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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

Why are the parents poor in the first place?

Because they prefer leisure to work, even if it means they have less money. The poor have a labor force participation rate about 1/3 that of the non-poor (20% vs 65%) and a full time labor force participation rate of about 1/5 that of the non-poor (10% vs 55%).

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2007.pdf

A significant amount of the extra leisure time is spent watching TV.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm

[edit: Hi downmodders, sorry for providing inconvenient facts.]

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I've seen you regularly bring up these stats, but you never mention that while only 20% are working full time or seeking full time work, 35% are children, which make a disproportionate amount of the poor.

That leave 45% for whom it is a matter of leisure, as you say. However, that study doesn't provide information about how much of that 45% is disabled, and how many are elderly, two more groups disproportionately predisposed towards poverty.

If you're being downvoted, it's because you keep bringing up a very straight-forward study and drawing a very extreme social conclusion from it.

You think that the population as a whole does not include children? (They do have slightly fewer, at 25%.) Excluding children, the country as a whole has a FTLFPR (Full Time Labor Force Participation Rate) of 73%. The poor have a FTLFPR of 15%.

That's a calculation that took me 2 minutes. If you really cared about facts, you would have done it yourself. But I guess it's safer to raise questions and assume the answers support your views, rather than actually look into the data.

...and how many are elderly, ...disproportionately predisposed towards poverty.

Please stop making stuff up. The poverty rate among children is 27%, working age adults is 18%, and the elderly is 14%.

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparebar.jsp?ind=10&ca...

As for the disabled, if you truly believe that the numbers will contradict my case, why don't you post them? (I'm not going to do all your research for you.)

> Because they prefer leisure to work, even if it means they have less money.

Who takes bus at 4 in the morning to clean the toilets at your office and leave before you arrive at 8? The poor. Who does two different, hard and unfulfilling jobs to make end meet? The poor. Who has to spend 12 hours far from home but is paid only 3 hours? The poor. The poor have it much less easy than you and I, and your self-satisfied condescending attitude is sickening.

It really depends on what easy means here. Poor people might have to work more often and might have less physical comforts or conveniences available, and those things can certainly ease a subset of life's problems, but I wouldn't say that money automatically makes one's whole existence or life easier. I've known several individuals more affluent than myself whose lives, at least in my estimation, are much more difficult.

Money can take care of some things, and the things it helps are nice, but I think it's important for us to have some perspective.

Wealth comes with its own worries and some of those that don't have these worries ought to be grateful that they don't. Beneath its luster, wealth is often regarded as a destroyer. Think about it: of the the few that are capable of obtaining wealth, fewer still are able to bear it without destroying their own life or the lives of many surrounding. Wealth comes with burdens. Can you bear it?

> I've known several individuals more affluent than myself whose lives, at least in my estimation, are much more difficult.

What are you talking about? This guy takes the false and insulting stance that poor are so because they're lazy (implying they somehow deserve it, somewhat further implying that there is some immanent justice in this world).

We should carefully, as usual, avoid anecdotes and concentrate on general trends. The overall figure is that poor people don't choose to be poor, and that they would live better if they weren't. The people who got rich chosed their fate, the fact that they're happy with it or not is largely irrelevant here. That's the difference between being alienated / exploited, or not. These problems are of different scales and call for different remedies.

Actually, in terms of physical comforts and conveniences, they don't lack that much.

See this fantastically interesting document - if you want to know how many poor households (or non-poor households) have (e.g.) a "Porch, Balcony or Deck", exposed wiring or have AC, the answers are all here.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

The poor have it a bit worse than everyone else, but it's not that dramatic. Most of the poor have a house with plenty of space, a car, etc.

It might help if you explain how a document on the Working poor, relates to someone allegedly preferring leisure to working.

It also might help if you explain how a news release on the leisure metrics of employed persons and their families relates to the alleged leisure activities of these straw poor people.

There are very hardworking poor people and very lazy rich people, and not just the outliers.

It might help if you explain how a document on the Working poor, relates to someone allegedly preferring leisure to working.

It might help if you read the first paragraph of the document, rather than just the title.

As for the leisure metrics, see Table 11. It provides leisure time usage for workers (at various income levels) and non workers.

There are very hardworking poor people...

And the report I linked to tells you exactly how many there are (about 10%, assuming "hardworking" == full time for 50+weeks/year).

Ok, I'll bite. how does it relate? the number cited does not say how many of the ~30 million are able bodied adults. If you deduct the children, elderly, infirm, graduate students, or people who simply have unreported income, I'm sure the number is a fraction of that figure.

And that doesn't even touch on the people who cannot get a job for any number of reasons.

So how do you extract any semblance of a number of people who prefer leisure to working?

(about 10%, assuming "hardworking" == full time for 50+weeks/year).

That is a huge assumption.

Wait, you want to include people with unreported income among the poor? How do you know that if we were to include the unreported income, they would still be poor?

You are correct. I don't have data to answer all your questions, though I do deal with children and the elderly here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130441

Feel free to assume the one set of numbers I am unable to find in 5 minutes of google completely debunks me. After all, all the facts we do not know must support our preconceived notions, right?

And that doesn't even touch on the people who cannot get a job for any number of reasons.

Again: please read the first paragraph. It explains that "working poor" includes the unemployed (people looking for work, but who have not found it).

That is a huge assumption.

Please learn the difference between "definition" and "assumption". I don't know how you define "hardworking", so I chose a definition, explained what I meant, and presented facts concerning that definition.

I don't want to include people with unreported income, but you are.

Your last statement sums up the cognitive dissonance that your argument creates. You are creating your own definition of a word which already has one.[1] If you don't know anyone who is not hardworking, yet has managed to remain employed for at least a year, you're not paying attention.

1.http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=hardworking

Right - I'm using the best available data I can find. You seem to prefer ignoring the data we have, with the post-hoc justification that it isn't perfect in every way. Do you do this when the data supports your preconceived notions as well?

As for the "cognitive dissonance", your definition of hardworking is circular:

Hardworking: (adj) industrious, tireless, untiring (characterized by hard work and perseverance)

Industrious: (adj) hardworking, industrious, tireless, untiring (characterized by hard work and perseverance)

In a fact based discussion, one usually needs to construct a more precise definition of colloquial terms. There is no effective procedure for determining whether individual X is hardworking by the dictionary definition, and thus we cannot count the number of hardworking people. I constructed a definition which a) is measurable and b) which roughly agrees with my intuitive notion of what "hardworking" means. If you don't like it, replace "hardworking" with "Category H" in my previous post.

Sorry if my attempts at precision and use of facts interfere with your desire to confuse things and revert back to your preconceived notions.

Ok, my last post on this.

As much as I'd like to claim authorship, I didn't write the dictionary. If you'd like to argue about whether the terms mean what you want them to mean, or if they lead you into a logical endless loop, you're wasting your energy.

There is no effective procedure for determining whether individual X is hardworking by the dictionary definition, and thus we cannot count the number of hardworking people.

So we agree.

I constructed a definition which ... which roughly agrees with my intuitive notion of what "hardworking" means.

Ok. so who is reinforcing their preconceived notions again?

Believing in something doesn't make it true.

Reusing global variable names in your local scope can cause really insidious errors. Just sayin.

It's not as simple as you would like to believe. Lacking social skills and having self-defeating attitudes are much more likely to keep them poor, assuming they are not mentally deficient, than a simple pursuit of leisure over work. Lots of people, rich and poor, prefer leisure to their current work situation, in case you don't know. Some rich people have poor social skills and self-defeating attitudes and somehow manage to stay rich too. But this is more about beginning poor and staying poor. Many poor people are not that happy, feel frustrated, and perhaps watching TV is an easy activity that makes them feel okay.

I certainly prefer leisure to my current work situation. The universe of possibilities (for most people) is {work+pay, no work+no pay}. Within this universe, I prefer work+pay.

You can deduce this based on revealed preferences - I've been either working or looking for work for my entire adult life. Similarly, revealed preferences suggest that most of the poor prefer no work + no pay to work + pay.

Just because they cannot find jobs, does not mean they prefer not having jobs.

The fact that they are not even looking does, however. Or at the very least, it means they are completely ambivalent about whether they have a job.

When your choice is between having a shitty job and no job, maybe staying at home simply is the easiest. Or sometimes your choice is working late and letting your children alone, wandering the streets.

You apparently still live in the wonderful lalaland, where human beings are perfectly rational and do not suffer from segregation, humiliation and other social problems.

I'll suggest that you try to see life from a less privileged person point of view from time to time, instead of the Chicago school of economics only. That may make you a slightly more charitable person.

Citing facts == "Chicago school of economics only"?

You are correct - I did assume poor people avoid work out of rational utility maximization (i.e., I assumed poor people's choices revealed their preferences). You may be right - poverty might be caused by irrationality. I made no claim whatsoever about segregation, humiliation or other social problems.

Come to think of it, if the poor are irrational, that might also explain why their children do not become as intelligent as the children of the rich.

No one "becomes" intelligent. Intelligence is the capacity for learning and understanding concepts, and a lot of children go on to live their entire lives without getting anywhere near that capacity due to a lack of access to educational opportunities in an environment, both at home and at school, that is conducive to learning and advancing. The fact that we accept this as normal is disgraceful, especially when any one of these children could potentially become the adult that makes a major technological breakthrough that benefits us all.

> I did assume poor people avoid work out of rational utility maximization.

I don't think anybody in their right mind believes seriously this to be true, nowadays. I mean out of the crazy free-market fanatics and maybe Goldman-Sachs bankers. I'm clearly not interested in proving you wrong, I've got way better fish to fry than convincing wingnuts.

Seems like there's SOME element of truth to this, if probably not as rationally analyzed as one might surmise from this comment. It tends to be more "oh why would I work harder at this dead end job, I'm gonna go home and have a drink and play World of Warcraft"

Of course, because obviously this won't imply starving to death. So the choice is : working an incredibly shitty job for little money, or staying at home for little money, which is quite obviously the most rational choice. The fact is that despite that, a very large number of people accept the burden of terrible low wage jobs, for different and largely non economic reasons; so instead of being lazy that's the other way around, the working poor are indeed courageous.

Live a few weeks off a janitor job, then we'll see your participation rate.

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