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The Unexotic Underclass

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Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#201

Post by DanBC »

tsunamifury wrote: post #164

I built language learning applications that reached over 10 million users in the developing world and my brother built a startup that employs only ex-cons in one of the worst neighborhoods in America. We learned a few things from actually doing this: TL;DR its really expensive to make products for the 'forgotten underclass' due to many unforeseen issues. 1) Poor areas are overrun with corruption and graft. Its very h…

> An example would be, after my brother created several successful startups using ex-cons, he wanted to turn the program over to the City. He quickly learned without a politician attached and 'sitting on the board' you couldn't do this. The price of this? Paying him 70% of the donations coming in to support the program. I have numerous examples more blatant in 2nd and 3rd world nations.

That sounds like an excellent situation to gather the evidence and get some newspaper coverage.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#202

Post by dasil003 »

DanBC wrote: post #77
NoPiece wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do people know to go to the edge of the supermarket when the government has been telling them, and schools have been teaching them go to the middle? This is the food pyramid the government was pushing from 1992-2005. You should have 6-11 servings of bread, rice, pasta, and cereal a day! It was red tape and ignorance that pushed people to the middle of the market. http://i.imgur.com/QtDfDAl.jpg

Obese Americans are not obese because they eat too much pasta and bread, but because they eat thousands of extra calories in the form of raw sugar and fat. A 330 ml can of cola is about 140 calories. A "Big Gulp" with 15% ice is about 360 calories.

This may be true in a strict factual sense, but I think the interesting question is why people are eating thousands of extra calories on an unprecedented scope.

Is it simply because more calories are available or is it because industrial foods that are scientifically designed to trigger an addictive response are completely devoid of the nutritional value that their flavors signal? The metabolic and satiety response to 360 calories of carbs in the form of a Big Gulp is completely different to the response to 360 calories of carbs from potatoes.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#203

Post by jcalvinowens »

orangecat wrote: post #171
jcalvinowens wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears that Norway, Austria and Germany, amongst others, do not see a balance in favor of the benefits. Germany just approved a minimum wage. > Unsurprisingly their unemployment rates are low. I have never bought this argument. A business hires employees because it has some amount of work it needs to be done. The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid. Arguing that t…

The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid. Whether the work can be profitably done certainly can change. Arguing that the minimum wage causes meaningful increase in unemployment is just as silly as arguing that paying CEOs huge salaries does. Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects? You can argue that a minimum wage makes things more expensive: that's likely…

> Could we make it $50/hour with no employment effects?

No, of course not. Nobody is asking for that.

> Which means the minimum wage is indirect welfare that redistributes money to low-skilled workers by taking it from some combination of business owners, employees, and customers.

That's a stretch... If raising the minimum wage caused a dollar-for-dollar increase in the price of everything then yes, but that would only occur in a business who's only major expense is unskilled labor, and even there it wouldn't be equal to the rise in wage. And for a low-income person, housing is a major expense that has a negligible labor component built into it.

> If Walmart pays a cashier $10/hour, they're helping him more than you are, but somehow they're the bad guy.

If people at Wal-Mart work and don't have enough money, and then they get welfare in order to make ends meet, that's you and I subsidizing Wal-Mart. I would rather that extra money for the worker come out of Wal-Mart's profits than your and my taxes.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#204

Post by jcalvinowens »

PeterisP wrote: post #197
jcalvinowens wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It appears that Norway, Austria and Germany, amongst others, do not see a balance in favor of the benefits. Germany just approved a minimum wage. > Unsurprisingly their unemployment rates are low. I have never bought this argument. A business hires employees because it has some amount of work it needs to be done. The amount of work to be done doesn't change as a function of how much workers are paid. Arguing that t…

There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment. We already have a bunch of automation technologies where machines and software can do a better job than a low-wage person can, simply the people currently are cheaper even at USA minimum wage. Once the minimum wage rises above that cost (or the tech drops in price), those jobs will be gone for good.

> There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.

This is not an accepted fact. There's a variety of scholarly literature that argues both sides of this issue.

> Those jobs will be gone for good.

That's an entirely different problem.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#205

Post by jwgur »

aianus wrote: post #186
JabavuAdams wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organ donation 2.0 and prostitution 2.0. But we're helping the poor to make their own decisions about how to generate wealth.

Let me understand how I'm supposed to see this: A-OK: Rich Americans die from kidney failure while poor Africans die from malnutrition/AIDS/TB/whatever. Reprehensible exploitation: Rich American buys a kidney from a poor African, feeding his family for a decade in the process. Nobody dies.

It's a false premise - the "Rich American" has a duty to help those who are less fortunate (poor Africans), and that duty extends further than just quid pro quo transactions.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#206

Post by nilsimsa »

chillingeffect wrote: post #188
tinco wrote: post #76

I would really love to cater to the unexotic underclass, but how? I mean he goes on and on about how much opportunity there is, but I don't see it. I know how to get 500 white liberal suburbanite young males to pay me $10 per month. They have the money and they love to spend it on tech and gadgetry that makes their lives even more comfortable. But single house mothers? Poor Romanians? How would I even get them to pay…

> all these people really want and need is money, In my opinion, all they really want and need is _land_. The real people squeezing everyone else are the landowners, and the landlords. With enough land, anyone can support themselves: chickens, vegetables, hunting and fishing, etc. Mortgages in exchange for housing ("death pledges") exploit the poor, indenturing them to overemployment at insufficient wages. The novelt…

If all you need is _land_, there is plenty of cheap land in the US. But you just have to live away from the big population centers. But then if you are going to be self sustaining, you don't need to near a big population center.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#207

Post by ceejayoz »

wolfgke wrote: post #89
tinco wrote: post #76

I would really love to cater to the unexotic underclass, but how? I mean he goes on and on about how much opportunity there is, but I don't see it. I know how to get 500 white liberal suburbanite young males to pay me $10 per month. They have the money and they love to spend it on tech and gadgetry that makes their lives even more comfortable. But single house mothers? Poor Romanians? How would I even get them to pay…

> I imagine them needing to spend money on food, accepted > education, There is so much educational stuff available on the internet and public libraries that I can't see a reason why there is a lot money to spend on. > housing Accepted > and entertainment. May I tell you something: As a graduate student I have so much work to do that I hardly have any time for entertainment. Thus rather little money is spent on it. C…

> There is so much educational stuff available on the internet and public libraries that I can't see a reason why there is a lot money to spend on.

> As a graduate student

You've presumably spent money on college, textbooks, etc.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#208

Post by PeterisP »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #204
PeterisP wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment. We already have a bunch of automation technologies where machines and software can do a better job than a low-wage person can, simply the people currently are cheaper even at USA minimum wage. Once the minimum wage rises above that cost (or the tech drops in price), those jobs will be gone for good.

> There is a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment. This is not an accepted fact. There's a variety of scholarly literature that argues both sides of this issue. > Those jobs will be gone for good. That's an entirely different problem.

It's not an entirely different problem, the point I'm trying to make is that this single factor causes a clear link between minimum wage and unemployment.

Currently, it makes sense for a poor person somewhere to make a living by sewing sneakers - because that person is cheap. It makes sense for people to work on data entry, it makes sense for people to flip burgers, it makes sense to do a lot of things - but only while the people remain so cheap.

There are many jobs already that are impractical to do in USA, because of the minimum wage - they get done either by automation or by someone in much poorer countries, but never again by a US worker. If minimum wage goes from $10 to $15, then more types of jobs will join that.

The 'entirely different' problem arrives when the true market rate of low skilled labor becomes negative - i.e., an automated process generally costs less than a manual process even if the workers would work for free or for basic shelter/sustenance (order of magnitude less than first world would call a livable wage). I don't want this, but it seems rather likely that it will happen within my lifetime.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#209

Post by rwallace »

tinco wrote: post #115
graeme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this is the future. I say unfortunately, because I think if we could see the final version, we'd recoil. The sharing economy, at heart, is about the monetization of spare capacity. So far it's mostly been physical assets, but spare time is next. Anywhere you find a poor person watching TV (or, god forbid, reading a book) there's spare capacity ready to be monetized. And, why are they sleeping so much?…

I agree that a future where millions live in poverty, working insane hours for minimal wages is repulsive and definitely the sort of thing that the next generation of web services might bring closer. But this future is going to come anyway, in the near future automation and centralization of production are only going to increase, leading to much increased joblessness. The only way we can combat that is if more wealth…

Future? Everything I've heard about society and the economy in the US says it's the present, without Web services coming into the picture. Web services don't make that aspect of things either better or worse, but what they do have the potential to do is make it so you don't have to endure a grinding commute and abuse by a sociopathic boss as well as the poverty and excessive hours

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#210

Post by ceejayoz »

nilkn wrote: post #175
lotsofpulp wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the skill and risk involved in being able to determine what is "under-priced"? The way I'm reading these posts, it seems as if all it takes to make money is money (at least in flipping homes).

Perhaps I'm thinking of a different notion of flipping homes. I might be the one confused here. I was thinking of buying old homes, possibly teardowns, in a rapidly up-and-coming area, renovating them, and then reselling them at a much higher price. I feel like there's less risk involved here as long as you have strong data showing the area is becoming popular and you can act quickly (i.e., before the boom ends). If…

So basically, by "I guarantee it" you meant "you could be fucked and lose all your money"?
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