This is a teenager • Hacker News Board

Re: This is a teenager

#721

Post by adrianN » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 10:21 AM UTC

pants2 wrote: post #214

bsimpson wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how to practically make this work. There's a strong case to be made that a minimum wage helps people whose value approaches the minimum while hurting people above or below (e.g. $12 and $18 wages in an unlimited market both round to $15 with a minimum, while someone who only produces $7 of value is no longer employable). Similarly with cash infusions - giving people more money is inflationary. Nobo…

I have a family member that is severely disabled. She used to be on a program where the government would supplement her wages - she worked at Jack in the Box, where her employer would pay like $3/hr and the government would top that up to $10/hr. Now that program is gone and minimum wage for fast food is $20/hr. She simply cannot perform $20/hr worth of work, so she's unemployed (and living on government assistance).…

She could do some volunteer work.

Re: This is a teenager

#722

Post by lynx23 » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 10:28 AM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #323

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is still a function of the past, even if we lack that function's complete specification.

>The future is still a function of the past If you don't believe in conscious choice the whole debate is moot anyway.

IIRC, free will is pretty much a myth, and beliefs are not relevant when it comes to science...

Re: This is a teenager

#723

Post by badpun » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 10:29 AM UTC

Regarding low-income as a result of adverse childhood experiences. This ignores the fact that some jobs just don't pay a lot, and even if everyone had super-duper childhood, some portion of those people would still end up working minimum-wage jobs - because somebody has to do them. The way our economy works is just stack-ranking, but at a nation-wide scale. In consequence, if you help one teenager, you'll lift them further the bottom of the stack - at the expense of everyone else who they've surpassed thanks to your help. Another corollary is that, if we want people to not have low incomes, we need to change how our society functions (as say Scandinavians did it, with very high minimum wage), as helping individuals will not matter that much. The one effect helping individuals has is making them more efficient and better adjusted to the economy, so that maybe they'll be slightly better waiters or burger flippers, which produces slighly more GDP for the nation to spread via welfare state policies - but, for simplest jobs, that effect can't be huge.

Re: This is a teenager

#724

Post by brabel » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 10:40 AM UTC

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #692

brabel wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the claim. The claim is that if you're born poor, your chances of being poor when you become an adult are much higher. Perhaps you know that and still think that because the kid who is born poor "chose" to stay poor, but I hope no one capable of having a discussion about this topic thinks like that.

No, that is not the claim. That is a simple statistical fact that is obvious to anyone who looks at the data. The claim is that folks are nothing more than "a derivation of their previous person states", and that correspondingly there is little to nothing a person can choose to do to escape the path set for them by their start state. I personally think this is blatantly false, and I have many observations to support…

> folks are nothing more than "a derivation of their previous person states"

FFS that's an unbelievably bad interpretation. Are you just trolling or you really can't see the difference between that interpretation and "what we become depends in great part on where we're starting from"??

Re: This is a teenager

#725

Post by boxed » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 10:44 AM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #364

The punchline is this: "It's 2021. The research participants are in their late-30s now, which means they've had plenty of time to shape their own destinies. But we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect on their financial situation as adults. It also has an effect on virtually everything else in their lives." You cannot infer the direction of causality from this data, i.e. that the…

Honestly I think the effect was hard to even see in the graphs at that point. It certainly wasn't "huge".

Re: This is a teenager

#726

Post by helboi4 » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 10:51 AM UTC

latency-guy2 wrote: post #590

nurple wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that having the time and resources for those things is a privilege that many in poverty don't have?

Those in poverty do have that time. Number of hours worked increases with wealth. Share of people working more than one job has fell since the 90s, and never exceeded 7%. Average commute time (one way) has been 20 - 30 minutes since the 90s. You're pushing rhetoric, not reality. Which is fine, but I won't let you lie.

I dunno man I work way less than my friends who work retail/hospitality/labouring jobs etc. Maybe the top people in my field work loads but most don't. But more importantly, I sit on my ass all day. Being physically exhausted from being on your feet all day is simply harder to deal with. Furthermore, I can afford a lot of things that take stress off me. I can afford to buy quality premade food when I don't have time to make food. I can afford to take Ubers when I need to get stuff fast etc etc. When I was growing up I probably had food from a takeaway or restaurant like once a year and I often couldn't afford to take the bus. That erodes your time.

Re: This is a teenager

#727

Post by raxxorraxor » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 11:14 AM UTC

James_K wrote: post #399

liveoneggs wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better for society if someone inclined to murder did not. Police do not protect the victim of murder -- they are dead already. Your view appears to say "society" (the police?) should "protect" children from their own parents, if they are deemed "bad"? The line for police intervention should probably not include "living in a bad neighborhood" or "being poor". Those strategies are tried pretty often by evan…

> Police do not protect the victim of murder But if they could, they most certainly should. Preventing murder is good, just as preventing a bad childhood is good. > Your view appears to say "society" (the police?) The police are (or should be) an extension of society. They are a part of the government, which in a democracy means the represent the will of the people, and hence they are society manifest. There are othe…

Government has the responsibility to provide access to education and make it as transient as possible in regards to class. But government by experience is usually also a bad legal guardian, even if the people involved really want to help these kids.

Perhaps they get lucky and grow up in a good adoptive family. But for the others there are a few things that are quite difficult to replace.

A democracy isn't a manifested society, it is a compromise of everyone involved. Ideally at least, the reality is more gray and even in a democracy a government doesn't have the legitimacy to do everything it wants. Further its ability to evaluate which children would benefit from more direct support is limited.

So perhaps you need not only look at the children and instead try to improve the lives of the parents as well.

Re: This is a teenager

#728

Post by helboi4 » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 11:17 AM UTC

To respond to a lot of these ridiculous responses here:

The answer to this is that we should optimise society towards less inequality. It is our collective responsibility because the privileged people who have disproportionally better results do so BECAUSE systems of inequality that keep wealth in certain areas of society exist. This doesn't mean you didn't work hard, obviously.

The evening out of such inequalities require much more radical policies than stuff like affirmitive action. We need things that address the root of the issues with how our society works. Nobody is willing to do that.

But yeah, its not the fault of the parents alone. I'm sorry that's some incredibly neoliberal individualist bullshit. There are so many factors listed here that poorer parents cannot sheild their kids from. They cannot live in a nicer place that they can't afford. They cannot just stop having chronic illness at a higher rate because of their own disadvantaged lives. Etc etc.

Everyone should take responsibility over their own life and do as much as they can to not let anything hold them back, just for the sake of their personal happiness at least. However, saying that does not then abdicate us from our other responsibility to make the world a better place. Telling people to work hard does not make societal factors go away.

Re: This is a teenager

#729

Post by begueradj » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 11:23 AM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #364

The punchline is this: "It's 2021. The research participants are in their late-30s now, which means they've had plenty of time to shape their own destinies. But we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect on their financial situation as adults. It also has an effect on virtually everything else in their lives." You cannot infer the direction of causality from this data, i.e. that the…

Still books/ study material are of extreme importance.

No one could be living in more extreme poverty than Michael Faraday did. Still he managed to be one of the greatest minds of all times. He read a book called "The improvements of the mind" by Isaac Watts and applied it on himself literally. The book was written for poor people who can not afford themselves books and means to conduct chemistry/electricity/mechanical and biology experiments.

Michael Faraday had to draw and write down everything he learned and imagined meticulously in a military and highly disciplined way where testosterone was expressed in its noble manner: discipline and high focus, no distraction. He wrote himself an extremely dense and technical voluminous book like notes of things he read and noticed while he was still a boy.

The success story of Michael Faraday started only because he was accepted to work for a man selling books. There, Faraday read every single book he saw.

I hope the study mentioned in this article will not be taken seriously by people of modest environments. The victimization mindset is a gatekeeper to success.

Re: This is a teenager

#730

Post by ozim » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 11:29 AM UTC

mdekkers wrote: post #698

ozim wrote: post #683

I think in Europe no one holds back in the grades, school will push a kid forward. When I was a kid they did hold kids and they were usually worst bullies and bad influences. Wonder if it still the case in US or “Alex” would be born somewhere 1990ish or earlier?

> I think in Europe no one holds back in the grades, school will push a kid forward. That is hilariously incorrect. I had an adverse childhood, my dad died when I was 8, and my mom was literally not around, she was on the other side of the country and not interested. I was in care. I was passed around middle and high schools like a hot potato, nobody wanted me, simply because I was in care. The folks in care told me…

Push forward doesn't mean help in some special way.

It means only that they will never let a kid to stay the same level with younger kids, you always move with your peers to next class - even if you won't have any passing grades.

Maybe on high school level they will kick you out but in primary school I don't think they have any real grades even anymore.