9 ms·

Robert Putnam on the gap between rich kids and poor kids

56 points by jeffreyrogers 12y ago

msandford 12y ago
I suspect that all the programs meant to help people are actually a part of the problem. Not directly, because helping people doesn't really hurt (except maybe in a "don't feed the wild animals" sort of way, but most consider that negligible). But more in a "somebody else's problem" or a "bystander effect" sort of way. In other words, the existence of programs to help people in need -- and worse, large federally funded and administrated programs -- make people feel as though it's not their problem and also that they're already doing something to help: paying their taxes and not voting against these programs. I say large federally funded programs are worse only because that makes the responsibility far more diffuse and the ability to influence ever more limited. So the programs to help aren't directly bad, but the knock-on psychological effect is that they absolve people of any personal need to help (since they're already helping in a very vague and miniscule way) and that leads them to not take any (additional) direct action. It feels like the inverse case of the tragedy of the commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  You are making the assumption that without these programs people would actually do something themselves to solve other's problems. In my opinion most people would just try to rationalize it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis Government funded programs might be inefficient and open to abuses, but are better than the real alternative that would be doing nothing at all.
  - msandford 12y ago
    So I'm not railing against government programs because they're "bad" and in fact I'm not necessarily even opposed to them. I'm trying to explain a set of psychological effects that I suspect influence the way our society approaches these kinds of problems.
- germinalphrase 12y ago
  Do you believe that our population would effectively self-educate without gov't funded education?
  - mrwarn 12y ago
    Do you believe our population is effectively educated with government funded education?
    - germinalphrase 12y ago
      No, I don't. However, I believe this is a problem associated with how we approach education as a task rather than how we fund it. If it were merely an example of "gov't funded education" causes poor education then we would likely see significant gains when private education models are used to replace public schools. Currently, gains with private/charter schools are flat compared to public schools. I do, however, believe that in absence of a publicly funded education system a large segment of our population would simply be locked out of educational opportunities. How is a family that already struggles for basic necessities going to find an extra ~6-10k a year to pay for private school fees?
      - msandford 12y ago
        > How is a family that already struggles for basic necessities going to find an extra ~6-10k a year to pay for private school fees? You do realize that those people already do pay for their children's education right? It's just indirect through property taxes. Yes people who don't have kids in school also contribute but it's not as though there are 10x as many people without kids as with kids, it might be 50/50 kids/no kids meaning that the best you can get is a 50% "discount" over directly funding instead of funding via taxes.
        germinalphrase 12y ago
        Setting aside that progressive taxation probably means that the population I was discussing isn't significantly funding their children's education (and would likewise not be able to cover the actual cost of education if they were called on that burden) -- I was responding to mrwarn's comment asking if gov't funded education is working, to which I responded that public schooling is not working, but that the problem is not dependent on the source of funding. When we turn public schools into private schools (as Chicago has done by the dozens in the last few years) we don't see educational improvements when the students population remains the same. When we do, it's modest or an outlier (and education is filled with outliers).
- jellicle 12y ago
  But we've had thousands of years of testing of your hypothesis, and no, individuals do not step up in any great number to solve massive societal problems of poverty. Which is why we invented governmental action to solve them. Which has proved extremely effective.
  - msandford 12y ago
    We also had thousands of years where basically everyone was poor and there wasn't anywhere near enough production so that there was a hope or a prayer of not everyone being poor. The middle class is a relatively recent phenomena. A great example of this is "The $3500 shirt" article that made it to HN a while ago: http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-lesson-in.html http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-l... > Which is why we invented governmental action to solve them. Which has proved extremely effective. I was under the impression that the whole point of the article -- and also the book -- was that the programs in place currently are not effective. If they were, there would be no "Mary Sue"s, there'd be only "Miriam"s and there would be no problem.
carsongross 12y ago
A strong, common culture is the only historically verified way to escape the prisoners dilemma of social interactions. We've done a pretty good job of destroying that for the last fifty years in the west. "We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
- saturdaysaint 12y ago
  Yet violence has dropped impressively in the west in the last 50 years, both in crime statistics and in the absence of wars between major powers. And the last 50 years mark many incredible advancements in society: civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, the first attempts to take sexual violence seriously, etc. etc. etc. I'd much rather be a random American today than 50 years ago.
  - Kurtz79 12y ago
    Agreed. I cringe when people say how things are going for the worse constantly.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      Sometimes it's because things are objectively worse. Cringing doesn't change the facts. The original claim that we're less violent is easy to debunk, and has been debunked by many people. See e.g. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-... But more than that, it's clear that economics and politics have become prime vectors for social violence in the 'developed' West: particularly economics, which has been used as an ideological excuse to destroy the possible future prospects and current living conditions of entire generations now. Unemployment in - say - Spain for the under-25s is more than 50%. The rate in the US is around 12%, but that disguises the fact that many 'jobs' barely pay a living wage now, where fifty years ago even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries. The destruction has been justified by a steady stream of clearly wrong 'economic theories' that don't stand up to even the most basic undergraduate-level scrutiny. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt So yes - things are objectively worse for many people. The fact that some people are doing okay and a tiny minority are doing really well doesn't change that. Getting this stuff wrong has very real long-term social and political consequences. It's irrational to ignore that.
dzdt 12y ago
The last few decades in the US have seen a shift from 1 parent working sufficing to support a family to 2 parents working beening needed for middle class living, and longer hours than before. And more kids have only 1 parent in the household. There simply isn't time for participating in the community-building activities that filled the gaps before. So we are more isolated, and people's lies are in a more fragile balance.
- dominotw 12y ago
  I know lots of my friends have families where single income would sustain them but both husband and wife go to work. We have stigmatized staying at home and raising children as a society.
  - donbronson 12y ago
    Who is this "we" ? People without kids?
    - taeric 12y ago
      Society, in general. This is perhaps one of my favorite Bittman quotes. I can't remember it verbatim, but it was essentially lamenting how we have devalued working in your own home. In his case, he was referring to cooking, but I feel the overall point is rather relevant.
    - jonathantm 12y ago
      "We" is not a who, but rather a "what" - namely, a useful indication of poor thinking.
  - paganel 12y ago
    I'd say is a net positive for society that women nowadays are more financially independent compared to the 1960s-1970s. Consider it this way, you're a stay-at-home mom who has decided to focus on her kids in her later 20s, and then you're 40 and divorce happens. In the happy case your ex-husband and father to your kids still pays for their education and food and relared stuff, but what about you and your own financial needs? Now that you've been out of the work-force for 10+ years you're basically unemployable.
littletimmy 12y ago
The key to well functioning kids is involved parents. The key to involved parents is less time spent working. Americans need to get over their fetish for hard work and start staying home more. Or just stop having kids altogether and use work as the primary source of joy.
- thehoff 12y ago
  That sounds great from where you may sit but what about those families where the parents have to work long hours just to provide? I know there are some that are definitely not in a financial position where they can do that. Working less is just not an option when you are barely making ends meet. And trust me, they would love to spend more time with their kids.

56 points by jeffreyrogers 12y ago

I suspect that all the programs meant to help people are actually a part of the problem. Not directly, because helping people doesn't really hurt (except maybe in a "don't feed the wild animals" sort of way, but most consider that negligible). But more in a "somebody else's problem" or a "bystander effect" sort of way. In other words, the existence of programs to help people in need -- and worse, large federally funded and administrated programs -- make people feel as though it's not their problem and also that they're already doing something to help: paying their taxes and not voting against these programs. I say large federally funded programs are worse only because that makes the responsibility far more diffuse and the ability to influence ever more limited. So the programs to help aren't directly bad, but the knock-on psychological effect is that they absolve people of any personal need to help (since they're already helping in a very vague and miniscule way) and that leads them to not take any (additional) direct action. It feels like the inverse case of the tragedy of the commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Kurtz79 12y ago
You are making the assumption that without these programs people would actually do something themselves to solve other's problems. In my opinion most people would just try to rationalize it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis Government funded programs might be inefficient and open to abuses, but are better than the real alternative that would be doing nothing at all.
- msandford 12y ago
  So I'm not railing against government programs because they're "bad" and in fact I'm not necessarily even opposed to them. I'm trying to explain a set of psychological effects that I suspect influence the way our society approaches these kinds of problems.
germinalphrase 12y ago
Do you believe that our population would effectively self-educate without gov't funded education?
- mrwarn 12y ago
  Do you believe our population is effectively educated with government funded education?
  - germinalphrase 12y ago
    No, I don't. However, I believe this is a problem associated with how we approach education as a task rather than how we fund it. If it were merely an example of "gov't funded education" causes poor education then we would likely see significant gains when private education models are used to replace public schools. Currently, gains with private/charter schools are flat compared to public schools. I do, however, believe that in absence of a publicly funded education system a large segment of our population would simply be locked out of educational opportunities. How is a family that already struggles for basic necessities going to find an extra ~6-10k a year to pay for private school fees?
    - msandford 12y ago
      > How is a family that already struggles for basic necessities going to find an extra ~6-10k a year to pay for private school fees? You do realize that those people already do pay for their children's education right? It's just indirect through property taxes. Yes people who don't have kids in school also contribute but it's not as though there are 10x as many people without kids as with kids, it might be 50/50 kids/no kids meaning that the best you can get is a 50% "discount" over directly funding instead of funding via taxes.
      - germinalphrase 12y ago
        Setting aside that progressive taxation probably means that the population I was discussing isn't significantly funding their children's education (and would likewise not be able to cover the actual cost of education if they were called on that burden) -- I was responding to mrwarn's comment asking if gov't funded education is working, to which I responded that public schooling is not working, but that the problem is not dependent on the source of funding. When we turn public schools into private schools (as Chicago has done by the dozens in the last few years) we don't see educational improvements when the students population remains the same. When we do, it's modest or an outlier (and education is filled with outliers).
jellicle 12y ago
But we've had thousands of years of testing of your hypothesis, and no, individuals do not step up in any great number to solve massive societal problems of poverty. Which is why we invented governmental action to solve them. Which has proved extremely effective.
- msandford 12y ago
  We also had thousands of years where basically everyone was poor and there wasn't anywhere near enough production so that there was a hope or a prayer of not everyone being poor. The middle class is a relatively recent phenomena. A great example of this is "The $3500 shirt" article that made it to HN a while ago: http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-lesson-in.html http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-l... > Which is why we invented governmental action to solve them. Which has proved extremely effective. I was under the impression that the whole point of the article -- and also the book -- was that the programs in place currently are not effective. If they were, there would be no "Mary Sue"s, there'd be only "Miriam"s and there would be no problem.

carsongross 12y ago

A strong, common culture is the only historically verified way to escape the prisoners dilemma of social interactions. We've done a pretty good job of destroying that for the last fifty years in the west. "We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

saturdaysaint 12y ago
Yet violence has dropped impressively in the west in the last 50 years, both in crime statistics and in the absence of wars between major powers. And the last 50 years mark many incredible advancements in society: civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, the first attempts to take sexual violence seriously, etc. etc. etc. I'd much rather be a random American today than 50 years ago.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  Agreed. I cringe when people say how things are going for the worse constantly.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    Sometimes it's because things are objectively worse. Cringing doesn't change the facts. The original claim that we're less violent is easy to debunk, and has been debunked by many people. See e.g. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-... But more than that, it's clear that economics and politics have become prime vectors for social violence in the 'developed' West: particularly economics, which has been used as an ideological excuse to destroy the possible future prospects and current living conditions of entire generations now. Unemployment in - say - Spain for the under-25s is more than 50%. The rate in the US is around 12%, but that disguises the fact that many 'jobs' barely pay a living wage now, where fifty years ago even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries. The destruction has been justified by a steady stream of clearly wrong 'economic theories' that don't stand up to even the most basic undergraduate-level scrutiny. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt So yes - things are objectively worse for many people. The fact that some people are doing okay and a tiny minority are doing really well doesn't change that. Getting this stuff wrong has very real long-term social and political consequences. It's irrational to ignore that.

dzdt 12y ago

The last few decades in the US have seen a shift from 1 parent working sufficing to support a family to 2 parents working beening needed for middle class living, and longer hours than before. And more kids have only 1 parent in the household. There simply isn't time for participating in the community-building activities that filled the gaps before. So we are more isolated, and people's lies are in a more fragile balance.

dominotw 12y ago
I know lots of my friends have families where single income would sustain them but both husband and wife go to work. We have stigmatized staying at home and raising children as a society.
- donbronson 12y ago
  Who is this "we" ? People without kids?
  - taeric 12y ago
    Society, in general. This is perhaps one of my favorite Bittman quotes. I can't remember it verbatim, but it was essentially lamenting how we have devalued working in your own home. In his case, he was referring to cooking, but I feel the overall point is rather relevant.
  - jonathantm 12y ago
    "We" is not a who, but rather a "what" - namely, a useful indication of poor thinking.
- paganel 12y ago
  I'd say is a net positive for society that women nowadays are more financially independent compared to the 1960s-1970s. Consider it this way, you're a stay-at-home mom who has decided to focus on her kids in her later 20s, and then you're 40 and divorce happens. In the happy case your ex-husband and father to your kids still pays for their education and food and relared stuff, but what about you and your own financial needs? Now that you've been out of the work-force for 10+ years you're basically unemployable.

littletimmy 12y ago

The key to well functioning kids is involved parents. The key to involved parents is less time spent working. Americans need to get over their fetish for hard work and start staying home more. Or just stop having kids altogether and use work as the primary source of joy.

thehoff 12y ago
That sounds great from where you may sit but what about those families where the parents have to work long hours just to provide? I know there are some that are definitely not in a financial position where they can do that. Working less is just not an option when you are barely making ends meet. And trust me, they would love to spend more time with their kids.