Comment by throwaway846 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway846 | Hacker News Reader

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Similar story I'm now late 30s; father left when i was 2 died of aids when I was 6

Mother washed dishes then was unemployed from age 12-now and we bounced around her boyfriends houses

My metric (edit: for myself) "have you been poor" is gathering extra condiments from a gas station and having mustard on bread for a meal. We had food stamps, and a small social security check. I always had a bed, and food, but barely and i was aware how close we were as we midnight moved at least once.

I got my college degrees through federal grants and employer sponsorship; now making north of 200k I reflect on how privileged I am to get here. My mother kept me in an upper middle class public school system using a po box, I'm a white man who loved computers in the 90s. I ended up with a social network and a background that looks upper middle class.

I don't subscribe to that "I made it and so can you" I see my story as a I had privilege, how can we make privilege into equity.

Equity should operate just as much, if not more so, by boosting people up than by cutting people down. It should also favor the individual and small business over large megacorporations.

I fear that the concept of equity presents a real possibility of a race to the bottom if we're not careful to prevent a Harrison Bergeron situation. That doesn't mean I think we should avoid equity, just that we should be cognizant of the potential pitfalls along the way to determining the exact implementation.

Your fear is well-founded, that's already what is happening. Boston Public Schools, for example, just suspended placements in AP courses for all students out of equity concerns.

It turns out it's much easier to achieve equity by pushing people down (no more AP courses for anyone) than by lifting people up (getting more black and latino students into AP courses).

>just suspended placements in AP courses for all students out of equity concerns.

The "ruling" class were angry that the plumbers' kids weren't paying a full 4yr of dues to the state colleges so now they're making it so you need to go to private school if you want to get a head start at college gen-eds. And they sold the idea to the masses in the name of making all the animals equal.

I'm being cynical. More likely the people responsible just don't know or care and pushing everybody down is just the easiest way to appease the pro-equity crowd.

This is a very reasonable thing to fear. The concept of "уравниловка" in Russian exists precisely because the government tried to do just that in many cases. Making everyone the same (in terms of equality of outcomes) is a lot easier to do by making all the outcomes bad.

I should note that "equity" need not mean "equality of outcomes", but when pressed for how one evaluates "equity" far too many proponents fall back to "equality (and proportionality) of outcomes" in practice....

"Equity should operate just as much, if not more so, by boosting people up than by cutting people down."

This is central to the whole problem with this concept of "equity". If the implementation, as you say, _at all_ involves cutting someone down, then it's morally bankrupt. Who decides who gets cut down? Does the person being cut down have a voice? Are they told how they're supposed to feel about it? Is that not creating a newly marginalized group? This will lead to lots of division, and understandably so.

There's a lot of truth to the adage "two wrongs don't make a right". Equity seems to be about saying that everyone should have the same outcome, by force if necessary.

Oh wow, similar for me as well. Mom kept us in the "good schools" though by renting the smallest place you could in said Good School District.

Also, lots of weekends at public libraries.

(Thanks, mom!)

> My metric for "have you been poor" is gathering extra condiments from a gas station and having mustard on bread for a meal.

Do you really mean that or is that hyperbole? Because if you really mean that, thats a bit gate keeperish, isn't it? What if someone had their own mustard but dinner was still bread mustard? Its a ridiculous example, I know, but so is this yardstick.

Metric for myself; not others. I can't pretend to know what "line" people have in their mind that gives them anxiety around money. (I'll edit for clarity)

It ends up being a discussion point with my wife for lots of topics where I'm not picky about the quality of food because it's not mustard on bread.

Oh in that case I understand your trauma. But you need to understand that it is trauma and not facts of life. I am, for the past few years, learning how to be happy. I realized that most of my life training has been around learning how to survive because that's how it is where I was born. And because that's all I knew, I thought that was somehow superior. Our media also tries very hard to glamorize "struggling", there are no stories about how to be happy because it will be laughed out of room. It will be counted as either "privileged people being privileged" or they will tie it to family/love as the only posed answer.

Seriously man, I want to be happy and nobody out there wants to tell me how. I am slowly discovering it for myself, but I feel like this is a deficiency in our media.

>Oh in that case I understand your trauma. But you need to understand that it is trauma and not facts of life.

Thank god you now understand their trauma well enough to explain how they don't comprehend reality the right way.

I did not comment upon their trauma at all. Just that I think it is trauma. I have gone through my share of poverty without the first world safety nets. That is what I was talking about.

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