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3 rules to escape poverty ... graduate high school, defer parenthood and avoid drugs.
by lorcan 8y ago
3 rules to escape poverty ... graduate high school, defer parenthood and avoid drugs.
- cmurf 8y agoEqual rights for girls/women leads to all three so I would put that first, and now you've got two spare slots for new rules.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoEqual rights for girls/women leads to avoiding drugs? I'd like to see how you think that works.
- daenz 8y ago"Equal rights" in this context, through some semantic gymnastics, probably means "abortion and contraceptives." Calling it "equal rights" is silly because men don't get elective medical procedures and condoms for free.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoEven if that's what cmurf meant (and it probably is), I still don't see how it results in avoiding drugs.
- cmurf 8y agoMen also don't get pregnant for 9 months, or experience lower wages in anticipation of it. What is it with men and abortion? Scared of your inferior genes being rejected by conscious female logic who knew from the outset she definitely did not intend to produce your vile offspring?
- daenz 8y ago>Scared of your inferior genes being rejected by conscious female logic who knew from the outset she definitely did not intend to produce your vile offspring? Wow, that is ugly. Also I happen to hold some pro-choice views so please direct your toxic bile elsewhere.
- cmurf 8y agoThere is a metric fton (an SI unit) of research on a wide range of socially beneficial change that happens simply from giving power to women. What, I literally have to do research for you? At least in political science circles, this is like basic multiplication. Not quite as simple as addition. (Political science is my discipline. I see high orders of Dunning Kruger and misogyny in the HN community, so it does not surprise me at all that my idea of 4*4!=16 is common here).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tomhoward 8y agoThe root commenter may have started this flamewar with a simplistic and inflammatory comment, but you exacerbated it with an equally simplistic and inflammatory comment introducing gender politics in a way that has only a tenuous link to the original topic. > There is a metric fton (an SI unit) of research on a wide range of socially beneficial change that happens simply from giving power to women. Nobody who is the kind of contributor that HN welcomes would take serious issue with this. That doesn't make your original comment a relevant or constructive contribution to the discussion, which is about poverty in general. Discussions about just how equality can be achieved across gender and other axes, and how that can lead to benefits to society, are important and worthy discussions. But they're not simple - if they were, these problems would have been solved long ago.
- lorcan 8y agoIts a testament to the state of our national discourse that the statement of some simple, but obvious, truths could be considered "inflammatory". Also I didnt bring gender into the discussion; the burden of poverty falls disproportionately on women.
- tomhoward 8y ago> our national discourse You might want to check your assumptions about which country I'm from. > I didnt bring gender into the discussion; the burden of poverty falls disproportionately on women. This is a rhetorical tactic, not a good-faith mode of discussion. From the age of your account it looks like you're a new participant on HN. Fair enough that you're not yet up to speed with how things are done here. This site is intended for people who want to engage in good-faith discussions, not rhetorical trickery and point-scoring.
- moate 8y agoIDK how to take this/ Do these rules guarantee that if followed you won't wind up in poverty? If you break these rules (which TONS of people do) will you not escape poverty? How do these rules help someone incapable of one of them?
- sintaxi 8y agoStatistically it virtually is a guarantee though I tend to think the three rules are 1) graduate high school. 2) get a full time job. 3) be married before having children.
- daenz 8y agoThese "no rule is valid unless it works for everyone 100% of the time" arguments are tiring. There is literally no rule that meets these criteria, yet humans are smart enough to recognize when something works relatively consistently for most people, and consider that a good thing. People wanting absolute guaranteed results for all cases come across as deliberately contrarian.
- moate 8y ago>>People wanting absolute guaranteed results for all cases come across as deliberately contrarian. People making stupid generalizations that "these 3 rules..." are coming across as deliberately stupid. The world is nuanced. Saying "the way to fix poverty is this one simple thing" is useless. You want to have an actual conversation, that's fine. OP is laying down some bullshit. If he want to come back and refine is statement, great. Let's start the discussion I was instigating. You want to infer meaning and give his bare bones comment a whole bunch of implied meaning, great. I'm trying to figure out if he's trolling or just being trite and dismissive.
- daenz 8y agoThe miscommunication here is I was on the same page as OP because I've seen the study he was alluding to (and actually got one of the points wrong). I incorrectly assumed that it was common knowledge. It's referenced here, and yes I am aware that this article is attempting to "debunk" it, but I think the counterpoints it makes are quite weak: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027195/haskins-sawhill-norms-marriage https://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027195/haskins-sawhill-norms-...
- maxxxxx 8y agoAlso: don't get sick and don't have any mental issues.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- novok 8y agoWay less likely when you're a young person to be so serious that you can't work. And you have universal healthcare & disability in Canada.
- klyrs 8y ago> And you have universal healthcare & disability in Canada. Yes and no. "Universal" health care doesn't cover vision, dental, or mental health. In BC, "universal" health care is paid by one's employer. Which is great for people with steady employment, and awful for everybody else.
- eigenstuff 8y agoAnd this is why Appalachia still cannot break its cycle of systemic rural poverty. I think people fail to realize or are just now realizing that the opioid epidemic beginning in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky (as well as on reservations) wasn't an indictment of the character of Appalachians as a distinct cultural group by any means, it was a calculated move to exploit the vulnerable and forgotten: rural populations isolated from the outside world, full of bodies broken in the mines and in pain, few prospects and little hope for anything better. Purdue was pumping hundreds of thousands pills into these little hollers. Just one more corporate entity committing... Can we call it genocide yet? Between this and tens of thousands dead in the mines and from black lung and cancer caused by pollution? Because basic safety would cut into the bottom line and these people are seen as disposable? Just a bunch of backwards yokels who can't speak English right and get what they voted for? Things have happened in this region that make the Flint water crisis look like amateur hour. Their schools are chronically underfunded because industry owns local governments all the way down to the school boards and sherrifs, that they would pay their fair share of taxes and invested in these communities with that kind of death grip on the region is laughable. I live near a trailer park, it kills me to think there is genius in there and in trailer parks all over the place that goes unrecognized and never developed and allowed to grow to reach its full potential. What's the point of staying in school if all you've ever expected of yourself is working at the gas station because you don't know you can want more for yourself? Because your family is poor, and you need to go to work to help feed your little siblings? That teenage pregnancy rates are higher is hardly surprising. If you're standing in line at 6 am for Remote Area Medical to get a tooth pulled, it goes without saying you have no access to birth control or abortions. Not that you could even afford the latter anyway. And so the cycle of systemic rural poverty continues.
- pandolce 8y agoIt’s not that simple. https://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027195/haskins-sawhill-norms-marriage https://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027195/haskins-sawhill-norms-...
- daenz 8y agoSomeone should do a study on the effects of telling people they have no agency over decisions in their life.
- pandolce 8y agoInstead of simply telling poor people to stop making bad decisions, we should work to solve the underlying problems which are causing them to make those decisions.
- daenz 8y ago>we should work to solve the underlying problems which are causing them to make those decisions. And in the meantime, we should be educating and encouraging them about avoiding making bad decisions. But by removing their agency, you rule out that option as part of the solution. Instead, it seems you would rather hold your breath until "the system" is fixed, than address how to encourage people to make better decisions while also working towards a better system.
- pandolce 8y agoJust telling people “stay in school, don’t do drugs” and trying to sell them the American Dream doesn’t do enough to combat poverty. Talking points like the “3 Rules” diminish or even deny the fact that systemic flaws are contributing to poverty. Attempts to encourage good decision-making among the poor may work in the short-term, but if it detracts from the movement to provide long-term solutions then that’s a problem. At the same time we shouldn’t wait idly for political change like you said. I guess we should take both approaches and not go too extreme with either one.