Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How poverty changes your mindset

review.chicagobooth.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 559 posts

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#521

Post by woliveirajr »

tudelo wrote: post #353
woliveirajr wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) and, to some extent, this is kind of funny, because where I live having a Civic is a sign that you do have a expensive car, and people treat it like "just more 10k bucks and you could be in an Audi".

Do you live somewhere where a car is not necessary/totally unaffordable? I think the OP is probably living in the US, and navigating most areas is almost impossible without a car. Wonder what the alternative to a cheap civic is other than no car :)

In my city there's a fair public transport, but in the country as a whole, no. Even bigger cities lack good transportation.

But cars are expansive, specially considering the average income, and having a Civic or a Corolla puts you in the top, with Audis being the "I'll never afford to have one of those".

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#522

Post by losteric »

ashelmire wrote: post #172
losteric wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people will be employed by the companies that replace all these low-wage low-skilled jobs? What will those formerly low-wage low-skilled laborers do after they are replaced? Buy a college education? Learn robotics? As those jobs are automated, who will patronize those businesses? eg what fraction of McDonalds customers are high-income high-skill laborers vs lower-wage low-skill?

Few, study and get news jobs, maybe, maybe. There are always more jobs and opportunity for growth (even in a bad economy). The companies will evolve or die as they always have if their customer base disappears.

I guess my questions boil down to this:

Human cognitive abilities follow a normal distribution. Some low-skilled laborers never had an opportunity to reach their potential, others lack the capacity to perform higher skill jobs... and some people are incapable of even "low-skill" labor.

Is automation maintaining or reducing the number of jobs for less capable people? Are we slowly raising the unemployable-threshold?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#523

Post by maksimum »

jjeaff wrote: post #515
maksimum wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment implies that these companies going out of business would be a bad thing. In the short term, definitely. But jobs are just means to an end for most people. Why can't government aim to simply provide those ends? The obvious counterargument is that the free market is more efficient. But the US government has shown itself to be very capable in providing some services to the entire country. The military has d…

Hilarious that you use the word "efficient" and then in the next sentence make the claim that the US military has done a great job at keeping the country safe. Yes, they do a good job. But the US military is one of the most bloated, over-funded organizations in human history.

I'd like to stretch some ideas for the sake of exploration. Curious to hear what you think:

I think you could interpret the US military's success despite "waste" to mean that a federal government can get away with a lot of inefficiency and still beat the "free market."

History already showed us what private military is like. I believe it's essentially feudalism and warlords. I.e. true poverty for 90% of the population. A powerful federal millitary that follows the laws of democratically elected officials gives people in the US historically unprecedented safety.

It's not clear to me why the federal government couldn't build a military-like organizations for addressing food, shelter, health care, and education.

The fundamental issue seems to be that the free market is the best means for deciding resource allocation towards those other goals. So why not simply implement UBI pegged to prices in LCOL areas?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#524

Post by brokenmachine »

pm90 wrote: post #259
dizzystar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I totally get this. I have no idea why people want stuff. I have one computer, one phone, one guitar, and so on. If I could own just one set of clothing, I'd be happy with that. It isn't frugality for me, it's just that I can't stand clutter and really, what I consider. I think I missed whatever the definition of having things means.

I guess it depends on you knowing what you want. I wouldn't drop money on a spanking new car even though I can afford to and all my peers drive Audis or whatever, but I feel just OK with my over 100k Civic just because I like not having a loan on my head. I didn't get the latest iPhone (still on the 5s) because a beautiful new phone means nothing to me; I'm just fine with a less expensive, smaller and slower model. O…

> I wouldn't drop money on a spanking new car even though I can afford to and all my peers drive Audis or whatever, but I feel just OK with my over 100k Civic just because I like not having a loan on my head.

Needing a loan ≠ can afford to. Many people do not understand this simple fact.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#525

Post by pm90 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #524
pm90 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on you knowing what you want. I wouldn't drop money on a spanking new car even though I can afford to and all my peers drive Audis or whatever, but I feel just OK with my over 100k Civic just because I like not having a loan on my head. I didn't get the latest iPhone (still on the 5s) because a beautiful new phone means nothing to me; I'm just fine with a less expensive, smaller and slower model. O…

> I wouldn't drop money on a spanking new car even though I can afford to and all my peers drive Audis or whatever, but I feel just OK with my over 100k Civic just because I like not having a loan on my head. Needing a loan ≠ can afford to. Many people do not understand this simple fact.

Really... so you wouldn't take out a mortgage to buy your house?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#526

Post by brokenmachine »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #468
Simon_says wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I'm totally with you on the root causes. I'm just resentful that I pay more in taxes to support kids when the parents don't care enough to ensure they have a stable life prior to bringing them into the world. And while I agree with you that evolution is powerful, reliable birth control is recent enough that we haven't adapted to it. It's quite possible to control when you have kids via abstinence, birth control,…

I consider such questions to fall under the purview of sexual morality. As such, they are complicated questions that are very poorly served by draconian policies that people who can't afford a kid just should not have one. Taken to its logical conclusion, I see no reason why that would not lead to a society where murdering kids up to a certain age is the expected norm when the family falls on hard times. If there is…

...or, just accept that if you are going to have kids with no income, both the parents and the kids life is going to be tough. If you're going to make decisions like that, you shouldn't expect the rest of society to pay for it.

You may call that sexual morality, I call it common sense.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#527

Post by brokenmachine »

Hextinium wrote: post #275
MrLeap wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As income inequality increases, relative percentage comparisons like this become more infuriating than comforting. The more money you have, the dumber you can be with it and still be guaranteed survival. At a certain level of poverty, you have to operate at peak financial efficiency to live a mean lifespan. 50,000$ properly spent could change the course of human history. It could supply the nearby treatment center fo…

I have very often thought what would happen if I was to suddenly come into a substantial amount of wealth and this is what I would do with a no holds barred method of paying skilled people to do cool things that they do not have the money to do otherwise. There are incredibly talented people that if given 20k to make their Magnus opus they would make the most breathtaking and increadible stuff imagined.

The trouble is finding those people.

Most people I meet are literally stereotypical consumers and couldn't come up with a unique idea to save themselves.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#528

Post by brokenmachine »

BuckRogers wrote: post #253
nine_k wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly describing how an irrational spending is hard to shake off, even at the moment when you need every dime. Rational thinking under stress is hard. It can be a trap, and often is.

That's why I try to maintain the same lifestyle no matter how much I do or don't have. Once you adjust your spending habits, it's very difficult to change them. I just think out what makes sense, how far I have to be happy, then build a routine around sensible choices. Half of the time, the sensible choices are the healthiest anyway (like taking lunch to work vs fattening fast food). Nailed it on the head that ration…

I agree with all you said - I could have written it myself.

But I do suspect that, like myself, you are well-educated and probably from a stable home with parents that were good role models.

Someone whose home life was chaos probably wasn't lucky enough to been demonstrated those life skills.

It's sad, but I don't want to pay for people making totally avoidable bad decisions. I don't know the solution but whatever we can do to avoid kids being raised in chaotic home situations would help in the future.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#529

Post by PhasmaFelis »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #313
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve. I'm not sure where your second criterion comes from. I don't think "poverty" excludes anyone who aspires to someday leave poverty.

Aspiration and hopelessness are not mutually exclusive.

They're equally irrelevant, though. Poverty is when you don't have enough money. It's not a state of mind.

I thought some more about part of your earlier post:

> If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks.

This really doesn't make sense. I've known at least one desperately poor and depressed person who found escape and satisfaction in scavenging and programming discarded hardware. There's no reason people in poverty can't be hackers. Arguably they've got more motivation to hack than people who can just buy the latest widgets off-the-shelf.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#530

Post by Clanan »

mrep wrote: post #221
kraig911 wrote: post #69

I hate seeing people's comments on stories around this topic. I grew up in poverty and food stamps from time to time. My dad was a roughneck and when the oil bust happened in the 80's there was a time we lived out of our car -- my whole family. here was literally nothing to do in the oil patch during that bust. There was literally no work. But people don't understand true hopelessness. My dad did everything he could…

> The poor and destitute simply need help. Upvote for the story but "simply need help" is not a policy a government can use to solve the problem. Granted, solving this problem for everyone is nigh impossible but maybe you can give us an example of a policy that would have helped out your individual family to give us some ideas?

This response unintentionally demonstrates what I think is a huge part of this puzzle: that government is the default "fixer" of this problem. That's an easy assumption to make, because it removes all personal responsibility while assuaging one's conscience. The Bystander effect in full force. What if we instead start assuming it is -our- responsibility to help the helpless?

Many comments in this thread mention the disparity between the Haves and Have-nots in San Francisco. Imagine the impact if all those Haves decided to use their own time and money to aid the homeless/hungry/needy/destitute? Instead, we fall back to blaming the other side's politicians and policies and we hope that someday Big Brother will take care of everything.

Post reply on HN