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The argument that all a kid needs to turn out OK is money is absurd, and yet, it seems to be a cornerstone in Millennial thinking. We do everyone a disservice w

The argument that all a kid needs to turn out OK is money is absurd, and yet, it seems to be a cornerstone in Millennial thinking. We do everyone a disservice when we pretend that all of our problems stem from not giving everyone free money. Maybe we are too far removed from the Soviet era for the whippersnappers to understand how very not-well these strategies turned out 30+ years ago. Stop worshipping money. Correlation is not causation. What, pray tell, is the direct link that causes a child's brain size to increase in relation to the parents' bank account? Perhaps the reason wealthier children are healthier is because their parents have discipline and work hard to provide a safe, healthy, stimulating environment for their children, which includes retaining steady gainful employment and using the proceeds from that employment to provide food, shelter, and education for the children. This will not magically happen among poor children if you give the parents some baseline income. I'm not speaking in absolute terms; there is definitely some crossover with good parents who are down on their luck and bad parents who have way too much money. But boiling the problem down to "give poor people more money to fix kids' brain structures" is too lazy, and preaching this about like it's some fundamental righteous principle is highly distasteful.

ryandamm 11y ago
What I'm hearing you say is this (correct me if I'm wrong): You are resistant to early, empirical results that poverty causes negative outcomes for children, and you will require stronger evidence to overcome this resistance. Fair I suppose, but it says a lot about your politics. And I'll leave it there.
- DanBC 11y ago
  A more charitable interpretation would be that while poverty is one thing that harms children (and that can be fixed by giving them cash) there's a bunch of other stuff that harms children, and these don't seem to be fixable with cash. EG parents with addiction to alcohol doesn't seem to be something that's fixed with cash hand outs.
icebraining 11y ago
The argument that all a kid needs to turn out OK is money is absurd Yes, that argument nobody is making is indeed absurd. Perhaps the reason wealthier children are healthier is because their parents have discipline and work hard to provide a safe, healthy, stimulating environment for their children, which includes retaining steady gainful employment and using the proceeds from that employment to provide food, shelter, and education for the children. This will not magically happen among poor children if you give the parents some baseline income. Did you RTFA? The improvements happened after families started gaining an extra $4k from a new casino that was opened in the area. So yes, it did magically happened after the parents got a baseline income increase.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> The argument that all a kid needs to turn out OK is money is absurd, and yet, it seems to be a cornerstone in Millennial thinking. I don't know; your argument seems to be actually the typical response, the kind of thing most people say when they see something that can be pattern-matched to "give money". There are of course many non-material things that are important to growth of a children, but why dismiss this one so easy? Is it because it "sounds too simple"? Personally, I think we seriously overstate effectiveness of methods appealing to virtues, morality and "if only people would...". A lot of things in life are indirectly related to material wealth, you can improve pretty much anything by throwing more money at it. And we also know that things like "hard work" and "discipline" are overrated; people usually behave the way they do because of the environment they're in, and you can manufacture discipline by a mix of glucose and (in more extreme cases) some anti-ADHD medication. I think we're as a society ignoring the obvious because it's easier to blame someone's lack of virtue than actually invest resources into solving their problems.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
Repeated actual peer reviews studies are showing the same thing namely that poor people are poor not because of their moral failing but because they don't have any money. So you argue that instead of actually using the results of research we should focus our welfare using understanding based upon 19th century moralizations.
- aianus 11y ago
  > poor people are poor not because of their moral failing but because they don't have any money. My parents put together made less than $4,000 a year when I was born. Yet, today they are not poor and neither am I. Nobody gave them any free money, why wouldn't I be skeptical of these studies?
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Why would you assume you're representative?
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      Why would you assume he isn't?
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Because most people that start life poor end life poor and most people that start life rich end life rich.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        I'm not assuming either way.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Your parents were lucky. They are probably also hard working and intelligent but unless they were lucky they could not have escaped from the poverty you describe (unless you're missing some details like having helpful rich friends or family etc). It's too easy for something to go wrong e.g. an illness or injury, a car accident, a broken appliance or two and your knocked back down again and if you have no money and no income you can't recover.
mikeash 11y ago
I don't understand your reference to the soviet era. When I think of what characterized the Soviet Union, "giving everyone free money" is not what comes to mind at all, especially since one of the major things that did characterize it was crushing poverty and shortages for many.

ryandamm 11y ago

What I'm hearing you say is this (correct me if I'm wrong): You are resistant to early, empirical results that poverty causes negative outcomes for children, and you will require stronger evidence to overcome this resistance. Fair I suppose, but it says a lot about your politics. And I'll leave it there.

DanBC 11y ago
A more charitable interpretation would be that while poverty is one thing that harms children (and that can be fixed by giving them cash) there's a bunch of other stuff that harms children, and these don't seem to be fixable with cash. EG parents with addiction to alcohol doesn't seem to be something that's fixed with cash hand outs.

icebraining 11y ago

The argument that all a kid needs to turn out OK is money is absurd Yes, that argument nobody is making is indeed absurd. Perhaps the reason wealthier children are healthier is because their parents have discipline and work hard to provide a safe, healthy, stimulating environment for their children, which includes retaining steady gainful employment and using the proceeds from that employment to provide food, shelter, and education for the children. This will not magically happen among poor children if you give the parents some baseline income. Did you RTFA? The improvements happened after families started gaining an extra $4k from a new casino that was opened in the area. So yes, it did magically happened after the parents got a baseline income increase.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> The argument that all a kid needs to turn out OK is money is absurd, and yet, it seems to be a cornerstone in Millennial thinking. I don't know; your argument seems to be actually the typical response, the kind of thing most people say when they see something that can be pattern-matched to "give money". There are of course many non-material things that are important to growth of a children, but why dismiss this one so easy? Is it because it "sounds too simple"? Personally, I think we seriously overstate effectiveness of methods appealing to virtues, morality and "if only people would...". A lot of things in life are indirectly related to material wealth, you can improve pretty much anything by throwing more money at it. And we also know that things like "hard work" and "discipline" are overrated; people usually behave the way they do because of the environment they're in, and you can manufacture discipline by a mix of glucose and (in more extreme cases) some anti-ADHD medication. I think we're as a society ignoring the obvious because it's easier to blame someone's lack of virtue than actually invest resources into solving their problems.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

Repeated actual peer reviews studies are showing the same thing namely that poor people are poor not because of their moral failing but because they don't have any money. So you argue that instead of actually using the results of research we should focus our welfare using understanding based upon 19th century moralizations.

aianus 11y ago
> poor people are poor not because of their moral failing but because they don't have any money. My parents put together made less than $4,000 a year when I was born. Yet, today they are not poor and neither am I. Nobody gave them any free money, why wouldn't I be skeptical of these studies?
- mikeash 11y ago
  Why would you assume you're representative?
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    Why would you assume he isn't?
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Because most people that start life poor end life poor and most people that start life rich end life rich.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I'm not assuming either way.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Your parents were lucky. They are probably also hard working and intelligent but unless they were lucky they could not have escaped from the poverty you describe (unless you're missing some details like having helpful rich friends or family etc). It's too easy for something to go wrong e.g. an illness or injury, a car accident, a broken appliance or two and your knocked back down again and if you have no money and no income you can't recover.

mikeash 11y ago

I don't understand your reference to the soviet era. When I think of what characterized the Soviet Union, "giving everyone free money" is not what comes to mind at all, especially since one of the major things that did characterize it was crushing poverty and shortages for many.