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America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

nytimes.com

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Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#471

Post by toasterlovin »

freeflight wrote: post #147
toasterlovin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this dovetails with what I think is the most fascinating topic in evolution: the demographic transition in humans. If you're not familiar, demographic transition is the term used to describe what has happened to the demography of nations as they become developed. Which is that, rather than producing more children with their material abundance, people in rich nations have less children. This is not, at all, what bi…

> This is not, at all, what biology would predict. Why isn't it? Afaik in biology, healthy populations tend to be stable populations. Populations that shrink or grow too fast are often a sign for something going very wrong, usually having to do with sustainability. That's why I think people in rich nations having fewer children is a feature and not a bug. It's the result of increasing living standards because when yo…

Biological organisms are machines for turning energy into additional copies of the genes that created the organism. People in the developed world have access to an obscene amount of energy. Yet fertility rates are below replacement level in basically every developed country (if you don't count first generation immigrants). And when you zoom in, you notice that poor people have more children than all but the top several percent of earners (so fertility goes down as access to resources goes up). If you saw something similar in any other species, it would be the biggest unsolved riddle in biology. Something truly strange. And yet here we are basically not paying attention to it at all.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#472

Post by toasterlovin »

antisthenes wrote: post #453
toasterlovin wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If fertility is constrained by lack of resources, the why do poor people in the developed world have more kids than middle class people?

Presumably because within the budget constraint, the survival rate of many kids will result in a similar amount of kids at the end of the woman's fertility window. I didn't say it is constrained by lack of resources, I said it's also constrained by lack of resources.

It's probably about whether women are on a career track and, thus, what age they start having children. Poor women generally aren't on a career track. They finish school and start working a job that doesn't require school or much training. So they can (and do) have children pretty early. Rich women do usually go to college, but they meet a future husband there who is on a high-earning career track and are able to start a family relatively early because they don't have to help pay the bills.

What I'm saying, though, is that if you look at the fertility curve[1] you'll see that many middle class families could eliminate one earner and still have 2-3x the income as poor families that have more children. But people are choosing not to do that (well, secular people are choosing not to do that; intensely religious people often do exactly that).

That's what's interesting to me.

[1]: https://twitter.com/CSchmert/status/993934031174725632

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#474

Post by naravara »

jblow wrote: post #459
naravara wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy much? The world isn't divided into some platonic form of "communism" and "capitalism." These are just labels we attach to a whole bunch of social and economic dynamics.

Names for colors or kinds of automobile are also just labels we attach to whole spectra of related things, but the words still have meaning and we are able to use them productively.

Responding to a comment like “this red color is agitating” with “you don’t get to complain about red unless you accept all the ways that yellow is bad” isn’t using terms productively.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#475

Post by brokenmachine »

itronitron wrote: post #317
axaxs wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost in the -exact- same boat, as if I could have written this comment myself. My favorite job, by far, was landscaping. Being outside all day, getting sun and exercise, and seeing your completed project were all very rewarding/valuable. I was in great shape, left work at work, and had no problem sleeping at night. It just doesn't pay well. I find working at computers all day rather depressing, at times pointless,…

>> I really wish there was some kind of middle ground. I think there is a market for a large, physically demanding computer keyboard. The keyboard 'keys' would require pressure from a full hand to activate, and the return and backspace keys could have a different type of lever action (pull to the side maybe). The operator would have to stand, which seems like a trend these days, and the PRO-version could come with a…

I would often find it pretty satisfying to punch a punching bag to send emails.
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