To Help Tackle Inequality, Remember the Advantages You’ve Had | Hacker News Reader

To Help Tackle Inequality, Remember the Advantages You’ve Had

nytimes.com

31 pointsyarapavan23 comments

I think the illusion we have is that we suffer more than others, or that other people do not suffer as much as we do.

Sure, we have all had advantages in life, but we have all had problems as well. Rich people have problems just as much as poor people. Rich people problems are much different than poor people ones, but they are still there.

Too, I think that American culture tends to create the illusion that if you are not super successful, then you are a loser.

I think this especially applies to middle class and upper middle class people.

For whatever reason, our culture has cultivated this cult of success and it just drives people crazy, and sadly, to depression and suicide.

We have deluded ourselves into thinking that more success and more money will somehow result in a lot less suffering. Then, when we taste success or money, we realize that it has very little to do with happiness or suffering.

I know a lot of successful people who hate their lives and other people who are not "successful" that are much more satisfied with their lives.

There's a very big difference between making enough money to be financially stable and being one unexpected large expense away from not being able to pay some bills or the rent.

i'm having trouble thinking of a rich person problem that wouldn't also be a problem poor people face at least as much.

Terminal cancer,etc.

> a problem poor people face at least as much.

I'll see your "terminal cancer" with "any cancer with no ability to pay for treatment or care". Even if it's terminal, the wealthy can afford to die much more comfortably.

Any sickness. Stuff we overcame through vaccines, but makes a comeback caused by delusions, leaves poor people dead or crippled.

Being kidnapped for ransom?

Depending on circumstance, I can think of a few: work stress (many high-paying jobs are high-paying because they are highly demanding; the stress on the poor is perhaps shifted away from work and towards an inability to pay for things); social pressures (to maintain a high social standing, for example); and privacy invasions from the paparazzi. Certainly, not all rich people face these problems, but many of these would disproportionally affect the rich in my view.

I think relationships can he harder for rich people. Since you get to pick and choose all elements of your life, picking the people you spend time around is much more available to rich people.

And people are often after your money, which can really damage relationships between people.

You never know if someone likes you for you or your money.

Depression can ravage a person regardless of socioeconomic class. While wealthier people may afford better treatment, the affects are still there. Kate Spade is the most recent example that comes to mind.

There was research posted on hn which showed that poverty has a negative effect on cognitive functions

> American culture tends to create the illusion that if you are not super successful, then you are a lose

Is any culture not this though. Indian/Korean culture are exactly this too.

Re: suffering. Humanity shares a common consciousness and suffering is a part of it. A poor uneducated peasent in remote village in india suffers from the same suffering that a rich hollywood celebrity in beverly hills. It makes no sense to expect that rich ppl would not have same consiousness.

>Is any culture not this though.

Yes, there are a lot of cultures that don't have nearly the same expectations that middle and uppermiddle class Americans do.

Even a lot of western Europeans feel much differently about their work and careers and success than Americans.

Latins also tend to view these things much differently.

It seems appropriate to plug Vicktor Frankl's book, Man's Search For Meaning to anyone who can clearly see themselves in an advantage position of privilege in life, but who still feels terribly empty inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

I just read this (again) during a bit of an existential crisis. It's certainly a good read, and puts things in perspective.

Freakonomics podcast - http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-my-life-so-hard/

Interesting how they discount the "headwinds" that white males are feeling, and don't go into detail about the perceived "headwinds" that half the country is currently hallucinating in.

I've seen this argument that if outcomes of public services( like education) is not upto par then the problem is that there wasn't enough funding for these programs and solution is to increase funding.

is this argument is fundamentally unfalsifiable?

Is it possible to do estimations like we do for software projects. Improving education by x% will cost y$ or are there way too many moving variable to any sort of estimations.

Yes, but that's not really important. People will always want more money, not less.

I've discovered a term recently that I'm fascinated by: "wicked problem"[1].

Could education be a wicked problem? We know that the students didn't meet the standards. So there is a problem. But are the standards too high? Are the teachers not doing well enough? Are the materials not adequate enough? Etc.

And we can't know what will fix the problem until we attempt the solution. And if the proposed solution doesn't work, we might not even know because the issue could have multiple causes.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

The asymmetry depends on the culture. In some cultures moaning is more common than in the others, using Google in English to gauge that, results in serious skew.

Anecdata shows that summer camps in things children are interested in are the single most important thing for building esteem, which is its own tailwind.

Could anyone link to the non-paywalled source research paper listed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27869473 ?

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