Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 143 posts

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#131

Post by randomdata »

rdouble wrote: post #88
mynewwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be slightly out of touch if you think saving $700 a month is poor. Huge portions of America have no savings and live paycheck to paycheck. Many more have only a few hundred in savings total. 50% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 in an emergency (citation: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/news/economy/americans_lack_... ). Only 25% were "certain" they could come up with the funds.

Perhaps it's not "poor" but I was questioning whether it is really considered "solidly middle class." If it is, I guess I am out of touch.

Where would you place the middle class? While it might not seem abnormal around here, a $100K income puts you in the top 3-5% of earners.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#132

Post by kyllo »

saosebastiao wrote: post #91
kyllo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the big reason why Seattle is getting so expensive is just because there are lucrative jobs to be had here. Same reason why Silicon Valley is so expensive, but still on a smaller scale at this point. I think we're going to see more and more of this: the cities with a lot of jobs getting very expensive to live in, and the cities with fewer job opportunities staying flat or even getting cheaper--because…

But it doesn't have to be that way . Seattle has a lot of high paying jobs, sure. But because Seattle artificially restricts housing supply, the high paying jobs bring in people like me that can absorb the cost, pushing out people that can't absorb the cost. Those people tend to work in jobs that keep other living costs low , meaning that if they continue to exist at all, they exist at higher prices...exacerbating th…

But because Seattle artificially restricts housing supply, the high paying jobs bring in people like me that can absorb the cost, pushing out people that can't absorb the cost

I do know that the pace of new housing construction in the Seattle metro area is very low, and last winter the housing supply on the market hit its lowest level since late 90s dot-com boom. Now I don't know if this is truly due to artificial/legal/zoning restrictions as you say, or if it's just due to the geography and the fact that the areas within reasonable commuting distance of Seattle are pretty well built out already--or some combination of both. But the fact is, people are moving here much faster than we are building housing for them, and it's pushing up prices very fast.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#133

Post by quantumstate »

fingerprinter wrote: post #66

I can't help but feel that this is about a couple of things: 1. education 2. income 3. influence I've travelled and lived all over the world. It always struck me odd that the poorer places in the world always seem to value religion over education (my perception), and it creates a nasty cycle where the majority of people don't/can't better themselves. I saw this first hand in the southern US where it was always God #1…

As an extreme counter example I visited rural South Sudan, this is one of the poorest parts of the world, people are subsistence farming so their monetary income is very low. Some people struggle to pay school fees of 20 South Sudanese Pounds ($6.88) a term (3 terms a year).

Government funding is pretty limited so a lot of schools are supported by the church there, I think the funds are mainly provided by Christian organisations outside of the country.

My theory is that people with a better education are more keen on education. In South Sudan the people in church leadership are highly educated compared with the average person.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#134

Post by mindcrime »

jshen wrote: post #128
mindcrime wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice strawman. I certainly don't believe that. That's good to know. And I'm not saying that you specifically do believe that... it's more that your earlier post just seems to fit into a meme that seems to be becoming more and more prevalent around here, in which everything becomes attributable to "luck". Perhaps I over-reached in lumping your post into that category. Probably I'm just overly sensitive on this topic.…

" But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful" I agree when we're talking about making decisions in our own lives, but we should think about it at the level of society and government. We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. Social mobility is decreasing in America, and we should do something about it.

We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing.

True. Unfortunately there's quite a bit of debate about what policies are best at increasing opportunity.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#135

Post by jshen »

mindcrime wrote: post #134
jshen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful" I agree when we're talking about making decisions in our own lives, but we should think about it at the level of society and government. We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. Social mobility is decreasing in America, and we should do something about it.

We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. True. Unfortunately there's quite a bit of debate about what policies are best at increasing opportunity.

I think real analysis, with real data, goes a long way. It's ideology that messes it up.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#136

Post by justindz »

phreeza wrote: post #121
justindz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Born, raised and educated entirely in West Virginia. Currently a Director of Product Management at a DC tech company. My dad, who worked for the National Park Service for 35 years (retiring last month) brought home a 25Mhz "shades of grey" decommissioned laptop for me to play with in Jr. High. The rest is history. If I look back on that history, I definitely see myself being incredibly lucky, but also putting myself…

Not an early model Toshiba sattelite by any chance? My first computer had those specs, also dexomissioned hand-down, from my uncle.

I don't think so. I'm wracking my brain now to remember the manufacturer. I might have to ask my dad. Ah, childhood comes rushing back.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#137

Post by reeses »

mynewwork wrote: post #87
rdouble wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't notice your reply otherwise I wouldn't have deleted my post. In my home town in northwestern MN there is an agricultural experiment station which paid $35,000 for a programming job a couple years ago. I made a spreadsheet and even as a single guy with my car paid off I'd only be able to save about $700 a month on that salary. And that's as a renter. Granted, heating costs are much more expensive in northwest…

You may be slightly out of touch if you think saving $700 a month is poor. Huge portions of America have no savings and live paycheck to paycheck. Many more have only a few hundred in savings total. 50% of Americans couldn't come up with $2,000 in an emergency (citation: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/news/economy/americans_lack_... ). Only 25% were "certain" they could come up with the funds.

Not being able to save $700/month or to come up with $2,000 in an emergency situation in the USA is poor, no matter how much useless crap you bought with the rest of your money.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#138

Post by TheCoelacanth »

Arjuna wrote: post #83

I was born and grew up in WV. As many of you know, it is a poor state. We grew up on powdered milk. Most of my ancestors either went into chemical production (a local term from where I grew up is the "Chemical Valley", although most of that production and associated jobs are gone now) or slipped into the mines to work black gold [1]. We didn't have a lot, and there was no way that we could afford a computer. However,…

West Virginia may be a poor state, but if you'll look at the map they present, you'll notice it's actually a relatively high mobility area.

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#139

Post by phreeza »

justindz wrote: post #136
phreeza wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an early model Toshiba sattelite by any chance? My first computer had those specs, also dexomissioned hand-down, from my uncle.

I don't think so. I'm wracking my brain now to remember the manufacturer. I might have to ask my dad. Ah, childhood comes rushing back.

Amazingly, Toshiba still has a product page up for mine. The picture is misleading, it shows colors on the screen, but the specs list it as monochrome.

http://www.toshiba-europe.com/bv/computers/products/notebook...

Re: In America, Where You're Born Is Correlated With How Far You'll Go In Life

#140

Post by justindz »

phreeza wrote: post #139
justindz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. I'm wracking my brain now to remember the manufacturer. I might have to ask my dad. Ah, childhood comes rushing back.

Amazingly, Toshiba still has a product page up for mine. The picture is misleading, it shows colors on the screen, but the specs list it as monochrome. http://www.toshiba-europe.com/bv/computers/products/notebook...

Ah, the mighty SX processor series. These look like very similar specs, even though I'm sure it wasn't a Toshiba.
Post reply on HN