42 ms·

Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years with Nearly Nothing Going Wrong (2017)

79 points by safaa1993 3y ago

Ujjawal_Gupta 3y ago
Depends upon the country ig
arp242 3y ago
What things like this miss is that we can't all be rulers of the queen's navy. That is: we can't all be computer programmers and marketing executives and doctors and whatnot. We actually do need the cleaners, and farm hands, and landscapers, and people at Tesco, and so forth and so forth. Anti-poverty efforts that focus mainly on education kind of miss this, IMHO. And sure, these efforts and not useless especially in the context of entire communities being impoverished, but someone will have to do those jobs regardless, and the problems are so much deeper.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  If we need those jobs so much, then perhaps we should treat the people who do them with respect. Like by giving them predictable, full-time schedules and health insurance.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Yes I agree; that was my point more or less: people should be able to work these "poor jobs" and still have a reasonable standard of living. I'm okay with people being "poor relative to middle class", as long as everyone has a reasonable standard of living (barring exceptional circumstances).
  - arcbyte 3y ago
    This is an interesting comment because there are jobs like this out there. Absolutely companies exist which pay janitors very well. Companies exist owned by janitors who make tons of money. Many, many companies also exist that are absolutely of low quality. It would be good to explore this disparity more. Just because there's a job called "janitor" doesn't mean it is valued the same way in every context, even if we might argue it should. Why?
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      I’m speaking from my personal experience of working such jobs. It’s a perspective that seems oddly rare on this forum. The well-respected, well-paid working class job may exist, but as someone who actually did the work and still knows a lot of people who do, I suspect it’s a myth.
      - Paul-Craft 3y ago
        I agree with you. In 1975, the janitor was an employee of a company whose premises they were cleaning. It was theoretically possible for the janitor to become CEO one day, or at least an executive. [1] Today, the janitor probably works for a contractor hired by the company who bills them out at a multiple of what they actually get paid. They probably don't have very good benefits, are lucky if they can afford the health insurance offered, and probably can't really afford to contribute to a 401k. I would much rather be a janitor in 1975 than 2023. --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Monta%C3%B1ez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Monta%C3%B1ez
      - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
        Even jobs like "mailman", which you'd think is a modest government job with decent benefits, have suffered. A lot of mail carriers are precarious contractors without a fixed schedule.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    And this means society investing in technologies that dramatically improve their job. E.g. janitors of the future maintaining advanced robots and lighting systems that keep everything operational and healthy.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      I think it means investing in worker protections for the janitors of today.
      - mensetmanusman 3y ago
        Both, protect workers of today, and government r&d investments into ways to make their lives even better.
- millzlane 3y ago
  Someone does needs to do these jobs, but would you tell your kid who wants to be more than a janitor that "we all can't be successful programmers; what would the world do without be without impoverished people to do the jobs we don't want. Sure someone has to do those jobs sure, but should they only be reserved for poor people?
  - arp242 3y ago
    Well, no, and I'll go even a step further and consider anyone saying such things to be a bad parent. But the context here isn't a parent trying to get the most for their kids, it's people thinking on how to organise a reasonably just and fair society. And in this context, I think it's important to realize that no matter what we do need people doing these jobs, and that these people also deserve a reasonable standard of living. I don't have a problem with "poor" per se, but there's different levels of "poor" and right now you can work an honest full-time job and not make rent – I don't consider that to be reasonable.
    - millzlane 3y ago
      I would agree with you. Thank you for adding context. I'll admit I'm guilty of rolling out of bed and commenting so I may have missed the point in my foggy haze.
    - jewayne 3y ago
      Right. I think almost everybody wants some version of "fairness", but for many fairness is actually defined by a remarkably strict hierarchy. It's not that they want McDonald's workers to suffer, exactly, but they want to be able to see, even at a glance, that they are doing better than the McD's workers (and of course they go to McD's and enjoy that convenience) And the same people will say, without a hint of irony, that people working low-wage jobs shouldn't have kids they can't afford. As in, not only should people doing essential jobs be restricted from enjoying life, they should also die off without reproducing.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  The issue is that we don't have too few people willing to work at Tesco or be landscapers; we have far too many of them relatively, and way too few doctors, computer coders or other high-skilled jobs. One additional unit of landscaping or Tesco work contributes very little to society, and ultimately that's what sets the reward for work in a market economy. (You can of course have some subsidies on top of that for low-income folks, to help them make rent and whatnot - and there's nothing wrong with that if they're carefully designed. The U.S. EITC and the German "Minijob" arrangements are pretty decent all things considered.)
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    Software development is high-skilled? Scary to imagine.
  - BadCookie 3y ago
    We have too few coders? Then explain why job openings are getting hundreds of applicants in the first few hours and auto-rejecting people with many years of experience. I think you are mistaken.
    - pandaman 3y ago
      The compensation for coders is high because there are few of those and the high compensation attracts job applications. I don't see any discrepancy here. If you could actually close any vacancy with one of the applications you got in a few hours then why anybody would have paid huge money to recruiters, had vacancies open for years, paid FTE rates well above any other profession that does not require formal credentials (actors, models, athletes, rock stars, writers etc are either contractors or self-employed) and kept raising the compensation?
  - arp242 3y ago
    Alright, sure, although I'm not sure if that really matters? We still need people to do these jobs and we need tons of them (not just a few)?
    - 3y ago
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  No, we can't. But, we can all at least aspire to be Danes[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
- RivieraKid 3y ago
  The markets solves this. If everyone is smart, skilled and educated, those low-wage and low-status jobs would actually be the best paying jobs with lots of perks to attract workers.
jcarrano 3y ago
Excellent! 200 years ago escaping poverty was not possible, 100 years ago it took a couple generations and now a mere 20 years.
- millzlane 3y ago
  Yea we're pretty privileged compared to our stoneage relatives.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    200 years ago is far beyond stone age.
    - j45 3y ago
      Imagine how storage we will be in 20,100 and 200 years :)
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  You realize you're actually not really saying anything here, right? After spending 1/4 of one's life going to school, then (if one is lucky) another 1/4 of one's life working, and another 1/4 of one's life in old age, there's not very much life left to live. Putting it more concretely, the US ranks 27th on the Global Social Mobility Index. That's great, if you're cool with hanging out with Latvia, Spain, Poland, and Cyprus. But, why do that, when you can be Denmark? The benefits are clear (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#Global_Social_Mobility_Index_(2020)_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#G...) But I guess that just doesn't make enough money for the shareholders or something.
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    1) What's the cost of Denmark's social mobility? We already have a fairly progressive tax system in the US, what does Denmark do differently and to whom does it cost? 2) What's the benefit? (Note that although a rising tide floats all boats, it is unfortunately impossible to imagine the world that would result if opportunity was equitable) I'm not arguing against it, I'm just saying it boils down to those things.
silexia 3y ago
False. In industries with low levels of government regulation you can move very quickly out of poverty. It is only in areas where existing businesses obtain regulatory capture (meat processing, medical, etc) and prevent competition that social mobility goes down. I went from poor to rich in 5 years after starting my website development service company. Lots and lots of things went wrong ranging from mistakes I made (drinking too much, hiring my girlfriend who made life a nightmare then sued me later, nepotism hiring my brother, being a bad manager at first, and many other issues).
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  False. You could move very quickly out of poverty by (probably) stumbling into success in an industry with very low levels of regulation. Not everyone can do that. You have to realize that half of everybody has a below average IQ, and that pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole "starting a company in an industry with low levels of government regulation." How about this? Suppose we abolished all regulation tomorrow. How would that help people get out of poverty? Well, it wouldn't. How do I know that? Just look back to the 19th century, when we more or less didn't have regulation in the US. It was a terrible time to be a worker, but a great time to be a robber baron.
  - fred_is_fred 3y ago
    I would argue that we barely have regulation now from an enforcement point of view and you may have noticed but the robber barons are back.
    - Paul-Craft 3y ago
      And I wouldn't bother to argue with that. You are right.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  > hiring my girlfriend > hiring my brother this almost never goes well. many relationships were ended by adding a working relationship element to the picture. this goes for friendships as well as pairings. extremely hard to make work, with long term damage resulting from it failing. you either have to compartmentalize the work relationship from the other relationship or... nope, that's pretty much what you have to do. I think what happens is that it's too easy to lean on forgiveness and slack due to the self-sustaining part of the relationship. not sure if related but it also seems like adding sex to a normal friendship can also sink both. maybe it has to do with adding ulterior motives like "profit" and "orgasm", not sure. maybe compartmentalization would help there too, not sure.... you'd have the "friend" part of the relationship (intrinsically-motivated) and the compartmentalized "tit for tat" part of the relationship (extrinsically-motivated; sex, money, etc.). This might at least leave the "friend" part somewhat intact (eventually) if the other part fails. For some reason, pure friendships are the most enduring relationships (and yes, even those can end if people grow apart, but still). One thing you're possibly not factoring in is your possible "gifts" at doing this well, and whatever opportunities (educational, parents being supportive financially or otherwise, etc.) you might have benefited from on the ramp-up to your life.
derpiederpie 3y ago
[flagged]
- arp242 3y ago
  So all poor people should become computer programmers, and then the jobs formerly done by those formerly poor people will be done by ... who?
  - hypefi 3y ago
    By robots... duh, (that seems the dream of techno-futurists, ain't it ?)
- devbent 3y ago
  Congratulations, you are smart enough, and literate enough, to learn software engineering. Meanwhile the average American reads at a 5th grade level, and around 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. I'm guessing you also didn't have any chronic health conditions. Traumatic brain injury that keeps you from remembering things, or a form of PTSD that causes you to be unable to function in loud environments. A lot of us in the technology field started off with very little and fought our way up to having something. Those of us with empathy realize it was a combination of hard work and a lot of other things going right as well that we didn't have control over.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    They also expect people to be homeless and live in a tent, while collecting cans to earn the $200 to buy the cheapest possible laptop, and somehow be able to focus on learning software engineering while doing all that.
  - wetpaws 3y ago
    [dead]
mildchalupa 3y ago
Link for article without paywall?
n_ary 3y ago
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/2Dcrc https://archive.is/2Dcrc Also, article is from 2017.
webmaven 3y ago
Article is from 2017. Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/2Dcrc https://archive.ph/2Dcrc
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
qp11 3y ago
Decent living standards (affordable quality housing/health/edu/transport/energy) + reduced inequality between the top and the bottom should not be hard to achieve if its declared as an actual Goal. Technology causes Price of Goods and Services to fall. Not rise. Yet the Fed says its inflation target is 2% which means Prices are always supposed to grow no matter what innovation happens or its speed. This makes no sense. If living standards rise and debt levels drop due to increasing efficiencies and productivity then we should allow Prices to fall. Wont that take care of inequality and living standards?
- realusername 3y ago
  I think you are mixing up inflation and purchasing power, those two metrics aren't related and can go opposite ways.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  You know, the whole idea of a "cost of living" is actually pretty damn absurd. I can live on about $40k post-tax, even in the Bay Area, paying $2k/month rent. That's pretty much the most basic version of life I can live that includes being able to sleep inside a home with water, heat, and electricity, while also being able to take care of my dog and go to the park with her a few days a week. But, if, somehow, I can't come up with $40k, I don't get to live even that basic life. That's cold, hard capitalism for ya. And even in California, there aren't even social programs available that can simultaneously keep someone from starving while also living indoors. Oh, and the "cost of living" goes up all the time. Now, I'm not saying I want to be a layabout and just not work, drink Mountain Dew, and eat Cheetos or something. People, including myself, actually love work, if it's work that has meaning to them. Being productive is something people are hardwired to love. What they don't like is being told what being productive is, and they especially don't like toiling away forever while watching other people get the vast majority of the benefit from them doing so. The worst part about all this is that the rules of economics are just fucking made up, and we could literally change them at any time. Whether you think it was a good idea or not, we actually did that in 2020, when governments worldwide shut down things like bars, restaurants, gyms, travel, &c. We did that! For better or for worse, we did that! The fact that we all, collectively, could do a thing like that means that we can do other things that are just as big and seem just as impossible. What we need is a reason. And that reason is (or, rather, ought to be) that we now have an economy that simply does not work for most people. Last I checked, around 2/3 of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. Now, sure, that counts people who are just bad with money. There will always be people like that. Improving financial literacy is definitely something that needs to be done. But, for the most part, what that 2/3 statistic is saying is that we have an economy that normal people can't function in, if by "function," you mean "get through day to day life, while also being able to save back some resources for the future." The way to fix all this is that we need to realign the economy. We have to make sure that the people who make the economy work (i.e. workers) gain most, or at least more of the benefits of doing so. I realize that's a pretty broad statement, and that a lot of this that I've written here sounds like a left wing populist stump speech, but I'm not running for office. I'm just a simple software engineer; I'm not rich enough to be able to drop everything and run a political campaign instead of working as a cog in the machine.[1] What I'm saying is that we need to make sure people can afford to live. The median male worker now has to work 53 weeks to afford a year's worth of expenditures on housing, health insurance, transportation, and education.[2] The same source shows that the average female worker needs to work 66 weeks to afford those expenditures. As they so drolly quote the author of the study these figures come from, "This is a problem, as there are only 52 weeks in a year." We also need to realign how work works. People, especially younger people, have gotten so alienated from the whole concept of work that there's a subreddit with hundreds of thousands of subscribers called "anti-work" that's all about this. And we definitely have to realize as a society and as a species that money is basically made up bullshit. The thing that needs to matter is people, not money. I'm going to cut this off here, because it's already starting to look like I've written the first page of my manifesto lol.... But, I hope you get the idea. The economy doesn't work. We can change that. We should change that. That's it for now, at least until the inevitable grilling y'all are gonna give me about exactly how I expect us to actually accomplish that. --- [1]: That's another problem, but I'm going to leave that one alone for now. [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-expenses-family-of-four-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-...
strken 3y ago
Kinda annoying that they compare FTEs against the size of the whole population and not against the labour market. It doesn't change the conclusion, but it's probably close to a quarter or a third of workers, given the LFPR is usually 60-something%. Including kids, retirees, anyone with a medical condition or disability, etc. in the other 80% isn't accurate, since a retired FTE or the child of two FTEs belongs in the top class still, and the permanently disabled or chronically unemployed are in a different situation.

79 points by safaa1993 3y ago

Depends upon the country ig

What things like this miss is that we can't all be rulers of the queen's navy. That is: we can't all be computer programmers and marketing executives and doctors and whatnot. We actually do need the cleaners, and farm hands, and landscapers, and people at Tesco, and so forth and so forth. Anti-poverty efforts that focus mainly on education kind of miss this, IMHO. And sure, these efforts and not useless especially in the context of entire communities being impoverished, but someone will have to do those jobs regardless, and the problems are so much deeper.

hotpotamus 3y ago
If we need those jobs so much, then perhaps we should treat the people who do them with respect. Like by giving them predictable, full-time schedules and health insurance.
- arp242 3y ago
  Yes I agree; that was my point more or less: people should be able to work these "poor jobs" and still have a reasonable standard of living. I'm okay with people being "poor relative to middle class", as long as everyone has a reasonable standard of living (barring exceptional circumstances).
- arcbyte 3y ago
  This is an interesting comment because there are jobs like this out there. Absolutely companies exist which pay janitors very well. Companies exist owned by janitors who make tons of money. Many, many companies also exist that are absolutely of low quality. It would be good to explore this disparity more. Just because there's a job called "janitor" doesn't mean it is valued the same way in every context, even if we might argue it should. Why?
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I’m speaking from my personal experience of working such jobs. It’s a perspective that seems oddly rare on this forum. The well-respected, well-paid working class job may exist, but as someone who actually did the work and still knows a lot of people who do, I suspect it’s a myth.
    - Paul-Craft 3y ago
      I agree with you. In 1975, the janitor was an employee of a company whose premises they were cleaning. It was theoretically possible for the janitor to become CEO one day, or at least an executive. [1] Today, the janitor probably works for a contractor hired by the company who bills them out at a multiple of what they actually get paid. They probably don't have very good benefits, are lucky if they can afford the health insurance offered, and probably can't really afford to contribute to a 401k. I would much rather be a janitor in 1975 than 2023. --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Monta%C3%B1ez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Monta%C3%B1ez
    - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
      Even jobs like "mailman", which you'd think is a modest government job with decent benefits, have suffered. A lot of mail carriers are precarious contractors without a fixed schedule.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  And this means society investing in technologies that dramatically improve their job. E.g. janitors of the future maintaining advanced robots and lighting systems that keep everything operational and healthy.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I think it means investing in worker protections for the janitors of today.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      Both, protect workers of today, and government r&d investments into ways to make their lives even better.
millzlane 3y ago
Someone does needs to do these jobs, but would you tell your kid who wants to be more than a janitor that "we all can't be successful programmers; what would the world do without be without impoverished people to do the jobs we don't want. Sure someone has to do those jobs sure, but should they only be reserved for poor people?
- arp242 3y ago
  Well, no, and I'll go even a step further and consider anyone saying such things to be a bad parent. But the context here isn't a parent trying to get the most for their kids, it's people thinking on how to organise a reasonably just and fair society. And in this context, I think it's important to realize that no matter what we do need people doing these jobs, and that these people also deserve a reasonable standard of living. I don't have a problem with "poor" per se, but there's different levels of "poor" and right now you can work an honest full-time job and not make rent – I don't consider that to be reasonable.
  - millzlane 3y ago
    I would agree with you. Thank you for adding context. I'll admit I'm guilty of rolling out of bed and commenting so I may have missed the point in my foggy haze.
  - jewayne 3y ago
    Right. I think almost everybody wants some version of "fairness", but for many fairness is actually defined by a remarkably strict hierarchy. It's not that they want McDonald's workers to suffer, exactly, but they want to be able to see, even at a glance, that they are doing better than the McD's workers (and of course they go to McD's and enjoy that convenience) And the same people will say, without a hint of irony, that people working low-wage jobs shouldn't have kids they can't afford. As in, not only should people doing essential jobs be restricted from enjoying life, they should also die off without reproducing.
zozbot234 3y ago
The issue is that we don't have too few people willing to work at Tesco or be landscapers; we have far too many of them relatively, and way too few doctors, computer coders or other high-skilled jobs. One additional unit of landscaping or Tesco work contributes very little to society, and ultimately that's what sets the reward for work in a market economy. (You can of course have some subsidies on top of that for low-income folks, to help them make rent and whatnot - and there's nothing wrong with that if they're carefully designed. The U.S. EITC and the German "Minijob" arrangements are pretty decent all things considered.)
- intelVISA 3y ago
  Software development is high-skilled? Scary to imagine.
- BadCookie 3y ago
  We have too few coders? Then explain why job openings are getting hundreds of applicants in the first few hours and auto-rejecting people with many years of experience. I think you are mistaken.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    The compensation for coders is high because there are few of those and the high compensation attracts job applications. I don't see any discrepancy here. If you could actually close any vacancy with one of the applications you got in a few hours then why anybody would have paid huge money to recruiters, had vacancies open for years, paid FTE rates well above any other profession that does not require formal credentials (actors, models, athletes, rock stars, writers etc are either contractors or self-employed) and kept raising the compensation?
- arp242 3y ago
  Alright, sure, although I'm not sure if that really matters? We still need people to do these jobs and we need tons of them (not just a few)?
  - 3y ago
Paul-Craft 3y ago
No, we can't. But, we can all at least aspire to be Danes[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
RivieraKid 3y ago
The markets solves this. If everyone is smart, skilled and educated, those low-wage and low-status jobs would actually be the best paying jobs with lots of perks to attract workers.

jcarrano 3y ago

Excellent! 200 years ago escaping poverty was not possible, 100 years ago it took a couple generations and now a mere 20 years.

millzlane 3y ago
Yea we're pretty privileged compared to our stoneage relatives.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  200 years ago is far beyond stone age.
  - j45 3y ago
    Imagine how storage we will be in 20,100 and 200 years :)
Paul-Craft 3y ago
You realize you're actually not really saying anything here, right? After spending 1/4 of one's life going to school, then (if one is lucky) another 1/4 of one's life working, and another 1/4 of one's life in old age, there's not very much life left to live. Putting it more concretely, the US ranks 27th on the Global Social Mobility Index. That's great, if you're cool with hanging out with Latvia, Spain, Poland, and Cyprus. But, why do that, when you can be Denmark? The benefits are clear (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#Global_Social_Mobility_Index_(2020)_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#G...) But I guess that just doesn't make enough money for the shareholders or something.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  1) What's the cost of Denmark's social mobility? We already have a fairly progressive tax system in the US, what does Denmark do differently and to whom does it cost? 2) What's the benefit? (Note that although a rising tide floats all boats, it is unfortunately impossible to imagine the world that would result if opportunity was equitable) I'm not arguing against it, I'm just saying it boils down to those things.

silexia 3y ago

False. In industries with low levels of government regulation you can move very quickly out of poverty. It is only in areas where existing businesses obtain regulatory capture (meat processing, medical, etc) and prevent competition that social mobility goes down. I went from poor to rich in 5 years after starting my website development service company. Lots and lots of things went wrong ranging from mistakes I made (drinking too much, hiring my girlfriend who made life a nightmare then sued me later, nepotism hiring my brother, being a bad manager at first, and many other issues).

Paul-Craft 3y ago
False. You could move very quickly out of poverty by (probably) stumbling into success in an industry with very low levels of regulation. Not everyone can do that. You have to realize that half of everybody has a below average IQ, and that pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole "starting a company in an industry with low levels of government regulation." How about this? Suppose we abolished all regulation tomorrow. How would that help people get out of poverty? Well, it wouldn't. How do I know that? Just look back to the 19th century, when we more or less didn't have regulation in the US. It was a terrible time to be a worker, but a great time to be a robber baron.
- fred_is_fred 3y ago
  I would argue that we barely have regulation now from an enforcement point of view and you may have noticed but the robber barons are back.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    And I wouldn't bother to argue with that. You are right.
pmarreck 3y ago
> hiring my girlfriend > hiring my brother this almost never goes well. many relationships were ended by adding a working relationship element to the picture. this goes for friendships as well as pairings. extremely hard to make work, with long term damage resulting from it failing. you either have to compartmentalize the work relationship from the other relationship or... nope, that's pretty much what you have to do. I think what happens is that it's too easy to lean on forgiveness and slack due to the self-sustaining part of the relationship. not sure if related but it also seems like adding sex to a normal friendship can also sink both. maybe it has to do with adding ulterior motives like "profit" and "orgasm", not sure. maybe compartmentalization would help there too, not sure.... you'd have the "friend" part of the relationship (intrinsically-motivated) and the compartmentalized "tit for tat" part of the relationship (extrinsically-motivated; sex, money, etc.). This might at least leave the "friend" part somewhat intact (eventually) if the other part fails. For some reason, pure friendships are the most enduring relationships (and yes, even those can end if people grow apart, but still). One thing you're possibly not factoring in is your possible "gifts" at doing this well, and whatever opportunities (educational, parents being supportive financially or otherwise, etc.) you might have benefited from on the ramp-up to your life.

derpiederpie 3y ago

[flagged]

arp242 3y ago
So all poor people should become computer programmers, and then the jobs formerly done by those formerly poor people will be done by ... who?
- hypefi 3y ago
  By robots... duh, (that seems the dream of techno-futurists, ain't it ?)
devbent 3y ago
Congratulations, you are smart enough, and literate enough, to learn software engineering. Meanwhile the average American reads at a 5th grade level, and around 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate. I'm guessing you also didn't have any chronic health conditions. Traumatic brain injury that keeps you from remembering things, or a form of PTSD that causes you to be unable to function in loud environments. A lot of us in the technology field started off with very little and fought our way up to having something. Those of us with empathy realize it was a combination of hard work and a lot of other things going right as well that we didn't have control over.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  They also expect people to be homeless and live in a tent, while collecting cans to earn the $200 to buy the cheapest possible laptop, and somehow be able to focus on learning software engineering while doing all that.
- wetpaws 3y ago
  [dead]

mildchalupa 3y ago

Link for article without paywall?

n_ary 3y ago

Paywall removed: https://archive.is/2Dcrc https://archive.is/2Dcrc Also, article is from 2017.

webmaven 3y ago

Article is from 2017. Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/2Dcrc https://archive.ph/2Dcrc

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

qp11 3y ago

Decent living standards (affordable quality housing/health/edu/transport/energy) + reduced inequality between the top and the bottom should not be hard to achieve if its declared as an actual Goal. Technology causes Price of Goods and Services to fall. Not rise. Yet the Fed says its inflation target is 2% which means Prices are always supposed to grow no matter what innovation happens or its speed. This makes no sense. If living standards rise and debt levels drop due to increasing efficiencies and productivity then we should allow Prices to fall. Wont that take care of inequality and living standards?

realusername 3y ago
I think you are mixing up inflation and purchasing power, those two metrics aren't related and can go opposite ways.
Paul-Craft 3y ago
You know, the whole idea of a "cost of living" is actually pretty damn absurd. I can live on about $40k post-tax, even in the Bay Area, paying $2k/month rent. That's pretty much the most basic version of life I can live that includes being able to sleep inside a home with water, heat, and electricity, while also being able to take care of my dog and go to the park with her a few days a week. But, if, somehow, I can't come up with $40k, I don't get to live even that basic life. That's cold, hard capitalism for ya. And even in California, there aren't even social programs available that can simultaneously keep someone from starving while also living indoors. Oh, and the "cost of living" goes up all the time. Now, I'm not saying I want to be a layabout and just not work, drink Mountain Dew, and eat Cheetos or something. People, including myself, actually love work, if it's work that has meaning to them. Being productive is something people are hardwired to love. What they don't like is being told what being productive is, and they especially don't like toiling away forever while watching other people get the vast majority of the benefit from them doing so. The worst part about all this is that the rules of economics are just fucking made up, and we could literally change them at any time. Whether you think it was a good idea or not, we actually did that in 2020, when governments worldwide shut down things like bars, restaurants, gyms, travel, &c. We did that! For better or for worse, we did that! The fact that we all, collectively, could do a thing like that means that we can do other things that are just as big and seem just as impossible. What we need is a reason. And that reason is (or, rather, ought to be) that we now have an economy that simply does not work for most people. Last I checked, around 2/3 of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. Now, sure, that counts people who are just bad with money. There will always be people like that. Improving financial literacy is definitely something that needs to be done. But, for the most part, what that 2/3 statistic is saying is that we have an economy that normal people can't function in, if by "function," you mean "get through day to day life, while also being able to save back some resources for the future." The way to fix all this is that we need to realign the economy. We have to make sure that the people who make the economy work (i.e. workers) gain most, or at least more of the benefits of doing so. I realize that's a pretty broad statement, and that a lot of this that I've written here sounds like a left wing populist stump speech, but I'm not running for office. I'm just a simple software engineer; I'm not rich enough to be able to drop everything and run a political campaign instead of working as a cog in the machine.[1] What I'm saying is that we need to make sure people can afford to live. The median male worker now has to work 53 weeks to afford a year's worth of expenditures on housing, health insurance, transportation, and education.[2] The same source shows that the average female worker needs to work 66 weeks to afford those expenditures. As they so drolly quote the author of the study these figures come from, "This is a problem, as there are only 52 weeks in a year." We also need to realign how work works. People, especially younger people, have gotten so alienated from the whole concept of work that there's a subreddit with hundreds of thousands of subscribers called "anti-work" that's all about this. And we definitely have to realize as a society and as a species that money is basically made up bullshit. The thing that needs to matter is people, not money. I'm going to cut this off here, because it's already starting to look like I've written the first page of my manifesto lol.... But, I hope you get the idea. The economy doesn't work. We can change that. We should change that. That's it for now, at least until the inevitable grilling y'all are gonna give me about exactly how I expect us to actually accomplish that. --- [1]: That's another problem, but I'm going to leave that one alone for now. [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-expenses-family-of-four-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-living-...

strken 3y ago

Kinda annoying that they compare FTEs against the size of the whole population and not against the labour market. It doesn't change the conclusion, but it's probably close to a quarter or a third of workers, given the LFPR is usually 60-something%. Including kids, retirees, anyone with a medical condition or disability, etc. in the other 80% isn't accurate, since a retired FTE or the child of two FTEs belongs in the top class still, and the permanently disabled or chronically unemployed are in a different situation.