Some evidence and context for this is sorely needed. Note: if lack of information were really the cause, then you'd expect plastering healthy eating information all over the NYC subway would fix the problem. Did it?
The best explanation I can come up with is the following. People with low self discipline become poor. People with low self discipline become fat and eat badly. They also don't exercise much and engage in other fun but harmful behaviors (unprotected sex, drug use, drinking to excess). But that's a naughty explanation, even if it fits the data quite well.
What is it that you have against underrepresented people?
Every post about them you're there to say "Nope, it's their own fault.". I only give you the benefit of the doubt because tptacek has you listed in his HN profile. What did you experience/witness in your life that has caused you to hold these views?
For the most part, I like having my assumptions challenged, but Chris is more credible the closer his core argument is to the facts he's mustering. In comparing, say, rural Indian poverty to US urban poverty, he can marshal a pretty strong argument. But in diagnosing the roots of US urban policy from BLS statistics, his rhetorical strategy is a lot less effective.
Not every worthwhile commenter is going to make you happy all the time.
I have nothing against "underrepresented people", or any particular feelings toward any class of humans not defined by particular actions.
My views towards poor people are the same as my views towards myself and my friends; most of my own problems are my fault. This is doubly true when statistics suggest a correlation between bad behaviors and negative outcomes.
Note the vast majority of my posts are merely discussion of the world as it is, not an expression of mood affiliation (" I'm so empathetic to favored groups, bask in my moral virtue"). And if you actually want to fix things rather than morally posture, you need to do the same.
Further, note that in at least one of your links, I'm advocating in favor of the poor (India being my goto example) and against the rich (american "poor"), at least if you read my post through thr lens of mood affiliation. But I guess "those people" don't count.
Being honest, you come off as extremely out-of-touch with the experience of poor people in the US. Have you had any close relationships with poor people? I don't mean an educated person that is down on their luck, or college students eating ramen, but someone who grew up poor and is still poor now.
Most people here probably agree with you that poor people tend to have worse impulse control. But you seem totally unaware of how significantly stress, trauma, or desperation affect impulse control. It's more than just stress about paying the bills. I tutored reading at an intercity elementary school and there were kids there who had family members incarcerated or murdered, homes foreclosed, parents making the local headlines for child abuse, etc. One boy I taught had to move out of his house because someone shot it up in a driveby looking for his older brother. A girl from a refugee family had 19 siblings and a physically abusive, alcoholic father. My coworker taught a boy whose parents were both in prison for murder. It was not uncommon to see little kids wearing RIP shirts for friends and family members. These stories are so much more common than you'd think. I'm not being hyperbolic, look at gunshot and homocide maps for Chicago in a single year:
Sure, a phenomenally resilient person can make it out of horrible circumstances, but the average person isn't able to. I personally don't think I would have fared well if I grew up in a bad environment. As a younger person I was angry and depressed enough already without the reality of hearing gunshots nightly, losing family members, facing systemic discrimination, going to bed hungry, etc. I had a great family and I still fucked up along the way sometimes. I also had a support system that allowed me to take the risks that made me independent and not poor today.
I somewhat disagree with your last point too. I grew up in the US but now live in a very poor country. The struggle is bad in both countries, just different.
When I live in the US I mostly live in poor neighborhoods. I've known many poor people. And I've observed a number of poor people get off their ass, get a job, and stop being poor. Let me point out two issues:
I don't mean an educated person that is down on their luck, or college students eating ramen...
If poverty were actually the cause of assorted bad things, then why wouldn't college students experience those same bad things? Clearly something else is at work.
You provide one possible alternative factor: crime. Perhaps we need more police in certain regions, drone powered surveillance, or other such solutions. That's a problem, but it's a) unrelated to the question of whether time spent working prevents poor people from cooking and b) minimally related to poverty.
Because most college students are not poor in the sense that they grew up poor and still are poor. And college students who grew up poor are much more likely to leave college midway through, which is an obvious effect of dealing with ever-looming stress, health problems, and trauma that people from a poor background are much more likely to deal with.
It's impossible to go to college or enter the workforce and just switch off all the bad things in your past and present. From my experience a lot of my college friends who left midway through had family problems, often financial or health problems. Again this is stuff that poor people go through much more, and it negatively impacts their ability to hold down a job, finish college, and succeed in general.
It's a complicated issue but you seem to have no desire to understand it further than "get off your ass, get a job, and stop being poor".
And I strongly disagree that the US needs more police.
Surveillance is inevitable and if data and access are open, then I'm relatively at ease with it.
Edit: Crime is minimally related to poverty? I don't know how you can justify that statement.
And college students who grew up poor are much more likely to leave college midway through, which is an obvious effect of dealing with ever-looming stress, health problems, and trauma that people from a poor background are much more likely to deal with.
So the claim is not that being poor is directly an issue, but that poor people are more likely to have other issues.
Most people's actions are controlled by their circumstances. Most people don't have much leeway for free will, and those that do don't know enough to apply it correctly. And since they often they don't even know what they don't know, they can't educate themselves out of their ignorance.
There's remarkably little empathy in what you write. It makes me think you're either on the autistic spectrum, or very young with no life experience, younger that I had thought you were based on your profile age.
Toehead2000 stated your theory more succinctly: "Poor people have no agency." Suffice it to say that I don't agree - I believe poor people are just as human as I am.
Scroll up for a simple way to test whether lack of education is a correct theory. What's the result?
As for empathy, I believe it's nothing but a feel-good substitute for moral reasoning. I've discussed that in more depth in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507328
And the way you are attempting to use it, as a substitute for actual facts, is simply anti-intellectualism. So are the ad-hominem fallacies, which have sadly become commonplace here and in modern culture.
"Poor people have no agency." Suffice it to say that I don't agree - I believe poor people are just as human as I am.
Suffice it to say, I think you are radically overestimating how much agency even you have.
As for empathy, I believe it's nothing but a feel-good substitute for moral reasoning.
Empathy is necessary for human communication. Without it, you will forever be grinding your own axe and never change anyone's mind. You need to be able to get inside other people's heads, and see things from their perspective, in order to change their minds and behaviours. And in doing this, you see that most people are not that different to you. Usually, they just have different information.
Principles - and I prefer ethical principles to a system of morality with its baggage-laden language of judgement - are useful tools for judging things. But if you want to actually change the world, and improve things, you need more than that. You need to be able to take action, and predict the results of your action. And here's the paradox: the action that is most principled may not lead to the result that is most good. It may even be harmful to the greater good.
Now, I'm not saying that ends justify means, either, but rather: viewing actions through a simplistic principle-based lens is ultimately not productive.
I don't think there's any god. I don't think anyone is going to pat you on the head for doing the right thing even if it results in despair. All we can do is try and improve the human condition for all of us, collectively, into the future. And in this, ends do matter. Simplistic principles are not enough.
It is true, almost to the point of truism, that most people who end up with bad outcomes got there by bad choices. But this omits far too much; good choices aren't made merely by moral character or some other characteristic that can let you condemn someone without further consideration. They're a product of a life's education, a learned way of living, and indeed, a learned helplessness in many cases.
I would argue that moral character mostly doesn't exist. It's mostly just an artifact of what you stand to gain vs what you stand to lose if caught, and what your alternatives are. And when these patterns are iterated, the tradeoffs change. Once you have a criminal record, the fear of getting one is far less, and the opportunities to do well for yourself without one disappear. And so on.
I find it disturbing when people dismiss a whole class of other people for decisions that are cast in a moral light, with the language of blame and hints of sins, and connotations of deserving some kind of punishment. It shows a deeply misguided and unempathetic understanding of humans. It's the kind of thinking that dehumanizes other people.
-Its "headcount" approach identifies only the share of people who fall below the poverty threshold, but does not measure the depth of economic need;
-It does not reflect modern expenses and resources, excluding significant draws on income such as taxes, work expenses, and out-of-pocket medical expenses, and excluding resources such as in-kind benefits (e.g., food assistance);
-It does not vary by geographic differences in cost of living within the contiguous United States;
-It is not adjusted for changes in the standard of living over time; and
-Its strict definition of measurement units—"family"—as persons related by blood or marriage does not reflect the nature of many households, including those made up of cohabitors, unmarried partners with children from previous relationships, and foster children.
There is also the fact that government handouts are tremendously regressive. During a time I had of joblessness and no income, I was on food stamps and other supplemental assistance. When I found a part time job (15 hours/wk), I took it! So.. I made $100 in the first full week. I really got $80, less taxes. And cost me $8 for gas, so my real effective pay was $73. So, SNAP takes out $100 from my food benefit.. ?! I only made $73, so I am in effect being punished $37 for working and trying to better myself.
There are cases much more extreme, where every benefit goes down by X when income goes up by X. Those people end worse off working, unless they can get income that covers all of their losses. Any understanding of basic business 101 says that in their case with the regressive benefits system makes no sense to mildly make oneself better. Unfortunately, the bigger 'make oneself better' just never happens.
The comment wasn't about poverty in general but about whether poor people work and how much. The ill-designed incentive structure and generally disappointing performance of government bureaucracy in helping anyone are worth noting, however, if you don't work, you clearly have the time to go do some grocery shopping.
Which was the gist of that comment as it was a response to
A poor person is probably working some physically taxing job and is just too tired to cook a healthy meal. Or too tired to get to the market selling healthy food
Your quest to fit the data is admirable; the data available to me suggests that you either have some axe to grind, and are hiding your axe behind the veil of the reasoning process on display, or else you suffer a breathtaking lack of introspection, since every human being alive has experienced a variety of pathological effects, like poor decision making and poor impulse control, as a result of some temporary stressor. You're hungry, you yell at your wife; you get chewed out by your boss, you kick the dog; you get fired and you buy a bottle of vodka and a pepperoni pizza and spread out on the couch.
It takes minimal imagination to extend these common experiences to a world where one is not momentarily hungry, or momentarily stressed, or momentarily taking shit from someone in power, but is rather subject to a constant onsalught of stressors due to poverty or systematic racism, and to imagine the consequences that such circumstances might produce. And yet you're not alone in your failure to do this minimal amount of mental work.
So as an aid to you in explaining the variance in the data, since your own life's experiences have seemingly left you with your current best explanation that a wide swathe of humanity is demonstrably and inherently inferior to the swathe of humanity that is currently winning, this book might serve as a useful meta-analysis covering the relevant issues:
I was responding to this: But not just supply of food, supply of time as well. A poor person is probably working...
Many people have done all sorts of stupid things, me included. For example, a few months back I was moping about a woman in London and not getting any work done, nor was I exercising.
Suppose someone comes along and asks why I'm not getting any exercise. The following is an incorrect reason: "...supply of time...probably working hard..."
The correct reason: I was sleeping until 2PM and hitting up the old monk before 6pm. I was banging a Rwandan pimpstress, a Ukrainian who got turned on by eve teasing and assorted other odd characters. Ganja played a role in this story as well.
None of this is work. It would be wrong to say I didn't exercise because I was working hard. Someone who says "chris wasn't working hard" does not have an axe to grind. They are simply correctly pointing out that enjoying ganja and unhappily married women [1] is not work.
[1] Tip: In India any woman over 26 should be presumed married. Learn from my mistakes.
This is a myth. Poor people mostly don't work at all, and those that do typically work only part time.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2012.pdf
Some don't even know fast food is unhealthy.
Some evidence and context for this is sorely needed. Note: if lack of information were really the cause, then you'd expect plastering healthy eating information all over the NYC subway would fix the problem. Did it?
The best explanation I can come up with is the following. People with low self discipline become poor. People with low self discipline become fat and eat badly. They also don't exercise much and engage in other fun but harmful behaviors (unprotected sex, drug use, drinking to excess). But that's a naughty explanation, even if it fits the data quite well.