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This is a teenager

pudding.cool

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Re: This is a teenager

#641

Post by saltminer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #608
mbesto wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> navigating health insurance, paying taxes, budgeting, managing credit, home maintenance, vehicle care The self-perpetuating lie in American life is that all of these get solved by . Silicon Valley has only made it worse because these solutions are just monkey-patching poor "source code". Why learn how to balance a checkbook when Chase online can do it for you? Our parents' generation had it different. They had fewe…

I learned out to fill out a basic Form 1040 tax return in middle school (late 1970s). Banking now is WAY easier. Balancing a checkbook? All your transactions and your balance are available 24/7 on your phone. Your paycheck appears in your bank account automatically. You used to have to get a paper check at work and then take it to the bank (open 9-5, maybe a little later on Fridays, and 9-12 or maybe 2pm on Saturday)…

> Today's cars will go 100K miles easy with little more than oil changes and maybe a new set of brake pads and tires. Cars then needed regular tune-ups and generally started having more major problems after only a few years.

Yeah, getting your engine rebuilt used to be a fairly common occurrence. Now, unless you own a vintage car, it's quite rare.

> You don't have as many family doctors with their own or small group practices, where getting an appointment was pretty easy and they actually knew you.

Very true. The US health insurance industry is to blame for a lot of the consolidation; it's getting harder and harder for independents to survive as time goes on, with smaller providers being less attractive for insurers to begin with and the ones who will deal with them squeezing them more and more. The increasing documentation requirements by insurers are also much harder for independents to meet.

Re: This is a teenager

#642

Post by harryp_peng »

Aeolun wrote: post #534
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…

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.

yeah, I mean, I made it (what was it?) I think I became conscious and awake at 16, and with a computer did anything imaginable. We have all became 10x with the internet, and will probably be 100x with AI.

Re: This is a teenager

#643

Post by chefandy »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #595
chefandy wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

As someone subjected to both of these actions, plus expulsion, in lieu of anybody bothering to try and figure out what was wrong, that certainly rings true. However, people just really really love a) nostalgia, b) validating their compulsion to inflict the same pain they experienced as children on young people, and c) watching people in out-groups get punished. It's a lovely thought, but I'll believe that there have been real changes, rather than overblown facets of moral panic about abandoning those bad habits, when I see them.

Re: This is a teenager

#644

Post by theonething »

komali2 wrote: post #628
parentheses wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I find it hilarious when Americans complain about America. Most have no clue how good they have it.

Why is it funny to want to make our country better? Do you believe it's impossible for America to more wisely spend its wealth? Do you believe Americans have it as good as is possible, considering how rich the nation is? I find this silly, because I can simply point at our education and healthcare outcomes to find two readily improvable conditions. Or, our child hunger rates.

> Why is it funny to want to make our country better?

If the complainers had that attitude, I wouldn't mind at all and would endorse it. It's the whiners that have nothing more creative to say than how terrible America is that get me.

Re: This is a teenager

#645

Post by adeelk93 »

gowld wrote: post #395
skrbjc wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument of the data seems to say we should put resources towards those with more adverse experiences in childhood. But I wonder, if you were optimizing for improving more people's lives in a more meaningful way with limited funds, would you come to the conclusion that you could do so by focusing on improving the lives of those in the no adverse experiences group because you might be able to get more "life improv…

It depends entirely on how you define utility. Making rich people happier makes me more unhappy that it makes them more happy, so by your calculus it's not worth helping them. See how quickly this line of reasoning runs aground?

Probably the whole concept of utility breaks down if we were to include schadenfreude like that

Re: This is a teenager

#646

Post by tatrajim »

llm_trw wrote: post #633
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do the greater communities need to pay their dues? Schools cost money to run but taxpayers balk and cry over every cent increase. There are crumbling schools with toxic air and water that lack adequate HVAC paying their teachers unlivable salaries. This is the result of neglect to preserve and invest which is a condemnation of those who allowed such neglect on their watch when they should have championed such pl…

Schools in the US cost more than schools in any other developed nation. Every institution in the US has been taken over by careerists and credentialists who produce nothing of value and are a drain on the system. For a simple example in our area look at twitter: we were told the servers would catch fire, the end times will be upon us and cats will live with dogs. Instead the servers kept chugging along just as well a…

As an anecdote on the topic of education, as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in rural South Korea in the 1970s, I routinely visited secondary schools that (at the time) were little more than drab warehouses for large (-70 students/class) using ragged textbooks and ancient furniture. Spirits were high, though, and these farm kids were successfully learning math through basic differential calculus plus a daunting array of other subjects.

Thereafter, I have only felt (perhaps unfairly) mild contempt for the perennial whining of US critics who blame low funding for educational failing in the public schools. In my opinion the blame lies elsewhere, starting with the family.

Re: This is a teenager

#647

Post by aprilthird2021 »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #637

The format is very creative and technically impressive. I don't want to launch into criticisms without acknowledging that. However, I find myself underwhelmed, for a few reasons. - It's hard to compare the different cohorts, because of the different widths. - The definition of "adverse experiences" seems too limited in scope of what's counted, leading to small numbers and small differentiation between the cohorts. -…

I'm honestly not sure what conclusion to come away from this data with. It seems to be bolstering a (typically conservative) viewpoint that parenting is really important and that bad or unfit parents need to be kept in check by the state because the harm they may do to their kids can last a lifetime.

This article focuses on shootings, neglectful parents, etc. But what if we focused on more controversial things like only having one parent in the home or missing, specifically, a father figure, religious attitudes of parents, or even (to be maximally controversial) same-sex vs opposite-sex parents?

If those things were found to have impacts on children that last into adulthood also (since the data implies that our childhood shapes us so much), I doubt the author would agree that we have a collective responsibility to keep children from experiencing the negatives of those scenarios

Re: This is a teenager

#648

Post by SoftTalker »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #615
SoftTalker wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned out to fill out a basic Form 1040 tax return in middle school (late 1970s). Banking now is WAY easier. Balancing a checkbook? All your transactions and your balance are available 24/7 on your phone. Your paycheck appears in your bank account automatically. You used to have to get a paper check at work and then take it to the bank (open 9-5, maybe a little later on Fridays, and 9-12 or maybe 2pm on Saturday)…

You focus on banking, I’m talking about budgets. Do you track every cent in and out and have a quarterly updated forecast of your financial position a decade out? How close are you to that? If your answer doesn’t include a spreadsheet of some sort you’re not budgeting but taking a shortcut on faith your intuitions are correct. Did you get taught how credit applications work, how banks determine credit worthiness, how…

No I don't budget to that degree. Neither did most people 30 years ago.

I put a percentage of my income into an investment account automatically every payday and forget about it. What I have left is my spending money. That's very simple and tends to work for me.

Re: This is a teenager

#649

Post by ascorbic »

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…

That's great, and I'm genuinely glad to hear you've done well, but your story in no way negates the data in the article. It's not claiming that nobody coming from an adverse childhood succeeeds - just that it's a lot harder. Your post is a great example of survivorship bias. I doubt that there are many people in poverty who post to HN.

Re: This is a teenager

#650

Post by petesergeant »

usefulcat wrote: post #640
petesergeant wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, although it disproportionately affects people who are poor but not broke. If you’re truly broke, there’s Medicaid, if you’re old there’s Medicare, 4% by some form of military healthcare, many people covered by their employers, and so on. 90% of Americans are insured. As a Britisher, obviously I’m in favour of universal healthcare, and I think the US system would benefit from it. But let’s not pretend it’s perf…

> 90% of Americans are insured I'm one of those 90%. My health insurance (family of 4) costs more than my house payment, and the annual deductible is over $6000 (for one person). Either the premiums or my deductible goes up every year. In terms of total cost (monthly premiums plus annual deductible) it's also pretty much the least expensive plan that I can get. It's not that health care here is bad, it's that it's ri…

> It's not that health care here is bad, it's that it's ridiculously expensive compared to most other places in the world.

Sure, but the average American also gets paid $20k more than the average Brit, on average.

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