Where do poor ppl go?

College Life
41

<p>In a country free of political oppression, people are often poor because of innate predispositions ill-conducive to survival. To enhance their reproductive potential is to augment the likelihood of the proliferation of those predispositions, only to increase the societal need for subsidization in the future and decreasing overall societal utility. </p>

<p>The Industrial Revolution occurred because the rich out-reproduced the poor in England, increasing societal worker productivity and breaking Malthusian trap, or else we’d all still be enjoying the same standard of living as tribal populations. The western world owes its improved standard of living to the fact that the rich out-bred the poor. (Farewell to Alms)</p>

<p>By the way, my grandfather hopped from country A to country B due to a war, starting a new life with absolutely nothing. He found a way to make a living for himself with no help. My father, born and raised in country B, came to America with almost nothing, and has now done very well for himself with no help.</p>

42

<p>It is one thing to provide public utilities and services. It is another to ensure that no one will ever have to fear failure.</p>

43

<p>What do you mean by “fear failure”? I’m quite positive nobody here suggests that it’s necessary for the rich to pay for each impoverished to have a three-bedroom house with endless supplies of food. However, I do think that each individual in a country that has grown fat off its own excess should be able to have, at the very least, decent food, water, clothes, and shelter. </p>

<p>Would ensuring that no individual in poverty starves or freezes to death prevent putting a proper fear of failure into people?</p>

44

<p>I didn’t mean “fear failure” like “fear failure, to create incentive to succeed,” even though that’s likely true on some level. I meant “fear failure” to be interchangeable with “fail” or “experience failure.” Failure would be having little choice but to have their genetic legacy end with them or ending relatively soon.</p>

<p>Helping the propagation of the genetic dispositions that result in being poor will only call for greater needs of subsidization in the future.</p>

45

<p>

One word: imperialism. The western world owes its improved standard of living to the fact that it trampled on, enslaved, oppressed (and in many cases continues to do so today), and extracted wealth from hundreds of millions of individuals in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It is not the “Protestant work ethic” or the fact that Westerners today are more genetically disposed to work hard and be successful.</p>

46

<p>In pre-industrial times (and in many if not most societies in the world today), increases in wealth (resources) obtained via technology or other means (imperialism, for instance) will not result in long term increases of standard of living (real income per person) because population makes a geometric increase to mitigate the benefits of the increase in wealth. Thus, in an imperialist country, there are just more people living the same quality of life as before, even if the country had gone to take $X amount of resources from another country.</p>

47

<p>Yeah but wouldn’t the X amount of resources taken from other countries be used to establish educational, social, and political infrastructure that would be used to facilitate and help perpetuate a cycle of successful behavior?</p>

48

<p>Political infrastructure per se has surprisingly little effect on real income. For example, pre-industrial England (and other countries with established governments) had the similar real income as hunter gatherers from Neolithic times. </p>

<p>Things like political infrastructure would increase living quality in the short run, but people will live longer and breed more. As times goes on, the country will have less and less to go around, and some time later everyone will be living the same life as before the political infrastructure (with just more people). You can think of political infrastructure as allowing more people to live at the same quality of life as before.</p>

49

<p>I don’t believe that there is a genetic disposition toward poverty. If anything, there is one that is propagated based on learned behaviors in some families (the people that have committed welfare fraud for generations), but those are definitely very few and far between cases, and in my experience poverty is a cycle that endures because of existing societal and monetary barriers.</p>

<p>I consider it this way. If you have a child of average intelligence in a middle class family, and a child of the same intelligence in a poor family, the child in the former will be far more likely to achieve scholastic success due to availability of review materials, affordability of school supplies, access to a home computer and transportion to and from various extracurriculars or review classes. In the end, it becomes far more likely that the child from the middle class child will attend and succeed in college, even though he or she is not genetically predisposed to be more intelligent and scholastically inclined, just as a basis of circumstance.</p>

<p>Coming from the very lowest echelons of the middle class and poverty (we’ve ricocheted back and forth throughout my life, basically), children of individuals who have not yet escaped poverty do not go to college unless they are well above average intelligence, because without substantial scholarships, even attending cc and then state school is a tremendous burden. Even with a small scholarship, due to monetary difficulties my brother’s education has encountered many delays due to the seeming impossibility of working nearly a full time job in addition to succeeding full time in school.</p>

<p>Basically, to sum it up, attributing poverty to genetic predisposition is a cop-out that people use to prevent themselves from feeling guilt about those who are in less fortunate circumstances, and it really bothers and offends me. My brother and I are probably more intelligent than the average kid, but we have so much more difficulty putting ourselves in the position to have decent, reliable livings as a matter of circumstance, not genetics.</p>

<p>I really apologize for my lack of eloquence in explaining this, sorry.</p>

50

<p>Julie, first of all, I didn’t think your post is short on eloquence at all; you got your point across. Even if it were, it’s nothing to apologize about. Some ideas are difficult to elucidate. </p>

<p>“I don’t believe that there is a genetic disposition toward poverty. If anything, there is one that is propagated based on learned behaviors in some families (the people that have committed welfare fraud for generations), but those are definitely very few and far between cases”</p>

<p>“I consider it this way. If you have a child of average intelligence in a middle class family, and a child of the same intelligence in a poor family, the child in the former will be far more likely to achieve scholastic success due to availability of review materials, affordability of school supplies, access to a home computer and transportion to and from various extracurriculars or review classes. In the end, it becomes far more likely that the child from the middle class child will attend and succeed in college, even though he or she is not genetically predisposed to be more intelligent and scholastically inclined, just as a basis of circumstance.”</p>

<p>I’m inclined to agree with the situation you posed—but I think it was the book Freakonomics that established that it mattered much more what parents are than what parents do or provide in determining the future success of their child, and that things like the “availability of review materials, affordability of school supplies, access to a home computer and transportation to and from various extracurriculars or review classes” are indicators of a future successful child, and not the causes of a child being successful. The distinction between correlation and causation is vital here. </p>

<p>Obviously, there is no Boolean gene for poverty or wealth, but people do inherit traits that are conducive to economic success. 50% of variations between individuals in intelligence quotients can be explained by genetics (Essentials of Psychology 280).* Biological twins who were adopted by different families also turned out to be much, much more similar in intelligence than unrelated children raised by the same family from birth.** I’m guessing less readily quantifiable traits like “industriousness” also behave genetically in similar fashion.</p>

<p>“Basically, to sum it up, attributing poverty to genetic predisposition is a cop-out that people use to prevent themselves from feeling guilt about those who are in less fortunate circumstances, and it really bothers and offends me.”</p>

<p>It’s really unfair of you to say that. Someone could easily take the exact opposite road and say “attributing poverty to monetary oppression is a cop-out that people use to excuse themselves for being economically unsuccessful”–see how obnoxious (and unsubstantiated) that is? </p>

<p><em>I copied and pasted this sentence verbatim from a paper I had written on some other topic.
*</em>I remembered this from my psychology textbook. I didn’t feel like logging on my school’s remote access library to get on jstor to look for articles with exact figures.</p>

51

<p>A family that makes over 50K a year can afford to send a child to college and thus is rich. if they cant they are living beyond their means.</p>

<p>A family that in total makes 17K a year, is poor and cant afford to send a child to college.</p>

52

<p>My school costs around $12,000-$16,000 a year if you full-time depending if you take three classes each quarter or four classes each quarter. I am not rich at all. Grew up poor was homeschooled started college at age 21 work just about full-time and give most of my money to my parents because they are in bad shape. I got grants last year and still had to take out of loan. Don’t have any grants this year and took out more loans. May try to pay a little on the interest, but you know what? I’ll get my four year degree and maybe be able to pay off the loans in five years instead of the usual ten years.</p>

<p>Most poor kids in my area just get jobs after high school and go to the Community College part time or the Adult Education and Techical Center. Not bad choices, but just not my thing…</p>

53

<p>I find it funny to read this thread, partly because I’m I gues “poor” by CC standards, and possibly because this mindset that is being portrayted by many members on this forum is slightly insulting.</p>

54

<p>

</p>

<p>I doubt it. Think for a moment about other basically unquantifiable traits, such as courage in battle, charisma, and work ethic. Throughout history many great leaders have possessed such traits, an excellent example would be Charlemagne . Despite this his offspring did not inherit the things which made him a great leader. You see this again and again in history. Chinese dynasties, various Indian kingdoms etc are also very good examples which support my point. You have a great leader who achieves vast success - which is destroyed by his progeny. This seems to indicate that the qualities which are less quantifiable are not passed on form generation to generation. Intellect, looks, and other clearly hereditary aspects of what make you well you are the only things which I believe are passed on. Unless you have some evidence that these intangible (and hard to define traits) traits are passed on , then I am afraid I shall have to remain highly skeptical of your claims. To be honest you seem to be attempting to justifying their lack of compassion for others using social Darwinism. </p>

<p>Social Darwinism was always stupid BTW. </p>

<p>I support Eugenic breeding for IQ though.</p>

55

<p>Well Elder, let’s simplify things and say there’s four boolean genes for intelligence, industriousness, courage, charisma, and your heredity is based only on your father’s genes. And let’s say the chances of inheriting any particular one gene from your father is .75 (if it’s .5 it’s basically random determination). To be economically successful, you really only need two of these traits: intellect and industriousness. Of course it’ll be better if you have courage and charisma too, but you don’t really need it to have a reasonably high-paying job, for example. Now say you want to be a political leader that will be lauded for being a great leader years after your death. What traits do you need? All four, and that doesn’t even make it likely much less guarantee it; those traits are just prerequisites. </p>

<p>Chances you inherit your father’s intelligence and industriousness: .75<em>.75</em>1.0*1.0 = 9/16</p>

<p>Chances you inherit all four: .75<em>.75</em>.75*.75 = 81/256</p>

<p>And also keep in my that being such a historically laudable leader is much more difficult than being relatively economically successful. A huge element of luck is also involved in being a leader. Even with all four traits, a leader will probably likely fail. So let’s adjust for luck. Let’s say you have a 25% chance of being a good leader if you have all four traits (I think it’s even lower, personally, but I’m being conservative).</p>

<p>So now we have figures for the chances of you being economically successful or a good leader if your father is.</p>

<p>Economically successful: .75<em>.75 = 9/16
Good leader, adjusted for luck: .75</em>.75<em>.75</em>.75*.25 = 81/1024</p>

<p>So when we’re observing heredity through these examples, chances are you’re going to find children of leaders enjoying much different outcomes than their fathers, even if they inherit all four traits. </p>

<p>I’m not saying everyone above the 50th percentile of wealth is smarter and more industrious than everyone below it. But on average, it will be true. When things aren’t black and white, we have gray and averages. Who would I prefer to breed faster, the upper 25th or the lower 25th percentile? The upper 25th in a hummingbird heartbeat. </p>

<p>Social Darwinism will accomplish the same things as eugenic breeding for IQ, but more slowly. It’s a trade-off between the coercion and efficiency. Eugenic breeding is more efficient but involves coercion, Social Darwinism is less efficient but allows things to progress naturally (at this point, anyone who asks me if I’m aware of the naturalistic fallacy is a ■■■■■, a jokester, or an idiot).</p>

56

<p>Let’s revisit the idea introduced by the book Farewell to Arms (non-fiction, f.y.i., for those in various threads who think I’ve been introducing fictional works to convey various points). </p>

<p>Say we have a village of four people, and their occupations are (in descending order of income): investment banker, merchant, factory worker, farmer. Let’s say you need all four of those occupations to have a successful village, and only one position for those four occupations are open. Again let’s say fathers can reproduce asexually, like my previous post. And let’s say the IB’er, merchant, fact. worker, and farmer have IQs of 140, 125, 110, and 95, respectively. </p>

<p>So in our village, we have:
IB’er: 140 IQ
Merchant: 125 IQ
Factory worker: 110 IQ
Farmer: 95 IQ </p>

<p>They all try and have kids; the investment banker has 3 surviving children, the merchant has 2 surviving children, the factory worker 2, and the farmer 1. </p>

<p>We’ve established that IQ is hereditary, so the childrens’ IQs will be similar to their fathers’. I’ll even be conservative with the next generation’s IQs (I low-balled the average of the IB’er and merchants’ kids, and high-balled the other two). No one subsidizes anyone’s living, so the higher income professions have superior reproductive potential. So in the next generation, we have: </p>

<p>IB’er: 140 (IB’er’s kid)
Merchant: 135 (IB)
Factory Worker: 130 (IB)
Farmer: 120 (Merchant)
Unemployed: 115 (Fact. Worker)
Unemployed: 110 (Fact. Worker)
Unemployed: 100 (Farmer)</p>

<p>So now the village is overall, more productive in this generation, with more intelligent people manning their four professions, all because the richer bred quicker. </p>

<p>The four current professionals could choose to subsidize the unemployed, but what if they do? It’ll just increase the subsequent generations’ need to subsidize. If this village subsidizes and increase the reproductive potential of their poor, standard of living will never increase–the Malthusian trap will never be broken; population growths will negate any advances in overall productivity, because the average villager productivity never rises. </p>

<p>My example was overly simplified to illustrate this phenomenon, but this is what happened in England prior to the industrial revolution–worker productivity increases that exceeded the effect of population growth, as a result of the rich drastically outbreeding the poor.</p>

57

<p>

Lets not say there are genes for traits unless we have evidence for that fact instead.</p>

<p>

Not if you inherit a kingdom. Then it is all about maintaining your power, which requires far less skill or luck.</p>

<p>

Evidence needed.</p>

<p>

No, it will create a state in which a few groups establish an oligarchy, which will make it impossible for new comers to break in.</p>

<p>

Not really. All you do is offer people financial incentives to marry someone (and produce at least two children with a bonus for each additional child) with an IQ within 10 points of theirs if said IQ is over 130 to start with. I guarantee many young people will discover they love people within this range. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>As for your second post-you must establish that the majority of people in America with lower income have lower IQ’s. My solution to people with lower IQ’s is actually much better in my opinion then your cold hearted appraoch. You simply pay them to be sterilized. This would work faster than any “weeding out” which Social Darwinism would cause to occur, and the cost would not be that prohibitive. Taken in conjunction with the program I mention above the average IQ should rise sharply regardless of any social programs offered to the poor. I would also call my approach “compassionate” if you think that matters.</p>

58

<p>eldercookies, please tell me I misread you:</p>

<p>you think paying the poor to have themselves sterilized is ok, but you don’t like people who try to argue that the rich shouldn’t have to look out for the poor?</p>

59

<p>Not the poor. I was talking about people with low IQs. Why would that be a problem? No one has to do anything if they do not want to in my scenario. What is wrong with wanting to improve our gene pool?</p>

60

<p>When did this turn into a topic about intelligence?</p>