As I write this, there are just a small number of comments, all saying "there's no money in research" and "scientists are paid less than McDonald's burger flipper". It's like a whole section of disgruntled grad students who wanted to be professors. There is tons of money in science! People who "fail out" of or never wanted to pursue the stupid academic dream become active in patent law, become managers at pharma and biomed companies, oversee quality control at chemical firms, write documentation for medical devices, run labs, work as lab techs. These are all good jobs compared to the jobs the majority of Americans are qualified for.
Seems like HN has a very warped view, this view that "there's no money in research" means some poor kid is better off flipping burgers into her 50s than becoming a lab manager.
I would warn your optimism however, my wife is a lab manager (performs research, publishes, ostensibly as involved in the science as any PHD) but I would by no stretch of the word say she makes "good money"; both of us made more back when we were service workers. The perception in her group is that the positions that pay even close to tech (some of the ones you list, manager at pharma company etc) are almost paramount if not more difficult to e.g. getting a manager position at google. If you're not top of the pile material, good fucking luck. (and you'll likely have some very high expectations to get there, PHD+extensive research the minima of, which again unlike tech, are less able to be fulfilled while making good money as well, and typically require more upfront investment)
I would say that in my experience the closer you get to science (or the further from money, perhaps?) the harder good money is to come by. (Left an academic tech position myself a while back; tripled my salary overnight)
Wages are higher in technology compared to the sciences because productivity is higher due to greater automation. The sciences may see wage increases in the future as research tools become more automated. Whether the skill sets remain the same is not so sure; manual wet lab work will always be inefficient compared to a programmer controlling an array of robotic lab devices.
> Whether the skill sets remain the same is not so sure; manual wet lab work will always be inefficient compared to a programmer controlling an array of robotic lab devices.
I've already seen this happening in certain labs. It can be an odd experience walking into an empty lab. In one particular bio lab, they employed one particularly talented tech who knew how to do experiments that weren't yet being done by robots. The other guys were all programmers or doing bioinformatics. They're all well-paid and getting papers in NEJM, Nature, Cell, etc. (I didn't get the job :-/ )
It's definitely true that getting the manager at pharma company type jobs are hard to get, and lab managers are not paid super well. But: a clinical research manager has an average salary of about $94k in the US, while web developer not otherwise specified has an average salary of about $66k in the US. Restaurant manager comes down to $37k on average, Bath & Body Works retail manager comes up to $54k. Glassdoor lists a bunch of lab manager jobs at $51k to $65k. The average salary for a black man in the US is about $35k and the average salary for a white man in the US is about $48k [1]. Every science-related job in the list is above the average salary for white, black, or hispanic men in the US, and certainly above average for women. Retail and food service fall on either side -- and which jobs are more likely to have health insurance?
What kind of jobs did you have experience with before lab manager? I'm curious.
- you're comparing what seems to be highly skilled vs. more unskilled labor; (as well as more typically PHD requiring vs not) which if anything seems to support my point given that frankly the pays are similar enough. (at least compared to the delta you'd make using higher education to go into industry)
- clinical managers (general lab managers as well, fwiw) are actually far more to the administrative side than the experimental side so it does not seem surprising that it biases upwards compared to pure researchers.
Jobwise, for myself, I built solutions for an astrophysics research group, hers was in applied psychology for certain classes of severely impaired patients.
The comparison between skilled and more unskilled labor is intentional; the article was about training in science. Many posters seem to argue below that science training does not lead to better-paying jobs, and thus it is not important that poverty and social background are barriers to science training/doing science. A science degree in general requires more training than a business degree or a communications degree, and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are disproportionately ending up in "general studies," communications, business, etc., which often lead to jobs like restaurant manager (and don't lead to admin jobs in science).
Maybe the difference between how I see it and what you're pointing out in your two points is that "failing out" or stepping out of pure science research into science industry/admin preserves or increases pay, while "failing out" or stepping out of business or communications leads mostly to unskilled jobs which pay poorly. The expected value of a job after a science degree is higher, because there are more good paths (even if some don't pay super-well).
> The comparison between skilled and more unskilled labor is intentional.
Don't you need to "condition" on aptitude and ability then? A person capable of getting into a decent PhD program would probably also be able to get into a solid medical or law program. At the undergrad level, that might mean a nursing degree (APRN or something) instead of a bachelors' in biology.
The science degree is not particularly lucrative at either level.
Also, I think you're flipping the causality around in other people's arguments: they seem to be claiming that pushing science degrees is not a particularly effective way of addressing poverty.
Of course there is tons of money in science. But it does not go towards scientists.
Some of my friends have PhDs in oceanography. Most of them are working in the lab, cutting fish (sampling) for minimal wage.
They are not even permanent employees, but on sliding contract extended every 6 months. Every 4.5 years they have to take one year break, because after 5 years they would become permanent employees.
Half empty building they work in has price tag over 200M euro (30M would do). Institute has over 60% non scientific stuff (all permanent of course). For example 10% of people are in HR, my corporation had 0.5% people in HR.
And if you studied 10+ years to write documentation which only needs 3 years degree... That is lot of wasted time and money.
What you described, where the money is at, is commonly referred to as "industry" and yes it is "science" oriented but pursuit of profit definitely changes the dynamic away from academic pursuit of advancement of the human species that, more often than not, results in failed outcomes rather than something that can make money. Who are you to judge and deride the "stupid academic dream" from which all those industries have their genesis? The reason there are loud and worthwhile voices critical of what "business mentalities" have done to cheapen the profession and academic nature of research, and consistently "privitize" the results of partnerships done in academic settings. If the industry wasn't so "warped" as it is now, then maybe the view being shared here wouldn't reflect that. Going "Rah rah join the dick-pill-selling-company-brigade" is fine if that's what you want to do, but that's not really science with a capital S.
There are people in business trying to advance our species and there are people in academia trying to burnish their prestige, make money, and get a job you can't be fired from.
Well, the entire institution of business has an explicit profit motive and academia has an explicit knowledge motive, so while there may be misguided individuals in either pursuit, that doesn't sully the previous poster's point.
Academia's primary product is credentialing, not knowledge. If knowledge were the product they would bill for knowledge, but they don't, they bill for credentials.
Yep, it goes to the cost of doing research, paying the CEO and VPs, marketing, etc. Industry positions pay vastly better than academia, but still quite poorly relative to the amount of work and expertise needed.
No--one of the reasons it's not a more accessible path is because it pays so poorly. Science funding doesn't follow a normal supply and demand framework; money isn't sent to scientists by customers in exchange for the benefits they provide, but by hopeful non-profit agencies giving as much as they can without expecting tangible return. There's a set pool of money to draw from (and that pool is drying up, as funding for the NIH et al. decreases) which means you can either have a small number of well-paid scientists or lots of poorly paid ones. There are societal benefits to lots of scientists, so we're all trying to be okay with pure research as a path you can only go into if you don't have large debts to repay.
The way science is currently set up, the only people who can take unpaid "research experience" positions etc. in undergrad that have a huge impact on their career trajectories are people who know the bills are being paid some other way.
You have reached the point. I, myself, in a public University in Brazil, still have concerns about the money I'll have to afford bus tickets. Some students even own a car!, of course most of them have "unpaid" positions because they won't suffer in their social lifes if they aren't paid. Thanks for getting the point.
This argument is circular: the "oversupply" isn't relative to the market's ability to pay, it's relative (broadly speaking) to the amount the government is willing to spend on the positive externality of available research. If the marginal output of a new scientist is low due to "lack of things to discover" instead of "lack of funding", _then_ you can talk about an oversupply. I've yet to see any evidence that this is the case, and it certainly would be somewhat ahistorical for the hard sciences.
By (imperfect) analogy, what you're saying is equivalent to looking at our crumbling infrastructure, lack of investment in infrastructure, and high unemployment among construction workers and saying "the problem here is an oversupply of construction workers".
You're right that it's possible, in theory, to increase funding to the point that everyone who is capable of and wiling to be a research scientist makes a competitive salary.
However, in this case, the oversupply is so obscenely high [1] that you would have to allocate something like a fourth of the economy (roughly all government funding at all levels) in order to exhaust the supply and pay it the no-labor-of-love wage (i.e. a significant premium over the typical bachelor-educated labor).
(By the same analogy, imagine if we had pressured every schoolchild to go into construction. In that case, you would be correct that we're underinvesting in infra, but it would still be a correct to say that we over-pressured kids in the wrong direction, and that the correct level of funding would still not exhaust the supply of underemployed construction workers, and they would still need to find a better use of their skills.)
But I also think there is a case to be made that "things to discover" (through this mode) is being exhausted; it shows up as the "replication crisis" you may have heard of in the social sciences, where all the results fail to replicate because of so many people looking for whatever effect they can find and this inundates the system with false positives because it's the best they can get.
(Do you believe the above arguments remove the circularity, even if perhaps still insufficiently substantiated?)
[1] every schoolchild being taught they they need to educate themselves to the level of "prerequisites for grad school", while also receiving a lot of "advertising" for going to grad school
Thanks for clarifying, I understand your position a lot better. I no longer find it circular, but I still disagree with a lot of your assumptions.
TL;DR: I (and IMO this thread) was speaking of hard sciences, not social sciences: there doesn't seem to be nearly as much of a replicability issue due to people starving for discoveries (there are still process improvements to be made, however). As such, the only bottleneck I've seen evidence of (in the hard sciences) is funding. I do of course think it's possible to fund science _too_ well, I just think that what evidence there is doesn't imply that we're on the point on the curve where excess funding is the problem. The "oversupply" in hard sciences is only relative to the choked-off funding, not to any reality-grounded assessment of the value of further research (and researchers).
I did think the social sciences would come up and considered clarifying that I was speaking exclusively of the hard sciences; I assumed from the conversation about "science careers" that we weren't talking about the majority of the social sciences (I don't think sociology/economics/etc are commonly held to be "science careers").
When you're saying that 1/4 of the economy would be necessary, I'm not sure if you're basing that on the situation where every schoolchild thinks they need to go to grad school? Frankly, I don't think this assumption is reasonable: I don't think the current system even encourages that. Universal undergrad is heavily encouraged, but culturally, grad school still remains very much discretionary. Hell, the last three generations of my family have been thick with advanced degrees on both sides, and I still didn't end up getting one (though it's certainly possible in the future).
I think we've reduced our disagreement to something too intractable for HN, except for this point, which I want to to clarify.
>I'm not sure if you're basing that on the situation where every schoolchild thinks they need to go to grad school? Frankly, I don't think this assumption is reasonable: I don't think the current system even encourages that. Universal undergrad is heavily encouraged, but culturally, grad school still remains very much discretionary.
My point was that grad school "overuse" is tightly coupled to undergrad "overuse" -- colleges are dominated by professors that think highly of post-grad education ("hey, it worked for me!") and will therefore overpromote that as an option. Therefore, overpromotion of college will translate to a saturation of grad school (and jobs with grad-school prerequisites), even if policy "only" encourages undergrad; this is where I think we are today.
> it shows up as the "replication crisis" you may have heard of in the social sciences
The "replication crisis" is not focused in the social sciences; its a name for a problem across the sciences, and is of particularly acute concern in medicine.
Because love of knowledge and learning are weaknesses in a capitalist society. Where there is love, there is a willingness to sacrifice for the love. Where there is a willingness to sacrifice, there is a cost that can be cut.
The scientists are in it for love. The people who have the money understand that the scientists will do it practically for free if they had to-- and so, they have to.
So there is no possible way that the issues could be related.
It's only that stupid social justice that makes people talk about demographics and socio economics as we all know. There is no other reason to look into it...
Man, wish I could find the link - I had read something probably 10 years ago that discussed the abnormally high number of independently wealthy people in academia and research. Makes sense given how expensive it is and how infrequently it nets positive ROI.
A big part of science are 'ideas', and ideas are interesting things in Human culture. To be the 'idea person' in a social group requires considerable social status. I see so many people in corporations battling to have their ideas win. I see so many people of higher status claiming ownership of the ideas of those 'beneath' them. I see plenty of great ideas being ignored because of who proposes them. And, it's very rare to see an outsider's idea gain influence.
They say that execution matters much more than ideas - but they go hand-in-hand. The person who gets to execute also gets to choose the idea.
Given the comparitive physical weakness of the Human, 'the idea' is their number one weapon and asset. It enables power. So, there are probably a lot of social reasons why most lower-status (lower income) people are kept out of science and research. It's probably more of a systematic result of Human behavior than just being poor.
I'd like to go get a PhD and teach, but it pays less than half of what I make as a software dev. I wish I could somehow teach science & tech and also make money.
You can teach adjunct at a local city or community college. People with your kind of skills are in demand, I'm sure they'd love to have you, even if just a few hours per week. And no PhD required.
Studies have shown a major factor in young people's likeliness of going into science is whether their families think highly of science and science careers (regardless of parents' education levels). I'd imagine the ivory-tower nature of science can contribute a class divides in this respect as well.
I don't know what anyone else's story is, but for myself, everything was given to me by my parents. We weren't exactly rich, but I was certainly privileged. Whatever I asked for, I got. So, when a university education was given to me, I thought I could just "follow my dream" and not concern myself too much with making an income, because why should I? Making an income had never seemed like a concern, so I studied pure mathematics.
When my father died and my personal gold mine with him, I had to drop out of mathematics (which I was half-assing anyway), find a way to make money, and here I am now: software developer.
> when a university education was given to me, I thought I could just "follow my dream" and not concern myself too much with making an income, because why should I? Making an income had never seemed like a concern, so I studied pure mathematics.
Are you talking about your math undergrad degree, or graduate degree? Pure math is perhaps a bad example here: in my experience, damn near every high paying field is glad to see a math degree (including seemingly unrelated fields like law, medicine, etc). I've done really well in tech and my math degree (both on paper and in practice) has contributed a lot to that success.
A math graduate degree is a little less of a definite pay-off, but I had a math PhD under me at Google who got hired in with no engineering experience whatsoever at something like 200k/yr. It took him about six months of a bit of handholding but he ended up being one of my most dependably talented people.
Sure, I got jobs programming, but not jobs doing math. It was good enough to wave the degree around to impress people, but the actual stuff I learned was utterly irrelevant to programming. I could have studied chess and still gotten programming jobs, if only they gave out chess degrees and people admired chess.
I wanted to keep doing math and that's why I was having a hard time finding money.
Oh gotcha, I misunderstood you as saying that finishing a math degree wouldn't be worth the financial investment.
FWIW, I kept my eye on the ball and five years after finishing undergrad I mostly have work that's heavy in math but is still as lucrative (more actually) than a programming job. It's not a guarantee, but if you like it enough and try to point each step forward towards doing more math, it's definitely possible. I did get other degrees during undergrad though, so that probably shaped the opportunities available to me.
the easier kids have it during childhood, the harder the reality hits later (if ever). some frugality in upbringing instead of just throwing money on them to compensate lack of time spent with them goes much, much longer way
I get what you're trying to say but I just want to point out that reality still probably hits harder when life was always hard.
Growing up with nothing into an adulthood with no support network and few prospects, where our society blames you for being in that situation, is a harder draw than being taken care of until you're halfway through college then having to find your own way.
There is frugality based on necessity and there is frugality based on considering it a positive character trait. When necessity is dominant, the other kind of frugality rarely happens.
The former quickly breaks down in presence of money, but it is a great enabler for financial risk-taking. ("worst thing that can happen is that I have to go back to ramen", call it scalability of personal finances, if you like).
The latter is quite the opposite, it seeks financial peace of mind and will take stability over opportunity any time. People with this mindset will tend to find the solid, but not stellar pay scale of science rather attractive. Self selection happens.
I came from a well-to-do family and well... my parents pushed me to go into medicine/finance/science, partially because they perceived those industries as making a lot of money and for the prestige. Science might not be as lucrative as finance/medicine, but in my circles, people certainly respect an intellectual scientist more than they do a lowly designer (me!).
I went into tech as a designer before the wave hit largely because I love computers and the digital medium. They opposed it because of the uncertainty of the industry ("How do you make money as a designer?") but supported me financially while I went through college. Long story short I was able to help make a lucrative company in SV.
I guess to answer your question, I very well could've gone into science because of my parents and well, the prestige.
When? How was the economy when you chose your career? Today, in a very uncertain economy with lots of parents not finding work (western Canada), high school kids look at research as a hobby that won't allow them to support a family.
I pushed my daughter to go to a two-day university bio discovery thing, she absolutely loved it, but said that all the research assistants confirm they can't afford to live and most of them are thinking of dropping into the industry so they can stop asking their parents to help paying the rent.
Isn't it a well-known phenomenon that the children of well-to-do parents often end up in the arts and other fields with high cultural capital? Having money allows you to not worry about money.
I was talking high end of middle class where kids will have to support themselves eventually. I think you're talking rich people where your "career" won't impact your standard of living (because of parents wealth).
Nope, not at all, talking about upper middle class folks. You're right that it doesn't necessarily make sense because the children will eventually have to take care of themselves, but it is what it is.
I'm not at all surprised by this. A similar phenomenon exists in many other fields and areas of life. Those who have a solid financial support system are simply more likely to be able to commit themselves more deeply to whatever they focus on.
This has been the case for centuries: the wealthy simply have always had more means to do more things.
> I'm actually surprised well-off students choose science over well-paying careers given that it is well known that there is no money in research.
Most of them don't. But not everybody is materialistic or subject to social pressure.
Actually, what annoys me the most as a professor isn't the (comparatively) low salary but the lack of recognition. My family always blames me for not pursuing a more lucrative path and don't understand what I do and what purpose it serves.
I'd rather get paid below market value (considering either my current career path or an alternate I could have chosen) and do interesting work every day than get paid a lot and work long hours doing something I hate.
My father made the opposite choice and regrets it every day now that his career is coming to a close.
>>I'd rather get paid below market value (considering either my current career path or an alternate I could have chosen) and do interesting work every day than get paid a lot and work long hours doing something I hate.
It's important to note that the spectrum you laid out has two other "corners". Many PhDs do mind-numbingly boring work, even if it's original research, while getting paid a pittance.
Conversely, there are many ways to do fascinating, intellectually vigorous and challenging work every day with only a Bachelor's or Master's qualification while getting rich.
> Many PhDs do mind-numbingly boring work, even if it's original research
There's a second trade-off here too.
PhD/Postdocs do stuff that's mind-numbingly boring at a "micro" level (e.g., actually performing most experiments), but really exciting at a macro level (e.g., figuring out how the brain--or the Sun--works). In industry, there's often the opposite opportunity: exciting day-to-day work for uninteresting goals, like using state-of-the-art machine learning (fun!) to figure out whether a webpage should show a Papa John's or Pizza Hut ad (meh).
> I'm actually surprised well-off students choose science
If you have a trust fund waiting for you, you can pursue idealistic dreams of changing the world rather than worrying about what will be most likely to leave you with enough money to eat.
Poverty and social background remain huge barriers in all highly educated fields except for computer science/development/sysadmin.
We're very much the exception not the norm. As much as my mother believed I could be anything I would not be able to drag myself through university even without external factors pushing me down and throwing me around like a sack of meat.. for years..
We're _better_ than other fields, but definitely not an exception. I grew up in a formerly upper upper middle class family that didn't have very much money due to medical and mental health issues. I'm only ~5 years out of uni but my success at every point in my education and career so far made it credible to me that credentialism and reliance on personal connections wasn't a significant factor in tech careers (as opposed to merit).
But it's recently become pretty clear to me that all the best opportunities I've ever been exposed to were through connections, and not all of those connections are attributable purely to merit. Had I not had these, I would be doing pretty well on merit, but the fact that I'm doing extraordinarily well is due to the fact that I got opportunities that many others never even had a shot at. About half of these were from family and friends, which has almost nothing to do with revealed merit. The other half was from smart classmates in my CS program, which is a little more correlated with merit. But it's not a coincidence that most of the people in my friend group were somehow similarly upper middle class. I had a really talented, smart friend group, but it's hard to imagine that coming from a similar background didn't have any affect on how easily we got along.
From the article:
> Last year, Christina Quasney was close to giving up. A biochemistry major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Quasney's background was anything but privileged.
People with little family money get free grants and low-interest government backed loans to attend college. She is attending a public university. In NYC, there are many students that are attending City University of New York and I meet some. They are studying biology, engineering, and other sciences. They generally but not always live at home.
The annual tuition and fees are less than $7000 and for transportation, the MTA subway/bus is $115 per month, unlimited rides.
Students like those mentioned in the article get Pell Grants and Stafford government backed low-interest loans.
Pell Grants are $5,800 per year.
Stafford Loans are 5,500 the first year, 6,500 the second year, and $7,500 for the remaining years.
In my particular case, I paid for 90% of tuition/housing/living expenses by programming computers beginning in high school. I was not eligible for Pell Grants nor any form of loans including Stafford Loans.
So, I really don't understand these arguments. Public universities provide a first class low-cost undergraduate education and of course have PhD programs and so on.
Once one has an undergraduate degree with good grades, in the sciences and engineering, if they are admitted to a PhD program so they are fully funded for both tuition and housing.
> I paid for 90% of tuition/housing/living expenses by programming computers beginning in high school.
It's commendable that OP did this - that's great and plenty of people have squandered their gifts unlike him.
However, just because funding is available doesn't mean people aren't at a disadvantage due to their situation.
Does OP really believe that you're on equal ground if you:
- Live in a ghetto, often with an stressed-out, overworked single Mom.
- Go to a shit school without adequate fucking literacy education - let alone programming classes.
- Have no family / friends who have professional jobs.
- Often fear for your physical and financial safety.
- You don't have a computer / internet at home.
This breads a very difficult kind of scarcity to dig yourself out of, and we need programs to help these kids get out. Cash is great, but not sufficient.
You can't easily fix a broken culture from the outside. All people need to be treated equally, above all else, including race, gender, beliefs, and economic status (yes). I simply think it is unfair to nullify and demean the good work that hard-working individuals have done. By claiming that their position in life is a product of "privilege" or their parent's privilege, and simply giving those that did not do said hard work a free pass and cash.
Those are the beliefs, uncomfortable or not, and as is often the case with this type of topic, they are the products of a fundamentally different view of the world. I am not here to fix cosmic injustices using further injustice, nor do I want my tax money going towards it either.
Putting your ideological motivations aside, how do programs promoting home computer ownership or basic literacy (with the ultimate aim of getting people up to par in literacy, before encouraging development in the sciences) in impoverished areas "nullify and demean the good work that hard-working individuals have done"? There's no logical connection there, nor any sort of free pass being offered.
Furthermore, the implication that people in poverty are any less "hard-working" than those that have achieved financial success/accessibility to the sciences seems like a claim that needs some citations. Quick Google searches suggest that escaping poverty with children would actually require working more than 40-hours a week. Seems like a catch-22 for trying to achieve financial, familial and educational success. [1]
Furthermore, the implication that people in poverty are any less "hard-working" than those that have achieved financial success/accessibility to the sciences seems like a claim that needs some citations
60% of poor adults (age 18-64) don't work at all. In contrast, 81% of non-poor adults do. 58% of non-poor adults worked full time year round, whereas only 11% of poor adults did.
Why is this a remotely controversial claim, as opposed to simply standard knowledge that all educated people know? Would you also require a citation that proves Trump is a Republican, or that rich people don't commit much violent crime?
> > Furthermore, the implication that people in poverty are any less "hard-working" than those that have achieved financial success/accessibility to the sciences seems like a claim that needs some citations
> 60% of poor adults (age 18-64) don't work at all. In contrast, 81% of non-poor adults do.
I'm having trouble believing that it is possible to make an argument that % of people in a group who are employed is a good representation of the degree to which people in the group are hardworkers seriously, no matter what the group in question is.
But when its poor vs. non-poor -- that is, when the groups are divided up by an attribute which is fairly strongly influenced by whether or not you have the income derived from a job -- its even harder to believe.
> Why is this a remotely controversial claim, as opposed to simply standard knowledge that all educated people know?
That poor people are less likely to be employed is not a controversial claim, nor was it the claim at issue. That they are less "hard-working" was the claim at issue, which is not one which can be resolved by looking at the degree to which they are employed.
(To get that number, I took 10.5M in labor force / (45.3M poor people - 16M poor children).)
So yes, I think it's fair to characterize a group of people who don't work, and aren't even looking for work, as "less hard working" than a group that disproportionately is working.
What does "hard working" mean to you? And why do you believe poor people are comparably hard working to the non-poor?
> Here is data suggesting most poor people aren't looking for work - only 35% of poor adults were in the labor force:
Lower labor force participation could mean they are less hard working -- or it could mean that they have less opinion of their ability to be gainfully employed, or it could mean that working has a high cost (because, e.g., they have children to take care of, childcare isn't free, and the jobs they could reasonably secure wouldn't provide a net gain before considering child care that's enough to pay for childcare.)
Or lots of other things.
> What does "hard working" mean to you?
Willing to expend effort to improve one's condition, essentially.
> And why do you believe poor people are comparably hard working to the non-poor?
I haven't argued that they are. I've argued that the evidence that you've presented to prove that they are not has virtually no probative value on the point it is offered to support.
Willing to expend effort to improve one's condition, essentially.
It's true - I can't rule out that the poor aren't sitting at home praying for a job while taking no action to find one.
But what I've presented is strong evidence that the poor are not hard working.
Suppose your prior is P(!hardworking) = A, P(working) = B, P(looking for work) = C, P(hard work in non-labor force activities) = D. Of course, A + B + C + D must add up to 1.
I've just shown B and C to be false. So P(!hardworking|evidence I've presented) = A / (A + D) > A. Feel free to tweak this and try a more complicated model, I don't think you'll get a different result.
What evidence - if any - would cause you to acknowledge that the poor actually aren't hardworking?
(because, e.g., they have children to take care of, childcare isn't free, and the jobs they could reasonably secure wouldn't provide a net gain before considering child care that's enough to pay for childcare.)
Strangely, poor Indians have solved this problem. One poor person looks after multiple children while the others work. But poor Indians, unlike poor Americans, are actually hard working.
> Strangely, poor Indians have solved this problem. One poor person looks after multiple children while the others work
If done outside of the formal economy, that would produce, ceteris paribus, lower labor-force participation among the poor, which is, surprise-surprise, exactly the result you said indicated that American poor are not hard working.
So, thank you for illustrating one of the reasons your "evidence" doesn't justify the conclusion you've drawn from it.
It illustrates nothing of the sort. Some simple numbers.
Suppose that the 65% of poor adults who aren't in the labor force decided to enter into such an arrangement. Then 3 of them would work (or look for work) while the 4'th watched their children. The labor force participation rate of the poor would increase from 35% to 83.75%.
Can you name any piece of evidence or measurement which would cause you to believe the poor are not hardworking? Or is your doubt more religious in nature?
Your simple numbers are, frankly, meaningless and stupid. They assume that childcare is the only reason poor people are ever out of the labor force, for starters.
If you assume thatpoor people are more likely to have to resort to mutual aid outside the formal economy for that while non-poor people are more likely to be able to be either consumers or suppliers (or both) of childcare in the formal economy and that is the only factor affecting differences in labor force participation between the groups (which is, no doubt, an oversimplification), then you'd expect -- no matter what the mutual aid ratio is -- a lower labor force participation rate for the poor.
If you more generally assume that this is hardly unique, and that regulatory costs force those with less means out of the formal economy in other ways, you'd expect the labor force participation rate of the poor to be even further depressed.
> Can you name any piece of evidence or measurement which would cause you to believe the poor are not hardworking?
I'm not convinced that the character trait of "hard-workingness" has a good objectively-measurable proxy, but then since I'm not the one making a positive claim about it, its not my obligation to present and justify a valid measure of the trait.
> Or is your doubt more religious in nature?
False dichotomy much? Thinking you are making a positive fact claim about something for which no good objective evidence exists and which, while it might in principle be measurable, it is unlikely that objective evidence could exist in practice, isn't a "religious" objection -- if anything, its skepticism that you are making what is essentially a claim of a religious nature (that is, one that is held as true statement of material fact about the world without being either objectively justified nor even necessarily practically objectively justifiable.)
Yes, they probably do. Crime victimization surveys (e.g. the NCVS) strongly suggest that blacks do, in fact, commit a lot more violent crimes than other groups.
Since you seem to believe there is some confounding factor that causes the census to incorrectly count the number of poor people who work, feel free to expand on it.
> I simply think it is unfair to nullify and demean the good work that hard-working individuals have done. By claiming that their position in life is a product of "privilege" or their parent's privilege, and simply giving those that did not do said hard work a free pass and cash.
And here it is - you think those who didn't have the same benefits as you and me (presumably) are takers who want "a free pass" and "cash".
What's missing in your diatribe is the fact that what everyone wants is opportunity or even a chance of opportunity. Not a handout - most people just want a fair break.
First, we can look at the past or other countries. Either the US 1950's or the top 10% of India consists of people who live in what we call "poverty" in 2016 USA.
Second, we can take good people, drop them into poverty, and watch what happens. For example, take an upper middle class 22 year old, drop them into the poverty of graduate school, and check whether they go bad.
Both of these are ways of letting the people vary, but holding the economic stimulus constant.
From what I've seen, both groups are extremely reluctant to engage in violence. When I was in grad school, even the 10'th year graduate students ("lifers") did not start robbing people or beating their wives! Also, very interestingly, both groups rarely stay poor for long when placed in the US.
Grad students have job security, health insurance, physical security, and good job prospects upon graduation. It's not really a fair comparison to, say, a part time minimum wage job at home depot, even if the take-home pay is similar. The tax ramifications of graduate school are usually pretty good too, so the money goes further than the salary numbers would indicate.
There's also a big difference between being low paid in a generally high paid cultural group vs being in a generally low paid cultural group, in terms of social safety net and psychological climate.
In terms of goods and services consumed, grad school was definitely comparable to poverty. Insofar as it differs it's by perhaps a few thousand dollars/year.
Are you suggesting that if we took poor Americans, but gave them health care an extra couple of thousand $/year, that they would suddenly reduce their crime levels to that of graduate students? I feel like this can be tested by comparing the generosity of various state-level welfare programs.
Or again, by looking it (very poor) upper class Indians.
There's also a big difference between being low paid in a generally high paid cultural group vs being in a generally low paid cultural group, in terms of social safety net and psychological climate.
If you switch on showdead you'll see that in my now flagged post, we are discussing whether economics causes poor people to become "bad people". You might be right that psychology does, but that's a totally different claim.
While my HS did have a course in computer programming taught by a very good teacher, a computer scientist, I learned to program before then. These days one can purchase a Chromebook for about $200 to $300 and put Linux on that and program open source. I know someone who has a nice Mac, but actually I see him mostly with his 13" Chromebook programming C++ on Linux.
Much of the issues mentioned are true of anyone that wants to go to college. But the article to me was about paying for college and ironically, the poor have more opportunities than the not so poor because of the Pell Grants and Stafford Loans.
At any rate, in NYC, I see students who were immigrants from disadvantaged backgrounds getting a top education at CUNY (and there are other low-cost schools in NYC).
It's not just cash and computing devices we are talking about. It's home environment. Home environment is a huge factor on education success.
My mother and sister both do some one on one tutoring of kindergarten age economically disadvantaged children. They've told me about the kids that come in that you can tell are very bright. But due to some of the factors like described in the previous post (eg the stressed out single mom who is always working and has less time to do things like reading with their kids etc., the less safe environment, or even just parents that for whatever reason don't know how to engage in that way), many times they still often come in significantly behind. Which makes sense. If your family actively engages their children in learning from the start, you're going to be better prepared.
Is it possible to overcome that? Yes, but not by simply throwing a Chromebook at them. The good news for instance is that this type of volunteer-led tutoring seems to work very decently at closing some of the gap (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/can-volunteer...). So I think it's going to take more or less solutions in that direction.
I understanding what you are referring to but the point of the article was asking if people who come with low economic background are shut out of science research and the answer is no. True, there are some people with an unfortunate backgrounds in this country and every country, and it is great that people are helping them, but there are many who have little money including the immigrants that I mentioned, but those who are not immigrants as well and they are able to get science and engineering degrees at quality schools thanks to relatively low tuitions, and grants and government-based low-interest loans.
The Nature story is decidedly sensationalistic or the writer(s) didn't do their research. I think they should come to NYC and interview the students at CUNY and other NYC public colleges. Most of these students come from families without resources.
My junior/senior high school charged no tuition -- just fees and books. Entrance was based on grades/test scores/personal interview.
I did not grow up in NYC, but there are several free public high schools for gifted scientists and engineers to be including Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx School of Science. Entrance is based on merit.
So, it is certainly possible to get a top rated education not coming from "privilege." Other communities offer Magnet Schools and more should be offering them. A huge systemic problem in this country is that we spend enormous sums of money for "special education" but very little for academically gifted children. That is a real problem.
If one is concerned that children "without privilege" can get to be scientists and engineers and so on, then they should be solving a systems problem which is not enough public Magnet Schools for academically gifted children.
The colleges hire people to help with financial aid and they are supposed to speak with students before classes start because of application deadlines.
I'm sorry that your college didn't help you as they should have.
You don't understand these arguments because you came from such an extreme place of class privilege that you already had the education in high school to get paid "programming" jobs. People coming from poverty don't have family that can make up the 10% that you didn't cover out of pocket. Even then, you are probably being disingenuous with that 90% figure and if you want it to stand as valid evidence that all of these dirty poors should just suck it up because, "BOOTSTRAPS!!!", you should share your financial records for the years that you were in college rather than throwing out a few general links.
You created something that, at first glance, seems like a reasonable argument, but when exposed to a cursory examination, collapses under the weight of it's own bullshit.
> People coming from poverty don't have family that can make up the 10% that you didn't cover out of pocket
They get almost $24K free money in 4 years of free money in Pell Grants
They get about $27K in 4 years subsidized Stafford Loans
People in poverty also get other kinds of grants/fellowships.
The Nature article was about people from poorer backgrounds not being able to be Scientists. The truth is they receive plenty of money for college and as I pointed out there are many in NYC that are doing just that.
Did you know that one of the schools that I went to disbursed financial aid a week after tuition was due, meaning that many students were dropped from their classes and had to re-register at the last minute with a late registration "fee?" This is one example of a constant parade of such bullshit. You had a pile of money that you earned, but it was predicated on an exceptionally privileged childhood education and a stratospherically privileged after-school-job opportunity, plus whatever else you needed, plus the knowledge that you could take risks because your family had the means to catch you if you stumbled. Did you know that many schools subtract the value of any grants or fellowships from what students receive in Pell grants and Stafford loans? Winning scholarships can be a Pyrrhic victory, but clearly you know all about that, because you are someone who received Pell or Stafford loans and actually understands the policy arena surrounding higher education financial assistance. Oh wait, you don't know what you are talking about and are instead trying to feed the meritocratic delusion upon which your self esteem rests.
> "Did you know that one of the schools that I went to disbursed financial aid a week after tuition was due ...."
You are saying that the school you went to was run incompetently. I am sorry for that. You should count yourself blessed that you received money for college without, say, serving in the military as others must do using a G.I. Bill to pay for college.
I could not get Pell Grants or Stafford Loans, if you'd read the entire thread with my posts, including my original post, you'd know that.
I wouldn't complain about any free money. So what if you win a scholarship and then the Pell Grants are deducted? 4 years of Pell Undergrad is a free $24 K. I didn't get a single penny.
I had no financial safety net that you suggest. I had to do it on my own.
So, people get Pell, they get Stafford, there are quality low-cost public schools such as City University of New York (CUNY) where Pell grants alone cover the cost of tuition.
In addition, people can serve in the military to get even more money through G.I. Bill (and many have).
After undergrad, PhD programs in science and engineering are funded including tuition and living expenses.
There are programs to pay for an entire medical school education including both tuition and living expenses such as serving 4 years as a military doctor (or perhaps other programs such as underserved areas).
Don't take your anger out on me or others because your school was incompetent for not processing grant and loan applications at the correct time. Instead be thankful for all of the free money received (Pell is now $24K for 4 years) and subsidized loans you got (Stafford is $27K for 4 years) subsidized by people like me that never could get either Pell or Stafford.
i'm sorry, but technology is making access to science easy enough that "my high school can't afford to offer that bio class" excuse just doesn't work anymore. hell, even news aggs like google offer a science section every day.
Then you were exceptionally unclear about it. What does Google News's science section have to do with anything? A newspaper's "science" section has little to do with real science.
the argument the article made was that financial barriers made science inaccessible. ubiquitous exposure (google news) makes the argument nonsensical. if you think you can't master high school science today (the argument) without bunsen burners, some hcl, and an egregiously over paid teacher, i can't help you.
Oh good, there's no financial barrier to being the kind of person who believes what unqualified journalists say about science, goes on fad diets, and says "I Fucking Love Science".
I find mathematics interesting, and I'll watch educational videos about it on YouTube and occasionally read some stuff, and I COULD take various free online courses and/or tutorials, and yet despite all this, I'm don't seem to be advancing as much as I did in college when I had to spend three hours a week in a lecture and several times that working problems.
Because having the option to take a course teaches me nothing in itself, and the occasional interesting, non-intensive video doesn't begin to compete with semi-mandatory hours of instruction and practice every week.
A few people will learn a lot without taking a class, but far fewer people have the motivation and drive to do that than have the intelligence and drive to benefit greatly from a class.
Realistically, if you don't have the motivation and drive to study science all by yourself, you don't have the motivation and drive to be a scientist.
A scientist doesn't learn everything they need in classes and then stop. They need to continually improve their knowledge; when I had an academic career I spent perhaps 4 hours/day going through papers and keeping up with the literature. Nowadays that's probably dropped to 2 hours/day, since I'm in a space where old school techniques (operations research FTW!) are generally pretty effective.
Seems like HN has a very warped view, this view that "there's no money in research" means some poor kid is better off flipping burgers into her 50s than becoming a lab manager.