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How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

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Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#61

Post by arconis987 »

nine_k wrote: post #56
arconis987 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up Mormon in Utah and I love the Mormons in my life. Every leader in local congregations is an unpaid volunteer. Everyone in the congregation has a responsibility to carry out in the community (sunday school teacher, youth mentor, clerk to track finances, etc). As a Mormon kid, I was taught to work hard my whole life for the good of others. I served a Mormon mission in Europe, which was an extremely difficult…

Isn't it the case with every group with strong identity? Imagine being raised in a long-term Democrat family and declaring that the Tea Party is your thing. (And it's not even about eternal damnation.)

I think that's a very good point. That said, my guess is that, on average, shunning is probably less frequent when family members leave a political party than when they leave Mormonism, but that's just a guess with no backing evidence.

Some Mormon families don't care whether their kids stay in the church or leave. For others, it leads to shunning and disowning. I'd say shunning probably occurs more for Mormon apostates than Catholic apostates, but it probably occurs less for Mormon apostates than Jehovah's Witness or Scientologist apostates.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#62

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

arconis987 wrote: post #43
itchyjunk wrote: post #15

When I was first about to move to Utah, few years ago, lot of people asked me "why?" and told me a lot about a lot of things. Of course, I didn't even know who the Mormons were (I am not from USA originally). Most of what I heard was wrong. I've met Mormons who have asked me where I am from and not only know where that country is but spoke to me in my NATIVE tougue. I was very impressed. The key word in the article i…

I grew up Mormon in Utah and I love the Mormons in my life. Every leader in local congregations is an unpaid volunteer. Everyone in the congregation has a responsibility to carry out in the community (sunday school teacher, youth mentor, clerk to track finances, etc). As a Mormon kid, I was taught to work hard my whole life for the good of others. I served a Mormon mission in Europe, which was an extremely difficult…

> my Mormon loved ones told me that they were concerned about the future of my children, that I was depriving my family of happiness in heaven, and, as one of my own parents told me, they didn't know who I was anymore.

If they believe that you must be religious or else you burn in hell for all of eternity, then their reaction makes sense. They are behaving that way out of concern for your well being.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#63

Post by wang_li »

skywhopper wrote: post #46

These sorts of comparisons inevitably don't mean much because there's just too many factors that are different between Utah and the states the author compares them to. It helps upward mobility if you start out better off, and Utah has the the fifth richest bottom quintile in the nation (See http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/sta... ) in a place where household expenses and housing costs are prob…

It might be ridiculous but not for the reasons you state. All those differences are the result of culture and governance.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#64

Post by r00fus »

philipodonnell wrote: post #45
supremesaboteur wrote: post #25

"Utah is a deep red state, but its conservatism is notably compassionate" Or maybe conservatives are not ruthless towards the poor ?

In general, conservatives tend to regard poverty as a self-inflicted state, or at least that remaining in poverty is a failing of the individual by not escaping it, and thus addressing poverty should be left to that individual. Liberals think of poverty more as a systematic social condition that individuals bear little responsibility for, either getting there or remaining there, and thus addressing poverty should be…

One of these views is more factually valid and supported by data.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#65

Post by jandrewrogers »

DanBC wrote: post #35
thedevil wrote: post #31

I'm from Utah. I moved to Seattle, then San Francisco. When I had a kid, I moved back to Utah. One thing I noticed is that Utah is almost all middle class. Some have more money, some have less, but most of them are middle class. It's relatively easy to go from poor to rich if you're really middle class. I mean that if your parents are well educated but a high school teacher and a stay-at-home-mom in a middle class ne…

> If you can lift up people in situations like that, I'd be much more impressed. > But I think the lack of a real lower and upper class would make mobility look artificially better. I'm a bit confused. Aren't these contradictory? By not having poverty haven't they achieved the raising people out of poverty bit already?

Mobility is typically defined in terms of moving between income quintiles in the population -- relative, not absolute. If the income range of the quintiles is very compressed (i.e. everyone's income is close to the median) then a small change in absolute income can lead to a large change in income percentile. Compared to places with higher income variance, this tends to overweight the "mobility" of places with low income variance. At the very least it produces a misleading result relative to what most people would define as meaningful mobility.

The same problem applies to comparing mobility between countries. If you have someone with the same (PPP) wage in the lower quintiles in Denmark and the USA, a $20k increase in absolute income in Denmark will cause a big jump in the quintile (and therefore "mobile") and a $40k increase in absolute income in the USA won't even though it is twice the real gain! Simply due to the fact that Denmark has low income variance and USA has high income variance. Income mobility measures that don't adjust for variance tend to produce misleading results when there are significant differences in income variance in the sample population.

If Utah has a relatively low income variance (not a lot of poor, not a lot of rich) then it will lead to percentile based mobility measures that are less meaningful than States with higher income variance.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#66

Post by losteverything »

I am not convinced that people in the bottom or top have the same dream as the rest; and I am not convinced the article title is the best one for the content.

Her comment: "Salt Lake City is a very weird place." made me think more. Having experience in nearly all the states, SLC is truly unique. It is easy to imagine myself in almost all of the US, but SLC is hard for me, and thus I would agree with her statement.

HOwever - UTAH is probably the best state for national parks and state parks. If you had to choose just one, I would choose Utah.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#67

Post by ythn »

skywhopper wrote: post #46

These sorts of comparisons inevitably don't mean much because there's just too many factors that are different between Utah and the states the author compares them to. It helps upward mobility if you start out better off, and Utah has the the fifth richest bottom quintile in the nation (See http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/sta... ) in a place where household expenses and housing costs are prob…

> It also helps if you don't have entrenched poor communities

Even still, the article does address this - "another economics professor at Brigham Young told me that his church ward had recently deliberately expanded its boundaries to include a nearby trailer park."

I think this is a key ingredient to effective upward mobility: mixing of social classes. If you have setting multiple times a a week (church) where entrenched poor (trailer park) can mingle and interact with middle and upper class, that's a huge boon for the poor. Simply giving money to the poor in the form of an impersonal government check on the other hand is very ineffective.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#68

Post by tp3z4u »

yorwba wrote: post #38
tp3z4u wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women are on the internet now. The times they are a changing.

@kelukelugames claimed to be male once ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967181 ), so assuming they haven't changed their gender identity in the mean time, talking about multiple girlfriends does seem to imply polyamory. Of course I'm a non-native English speaker who has trouble keeping the various context-dependent interpretations of "girlfriend" straight, so I might still be misunderstanding something.

Wow that is a fair point. I presumed he was more likely a woman given the wording and that polygamy is uncommon. Even in Mormonism. I concede my position.

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#69

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

wang_li wrote: post #63
skywhopper wrote: post #46

These sorts of comparisons inevitably don't mean much because there's just too many factors that are different between Utah and the states the author compares them to. It helps upward mobility if you start out better off, and Utah has the the fifth richest bottom quintile in the nation (See http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/sta... ) in a place where household expenses and housing costs are prob…

It might be ridiculous but not for the reasons you state. All those differences are the result of culture and governance.

Two points:

1. You're wrong about it being just culture and governance -- history and geography play a big role in why we see things developed as they are.

2. Even if it were, your comment is useless. You claim it's culture and governance, not just governance. With part of it being cultural homogeneity (as the GP said...), which is itself a quirk of history and geography, it doesn't follow that changing governance to match would lead to the same outcomes, since cultures wouldn't match (and likely be less homogeneous).

Re: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

#70

Post by tyingq »

itchyjunk wrote: post #15

When I was first about to move to Utah, few years ago, lot of people asked me "why?" and told me a lot about a lot of things. Of course, I didn't even know who the Mormons were (I am not from USA originally). Most of what I heard was wrong. I've met Mormons who have asked me where I am from and not only know where that country is but spoke to me in my NATIVE tougue. I was very impressed. The key word in the article i…

> I am not sure why Utah has such an odd reputation outside of the state

Part of it is that Mormon influence. As you mention, there are a lot of positive things they bring to the table. Like any other church, though, it's not all positive.

Because they are a dominant proportion of the state (~60% of the population), their religious views leak into politics, public schools, law, business relationships, media, and so forth.

If your values match theirs, it's terrific. If not, you'll run into issues. The Mormon view on LGBT rights isn't terribly progressive, for example. They also didn't allow black males to "hold the priesthood" until the very late 70's. Note that almost all adult males in the religion "hold the priesthood". Not quite enough time has passed for that stigma to have cleared away.

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