No Money, No Time • Hacker News Board

Re: No Money, No Time

#81

Post by beat » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 3:22 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #40

beat wrote: post #11

The thing that frustrates me the most about this situation is the waste of human capital this represents for society. Now, I'm a firm believer that society is advanced mostly by a small minority of highly talented individuals - the intelligent, creative, charismatic, and hardworking few change the game for everyone else. Now, what happens when those rare talents are born into the cycle of poverty? What lessons do the…

> "Now, I'm a firm believer that society is advanced mostly by a small minority of highly talented individuals - the intelligent, creative, charismatic, and hardworking few change the game for everyone else." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory

I think my idea is consistent with both the Great Man theory and its critics. I'm concerned that, due to the negative impacts of poverty and other social failure modes, we're preventing the formation of Great Men (and Great Women - one of the grand social ills that we've only halfway addressed is sexism).

Re: No Money, No Time

#82

Post by beat » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 3:31 PM UTC

Meekro wrote: post #24

beat wrote: post #11

The thing that frustrates me the most about this situation is the waste of human capital this represents for society. Now, I'm a firm believer that society is advanced mostly by a small minority of highly talented individuals - the intelligent, creative, charismatic, and hardworking few change the game for everyone else. Now, what happens when those rare talents are born into the cycle of poverty? What lessons do the…

The fact that people like you can escape is very encouraging: it means we still have class mobility -- if you've got the skills and work ethic, you can be born into the lower class and quickly rise above that.

We still have class mobility, to a degree. Not enough of a degree, which is my concern. My daughter, who is 20, is concerned that society is actually going backwards, and there's less opportunity for her generation than for previous generations.

Re: No Money, No Time

#83

Post by SilasX » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 3:35 PM UTC

incision wrote: post #34

SilasX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that ignores the fact that the forms and such are there in the first place precisely to contain the tide of applicants. What do you think happens when organizations are under budget constraints and have to find creative ways to cut [edit: typo] costs?

>'I think that ignores the fact that the forms and such are there in the first place precisely to contain the tide of applicants.' This thought did cross my mind, but I've done lots of work in the public sector - local, federal, education and health. As a rule, these agencies just aren't that clever, not even close. In my experience, bad forms and the like are generally a matter of "That's how we've always done it."…

It doesn't have to literally take the form of "hey, we can scare people off by making the forms longer! And my mustache is twirlier today!"

Rather, it's more like: with a reasonable flow of applicants, they can be lax in checking them, and maybe call the applicant if they need to get more information or something doesn't look right.

But as the influx gets too large, they have to adopt an attitude of "give us everything we might possibly need to validate you, the first time around, or we can't afford to process it". They may not be deliberately trying to scare people off, but the massive influx does lead, somehow, to ever longer forms.

Re: No Money, No Time

#84

Post by beat » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 3:36 PM UTC

incision wrote: post #34

SilasX wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that ignores the fact that the forms and such are there in the first place precisely to contain the tide of applicants. What do you think happens when organizations are under budget constraints and have to find creative ways to cut [edit: typo] costs?

>'I think that ignores the fact that the forms and such are there in the first place precisely to contain the tide of applicants.' This thought did cross my mind, but I've done lots of work in the public sector - local, federal, education and health. As a rule, these agencies just aren't that clever, not even close. In my experience, bad forms and the like are generally a matter of "That's how we've always done it."…

Heck, I see "that's the way we've always done it" and awful mountains of paperwork inside the enterprise. You'd think Fortune 100 businesses would be interested in internal efficiency, but they're not.

Re: No Money, No Time

#85

Post by _delirium » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 3:37 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #61

incision wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>'Whereas the American one seems incapable of delivering anything with less than a 6-month waiting list..' My family was on a wait list for housing assistance from the time I was a child until I dropped out of school and started working, making us ineligible. The list is currently closed and was last open over half a decade ago, for less than two weeks - like something out of a fantasy novel. >...with an extremely bu…

The problem is that while there are a great many deserving people who wouldn't abuse the system, there are also plenty who would. Worse is that if you overhear one person on the bus (like I did when I was in college) talking about having another child so she could get a larger welfare check, it has a way of getting to you. It's an anecdote so it doesn't really count from a scientific perspective. But emotionally, tha…

I agree that this sentiment is a major issue for public support of welfare systems. A few (admittedly speculative) thoughts on what's different in Denmark, where such sentiment isn't absent, but I think is a bit weaker and less influential:

1. In a way, the U.S. makes for a foil that enhances the perception that the welfare state is necessary for a society we'd like to live in. People are afraid of Copenhagen ending up like San Francisco or Detroit, with homeless people everywhere, dangerous ghettos, etc., and there's a perception that the welfare system is one thing keeping that possibility at bay, and keeping Copenhagen a fairly safe and nice place to live. The "are you trying to turn us into America?" trump-card is a huge PR/positioning problem for the (smallish) free-market/libertarian parties, because a lot of people are genuinely afraid of it.

2. A decent amount of stuff that is "welfare" in the U.S. is instead just something everyone gets, so there is no issue over eligibility and whether people are gaming it. Everyone gets free healthcare, subsidized childcare, free university, paid paternity/maternity leave, etc., so there aren't debates over things like Medicaid or CHIP. Even the public-housing system is open to anyone (there are waitlists for popular buildings, but no income/wealth cutoff).

3. There's a general feeling that even people who really are up to no good are still somehow "our responsibility". It's kind of the society-level version of what southern Europeans feel on the extended-family level. To a Greek, your uncle might be a lazy jerk and/or an alcoholic, but he's still your uncle and it's seen as at least partly the family's responsibility to make sure he's not homeless or resorting to crime to eat: it'd be shameful to the family if one of theirs was not taken care of. In Denmark it's sort of the same, except it's not the individual family's responsibility, but the state's, to make sure everyone in the "extended family" is off the streets and able to eat.

4. Low-end jobs just pay a lot more. Even working as a supermarket check-out clerk, barista, or McDonald's employee, pays ~$35k-$40k if you do it full-time. So being employed makes a qualitative class difference: in the U.S., minimum-wage workers and welfare recipients are both "lower-class" or "poor", whereas in Denmark, welfare recipients are mostly "poor" while minimum-wage workers are "middle class". As a result, people tend not to feel envious of those on welfare, but more pity towards them.

5. There's a greater cultural acceptance of the idea that people can be temporarily disabled. You can be on disability or sick leave for 6 months for a physical or mental health problem, and then go back to work; it's not only for people who are permanently disabled. This is seen as relatively normal, and such sick leaves are relatively common. Since many people have either taken one themselves, or have friends/family who have, it's not seen as much as something that "other" people are doing to take your tax money, but something that many people, including your own social circle, might need.

In general, the fact that many people will use the welfare system at some point in their life, even if only briefly, means people are very interested in ensuring that it's quick and efficient. Whereas my impression is that most Americans don't have a personal interest in the welfare system being quick and friendly, because they don't expect to use it.

Re: No Money, No Time

#86

Post by _delirium » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

incision wrote: post #77

yardie wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think similar to this, even though I was and grew up poor. But after working with a few NGOs I've found the system is designed to screen out the people that need the help. At the same time the people that know how to work the system get the most aid. Most welfare requires that you report 0 income, so instead of searching for work working welfare becomes the job. Showing up every day to the local office, wai…

>'...the cost of daycare was more than her income.' Covering the gap when coming off of assistance is a major problem. The sharp cutoffs and various criteria for violations turn leaving assistance into a leap of faith. A small raise becomes a big problem when the increase adds up to far less than the food benefit you'll lose all at once for exceeding the income limit. Likewise, you can't build a basic emergency fund…

The SSI one also tends to discourage disabled people from doing any work, because any ability to earn income, even a small amount intermittently, is taken as evidence that you aren't really permanently disabled. I have an American uncle with MS, who can't work at all now, but in earlier stages of the disease he probably could have worked some of the time (not a steady job, because he'd be relatively better for a few months then relatively worse again, but a part-time job for part of the year would probably have been ok). But he was advised that SSI disability just isn't set up for that: you can't be completely disabled some months a year and work part-time other months. You are either permanently disabled and get a monthly benefit, or you aren't disabled and get nothing. Since he wouldn't be able to work regularly enough to support himself through work, he went on SSI disability and didn't work at all, which was probably not ideal for either the economy or him.

Re: No Money, No Time

#87

Post by Mz » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 4:52 PM UTC

billmalarky wrote: post #80

Mz wrote: post #31

I just wish that articles like this focused more on how to solve it. It's nice that it acknowledges the problem. But that is not enough. The end of the piece gives a small snippet of examples of what works. How do we start promoting things that do work? That really work? I think that does not get done in part because many people really do not want "the poor" to solve their problems. I do not understand why that is bu…

I was under the impression that basic income was designed to give the poor the base they need to relieve the pressures of being poor enough that they could actually focus on getting a leg up instead of devoting all of their resources to simply surviving week to week.

a) I don't think this article mentions basic income. So I kind of think that is not relevant to this discussion.

b) I am not for basic income. I don't think completely screwing over the economy helps people at the bottom. I think "basic income" likely would screw over the economy.

Re: No Money, No Time

#88

Post by Mz » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 5:00 PM UTC

xnerak wrote: post #68

Mz wrote: post #31

I just wish that articles like this focused more on how to solve it. It's nice that it acknowledges the problem. But that is not enough. The end of the piece gives a small snippet of examples of what works. How do we start promoting things that do work? That really work? I think that does not get done in part because many people really do not want "the poor" to solve their problems. I do not understand why that is bu…

I recently finished reading the book mentioned in the article and in the book, they have a chapter focused on ways to improve the situation for people living in poverty. What I got from it was that programs to help poor people need to be tweaked to not tax their bandwidth as much and there is no real one size fits all solution. One example in the book is the computer skills programs that are often offered by employme…

Thanks for the feedback on the book.

As for your last paragraph: I have been homeless for about 2.5 years. Programs to "help the homeless" mostly really, really suck and a lot of them a) piss away the time of the intended recipients b) require the intended recipients to accept enormous disrespect and c) reinforce a subsistence existence. Many of the programs that look to get poor people off the street require you to first be guilty of something, admit your guilt and then be their property.

I have no doubt that it isn't exactly consciously intentional but those attitudes are in there somewhere or this would be better. (There are some programs that are better than that but the default model is pretty awful, to the point of being actively hostile.)

Re: No Money, No Time

#89

Post by threatofrain » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 5:10 PM UTC

aturek wrote: post #14

fit2rule wrote: post #9

There's a saying, it goes like this: "its expensive being poor", and its really the truth. If you don't have enough money to buy in bulk, you end up paying way more for the smaller amount of product. If you can't afford to spend time on something because you have a limited number of calories before you become unproductive, and therefore have to work on aquiring more calories, then you're stuck in a feedback loop of n…

There's a great quote from a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel: "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard…

I generally have the suspicion that "boots" and the like offer only micro-optimizations. Buying a $100-150 bag advertised for durability versus a $30-40 generic brand backpack. Or buying a MacBook Pro versus a midrange laptop with Windows.

While there may be optimizations to be found in these situations, I also wonder about the cognitive cost per optimization, and I wonder if it might not be better to put the most of your mind on a job or geography transition.

Re: No Money, No Time

#90

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jun 17, 2014, 5:22 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #33

JASchilz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give a few examples of these transaction costs?

I'm not judk, but a few obvious examples: - Medical bills - Rent hikes - Being between jobs - Repairing things that break (e.g. "My car needs $300 in maintenance" is a big deal when you were just barely going to break even on the month and have no savings) - Random expenses for kids' school None of these things are necessarily all that pricy, but when your minimal cost of living is equal to or only slightly less than…

I watched a guy who had just gotten out of prison trying to make it back into society. A lot of things cost more for him. One example: Car insurance. He didn't have the money to pay 6 months of insurance in one chunk, so he had to buy it one month at a time. Well, the insurance companies charge extra for that.

He couldn't afford a decent car, so he got a car that was cheap, and which (no surprise) broke down a lot. When it broke down, he had to pay to have it fixed, plus to take the bus to get to work.

And so on.