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This is a teenager

pudding.cool

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Re: This is a teenager

#591

Post by sangnoir »

Generous8030 wrote: post #561
l0c0b0x wrote: post #519

I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful co…

This is an interesting perspective that I very much agree with (also being an immigrant), I feel there is this constant bashing on the country, and for what I can tell (at least in my circle), is citizens most of the time. I have found the US to be the easiest place to make it (and by far) of any other that I have been to, but they rather remove any ounce of responsibility from their own citizens for... their own doi…

> I have found the US to be the easiest place to make it (and by far) of any other that I have been to, but they rather remove any ounce of responsibility from their own citizens

I'm willing to bet - dollars to donuts - that there were (and are) American investors in your country of origin, and every other one you've been to. Sometimes being an outsider confers clarity / skills / experience necessary to exploit opportunities not available - or even visible to those who've lived all their lives in an environment.

Re: This is a teenager

#593

Post by purple_ferret »

l0c0b0x wrote: post #519

I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful co…

Your story rubs me the wrong way. For one, you say you had to financially support your parents, but then insinuate that people highlighted in the article should bootstrap themselves up since America is such a great place. Also being an immigrant doesn't make it 'high risk.' In many areas, belonging to an immigrant community might actually confer an advantage.

The point of the article is to think about how adverse childhood experiences might affect adulthood, using actual data, and try to think about an actionable way to address the issue. Maybe stuff like this is behind USA's secret sauce compared to other countries where the 'unfortunate' are left to rot.

Re: This is a teenager

#594

Post by relaxing »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #441
maxerickson wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, critically, how much are we willing to collectively sacrifice to move that percentage of people in a positive direction? This begs the question, at least to some extent. A big lesson of modern economics is that lots of things are win-win. For example, if you could eliminate years spent in prison by spending more on K-12 education, that looks like a big sacrifice if you don't have the prison counterfactual to com…

There are lots of interventions that show massive returns on investment in social welfare: a recent one has been extended availability of support for teenagers aging out of foster care, that takes their outcomes from something like "percentage who have become homeless within one year of their 18th birthday" from 70% down to 30%, and similar for arrest records and pregnancy among girls. But, sadly, many people feel mo…

Critically, the industries dedicated to putting people in jail and keeping them there are well-organized and politically-connected.

And the industries that could benefit from an expanded workforce are aligned with the pro-jail bloc for political gain.

Re: This is a teenager

#595

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

chefandy wrote: post #573
sabarn01 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcome of this has been to make it harder to fail as a kid. We don't hold kids back anymore and we don't suspend kids anymore. At some point in time the rubber meets the road and you will be held accountable and have to be. We could improve the social safety net but we never want to match other countries that have more supervision of their at risk population. When I worked temp jobs there wasn't a place I worked…

> We don't hold kids back anymore and we don't suspend kids anymore. Does that contradict real data that shows holding kids back and suspending them makes them more successful?

Real data on holding kids back is actively harmful.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03055698.2014.93...

The same holds for suspensions.

https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Noltemeyer_W...

Re: This is a teenager

#596

Post by komali2 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #588
komali2 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Do you think it's fair that some kids will be able to command historic levels of political and capital power by being born and never need to work, most kids will need to work at this point it seems until death, some kids will achieve "needing to work until death" status by working harder than anyone else while being hungry and housing insecure, and many kids will simply live and die in squalor whether they wo…

well... that's a completely different point than the one they were disagreeing with, no?

I don't know, I'm asking lol. It seemed to me they were arguing in favor of Spartan meritocracy hence my comment.

Re: This is a teenager

#597

Post by yosito »

I read this, and I'm shocked at the number of people who seem to make it through life with no adverse experiences. And I also note how by almost every measure, there is a similar ratio of people with adverse experiences who are found at every level. Life is hard. I used to think that it's hard for a majority of people. But this article has convinced me that quite a lot of people have relatively easy lives, which, as someone who had my fair share of adverse experiences, I think is wonderful.

Re: This is a teenager

#599

Post by gopher_space »

petesergeant wrote: post #538
Aeolun wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess what we learn from this is that not everyone is as enterprising as you? While on some level I’d say that, of course you can do it if you want to. There’s many people for whom that is just too much of a leap, and it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.

> it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it While I’d agree, you’ve read the OP’s comment in a significantly darker light than I did, or than I can get the text to support

OP sounds too servile to appreciate the hatred we have for Horatio Alger.

Re: This is a teenager

#600

Post by joshuahutt »

Life seems to be a crapshoot for most people. Most people seem to be born into families not adequately equipped to raise children, and the ones that succeed and survive seem to do so despite what they missed out on, developing elaborate coping strategies that survive on into adulthood, which ironically, can lead to more underserved children.

Few seem fortunate enough to find a time to "pause" in their lives, examine what deep seeded issues they have developed from the process of surviving childhood, and finding and embarking on a path to a more balanced and mature, "adult" life.

But hey, it might be a sampling bias. I also imagine there is a silent majority of well adjusted people that don't show up on the internet or the news, projecting themselves all over everyone and everything within their reach.

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