Had everyone in Vanessa's life had stable employment opportunities and the ability to pursue them, then I would imagine that her mother's and father's lives would have been radically different and her situation would be far less pernicious. The point of employment-focused poverty alleviation is not just that individuals having jobs is good, it's that material stability has powerful network effects that are not zero-sum and reinforce themselves over multiple generations.
Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
501–510 of 632 posts
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
People choose to acquire skills, or not. It's the whole point of all the education available to Americans, most of it free. Choose it, or not. Heck, you can even get an MIT education for free over the internet. It's up to you.
> People choose to acquire skills, or not. > It's the whole point of all the education available to Americans, most of it free. Choose it, or not. Heck, you can even get an MIT education for free over the internet. It's up to you. It's only free if your time is worthless. Else you have opportunity costs. Which are not just monetary (e.g. needing to work long hours to put food on the table) but human too (e.g. tending…
>>It's only free if your time is worthless.
If a person is poor, and they still think sparing an hour watching a Ivy League university lecture(that can vastly increase their opportunity range) isn't worth your time, they have far bigger problems related to entitlement.
>>Else you have opportunity costs.
And there they have a choice. Which opportunity is more important to one's life?
>>and even following that free education will be much harder than the average HN commenter whose parents splurged for their education.
There is often a huge space between Homelessness and being a billionaire.
You can always start doing work that is better than flipping burgers. And I don't any one will contest the fact that it will take a person years before they reach 6 figure salaries.
Again, even an entry level QA job could pay you better than flipping burger and you can work from there.
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#503The lady in the example is 33 has a diabetes, 3 kids to support, and presumably also have to support for her disabled mother. To make the matter even more sad she had no higher level education. I can imagine how hard and tough it is for her. But I don't think raising the minimum wage or a mandated salary increase/promotion is the real solution here. The real solutions would be to: 1. Educate parents on the importance…
It's entertaining that we, as a society, prevent people under the age of 18 from voting, and under 21 from drinking, and we say (truthfully) that it's because they aren't fully developed yet.
But when a person of 16 makes a life altering decision, and we shrug our shoulders and say "they should have known better".
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#504A few threads seem to believe that the minimum wage is high enough / need not be increased. I don’t actually want to argue about mechanism, but think that it’s imoortant to note that the math says our (current) minimum wage is demonstrably insufficient to remove poverty. With the Federal minimum wage currently at $7.25/hr, that’s just $15k/year at full-time. That puts many minimum wage workers below many countries’ a…
There are nearly twice as many Americans working below the minimum wage than at the minimum wage [0]. The BLS data is from self reported numbers. It doesn't include information about Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or by individual state or local minimum wage laws. But if even a portion of those individuals working below the federal minimum wage in the gray market or under the table, it kind of makes minimum wage rat…
Hmm. I don’t think that data necessarily leads to that conclusion. Two things:
- Many states have a higher minimum wage, so the BLS reports are annoying. They do strictly less-than-or-equal rather than also including “nearby” or even “minimum in state”, making the overall percentage fairly low. I’m guessing data for “What percentage of the labor force makes less than $15/hr” would be more helpful, but is too far from the current minimum wage to be a reasonable discussion.
- Anecdotally, informal labor is driven by workers without the right to work (whether due to immigration status or otherwise). So I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that people would suddenly end up below minimum wage; the more likely outcome is as others have suggested: companies will raise prices (keeping the job), invest in automation (removing the job), or both.
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does not absolve her of her irresponsibility. 99% of 16-year-olds realize having a kid is a bad idea. She made her bed, and now she sleeps in it. I can empathize with her situation, but I can not empathize with anyone saying she is not herself at least partly responsible.
A modern wealthy society that allows a bad-but-understandable move by a 16 year old girl to basically wreck her entire life, is a cruel society. Also don't overlook that America is also supposed to be a country of redemption and second chances, and that we as a society derive strength from that. We foster risk-taking, and we don't throw away people who seriously screw up - but rather capitalize on the fact that those…
The level to which you are removing Vanessa’s agency in your attempts to relieve her of responsibility is frankly sexist.
Don’t be sexist. She has agency. She has responsibility. She made her bed and now she lies in it. People with your paternalistic condescending thought process are ultimately what holds people like Vanessa back in society in the first place. Don’t take away her agency. She’s responsible for any decisions she’s made, good or bad. And 99% of her 16yr old female peers know that having a kid at 16 is a “ bad decision.” It’s literally sexist as fuck to suggest she was somehow stupid enough or irresponsible enough not to know what she was getting into. Vanessa KNEW she was making a “bad decision” and she CHOSE to make it anyway. Stop pretending like she didn’t choose it. Stop pretending like she has no agency. Stop being sexist. Thank you
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#506It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
You can escape poverty by working harder; it is just that working harder will not always work. It needs to be coupled with other virtues; of course the solution is not just simply to work harder, but to suggest that working harder is not a great deal part of the solution is false by every measure. Lets say this, you are born into a poor family - you still get to go to school that likely has a great library - the school and the library represent a deposit of great wealth that has been bestowed on you by society and you can take advantage of that - or not; most don't and mostly it is due to laziness. Most children would rather watch TV all day. Say you live in a "bad" neighborhood. You can pick up trash around your house or leave it there, or throw more trash on the ground. My observation is that the poor just throw more trash on the ground, they don't make their beds, they live in filthy or cluttered houses...with all that time on their poverty stricken hands they could at least organize their place. I have seen such stark differences...here in the states, in the middle east, and in Africa. I have seen impoverished people that wallow in their mire, and I have seen those that work hard to improve their situation, and though they may still be financially impoverished - they at least make the things around them a little nicer, educate their minds with what books they have and therefore live a more fulfilled life.
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to 'educate' parents as to the importance of education. It is a typical rich person bias to believe that poor and disadvanted people need to be told that. Likewise, people know that getting pregnant at 16 is not a great life plan. But the fundamentalist right have been campaigning for decades to control women's reproduction, including to prevent sexual health education, prevent contraception, and to de…
What's tragic is that millions of poor children are being raised in households considered poor because there is only a single earner. We have to address the cultural issues leading to the epidemic of single parent households. That will do far more for the children of the future than anything else.
That is one part of the problem, but I think you are being hyperbolic in describing it as the key. In many countries single parents (or single income families) are not automatically poor. Having a single income (at minimum wage) be above the poverty/food stamp line would be a start. Sick/carers leave and subsidised childcare also have huge impacts in allowing mothers to retain higher paying jobs.
The real question is: why won't America care about children?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brycecovert/2012/07/16/the-rise...
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#508It's not like meritocracy is completely unrelated to real life, it matters in a certain regime. However, if like Vanessa, you're born to lesser circumstances, you just cannot escape poverty by just working harder. Similarly, if you are born to very well off standards, even if you're a dope and spend money from Dad's inheritance on cocaine, sure, you won't be successful but you'll still have a net of some kind. You ca…
You can escape poverty by working harder; it is just that working harder will not always work. It needs to be coupled with other virtues; of course the solution is not just simply to work harder, but to suggest that working harder is not a great deal part of the solution is false by every measure. Lets say this, you are born into a poor family - you still get to go to school that likely has a great library - the scho…
>My observation is that the poor just throw more trash on the ground, they don't make their beds, they live in filthy or cluttered houses...
I would argue here that you've confused correlation with causation.
Perhaps a minimum wage 60 hours/week worker just doesn't have the time or energy to make their bed, not an unwillingness. Maybe the poor conditions in a neighborhood are what make it affordable, not preferable. Etc.
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time is money, as the saying goes. When you're working a double shift to put food on the table, it's really hard to learn an extra skill set (e.g. programming) and make time to build up a resume on github (or whatever). The cost isn't really located in the act of "buying" education.
I work 80+ hours a week, you don't need to tell me about time. However EVERY friend I have making significantly less than me / slightly struggling works a single job and spends significant free time in front of TV or games or facebook. My friend that worked hard all the time I taught coding to in under 8 months and he broke 6 figures within 3 years. The ones that were lazy I tried and they didn't put effort in to con…
> I work 80+ hours a week
Why?
Re: Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not
#510Both article and (so far) HN comments manage to avoid the phrase Protestant Work Ethic. The Protestant Work Ethic is a belief that work itself is inherently a good idea, usually because it is in some sense desirable by God, but this idea has outlasted mainstream confidence in the Protestant idea of a personal God. If you reject the PWE then very different possibilities emerge and in particular "full employment" stops…
Protestant work ethic would also absolutely recognise taking care of your family as "work". In fact, it would recognise nearly anything that keeps you non-idle and isn't done purely for pleasure as work. The requirement to be employed in order to receive social help is really weird, it should also factor in any elderly parents and children to take care of. Even from the point of view of complete utilitarianism aiming…
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