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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

But the condition of poverty often entails one or more of these realities: a lack of income (joblessness); a lack of preparedness (education); and a dependency on government services (welfare). A.I. can address all three.

Wow, and not in a good way. Reading that makes me apoplectic. My first instinct is to write something full of swear words and insults that wouldn't meet HN guidelines.

First, poverty is gendered. One of the things that drives poverty for women is the cultural expectation that we provide caregiving to our own children and other relatives essentially for free and that society owes us nothing for this imposition on our time and energy. There are other factors, but that's a big one.

The next thing that drives poverty is various intractable personal problems, such as health issues, learning disabilities and mental health issues. One thing society can do to reduce the degree to which such issues separate the Haves from the Have Nots is to provide universal health care.

Dependency on government services is driven in part by poor design of services such that getting on them actively cripples your ability to get off of them. This entire article sounds like a snide way to blame poor people for their problems rather than look for actual solutions.

I can't believe they say in the same article that a) jobs are outright going away and b) the solution for unemployed people is superior job matching services. If there are no jobs to get, you don't have a matching problem.

This is such utter drivel. Wow.

View on HN

Where does the fact that more homeless in the U.S. are men than women fit into this for you?

I believe they meant that poverty is experienced differently by gender, not that it only happens to one gender.

That's really complicated. One thing that drives higher rates of homelessness for men is that it is safer for them. Homeless women are at high risk of being raped. Women often put up with things men will not tolerate in order to avoid the street because it is the lesser evil.

Of course, that isn't something most people want to hear. I am a woman and I spent 5.7 years homeless. It helped me solve some of my intractable personal problems. I am newly off the street and recently applied for my dream job. I hope to soon have the life I always wanted and could not arrange. I got it in part by taking the whole deal involved in exercising agency like a man, a luxury many women lack.

But commenting on such things tends to not be well received. Men want to play their own victim card when it comes to that statistic and it is never acceptable to point out that there is an element of choice involved and the greater degree of agency generally exercised by men is a driving factor in higher rates of male homelessness. It sounds like victim blaming to a lot of people.

In more or less all western societies men are found in the top and in the bottom of society.

I am perfectly fine with accepting that there is an element of choice involved if that also explains why men are found in the top of society.

My experience is that many women will not agree on that but instead point to (if they are really stereotype feminists) patriarchal structures in society benefitting men.

I'm not a feminist. I was on the street with my two adult sons. I have a track record of making even handed comments about gendered issues on HN.

That's fine.

I wonder still though if you agree that it also explains why men are found in the top.

I think it is more complicated than that. And I doubt we would be able to have a good discussion on the matter. You seem to be driving towards "Women just don't want it bad enough." There is some truth to that. But there is also a higher cost to women to just do the will-to-power thing and, in the aggregate, it doesn't serve survival of the species.

I am simply responding to your claim about men making choices and wondering if you are consistent with this or whether you claim it only applies to men.

In general, men and women face a different set of choices. It tends to be an apples to oranges comparison.

I do think this is an element:

Generally speaking, women have an option men lack. They can marry well. Given this easy out, when things get challenging at work, some will walk, especially since they have vastly less reason to believe they can achieve stellar success and they also face sexual harassment to a degree that far exceeds what men face. So, with poorer odds of reward, a typically worse set of working conditions due to the element of harassment and another option on the table, this will lead a lot of women to give up where men have fewer disincentives to persist and no easy out.

Women need to "want" it a helluva lot worse for wanting it to have any hope of getting them as far as a man is likely to get. So it is a rather unfair question and it really comes across like it has a very polite facade, but dark agenda.

I will add that I have already previously indicated women make choices as well when they choose to put up with crappy situations to avoid being raped on the street. So I don't plan to engage you further.

The patriarchy isn't so black and white. Toxic masculinity is bad for women and also bad for men. Sexist social conventions make it still much more acceptable for women to be unemployed than for men and so the pressure to succeed is much higher for men. I believe this, along with other expectations of masculinity, is part of the reason why they may be more likely to get burnout or suffer depression and other mental illness, while rejecting help necessary help. This can easily lead to homelessness.

Feminism includes criticism of the social dynamics that hurt men too. I think it's perfectly explained from a feminist framework why men can be on the bottom and also on the top of society. Most feminists support a solution to these problems as well as the ones that affect women since they are inherently connected.

Well, toxic masculinity isn't really a thing I recognize.

There is masculinity but claiming it's toxic is an absurd form of shaming which rests on the assumption that there are masculine traits which are objectively toxic.

No, toxicity is generally determined by dosage of a particular toxin, not grouped by toxins and non-toxins (example: water). This definition holds here too.

It implies that too much of a thing can be dangerous which isn't always the case.

It is a loaded term. It doesn't belong here, anymore than announcing women are all bitches belongs in civil discourse.

I didn't say all masculinity is toxic. I think masculinity is fine but then you have things like this:

"Man up"

"Boys will be boys"

"You throw like a girl"/"[blank] is for girls"

"When men were men..."

"No means yes, yes means anal"

You can't deny there are some really terrible behaviours and expectations that have been normalised in our culture and they are considered as being inherent to masculinity.

>My experience is that many women will not agree on that but instead point to (if they are really stereotype feminists) patriarchal structures in society benefitting men.

I'm curious as to why you think this an "either-or" proposition? Can men make choices and benefit from a "patriarchal" society? In fact, might men have further incentive to make the choices that will convey the benefits that disproportionately await them?

What are then victim hood stats by gender? While I would agree that homeless women would more often be victims of sexual violence, but sexual violence is not the only kind of violence. Do the stats really show that homeless men are safer?

Regarding your last comment, what do you mean by "greater degree of agency" and how do you measure it?

We don't live in Saudi Arabia. Women can make all the same choices men can.

Like what is stopping other women from doing what you did and how does that also not stop men?

It sounds like victim blaming because it is. In our society we tend towards believing people are not deserving of help if they are in bad situations due to their own choices.

I don't believe because I understand how hard it can be to make the right choices, and also because as far as I have seen that's true of almost everyone in a bad spot. That doesn't mean we shouldn't help them, because we should help everyone who suffers.

Homelessness is only the most visible sign of poverty. If we somehow gave all homeless people some walls to live in, let's say without running water and no heat, would we have "solved" poverty?

Of course not.

As the GP pointed out, homelessness is safer for men.

How about this fact: 21% of children live in poverty. How does that fit in for you?

To add to your point, a fair amount of homeless people have mental illness, so no amount of job will help them if we don't care to their mental health.

(The official US number is 25%, but I feel like Canada and UK surveys pairing mental illness and homelessness at up to 70% is closer to the reality.)

> To add to your point, a fair amount of homeless people have mental illness, so no amount of job will help them if we don't care to their mental health.

Mental illness isn't always a 100% sort of thing. Most people I know have been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness at some point or another, most of them either temporary or minor. Most of these people are gainfully employed, most of the time. Some of these people have had some issues retaining employment due to a mental issue getting worse.

The more demand for your labor there is, the easier it is to get back on your feet after a temporary worsening of your condition is resolved, and that's super important, I think. Also, if you have chronic issues, the degree to which your employer will tolerate those chronic issues is determined largely by demand for your labor.

I mean, certainly, there are some who are completely disabled, and I imagine that if you took one of those people I know with minor issues that periodically got worse and better, they'd have a hell of a time trying to get better if they were homeless. Certainly, mental health treatment is important and would help a lot. I'm just saying that more demand for your labor is also something that helps a lot, even when you do have some other issues.

Imagine getting rid of all your possessions and wealth, moving somewhere that you have no support network, not talking to anyone you know, and living on the street (going hungry sometimes, facing the elements, not being able to shower regularly, wearing holes in all your clothes, ...). After 5 years, what do you think the chances are that people will consider you “mentally ill”? If you want to make the experiment more realistic, imagine also suffering some trauma that causes you extreme amounts of anxiety for a while such as going through a messy divorce with a scheming narcissist, having your family disown you, getting severely physically assaulted, or killing several innocent people.

Many “mentally ill” people were formerly considered “sane” within the bounds of social norms, but even the best prepared can fall on hard times, and being homeless and socially isolated is really hard even for the mentally strongest.

I'm not sure homelessness is safer for men. Men are a lot more likely to be victims of every kind of assault than rape, and I have no reason to believe that the ratio of male:female victimization is affected by poverty. Further, men probably don't lag women a whole lot in rape victimization, or at least it's certainly more prevalent than the cultural meme suggests, largely due to underreporting and the fact that many jurisdictions (including the FBI) have defined rape in such a way that it excludes men from the victimization statistics (e.g. "rape is vaginal penetration"). Besides, there are far fewer social services (e.g., shelters) available to homeless men as compared to homeless women.

Glad to find others here who had a negative impression of the article. Wasn’t sure what comments to expect given its association with two influential organizations. My objections vary somewhat from others, but overall I felt it was at risk of drifting into Not Even Wrong territory.

The author suggests hard working middle class people are missing out on millions unfilled job openings ripe for the picking, because we don’t have good enough matching algorithms.

One insult is suggesting desperate out of work people may not already be taking the extraordinary measures necessary to find the best positions they can get. I question even the validity of the claim, that “matching” is alone is keeping any significant number people out of work. Another insult is not mentioning a lot of these jobs may not be filled simply because the salary and opportunity for career development are not that great.

Other topics like improving the educational system are grossly oversimplified given the competing interests of students, teachers, politics, and government. The biggest problem has been explained here on HN previously: Education doesn’t lack good ideas or innovation as much as it lacks funding to develop and implement the good ideas.

Other points about how AI will remove concerns of bias seem naive, or at least not in tune with recent work like that from Facebook, that has faced an uphill battle trying to convince people its easy to create objective policy systems.

I can see the benefit of articles that look at the current practical challenges of AI, and also more speculative articles that look at what the future may bring. This argument seems to be stuck in the middle, while not doing particularly well at either.

> One of the things that drives poverty for women is the cultural expectation that we provide caregiving to our own children and other relatives essentially for free and that society owes us nothing for this imposition on our time and energy. There are other factors, but that's a big one.

You have a source for that? I would think that the wage gap would be a much more significant factor than cultural expectations. And I would hope that people would provide caregiving to their own children for free.

There are many sources. Off the top of my head, you can look for books, articles etc about the feminization of poverty, pink collar ghetto and the second shift. I have read far too many books (articles etc) over the course of decades to remember them all.

And I would hope that people would provide caregiving to their own children for free.

So would I. But why is it only women are expected to provide such care and are classified as gold digging whores if they think the father should provide for them while they do so and also provide some compensation into the future for the lost career building opportunities it costs them? Parents should both be responsible for the product of having gotten jiggy together, not just mothers.

This is true, to some extent, and false to some extent as well. There are plenty of fathers who split primary care giving. Also, once children reach school age, primary care giving responsibilities decrease and can be split between parents more easily.

The stats I have seen suggest that full time moms do 60 hours of women's work per week. Working moms still do 40. To make up for the loss of 20 hours of women's work, men began doing an extra 10 minutes per day, or 1 hour and 10 minutes per week.

Those stats are not current. Given the reactions I got from working women at a Fortune 500 company over the detail that my sons took over the cooking and cleaning, I have zero reason to believe we are anywhere near achieving parity.

Where are you getting these numbers?

Lots and lots and lots of reading over the years.

"Lots and lots of reading", yes that scholarly peer reviewed journal. I know it well.

The 60 hours of work a week for homemakers comes from a book called "More work for mother." It is a figure that has been stable for 300 years. I don't recall where specifically I got some of the other figures. I was trying to sort my life out, not prepare for debate on an internet forum I had not yet heard of and which did not exist when I was doing a lot of this reading in my 20s.

I don't think the statistics you posted about men working an extra 10 mins a day is accurate. It actually sounds quite absurd.

You've posted plenty of comments that break the HN guidelines. If you keep doing this will ban you. Especially, please cut the ideological flamebait and—as in this case—nasty snark.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> But why is it only women are expected to provide such care and are classified as gold digging whores if they think the father should provide for them while they do so and also provide some compensation into the future for the lost career building opportunities it costs them? Parents should both be responsible for the product of having gotten jiggy together, not just mothers.

How does that contribute to women being in poverty at a higher rate than men? If the parents are married, they share finances so they are either both in poverty, or neither are in poverty. If they are divorced, the primary caregiver will be compensated for their time through child support payments.

And I don't think stay at home mothers are generally classified as "gold digging whores", maybe my experience is different from yours though.

Most poor people in the US are women and their children. Most of those women were solidly middle class until one of three things happened:

1) She got unexpectedly pregnant.

2) She got divorced.

3) Her spouse died.

Due to the fact that women live longer and men are, on average, about 4 years older than their wives, 90 percent if the time, when someone is burying their spouse it is a woman burying her husband. (for hetero couples, a stat that will change with same sex marriage)

I did the homemaker thing. I have 6 years of college. My post divorce life has been far less lush than that of my ex.

>She got unexpectedly pregnant

This may show my bias growing up in a traditionally christian environment, but for years the rub on the right has been to disregard two of those realities and handwave the other as: she got unexpectedly pregnant, because she lacks personal responsibility, and is therefore not entitled to the support of the state or society. When the Haves "get unexpectedly pregnant," it's an accident or a surprise, when the Have Nots do, it's a sin. Even some of the responses here dogwhistle the sentiment that the people in this position kind of deserve it, which disgusts me.

And to the other reply to your comment: Good thing this isn't a sympathy contest, and that humans do not have a finite capacity to care for their fellow humans, so we can feel bad for the dead people and still work for the benefit of the people left behind. "These are nice points, but wave of hand I'm not going to listen to them, honey." Of course they needed a throwaway account to say it here, too bad that attitude prevails in so many of our interactions every day.

At the individual level, I've always thought discussing person responsibility for getting pregnant or attempting to cast blame for doing so is pointless. The kids are there whether we like it or not so what are we going to do now, as a society?

At the societal level, attempting to hold people to a lofty standard of moral purity doesn't seem to be particularly effective considering even clergy have trouble remaining celibate.

> At the individual level, I've always thought discussing person responsibility for getting pregnant or attempting to cast blame for doing so is pointless.

The hope is that it prevents future unexpected pregnancies by making people pause and think before they act "Hmm, maybe if I do this unprotected thing I want to do that it will financially screw over the girl I want to do it with. Maybe I shouldn't do that thing without protection."

> At the individual level, I've always thought discussing person responsibility for getting pregnant or attempting to cast blame for doing so is pointless. The kids are there whether we like it or not so what are we going to do now, as a society?

Personal responsibility is about incentivizing good choices, so society has to pick up the tab for fewer children born into poverty. Unfortunately, this probably doesn't work out in practice since people (particularly teenagers) are going to have unprotected sex regardless of consequences. So there is a point even if the point is broken.

I absolutely agree. To be clear, I'm not endorsing the attitudes I described - they abhor me.

> Most poor people in the US are women and their children.

There are 44 million people in poverty in the US. There are 10 million single mothers in the US, with 17 million children. Since the majority of single mothers are not in poverty, your statement is false.

https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/

It is, at worst, inadequately pedantic. Most poor adults in the US are female. Women and children make up the majority.

My phrasing is fine if someone is engaging in good faith and trying to actually understand my points rather than looking for some trivial means to justify dismissing them.

I assumed you were talking about single mothers and their children. I think that is a fair assumption since it is not very surprising that the majority of people in poverty are women and children - they do make up the majority of the US population, after all. You could similarly say that most poor people in the US are men and their children.

You could say that, but women usually get custody. So it isn't really an accurate framing of social reality.

You really seem to be reaching here. So I will likely not reply further.

You've supported your thesis (that society treats women unfairly) with "we let men die younger" and "we let women disproportionately win custody battles". I think your posts have been confusing--I don't think we need to assume bad faith.

EDIT: Others have independently expressed similar confusion as well.

EDIT2: I'm being throttled, but in response to Doreen:

Here's where you say women live longer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16055356). I don't see how that can mean anything other than "men die younger". Again, no need to resort to "bad faith" when "miscommunication" suffices. Here's the full text for convenience/posterity:

> Most poor people in the US are women and their children. Most of those women were solidly middle class until one of three things happened: 1) She got unexpectedly pregnant. 2) She got divorced. 3) Her spouse died. Due to the fact that women live longer and men are, on average, about 4 years older than their wives, 90 percent if the time, when someone is burying their spouse it is a woman burying her husband. (for hetero couples, a stat that will change with same sex marriage)

"we let men die younger"

Nowhere did I say that. That framing sounds incredibly bad faith.

>Most poor people in the US are women and their children.

What a strange statement. This would be true if, for example, poor people were 33% men, 33% women, and 33% children.

It would also be true that "most poor people in the US are men and their children."

Did you mean to say something specific about single mothers and the children who live with them? Or was the phrasing an attempt to import that image while saying something much less meaningful?

Here's something that is specific and true: The vast majority of homeless in America are men. There are many, many centers set up to help women and children in poverty exclusively, while resources just for men are rare-to-nonexistent.

Extreme poverty is massively gendered against men, and the resources to address it are massively gendered towards helping women.

I posted this above to another comment:

My mother cheated on my father and he left her because of that.

He was required (by Texas law) to pay child-support to my mother up until we were 18 (I am 29) to my mother who cheated on him; he still owes back pay on that and refuses to pay until they put a warrant out for his arrest.

My mother demonized him to us by crying about not knowing why he left her; she never once mentioned until 5 months ago that she cheated on him.

Dad regrets leaving us (his kids, not my mother) because it put a rift between us. We never knew the truth until recently when my mom let it slip in a conversation.

At this point I feel like he has been punished enough by the state of Texas for leaving my cheating mother.

Recently my eldest brother had a girl and my father has been in her life as much as he can and I'm incredibly happy for that (not jealous one bit) because at least my niece will have something my brother and I never had because he was soured by her behavior.

We grew up poor because of my mother's infidelity...

In the USA, alimony and child support serve this purpose. Other developed countries are similar, or have strong non-gendered social security.

In USA, while women are in poverty more than men, likely for the reasons you highlight, women receive more social services than men, for those same reasons. Homelessness disproportionately impacts men (by far), because woman and children have more access to social services.

Europe has a better track record here. European women historically advocated for getting help with the burden of bearing and raising kids. American women seem to have modeled feminist positions on the historic American attitude of don't tread on me. Those social services mitigate some of the harm, but don't empower women to reclaim their lives effectively.

Also, the American track record for alimony and child support is not great of late.

According to https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/adult-poverty-rate..., poverty rates between men and women are comparable; only 3% difference. Also, besides poverty, I would expect a comparable expectation on men to make up the deficit by working harder. I'm guessing the disparity is really driven by a significant disparity between single mothers and single fathers.

I think it's probably has something to do with the fact that females have all the biological equipment necessary for child-rearing and males have all the biological equipment necessary to hit it and quit it. Furthermore, only the female can be absolutely certain (without some investigation) that her child is actually her child. The male usually has to accept some deception risk.

The instinct for pair-bonding--and, in humans, the cultural institution of marriage--evolved as behavioral adaptations to the unfairnesses inherent in having two sexes.

It would appear that equal outcomes demand equal commitment. As the biological commitment is a few kcal and a few minutes for one, versus years of time and many more kcal for the other, that leaves an awful lot of effort to make those scales balance.

Simple analysis suggests that females should cartelize and police each other's behavior with respect to males, embargoing reproduction from any male deemed too selfish in regard to child-rearing responsibilities. But cartels are tough to keep together, and males can counter with misogynistic and patriarchal strategies of their own.

The biological discrepancy will therefore likely never be resolved to anything even close to fairness.

It's never going to be free, either. There is always an opportunity cost. Providing resources to an existing child precludes using them yourself or applying them to a theoretical future child.

I'm inclined to believe this opinion runs diametrically opposite to the general consensus in Australia, insofar as legislation can be considered the general consensus.

I'll admit some men, and some women, may lean in the general direction of the opinion you've state, but I feel "gold digging whores" is overly strong.

But their opinions hardly matter as we have strong child support legislation, with a strong Child Support Agency to enforce the laws to direct an appropriate amount of money to the resident-parent to aid in funding the child. We also have a fairly well run welfare system.

I feel "gold digging whores" is overly strong.

In the US, full time moms tend to get viewed and treated like leeches, regardless of their socioeconomic class. I was a homemaker a long time. I have six years of college. I was a military wife and homeschooling mom. But America is pretty sucktastic about treating full-time wives like pariahs and non contributors.

If your land is more civilized than mine, I am very glad to hear it.

Edit: And I am not questioning it. I met an Australian friend for lunch/dinner with a group of friends in San Francisco years ago. He talked very differently about his full-time homemaker wife than is the cultural norm here.

I think the concern is that mothers rather than fathers are expected to provide care giving.

Fathers are also expected to provide full financial support, both culturally and legally.

Assuming the father 1)is known 2) is able 3) is willing. Re #3, Paternity must be established and that burden falls on the mother. Where the assumed father does not voluntarily submit to a paternity test, the mother has to file suit to compel him. That's not something that's going to be easy for someone already in poverty.

When the Welfare People Come is great read on the the way the welfare system is stacked against those who need to use it that delves into this and OP's points in greater detail.

Another factor is the large number of men put in prison for long periods of time, and even when they get out their record destroys their ability to earn money to support their families.

> 1) is known

If the woman doesn't know who the father is, who's choice was that?

> 2) is able

yes

> 3) is willing

The courts routinely assess child support on both willing and unwilling fathers. It's not an option for fathers.

If the woman doesn't know who the father is, who's choice was that?

In some cases, the man who raped her.

I think he was referring to terminating the pregnancy or putting the kid up for adoption.

Terminating the pregnancy is another choice that's not practically available to many poor women in the united states.

It is also incredibly shitty to suggest that if a woman is raped she can just get an abortion, problem solved. It is surgery, this another insult to the body, and some women feel strongly that abortion is murder. So the choice becomes "Do I try to spend the rest of my life loving this demon spawn that will be a living, breathing reminder of my rape every day, or do I swallow my morals and commit what I view as baby murder?" Acting like it is no big if a woman is raped and left with such a conundrum sounds just mind-bogglingly callous.

#1) Don't moralize the situation. The woman may have been raped, her partner may have lied to her. She may just have wanted to get off and the condom broke. She may be a prostitute, willingly or unwillingly.. Doesn't matter. The only reason any of these are an issue is the unremunerated responsibility of the woman to raise the child.

#2) Yes, your prison comment overwhelmingly impacts the poor, particularly minorities.

#3) The burden is on the woman, if the woman is poor she may not have the resources to force the father to pay.

It kind of is a moral situation isn't it? Excluding rape, all the others are in the sphere of womens control.

Accidents are only accidental in intent, not in results.

My mother cheated on my father and he left her because of that.

My mother demonized him to us by crying about not knowing why he left her; she never once mentioned until 5 months ago that she cheated on him.

Dad regrets leaving us (his kids, not my mother) because it put a rift between us. We never knew the truth until recently when my mom let it slip in a conversation.

At this point I feel like he has been punished enough by the state of Texas for leaving my cheating mother.

We grew up poor because of my mother's infidelity...

Well, there are studies that find that the wage gap has a lot to do with caregiving. This freakonomics episode talks about that: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender...

There is a reason poor urban neighborhoods are full of poor single moms, not single dads, and it’s not the wage gap. Indeed, the wage gap all but disappears when you eliminate child-rearing related differences from the equation.

Out of curiosity, why did you scope to urban neighborhoods? Either the finding holds true for urban, suburban, and rural poor neighborhoods or child-rearing responsibilities is probably not the cause (instead, it would probably be something that correlates with population density). What am I missing?

EDIT: I can't reply ("I'm posting too fast"), but I'm genuinely asking for clarity--not making a point or impugning anyone's character.

It seems uncharitable to glom onto a single word of the GP's statement; suburban and rural areas are also full of single mothers.

I was just asking for clarity; not making a point of any kind.

I've spent many years living or working in depressed industrial/port cities, so urban poverty is the first thing that comes to mind. It's apparently also true in rural areas, though I've never spent enough time in any such places to see who was carting around the kids. https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https:/....

Ah, thanks for clarifying.

>I can't reply ("I'm posting too fast"),

Click on the time next to the post you want to reply to.

From their description, your parent appears to be rate-limited: they can't post a new comment and instead are editing one they already posted.

In a different comment, they outright state they are being throttled:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16056235

Yeah, I think I get something like 5 posts in several hours (or maybe it's 5 posts in an hour with several hours of cooldown time?). I suspect it's because I have too many "controversial" posts, which is to say that center-left is a bit too far to the right for some on HN.

Have you had a child recently?

My wife was a finance director and made good coin. Given the cost of daycare and the difficulty of getting late childcare (we both have jobs where the day ends when it ends sometimes, daycare assumes your day ends at 4 everyday), it was a no brainer for her to stop working.

When she returns to the workforce, she’ll be on the bottom as an analyst or some other gig.

For people with less resources, it’s far worse.

In more developed countries that would be illegal. You are guaranteed to be able to return to the same position and pay.

Also daycare would be subventionized.

> In more developed countries that would be illegal. You are guaranteed to be able to return to the same position and pay.

Even if you quit entirely, beyond straightforward maternity/paternity leave? I don't think I'd be in favor of that type of regulation. In my opinion, if you make the decision to quit (for whatever reason), you can come back to get whatever job your skills let you get. I also think "developed" isn't the adjective you're looking for, maybe "tightly-regulated".

> Even if you quit entirely, beyond straightforward maternity/paternity leave?

Of course not. The point is that there shouldn't be any economical or work-related downside (other than slightly less pay during maternity/paternity leave) for having a child.

(Obviously raising a child costs money but I hope you get the idea)

Developed is quite apt for any society that values its members.

No, it's still maternity leave, but in some countries up to 3 years as far as I know. After that there are state-provided kindergartens.

I wasn’t clear — this was 5 years ago, and she resigned. Her employer provided 6-8 months of leave, mostly paid.

Why can't a finance director afford a nanny? Why can't the finance director's spouse quit their low paying job? Either the job pays more than childcare (about $15/hr), or it's not a high paying job to give up.

>we provide caregiving to our own children and other relatives essentially for free and that society owes us nothing for this imposition on our time and energy

At least historically, what society gave in return was keeping women (for the most part) out of harms way when it came to wars.

True. But the reason for this is because if you lose 90 percent of your men to war, you can enact polygyny and rapidly repopulate. But no matter how many men a woman sleeps with, it takes 9 months to complete a pregnancy. Whereas a man can father children on multiple women at the same time.

Not does that alone justify keeping them in poverty.

True -- except maybe for the "at the same time" part; with a few minutes break in between I'll agree :) But yes, I agree also that it doesn't justify poverty. I think partly due to the inherent assymetries (like the biological one you mention), historically we have had a mix of advantages and disadvantages for the two genders. As the situation changes, maybe the "deal" becomes more favorable for one, less for the other. (e.g. Women are expected to work now, also to take care of children, whereas a chivalrous behavior towards them is worth much less in 21th century).

The mainstream opinion today seems to be that the current "mix" is less favorable to women (I happen to disagree with this), but I think it is a good basis for a civil discussion, more so than the insistence on equality at all levels which seems unattainable to me. (EDIT: last few words added)

Historically wars frequently involved one side razing the others city and murdering and enslaving all of their non-combatants. Not exactly out of harms way.

The death rate for men in wars is far, far, far higher than for women.

How so? The last century saw the civilian death rate in war increase fast, such that something like 90% of war deaths a civilians. The overall stats are not skewed much by the overwhelmingly male make up of most armies. Or are you arguing that male civilians die in wars a lot more than female ones?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio

The 90% figure is disputed, and includes refugees. A more reasonable figure in the article is:

"On the average, half of the deaths caused by war happened to civilians, only some of whom were killed by famine associated with war...The civilian percentage share of war-related deaths remained at about 50% from century to century."

That implies roughly 3/4 of the deaths are men.

I agree that 90% seems to be the upper end, but 50% is the extreme low end and is a dated figure and the other sources seem to show this. Notably that quote you cite was written in the early 80s, and according to most those sources, wars are getting more deadly for civilians and less deadly for combatants (drones and other remote killing methods?).

UNICEF et al cover this at length. https://www.unicef.org/graca/patterns.htm

https://www.iraqbodycount.org

Edit: Intersting discussion here, suggesting much of the difference comes down to how you measure and when you stop measuring. The longer you measure, the worse it is for civilians and in particular, women. https://files.prio.org/Publication_files/Prio/Armed%20Confli....

Poverty is gendered, but it is not female gender. If you walk any major US city in the evening, you can clearly see what gender it actually is.

Homelessness is not the only form of poverty. I would argue that long-term homelessness is only a small slice of the pie.

Furthermore, women are probably more likely to get an offer (and accept an offer) for welfare assistance than men. Parents with children are probably far more likely to receive assistance than individuals.

>more likely for welfare assistance than men

I don't see how it cancels my argument other than highlighting even bigger wealth distribution imbalance in favor of women.

Just so we can start with a more precise base statement:

2 minutes of googling seems to show that adult women’s poverty rate is around 20-30% higher than men’s.

The biggest predictor of poverty for women is marital status. Families headed by a single female have a poverty rate over five times higher than married couple families.

http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html

And, according to that data, twice that of single dads, which seems like a more apt comparison.

Not that simple though,

Courts favour giving custody to Women. The men who do get custody generally have to have more of their affairs in order (job, housing, stability). So its not surprise when a man gets custody he is in a better financial position.

Exactly. My mother cheated on my father; she got custody of us and had to be both mother and father while also growing up in poverty.

She also demonized him to us as if it was his fault for leaving her.

Her cheating also made a head while she was both dating my current step-dad and another man who could also have ended up as my step-dad.

Needless to say, I have a hard time with relationships because my mother's have been extremely out of the norm.

Needless to say, I have a hard time with relationships because my mother's have been extremely out of the norm.

I am very sorry for what you suffered.

For some years, I read as much scholarly info as I could on infidelity.

In a nutshell: Infidelity doesn't destroy a relationship. Instead, it grows out of serious problems within the relationship.

I hope you find a means to heal.

> In a nutshell: Infidelity doesn't destroy a relationship. Instead, it grows out of serious problems within the relationship.

Yup, she was co-dependent on him and he was a workaholic mechanic.

There is more to the story than I have said:

My father had a serious cocaine addiction (he is clean now); that combined with his workaholic nature (at the time) caused him to not be around my mother as much as he should have.

She wished he would be around more with her and the cheating on him seems to be the side-effect of that issue.

Those were the starting points of the relationship problems and they only worsened from there.

My mother's mother ragged on her a lot about every mistake (big or small) she happened to make. I believe this caused her to have a hard time trusting her decisions and lowered her self-esteem.

The codependency with my father and his lack of being around due to working (to help provide for us) was definitely a factor in her cheating on him; it seems to be a common problem of those whose significant other isn't around as much as they should (or would like them) to be.

Thanks for the thoughts on healing, it's definitely a struggle.

Let me very gently suggest that trying to decide which one to blame is not a constructive path forward.

Agreed, I've long since stopped blaming either of them.

It sucks that they did divorce however my brothers and I turned out just fine by her raising us.

I see a psychiatrist and have talked plenty with her about my childhood and growing up.

From my posts it may come off that my mother is a terrible person and that's so far from the truth. I love my mother and would do anything for her.

She had to play the role of mother and father (something any parent would struggle with). Sacrifices she made to raise us still amaze me to this day.

Mom involved us in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts to be around male mentors (and it helped a lot). We had the support of Big Brother & Big Sisters for one-on-one interaction with male figures.

We never went without under the care of my mother, however we were in poverty and she constantly was trying to make ends meet every month. While we weren't homeless like in your situation, it was still very much a struggle.

I learned very early on the difference between wants and needs.

I really got a lot out of what Patrick Stewart said in this video about his own parents:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/05/31/187551135...

Thank you for sharing that powerful video with me. Makes my liking of Patrick Stewart (the only true Commander of the Enterprise) even stronger.

He's such a kind, caring and eloquent man despite his upbringing.

I'm watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_27bpIb30 now to learn more about his life.

Infidelity is not excusable. You either need to decide if you are in or you are out. If you're out, then be honest and cut the cord.

> In a nutshell: Infidelity doesn't destroy a relationship. Instead, it grows out of serious problems within the relationship.

Sometimes the "serious problems" are simply that one partner is a cheater. An ex of mine (who cheated on me) went on to cheat in their next relationship, and the one after that, and based on mutual friends' comments, a few more since. Some people just aren't wired for monogamy.

These are fair comments, however I think it's reasonable to say that we need more automation in the home and personal care. Health Care, IMHO, should be solved by AI and Big Data.

I'm a free market person and I believe if the government tried to legislate this, it would screw it up. Rather it should try to open the way for the private industry to create AI based health care solutions.

I'd also like to see character based communities with minimal basic income. Ie, your economic output is not relevant, but rather your character. How kind you are to others, how passionate you are about your talents, how independent you are about looking after yourself. I think this is the real solution to poverty in a world of increased automation.

I know some people want UBI without strings attached, but my feeling is that without some kind of purpose (even a non economic one) mental health issues will increase.

I have a little exposure to this space (healthcare), and I'm nowhere as optimistic as you that AI or big data will cure what ails us, especially on the small scale (each patient).

Datamining is likely to help detect and clarify negative patterns in large groups (like when stents don't actually reduce angina). But doing the same to find positive patterns to shape policy seems to be much harder due to the wild variation inherent in individual patient response to each therapy.

Existing therapy is refined via specific experiments which are not amenable to aggregation into large groups that can be 'mined' using AI or DM, thereby adding further value. It's not clear to me what AI can add to existing stat/prob methods here.

Inversely, when trying to characterize patients using their raw data, I've found individual patient data to be so horribly noisy and so often mislabeled as to be useless for more than trivial purposes of individual trend summary. This becomes especially woeful when aggregating digital health records, and is likely to remain so for decades to come (given their current glacial rate of improvement).

When it comes to the prospect of mining medical data to improve treatment, I can only say, "GIGO".

>if the government tried to legislate this, it would screw it up

Agreed.

>Rather, [the government] should try to open the way for the private industry ...

Disagree, at least in part.

One source of personal frustration is the perception that rich techies who made their fortunes by writing programs without explicit government approval/legislation seem to spend a lot of time begging for government solutions (like UBI) or approvals for these problems without first attempting to use their money, brains, and tech with a little creativity to generate extra-governmental solutions.

I have my own concerns, but not because of gender. Still what I want to comment on is the gendered poverty argument you made.

I have been saying something similar for a long time! The wage gap, in my opinion, is a result of choices made by women in a society that expects them to be primary caregivers.

I think that people should be paid to be caregivers for their own families. In fact, many new programs do exactly this. Still it is not reliably spread throughout the US federation.

However, my concern is that subsidizing child care actually leads to overpopulation. I am worried about the Malthusian trap.

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286

If you take one of the article ideas in isolation, i.e. using AI to match impoverished people with good, unfilled middle class jobs... do you object to this idea by itself, or just to the idea it would be a cure-all, oblivious to other social factors?

Eh. It would definitely help to have better tech that could point people in the right direction in their job searches.

But I agree with you that when the real problem is a rising fundamental scarcity, a better breadcrumb detector is not the ultimate solution.

Yeah I kinda saw it coming with just the headline. The only thing needed, and missing, to wage "war" on poverty (inappropriate metaphor for 53 years but I'll go along with it) is the will. Not more data.

The title of this post should really include "OpEd" or "Opinion" to make it clear that this isn't journalism, but punditry.

The most tragic aspect to the responses here is the strangely monochromatic assertion that only homeless people count as poor.

Utterly bizarre.

People tend to focus on their biggest fears. It is an overwhelmingly male forum. It's not really rational, but pointing to statistics about homelessness and gender as a way to dismiss other points about the feminization of poverty is really common. It probably comes from a place of fear and suggests to me that men are saying "It isn't like my life is just peachy. And if I can't hack it, then fuck me. Society won't do shit all for me."

And that's not a crazy thing to be wrapped around the axle about, though it doesn't generally make for good debate.

It is both frustrating and enlighening to see that almost all replies to your comments and comment chains therein are grappling with your note that poor women may possibly have it harder than men. HN is not a good place to discuss issues relating to marginalized people; as a whole this is the least marginalized forum I could think of.

I actually think the discussion is going really well overall.

I agree with you because it is civil and good points are being made. As a general point though notice that assertions about women are met with requests for sources, but assertions about men are assumed true.

I hadn't really noticed, so I will just assume you are correct. But:

It is an overwhelmingly male forum. So not surprising that men generally are more aware of male reality than of female reality.

There have also been rebuttals of the worst and most inaccurate pro male comments.

Most people here seem to genuinely be interested in understanding and not merely looking to shoot me down.

It used to be a great deal more onesided and challenging, to the point where you couldn't say anything about the reality of women's lives without it being a flamewar or beatdown.

Thanks for the time your are putting in here.

That's most likely due to the fact that this article/topic was non-gendered, or gender-neutral. And that the poster decided to inject it into the conversation. It may be a pertinent matter to discuss, or not, but it acted as a focal point in that comment.

To be fair, I stopped reading that post at that point and moved on to the discussion chains. Only afterwards did I come back to it.

Had a very similar reaction to this.

Friendly heads up: HN norms are that you simply upvote, instead of replying with a comment that basically boils down to "I agree" and no other info.

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