341–350 of 868 posts
This is a powerful message. A cynical (mostly realistic) outlook is that we are powerless pawns at the mercy of the powerful (read rich) in the world whose actions are ultimately reasons for blaming the powerless.
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I don't understand how to practically make this work. There's a strong case to be made that a minimum wage helps people whose value approaches the minimum while hurting people above or below (e.g. $12 and $18 wages in an unlimited market both round to $15 with a minimum, while someone who only produces $7 of value is no longer employable). Similarly with cash infusions - giving people more money is inflationary. Nobo…
My personal position is to abolish the minimum wage and update the tax scale with negative tax rates that support a reasonable quality of life at all income levels. The market will find its own balance for what a true minimum wage is in that environment (and not have weird perverse incentives like you state). Yes, this is UBI. But phrased as a tax cut makes it politically viable (at least in the US).
Expansion of the EITC program is fairly well-regarded among economists and has been historically quite popular! We should do more of it!
Great title and initial presentation though!
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The visualization is a good iteration on trying to get complex papers distilled into a digestible format. That was nice. I'm not super sure how I feel about the message though as it operates on a handful of really big presumptions. I'll share my own bias to save everyone the tldr on where I'm coming from: I'm a parent advocate. I think the nuclear family is the backbone to society and that much, if not every, societa…
> The second presumption is that "abuse" or "adverse experiences" is able to be categorized by the researcher's definition. Again, we're dealing with people of different cultures who have different standards for living. We're overlaying our own "refined" terminology of what constitutes "abuse" or "danger" to them and drawing conclusions. Worse yet, we're saying that those same conclusions are correlated to the condit…
Hundred percent agree on this point. My concession was that it's not always beneficial that the parents stay joined nor is it deterministic that a single father or mother is strictly worse off than an intact family with an abusive/negligent/not present parent. Ideally none would divorce, but we can't factor for that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The visualization is a good iteration on trying to get complex papers distilled into a digestible format. That was nice. I'm not super sure how I feel about the message though as it operates on a handful of really big presumptions. I'll share my own bias to save everyone the tldr on where I'm coming from: I'm a parent advocate. I think the nuclear family is the backbone to society and that much, if not every, societa…
Question one of the ACE test is > Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? seems pretty clear to me, regardless of if something is considered okay in one culture but not in another, the question is was the experience humiliating, not did X happen, where X could be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal position is to abolish the minimum wage and update the tax scale with negative tax rates that support a reasonable quality of life at all income levels. The market will find its own balance for what a true minimum wage is in that environment (and not have weird perverse incentives like you state). Yes, this is UBI. But phrased as a tax cut makes it politically viable (at least in the US).
I would be interested to see this modeled. One of the classic unintended consequences of social welfare is making someone at the bottom unwilling to work. We saw this during the pandemic when people in formerly low-wage jobs got a lot of cash assistance and stopped being interested in low-wage jobs. (Remember all the "help wanted" signs and early closing hours at local restaurants?) I'm curious to see an example scal…
Unwilling to work or temporarily not desperate to stay alive? How many receiving assistance were still working, just doing it less?
The only studies on outcomes I recall is that a lot of kids were no longer experiencing food insecurity.
The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. I wish they had shown percentages with the visualization. They choose not to. I was underwhelmed by some points that seemed like they should have been more shocking. Look at the huge number of people in the many adverse experiences category who made it to college, and make a high salary.…
It's hard to look at visualizations like this and reflect on the experiences of the individuals living through hardship. Even those who 'make it out' may struggle in ways not fully captured in the data or this visualization. I grew up in a 'high risk environment', and experienced all the adverse experiences with the exception of gun violence (yay Canada). I'm one of the few that 'made it out'. Many of my childhood fr…
I think a lot of people take for granted what an impact a small amount of money, or the lack thereof, has on a person's ability to thrive and contribute to their community, and how much its impact on a person's mental health contributes to hopelessness and often ultimately substance abuse.
I do like your thoughts on things the government could change. Frankly, though, I actually think they know these things but have perverse incentives to keep the population stratified. This country would financially crumble without the abuse of those in poverty for every one of those 7 generations, if not more.
I think managing this pool of exploitable resources is actually a primary component of most govs immigration strategies.
The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. I wish they had shown percentages with the visualization. They choose not to. I was underwhelmed by some points that seemed like they should have been more shocking. Look at the huge number of people in the many adverse experiences category who made it to college, and make a high salary.…
Took another look at their data visualizations, and yeah, look at 2013, for the people with no adverse experiences, it looks like at least 40% make $45k more, while those with multiple adverse experiences it looks something like 15%.
And, in 2021, it's harder to see (because looks like people's income rises as they get older), but it looks like for no-adverse experiences, good 50% are making over $60k, while maybe 30% for multiple adverse experiences.
... and actually, do agree with one aspect, it is interesting that the older they get, the less the differences in income and other life attributes are. Maybe it just means that for people who had difficult childhoods, it takes more time to get past all the early obstacles, and live a more stable life.
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It's hard to look at visualizations like this and reflect on the experiences of the individuals living through hardship. Even those who 'make it out' may struggle in ways not fully captured in the data or this visualization. I grew up in a 'high risk environment', and experienced all the adverse experiences with the exception of gun violence (yay Canada). I'm one of the few that 'made it out'. Many of my childhood fr…
Unfortunately a solid number of these things would rely on the moral equivalent of slavery. > Reduce the burden of poverty. For instance, the poorer you are the further you have to travel to the grocery store. The people who often don't have the means to easily travel for food have to travel for food. No one wants to work in these neighborhoods because they are invariably awful. At some point the risk of an employee…
I think you mean China's economic system, which was in turn based on the practices of the USSR. China's economic system is lifting millions out of poverty, but western systems are systematically dragging people into it. Poverty in the US has never been lower than it was in 1973. Since then, poverty in China decreased by about 85%.
What's missing here -- and in most of social sciences -- is the realization that adverse events is itself a product of genetics, and bad social outcomes are only weakly mediated through those events. Genetics is most of the story here and, although it's a depressing narrative, I'm sick of seeing people push a narrative that is not based on facts.
On what factual basis can you claim that adverse events are primarily driven by genetics? On the face of it this seems ludicrous. A baby born to a mother living in a high-risk environment but then adopted by a low-risk family would likely do far better in their life than the inverse.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...