[HN Gopher] The Psychology of Poverty: Where Do We Stand? [pdf]
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The Psychology of Poverty: Where Do We Stand? [pdf]
Author : elsewhen
Score : 10 points
Date : 2023-12-26 18:57 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nber.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nber.org)
| ganzuul wrote:
| There are other kinds of abundance than money but we are much too
| focused on that single value for wealth to truly account for our
| gifts. We destroy a lot of information that could make us happy
| by reducing it to currency.
|
| It's depressing when I create something I'm proud of and when I
| show it to others it in their perception it is part of an
| economy. That is in my opinion the true poverty trap.
| drekipus wrote:
| Have you had any experience with poverty / getting others out
| of poverty? in which gives you experience to say "yes, this is
| the true poverty trap!"
|
| I know you're being poetic, but poverty is a very real thing.
|
| There comes a point where you need to worry about food on the
| table before worrying about self-actualization and "value-of-
| itself" for what creative thing you've done.
| Geisterde wrote:
| Prices are a heuristic people use for making choices more
| simply, because the number of ways an object can be defined is
| more numerous than the billions of atoms its made of. Further,
| for an item to be produced at scale and over time in the
| market, the profit must exceed the costs.
|
| Now, if you are able to see the value in something despite not
| having a firm monetization strategy, that just puts you in the
| same mental frame as the greatest entrepreneurs in the world.
| Jeff Bezos said something about how you should do what matters
| and find the profit later, it was written on the wall
| somewhere. SpaceX still might not be profitable (not sure), but
| the promise of 100kt of payload to LOE with recoverable lower
| and upper stages? Its worth the weight!
| drekipus wrote:
| Amazing document; these are the sorts of things i find in my own
| experience as i try to help my sister out of poverty.
|
| I'm very glad that these sort of papers come out and are reasoned
| about. The "psychology" is perhaps the ONLY aspect that keeps
| poverty going, and it's made worse by people removing agency,
| introducing pointless stress, and in general just poo-pooing any
| attempts to climb out of the pit.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The "psychology" is perhaps the ONLY aspect that keeps
| poverty going
|
| Is there any basis for that? What about overwhelming bills and
| other liabilities, lack of marketable skills, illnesses
| (including addictions), lack of opportunities, lack of
| parenting and education, of food, etc.
|
| The data overwhelmingly says differently: The predictor of
| success is not psychology but pre-existing wealth and
| opportunity. Internationally, the difference is even more
| overwhelming.
|
| In my experience, it is a (condescencing, lazy) fantasy of the
| wealthy that poverty is just a matter of thinking differently,
| that anyone can do it because, after all, the wealthy person
| didn't have those obstacles. I say it's lazy because it doesn't
| take much examination of the data to see what wealth depends
| on.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Thomas Picketty agrees: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/20
| 1x/2014/05/01/Piketty-C...
|
| We need a basic income.
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(page generated 2023-12-26 23:01 UTC)