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Comment by sabarn01 | Hacker News Reader

People should fear being destitute its the natural human condition. Learning skills is the only way to make wealth.

Up until recently the natural human condition also involved going through the grief of losing at least one of your kids.

https://ourworldindata.org/parents-losing-their-child

The human condition evolves.

Having said that, while I am supportive of UBI, I share your concerns over its impact on society. We do not understand the all what the knock on effects of such a program are. How it would be used/misused and how it would reshape incentives. We definitely need to dip our toe in the water before considering jumping in.

No person who was born rich has to learn skills to avoid destitution. And poverty isn't the natural condition for humans any more than it is for cats, or any other animal.

> No person who was born rich has to learn skills to avoid destitution.

I can only speak for the Western tradition, but for most of history, the wealthy took great pride in making sure their male children were at least trained in soldiering, knew the family business, and were well-educated. It was the bare minimum to be considered a gentleman.

And, if that child flubbed all those skills, then they'd skill live a comfortable and rich life, there just might not be much left for the next generation.

Also, how is learning how to fence a good skill to avoid destitution? The rich had leisure time and invested that time in cultural skills, this isn't actually a bad thing either - it's my hope that everyone can afford to develop a hobby and be creative in their life... but that has nothing to do with avoiding destitution.

Yea sure. No one ever blew a fortune

It's rare. How you are born pretty much sets your future in stone. Those rags to riches stories and vice versa are the outliers

Books are filled with once great families with a name, and nothing else, struggling to survive. It is common for someone to be born rich, gamble it all away and leave nothing (other than maybe an education) to the kids.

There are rich who live their children much, but most children of the rich who remain rich have to work to stay rich. Yes there is a big advantage that being born to wealth gives to keeping it - but that advantage isn't any guarantee.

I have in my lifetime seen plenty of starving cats - we took pity on them and took them in. I've seen evidence of mass freezing to death in wild animals after the herd eats all the food.

Rich people have other reasons to learn skills.

And I think the hope with UBI is that people in general will find enough reasons that they continue to learn skills, and not just live off society as purposeful freeloaders.

I used to think that there are some types of people that would freeload whenever they possibly could.

Then a young family member proved that they will basically do whatever they can to avoid even finishing school, let alone getting a job and keeping it.

I would like to think that people would learn hobbies and create art and science for the sheer joy of it if they didn't have to put food on the table... But the truth seems to be that there are many people who would just consume the massive amount of entertainment that we now produce and no contribute anything of their own, ever.

I’m guessing you don’t know many people who were born into wealth.

The skill that they must learn is how not to lose the money.

This skill is difficult to sustain over more than a generation or two — grandparent earns it, parent might keep it, child usually ends up destitute both in terms of financial capital and social capital.

If the “child” in this scenario is lucky, they have some social capital that will save them, and their branch of the family tree is at an inflection point.

Seeing a family self-destruct like this is tough to watch and surprisingly common within that class of people.

That skill is so trivial to learn compared with the skill of surviving and building up income from nothing.

Rich people literally just need to not be complete idiots - if you've got 300 million in the bank put it in some low interest stable investment and you'd be able to live off the investment earnings alone. There, I just explained all the life skills you need as a rich person - there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk to survive.

I am guessing that you do not know many people who were born into wealth.

There are existential questions that gnaw at some of these people that hinder them from taking the seemingly simple path that you have presented.

I would also argue that it is not as easy as you would think to park millions in some "low interest stable investment" that also does not have substantial (for generational wealth) counter-party risk.

> there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk to survive

I agree with this, but I think you are being overly dismissive of the skills that someone born into a wealthy family needs to keep that wealth.

It requires a healthy amount of self-awareness among other things.

Being a human being isn't easy, many people rich and poor struggle with deep philosophical questions, some people get devoured by questions of relative wealth even when they have very little just because they're among so many people poorer off than them.

That doesn't change the fact that being rich is easy mode for life. Yes, it isn't just a stroll in the continuous orgy park of happiness and funtimes, but there are a lot of difficulties in life that arise out of not having enough money, rich people essentially get a pass on all of these problems.

So, while I'm not saying that rich people never struggle with being a human being and all the existential doubt that can accompany that. I am saying that they never struggle to eat. I think everyone has their own struggles through life and really don't want to minimize problems that can arise in dealing with human issues like poor mental health - but seriously, everything is on easy mode for the rich, and if you don't think that's the case then you should really reach out to other communities and see what low income people have to deal with on a daily basis.

I literally cannot believe you are seriously making this argument.

I have seen too many people who were born into wealthy families, "have it made", and yet totally self-destruct in ways that I am not sure I would wish on my worst enemy.

I think another perspective on this issue is worth making.

I grew up working class and have seen lots of people fail. Those without the wherewithal to get on social benefits generally moved on with their lives toward success. I also have know several to get on social benefits find that acceptable and live what seemed to me unfulfilling lives on a type of pseudo adult hood. It could be they were happy and who am I to judge. I have always known if I fail I will be destitute and I think it has helped me build a decent life. But what works for me may not work for others.

That's why 10% of people born in the top quintile fall into the bottom one in adulthood, right?

We've built civilization around the notion that escaping the natural order of things is desirable.

I, for one, am happy to not be sleeping in shifts in order to stand guard against predation.

> People should fear being destitute its the natural human condition.

People should die of diseases, its the natural human condition. Women should die in childbirth, its the natural human condition. Men should die in wars, its the natural human condition. People should be hunted by sabre-tooth tigers, its the natural human condition.

Fear of failure is a useful social motivator. In rich societies that does't have to mean biological poverty.

When I lived in a urban poor neighborhood I had one neighbor who drove a asphalt truck while the other was on benefits and drank on the porch all day. As an external observer there was little material difference in their standard of living.

Sorry, can you clarify what lesson people who never were given a chance at an education should be learning?

Maybe, instead of getting all social darwinist, we could actually take stock in the fact that we have enough that we can afford to share with those less well off than ourselves.

That's a common argument to justify inequality. If learning is the key, then why is there such a huge income disparity between men and women? Are women lazy and don't learn?

What you're arguing for is equity, not equality. We already have equal opportunity. As for the gender wage gap, if women are so disadvantaged - exactly how do they make up 85% of consumer spending?

How do we have equal opportunity? Can you point me towards evidence of this? I guess you're not arguing about the gender wage gap, as it's a well documented fact. What is the point you're trying to make?

And yet not everyone can agree on what the cause of said gender wage gap truly is. Is it because women take time off to raise children, thus setting back their wage advancement? Is it because women are less likely to be more vigorous in asking for wage increases than men? Or is just because men are keeping women down?

As an example... for my wife, her salary was depressed because her boss thought that I make good enough money that she doesn't really need it. I think a lot of women still receive extremely slanted peer reviews due to gender biases (she's really catty, while he tends to raise good arguments), relationship drama (I mean, she's a good worker, but she turned down a drink with me... I don't know how good her judgement is), straight up appearance judgements (Oh, don't give the raise to nancy, she'll have a cushy life with looks like that, barbara could use it more), and harassment (I don't know about that raise - hey what are you doing friday?).

I think that everyone feels like we've totally solved gender discrimination forever while it's still really deeply seated in our culture.

What is the point, _you're_ trying to make? If you're trying to show women are financially burdened you can cherry-pick wage gap data to show that, sure, or you can take a more holistic view of society and what do you see? You see women with significantly more purchasing power than men. So are women disadvantaged or is there no incentive to be high earners? For me it's fairly obvious. There will be men and women who become high earners. There will be men and women who are overlooked based on gender. What I see with the wage gap can be fully explained by lack of necessity to earn for women. Think about that for a minute - they earn less than men, but they spend vastly more money than men. Exactly where is the incentive to earn more for women? Should they continue to work and earn more until they make up 90% of consumer spending? 95%?

It's beyond me how anyone can claim a group that represents 85% of consumer spending is somehow financially burdened and suffers from inequality. It's almost unfathomable, but here we are.

Dude, we are faaaaaaaaar from equal opportunity. One of the largest predictors of one's ability to accumulate wealth is still the wealth of their own parents. The U.S. is one of the countries with the highest link between parents' and a child's wealth.

Citation needed. I hear this often, but no hard evidence that isn't easy to show is false.

> Citation needed.

Here you go: "The fading American dream: Trends in absolute income mobility since 1940", Raj Chetty et al. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/398

I recommend „Capital in the 21st Century“ by Thomas Pikkety, an economist who has deeply studied wealth and income equality using historical data spanning three centuries. This book has all the evidence you need.

https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/0674979850

Spoiler alert: income from wealth is on its way of becoming close to being as concentrated as it was in the 19th century (especially in the US), and the share of income from work in total national income is decreasing almost anywhere. So yes, increasingly you can only accrue significant wealth by already having significant wealth.

Because you're using data that doesn't control for occupation, hours worked, etc.

So as a gender, women choose lower paid jobs and work less? If this is true and it is a choice, that would mean that women as a gender are either lazy or less qualified. If this is not true then it is evidence of inequality in the selection of employees. I don't see either of the above making your point.

> lazy or less qualified

No one is saying that, it's more of a strawman you want to use to, I'm not sure, maybe accuse people who disagree with you of sexism. Or could you explain why you use those words rather than assume we think it's, let's suppose, just a choice based on differences in average values men and women have?

My argument is that -as a society- we don't really accept that women are facing tons of difficulties that men don't experience, because of their sex. For example, sometimes it's because they might choose to have a baby in the future and a lot of employers don't want to have that risk, so they avoid hiring women after say 25. I'm not saying that you're sexist, I'm saying that as a society we're comfortable saying that people who have less deserve it for some reason and we have more for just reasons. If we accept that the society is unfair, and part of why we're better off than others is either luck of because the game is rigged (ie rich parents), we'll be more generous and fair. Apologies if I insulted people, I was trying to make a point for generosity and I got carried away.

And as a society we need to understand that men are facing tons of difficulties women don't face too? Why are men killing themselves at a rate 4-5 times higher than women in the western world? Why is the life expectancy of a male always less than a female?

So you're writing on HN instead of working more because you're lazy and less qualified? Or do you voluntarily choose to spend part of your life not working and doing other things that you find enjoyable?

TL;DR: go away troll.

Yes, you got it, women have more enjoyable things to do than working. How convenient.

There are countless socially beneficial personal activities that aren't centric around wealth. Start with a list of things people volunteer to do.

Then add jobs like teaching, nursing, health care aides, and social work that positively impact the lives of many but in many places pay extremely little. People are called to these jobs for reasons outside of wealth. UBI allows these people to continue to serve the rest of society in a sustainable way.

Does that mean you would support a 100% inheritance tax and say, confiscating all of someone's wealth every few years?

I think a true meritocracy is only possible using some type of agoge system, but that also violates human rights. When I say destitution I guess I mean to the acceptable minimum which that most people would find unacceptable.

There will be workaround:

You can't confiscate social capital or favours someone's parent did to someone as "young adult" then that young adult did it to these parents kid and barter continues.

Dying young from curable diseases is also the natural human condition... should we not use antibiotics?

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