The Son Also Rises.

[Blind groper]

However, I have to say that I agree with a lot of what Seth has said. My main point of disagreement is the suggestion that we can turn things around for those who fail through training programs. The thing is that these have been tried, many times, in many different countries, wit mixed results. Most of the people wo go through those training programs end up back where they began, though a minority will benefit. Certainly it is better than nothing, but is far from a complete solution.

About 20 years ago, I read an American book called "The Millionnaire Next Door". It was a description of those who succeeded and became rich. At the time, the author was able to define 'rich' as having money or assets to a total of a million dollars plus. He showed that pretty much anyone with the right attitudes and behaviour can become 'rich'. Of course, they have to start young. The recipe involves hard work and postponing gratification. They begin by getting themselves in a position to earn reasonable money. eg. do an apprenticeship as a plumber.

After that, with a reasonable income, t takes 20 years. For that time, they have to work hard, and invest all their spare cash in investments that accumulate capital, such as shares, property etc. Twenty years ago, it took 20 years to accumulate a million dollars in this way. Today the definition of 'rich' would be slightly different, but the same recipe applies.

The problem, though, is that not everyone has the same attributes of focus, ability to work hard and delay gratification.

[Seth]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

Are you aware, Seth, that the greatest hero of the Cuban missile crisis was a Russian submarine commander (Vasili Arkipov - as in the reference above), who stopped a submarine captain from firing a nuclear missile at the American fleet, which would definitely have set off WWIII. There is a pretty good chance that the only reason you are alive is due to the heroic actions of a Marxist Soviet soldier of the sea.

I'm glad to hear that even Soviet sailors can be rational human beings. But what does that have to do with the subject?

[Seth]

However, I have to say that I agree with a lot of what Seth has said. My main point of disagreement is the suggestion that we can turn things around for those who fail through training programs. The thing is that these have been tried, many times, in many different countries, wit mixed results. Most of the people wo go through those training programs end up back where they began, though a minority will benefit. Certainly it is better than nothing, but is far from a complete solution.

About 20 years ago, I read an American book called "The Millionnaire Next Door". It was a description of those who succeeded and became rich. At the time, the author was able to define 'rich' as having money or assets to a total of a million dollars plus. He showed that pretty much anyone with the right attitudes and behaviour can become 'rich'. Of course, they have to start young. The recipe involves hard work and postponing gratification. They begin by getting themselves in a position to earn reasonable money. eg. do an apprenticeship as a plumber.

After that, with a reasonable income, t takes 20 years. For that time, they have to work hard, and invest all their spare cash in investments that accumulate capital, such as shares, property etc. Twenty years ago, it took 20 years to accumulate a million dollars in this way. Today the definition of 'rich' would be slightly different, but the same recipe applies.

The problem, though, is that not everyone has the same attributes of focus, ability to work hard and delay gratification.

It's only a "problem" if one assumes that not having those qualities is "unfair" and therefore requires some form of compensation or accommodation for those "disabilities" that must be provided at the expense of those who do happen to have those qualities.

Otherwise it's just the way things are. Half the people on the Bell Curve are smarter than the other half. Shall we make them more stupid because the other half resents their intelligence?

[Blind groper]

If we could do the opposite, and give to those deficient in some vital quality those attributes they need, that would be constructive. Maybe some day that might become possible. Right now, it seems extremely difficult.

However, the world has become immensively productive. We make more food, clothes, and television sets than we can sell. There is wealth in sufficient abundance to ensure that everyone has the basics, regardless of their talent or lack thereof.

[Seth]

If we could do the opposite, and give to those deficient in some vital quality those attributes they need, that would be constructive. Maybe some day that might become possible. Right now, it seems extremely difficult.

However, the world has become immensively productive. We make more food, clothes, and television sets than we can sell. There is wealth in sufficient abundance to ensure that everyone has the basics, regardless of their talent or lack thereof.

Well, unless you're talking about the third world, everyone pretty much does have the basics in most of Europe and the United States, and other places.

The standard of living for the very poorest of the poor in the US is orders of magnitude higher than the "ordinary" poor in, say, Calcutta.

To some degree it's relative to the culture and society in which one lives. What comprises "the basics" in Indonesia or Vietnam seems exceedingly primitive to Americans or Germans.

People who complain about Nike using "sweatshops" in Bangladesh to make shoes haven't been to Bangladesh and don't understand that making twenty-five cents an hour in Bangladesh is a middle-class job that allows the worker to have luxuries unimaginable to most Bangladeshi even 25 years ago. Do they have the lifestyle of a Manhattan lawyer or a Hollywood actor, or even a United Auto Workers laborer at GM? No, but then again their position is better than it's ever been.

And if you really want to see the contrast, go to, oh, let's say...Somalia, where a cow pie and a stick are considered Trump-like wealth.

[Blind groper]

That is true but not unavoidable. For example, compare North and South Korea. In 50 years, average incomes in the south rose 15 fold while the north remained stagnant. Essentially the same people but under two different regimens.

It takes good government to raise the people to wealth.

[Seth]

That is true but not unavoidable. For example, compare North and South Korea. In 50 years, average incomes in the south rose 15 fold while the north remained stagnant. Essentially the same people but under two different regimens.

It takes good government to raise the people to wealth.

Well, it takes =/= evil, despotic, insane, cult-of-personality Marxist government anyway.

[pErvinalia]

Important brain regions are more developed among children raised in a comfortable home environment. The enhanced regions are ones that are most required for tests such as the SAT.

"Just as you would expect, there's a real cost to not living in a supportive environment,” says MIT's Professor John Gabrieli. “We can see it not only in test scores, in educational attainment, but within the brains of these children."

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/privile ... ble-brains

[laklak]

So stupid, lesser-brained people have kids and those kids are stupid lesser-brains, and their kids are even stupider and even lesser-brained, and so on and so forth, world without end. Idiocracy is the inevitable result.

Fuck I need to buy my boat.

[Tero]

The rich! They always think it's about them.

It's much simpler. Most people are losers.

[Blind groper]

Fuck I need to buy my boat.

Read up about the Flynn Effect (on Wiki). The truth is that each generation is smarter than the one before. As well as taller, healthier, longer lived.

[Seth]

So stupid, lesser-brained people have kids and those kids are stupid lesser-brains, and their kids are even stupider and even lesser-brained, and so on and so forth, world without end. Idiocracy is the inevitable result.

Fuck I need to buy my boat.

Then again, what they are saying is that tests such as the SAT have been created so as to weed-out the lesser-brained so that society can focus it's resources on those who have a greater capacity to learn and make use of that knowledge.

Gee, I wonder why society would want to do that? Maybe to keep the idiocracy at bay?

But the Progressives would have us accept the premise of the article, which is that income inequality alone is responsible for worse educational outcomes in children, on our way to their desired conclusion, which is that income inequality is bad and therefore income must be equalized "for the children."

But here's a little nugget from one of the cited papers in the article:

Fifth, American families have changed in several important ways in the last four decades. Children in high-income families are increasingly likely to be raised by two parents, both with college degrees, whereas low-income children are more likely than ever to be raised by a single mother with a low level of education (McLanahan, 2004; Schwartz & Mare, 2005). This means that family income has become increasingly correlated to other family characteristics and resources that are important for children's development.

And what, pray tell, causes low-income children to be raised by a single mother?

The welfare state, that's what.

It is well understood that the disintegration of, in particular, the black family structure, began with Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s.

The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family as a stable institution. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African Americans today is 73%, three times higher than it was prior to the War on Poverty. Children raised in fatherless homes are far more likely to grow up poor and to eventually engage in criminal behavior, than their peers who are raised in two-parent homes. In 2010, blacks (approximately 13% of the U.S. population) accounted for 48.7% of all arrests for homicide, 31.8% of arrests for forcible rape, 33.5% of arrests for aggravated assault, and 55% of arrests for robbery. Also as of 2010, the black poverty rate was 27.4% (about 3 times higher than the white rate), meaning that 11.5 million blacks in the U.S. were living in poverty.
...

The results of welfare policies discouraging marriage and family were dramatic, as out-of-wedlock birthrates skyrocketed among all demographic groups in the U.S., but most notably African Americans. In the mid-1960s, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was scarcely 3% for whites, 7.7% for Americans overall, and 24.5% among blacks. By 1976, those figures had risen to nearly 10% for whites, 24.7% for Americans as a whole, and 50.3% for blacks in particular. In 1987, for the first time in the history of any American racial or ethnic group, the birth rate for unmarried black women surpassed that for married black women. Today the illegitimacy rates stand at 41% for the nation overall, and 73% for African Americans specifically.[4]
...

Welfare not only increases illegitimacy and poverty in the short term, but it inflicts long-lasting, even permanent, handicaps on children who are raised in welfare-dependent homes. Dr. June O'Neill and Anne Hill, comparing children who were identical in terms of such social and economic factors as race, family structure, neighborhood, family income, and mothers' IQ and education, found that the more years a child spent on welfare, the lower the child's IQ. A similar study by Mary Corcoran and Roger Gordon of the University of Michigan concluded that the more welfare income a family received while a boy was growing up, the lower the boy's earnings as an adult.
Source: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/view ... sp?id=1672

So, we can easily conclude that the problem described in the article originally quoted is not a matter of income inequality, it's a matter of the on-going consequences of the welfare state. It's a vicious cycle. The more welfare you hand out, the less likely the recipients are to escape the welfare trap because handing out welfare in the way it has been and is being done today, disincentivizes precisely the sort of supportive two-parent home life that a child needs in order for his or her brain to develop.

One obvious solution short of eliminating the welfare state entirely (which is the best way) is to incentivize marriage and stable home life for those on welfare.

In other words, if the government is going to give poor people money, they should require that those with children be (and stay) married, preferably to the father, and those traditional family structure homes should be strongly favored economically. This means that a married couple with children, where one parent works and the other cares for the children full time should receive much higher benefits than single parents or where both work full time.

Gee, what a concept.

[laklak]

Stop giving welfare money for kids, or at least for ones born after a specific date. Make birth control and abortion free at government clinics. Hell, give 'em $100 for an abortion and an extra $25 a month for using birth control. Maybe a $1000 for getting their tubes tied. Mount an advertising campaign showing happy, childless people enjoying the good life, contrasted with poor-ass people living in filth and drudgery with a bunch of squalling nits.

[mistermack]

The book sounds like a load of shite. A mixture of the bleedin obvious and stupid inferences.

You can't conclude anything from going back three hundred years.
Even just one hundred years ago, social mobility was a very rare thing. Going back further than one hundred years, you are just stating the obvious, which is that it was incredibly difficult for people born poor to make enough to eat, let alone move up the scale.

The book is obviously aimed at idiots.

[Blind groper]

To mistermack

Nevertheless, there is a good point from that book. Which is that cultural teachings, whether from family, or your sector of society, are vitally important. A person who gets the right example and teaching can achieve much.

On the other hand, a person born into a problem cultural sector, such as those Seth wants to punish, may have a major struggle due to lack of appropriate example and teachings.