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Right. And here's a different flash site, which shows that literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide increased their real income over the last twenty y

Right. And here's a different flash site, which shows that literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide increased their real income over the last twenty years: http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-china/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=100;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=4.0174193548387;ti=1990$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=pp59adS3CHWfKPVb7dEexFA;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=rvalNLkeEs-y9Tp1T-SZb0g;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=20;iid=pp59adS3CHWfpIxpjegY4bw;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID1;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=83;dataMax=101655$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=8.8;dataMax=83$map_s;sma=53;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=;modified=80 http://www.gapminder.org/labs/gapminder-china/#$majorMode=ch... Somehow hundreds of millions of people in China and elsewhere went from far more deprived conditions to first world status over the span of a few decades. Nothing in that game compares to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution or the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward. So clearly it is possible for an entire civilization to pull itself up by its bootstraps through capitalism. [0] Finally, as noted the game stacks the deck against reality. It starts you out as a single parent with no savings and evidently no family members who will help you out...without any acknowledgement of the fact that broken homes, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, a lack of a high school diploma, and a failure to save are the major causes of poverty. [1], [2] If the game started a few years earlier and asked "do you want to complete high school" and "do you wait till you're financially stable before marrying & having children", the overall message would be very different. Indeed, the authors would likely be accused of having unfashionable political sympathies for simply advising that people mimic the behaviors of middle class Asian immigrant families. [0] http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/dp/0060197765 http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000/... [1] http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba428 http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba428 [2] http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2465.pdf http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2465.pdf

ianterrell 15y ago
I agree with your main points, but did your closing sentence need to get racist?
- smoyer 15y ago
  That statement may have a bit of racial stereotyping as we can be sure that not all (100%) Asian immigrants were so frugal but I don't see any malicious intent ... I get the impression that the statement is positive. I know I've been impressed by the work ethic of many immigrants I know (Asian and otherwise) compared to those who sit and wait for their government welfare checks. I understand welfare for those who are truly needy, but there needs to be a way to lift them up so that it's not permanent (with perhaps the exception of those with disabilities that prevent it).
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I guess I don't mind providing people the bare minimum to live without strings attached. I'd actually agree with Hayek and Friedman that we should attach fewer strings and just make them cash payments, because that's less distorting; all the book-keeping and social engineering to try to get people off welfare, and to not "waste" the welfare money when they're on it (Section 8 housing, food stamps, etc.) costs more and distorts the economy more than just paying them would. I don't think great things in civilization get done solely out of people needing to work the bare minimum to survive anyway; if that's all they were going to work, just paying them $10k subsistence is not a huge loss to society, and even pretty cheap by the standards of the other stuff we spend money on. Actually it'd be a pretty sad commentary on civilization if it were only the threat of literally being homeless/starving that inspired people to work; that's what it was like in subsistence-farming days, but surely a wealthy country can move beyond that, and make the baseline something higher, even if only "ramen + crappy apartment"? Plus, I think we'd make it back in how much it'd increase entrepreneurship if people felt more confident in a safety net being there if they failed (people from lower-class backgrounds w/o a family safety net, in particular, are very afraid to leave steady jobs if they have one).
    - smoyer 15y ago
      Well said ... plus, it would only cost half as much because we could get rid of the highly-paid bureaucrats administering the system (assuming they were capable of keeping a job elsewhere versus going on welfare themselves).
mynameishere 15y ago
Man, the Chinese were in the 2nd century until just a few decades ago, when they finally decided to imitate white America.
- meric 15y ago
  That is either sarcasm or a very ignorant comment.
  - mynameishere 15y ago
    No. The Chinese lived brutal, peasant lifestyles in the 20th century. It takes a very dedicated kind of ignorance to not know this.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
scottkduncan 15y ago
In a lot of ways the deck has been economically stacked against lower-middle class and working poor Americans, while at the same time macroeconomic trends benefited low-skilled workers in developing countries like China. Workers there were able to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" thanks in part to rapidly rising wages as production moved to lower-cost countries. I have no doubts that the globalization of economic inputs produces higher global growth and a greater overall level of welfare, but I also have no doubt that this process produces winners and losers. One subset of the losers has been low/medium skilled Americans, who face stagnating wages and many of the challenges this game portrays (in an admittedly over-dramatic fashion). We can either accept this as the cost of doing business or work as a society to compensate the losers, but in either case we should acknowledge that there are some larger forces at play that make it harder for certain segments of the population to reach their own bootstraps.
- avipa 15y ago
  Losers? I'll be the first to admit that I am ignorant about the situation in the USA, but do you really think that people such as these are losers considering the standard of living they can still afford? Mobile phones with $70 bills? Honestly? Hell, a mobile in itself? (My mobile cost £20, and I have yet to use up my initial top-up of £20 5 months after buying it). I honestly feel disgusted by the fact that I am expected to feel sorry for people such as these. I managed to get to the end to the month all fine and dandy, and could see many things I could still do to improve my cash flow. My kid may have not been given some meaningless luxuries that other kids got (I never went to school trips and the like myself), but my charisma and public services such as the library and the like would be more than enough to ensure he turns out a fine man. Hell, if I wouldn't even have had a kid in the first place, until I could ensure that I could raise properly. Expecting me to feel sympathy for an individual who can't afford a kid, suffering from their own selfishness, is out of order. It's comparable to expecting me to pay for the treatment of some fool who didn't put on a condom when he knew he was have sexual intercourse with a - unique woman. edit. Forgive me, due to my anger I lost focus on what I was initially trying to say. Basically, standard of living has improved dramatically. They may not be able to afford premium goods such as sparkly ipads and ps3's, but they can still afford a great deal of stuff.
badclient 15y ago
It's a whole different way of thinking though. I'm probably at the exterme end of it: my siblings and I have decided that we will form a trust in which we will all be equal owners and any company we start(or wealth we acquire individually) will be owned by the trust. The upside? It distributes the risk and almost ensures that none of us will ever go broke. The downside(for some people)? When one of us flips the company, the wealth will be equally distributed between my siblings, irrespective of whether they actually worked at the company or not.
- lurker19 15y ago
  Why 100% split? Why not a fractional share with a dollar cap, like social security? That could rednce the effect of freeloading, while still providing security in case the richest of you feels less generous in the future.
  - badclient 15y ago
    I suppose that could be done but financial security is only partial goal. The other goal of unity and equality is probably a little more important and that breaks pretty quickly if there is significant disparity between our standard of living. This reduces the chance that any sibling will have a lifestyle that is relatively more affluent than the others. And when we get a freeloader, it encourages the other siblings to not give up on his life. It may be easier to give up if you can tell yourself "well he is getting what he deserves". This assumes a great deal of good faith, obviously. It can easily go bad and turn into resentment if (a) we get a freeloader and (b) he remains a freeloader all his life. But even in that worst case scenario, the hope(from our cultural upbringing) is that there will be less resentment(for the financial unfairness) and more sadness/empathy for the sibling who went the wrong way all his life. My father's brothers have been on this model for couple decades and it has mostly worked out. They've had multiple freeloaders at one point turn into super productive contributors a decade later(and after lots of hardwork by the non-freeloading siblings towards the freeloaders). This model is most easy when you are still young and life is simple(as it is for us now). It becomes very challenging after we all have wives, children and grandchildren and different local interests and politics. It usually leads to (somewhat bitter) splitville where assets are divided. This is one area my siblings and me are most weary of and want to do a better job of than our prior generations.
roc 15y ago
> "It starts you out as a single parent with no savings and evidently no family members who will help you out...without any acknowledgement of the fact that broken homes, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, a lack of a high school diploma, and a failure to save are the major causes of poverty." Some people find it useful to walk a mile in the shoes of those affected by the policies they support. Whether you might ever choose or have to wear those shoes personally is rather beside the point. A dialogue tree that allowed the player to navigate life choices at an intellectual remove from real human life would simply reinforce our societal tendency to dodge the question of "what do we do with the struggling" by asserting that "I know better than them." edit: effect/affect
- anamax 15y ago
  > Some people find it useful to walk a mile in the shoes of those affected by the policies they support. Exactly which policies cause folks to get divorced (ie, get married young), have kids at a young age, and quit high school? Apart, of course, from the policies intended to reduce the effects of those decisions....
  - akdetrick 15y ago
    I'd venture to guess that the choices you mention did not always carry the sort of consequences they do today. You're right, policy decisions don't cause more people to have kids at a young age. They do however, have an effect on joblessness [1], just to name one facet of the economic environment that now exists in the US. [1] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate+us http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&...
    - vacri 15y ago
      You're right, policy decisions don't cause more people to have kids at a young age. 'Abstinence only' sex education causes more people to have kids at a young age, because it prevents more people from learning what options there are available. Add into that the issue that young people have always been difficult to stop fucking each other throughout history, and combine with the highly sexualised modern society, and 'Abstinence only' sex education is, frankly, evil.
doki_pen 15y ago
"That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes." ~ Kurt Vonnegut I think your mistake is to think everyone is capable of knowing the consequences of their actions. Letting all people suffer the full consequences of all their actions, when it would cost little to get them off the hook, seems wrong to me, and to many others. Life isn't fair, and it never will be. But we, as intelligent human beings, can do a lot to make it more fair. I think that is an overall win for everyone.
- jpadkins 15y ago
  > I think that is an overall win for everyone. Except for when you make life more fair by handicapping the high performers. See Kurt's Harrison Bergeron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
  - doki_pen 15y ago
    That is a very odd interpretation of Harrison Bergeron. You believe that it's about taxes and the welfare state? I find that hard to believe considering Kurt was a self proclaimed socialist.
- bkmartin 15y ago
  doki_pen, you make a great point. Lets also not forget that many people who end up in these situations actually grew up in them as well. Many of their parents didn't finish high school, don't have good jobs, and were born when their parents were only teenagers. A lot of people who live out these scenarios have never had anything better modeled to them. Preached to them, yes, but modeled? No. So when a kid, at home, is always being told and modeled things that will skew them away from making good decisions what do you expect? What do you expect when their Mom, who they love and trust (for no other reason than its their Mom, how do they know any better?), tells them that their teachers are wrong because of x or y and that you need to look out for yourself and that no one will help and yadda yadda yadda... yeah, some people aren't making bad decisions with all the facts laid out in front of them. Its easy to be an armchair quarter back, but instead of riding these people through their misery, why not show some love and compassion and try to help them out. This will go much further than beating them down and continuing not only the economic cycle, but the cultural one as well.
foolinator 15y ago
China is far from first world. They have modern cities, but their GDP is less than $5000/year pp. They employ slave child labor to make your cheap plastic shit. They work 14 hour days. It sucks.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  The coastal parts of China are first world economies, but parts of China are still effectively 3rd world. It's silly to claim that Chinese workers make "cheap plastic shit". They make high-end electronics, they make industrial equipment, they build ships, they make aerospace components, they even build orbital launch vehicles, communications satellites, and manned spacecraft. There are plenty of sound, factual criticisms of the Chinese government, economy, industry, culture, etc. without having to make things up.
  - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
    >> They employ slave child labor to make your cheap plastic shit. >They make high-end electronics, they make industrial equipment, [...] and manned spacecraft. // Are you saying they don't employ minors in China at poverty wages in the manufacture of "cheap plastic shit"? That would be news to me.
notahacker 15y ago
I thought the point of stacking the deck was to show that broken homes and a failure to save are root causes of poverty, and not readily-reversible ones. That said, people generally don't choose to lose their adequately-paid job and spouse any more than they choose to be the target of a Cultural Revolution lynch mob; certain behaviours increase the chances of it happening but bad things happen to people who make good, or at least explicable, choices too. Sure, China had terrible problems with revolutionaries, before reforms leading to a remarkable rate of economic growth that nevertheless still leaves the average person in living conditions that would appal the average debt-ridden member of the American underclass. Mostly they "pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps" by being able to work for (or employ people on) the sort of wages that would leave Americans unable to eat, never mind have houses, cars and mobile phone contracts to owe repayments on. So they didn't do it in isolation[] and their model doesn't work for the US unemployed. Perspective is useful, but deeming freedom of choice and support for the poor in a rich democracy to be adequate by comparison with a poor country rapidly recovering from internal chaos is like judging the adequacy of a government by how many gulags they operate. By the standards of first world countries, the poor in the US get a relatively rough deal. Singapore, since you cite it as an example, is a million miles away from a society where people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps from capitalism. For a start, the government cleared the slums by building 85% of the country's housing stock and fixed the rents and prices far below private-sector levels. They might be extremely business-friendly, but governments in democratic states don't get much more paternalistic than Singapore's. []Arguably the American poor have benefited far more from the resulting availability of cheap consumer goods than they lose from cheap Chinese labour pulling down on the bootstraps of the US manufacturing industry. But the availability of those jobs is still reduced.
noonespecial 15y ago
There is a saying I really like: "The poor are poor because all of their choices in life suck." There are of course two completely different ways to read that. I find that the first interpretation that jumps out at people speaks volumes about their world-view.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  Yep. The self-made man would say it a certain way, and the sad truth is that most people lack the mix of ambition and discipline to look for, find, and work on ways to change their situation. For every rags-to-riches story there are a million rags-to-rags stories to match. Another person here mentioned people using check cashing services instead of service-charging banks. You know, as opposed to shopping around for a smaller bank or credit union that doesn't do that (another thing strangely lacking as an option in the game). What makes this even more pathetic is that the bank charge is usually LESS than the 3% they are paying from their paycheck to the check cashing service! Top it off with the tendency for poor people to withdraw small amounts of cash from ATMs and take the service charge hit (which, since it's a fixed price, increases the percentage loss the lower the amount you take out) and you can't but shake your head in disbelief. And don't even get me started on the massive amounts of money stupid people spend on lottery tickets... It's little things like this that make (and keep) people poor, and these things are so easy to avoid with a little planning and discipline. Wealth is a long term strategy that few consider seriously. And once you have wealth, you need to protect it from your grandchildren, because it's a well known phenomena for the first generation to make the money, the second generation to keep the money, and the third generation to piss it away. Not to mention the incredibly stupid modern practice of splitting the inheritance between your children rather than passing it in its entirety to ONE child.
  - mkjones 15y ago
    > Not to mention the incredibly stupid modern practice of splitting the inheritance between your children rather than passing it in its entirety to ONE child. I'm not sure if this is a troll. What is incredibly stupid about the common practice of splitting inheritance equally between your children? What do you propose as a more optimal way to choose the single child who receives everything?

ianterrell 15y ago

I agree with your main points, but did your closing sentence need to get racist?

smoyer 15y ago
That statement may have a bit of racial stereotyping as we can be sure that not all (100%) Asian immigrants were so frugal but I don't see any malicious intent ... I get the impression that the statement is positive. I know I've been impressed by the work ethic of many immigrants I know (Asian and otherwise) compared to those who sit and wait for their government welfare checks. I understand welfare for those who are truly needy, but there needs to be a way to lift them up so that it's not permanent (with perhaps the exception of those with disabilities that prevent it).
- _delirium 15y ago
  I guess I don't mind providing people the bare minimum to live without strings attached. I'd actually agree with Hayek and Friedman that we should attach fewer strings and just make them cash payments, because that's less distorting; all the book-keeping and social engineering to try to get people off welfare, and to not "waste" the welfare money when they're on it (Section 8 housing, food stamps, etc.) costs more and distorts the economy more than just paying them would. I don't think great things in civilization get done solely out of people needing to work the bare minimum to survive anyway; if that's all they were going to work, just paying them $10k subsistence is not a huge loss to society, and even pretty cheap by the standards of the other stuff we spend money on. Actually it'd be a pretty sad commentary on civilization if it were only the threat of literally being homeless/starving that inspired people to work; that's what it was like in subsistence-farming days, but surely a wealthy country can move beyond that, and make the baseline something higher, even if only "ramen + crappy apartment"? Plus, I think we'd make it back in how much it'd increase entrepreneurship if people felt more confident in a safety net being there if they failed (people from lower-class backgrounds w/o a family safety net, in particular, are very afraid to leave steady jobs if they have one).
  - smoyer 15y ago
    Well said ... plus, it would only cost half as much because we could get rid of the highly-paid bureaucrats administering the system (assuming they were capable of keeping a job elsewhere versus going on welfare themselves).

mynameishere 15y ago

Man, the Chinese were in the 2nd century until just a few decades ago, when they finally decided to imitate white America.

meric 15y ago
That is either sarcasm or a very ignorant comment.
- mynameishere 15y ago
  No. The Chinese lived brutal, peasant lifestyles in the 20th century. It takes a very dedicated kind of ignorance to not know this.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

scottkduncan 15y ago

In a lot of ways the deck has been economically stacked against lower-middle class and working poor Americans, while at the same time macroeconomic trends benefited low-skilled workers in developing countries like China. Workers there were able to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" thanks in part to rapidly rising wages as production moved to lower-cost countries. I have no doubts that the globalization of economic inputs produces higher global growth and a greater overall level of welfare, but I also have no doubt that this process produces winners and losers. One subset of the losers has been low/medium skilled Americans, who face stagnating wages and many of the challenges this game portrays (in an admittedly over-dramatic fashion). We can either accept this as the cost of doing business or work as a society to compensate the losers, but in either case we should acknowledge that there are some larger forces at play that make it harder for certain segments of the population to reach their own bootstraps.

avipa 15y ago
Losers? I'll be the first to admit that I am ignorant about the situation in the USA, but do you really think that people such as these are losers considering the standard of living they can still afford? Mobile phones with $70 bills? Honestly? Hell, a mobile in itself? (My mobile cost £20, and I have yet to use up my initial top-up of £20 5 months after buying it). I honestly feel disgusted by the fact that I am expected to feel sorry for people such as these. I managed to get to the end to the month all fine and dandy, and could see many things I could still do to improve my cash flow. My kid may have not been given some meaningless luxuries that other kids got (I never went to school trips and the like myself), but my charisma and public services such as the library and the like would be more than enough to ensure he turns out a fine man. Hell, if I wouldn't even have had a kid in the first place, until I could ensure that I could raise properly. Expecting me to feel sympathy for an individual who can't afford a kid, suffering from their own selfishness, is out of order. It's comparable to expecting me to pay for the treatment of some fool who didn't put on a condom when he knew he was have sexual intercourse with a - unique woman. edit. Forgive me, due to my anger I lost focus on what I was initially trying to say. Basically, standard of living has improved dramatically. They may not be able to afford premium goods such as sparkly ipads and ps3's, but they can still afford a great deal of stuff.

badclient 15y ago

It's a whole different way of thinking though. I'm probably at the exterme end of it: my siblings and I have decided that we will form a trust in which we will all be equal owners and any company we start(or wealth we acquire individually) will be owned by the trust. The upside? It distributes the risk and almost ensures that none of us will ever go broke. The downside(for some people)? When one of us flips the company, the wealth will be equally distributed between my siblings, irrespective of whether they actually worked at the company or not.

lurker19 15y ago
Why 100% split? Why not a fractional share with a dollar cap, like social security? That could rednce the effect of freeloading, while still providing security in case the richest of you feels less generous in the future.
- badclient 15y ago
  I suppose that could be done but financial security is only partial goal. The other goal of unity and equality is probably a little more important and that breaks pretty quickly if there is significant disparity between our standard of living. This reduces the chance that any sibling will have a lifestyle that is relatively more affluent than the others. And when we get a freeloader, it encourages the other siblings to not give up on his life. It may be easier to give up if you can tell yourself "well he is getting what he deserves". This assumes a great deal of good faith, obviously. It can easily go bad and turn into resentment if (a) we get a freeloader and (b) he remains a freeloader all his life. But even in that worst case scenario, the hope(from our cultural upbringing) is that there will be less resentment(for the financial unfairness) and more sadness/empathy for the sibling who went the wrong way all his life. My father's brothers have been on this model for couple decades and it has mostly worked out. They've had multiple freeloaders at one point turn into super productive contributors a decade later(and after lots of hardwork by the non-freeloading siblings towards the freeloaders). This model is most easy when you are still young and life is simple(as it is for us now). It becomes very challenging after we all have wives, children and grandchildren and different local interests and politics. It usually leads to (somewhat bitter) splitville where assets are divided. This is one area my siblings and me are most weary of and want to do a better job of than our prior generations.

roc 15y ago

> "It starts you out as a single parent with no savings and evidently no family members who will help you out...without any acknowledgement of the fact that broken homes, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, a lack of a high school diploma, and a failure to save are the major causes of poverty." Some people find it useful to walk a mile in the shoes of those affected by the policies they support. Whether you might ever choose or have to wear those shoes personally is rather beside the point. A dialogue tree that allowed the player to navigate life choices at an intellectual remove from real human life would simply reinforce our societal tendency to dodge the question of "what do we do with the struggling" by asserting that "I know better than them." edit: effect/affect

anamax 15y ago
> Some people find it useful to walk a mile in the shoes of those affected by the policies they support. Exactly which policies cause folks to get divorced (ie, get married young), have kids at a young age, and quit high school? Apart, of course, from the policies intended to reduce the effects of those decisions....
- akdetrick 15y ago
  I'd venture to guess that the choices you mention did not always carry the sort of consequences they do today. You're right, policy decisions don't cause more people to have kids at a young age. They do however, have an effect on joblessness [1], just to name one facet of the economic environment that now exists in the US. [1] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate+us http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&...
  - vacri 15y ago
    You're right, policy decisions don't cause more people to have kids at a young age. 'Abstinence only' sex education causes more people to have kids at a young age, because it prevents more people from learning what options there are available. Add into that the issue that young people have always been difficult to stop fucking each other throughout history, and combine with the highly sexualised modern society, and 'Abstinence only' sex education is, frankly, evil.

doki_pen 15y ago

"That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes." ~ Kurt Vonnegut I think your mistake is to think everyone is capable of knowing the consequences of their actions. Letting all people suffer the full consequences of all their actions, when it would cost little to get them off the hook, seems wrong to me, and to many others. Life isn't fair, and it never will be. But we, as intelligent human beings, can do a lot to make it more fair. I think that is an overall win for everyone.

jpadkins 15y ago
> I think that is an overall win for everyone. Except for when you make life more fair by handicapping the high performers. See Kurt's Harrison Bergeron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
- doki_pen 15y ago
  That is a very odd interpretation of Harrison Bergeron. You believe that it's about taxes and the welfare state? I find that hard to believe considering Kurt was a self proclaimed socialist.
bkmartin 15y ago
doki_pen, you make a great point. Lets also not forget that many people who end up in these situations actually grew up in them as well. Many of their parents didn't finish high school, don't have good jobs, and were born when their parents were only teenagers. A lot of people who live out these scenarios have never had anything better modeled to them. Preached to them, yes, but modeled? No. So when a kid, at home, is always being told and modeled things that will skew them away from making good decisions what do you expect? What do you expect when their Mom, who they love and trust (for no other reason than its their Mom, how do they know any better?), tells them that their teachers are wrong because of x or y and that you need to look out for yourself and that no one will help and yadda yadda yadda... yeah, some people aren't making bad decisions with all the facts laid out in front of them. Its easy to be an armchair quarter back, but instead of riding these people through their misery, why not show some love and compassion and try to help them out. This will go much further than beating them down and continuing not only the economic cycle, but the cultural one as well.

foolinator 15y ago

China is far from first world. They have modern cities, but their GDP is less than $5000/year pp. They employ slave child labor to make your cheap plastic shit. They work 14 hour days. It sucks.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
The coastal parts of China are first world economies, but parts of China are still effectively 3rd world. It's silly to claim that Chinese workers make "cheap plastic shit". They make high-end electronics, they make industrial equipment, they build ships, they make aerospace components, they even build orbital launch vehicles, communications satellites, and manned spacecraft. There are plenty of sound, factual criticisms of the Chinese government, economy, industry, culture, etc. without having to make things up.
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  >> They employ slave child labor to make your cheap plastic shit. >They make high-end electronics, they make industrial equipment, [...] and manned spacecraft. // Are you saying they don't employ minors in China at poverty wages in the manufacture of "cheap plastic shit"? That would be news to me.

notahacker 15y ago

I thought the point of stacking the deck was to show that broken homes and a failure to save are root causes of poverty, and not readily-reversible ones. That said, people generally don't choose to lose their adequately-paid job and spouse any more than they choose to be the target of a Cultural Revolution lynch mob; certain behaviours increase the chances of it happening but bad things happen to people who make good, or at least explicable, choices too. Sure, China had terrible problems with revolutionaries, before reforms leading to a remarkable rate of economic growth that nevertheless still leaves the average person in living conditions that would appal the average debt-ridden member of the American underclass. Mostly they "pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps" by being able to work for (or employ people on) the sort of wages that would leave Americans unable to eat, never mind have houses, cars and mobile phone contracts to owe repayments on. So they didn't do it in isolation[] and their model doesn't work for the US unemployed. Perspective is useful, but deeming freedom of choice and support for the poor in a rich democracy to be adequate by comparison with a poor country rapidly recovering from internal chaos is like judging the adequacy of a government by how many gulags they operate. By the standards of first world countries, the poor in the US get a relatively rough deal. Singapore, since you cite it as an example, is a million miles away from a society where people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps from capitalism. For a start, the government cleared the slums by building 85% of the country's housing stock and fixed the rents and prices far below private-sector levels. They might be extremely business-friendly, but governments in democratic states don't get much more paternalistic than Singapore's. []Arguably the American poor have benefited far more from the resulting availability of cheap consumer goods than they lose from cheap Chinese labour pulling down on the bootstraps of the US manufacturing industry. But the availability of those jobs is still reduced.

noonespecial 15y ago

There is a saying I really like: "The poor are poor because all of their choices in life suck." There are of course two completely different ways to read that. I find that the first interpretation that jumps out at people speaks volumes about their world-view.

kstenerud 15y ago
Yep. The self-made man would say it a certain way, and the sad truth is that most people lack the mix of ambition and discipline to look for, find, and work on ways to change their situation. For every rags-to-riches story there are a million rags-to-rags stories to match. Another person here mentioned people using check cashing services instead of service-charging banks. You know, as opposed to shopping around for a smaller bank or credit union that doesn't do that (another thing strangely lacking as an option in the game). What makes this even more pathetic is that the bank charge is usually LESS than the 3% they are paying from their paycheck to the check cashing service! Top it off with the tendency for poor people to withdraw small amounts of cash from ATMs and take the service charge hit (which, since it's a fixed price, increases the percentage loss the lower the amount you take out) and you can't but shake your head in disbelief. And don't even get me started on the massive amounts of money stupid people spend on lottery tickets... It's little things like this that make (and keep) people poor, and these things are so easy to avoid with a little planning and discipline. Wealth is a long term strategy that few consider seriously. And once you have wealth, you need to protect it from your grandchildren, because it's a well known phenomena for the first generation to make the money, the second generation to keep the money, and the third generation to piss it away. Not to mention the incredibly stupid modern practice of splitting the inheritance between your children rather than passing it in its entirety to ONE child.
- mkjones 15y ago
  > Not to mention the incredibly stupid modern practice of splitting the inheritance between your children rather than passing it in its entirety to ONE child. I'm not sure if this is a troll. What is incredibly stupid about the common practice of splitting inheritance equally between your children? What do you propose as a more optimal way to choose the single child who receives everything?