Joe Biden 2022: Enter Dark Brandon

[hayden_horn 11362]

Just now, fattyflattie said:

A lot to unpack there, but glad you seem to be doing well.  I remember at least the story about your sister, didn’t know she had passed tho.  It’s terrible that drugs exist. I don’t mind absorbing your anger, but I had nothing to do with any of that, and I wouldn’t expect you to be responsible for my families issues.  

seriously?

could you be more out of touch?

she passed last year.

drugs were not the problem for my sister. they were her solution. people have problems they try to solve. it's not just easy to say "good effort, get those bootstraps!" sometimes people fall down.

people like you want to kick them. people like me want to help them up.

 

[4th&Five 41558]

I'm sure it has been posted but this made me bust out laughing.

 

[Biff Tannen 45691]

Just now, 4th&Five said:

I'm sure it has been posted but this made me bust out laughing.

 

That's just straight trolling.

[fattyflattie 4639]

6 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

Not trying to brag but not sure what you are calling out with your post.  That I have people that work for me in a Fortune 500 company that work harder than I do at this point?  Yeah, I guess that’s the case but it has nothing to do with impacting society as a whole as those people that work for me are in the top 1% so I don’t feel too bad for them.

That’s the thing, I’m not calling you out. I just don’t think your view is based in reality, at that income/wealth. I’m certain you’ve earned it.
 

1% earner is 405k in Texas.  If you are pulling in 1.6 to 2m annually (you said 4x them, iirc), then you can gtfo lecturing others who are still working on making it about kicking down ladders.  

[Snake Diggity 4625]

26 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

I’ll look into it. I’m curious as to what changed for you, specifically 7 years ago. 

 

I will say I would find the lecturing more to heart if it wasn’t coming from extremely well educated, mostly well to do, professionals.  I mean half of y’all participate in the look at my $10000 watch thread (one for each day of the week!!), another who just sold millions of dollars in family land, and several more who jetset across the world to vacation several times a year.  Y’all all work hard, I’m all for it. The gap between several of you and me is greater than mine and a 25 yo who can’t afford a house because they have school loans from UT. So a bit of perspective might be good for y’all, too.  

  Nothing specific to 7 years, just an estimate of the time/life experience it’s taken to gradually let go of the myth that people (even if just “for the most part”) get what they deserve/earn.  Not that it should matter, but I came from middle-middle class south Texas, paid my own way thru UT by working restaurant/retail and very very little help from parents or student loans, worked as a contractor overseas to get access to capital in my mid-20s, and have worked/saved/invested wisely over the last 15+ years to become what most people (not people on this board) would consider “wealthy”.  So my “self-made” credentials are pretty sturdy, on the surface.  And it felt good to believe that my place in the world was earned.  But between life experience and actual research, I’ve realized that my journey, and the journey of everyone else who ends up in my position (or better) is riddled with good fortune that far outweighed the impact of my own will, just as those who ended up worse off than me ended up there far more as a result of bad luck than their own laziness.

How society/laws should react to that reality is certainly debatable.  But we need to let go of the notion that people get what they deserve/earn, once and for all, because it’s simply not true.

[aggie08 21505]

2 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

I'm sure it has been posted but this made me bust out laughing.

 

Ok, the right is definitely getting better at comedy.

[Beantown Express 2.0 6559]

2 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

I'm sure it has been posted but this made me bust out laughing.

 

If this was a joke by him I think its actually pretty funny.  I am guessing its him being serious and right now his constituents are clutching their pearls about how evil Biden is to the press and that actually makes me sad.

[henrygandorf 29192]

2 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

If this was a joke by him I think its actually pretty funny.  I am guessing its him being serious and right now his constituents are clutching their pearls about how evil Biden is to the press and that actually makes me sad.

it's not a joke.  the right will never be that good at comedy.

[TurkeyChew 383]

I feel like the "don't get hooked on drugs, graduate high school, and don't get pregnant or get your SO preg before 25" is just stating that by doing some basic table stakes things, you exponentially increase your odds of succeeding to being above the poverty line and being self-sufficient and not dependent on the government for day to day survival.

Just like being born an American doesn't mean life will be perfect, by being born an American in the richest nation where like a $40k annual income puts you in the top 10% of the world, you have a better chance at not being abjectly poor. I think I read the average American income is like $45k these days (shoutout to Wharton grads), but I think that's the big idea:

It's not a playbook that guarantees any success and it's not a blueprint to happiness, just a way to minimize risk and assure at least mediocrity. 

That said, sure there are pockets of American society where populations and cultures are horrible and not getting pregnant and not getting hooked on drugs and graduating high school might be a huge thing, but generally speaking it's not a heavy lift for most Americans.

Edited January 25, 2022 by TurkeyChew

[Beantown Express 2.0 6559]

4 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

That’s the thing, I’m not calling you out. I just don’t think your view is based in reality, at that income/wealth. I’m certain you’ve earned it.
 

1% earner is 405k in Texas.  If you are pulling in 1.6 to 2m annually (you said 4x them, iirc), then you can gtfo lecturing others who are still working on making it about kicking down ladders.  

Maybe I don’t know the current economics of people in this country but I would think someone making $250K a year is in the top 1% or maybe its top 5%.  All I know is there aren’t tons of people in this country that make $150K plus are there?  $200K?  $400K?  Those seem like pretty big numbers to me.  

[fattyflattie 4639]

10 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

You don’t have to take my word for it, it’s true. Posting a link to a website called Obamaphone.com seems like a poor choice for getting info. Have you tried Bideneatschildren.com?

I’m pretty sure that was a legit site, fwiw. 
 

10 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Companies “forced” into EV by innovation and competition. Acceptance of gas guzzling trucks isn’t a political party rally, everyone wants more fuel efficiency.

In the passenger shitbox car market, sure. Not a lot of people who actually use their trucks looking forward to it.  I couldn’t give a single less fuck about fuel efficiency.  
 

I can’t believe I was so far off on all these progressive talking points.  Maybe Ill vote that way next time. 

[fattyflattie 4639]

3 minutes ago, TurkeyChew said:

I feel like the "don't get hooked on drugs, graduate high school, and don't get pregnant or get your SO preg before 25" is just stating that by doing some basic table stakes things, you exponentially increase your odds of succeeding to being above the poverty line and being self-sufficient and not dependent on the government for day to day survival.

Just like being born an American doesn't mean life will be perfect, by being born an American in the richest nation where like a $40k annual income puts you in the top 10% of the world, you have a better chance at not being abjectly poor. I think I read the average American income is like $45k these days (shoutout to Wharton grads), but I think that's the big idea:

It's not a playbook that guarantees any success and it's not a blueprint to happiness, just a way to minimize risk and assure at least mediocrity. 

That said, sure there are pockets of American society where populations and cultures are horrible and not getting pregnant and not getting hooked on drugs and graduating high school might be a huge thing, but generally speaking it's not a heavy lift for most Americans.

Bingo.  

[hayden_horn 11362]

10 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

A lot to unpack there, but glad you seem to be doing well.  I remember at least the story about your sister, didn’t know she had passed tho.  It’s terrible that drugs exist. I don’t mind absorbing your anger, but I had nothing to do with any of that, and I wouldn’t expect you to be responsible for my families issues.  

this mindset makes absolutely no sense to me, by the way.

of course i wouldn't be personally responsible for your family any more than you would be mine.

but at the same time, we are a fucking society. we should take care of each other. and you think we should not, based on what i'm reading here. 

fuck that. 

it wasn't the fucking drugs that killed her. that's the point you are missing, and i reckon that most people miss when people overdose. 

she was failed pretty close to birth. she needed help she couldn't get. my mom couldn't get her that help in the 80s. things might different today, but people deal with shit as well as they can. 

this idea that she could have worked harder. fuck you. she was slapped around by her dad, probably molested, though never proven, dealt with a divorce at 13-14, and tried to get through her life. my dad tried his best, but some problems cannot be solved.

perspective. get some of it. 

not everyone can be raised in a perfect world, and i'm sick of hearing it. 

[jimmyjazz 45976]

7 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Progressives do not want to end hunting or take away weapons for hunting. Weapons of war are more of their rallying point. You know that.

It's astonishing.  Going back to World War 2, the United States has had 7 Democratic Presidents, with varying party control of the House and Senate.  "They're gonna get your guns" has been a constant right-wing rallying cry.

Exactly what guns have been gotten during that 76+ year run?  Let's see, there was a 10-year mildly effective ban on "assault" weapons.  That's all I can recall.  

Nobody is coming for the guns.

[TurkeyChew 383]

6 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

It's astonishing.  Going back to World War 2, the United States has had 7 Democratic Presidents, with varying party control of the House and Senate.  "They're gonna get your guns" has been a constant right-wing rallying cry.

Exactly what guns have been gotten during that 76+ year run?  Let's see, there was a 10-year mildly effective ban on "assault" weapons.  That's all I can recall.  

Nobody is coming for the guns.

Because the ones that really do want to, sink their political careers by admitting it?

 

[fattyflattie 4639]

3 minutes ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

Maybe I don’t know the current economics of people in this country but I would think someone making $250K a year is in the top 1% or maybe its top 5%.  All I know is there aren’t tons of people in this country that make $150K plus are there?  $200K?  $400K?  Those seem like pretty big numbers to me.  

I don’t know, I just pulled and linked (I thought) Texas’ numbers. I’m sure they aren’t nearly as good in WV.  I can’t answer you what “tons of people make” 150k or not. I would assume by this thread, many don’t.  I would think 250k would put you in top 5% or so, maybe +/- 2. 
 

I work for a small private owned co now and I know we don’t hire anyone in the office below 50k, and all college graduates start closer to 65k. Engineers are closer to/sometimes above 100k.   Less than 12-15 years ago we were hiring them for 60k, and it would take ~3 years of hard work to reach 100k.  Full 6-8 years to reach 150k.   I’ve worked in and around this arena my whole career and it’s been the same (mostly) throughout.  Outside of the execs, the best pay is in the field.  We have supers that bring home well into the 3’s and our PMs and engineers travel just as much as they do. Some are early 30’s, 15 years or so into their careers. Those are the ones doing the best.  No formal education, work 12’s (engineers and PMs considerably more) and get to shut it off at the end of the day. 

[fattyflattie 4639]

8 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Nobody is coming for the guns.

Then run on that platform? It seems to be a winner and carries plenty of one issue voters. 

[StassneyHorn 6613]

10 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

I’m pretty sure that was a legit site, fwiw. 
 

In the passenger shitbox car market, sure. Not a lot of people who actually use their trucks looking forward to it.  I couldn’t give a single less fuck about fuel efficiency.  
 

I can’t believe I was so far off on all these progressive talking points.  Maybe Ill vote that way next time. 

Posting a link to a website called obamaphone.com is like pasting a link from the  “For Sale” forum and saying this is the place to buy tickets for UT sports.

[Chuckie Finster 22700]

8 minutes ago, TurkeyChew said:

I feel like the "don't get hooked on drugs, graduate high school, and don't get pregnant or get your SO preg before 25" is just stating that by doing some basic table stakes things, you exponentially increase your odds of succeeding to being above the poverty line and being self-sufficient and not dependent on the government for day to day survival.

Just like being born an American doesn't mean life will be perfect, by being born an American in the richest nation where like a $40k annual income puts you in the top 10% of the world, you have a better chance at not being abjectly poor. I think I read the average American income is like $45k these days (shoutout to Wharton grads), but I think that's the big idea:

It's not a playbook that guarantees any success and it's not a blueprint to happiness, just a way to minimize risk and assure at least mediocrity. 

That said, sure there are pockets of American society where populations and cultures are horrible and not getting pregnant and not getting hooked on drugs and graduating high school might be a huge thing, but generally speaking it's not a heavy lift for most Americans.

But it's bullshit.

I know plenty of people who got pregnant before 25 and ended up "successful.".  I know plenty of people who were drugged out of their minds in their early 20s and ended up "successful."  The common denominator for almost all of these is that were born into a family that afforded them a safety net that allowed them to fall down and still prosper.

None of those things are life ruiners if you are lucky enough to be born into a situation that can support you.  Focusing on the action without any acknowledgement of the importance of environment is ignorance at best, maliciousness at worst.

[Sbbruin 21861]

39 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

The American dream is to provide more for your children than you had.  If I could, I would make it to where they never had to financially worry a day in their entire lives, or their kids for that matter.  Aside from eating, that is the only reason I work.  The are all less than 10, so I guess good job at throwing insults at my small children?  I’ve got some low hanging fruit I could probably throw at yours(?), but I’ll let you have this one. 

While I get that this is you loving your kids and wanting them to have everything they want/need, I think you, or anyone for that matter, does their kids a disservice by leaving guardrails up for them and not letting/forcing them to take on that responsibility for themselves. Yours are young, so you aren't there yet, so of course you provide everything you can for them, as did I at that age.  I grew up comfortable but not necessarily "rich" (my Dad did well, but we had 5 kids who all went to private school and then to college so that sucked up pretty much everything), but I knew a LOT of kids from VERY wealthy families.  The ones who were the biggest fuckups, almost without exception, were the ones who had everything handed to them and who faced no blowback from being flakes.  And as adults were/are the ones who never really made anything of themselves as individuals.  

[Sbbruin 21861]

50 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

still not getting all the hate for drugs. some are really fun. 

[TurkeyChew 383]

7 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

But it's bullshit.

I know plenty of people who got pregnant before 25 and ended up "successful.".  I know plenty of people who were drugged out of their minds in their early 20s and ended up "successful."  The common denominator for almost all of these is that were born into a family that afforded them a safety net that allowed them to fall down and still prosper.

None of those things are life ruiners if you are lucky enough to be born into a situation that can support you.  Focusing on the action without any acknowledgement of the importance of environment is ignorance at best, maliciousness at worst.

Agree with you; money solves problems. If you are born with it, your table stakes are a lot easier.

The point is that for the 80% of the population, ranging from poverty line and up-- do these basic things and you can be a self-sufficient American with a modicum of autonomy and comfort and barring unforeseen events like health or trauma, etc., you are likely to live a below-average-to-average life without being dependent on the U.S. Government.

If you born with privilege, sure you can fail and fail and fail and do drugs and pregnancy and go to jail and be a felon and get a face tattoo and storm the capital on 1/6 and all these other really really poor life decisions, and still have the same expectation for an average to below average life without being dependent on the U.S. Government because of your privilege. 

I would actually argue the only thing that is "B.S." about that heuristic quote is that it might be "ableist" in that able-bodied folks have a privilege above and beyond all of those who are born with disability or have health issues that render disability which is out of their control which can necessitate a dependency on the government despite all best intentions and abilities and basic income-earnings, etc.

Edited January 25, 2022 by TurkeyChew

[fattyflattie 4639]

2 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

While I get that this is you loving your kids and wanting them to have everything they want/need, I think you, or anyone for that matter, does their kids a disservice by leaving guardrails up for them and not letting/forcing them to take on that responsibility for themselves. Yours are young, so you aren't there yet, so of course you provide everything you can for them, as did I at that age.  I grew up comfortable but not necessarily "rich" (my Dad did well, but we had 5 kids who all went to private school and then to college so that sucked up pretty much everything), but I knew a LOT of kids from VERY wealthy families.  The ones who were the biggest fuckups, almost without exception, were the ones who had everything handed to them and who faced no blowback from being flakes.  And as adults were/are the ones who never really made anything of themselves as individuals.  

I completely understand your post, but ALOT of assumptions there.  I’m hard af on my kids; I have to back off often. I likely phrased it wrong, but that would be goal. I want them to get better education than I had (not difficult), have a better job, where they don’t have to leave their family months (years?) at a time to live a comfortable lifestyle. Most of the fuckups I knew were the “rich kids” too. That said, most of the very successful people I know were also the “rich kids”.  I won’t ever be able to afford them to be layabouts and whatnot when they are grown.  But I don’t want my grandkids to worry if they’ll be able to attend college either.  My ideal situation would be they grow up like the current generation, tremendous work ethnic at a young age and not saddled with some of the racial burdens (that were more prevalent) when we were growing up. 

[wildcat09 29355]

17 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

this mindset makes absolutely no sense to me, by the way.

of course i wouldn't be personally responsible for your family any more than you would be mine.

but at the same time, we are a fucking society. we should take care of each other. and you think we should not, based on what i'm reading here. 

fuck that. 

it wasn't the fucking drugs that killed her. that's the point you are missing, and i reckon that most people miss when people overdose. 

she was failed pretty close to birth. she needed help she couldn't get. my mom couldn't get her that help in the 80s. things might different today, but people deal with shit as well as they can. 

this idea that she could have worked harder. fuck you. she was slapped around by her dad, probably molested, though never proven, dealt with a divorce at 13-14, and tried to get through her life. my dad tried his best, but some problems cannot be solved.

perspective. get some of it. 

not everyone can be raised in a perfect world, and i'm sick of hearing it. 

The people who benefit the most from the fact that we live in a society are often the least willing to acknowledge that we live in a society or contribute to it.

Imagine working in an industry that is fully dependent on enormous public subsidies and requires advanced, stable societies to purchase its product and thinking you accomplished everything yourself. 

[hayden_horn 11362]

16 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

this mindset makes absolutely no sense to me, by the way.

of course i wouldn't be personally responsible for your family any more than you would be mine.

but at the same time, we are a fucking society. we should take care of each other. and you think we should not, based on what i'm reading here. 

fuck that. 

it wasn't the fucking drugs that killed her. that's the point you are missing, and i reckon that most people miss when people overdose. 

she was failed pretty close to birth. she needed help she couldn't get. my mom couldn't get her that help in the 80s. things might different today, but people deal with shit as well as they can. 

this idea that she could have worked harder. fuck you. she was slapped around by her dad, probably molested, though never proven, dealt with a divorce at 13-14, and tried to get through her life. my dad tried his best, but some problems cannot be solved.

perspective. get some of it. 

not everyone can be raised in a perfect world, and i'm sick of hearing it. 

for the record, i was raised in a kind of perfect world, all things considered, aside from bro and sis. my dad and mom really had my education in mind and pushed me in positive ways. so i'm just trying to juxtapose my pretty privileged experience with that of my brother and sister. it's just frustrating to hear that "well, just work hard" when that doesn't always work. "hey don't do drugs" when you got slapped around by your dad. "live your perfect life"

fuck yall. ain't nobody got a perfect life, but most of us do the best we can. i'm doing well. so is my brother. my sister is in the ground. "hey, just work hard." whatever.

i don't know why i'm so mad here. but it hit a nerve.

[hayden_horn 11362]

6 minutes ago, TurkeyChew said:

Agree with you; money solves problems. If you are born with it, your table stakes are a lot easier.

The point is that for the 80% of the population, ranging from poverty line and up-- do these basic things and you can be a self-sufficient American with a modicum of autonomy and comfort and barring unforeseen events like health or trauma, etc., you are likely to live a below-average-to-average life without being dependent on the U.S. Government.

If you born with privilege, sure you can fail and fail and fail and do drugs and pregnancy and go to jail and be a felon and get a face tattoo and storm the capital on 1/6 and all these other really really poor life decisions, and still have the same expectation for an average to below average life without being dependent on the U.S. Government because of your privilege. 

I would actually argue the only thing that is "B.S." about that heuristic quote is that it might be "ableist" in that able-bodied folks have a privilege above and beyond all of those who are born with disability or have health issues that render disability which is out of their control which can necessitate a dependency on the government despite all best intentions and abilities and basic income-earnings, etc.

horseshit.

once you are a felon, your race doesn't matter, you marketability is shit. it's over.

 

['stache 21819]

2 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

horseshit.

once you are a felon, your race doesn't matter, you marketability is shit. it's over.

 

[hayden_horn 11362]

Just now, 'stache said:

not sure what you are going for here.

my sister is dead because, in part, once she got out of prison, she couldn't find a real job.

she was brilliant. smarter than me. but she got caught with the wrong amount of meth and became a felon. and really, that was the end of her story even though there were years to come of struggling. 

[aggie08 21505]

Trying to get lifelong Republicans to admit that maybe, just maybe, they had a teensy bit of luck, good fortune, and built-in advantages that helped them get to where they are now is always so much fun.

 

[JimmyJames 12271]

Certain posters once again espousing their opinion that the reason the poor are poor is due to their own “poor choices.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so stupid. 
 

Like I’m sure many on this board I’ve got relatives who have made “poor choices” and are doing ok with some still wealthy anyway because they inherited a bunch of shit. 
 

It’s really past time to stop pretending America is just a meritocracy where the rich are smart who made good choices and the poor are dumb who made poor choices. In most instances wealth is inherited, like trump, not all of course.

[mchookem 16336]

i'm going to say something nice...

i appreciate both fattyflattie and TurkeyChew having actual discourse the past few pages, explaining their positions and how they reached their worldview. gave each of them a posrep for it.

i pretty much disagree completely lol, especially with fatty, but i appreciate the effort to have some actual discourse and it helps me understand how others think.

this is probably an unpopular opinion but i wish we had more posters like them in the CR, if for no other reason than having actual discussion and sharing viewpoints might be the only hope 'we' (the american collective) have to steer this fucking ship away from the iceberg that we seem hellbent on hitting 😕 maybe reading stories like hayden's plants a little seed of empathy somewhere, who knows.

anyways, it's a million times better and more valuable input than the straight trolling of Trey or Bravo or the fucking assholishness of Sack. just felt like it deserved some acknowledgement. 

i'll probably get kicked out of the cabal now...😋

 

['stache 21819]

2 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

not sure what you are going for here.

my sister is dead because, in part, once she got out of prison, she couldn't find a real job.

she was brilliant. smarter than me. but she got caught with the wrong amount of meth and became a felon. and really, that was the end of her story even though there were years to come of struggling. 

You made a blanket statement that is verifiably untrue. Many felons get second chances. You also mentioned race, and it is also verifiably untrue that it means nothing in the realm of who gets a second chance. I am sorry to hear that story about your sister, I only browsed the last page or so. 

[Chuckie Finster 22700]

1 minute ago, mchookem said:

i'm going to say something nice...

i appreciate both fattyflattie and TurkeyChew having actual discourse the past few pages, explaining their positions and how they reached their worldview. gave each of them a posrep for it.

i pretty much disagree completely lol, especially with fatty, but i appreciate the effort to have some actual discourse and it helps me understand how others think.

this is probably an unpopular opinion but i wish we had more posters like them in the CR, if for no other reason than having actual discussion and sharing viewpoints might be the only hope 'we' (the american collective) have to steer this fucking ship away from the iceberg that we seem hellbent on hitting 😕 maybe reading stories like hayden's plants a little seed of empathy somewhere, who knows.

anyways, it's a million times better and more valuable input than the straight trolling of Trey or Bravo or the fucking assholishness of Sack. just felt like it deserved some acknowledgement. 

i'll probably get kicked out of the cabal now...😋

 

second this.

[wildcat09 29355]

Fun little piece on why the success sequence (the academic term for the "finish high school, get a job, get married before you have kids" thing) is total bullshit:

Quote

Back in my Demos days, I wrote a dozen or so pieces about the Success Sequence that have unfortunately been lost to time. When I started People’s Policy Project four years ago, I wrote two (I, II) fresh pieces about it, but abandoned talking about the subject when interest seemed to wane. Last week, Bryan Caplan became the latest victim of the Success Sequence con, giving me an excuse to talk about one of my favorite subjects.

What Is the Success Sequence?
The Success Sequence (SS) is presented as a series of steps individuals can take that will ensure they have a very low poverty rate. Caplan describes the steps as follows:

Finish high school.
Get a full-time job once you finish school.
Get married before you have children.

If you read the SS literature, what you find very quickly is that every person who writes about it has a different definition of it. Caplan cites to Sawhill and Haskins (S&H) and then to Wang and Wilcox (W&W) as if they are both doing research on the same thing. But they aren’t.

To follow the S&H SS, you need to delay marriage until age 21 and delay child birth until age 21. But the same thing is not required for the W&W SS.

To be considered a full-time worker under the S&H SS, an individual needs to live in a family where the “family head” (a Census concept that was initially used to mean the man of the house, but then was changed to mean something more women-inclusive, but now just means whoever answers the survey questions) has to work 35+ hours a week and 40+ weeks a year. In the W&W SS, an individual is considered a full-time worker if they individually (1) worked 35+ hours a week and 50+ weeks a year or (2) are married and watching kids or (3) are in college.

The reason for these differences is that the SS is not some kind of time-immemorial wisdom about poverty. Up until the 1970s, the majority of US adults did not have a high school degree and a little less than half of women had their first child before the age of 21. Almost nobody in the history of the world has followed this sequence.

The SS is instead an ad-hoc way of expressing the authors’ personal cultural preferences at this moment in time. If educational attainment continues to rise, eventually college will replace high school in the SS, and if age of first birth continues to rise, so too will the SS-approved age of first birth. Indeed, I suspect that if S&H were writing their book today, their birth-delay rule would be set at age 25, as bourgeois culture is nowadays pretty disapproving of a 21-year-old having kids.

Even the differences between S&H and W&W reflect disagreements each of them have about culture. For instance, W&W do not believe in delaying childbirth while S&H are big supporters of it. In his other writing, Wilcox laments the fact that having children has come to be seen as a capstone rather than a cornerstone of adulthood. In her other writing, Sawhill advocates free IUDs for poor women. The precise content of the SS gives you more insight into the cultural views of the author than the causes of poverty.

The Success Sequence Excludes Two-Thirds of Poor People

If you are trying to understand where poverty comes from in a capitalist society, the Success Sequence is not going to help very much. This is because the SS analyses all begin by excluding the vast majority of poor people in the country. W&W only looks at one wave of individuals who are between the ages of 28 and 34, which obviously excludes the vast majority of the population as well as the vast majority of poor people.

You might give W&W a pass on this because of the data they are working with, but S&H’s analysis uses the CPS ASEC, which provides a sample of the entire population. They really could see where the poverty is coming from, but instead decide at the very beginning of their analysis to exclude from their consideration (1) families with elderly people in them, (2) families with disabled people in them, and (3) families where every member is below the age of 25.

In the 2019 ASEC, these exclusions remove 117.8 million people (36 percent of all people) from the population. More importantly, these exclusions remove 38.5 million people who are poor based on market income, which is 65 percent of all people who are poor based on market income.¹

This is not surprising of course as elderly people, disabled people, and students generally receive very little from factor payments, which is why they usually get benefits from the welfare state. What is surprising is an inquiry into the sources of poverty that starts by intentionally excluding these groups.

The Success Sequence Is Not A Sequence

Recall from above that Caplan’s version of the SS is:

Finish high school.
Get a full-time job once you finish school.
Get married before you have children.

This is presented as a sequence of steps that you can complete as if in a to-do list and then be assured you aren’t going to be in poverty. But finishing high school is the only step that can actually be crossed off a list. The full-time job and marriage prongs are actually current statuses not steps.

A person who finishes high school, gets a full-time job once they finish school, and then gets married before they have children is counted as following the success sequence until something unfortunate happens to them, at which point they are reclassified as not following the success sequence.

For instance, if someone who had otherwise been following the success sequence loses their job and falls into poverty as a result, this does not count as a success sequence follower who fell into poverty. Instead, in both S&H and W&W, this person’s job loss makes them fail the “work full time” rule and therefore moves them into the “did not follow the success sequence” bucket, which is then perversely used to prove how effective the success sequence is.

Similarly, if your spouse divorces you and you get custody of the kids and you fall into poverty as a result of the divorce, you get recategorized as not following the success sequence even if you checked off all the boxes in the prior years. Weirdly, the divorced parent who does not wind up with custody of the kids can actually be scored as following the success sequence in S&H because they show up in the ASEC as a childless unmarried person.

If your spouse dies, it appears that you would also show up as not following the SS in W&W, though spousal death is probably not too relevant for ages 28 through 34. In S&H, spousal death strangely does not get you recategorized as someone who did not follow the success sequence even though spousal divorce does. Death and divorce are of course functionally equivalent, except that an alive ex-spouse could transfer you some income while a dead spouse cannot. But, as discussed already above, these rules are not about poverty but about what the author approves of. S&H are sympathetic to widows but not to divorcees, so the former gets the SS nod while the latter does not.

Once you understand who the Success Sequence excludes from the analysis (elderly, disabled people, and students) and how it reclassifies people when they hit an economic bump (job loss, death of spouse, divorce, leaving the workforce to care for a family member), it becomes clear that the Success Sequence is just a data-cutting game, not a serious effort to address the causes of and solution to poverty.

Poverty Is Simple

The saddest thing about the SS is that, in trying to make poverty seem like a simple problem, it actually makes it way more complicated than it really is.

In a capitalist society, the national income is distributed using factor payments, i.e. payments to capital and labor. Capital income is extremely concentrated and so it is not a huge factor when it comes to keeping people out of poverty. Labor income is much less concentrated, but only half of the population receives labor income. The other half — children, elderly, disabled, students, caregivers, and the unemployed — do not work and are therefore almost entirely locked out of the direct distribution of income.

The percentage of people who are working varies a bit depending on the macroeconomic situation, but not that much. So at any given time, the challenge of poverty is just the challenge of moving money from the right side of the above graph to the left side of the above graph.

For the purposes of our poverty metrics, this challenge can be met by either (1) combining people on the right side of the graph in family units with people on the left side of the graph or (2) using the welfare state to transfer money from the right side of the graph to the left side of the graph.

From the perspective of an overall society, if you are trying to limit poverty solely through approach number one, what you want to do is match every worker with a nonworker and then combine as many of these worker-nonworker duos as you can into each family unit. The optimal family would be something like a unit with 10 workers and 10 nonworkers living together in a single dwelling. This ensures that each unit has the same 1:1 ratio of workers to nonworkers, ensures income from workers spreads to nonworkers, and ensures that economies of scale (which are reflected in poverty lines) are as high as possible.

In practice of course, family units are not that big and most of them do not have a 1:1 ratio of workers to nonworkers. Instead, nonworkers are distributed very unevenly across family units, as we can see in the graph below.

When nonworkers are spread very unevenly across family units, the necessary redistribution from workers to nonworkers doesn’t happen, and so you get high poverty. You could certainly try to rearrange workers and nonworkers across family units to fix this, but I don’t see any plausible policy for doing that and trying to get people to live with one another when they don’t really want to also seems a bit repugnant to me as a philosophical matter.

Rather than redistributing people across family units, the welfare state approach attacks the poverty problem by redistributing income across family units. By levying a tax on all workers in order to fund cash benefits for nonworkers (old-age pensions, disability benefits, child allowances, caregiver allowances, and unemployment benefits), the welfare state ensures that income from workers spreads to nonworkers regardless of the composition of each family unit. This approach effectively achieves the desired 1:1 worker to nonworker ratio across the entire society and, if sufficiently comprehensive and generous, brings poverty down to a very low level.

If we switch our perspective away from a society trying to avoid poverty and towards an individual trying to avoid poverty, the analysis from above also provides a pretty straightforward guide. The two rules of individual poverty avoidance are (1) maximize the number of workers in your family unit, (2) minimize the number of nonworkers in your family unit. Five workers is better than four, which is better than three, two, one, and zero. Likewise, zero nonworkers is better than one, which is better than two, three, four, and five.

Bringing workers into your family is not something that you can just snap your fingers and do. You’ll need to learn relationship-building skills, among other things. Avoiding nonworkers is something you have total control over though. To minimize your chance of poverty, you should not have kids and you should avoid living with elderly people, disabled people, unemployed people, and students, to name a few.

To the extent that the Success Sequence gestures towards anything that’s relevant to individual strategies for poverty avoidance, it only does so because it is tracking the two rules above.

For example, when the SS says marriage reduces poverty, it is just clumsily gesturing towards rule number one: maximize the number of workers in your family unit. Indeed, if you push Wilcox enough on this, he’ll eventually admit this. The problem of course is that marriage does not always increase the number of workers in your family unit, e.g. if you marry a disabled person, and so a general recommendation of it is a bit misleading. The other problem is that the logic of adding workers to your family to avoid poverty does not stop at adding one worker. If marriage is your way of adding workers to your family, then the SS should be promoting polygamous marriages.

In other cases, the SS leads you in exactly the wrong direction. For example, when it talks about when and under what circumstances you should have kids, it should instead be telling you to never have kids. Having kids violates rule number two — minimize the number of nonworkers in your family unit — and can only act to increase your risk of poverty by increasing the amount of money you must earn each year to stay above the poverty line.

I could go on, but I have already gone on too long. In sum, the SS is a wildly misleading data-cutting game that obscures the rather simple mechanics of poverty, both on a social and individual level. Someone who is writing a book on poverty that really wants to approach the issue in the emotionless way it deserves to be approached should not fall prey to such a half-baked just-so ruse.

 

And from a conservative/libertarian source:

Quote

Yet despite this evidence, I find that failure to follow the success sequence is ultimately unsatisfying as an explanation for poverty. At least I find an overreliance on this explanation among many conservative poverty scholars. (In fairness, I should admit that I have often made many of these arguments myself).

First, we need to recognize that correlation does not necessarily prove causation. While the evidence cited above demonstrates a robust statistical relationship between joblessness, low educational attainment, nonmarital childbearing, and poverty, a “chicken or the egg” problem makes assigning the weight of causality to one or the other unclear. Ownership of a private jet is even more strongly associated with financial success, yet that doesn’t mean jet ownership is what allowed these individuals to escape poverty. And we certainly shouldn’t blame the poor for the failure to pursue jet ownership.

For example, current scholarship appears to be shifting from a belief that getting pregnant outside of marriage pushes women into poverty toward the idea that poverty itself encourages women to engage in behavior that leads them to become pregnant outside of marriage.

The success sequence also ignores the circumstances in which the poor make choices. Our choices result from a complex process that is influenced at each step by a variety of outside factors. We are not perfectly rational actors, carefully weighing the likely outcomes for each choice. In particular, progressives are correct to point to the impact of racism, gender-based discrimination, and economic dislocation on the decisions that the poor make in their lives. Focusing on the choices and not the underlying conditions is akin to a doctor treating only the visible symptoms without dealing with the underlying disease.

There is no reason to believe that low-income Americans value work, marriage, or education less than those in the middle-class. Surveys of the poor regularly show that they want a job, marriage, and an education. However, they are also less likely to believe those goals are attainable or that they will benefit from them even if they achieve them.

And their expectations, or lack thereof, are not unreasonable given their life experiences. We should recognize that it is much easier to follow the success sequence in areas that have good schools, plentiful jobs, and a large pool of potential marriage partners than it is in many high poverty communities. As one social worker puts it, “When our clients don’t finish high school, it’s because their lives (or schools) have been chaotic, not because they don’t care. When our clients don’t have a job, it’s because they can’t find one or have other obligations, like caring for children. It’s not because they think joblessness is the path to middle-class stability.”[2]

People who just mindlessly buy into bullshit like the success sequence are just looking for some sort of way to rationalize their lack of empathy for other people.

[henrygandorf 29192]

can we all agree that the "don't get pregnant young, don't get hooked on drugs, finish high school" is absolutely an accurate roadmap, as long as you preface it with "born into some sort of comfortable-to-privileged situation"?

if you think that those 3 hoops are basically all you need to jump through to be successful in america, then your worldview is warped.

[JimmyJames 12271]

Also its been my experience that many of those who become independently super wealthy without inheriting it are just much more ruthless than the next guy and display many narcissistic tendencies (not as bad as trump of course).  
 

Think Gordon gekko. I don’t think society should admire or reward that but in America at least we do. 

[hayden_horn 11362]

2 minutes ago, 'stache said:

You made a blanket statement that is verifiably untrue. Many felons get second chances. You also mentioned race, and it is also verifiably untrue that it means nothing in the realm of who gets a second chance. I am sorry to hear that story about your sister, I only browsed the last page or so. 

define a second chance.

she was brilliant. i guess she could've bootstrapped her way back up changing oil or something.

her life was ruined. because of addiction. she never robbed anyone. she didn't kill anyone. she got caught with just a bit too much meth. and now she's dead. 

guess that's funny.

[Anastasis 23475]

Yea War on Drugs. Sorry to hear about your sister hayden. 

[henrygandorf 29192]

6 minutes ago, mchookem said:

i'm going to say something nice...

i appreciate both fattyflattie and TurkeyChew having actual discourse the past few pages, explaining their positions and how they reached their worldview. gave each of them a posrep for it.

i pretty much disagree completely lol, especially with fatty, but i appreciate the effort to have some actual discourse and it helps me understand how others think.

this is probably an unpopular opinion but i wish we had more posters like them in the CR, if for no other reason than having actual discussion and sharing viewpoints might be the only hope 'we' (the american collective) have to steer this fucking ship away from the iceberg that we seem hellbent on hitting 😕 maybe reading stories like hayden's plants a little seed of empathy somewhere, who knows.

anyways, it's a million times better and more valuable input than the straight trolling of Trey or Bravo or the fucking assholishness of Sack. just felt like it deserved some acknowledgement. 

i'll probably get kicked out of the cabal now...😋

 

so what i'm hearing here is that:

wealthy people = rose

poor people = jack

that movie works on so many levels.

['stache 21819]

1 minute ago, hayden_horn said:

define a second chance.

she was brilliant. i guess she could've bootstrapped her way back up changing oil or something.

her life was ruined. because of addiction. she never robbed anyone. she didn't kill anyone. she got caught with just a bit too much meth. and now she's dead. 

guess that's funny.

Again, I browsed and didn't see that there was a specific context. But in general, the blanket statement that second chances don't happen and that race doesn't matter isn't true. That's what I was responding to. I would never take humor in that type of personal struggle.

[hayden_horn 11362]

2 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

can we all agree that the "don't get pregnant young, don't get hooked on drugs, finish high school" is absolutely an accurate roadmap, as long as you preface it with "born into some sort of comfortable-to-privileged situation"?

if you think that those 3 hoops are basically all you need to jump through to be successful in america, then your worldview is warped.

it's a fucking 1950s donna reed bullshit situation. even then, they knew it was bullshit, but it was kinda true. get that high school diploma, work at the factory, don't knock up your girl (because she has no fucking agency) and don't do drugs.

it's fucking 2022. let's get real.

[JimmyJames 12271]

6 minutes ago, mchookem said:

 

i'll probably get kicked out of the cabal now...😋

 

Your zoom invite to the meeting next week has already been rescinded.

[hayden_horn 11362]

2 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

so what i'm hearing here is that:

wealthy people = rose

poor people = jack

that movie works on so many levels.

ok, i've done enough vitriol on this thread, but this is over the fucking top. you can't bring that movie into this context. i'll fight you. haha.

[hayden_horn 11362]

3 minutes ago, 'stache said:

Again, I browsed and didn't see that there was a specific context. But in general, the blanket statement that second chances don't happen and that race doesn't matter isn't true. That's what I was responding to. I would never take humor in that type of personal struggle.

also, thanks for this. i've been a bit unhinged this morning about this topic.

[mdmost 43004]

5 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

ok, i've done enough vitriol on this thread, but this is over the fucking top. you can't bring that movie into this context. i'll fight you. haha.

I want you to draw me like one of your French girls, hayden

[TurkeyChew 383]

31 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

horseshit.

once you are a felon, your race doesn't matter, you marketability is shit. it's over.

 

Unless you are wealthy or have wealth/familial privilege. Which was my point.

Plenty of felons can still be average earners through nepotism, etc.

edit to add, also see that Henry made the same point. You can't have that heuristic quote without acknowledging there is privilege baked into it

Edited January 25, 2022 by TurkeyChew

[Beantown Express 2.0 6559]

12 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

can we all agree that the "don't get pregnant young, don't get hooked on drugs, finish high school" is absolutely an accurate roadmap, as long as you preface it with "born into some sort of comfortable-to-privileged situation"?

if you think that those 3 hoops are basically all you need to jump through to be successful in america, then your worldview is warped.

It’s ridiculous isn’t it?  We all know the 3 keys to making it in this world are, “Lord loves a working man, don’t trust whitey, and if you catch it see a doctor and get rid of it.”

[hayden_horn 11362]

1 minute ago, TurkeyChew said:

Unless you are wealthy or have wealth/familial privilege. Which was my point.

Plenty of felons can still be average earners through nepotism, etc.

well, we had some of that. not wealth. not really too much privilege, but my mom was a badass. still didn't work. 

[hayden_horn 11362]

Just now, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

It’s ridiculous isn’t it?  We all know the 3 keys to making it in this world are, “Lord loves a working man, don’t trust whitey, and if you catch it see a doctor and get rid of it.”

and this is shit, and this is shinola, which was a favorite of my dad's.

[wildcat09 29355]

12 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

can we all agree that the "don't get pregnant young, don't get hooked on drugs, finish high school" is absolutely an accurate roadmap, as long as you preface it with "born into some sort of comfortable-to-privileged situation"?

if you think that those 3 hoops are basically all you need to jump through to be successful in america, then your worldview is warped.

It's not a roadmap at all though. See my links above. It's not even a simple case of confusing correlation and causation, the data itself is cherrypicked to sell a lie.