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The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

johnkay.com

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Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#131

Post by w1ntermute »

bsbechtel wrote: post #130
w1ntermute wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That means we have more people who can go work on things like curing cancer and colonizing space Labor isn't 1-for-1 substitutable. You can't take a 50 y/o manual laborer with a high school education who's been displaced by robots and just turn him into a cancer researcher or rocket scientist.

It's not, but humans are dynamic beings who can learn new skills, not stagnant machines with one single function. 100 years ago half our population was illiterate, yet we overcame the displacement of thousands of farm workers due to technology. We will continue to do this throughout history again and again.

> 100 years ago half our population was illiterate, yet we overcame the displacement of thousands of farm workers due to technology.

As new generations came of age. That doesn't solve the problem of all the middle-aged people who are now out of work because they have been obsoleted by computers. These are very real problems, politically, socially, and economically, in the short term.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#132

Post by bsbechtel »

w1ntermute wrote: post #131
bsbechtel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, but humans are dynamic beings who can learn new skills, not stagnant machines with one single function. 100 years ago half our population was illiterate, yet we overcame the displacement of thousands of farm workers due to technology. We will continue to do this throughout history again and again.

> 100 years ago half our population was illiterate, yet we overcame the displacement of thousands of farm workers due to technology. As new generations came of age. That doesn't solve the problem of all the middle-aged people who are now out of work because they have been obsoleted by computers. These are very real problems, politically, socially, and economically, in the short term.

Lots of middle-aged people who are needing to develop new skills with lots of time on their hands. Sounds like a good business opportunity for a creative entrepreneur in the education space.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#133

Post by dllthomas »

gesman wrote: post #42

Poor are not staying poor by their "struggle to prosper". Poor are staying poor by keeping doing things that keeping them poor, like getting further down in debt, not acquiring new skills, not being productive and not expressing their creativity. And of course rich have their habits as well. Give money to poor guy, take all the money from rich guy and see where they are in in 5 years. Chances are they'll be back to t…

That's one theory. The evidence doesn't support it. Maybe the rich guy can get back to where he was with his track record and connections to build on (more likely if he earned the money in the first place rather than inheriting it), and of course if you just take cash and not other sources of wealth you probably haven't hurt the rich guy all that much. But when we have given money to poor people, they use it to improve their lives.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Column+Want+help+poor+...

"In Dauphin, Man., the government gave more than 1,000 families a four-year guaranteed income to help keep them out of poverty. Crime rates and hospital visits dropped. Education enrolment surged. Nobody sat around in sweatpants eating Cheetos. They used the extra resources to make plans. "

Focused on children: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/what-happens...

"But just four years after the supplements began, Professor Costello observed marked improvements among those who moved out of poverty. The frequency of behavioral problems declined by 40 percent, nearly reaching the risk of children who had never been poor."

Rural poverty in Kenya: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-25/want-to-figh...

"Food consumption increased 20 percent, with a 42 percent reduction in the number of days children go without food. Recipients were also able to increase their ability to earn income. Revenue from raising livestock rose by 48 percent; total revenue from self-employment rose by 38 percent."

Again, for emphasis: total revenue from self-employment rose

And lastly, a large one-time payment to long-term homeless men in London (though an unfortunately small sample size): http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-money-might-be-t...

"A year later, 11 of the 13 had roofs over their heads. (Some went to hostels; others to shelters.) They enrolled in classes, learned how to cook, got treatment for drug abuse and made plans for the future."

You need to update your model of how people work.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#134

Post by dllthomas »

mattmcknight wrote: post #120
specialist wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Capitation is inferior to market pricing in many ways and not "required" to reduce costs." Don't confuse markets with incentives. "Another solution is to force providers to charge a single posted price to all consumers, instead of practicing price discrimination." Not mutually exclusive. "This achieves the purported benefit of single payer, while still allowing for people to choose how much they want to spend on med…

>Don't confuse markets with incentives. I'm not confusing markets with incentives, I am suggesting that markets are the best known means of finding prices. Forcing capitation reduces the creation of new business models. The model already exists (in insurers like Kaiser that provide their own services), and can be chosen by consumers when appropriate. >Not mutually exclusive. Didn't say they were, but you used the wor…

"The common thread is that subsidies on the consumer side (in higher ed, healthcare, and home ownership) increase demand and thus increase prices."

But it is worth noting that in the long term that is only if there is something preventing the industry from growing (limited resources, barriers to entry). Otherwise, supply will respond to the increased demand and prices will be driven back toward the cost of production.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#135

Post by [deleted] »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #113
specialist wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Look at insane costs of healthcare/education in the US - no doubt caused, in part, by "free money" either through government-assisted programs or employer-sponsored insurance." Huh? Even with the modest ACA reforms implemented to date, the growth of healthcare costs has already slowed down. First time since the 90s. Medicare, which is most akin to single payer in other countries, is the most efficient guarantor (hig…

Medical loss ratio is a stupid metric. A simple way to increase it: reduce fraud protection. For example, suppose you reduce fraud protection by $1, resulting in an increase in undetected fraud by $2. Medical loss ratio = (med cost + $2) / (admin cost - $1) will go up.

[deleted]

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#136

Post by dctoedt »

tptacek wrote: post #80
benched wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is at least partly tongue-in-cheek, but at 36 I'm not really afraid of death. I am, however, rather terrified of aging further , since that's a thing that's happening right now. It's become very current in the last couple of years. And 'dying', since that's basically the very worst phase of aging.

I'm 37, not paralyzed by mortality, but sickened by the purported invincibility of 30 year olds. :)

> I'm 37, not paralyzed by mortality, but sickened by the purported invincibility of 30 year olds. :)

It starts long before age 30. Just wait till your kids get older, Thomas ....

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#137

Post by pizza234 »

FD3SA wrote: post #12

I've always been baffled by the investment choices of billionaires. If you accept an empirical view of the universe, no matter what you do, you will eventually die. Your experiences of the world will cease to exist. Therefore, the only rational investment would be in life extension technologies (SENS, advanced prosthesis, etc.). At first, this might sound repulsive. The idea of a group of elites discovering and hoard…

Well, first of all, research attemps to extend life are not like solving engineering problems - it's not somthing clear cut.

Minimal advances for example may take years and years.

And especially, how do you know that those advances are going to apply to the person who's founding the research?

What if one is at risk of heart attack? Should he still invest in life extension?

The concept of "curing [almost] every known disease" doesn't make any sense.

In this perspective, investing in life extension looks more like gambling to me, because we're dealing with non-deterministic contexts. So much for rationality.

Luxury commodities are an entirely different thing. As people pointed out, they satisfy some different needs.

Re: The world’s rich stay rich while the poor struggle to prosper

#138

Post by quadrangle »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #117
quadrangle wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's got nothing more to say and nothing relevant anymore? The "jumped the shark" reference is to absurd things after running out of ideas. It doesn't apply at all here. Non sequitur. Inequality whining is just getting started , given that we're on track for the problem to just get worse.

It never had anything to say, it never was relevant. These two facts are only now becoming obvious to more people, hence the shark jumping.

That's not what shark jumping means. It means that something was relevant but now has run out of ideas.
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