4 ms·

Well, I don't wish to drag this into highly opinionated territory, but 2 points: 1. Has there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circums

Well, I don't wish to drag this into highly opinionated territory, but 2 points: 1. Has there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? Of course the poor are more affected, that's always the case. The issue is how effectively (and quickly) government and people create the circumstances to recover from the situation, and how well they choose to target those who are disproportionately affected. On that measure, we are not doing a great job with top-down spreading money all over the place -- mostly to those who are know how to take advantage of it. Fed, I'm looking at you. 2. On the topic of education, I really object to people saying that the education system or government is willfully neglecting or trying to "keep down" the already disadvantaged. Effective public education is a very challenging thing to administer, and it also has such a strong component of parental and family and environmental contribution. Much of the failure (or poor performance) of the public school system for low-income children is also a fault of the breakdown of family discipline and emphasis on education in the lower/poor classes. The classroom + teachers cannot take the place of parents, who are the main enforcer of childrens' progress. If a family situation is falling apart, an education system cannot patch that hole. And in fact, schools are almost prohibited from playing the surrogate disciplinarian now, out of "equity" concerns. Further, they are handicapped by having to cater to the lowest / most unruly child in a classroom because they have to serve everyone and cannot kick out kids who misbehave and distract everyone else in a classroom. Our unwillingness to confront these truths means that education will always be failing the poor, and these "K-curves" will be with us for a long time.

vkou 6y ago
> 1. Has there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? Of course the poor are more affected, that's always the case. It can be argued that during the Black Death, the working poor that survived got a decent deal out of it. All the death created a labour shortage, resulting in higher wages and better working conditions.
halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
I know a teacher (high school) in the Chicago Public School system. Not only are teachers completely left to fend for themselves in a remote, Zoom-powered classroom setting now, the students themselves are completely disengaged and some of them making the situation even worse. Students are giving out the Zoom links/passwords to people not even in the classes (or in cases, not even the school itself) and people are Zoom-bombing the classes with, what has been described as, "horrific" content (hardcore porn, violence, gore, etc). From what I can gather, it's completely lawless and I have insane sympathy for any teacher trying to maintain order in a remote-classroom based world.
dragontamer 6y ago
The 2008 recession crashed the stock market and the housing market. The poor don't have stocks or houses, largely renting their space. As such, the 2008 recession felt like "everyone was in it together", because both the rich and poor were affected. ------ This 2020... recession? (or whatever we're in) is seeing a high-flying stock market and housing market for the most part. The PS5 / XBSX / 3080 launches were completely sold out. Amazon is flying high, etc. etc. Tech is getting a huge boost at the moment (for good reason: home-offices need to be built for WFH, video games are a good opportunity to play with friends while socially distancing, etc. etc.) This sort of thing makes it look like the rich (or really, the tech world) is doing great. Selling out $500 consoles and $799 or $1500 GPUs in seconds: clearly the people at the top have money to play with
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I suspect a lot of "not rich" people also saved a lot of money [and got a lot bored] by not being able to spend on entertainment (not even movies or meals out) and a $500 console is a gateway into very cost-effective entertainment/distraction which is greatly needed now.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    The poor don't sit around a computer and hit F5 constantly to get in place for an online preorder sale. Online preorders are a "rich" thing: requiring online accounts, access to banking / credit, and broadband internet to compete. In any case, the K-shaped recovery shows that consumer spending for the lower-percentiles is down: overall retail spending is down 10% for the lower quartiles of the population.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  >This sort of thing makes it look like the rich (or really, the tech world) is doing great. Selling out $500 consoles and $799 or $1500 GPUs in seconds: clearly the people at the top have money to play with Makes it look like? No this is exactly what's happening. There's a reason Musk, Gates, Bezos etc. have all made tens of billions in the past few months...
sk2020 6y ago
At least in my state, the department of education reports spending more per pupil (25-50% more) in schools with more than a 50% black population than in majority white schools. I would suspect many or most states are similar.
munificent 6y ago
> 1. Has there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? I think The Blitz might be an example of this. When you drop bombs on a city, you destroy a lot of physical property which preferentially harms those who own the most capital.
- theplague42 6y ago
  There's a whole book dedicated to this theory! https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/the-great-leveler https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th...
  - munificent 6y ago
    Ah, this looks excellent! I'm a little too preoccupied by the dumpster fire that is politics in my country right now to handle reading political non-fiction, but I'll add it to my to-read list.
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
>as there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? It probably depends on the metrics. The dead in WW2 were mostly from the uncomfortable classes, but wealth inequality was dramatically improved after that crisis was over.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
>Effective public education is a very challenging thing to administer, and it also has such a strong component of parental and family and environmental contribution. Yeah it's so hard that every other developed nation on earth outpaces the world's wealthiest country in almost every measure. Weird.
- ars 6y ago
  They don't. Look at the data in the US broken down by economic class. Most countries are far far more homogeneous than the US.
  - deeeeplearning 6y ago
    They do based on mean and median performance in virtually every category.
bryal 6y ago
> Much of the failure (or poor performance) of the public school system for low-income children is also a fault of the breakdown of family discipline and emphasis on education in the lower/poor classes. You're not going to have as much time available for disciplining and raising your kids properly when you have to spend most waking hours of the day working multiple jobs, just to afford putting food on the table. The "breakdown of family discipline", as you call it, is just another consequence of being poor. Seriously, there's just no winning for low-income households in the US.
godot 6y ago
On point #2, as a relatively new parent of only 2 years, I've both gotten a new appreciation of parents as well as understanding of why some families are at a disadvantage. To be quite honest, even as a software engineer who works from home and is not currently overworking (haven't been overworking ever since I became a parent), there's still a lot to do to care for a child. That is to say, I work just 8 hours a day, with zero time wasted on commute, and even during work hours I get a lot of opportunities to help out my spouse with cleaning up the child, putting away dishes and toys, cooking, etc. I can't even begin to imagine what life is like for parents who both work 12+ hours a day just to put food on the table and pay rent, which is the case for a lot of low income children. Is it any wonder that the parental component of these families is mostly missing (through no fault of their own)? In this sense, I feel like the problem is even bigger than schools/education. It's that, plus the fact that parents are working way over time just to make ends meet.

vkou 6y ago

> 1. Has there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? Of course the poor are more affected, that's always the case. It can be argued that during the Black Death, the working poor that survived got a decent deal out of it. All the death created a labour shortage, resulting in higher wages and better working conditions.

halfmatthalfcat 6y ago

I know a teacher (high school) in the Chicago Public School system. Not only are teachers completely left to fend for themselves in a remote, Zoom-powered classroom setting now, the students themselves are completely disengaged and some of them making the situation even worse. Students are giving out the Zoom links/passwords to people not even in the classes (or in cases, not even the school itself) and people are Zoom-bombing the classes with, what has been described as, "horrific" content (hardcore porn, violence, gore, etc). From what I can gather, it's completely lawless and I have insane sympathy for any teacher trying to maintain order in a remote-classroom based world.

dragontamer 6y ago

The 2008 recession crashed the stock market and the housing market. The poor don't have stocks or houses, largely renting their space. As such, the 2008 recession felt like "everyone was in it together", because both the rich and poor were affected. ------ This 2020... recession? (or whatever we're in) is seeing a high-flying stock market and housing market for the most part. The PS5 / XBSX / 3080 launches were completely sold out. Amazon is flying high, etc. etc. Tech is getting a huge boost at the moment (for good reason: home-offices need to be built for WFH, video games are a good opportunity to play with friends while socially distancing, etc. etc.) This sort of thing makes it look like the rich (or really, the tech world) is doing great. Selling out $500 consoles and $799 or $1500 GPUs in seconds: clearly the people at the top have money to play with

sokoloff 6y ago
I suspect a lot of "not rich" people also saved a lot of money [and got a lot bored] by not being able to spend on entertainment (not even movies or meals out) and a $500 console is a gateway into very cost-effective entertainment/distraction which is greatly needed now.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  The poor don't sit around a computer and hit F5 constantly to get in place for an online preorder sale. Online preorders are a "rich" thing: requiring online accounts, access to banking / credit, and broadband internet to compete. In any case, the K-shaped recovery shows that consumer spending for the lower-percentiles is down: overall retail spending is down 10% for the lower quartiles of the population.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
>This sort of thing makes it look like the rich (or really, the tech world) is doing great. Selling out $500 consoles and $799 or $1500 GPUs in seconds: clearly the people at the top have money to play with Makes it look like? No this is exactly what's happening. There's a reason Musk, Gates, Bezos etc. have all made tens of billions in the past few months...

sk2020 6y ago

At least in my state, the department of education reports spending more per pupil (25-50% more) in schools with more than a 50% black population than in majority white schools. I would suspect many or most states are similar.

munificent 6y ago

> 1. Has there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? I think The Blitz might be an example of this. When you drop bombs on a city, you destroy a lot of physical property which preferentially harms those who own the most capital.

theplague42 6y ago
There's a whole book dedicated to this theory! https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/the-great-leveler https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th...
- munificent 6y ago
  Ah, this looks excellent! I'm a little too preoccupied by the dumpster fire that is politics in my country right now to handle reading political non-fiction, but I'll add it to my to-read list.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

>as there ever been a nasty shock to economic systems or unforeseen circumstances that do not affect the poor disproportionately? It probably depends on the metrics. The dead in WW2 were mostly from the uncomfortable classes, but wealth inequality was dramatically improved after that crisis was over.

deeeeplearning 6y ago

>Effective public education is a very challenging thing to administer, and it also has such a strong component of parental and family and environmental contribution. Yeah it's so hard that every other developed nation on earth outpaces the world's wealthiest country in almost every measure. Weird.

ars 6y ago
They don't. Look at the data in the US broken down by economic class. Most countries are far far more homogeneous than the US.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  They do based on mean and median performance in virtually every category.

bryal 6y ago

> Much of the failure (or poor performance) of the public school system for low-income children is also a fault of the breakdown of family discipline and emphasis on education in the lower/poor classes. You're not going to have as much time available for disciplining and raising your kids properly when you have to spend most waking hours of the day working multiple jobs, just to afford putting food on the table. The "breakdown of family discipline", as you call it, is just another consequence of being poor. Seriously, there's just no winning for low-income households in the US.

godot 6y ago

On point #2, as a relatively new parent of only 2 years, I've both gotten a new appreciation of parents as well as understanding of why some families are at a disadvantage. To be quite honest, even as a software engineer who works from home and is not currently overworking (haven't been overworking ever since I became a parent), there's still a lot to do to care for a child. That is to say, I work just 8 hours a day, with zero time wasted on commute, and even during work hours I get a lot of opportunities to help out my spouse with cleaning up the child, putting away dishes and toys, cooking, etc. I can't even begin to imagine what life is like for parents who both work 12+ hours a day just to put food on the table and pay rent, which is the case for a lot of low income children. Is it any wonder that the parental component of these families is mostly missing (through no fault of their own)? In this sense, I feel like the problem is even bigger than schools/education. It's that, plus the fact that parents are working way over time just to make ends meet.