How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive
npr.org
npr.org
* Being poor reduces raw cognitive capability including memory and decision making.
* Being poor increases stress, leads to bad decisions and short term thinking.
* Even relative poverty can have this effect. It may be because social status is so important factor in human well-being.
It used to be a joke that you can remove poverty by giving people money. It was common to think that patronizing is the only way because poor are lazy bums and lower beings who need to be managed. Same data with same correlations as before. It's just the direction of causality that may need to change.
I read a comment last week about how if fire departments didn't exist already, there is absolutely no chance that they would get introduced in this modern era of politics.
Note that many countries with broadly left wing governments, such as those in Europe, were also not prepared for the pandemic, and will also pay a high cost.
I would guess this is likely because these positions are more based on philosophy than they are on actual economics or other evidence-based fields. This was a reasonable position when there wasn't strong evidence to either prove or disprove these arguments, but at some point the evidence becomes overwhelming, and those positions should no longer be considered serious. We're long passed that point on a number of issues, but it sure doesn't seem like anything will change anytime soon.
It's like dousing a farm field with fertilizers and herbicides to improve yields even though you couldn't sell half of last year's harvest. You end up selling your produce for less than last year even though the value of your company has gone up according to the stock market.
It doesn't take a genius to understand that things are doing better when supply and demand are balanced. You need a combination of multiple strategies.
Actually it's even worse. Too much fertilizer and herbicides will cause unintended consequences.
I want to support ideas that deal with issues at their source, in targeted and specific ways that have exponential payoffs later, but I'm forced to support sweeping "just give them houses and they're not homeless" solutions because at least those folks are trying to help, and anything is better than nothing.
Sure, but not actually doing any worse than Western Europe.
Also, those same conservatives actually did invest billions in vaccine development and production capacity in the US.
Literally twice as much as the EU did, and the result is a vaccine rollout that at 5x the rate.
Similarly, one could argue that if Trump's administration hadn't gutted the cybersecurity team, we may or may not have caught the SolarWind hack much sooner. Again, there's no way to know for sure how well preventative measures work, all I know is that while those teams were in place, the hacks and the impact of viruses were much smaller.
This is true. It’s not a valid counterfactual to compare against an imagined ideal.
It’s just as possible to consider that the pandemic response team had degenerated into ineffectiveness, and by disbanding them Trump made things better.
This is why imagined counterfactuals aren’t helpful compared vs comparing with an actual benchmark.
I just think it makes no sense to reduce that to blaming the republicans or even a specific act of the Trump administration, based on pure imagination of an alternative outcome.
If ‘American republicanism’ is to blame for how bad the pandemic is, how do you explain Europe’s performance?
When they were the ones who cut off funding to the very agencies whose job it was to prevent, then it absolutely makes sense. If I cut off your house's alarm system, and the very next week there's a burglary, you would absolutely blame me for it.
> how do you explain Europe’s performance
Again, I'm not talking about the response to the pandemic, but specifically about prevention. And yes, China, Europe and other countries should've had their own agencies in charge of tracking and preventing worldwide outbreak, but this is whataboutism. What I care about is that the US cutoff it's alarm system and ended up getting attacks the next year.
People die in hospitals.
Demolishing them will make things better.
The best way I can describe it is that poverty makes you start out life in a giant hole and you're given nothing to help you dig out of that hole to reach the surface where you can then start thriving. I honestly feel that at 54 years old, I'm finally thriving and not merely surviving in this whole of poverty. Yes, it's taken me this long to get here.
I never went to the dentist on a regular basis. It wasn’t until I had an abscessed tooth and was in extreme pain, that my welfare mother took me to a backwoods, rudimentary small town dentist. I remember sitting in the dental chair with the high-pitched whine of the dentist drill and smoke that smelled like burning hair, pouring out of my mouth. It traumatized me. To this day, I still have issues with my mouth and am finally at a point where I can begin getting it taken care of.
I got a job working at the elementary school in 9th grade one summer. I spent the summer scraping gum off of the bottoms of chairs and desks using a container of something that froze the gum so I could scrape it. I also spent long hot summer days crouched over on the black tarmac, painting the foul lines with yellow paint. I was hunched for so long that I developed back problems and of course, couldn’t afford to get it taken care of. I’ve had back problems ever since and it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I could finally afford to see a Chiropractor and find some relief. And to top it all off, the State of California cut my moms welfare off because I managed to earn $2000 that summer. Guess how much I ended up getting to spend on new school clothes? Only about $200 from what I can remember.
It wasn’t until the past few years that I stopped looking at the price of things I was putting in my cart and making a mental calculation of the total cost of the shopping cart EVERY TIME I went shopping. I no longer do this and get whatever I want from the store.
I developed a weird sense of wanting to have choices. My wife couldn’t understand why I would open three different tubes of toothpaste until she finally realized what it was I was doing. I never had so many choices and I loved it.
I could go on and on but I won't. I think it's pretty easy from here to extrapolate just what poverty did to my productivity overall.
I’ve never seen the appeal of porches and rolexes other than signifiers. I’ve rented luxury cars but they didn’t feel worth it to me. May be just me. I love affordable, highly reliable things that just work with very little upkeep. I love my Toyota. I love my small town home. I love having low burn rate. It makes me legit happy.
For me I've found that luxury and happiness are actually found in the simplest things.
It's not just about EMPLOYERS or capitalism. Child support enforcement and the family court has beat the crap out of me "in the best interest of the child". They shoveled all assets and pay to the mother, using the expected lawyer tricks and then big lies. I literally won at court of appeals because the judge used fake math. 1.5 years later the lower court refuses to have the re-hearing, refuses to stop the fake math monthly number, and I lost my apartment. Ridiculous and harming my child. "Government immunity" makes it easy for them to get away with putting my child into poverty. Government doesn't care about my child.
To me, the very mindset of boiling humans down to 'productivity' aka profit is a toxic way to look at life. We're well past needing to force people to work the fields for food, so why are we still treating human productivity as a valuable metric?
It probably comes from 'the free market is the best we've got, free market success is decided by profit'. Well yes, but remember why we're using the free market in the first place - winning at any cost was never the goal. The goal was to improve the quality of life within a society by letting supply and demand guide people's choices. It's turned into a strange ideology of celebrating winning and viewing anyone who isn't winning as a loser, rather than your teammate, your neighbour, dare I say your friend.
The times that I have been the most successful, most motivated, most driven, most productive, and most useful, in study, career, relationships, and life, have tracked exactly with periods in which I've gotten out what I've put in.
When I started my career and a company took a chance on me - we absolutely killed it, I was paid well for the time, everyone was happy.
When I moved on and was given the respect and decision making ability that I wanted - same thing. Absolutely smashed it out of the park, money flowing from every plug socket.
Whenever I've been in a working environment that has cost cutting, or bureaucratic bollocks, or management that decide what's best for the employees rather than asking them - my productivity has been horrendous, the company has lost money.
Every single time I've worked without return - burnout. Every time, without fail.
This extends outside of work. The last year has been a period in which I've gone from wanting to take part in society, work on big problems like climate change, sacrifice for the greater good, donate my time and money, to just thinking - you know what?
No-one outside of your immediate circle cares. They never did, and never will. They will throw you under the bus immediately and comprehensively as soon as there's even the slightest microscopic threat to their wellbeing.
And they'll cast the blame on you. They'll say it's your failing. They'll say - never mind our responsibilities to you - you need to do your bit regardless.
Well, you know what? Fuck you guys, I'm getting mine now.
I'm saying that this applies at every level of the scale, in work, love, friendship, society, everything.
We are wasting mind-bendingly tremendous amounts of talent in our world simply because of tunnel-vision mindsets.
And it saddens me that as hard as I try, I can't change this. I've spent my career trying. The well has run dry, and now I'm one of them. :/
The culture in which you and I and many others live is, in the current historical moment, a deeply deranged one - 'deranged' not in the colloquial sense, but as an engineer might use it: we live within a giant machine which for a long time now has been operating dangerously far outside its design parameters, with all the metaphorical noise and smoke and flying bits of molten steel that entails. We're all dodging its shrapnel all the time, to a greater or lesser degree. Or failing to dodge. I forget who said it, but I like the way it's put in this (paraphrased) quote: "Everyone is walking wounded. We have never seen a totally sane human being." - not even in the mirror.
Even in the best of times, such a machine needs a large team chosen from among the best of people to operate it effectively. These are not the best of times, and they are not the best of people. Whether there'll be any fixing it before the bearings seize and the spindles snap, I've no idea. But even if they run it to destruction, that won't be the end of the world, although from here it seems like it would be. And either way - in the meantime, we all still have to get through the day, you know?
It's to your credit that you tried so hard. But there's no shame in losing to something that's this much too big for any of us. Try not to take on too much about it, and spend some time thinking about how it, and you, might be if the machine does stop in your lifetime.
Human to human, one at a time.
Skip the interactions that discount you.
This might be the biggest problem human race has to solve. How to encourage and reward good behavior for the greater good. Economists would say it's a problem on how to price in externalities. It doesn't matter.
I see it everywhere. In academia, most big PIs I've met don't care about pushing knowledge frontiers. It's about their own careers, putting their names on as many manuscripts as possible and securing funding to hire more and more people.
In my neighbourhood teens are systematically breaching COVID restrictions with huge illegal parties, spreading disease and therefore causing fatalities. Since the odds of having severe COVID are low for them, they don't care.
The local power plant was scamming with their emissions in a VW-like way, by tampering CO2 meters in their chimneys.
I could go on and on.
How can we address these behaviors? Pg has said somewhere I can't find now that scaling big companies is still an unsolved problem, and that solutions are welcome. I think it's the same class of issue. Once you are big enough to require a layer of middle management, you won't be able to filter out the selfish ones.
It's individualism for me now. Me, my friends, the neighbours.
Everyone else, figure it out, I'm not your pawn.
And yet, oddly enough, countries with regular civil unrest tend not to be bastions of civil liberty, but violent mafia-run hellholes.
And a pure focus on “us” can lead to poorer outcomes as there is no immediate reward for the person doing the work.
I'm not claiming capitalism doesn't work (at least for many definitions of capitalism, and work), but we should acknowledge its drawbacks, acknowledge strengths of other systems that otherwise failed, and hope to find a better model that has similar advantages with fewer of the drawbacks.
But I think it’s disingenuous to say that a system focused on “we” suddenly solves all the issues with capitalism (which is what the grandparent was trying to infer).
..except when we're not. You often see in-group worker game the system by taking ever increasing cash comp ("i win either way") or special incentive bonuses for managers who ensure delivery. Meanwhile, VCs are on first-out preference shares. Worse, you often dont know this is happening so you continue to think the real game is cashing out your equity.
This is poor governance IMHO. And many workers end up sniffing it out. The ultimate capitalist system would have absolutely guaranteed comp by equity w/o special side incentives.
Alternatives to capitalism have been tried and it always fails.
Venezuela is the most recent example.
I just looked up Venezuela's situation. Well, food prices are going up because diesel sanctions prevent farmers from running their tractors. That's definitively not a currency problem.
Focusing on freedom ends up in anarchy and chaos everywhere.
Freench revolution is the most recent exanple - just look at the amount of people beheaded!
Perhaps the capitalists should drop the talk about freedom and voluntary trade. Or we need a new word for "freedom" that doesn't classify structurally coerced choices as "free".
If government policies are set in a way that encourages this outcome then that's what you get. It doesn't have to be that way.
In nations where people don't believe such blatant lies money doesn't turn into power nearly as easily. And look, poor people in those countries are actually much better cared for and live better lives than in USA! The bottom 90% are 90% of voters and therefore have all the power to make whatever policies they want. And once the 90% makes a lot of policies it is really hard to stop them from continuing doing that, you have to work really really hard to keep them away from power and to continue keeping them away.
You responce sounds like you are trying to have it both ways
But it is interesting to wonder if decreased birth rates could be both a symptom and cause of decreasing collectivism.
Not a very glorious or elaborate response, granted, but Occam's Razor must never be ignored.
"Decreasing collectivism" is only stemming from "every man for himself" because the economy is objectively getting worse and worse for most folks out there. It's a very logical outcome.
Of course companies who are doing well can also afford to pay more and give all sorts of perks to their employees.
I suspect often that is the actual causation, not vice versa. People like to point at successful companies and say "see, if you would treat your employees like that, you would be just as successful". That seems a bit silly.
But you mention causation. You have to treat your employees well if you want to be successful. It is necessary, but not sufficient.
Taking an extreme example, soldiers at war. Are they generally being treated well? I'm not sure they are, and I don't necessarily mean deliberately. I don't think generals want their soldiers to be killed, in general. It just happens that situations arise where there is struggle and soldiers get killed.
I remember complaints about CD Projekt Red (makers of Cyberpunk 2077) who had to ask for death marches despite of initial promises to ever do so. I don't think they liked doing that, but presumably the business situation made it necessary.
So instead they decided to crunch and deliver a buggy game with the result that other people were so disappointed that they didn’t buy it.
I don’t know which is the bigger group, but I wish they would have delayed it.
So the pressure to deliver sooner rather than later also directly benefited the employees financially, even if it negatively affected their time and work/life balance.
But assuming the best intent is just plain ahistorical. We’re only a century out from when companies routinely hired armed security services to threaten and ultimately murder people organizing to get their share of what wealth they created. That’s widely understood to be excessive now and those of us in privileged career positions take that for granted, but I think it’s worth remembering that some people still have that to survive and most of the rest of us are navigating a kinder gentler version.
To be honest that sounds to me as if those people "organized" to take by force what they thought they deserved. In that case, hiring security for defense seems justified.
The company I work for recently got acquired and the entire culture changed to one of "fuck the engineers, only contracts matter, engineers are just butts in seats, the more the better (quality not required)".
My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slight bonus.
At this point, I have had all productivity beaten out of me. I really don't understand the mindset.
It's been a crash course on how to take a wonderful company and burn it to the ground in a matter of less than 2 years. Most of my coworkers have moved on at this point, and each contract they got out of it has now failed. So what the fuck was even the point?
How do you have 40% turnover and not think "Am I the problem?"?
Sure, it's emotional stuff, and the purely rational actor would dip without question. But having emotions is healthy and normal, even if it means they sometimes lead you to somewhat suboptimal situations. Of course, it can reach a point where people get locked in out of fear of the unknown, just like bad relationships. But it's rarely as easy as just saying "Okay, time to leave."
"When is the time to let go?"
This goes for all areas of life: intimate relationships / marriages, employment, being part of a hobby club that's not the same anymore, local community help (donations, voluntary labor etc.).
We the people are extremely bad judges of when is the right time to leave -- and 99% of the time we leave way too late. Usually after getting some deep emotional scars as a bonus.
In hindsight (which as they say is 20/20) every time in my life after I left any kind of interaction between me and other people / companies, it was well after I should have. But only in retrospect.
I gradually learned to recognize the signs and started to escalate problems early. And if they aren't addressed, leave early.
Life is too short to keep a death grip on things that are poisoning you. It seems every one of us learns this lesson very late in life.
But don't get me wrong: I am doing my very best not to live with regret and make myself better utilizing those past lessons -- as you said. But analyzing it back in time, I know that I actually had the right mindset but was too weak to utilize it.
Prioritize your health. Go your pace and accept the consequences. Always feel satisfied with your choice.
Prioritizing your health is an absolutely sound advice every time. I started doing that and even if the improvements are small and hard to feel just yet, it still feels great to feel better than two weeks ago.
If you respect me as an engineer, you do what needs to be done to address my genuine and valid concerns. If you can't, I can still like you as person, but you've ceased to be an effective leader. (I hold myself to that same standard with the teams I lead as well. I'm only as good as 9 parts what I deliver and 1 part what I wish I could deliver.)
I think they didn't realize that they had actually found a truly awesome company by chance and were witnessing its conversion to 'normal company'. Nothing more, nothing less. But if you ask me it was still totally bearable. The devil you know type of situation and hey, I'll let them pay me f they keep wanting to. I can still jump ship if they turn from normal company to actual evil (like introducing the kinds of perks that try and bait you into working 80 hour weeks and thinking it's fun and worth it and normal) company. I can still jump ship then.
I have been in that position before - that’s why I’m asking
I stayed 11 years at my previous job because it was fun and we were shielded us from a lot BS.
So while I'll never see another raise again, I have very decent overall total compensation, especially for the cost of living where I'm at.
The other side of it, is that I have about 3 months of vacation built up. The TLDR on that though is they tried to take it from me about a month ago (carry over policy that I was told I would be exempt from). I told them straight up I would leave that day, so they reneged in the end. But I have no clue how they wouldn't assume I'm going to just take it this year and look for another job.
So my play now is to enjoy the compensation while looking for another job.
I'm also pulling back heavily in my support to the organization, which is tough because I'm not used to putting in less than 110%.
I'm trying to look on the bright side though. I think this experience may have cured me of my tendency to be a workaholic.
So my advice: put in your 110% for 90% of the time (or something like that :)) I do this periodically. When required I'm there 110%. Done with something at 2pm Friday? Yeah well today I'll just call it a day instead of fixing yet another bug from the backlog that wasn't even in the sprint.
They were talking about how they were surprised we were able to charge so much for our engineers on our contracts, when all of theirs had much tighter margins.
I told them it was probably because they optimized for winning contracts at any cost vs winning contracts that were worth it.
I was there 9 months and at the end I ranked 5th in the company for seniority.
I left one place where there was literally a line of 6 of us who all resigned one after the other the afternoon when our annual vesting hit our accounts in the morning. I can't imagine the day that Director had hearing the same story from all 6 of us back-to-back.
While I fully expect them to sell, I expect them to stab me in the back so hard that the shares are effectively worthless.
I've been learning ruby in my spare time, so hoping to transition to a job that uses that in their stack eventually. I think I'm going to take a long break though, I'm very burnt out from the entire experience.
HTTPS://Levels.FYI/2020
There is only one thing to do after your company is acquired: get out of the company that got acquired. Full stop: get out. You can do this one of two ways: via the org chart, taking a lateral promotion into the acquiring company, into a part/division/product team/group that existed before your company was in the mix. The second is to leave and get another job elsewhere. Everything else will eventually be discarded.
Acquisitions are always bad for the acquired company. If you aren't laid off in the first year, you'll be pushed to attrition yourself, but make no mistake: the old company is dead and its people and their brains are the least valuable asset to the parent company, so get out of the small company.
>My boss is constantly turned down when he tries to advocate for me, or say that I deserve a slight bonus
Just so it's said plainly: this feeling always means to get another job. Listen to it: you want more money, you deserve more money, and that's a perfectly good reason to leave.
You can come back to this company after you bounce your salary up, or not, it happens both ways, but they aren't going to give you nearly as much as you get by changing jobs. Ever.
>At this point, I have had all productivity beaten out of me. I really don't understand the mindset.
You are in an abusive relationship with the company you work for, this is natural.
Can you explain your change of heart? You mention it happened in the last year but I’m not sure why. If anything this last year has motivated me to do even more. And I believe we can and will, but I am in a good place professionally.
Are you speaking more personally than professionally?
It sounds like maybe you did achieve some of what you set out to do but maybe you don’t think it was enough?
It's not about my accomplishments, but whether I feel like I have a stake in this. I have no stake in it now. They want a future that I don't want.
No social ties, no bonds, no community. No counter-culture. No culture. No high street. No shopkeepers.
Amazon, Deliveroo, Uber, Facebook, Netflix.
Skyrocketing wealth inequality. Printing, printing, printing, QE, home prices ten times the median wage.
An elite, and an underclass.
A society that interacts, in a regulated manner, through a screen. By _force_.
Because it's "safer". De-risked. Comfortable.
And their answer for me? Therapy. Anti-depressants. Coping strategies. Learn to love the screen.
Embrace the new future.
Not me. Your insults, your attempts at control, they bounce off me now. "I'm alright, Jack", as they say.
It was supposed to be satire on consumer culture. Looking at it again, it's could be called forward time shifted documentary.
Now that you've become "Red Pilled" as wrong thinker, you'll search out for more truths.
Especially how the establishment elite class pushes propaganda and pits the lower classes against each other.
When lower classes are fighting each other about racism, etc. then they don't have time to fight against oligarchy. How the establishment elite keeps getting richer every second.
Those are the most minor, trivial aspects of what has happened over the last year in the UK, and what continues to happen as we speak.
How about we make a trade.
I'll wear a mask in situations where others are concerned, take my vaccine, and you may distance from me as much as you'd like. You know, like I am and have been doing for eleven months now.
In return - I want my life back. Let's reinstate the democratic process, let's make it legal for me to go for a walk without an excuse, run my own business without having goons lock the doors, you know, stuff like that.
You keep your end of the bargain, I keep mine.
Fair trade? Or is this the part whereby you call me names, shout at me, and expect me to respond in kind?
I am choosing to do this, for you. It does not benefit me. Take it for granted at your own peril.
IMO, the UK handled Covid exceptionally poorly by repeatedly being afraid to act until it was too late.
Here in Australia (Specifically the Northern Territory) we locked down hard early on while we had around 20 cases, I think it was for 2 months, after which no further lock downs have been required. Quarantine for travelers has prevented Covid getting in to the community. Basically due to how we have handled it life is pretty much the same as before Covid here, restaurants are open, the shopping mall is packed and the only thing we had to give up was 2 months and international holidays.
By locking down hard on age groups who aren't vulnerable to the virus you're enabling the clown world that OP is referring to.
Sure lock down the elderly that's fine but making national health policy based on one demographic is full on straight clown world stuff.
Anyway, my point is that the UK choose their current situation by being afraid to act back when small steps could have made a huge difference.
No no it doesn't.
What is the percentage of people who have that type of reaction? Have you even looked at that? It's miniscule.
It's argued not to be from Covid directly but by comorbidities and would happen with any illness.
The news media blew it up out of proportion to scare you and millions of other people like you who have a poor grasp ofstatistics and risk... for money and it worked!
Welcome to clown world. Honk honk!
Your leaders not taking it seriously to begin with is the reason you are in this situation now.
Where I am we took this seriously early last year, and as a result have been able to live life mostly like normal since.
Anyway, you live in a democracy, so maybe convince as many people as possible to vote someone else in at the next opportunity. And if you think they are all stupid then run yourself.
Honk honk!
With an infectious disease like this, what you want is to curb its ability to spread. That means disrupting the entire social network, because while the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it spreads best through the young. Also lung damage, the fact that small chance of disability or death multiplied by whole country getting infected equals to more harm than inconveniencing everyone a bit and nipping the problem in the bud, yadda yadda. These are all tired points.
The main way UK (and US, and a chunk of EU) response was a "clown world" was pretending there's no problem until it was too late, and then doing too little, and then doing stupid things that nullified the effect of previous interventions.
But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea.
Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law.
I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing.
We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's going fairly well. The thing that is keeping me clinging to sanity is the fact that once the vulnerable groups have been vaccinated, I'm just getting on with life.
Without that; well the news is saying 'social distancing until 2022' and the Government are telling us that maybe in a month it'll be legal to sit on a park bench with a coffee.
This is not me being hyperbolic. It is currently illegal for me to leave my house and sit on a park bench.
If I followed that stuff to the letter, I'd have already gone postal or just thrown myself in front of a train.
This is a policy that, if it works at all, works for specific types of people; nuclear families, introverts, etc.
Those might even be a majority.
But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic.
We're doing all of this stuff in an attempt to reduce coronavirus cases prior to vaccination, because we care about public health, not purely for the sake of it. That would be "clown world".
> But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic.
That's absolutely true. The long-term effects of social restrictions on public health and general morale was something somewhat unexpected, or at least not thought much about early in 2020 (and, hindsight being 20/20, only confirms that the big mistake was not doing hard but short lockdowns early on). I'm just hoping we can vaccinate our way out of this in the coming months, because even introverts are having troubles taking this much longer. Myself, I started this pandemic in a state of being burned out by interacting with other people - a year later, I now desperately crave some socialization, but I'm not sure if I'm even capable of it anymore.
I actually had to look this up in order to make sure I had the dates right, but it's absolutely correct.
It is also illegal to meet a single person in your garden or outside unless you're exercising. I don't have exact timings on that, because in order to protect my mental health I've stopped following the news.
"A tad excessive" is understating it a bit. It's inhuman. Writing it down makes me feel ill. When people talk about it as if it's normal and okay, I get an intense feeling of anger and a desire to cause them pain.
So if you want your perspective on why people are acting like "covidiots" or whatever offensive name we're applying to our brothers now - this is why.
I am done with bureaucratic despots telling me what to do, I am not a guinea pig to be experimented on.
I've felt like you for a long time, after monitoring the actual statistics instead of the news.
Do you think Covid is following an exponential growth model in the under 55 age group if in a YEAR there's still less deaths than car accidents?
Covid is way more complex than "SHUT IT ALL DOWN, EXPOENTIAL GROWTH, FLATTEN THE CURVE".
These have just become buzzwords for simple minds to cling to a simple narrative and don't model the world accurately at all.
Honk honk! Welcome to Clown world!
I'm tired of it as well, but rather I feel the length of the lockdown is a result of the prevarication that took place in the beginning and a continuing series of poor choices intended to save political face afterwards.
My opinion is that had we locked down hard and early, banning foreign arrivals until the pandemic passed globally, we'd have quickly been able to meet without putting anyone's health at risk and at a lower economic cost.
Initially, at the start of the lockdown in March 2020, people voluntarily acted far in excess of legal requirements, or even guidelines.
I think that this made sense, and I'm proud of our behaviour on that front. I remember walking out of the house, once a week, in my homemade mask, to do the weekly shop.
Beyond that, as we learned more about the virus, but bizarrely went the other way and started to make everyday activities unlawful in an attempt to control the population, well, I've been increasingly choosing not to comply for the sake of retaining my sanity.
The Government simply does not get to decide on my behalf whether I have my friends and family over for dinner. I don't give them that power; if they wish to send men with guns like an authoritarian despot, that's their choice.
I think that if we'd enacted sane policies it wouldn't bother me as much.
Amazon, Deliveroo, Uber etc should have had an 80-90% windfall tax for the duration given that their competition is essentially illegal.
Tenants with no income should have had their rent cancelled. Not delayed - cancelled.
Working from home policies should have been optional for employees. Students should not have been required to pay full rent and full fees for Zoom calls.
But we haven't done any of that. We've taken a public health crisis and used it to absolutely destroy the country.
It's a leadership problem, and hard to fix for regular Joe.
It leads me to my original post:
> They will throw you under the bus immediately and comprehensively as soon as there's even the slightest microscopic threat to their wellbeing.
> And they'll cast the blame on you. They'll say it's your failing. They'll say - never mind our responsibilities to you - you need to do your bit regardless.
I'm just repeating myself now though.
I voluntarily restricted myself for a long while. Far, far longer than I should have, to the point that I may have given myself brain damage.
Now I am visiting my family because I'm not willing to do it indefinitely. The UK government is waffling on about restrictions until 2022 despite the fact we'll have vaccinated most of the vulnerable in a month or two.
Everyone has their breaking point, and I've reached mine.
Two weeks to flatten the curve, yo.
I'm opening up from March 23, they can do whatever they want.
But I can't help but wonder if there wasn't another way, like making only that most vulnerable part of society go in lock-down -- and nobody else. Most of the elder people aren't exactly spending hours outside every day anyway (by my observations at least which can of course be wrong). And many of them don't have the physical energy to be active outside, so maybe making only them go in lock-down would have been the best outcome for everyone?
Who knows. But in general the COVID pandemic has been handled extremely poorly almost everywhere. And businesses are closing down forever.
Thankfully it appears the vaccines will be effective if enough people get them for life to return to normal soon.
"Just a few weeks to flatten the curve" was a once in a generational play. I did my bit, and so far I've been punished for it.
I really hope for our sake it doesn't come down to this again, because this time it really will be a bloodbath, rather than a particularly bad year or two.
You are absolutely correct that there might not be "next time" even if that means humanity's doom.
Careless reasoning risks under reacting just as much as over reacting.
I've read a study in my home country about children suffering from bronchopneumonia (I was one of them) at early age and how does that affect their adult life -- and how much does it reduce their life expectancy (especially in terms of increasing the chance of pulmonary diseases in elder years).
I mean, all diseases are awful -- especially those that leave lasting negative effects.
The whole thing seemed to turn into a campaign to gain political capital at one point. Enforcement was loose, rules changed many times (the WHO organization didn't help matters there), and data gathering was unreliable for months.
What are we to do? Just bow our heads and pretend that the people in power are oracles? I am willing to obey well-informed decisions but at least where I live clear facts were extremely hard to get throughout at least half the 2020.
I don't necessarily disagree with you -- making this clear here. It's just that the pandemic was handled in a rather totalitarian manner and results have been... questionable.
:(
There's an old movie called They Live, starring wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper.
It's supposed to be satire on consumer culture, but looking at it now can be thought as time shifted documentary.
Are you sure you're not the one that's spying on the wrongthinkers? ;) Just kidding.
I've experienced similar situations professionally. My previous employer was happy to hear and implement ideas from anyone on the team, it lead to a really productive and tight knit group, things got done well and at a good pace. My current one is the opposite. Very prescriptive, ideas coming from the top down. As a result everythimg moves like molasses and it's killed all the motivation I have for the work I do there.
I'd urge you not to give up. I still believe things can change for the better, it feels like we're at a tipping point where society will either improve massively or fall into stagnation. Gen Z gives me hope that the former will win out. They seem much more active and interested in tackling these issues than older generations.
Why is it not getting better?
Who keeps getting richer every second, while everyone else stagnates?
It’s not egotistical it’s just a matter of perspective. Most people don’t get to decide or don’t have enough energy to decide to “get mine” even if they knew where to begin.
There was a time, when I was.
And I've been blindingly lucky to crawl, bit by bit, out of that.
But I still identify with that, because precisely the same societal decisions that fuck me, are the ones that fuck them too.
I owe them something. They're still struggling.
I don't owe the rest of society anything at all.
https://www.nber.org/digest/jul06/why-high-earners-work-long...
Companies that are better to work at have generally seen more growth in their stock price:
https://www.glassdoor.com/research/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/...
Doubt these findings will change corporate policies however.
Either way, boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I poop on company time.
This question isn't meaningful. "Less" and "more" are relative terms. There's no way to choose which one is occurring in the absolute.
those results or that it ain't obvious in {current_year}
anybody that escaped poverty could tell you about that "overhead", I guess?
__________
We can go further - generally people who spend 8-12h/day on warehouse working + commute don't go back to home and spend time on advanced mathematics, theoretical computer science and stuff.
Also a surprising number of people in the US believe that poverty is a moral failure of some sort. I never actually understood this.
Yep, there's a marriage in the US between business and religion that seems contradictory until you realize that these people believe the "invisible hand" of the market is God.
Who? I’ve never met anyone who believes that.
You'll see the above quote very frequently in any discussion about class and wealth in the US. It's a glib strawman that makes those writing it feel intellectually superior to and condescending to their targets at the same time. Until those on the various sides of ideological divides actually try to understand each other instead of coming up with smug strawman models that diminish the other side's agency, the conflict will continue. Thing is, there are some who benefit from this endless conflict and it is in their best interest to see it continue. They're usually not the ones posting quotes like above as they sit on the sidelines, only occasionally tossing in an ideological grenade or two should any side start gaining the upper hand.
I don't know how much of that theory remains true with American protestants today.
If you grow up middle class or better then it’s pretty much impossible to make good decisions and end up poor. The incorrect “moral failure” mindset comes from projecting this belief onto people who grew up in poverty and never had a chance.
That seems like a tautology. “Didn’t end up poor? Of course you didn’t, you made all good decisions. Ended up poor? Must have been those dumbass decisions you made.”
A lot of what people take as "morals" is actually good economic sense wrapped up within a moral code, and even those who advocate it in that form can still sniff out the good sense from it.
Strip away the morality (as we should) and the "good" behaviour is supported strongly by research, as this[1], from the left leaning Brookings Institute, shows:
> poor children are more likely to make bad decisions that lead them to drop out of school, become teen parents, join gangs and break the law.
> Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities: at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children.
> Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class
By cutting out those bits from the whole piece it makes it sound overly harsh but still, let's not throw out the baby from the conservative's bathwater.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/three-simple-rules-poor-t...
> The authors conclude that giving workers cash upfront helped alleviate the mental burden of their financial problems and freed them to be more productive. It echoes findings from other studies on the psychological consequences of poverty, but it is novel because it looked at the effects of it at a real job rather than in a laboratory setting.
I'm not sure I would come up with that conclusion based on the study. My interpretation would be that the workers were grateful for the advance or felt there was a catch. But then again, if you had the opposite effect you could argue that they had no accountability. Or a more narrow interpretation would be that workers that are paid up front are more productive. That's the problem with interpreting these studies, you can always make a story.
I think it would the argument for the debt alleviation would just be a cash grant, not tied to the work. I'm not sure why they didn't do that.
Basically the stress of poverty pulls people down in every possible way. It is not just in terms of producing plates, but also in your ability to perform mental tasks.
There are also other studies that show that people who are paid below what they feel they are worth, will perform less well. Basically human productivity seems to work in thresholds. If you are above the threshold, then increases in salary does not improve your performance. Being paid a million or 2 million makes little difference.
But if you are getting way below what you seem descent and normal for the type of work you are doing or you feel unfairly compensated relative to other workers, then performance has been shown to typically lag.
Basically there is a price to pay when engaging in unfairness. It affects people. We can even find the same results within animals. An animal can be fine eating one kind of food, but when that animal learns that that a peer is getting significantly better food, it will often get very upset, angry and stressed.
What is stopping people from getting together and forming their own "universal health care" group? There must be millions who are in favor of it? Get 100 million people together, and offer health care to each other. What's stopping you?
Some of them would have to put a lot of money at risk. When they do that, they usually want something in return. Well this is how corporations were invented. And those are regulated.
Typically the State medical device licensing boards will stop you. Try this: get 1000 families to chip in for an MRI and techs to run it for the benefit of the 1000 and their families. When you apply for State permit to turn it on, that board will look at competition in the area and not allow it. The rules don't allow too much competition to drive down prices, so only the mega-corps typically can play the game.
I disagree with private healthcare but there are ways to make it work.
Here is the basic idea. People are sick and there are not enough doctors and not enough drugs. Cost of healthcare rises until more doctors can be hired. Thus there will always be enough doctors. It also rewards superior care by making superior care more profitable.
However, if you artificially restrict the number of doctors then you are going against the idea of privatized health care. Similarly, if its possible to buy an existing drug to monopolize it and raise prices you are going against the idea of privatized healthcare.
It's the same with student loans. You privatize education and make students pay for it. Fine. However, by guaranteeing loans you did the exact opposite. You simultaneously privatized it and nationalized it in a highly inefficient way.
Other mechanisms can be light depression, impossibility to rest when not working or inability to improve qualification.
Edit: +hackathon ...I haven't had breakfast yet.
> The authors conclude that giving workers cash upfront helped alleviate the mental burden of their financial problems and freed them to be more productive.
Hmm. I'd be interested in how a third group who are simply given a single amount equal to the upfront payment would fare. They wouldn't be told it's related to their employment or work. How much of their improvement is merely from having current debts paid vs the concept of getting paid first then being trusted to deliver?
Great, they made 6.2% more plates; what a win for capitalism! Shuffle around the payroll, no change in $$, and boom increased productivity.
Here's the study: https://www.nber.org/papers/w28338
Being human is messy.
"why is poverty bad? not because we have empathy for poor people, nah, just because poor people are not being optimally productive worker bees"
The confounding factor I see here is what do we call China? They've experienced an incredible increase in wealth under their communist system but is what they have really communism? It certainly has lots of attributes of both theoretical capitalism and western capitalism as practiced mixed in with communist concepts. Whatever it is, China, for better and worse, is a very different country than it had been because in part due their hybrid economic system.
The UK, a capitalist country, does.
Private industry is really, really good at innovation (e.g. discovering new drugs and treatments) and providing optional goods and services but most people just want a basic level of service and they want a funding structure that does not misalign incentives.
For example, optional basic health insurance doesn't work because poor people will quit the insurance program while they are healthy and then only unhealthy people will stay and bear the full cost. This raises the cost for poor unhealthy people and then they quit insurance and get denied access to care. Finally only the wealthiest people will have health insurance.
Capitalism is just a tool that's used to achieve certain outcomes. It just happens to work more often that it fails. Nothing more, nothing less. If a different tool works just as fine or better then it can be used selectively in areas where it's superior. Blind faith to any tool is stupid.
Communism on the other hand tends to fail by default and because it requires external forces to make it work, it breeds authoritarianism and then everything goes bad.
Western Europe vs Eastern Europe, N Korea vs S Korea, Colombia vs Venezuela, USA vs Russia - its pretty standard that the workers in the Capitalist countries have a better quality of life than those in the Communist ones.
But it doesn't tell the whole story. Could you survive on $2 per day? The implication of this claim is that you are not in "extreme poverty" at that threshold, but I'm not sure many people would agree.
The next natural step is to ask where the line really should be drawn? For many reasonable numbers, we can see that number has been rising in the past few decades. You can set your own inputs on the linked calculator based on where you believe the poverty line should be drawn and decide for yourself.
Making some people rich doesn’t create poor people. They were poor before.
They did. It's called slavery. It's only when that finally became mostly unacceptable (remember there are still millions of enslaved persons worldwide), that they had to turn to paying them wages of a dollar a day (slavery with extra steps).
Forced work in a prison could be considered slavery depending on the reason for the arrest and the financial motives of the owner of the prison.
No, you can't, because you need to eat tonight, not tomorrow or the week after or next quarter. And you need to pay bills, your house, etc. So the labour market is not in effect free.
If anything China and the USSR turning their agrarian societies into world powers in the course of a few decades says otherwise. Whether or not the authoritarianism needed to accomplish this is worthwhile is another discussion. That said it is theoretically possible to achieve a more equal society without authoritarianism.
China did have a huge famine due to state powers making the wrong choice.
I can’t speak about wheat production but I don’t think it has much to do with bringing people out of poverty if the state is still able to provide for its citizens.
What income are they depriving them from? If they aren’t working, how could anyone deprive them of an income that doesn’t exist?
The deprivation is enforced through a large government program called "property law".
“Deprivation” is the act or process of removing. You’re claiming someone removed the income, but they haven’t done anything to create an income. There’s no income from which to deprive them because they haven’t done anything to generate an income.
> The deprivation happens through a large government program called "property law".
That doesn’t make sense, the way I understand it, property law codifies the rules around the things that people own. That’s preventing owners from being deprived. You’re asserting that laws which forbid depriving people of property are the mechanism by which they are deprived? How does that work?
"People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics.
> There’s no income from which to deprive them
There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year.
> How does that work?
Property law creates property ownership. Ownership assigned to one person is deprived from others.
“People are entitled to other people’s labor” is ideology as well. However claiming that someone has been deprived of something that never existed in the first place is just nonsense.
> There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year.
So you’re suggesting we deprive people of their income because of your ideology?
> Property law creates property ownership.
Negative, ownership creates property law.
> Ownership assigned to one person is deprived from others.
So how do you justify assigning ownership to certain people? What gives you the right to deprive people of their income?
You make a powerful critique of capital income and inheritance law.
> So you’re suggesting we deprive people of their income because of your ideology?
You're the one advocating we systematically deprive people of income. I'm the one advocating everybody receive an income.
> Negative, ownership creates property law.
Libertarian ideology has broken your brain. Property law is a government program - it requires enforcement to exist, aka the law.
> So how do you justify assigning ownership to certain people?
The principles of egalitarianism.
You must have missed the part about entitlement to others’ labor, as inheritance is a transfer initiated by the owner of the property, and capital income is a voluntary exchange by all parties.
> You're the one advocating we systematically deprive people of income.
No, that was you who suggested that US GDP could be expropriated from its owners and redistributed to your favored recipients.
> I'm the one advocating everybody receive an income.
Yes, exactly. You’re advocating that some men with guns confiscate the income of the working class and give it to people whom you have deemed more deserving. You haven’t justified this, however.
> Property law is a government program - it requires enforcement to exist, aka the law.
Property is temporally and logically antecedent to property law.
> The principles of egalitarianism.
According to egalitarian principles, you have no such right.
> Libertarian ideology has broken your brain.
Less of this, please. Make your case on the merits or move on.
Incorrect, dead people cannot own things. Inheritance is a government program that redistributes property to rich children based on what their parents wrote on a piece of paper.
> expropriated from its owners and redistributed to your favored recipients
You are very confused. People do not own what they are taxed. When a person is taxed and the money given to eg a social security recipient, that's not violating ownership, that's enforcing ownership. That money is literally the property of the SS recipient. The law is very clear on this.
> You’re advocating that some men with guns confiscate the income of the working class and give it to people whom you have deemed more deserving.
No, that's what you're advocating, by supporting enforcement of status quo capital income laws.
> Property is temporally and logically antecedent to property law.
It isn't. You can say the statue of liberty is your property - but until that's enforced by somebody (via initiation of force or threats thereof), it is meaningless. Property is the biggest government program there is.
> According to egalitarian principles, you have no such right.
Yes I do - I'm simply enforcing my view of property rights.
That is precisely why they initiate the transfer while they are alive by making a will.
> People do not own what they are taxed. When a person is taxed and the money given to eg a social security recipient, that's not violating ownership, that's enforcing ownership. That money is literally the property of the SS recipient. The law is very clear on this.
Then it sounds like the people aren’t entitled to the income that you want them to. What’s your justification for changing the law on property?
> No, that's what you're [...].
> It isn't [...].
This is tiresome. You’re just contradicting me by insisting on your framing of the circumstances without any justification or addressing my arguments. I get it, you (apparently) don’t like it when someone has more than someone else and you want people to run around continuously taking and giving so that no one ever has much more than anyone else. Hopefully one day you can see that this amounts to people enforcing their view of property on everyone else, which is quite the hierarchy and not the least bit egalitarian. I’m sure you’re ready with a devastating rebuttal (“no u”) but the part where people own what they own and obtain through voluntary exchange, and we prohibit taking people’s stuff and rearranging it without their consent, is the one with the egalitarian social ideals imbedded into the fabric of it. Because people have to agree to things, so essentially the poorest person has the same power as the wealthiest. And obviously you can see that in no way can we make the same egalitarian observations about a system that constantly looks at what you own and decides if its “too much” or not. So this is easy to demonstrate in any kind of good faith discussion but when people just contradict you it never gets beyond the part where I say something and you contradict it, so its usually a waste of time. But I appreciate you interacting with me up to this point and please feel free to engage with the substance of my remarks at any time.
> You can say the statue of liberty is your property - but until that's enforced by somebody (via initiation of force or threats thereof), it is meaningless.
Surely you can see this is not the case. Who would they be enforcing my claim of ownership against, unless someone else also claimed to own the Statue of Liberty? So we haven’t even enforced it yet, but we already have the idea of ownership. You see, there wouldn’t be anything to enforce unless we conceived of an idea of ownership. This is what it means for ownership to precede enforcement.
> I'm simply enforcing my view of property rights.
Good luck.
A will is not a transfer. The law is very clear on this. The government gets the property, then redistributes it to the rich kids via a nanny state program called "inheritance law".
> What’s your justification for changing the law on property?
To increase fairness and justice. What's your justification for not?
> this amounts to people enforcing their view of property on everyone else
Every possible political system does this, except the "grab what you can" world where there is no property at all. So why is yours "voluntary" and mine isn't.
> people own what they own and obtain through voluntary exchange
Property isn't voluntary. It is coercively enforced by the state.
> we prohibit taking people’s stuff
It's literally not their stuff. Tax law is very clear on this.
Me: This stuff rightfully belongs to A, because of egalitarianism. You: This stuff rightfully belongs to B, because it belongs to B.
You're doing a basic circular argument.
This is the thing with libertarianism - it's just pure status quo bias. "This person rightfully owns it because they own it". Nothing to do with freedom, because property is coercive, nothing to do with anti state because property is run by the state - just allegiance to existing property owners.
It’s not fair for you to decide what other people own. Its injust for you to have that much control over other’s property.
> What's your justification for not?
According to you I am changing the law, same as you. Fairness and justice.
> A will is not a transfer. The law is very clear on this.
Thats not really the case, and I’m unconcerned aboit statutes that were written by oligarchs. A will is a valid transfer.
> Every possible political system does this
You’re not in a position to decide what is and is not possible.
> Property isn't voluntary.
Yes it is.
> It is coercively enforced by the state.
So what if you (incorrectly) believe this to be the case? You can’t imagine a possible political system without coercive enforcement so you’re unable to criticize property on this basis.
> It's literally not their stuff.
In any system of fairness and justice it is.
> Me: This stuff rightfully belongs to A, because of egalitarianism. You: This stuff rightfully belongs to B, because it belongs to B.
You: This stuff rightfully belongs to A, because of egalitarianism. Me: Its not egalitarian for you to dictate what other people rightfully own. That would be a hierarchy with you at the top.
> You're doing a basic circular argument.
No, I’m applying egalitarian principles to your proposed authoritarian restructuring of society.
> This is the thing with libertarianism - it's just pure status quo bias. "This person rightfully owns it because they own it".
Who cares about libertarianism? I’m sharing the joys of egalitarianism with you. Quit trying to dictate the world to the rest of us and embrace the pluralism of egalitarianism.
> Nothing to do with freedom, because property is coercive,
But you like coercion, so to you this isn’t a problem for libertarianism.
> ...for you to dictate ... that would be a hierarchy with you at the top ... your proposed authoritarian restructuring of society ... Quit trying to dictate the world to the rest of us
Once again, you're confused on a basic level - what makes my proposed system more authoritarian than yours? You want property law enforced with one particular distribution, I want it enforced with another particular distribution. What makes my distribution authoritarian and yours not?
No, property is a social construct that humans use to denote who has exclusive rights over the disposition of a thing.
> It is literally the initiation of coercive violence on people who enter certain areas or touch certain objects (or threats thereof).
No, property is literally a social construct that humans use to denote who has exclusive rights over the disposition of a thing. Coercion comes afterwards, when people seek to enforce this norm on people who dispute it.
> Once again, you're confused on a basic level - what makes my proposed system more authoritarian than yours?
The hierarchical nature of the relations. Your system has people who have the power to grant and confiscate all the property in society. Since property is the right to determine the disposition of a thing, your system results in the ruling class exerting property rights over everything.
> You want property law enforced with one particular distribution
False. I am not specifying the distribution that is enforced.
> I want it enforced with another particular distribution. What makes my distribution authoritarian and yours not?
You’re choosing the distribution that is enforced, whereas I’m advocating for a distribution that is collectively decided absent coercion. My distribution is the emergent result of repeated interaction under egalitarian social norms. Your distribution is a hierarchical imposition of your preferred distribution.
Me: "Water is wet" You: "No, water is a type of matter. Wetness comes afterwards, when people touch it."
You are being so pedantic and incoherent that you're "not even wrong".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
You're wasting both your and my time here if you cannot accept basic, obvious realities like the fact that property requires enforcement.
You: “water is hot because boiling it requires heating it up” Me: “there is water at many temperatures and not all of it is boiling”
> You are being so pedantic and incoherent that you're "not even wrong".
I’m sorry you think its pedantry to examine the literal facts of the issue under discussion. However there is a big difference between the idea of property and the means one chooses to enforce property norms on people who do not subscribe to them, and if you don’t see this (or fail to comprehend the significance) then I can understand why you’re confused.
> You're wasting both your and my time here if you cannot accept basic, obvious realities like the fact that property requires enforcement.
You’re wasting both your and my time here if you’re unable to question things you have taken for granted. If it’s so basic and obvious then demonstrate it, rather than arguing by assertion.
Give a single concrete example.
That is, I'm pretty sure that on some level you operate as if private property is both normal and right, no matter what your theory says...
If you don't work then where do you expect your food to come from? I don't work full time and I don't starve so please keep the petty details out.
But on a serious note, the command economy of the Soviet Union did surprisingly well despite its profound number of flaws.
Literacy rates, economic output, educational levels, scientific output etc was significantly improved in Soviet times, relative to the Czar area which after all was capitalist.
This all happened despite the fact that:
1. They had a bloody and destructive revolution. 2. Their country got laid to ruins by the German invasion. 3. They had to rebuild the country after WWII with most of the healthiest and youngest members of society dead. Yet they pulled that off surprisingly well.
Yes if you compare Soviet growth to a number of other countries it was not always stellar, but considering that these countries had not received the same kind of devastating blows, it was still quite remarkable.
China is another good example. India and China had the same GDP per capita in the 1940s. China had a destructive Japanese invasion and then a bloody civil war. Then Mao did the crazy cultural revolution setting them back even more.
Despite all this China has 3x the GDP per capita of India. All despite the fact that India had democracy, private property and capitalist enterprises in this whole period.
Even today almost all key industries in China are fully or partially owned by the state. Such as construction, energy, banking etc. Yes China has lots of private enterprise as well. But they got growing rapidly long before these dominated the economy.
No, economy has pulled as many people out of poverty as China, and they did that with what can best be described as hybrid system. The Chinese economic miracle had been ongoing for many years before private property was actually made legal in China.
NOTE: I am not advocating these kinds of system as they are dictatorships. But I think they are worth pondering before people push the truthism that capitalism is so superior as an economic system and that alternatives cannot perform. The evidence seems to suggest that other systems can work and perhaps the best systems are hybrid systems.
This is a recent phenomenon that started in the 90s. China was essentially flat until 1993 (that's when India and China's GDP per capita started diverging).
Remember that article about a feed processing company in India not getting a permit to build a factory because he has to rezone land because all land in India is zoned for agriculture by default? The problem wasn't the bureaucracy. It was the corruption. The founder had to go to 14 different offices and one third of them didn't even process his forms because he refused to pay bribes. He had the bribe money but he refused out of principle and that heavily delays the start of the company.
that said, this straw man is pretty fleshy. there are definitely plenty of bosses who don’t care about or at least don’t prioritize the misery of their poor employees, for reasons concerning their own profit. in the absence of government action or mass labor action, i’m happy this study exists.
The real problem is that a lot of people think the exact opposite.
"If I can drag others down, I can protect or increase my wealth."
So I understand your disagreement: NPR is not generally going to criticize our system of capitalism. After all, many liberals - particularly the opinion-making elite - are thriving in this system.
But they will always approach cultural issues from the left liberal point-of-view. Recently, NPR Opinion has swung even more to the left: just listen to their afternoon talk shows. All Things Considered and Morning Edition have not gone as far, and are more center or center-left. Allsides, the media bias organization, agrees and rates NPR opinion as "Left" and NPR News as "Centrist":
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
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