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Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

priceonomics.com

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Re: Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

#2

Post by r00fus »

Interesting takeaways:

* They mentioned some degree of "mentorship effect", but didn't clarify how they controlled for this.

* Cash handouts (ie, basic income) prevented desperate measures. The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes.

Re: Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

#3

Post by lifeformed »

> Of course, evaluating whether the therapy itself was the relevant factor here is pretty messy. There’s a lot to these classes other than CBT, and on the surface it looks like a lot of these things could have impacted the results: The programs were administered by adults, who could have created a “generic mentorship effect.” Or maybe simply requiring that they show up to class week after week taught participants self control.

Couldn't they control this by having the other group go to a class, but not do anything?

Re: Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

#4

Post by solson »

To one degree or another authority implies the threat of violence. For the person confronted with violence, subconscious automatic action is required for survival. Mistakes may be made, but trust in your training is essential. It is the same in sports (football, basketball, ice hockey, tennis), if you have to hesitate and consciously think, you are "in your head" and you'll be beaten. Some of us have been trained to react automatically by our environments. The best training ground for criminal behavior is juvenile detention and other forms of incarceration where hesitation will get you in trouble quickly. Our system is creating these kids who act on auto pilot. If they lose respect they have lost nearly everything they have.

Re: Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

#6

Post by mason55 »

r00fus wrote: post #2

Interesting takeaways: * They mentioned some degree of "mentorship effect", but didn't clarify how they controlled for this. * Cash handouts (ie, basic income) prevented desperate measures. The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes.

> The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes

This is the idea behind a basic income.

Some experiments are also finding it cheaper to just give people houses than to continue to run homeless outreach programs.

Re: Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

#8

Post by vonklaus »

I read this article twice and I did find it interesting. However, this title doesn't make sense within the context of the article. Other than a contrived example they made up about rich kids possibly submitting to criminals while poor kids may not, this article focused solely on poor communities and mentorship programs.

On balance, the programs seem to work well in helping people get their lives together by giving them information, mentorship and resources. This does beg the question though: Are people being arrested because they are impulsive or disadvantaged as they did not provide contrasting evidence.

Also, in America nearly 50% of the population are in for drug offenses according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons data current as of may 30th, 2015[0] If all drugs were legal, and convictions on all other crimes collectively didn't double, less people would be in prison.

[0]http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offens...

Re: Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

#9

Post by eruditely »

Impulsiveness and Executive Functioning deficits contribute an extreme amount to crime, one of the primary sources of executive functioning ADHD has a number of great treatments. XR Stimulants work, many people in prison have ADHD and wouldn't have been there if they had taken their meds, recently it has become popular to doubt ADHD(See barkley for evidence) it's real and a big deal. The fact that it is so treatable is a miracle. Stop the nonsense.
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