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I think the problem with thinking of it like an investment is there is a 0% chance of personal, direct, return on your investment. It may benefit society and yo

by lolsal 10y ago

I think the problem with thinking of it like an investment is there is a 0% chance of personal, direct, return on your investment. It may benefit society and you may even benefit indirectly due to the benefit of society, but you would not be entitled to direct return on your investment. In that case to me it seems like a non-starter purely as an investment. There would also be very ambiguous (if any) accountability of the ROI with lots of hand-wavey things for ups and downs. You also can't re-invest anything that is invested in this manner, like you can with other investments. You can't rebalance or shift investment around once it's happened. So there seems to be a huge sunk cost the principal is unrecoverable. Maybe it's just too complex (right now) to calculate an expected ROI so it tends to sit more on the side of speculation than investing. It may seem like a good thing to do, but we're really just guessing. > $100 per month justifies at least $50,000 in additional investment, $100,000 if you count compound effects That seems like a total guess without a source.

sqeaky 10y ago
The chances of return are higher than 0%. They are just causally disconnected. Consider that muggers are likely to be people in desperate need of money. Investing in kids now reduces you chance of being mugged later. The same disconnected causality is at work in a ton of other ways. Chronically poor people will not invent a product you are likely to buy. Chronically poor people contribute less tax money, increasing your relative tax burden. Chronically poor people <contribute more> to <bad thing> and <contribute less> to <good thing>. This is extremely hard to measure with something like single study, but the mechanism is clear and easy to understand. And data does bear this out. Educated and wealthier areas have less of the problems I touched on here.
- lolsal 10y ago
  > The chances of return are higher than 0%. They are just causally disconnected. You're leaving off an important clause that I had: > 0% chance of personal, direct, return on your investment. Which is the most important part. I agree that essentially dumping money at the problem will help, but I disagree that it should be considered an investment in the traditional sense. I'm not sure what to call it other than charity.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    It sounds like we both agree it would improve the future in tangible and measurable ways, even for those paying the taxes. I would rather not argue the semantics of the word "investment", not all investments need to be financial.
r00fus 10y ago
This is exactly why poverty should be a governmental concern: a societal cost for societal benefit. The problem is that people don't care about or trust information that proves the investment is worthwhile - and part of that is an active disinformation campaign against anything government-positive by the wealthy/corporate elite that wants to defang the government from interfering in it's profits. There's also the fact that the riches pay less (in %) towards taxes than the middle-class or poor. When your "betters" don't pay their fair share, why should you?

by lolsal 10y ago

sqeaky 10y ago

The chances of return are higher than 0%. They are just causally disconnected. Consider that muggers are likely to be people in desperate need of money. Investing in kids now reduces you chance of being mugged later. The same disconnected causality is at work in a ton of other ways. Chronically poor people will not invent a product you are likely to buy. Chronically poor people contribute less tax money, increasing your relative tax burden. Chronically poor people <contribute more> to <bad thing> and <contribute less> to <good thing>. This is extremely hard to measure with something like single study, but the mechanism is clear and easy to understand. And data does bear this out. Educated and wealthier areas have less of the problems I touched on here.

lolsal 10y ago
> The chances of return are higher than 0%. They are just causally disconnected. You're leaving off an important clause that I had: > 0% chance of personal, direct, return on your investment. Which is the most important part. I agree that essentially dumping money at the problem will help, but I disagree that it should be considered an investment in the traditional sense. I'm not sure what to call it other than charity.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  It sounds like we both agree it would improve the future in tangible and measurable ways, even for those paying the taxes. I would rather not argue the semantics of the word "investment", not all investments need to be financial.

r00fus 10y ago

This is exactly why poverty should be a governmental concern: a societal cost for societal benefit. The problem is that people don't care about or trust information that proves the investment is worthwhile - and part of that is an active disinformation campaign against anything government-positive by the wealthy/corporate elite that wants to defang the government from interfering in it's profits. There's also the fact that the riches pay less (in %) towards taxes than the middle-class or poor. When your "betters" don't pay their fair share, why should you?