to learn anything even if you wanted to. OK, this is just one anecdote, but... I grew up in a fairly rural, poor part of North Carolina, went to generic, poor to below average public schools, came from a dirt-poor family t…

You have done extremely well, but you're forgetting that most successful rich people, those born to the right parents and in the right neighborhoods, are boring as %!#&, and many of them are not only unmotivated to learn, but quite stupid as well. So it's only the poor who have to really want it. The rich are simply born with it. So economic success is still very much hereditary (though you don't inherit it with your…

That's a magnificent job of stereotyping you've got going there. I can think of lots of "rich people" who have done quite well; Bill Gates springs to mind.

I'd love to see some evidence showing that middle class folks aren't financially mobile.

I mean seriously? Rich people (oh you qualified it with a "most") are stupid, unmotivated, and boring. I should know not to feed the trolls, but on HN, I can't let this type of stuff slide.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#123

Post by mindcrime »

ams6110 wrote: post #87
mindcrime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a good school does provide the opportunity, from stories I've heard from people who have worked at or attended bad schools it would be an environment where it would be basically impossible to learn anything even if you wanted to. OK, this is just one anecdote, but... I grew up in a fairly rural, poor part of North Carolina, went to generic, poor to below average public schools, came from a dirt-poor family t…

I'm curious what your parents taught you about personal responsibility. My theory is it's less about whether you grow up in poverty as it is about growing up being taught you're a victim, that everything bad in your life is the result of other people hating you or taking what should be yours, etc. If you feel everything that you have or don't have is the result of things other people are giving you or taking from you…

I'm curious what your parents taught you about personal responsibility. My theory is it's less about whether you grow up in poverty as it is about growing up being taught you're a victim, that everything bad in your life is the result of other people hating you or taking what should be yours, etc. If you feel everything that you have or don't have is the result of things other people are giving you or taking from you, you learn that you are not in control of your destiny.

Oh yeah... that. My parents absolutely hammered a sense of personal responsibility into me, and a "you control your own destiny" sentiment. My dad also instilled a sense of work ethic through demonstration (although, if you'd asked him when I was 14, he probably would have disagreed!). The thing is, we were poor, but my dad always worked and worked hard... and he was an entrepreneur, even a serial entrepreneur even though I doubt he knew that word. In between stints of working on dredge boats and doing auto-mechanic work, etc., my dad started business after business: building and selling crab traps, bought a dump trunk and did "hauling fill dirt," then "building docks and bulkheads" and then it was cutting down trees and hauling pulpwood to the mills, etc., etc. He finally "made it" so to speak, doing a business pouring and finishing cement (foundations, slabs, etc.)

So in that regard, I had a strong sense of personal responsibility (I think my parents essentially were libertarians, even though they had probably never heard that word either) and a demonstration of work ethic and the entrepreneurial drive.

However the reality is that almost nobody in the world or evn your town even knows you exist, much less is actively working to keep you down. If you grow up being told that life is (largely) what you make it, you will tend to do what it takes to achieve what you want, rather than remaining mired in self-pity and victimhood.

+1

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#124

Post by mindcrime »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #83
mindcrime wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument has never been that it is impossible to rise from poverty. The argument is that it is demonstrably massively unlikely. So the question then, as I see it, is "how do we make it more likely?" I mean, if I can overcome all sorts of obstacles that are frequently cited as reasons people remain in poverty, and I am not anybody particularly special, then why shouldn't anybody else be able to? What separates a k…

Based on your story it seems you were lucky enough to have a stable family who gave you what support they could to pursue independent study/tinkering outside of school. I am in the UK so it may be somewhat different here but I certainly know people with similar stories to yours over here. However there are plenty of families over here who live in poverty where either both parents are unemployed , or dad is a drug dea…

Based on your story it seems you were lucky enough to have a stable family who gave you what support they could to pursue independent study/tinkering outside of school.

Semi-stable might be a better term. My parents divorced when I was 16, and through most of my childhood my dad wasn't around through big chunks of it, because a lot of the jobs he took (in between attempts at entrepreneurial initiatives) involved working "on the road" a lot (mainly dredge-boats). But yeah, we were poor, but mostly not so poor that we couldn't afford food (although we had stints on foodstamps and what not, to be honest), and we did have enough money at times, that yeah, I managed to accumulate a decent little home library through yard-sales, library book sales, etc., and I had a little toolset, a soldering iron, and the ocassional trip to Radio Shack to acquire components (along with whatever components I could scavenge from old discarded TVs acquired from around the neighborhood, etc).

However there are plenty of families over here who live in poverty where either both parents are unemployed , or dad is a drug dealer and mum is a prostitute.

Yeah, thankfully my own situation wasn't quite that bad.

In many of these cases the children are simply not encouraged to learn anything, never provided with books (the parents might not even be able to read themselves).

Luckily for me, my mom was (and is) an avid reader and she read to me a lot as a kid, so I could already read when I started kindergarten, and I was always reading books from a few grade levels ahead of my grade. I remember once, in elementary school, trying to check out a book that was reserved for a grade higher than my own grade, and they wouldn't let me, and I raised such a fuss that my mom eventually came down to the school, talked to the school officials and got me permission to check out higher grade books. So yeah, in that regard, I had some positive things on my side.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#125

Post by mindcrime »

dredmorbius wrote: post #62
mindcrime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a good school does provide the opportunity, from stories I've heard from people who have worked at or attended bad schools it would be an environment where it would be basically impossible to learn anything even if you wanted to. OK, this is just one anecdote, but... I grew up in a fairly rural, poor part of North Carolina, went to generic, poor to below average public schools, came from a dirt-poor family t…

And how did your peers do? On average?

Good question. I'm not sure I've kept in touch with enough of them to truly answer that (and keep in mind, I'm almost 39, so it's been quite a few years since I've seen or talked to the majority of these people). But, I know at least one or two of my classmates did go on to become medical doctors, while more than a few are working various blue collar, manual labor jobs back home in rural NC. To quantify what the "average" outcome for those folks is, would be pretty tough to do.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#126

Post by kylebrown »

mindcrime wrote: post #59
RyanIyengar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument has never been that it is impossible to rise from poverty. The argument is that it is demonstrably massively unlikely.

The argument has never been that it is impossible to rise from poverty. The argument is that it is demonstrably massively unlikely. So the question then, as I see it, is "how do we make it more likely?" I mean, if I can overcome all sorts of obstacles that are frequently cited as reasons people remain in poverty, and I am not anybody particularly special, then why shouldn't anybody else be able to? What separates a k…

> So the question then, as I see it, is "how do we make it more likely?"

We'd have to change the structure of society. Its a class structure, and there's only so much room at the top. The wealth of the upper class comes from extracting rents from the lower class. This happens on a global scale (core countries exploiting the periphery) as well as a local scale (landlords with good credit collect more in rent than they pay on the mortgage).

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#127

Post by codex »

dredmorbius wrote: post #65
codex wrote: post #13

Evolution encourages diversity. At any given point in time and place, some people are better adapted than others. The least adapted make up at least some of the poor. By this relative definition, some poor will always be with us, even though their standard of living is rising continually.

Evolution does not "encourage" diversity. Evolution is predicated on some distribution of genetically inheritable characteristics with differential survival / reproductive benefits. Depending on a number of other characteristics, one might end up with highly diverse, or highly homogeneous local or regional populations.

You are right in general, but for succinct Internet discussion it is necessary to simplify as much as possible. Unfortunately this can sidetrack the discussion as flaws in the simplification are addressed.

In the case of humans, evolution did encourage diversity, if only because it created sexual reproduction in humans, which increases the diversity of offspring. And of course, humans are not all identical today, implying an evolutionary response to different environmental conditions.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#128

Post by matwood »

ams6110 wrote: post #87
mindcrime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a good school does provide the opportunity, from stories I've heard from people who have worked at or attended bad schools it would be an environment where it would be basically impossible to learn anything even if you wanted to. OK, this is just one anecdote, but... I grew up in a fairly rural, poor part of North Carolina, went to generic, poor to below average public schools, came from a dirt-poor family t…

I'm curious what your parents taught you about personal responsibility. My theory is it's less about whether you grow up in poverty as it is about growing up being taught you're a victim, that everything bad in your life is the result of other people hating you or taking what should be yours, etc. If you feel everything that you have or don't have is the result of things other people are giving you or taking from you…

I'm curious what your parents taught you about personal responsibility. My theory is it's less about whether you grow up in poverty as it is about growing up being taught you're a victim, that everything bad in your life is the result of other people hating you or taking what should be yours, etc. If you feel everything that you have or don't have is the result of things other people are giving you or taking from you, you learn that you are not in control of your destiny.

My story is similar to mindcrimes. I don't remember my parents ever blaming anyone else or being victims. My moms lessons were fairly simple. Work hard, don't get a girl pregnant, and go to college.

My dad was a quiet guy who just worked hard. If I complained about something not being fair he didn't care. "Life isn't fair. Now what are you going to do?" I can still clearly remember him and my mom fighting over food stamps. We qualified, and my mom wanted to get them but he refused. Instead he got another side job.

The other thing he always did was put outcomes squarely on me. It didn't matter if it really was another persons fault, he always asked what could I have done differently to change the situation.

I'll quit rambling now, but let me say y level of perfectionism and work ethic clearly came from my dad. It's probably not always healthy, but it has worked out pretty well so far :)

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#129

Post by [deleted] »

Dn_Ab wrote: post #105
crasshopper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are maybe thinking that it is difficult to identify powerlaws? (EDIT: s/identify/statistically verify/; s/powerlaws/TRUE powerlaws/) But look: http://globalrichlist.com/how.html The bulk is indeed powerlaw. Maybe you are thinking that a sufficiently winsorised US income distribution is lognormal.

To the contrary I think people are too eager to find scale free and power law phenomena. There are several papers discussing log-normal bulk and then power law tail. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2002/feb/26/the-phy... http://fmwww.bc.edu/ec-p/wp671.pdf and more For what it's worth my initial statement was meant to hold beyond income and wealth and generalize to say achievement and productivity and so a lo…

[deleted]

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#130

Post by randomdata »

sp332 wrote: post #49
grassclip wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the desire for an education is intrinsic. If you want to learn, you will (as evidenced by the study gms was talking about). Simply having access to all those goodies won't lead to motivation. Unmotivated students in that cushy environment would just lead to them being happier and more content, not make them work harder.

If you have a desire to learn but no possibility of learning (no teachers, no materials etc.) then you won't be educated.

There is always something to learn.

At some point, a long, long time ago, people had to have made discoveries and learn from that without teachers or materials. The education we have come to take for granted didn't just appear out of thin air.

You might be reinventing the wheel, but it's still a great achievement. The lack of teachers and materials isn't going to stop anyone who wants to learn.

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