Quote (thesnipa @ Jun 23 2020 12:14pm)

i still think it's a bit of a correlation error with "poverty" and "parenting" when i read these studies.

if you're poor but have good parents you'll end up ok, maybe not a NASA astronaut but you'll do ok.

if you're poor and have bad parents, you're either fucked. or you'll do the opposite of what they say and turn out great. making the opposite choice of a bad parent leads you down a great path.

if you're rich and have great parents, you'll be on the best path, and likely do wonderfully.

if you're rich and have bad parents, you'll likely be an unmotivated idiot who fucks up their life or never does anything.

like your cousin who got pinched with weed, he did get lucky, but also needed an incredibly extreme wake up call just to become a non fuckwit.

and really this shit is a bit hard to discuss in any sort of nuance, its always near homeless welfare babies versus trust fund jagoffs. in the center we see a lot of "my dad worked hard so i knew i had to my whole life too" versus "my mom always just skated by and it didnt give me a very good sense of motivation and hard work". rather than the far more extreme outcomes that we see on the ends of the spectrum nearly no one populates.

Quote (Thor123422 @ Jun 23 2020 01:06pm)

It really just comes down to how many failures you get. Trump got to fail dozens of times in spectacular fashion and is still seen as a success.

My cousins each got 3-4 failures without getting close to their limit.

An average kid gets maybe 2.

If you're poor you get zero, and if youre poor and a minority you will often have to bail yourself out of non-failures because the system is set to actively harm you.

Quote (Thor123422 @ Jun 23 2020 02:06pm)

It really just comes down to how many failures you get. Trump got to fail dozens of times in spectacular fashion and is still seen as a success.

My cousins each got 3-4 failures without getting close to their limit.

An average kid gets maybe 2.

If you're poor you get zero, and if youre poor and a minority you will often have to bail yourself out of non-failures because the system is set to actively harm you.


Meanwhile your "successes" have lower bars. Often a success is just showing up if you know the right people. While for people lower on the pole a success requires 80 hour weeks for 5 years. Equally motivated people will do better the higher status you are, but even the worst rich fuck ups almost never get the same punishment as even a normal fuck up from somebody lower.

Quote (Thor123422 @ Jun 23 2020 01:07pm)

Escaping poverty is difficult.

I'm gonna use a few examples of my life versus the life of a few of my cousins. My father's sister married a surgeon who went on to start his own practice, and they have been very successful. Meanwhile my father worked highway construction. By no effort of my aunt's, she is easily in the 1% by marrying and divorcing a very successful person while her brother didn't have that luck. So it's a pretty fair comparison.



My high school didn't have a baseball team.
My cousins had former MLB pitching coaches come over every Tuesday and Friday to coach my cousins.

My high school had a band, but no money for spare instruments for the students. If you didn't have the money to buy an instrument, you were basically SOL.
My cousins had a piano with a private tutor, and access to a private tutor for every additional instrument they cared to learn.

My sister and I both worked 40+ hours a week to get through college paying our own cost of living.
My cousins, all 4 of them, didn't have to work a day of their lives until they were 25, at which point their father gave them an administrative job making 60k+ a year in his medical practice if they wanted it. Only one actually took it though. She's a fuck up and has been bailed out many many times.

My sister and I both worked hard in school, but the only option we had due to expense was our state school. So we both went to that.
One of my cousins went to Florida State, which is still a state school but very good, another got into a private school in Colorado because his dad did back surgery on the dean, and another is now at a film school in L.A. and freshman year got hooked up with a movie producer as a script editor because, again, his dad did back surgery on the dean of that school and has connections to people in the film industry from the same source.

My sister and I were both pretty clean-cut. We didn't get into trouble because we know that our parents can't afford to hire legal representation, and we both are damn sure we couldn't afford it until our adult lives.
My cousin, at 16, had like a kilo of weed in his car and wrapped his car around a tree. I don't want to know how much money they spent on legal representation, but he got off with just a year in "rich kid rehab". He got his life together after that and stopped being a fuckwit, thankfully.



Anyway, I could go on for like, literally ever, on this subject. The reason I'm more aware of class differences than most is because I grew up on the side of the family that didn't marry a rich guy and I've had a front row seat to the advantages that money gets you. My cousins were literally not allowed to fail no matter what happened, and as long as they put in the most minimum amount of effort they were rewarded with their father's connections and told how great they were for being so successful.

Quote (duffman316 @ Jun 23 2020 02:39pm)

No one is saying being born into a rich life doesn't come with privileges. The question is what specific insurmountable obstacles did you face in carving out a decent living for your self when you don't have the same privileges. Staying out of trouble and getting into a state school seems like a pretty straight forward path to achieving a decent standard of living no?

Quote (Skinned @ Jun 23 2020 01:47pm)

You have to adapt to crime though. It isn't like you can just decide to be a better person. You are a product of your environment, especially at first. And sometimes being normal is more important than getting an interview at an age you might not survive until. I didn't ever expect to be this old. Having friends is important, being cool, etc.

Quote (thesnipa @ Jun 23 2020 03:15pm)

TBH i think liberals lose a lot of people with their "the hood is an insurmountable obstacle" type narratives and talking points.

i'd be far more interested in helping out in the hood if i thought people were interested in studying how people who do get out are successful, and emulating that as a way to fix the hood. instead that's seen as statistical good luck and nothing more, and not a workable model for helping inner cities.

the reality is most inner city people aren't criminals, only a tiny fraction will be shot by police, a noteworthy percent make it out, and gangs are a vast minority of the population. putting these together and making sense of gang violence stats, vastly lower IQ and academic performance, lack of nutrition, lack of mental health due to stigma, homophobia, and many other issues can do more help than a large federal check that will run out before people get the help they need.

sadly ive found liberals arent willing to really roll up their sleeves and conservatives aren't willing to admit they're wearing a long sleeve in a world of t shirt clad plebs. so fuck it, ill keep donating vegetables, seeds, time and energy into urban gardening initiatives, etc. but im out of the field as a job, its a hobby for me. too many hurdles.

Quote (Skinned @ Jun 23 2020 02:19pm)

You would be more willing to help the hood?

How? Would you be like tom cruise in the last samurai?

I just moved out of it when i got $$