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Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
31–40 of 310 posts
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#32For the individual, the answer is Debt. And servicing repayments of debt. Eg, that on the typical mortgage you repay ~3 times what you borrowed.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#33TLDR; "We have shown that poverty traps exist. People are poor because of a lack of opportunity. It is not their intrinsic characteristics that trap people in poverty but rather their circumstances. Poverty is not an innate condition. This has implications for how we think of development policy and for the value of eliminating global poverty."
Based on data from the Third World and destined to be used to argue for policy changes (towards wealth redistribution) in the First World.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#34Without making the jump from washing plates/factory work to software I don't know how I would have escaped(still haven't) considering my pay increased 4 times. Just brutal when you trade hours for money directly at a low rate, I was doing 70hrs washing plates before and it was nothing ha. Edit: there is the thought of living within your means, personally with a roommate I could live on $10-$20K a year which you can m…
This sort of perspective is very important, especially here on HN where I see plenty of ignorance on this topic. When you work these jobs, often the local cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages, where you stagnate and are unable to save. How can you possible afford to move when your rent increases? You have no savings to rent a vehicle to move your things, nothing to put down up front for a new apartment, an…
Yeah I didn't have a car for a while, I didn't get a job back in 2015 or so for PHP because of that ha. First in office web developer job after restaurant, I had to bike 30 miles a day lol [1] round trip, that was brutal. On the plus side, 3 hrs of podcasts. I listened to the book Eccentric Orbits then that was good.
Uber was like $60/day so yeah... although I only made it 4 days straight, never 5 days of bike riding so I would eat the Uber cost one day. I was lucky that friend loaned me $3K to get a car(opportunity). But I bought a bad car/sunk money into it(had to fix).
I would bike home from the factory pitch black road at night(dumb) listening to Changelog haha good times.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#35Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#36[flagged]
In the times of cavemen everyone was poor, was capitalism the root cause?
I haven't read the linked paper so I don't know how they'd define poor in it, but in my opinion in times of cavemen everyone was free to catch any prey to feed their families, everyone was free to pick any fruits from any trees and bushes, everyone was free to move in to any caves on any land.
I'd say they had everything they needed. Nowadays I wouldn't call that poor as masses of people working several shifts to be able to pay the rent and feed their families while they are feeding others to obesity higher up in the chain.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#37[flagged]
I don't want to defend capitalism, but I'd say that capitalism needing the exploitation of the weak is not even entirely true. There is strong evidence that overall economic growth peaked at times (or places) where income taxes were higher and the distribution of wealth and income was more equitable. Of course there is the whole matter of causation/correlation, but this at least shows that a capitalist society can an…
When the pandemic came to italy, I thought about what would be needed to survive[1] a two month[2] lockdown[3].
I had thought that in relatively rich[4] countries, providing air (minutes) for everyone would be trivial, providing water (days) easy, and providing food (weeks) something that would require something less than 5% of the population labouring under slightly altered habits[5].
However, by mid summer it has become painfully obvious that not only did some rich countries shut off water to their citizens, there has even been an infamous case of someone being deprived of air.
Now I am much less optimistic about climate change than I was last year.
[1] considering only physiological needs
[2] based on the chinese curves. It seems to have also been accurate for us.
[3] In practice, we didn't even "lock down", relying more on shared responsibility, and managed to get new cases to single digits per day. Unfortunately we're now in a (smaller, at least for the time being) second wave.
[4] For concreteness, consider those whose net worth exceeds GDP by at least a factor of 4.
[5] This was before I learned that food processing elsewhere is done in much more crowded conditions than here.
Q. Why is trickle down economics like UDP?
A. One might attempt to joke about either, but very few are likely to get it.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#38[flagged]
How's Venezuela going?
Venezuela is an example of what happens when you base your entire government spending on oil exports, prices drop, you refuse to adjust your spending in response, and resort to violence to silence critics of your spending. It has little to do with social welfare policies, or capitalism really, and much more to do with the pride of Chavez and Maduro, and a failure to diversify the economy to support social welfare policies.
The U.S., in contrast, is not only the largest oil producer in the world but also the largest economy in the world, and therefore much better diversified and suited to roll out enormous social welfare policies.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#39Without making the jump from washing plates/factory work to software I don't know how I would have escaped(still haven't) considering my pay increased 4 times. Just brutal when you trade hours for money directly at a low rate, I was doing 70hrs washing plates before and it was nothing ha. Edit: there is the thought of living within your means, personally with a roommate I could live on $10-$20K a year which you can m…
This sort of perspective is very important, especially here on HN where I see plenty of ignorance on this topic. When you work these jobs, often the local cost of living is pinned to these minimum wages, where you stagnate and are unable to save. How can you possible afford to move when your rent increases? You have no savings to rent a vehicle to move your things, nothing to put down up front for a new apartment, an…
People vastly underestimate how hard it is to do anything without capital/savings.
If you are one missed paycheque from going hungry, you can't afford any risks. No going back to school, no going freelance, no interviewing, no investing in anything. You can't afford the means to make money, whether it's a car, a computer or nice clothes. You can't afford them breaking down, but you also can't afford maintaining them.
The missed opportunities add up over time.
Grapes of Wrath is an excellent book that drives this point home really well. It hurts to read at times.
Re: Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]
#40This seems to be "Why do people stay in poverty?" "Poor" has a different meaning depending on who you ask. For example, students are popularly considered "poor". Some people would consider themselves "poor" if they can't afford a car. Some people consider themselves "poor" because they are not millionaires.