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I know lots of people Just wondering--do you really know "lots of people" who are among the "working poor"? I come from Appalachia and have known--genuinely,

I know lots of people Just wondering--do you really know "lots of people" who are among the "working poor"? I come from Appalachia and have known--genuinely, no bullshit here--lots of "working poor" and can't honestly say that there was some systematic conspiracy to hold them down, rough them up, prevent them from rising, etc. Fact is: There are a lot of people living in the lap of luxury--luxury measured by creature comforts--who in any other age would be lucky, yes lucky, to spend 12 hours a day behind a horse's ass. The real reason for people staying in the lower ranks is exactly what we already know: They have some dysfunction. Perhaps a lack of intelligence, or an excess of impulse, or simply a chronic inability to show up to work on time. The latter might suprise you, as it hardly matters if programmers get up at 8 or 9 or 10, but in low-end jobs, one of the big problems among "trouble employees" is simply their unwillingness to follow a schedule. Who's to blame?

david927 19y ago
There are lots of examples of poor people who are hard working and still poor, and lots of examples of wealthy people who fell into it. There is no moral value to wealth and to say so not only insults our intelligence but attempts to justify terrible injustices.
- deleted 19y ago
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- Prrometheus 19y ago
  At the same time, many people (we'll call them "left-wing") claim that there is no agency behind wealth or poverty, and that therefore we should punish the "lucky" rich people to help the "unlucky" poor. This attitude is utterly simplistic and destructive in a society when taken to the extreme (the left-wing tends to be extreme).
  - aquateen 19y ago
    "punish the rich"... "the left-wing tends to be extreme"; this is just blatant partisanship. There is nothing to support, just opinion... what productive conversation could start this way? This is why politics here is dangerous.
  - justindz 19y ago
    As a left-winger, here goes: Yes, there are nut jobs. But, yes, you are engaged in a fallacious generalization. It's also called a prejudice. But here's a softer restatement of what you said for those of us who at least think we're not nut jobs: "At the same time, many people (we'll call them "fellow humans") claim that there is sometimes wealth and poverty without agency and that those with means should help those without means, particularly in cases without agency or in cases with resistant intertia, because of the direct or indirect causal relationship between the source of the means and the reduced or diminished means of those living in or near poverty. This attitude is either selfish or altruistic on an individual level depending on the means of the proponent of this attitude and destructive in a society when taken to the extreme (some fellow humans tend to be extreme when you largely ignore fellow humans who do not fit your definition of extreme)." How was that? I don't assume that all "right-wingers" like you might be are extreme. I'm related to many of them, friends with many of them. They have good ideas and a different opinion on fairness and entitlement. It's possible that everyone's partially right and it's a good idea to mingle more often.
dataangel 19y ago
You can start off in the world in circumstances that make you much less likely to succeed later, circumstances that are totally outside your control. If you acquire an early aversion to people or a mental illness due to childhood rape, I'd have to be pretty dense to say your lack of productivity is your fault. If you didn't get into as good a college as the kid who's parents could afford after school SAT prep classes, I couldn't really say you're a worse student. If your parents sucked at child rearing and raised you on a healthy diet of Cheetoes and Disney videos instead of broccoli and Legos, you can't be totally to blame for your poor brain development and lack of impulse control. Writing someone off as having a dysfunction without considering the cause is stupid.
- wanorris 19y ago
  Of course people's parents can do all sorts of things to create a poor environment for a child to grow up in. Maybe their parents did the same thing. But at some point, regardless of what your parents did, you have to take responsibility for your own actions and try to make something of your life -- or not. By the same token, dysfunctional rich kids into drugs and other methods of squandering wealth are so common that they're a cliche. Maybe their emotionally distant parents are to blame too. Regardless of how they got there, at some point you have to just acknowledge that some people have useful survival skills for getting ahead in society, and some do not. Also, that virtually anyone who isn't actually mentally retarded has some ability to develop those skills if they want to strongly enough. This leaves you the option of modeling these skills as obtainable, which means that you create incentives for people to get their sh*t together, and the option of modeling these skills as innate and beyond anyone's control, which means that you just support people who drew the short straw and don't bother with incentives. I think it's pretty clear which of these models contributes to wealth gain over time and which contributes to welfare dependency.

david927 19y ago

There are lots of examples of poor people who are hard working and still poor, and lots of examples of wealthy people who fell into it. There is no moral value to wealth and to say so not only insults our intelligence but attempts to justify terrible injustices.

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
Prrometheus 19y ago
At the same time, many people (we'll call them "left-wing") claim that there is no agency behind wealth or poverty, and that therefore we should punish the "lucky" rich people to help the "unlucky" poor. This attitude is utterly simplistic and destructive in a society when taken to the extreme (the left-wing tends to be extreme).
- aquateen 19y ago
  "punish the rich"... "the left-wing tends to be extreme"; this is just blatant partisanship. There is nothing to support, just opinion... what productive conversation could start this way? This is why politics here is dangerous.
- justindz 19y ago
  As a left-winger, here goes: Yes, there are nut jobs. But, yes, you are engaged in a fallacious generalization. It's also called a prejudice. But here's a softer restatement of what you said for those of us who at least think we're not nut jobs: "At the same time, many people (we'll call them "fellow humans") claim that there is sometimes wealth and poverty without agency and that those with means should help those without means, particularly in cases without agency or in cases with resistant intertia, because of the direct or indirect causal relationship between the source of the means and the reduced or diminished means of those living in or near poverty. This attitude is either selfish or altruistic on an individual level depending on the means of the proponent of this attitude and destructive in a society when taken to the extreme (some fellow humans tend to be extreme when you largely ignore fellow humans who do not fit your definition of extreme)." How was that? I don't assume that all "right-wingers" like you might be are extreme. I'm related to many of them, friends with many of them. They have good ideas and a different opinion on fairness and entitlement. It's possible that everyone's partially right and it's a good idea to mingle more often.

dataangel 19y ago

You can start off in the world in circumstances that make you much less likely to succeed later, circumstances that are totally outside your control. If you acquire an early aversion to people or a mental illness due to childhood rape, I'd have to be pretty dense to say your lack of productivity is your fault. If you didn't get into as good a college as the kid who's parents could afford after school SAT prep classes, I couldn't really say you're a worse student. If your parents sucked at child rearing and raised you on a healthy diet of Cheetoes and Disney videos instead of broccoli and Legos, you can't be totally to blame for your poor brain development and lack of impulse control. Writing someone off as having a dysfunction without considering the cause is stupid.

wanorris 19y ago
Of course people's parents can do all sorts of things to create a poor environment for a child to grow up in. Maybe their parents did the same thing. But at some point, regardless of what your parents did, you have to take responsibility for your own actions and try to make something of your life -- or not. By the same token, dysfunctional rich kids into drugs and other methods of squandering wealth are so common that they're a cliche. Maybe their emotionally distant parents are to blame too. Regardless of how they got there, at some point you have to just acknowledge that some people have useful survival skills for getting ahead in society, and some do not. Also, that virtually anyone who isn't actually mentally retarded has some ability to develop those skills if they want to strongly enough. This leaves you the option of modeling these skills as obtainable, which means that you create incentives for people to get their sh*t together, and the option of modeling these skills as innate and beyond anyone's control, which means that you just support people who drew the short straw and don't bother with incentives. I think it's pretty clear which of these models contributes to wealth gain over time and which contributes to welfare dependency.