Where did the mentality originate that equates poverty with laziness?

Great Debates
61

No, this does not occur to me at all. Mostly because I do not understand what you mean. I still (after hijacking at least one other thread for a few pages) have no idea whatsoever what you mean by “accepting wealth that you have access to”. You seem to be saying that working is the act of refusing wealth that you have access to. But this would mean that wealth which I cannot get my hands on in any legal way, I somehow have access to. In which case, I have no idea whatsoever what you mean by “have access to”.

What you seem to be saying is that everyone has access to billions and billions of dollars. Some few people (the lazy ones) choose to accept access to it and we call them rich. Others choose not to accept access to this wealth and instead work for the wealth that the lazy rich people have chosen to accept access to. Is that even close?

62

pervert,
I was under the impression that I addressed this answer in #38 on this thread.

Let’s say that I call someone a dork and make a new friend in whatever coersive way I desire, , which is basically how people make friends in this society. The question is, since I can do it, should I do it?

This idea of accepting what you have access to melds with the “might makes right” idea…
for example

Just because I have access to being able to commit suicide, should I commit suicide? Should you accept a wealth that you have access to? I suppose by this I mean something more along the lines of “Should I actually claim what I have access to.”.

I don’t only think of access in terms of only ‘physical’ things but also abilities. “Should I use this ability because I can?”.

This comes down to the idea of either accepting a billion because you can, or as I mentioned earlier, accepting a coerced robot being because I can – which to most people, coersion over other beings in specific ways is generally worth more than all the money possible, as arguably it’s what people try to trade money for in the first place. But you don’t actually need money to coerce people… because using undefined terms when talking to people has the same value.

You have to use undefined terms in order to accept wealth in the first place…

The access… is “You CAN take it”

The acceptance is “You DO take it”

When a person moves from “can” to “do” in this sense, they are using a religion, which is based upon circular purpose for “DO take” using undefined terms.

“how to i get somewhere” is science.

“actually going there” is religion — as in “What is your purpose for claiming/using what you have access to?”.

There are however, self referrential accountabilities that human beings can place upon themselves to assure that their purpose for accepting something is inherent, and therefor NOT a religion – namely, suicide contracts. i.e. “If nobody de-selects me for accepting this wealth, I am inherently representing perfect distribution of commodity in an existence where beings are aware that they exist”.

Maybe this doesn’t quite make it clear though. I tried to convey the idea in the aformentioned post #38 in this thread. If that doesn’t work either, I’m not sure quite where to go from there.

63

You missed the point of what I was saying. The point is that there is no direct correlation between how hrad someone works and how much they get paid. There are whole host of factors that in most cases are much more important, such as talent, education, social capital, stress, lack of psychological problems, lack of social burdens, etc. I’m not comparing two people in the same job, I’m talking about people across all jobs. Laziness is no predictor of wealth.

Amen. No one who claims to want to help the poor can ever be allowed to dodge this issue. They need ot be asked flat out: “Why wouldn’t your program just make things WORSE?” Economic conservatives were the ones who pushed probably the only really useful program in the last few decades: the earned income tax.

Social safety nets need to:

-reward success and effort, not mere status
-help people compensate for intrinsic problems (like lack of education and job training), but not compensate them for them
-not immediately rush in to cure failure, but rather after serious efforts to recover from failure have themselves failed
-have a steady and unavoidable cutoff to full self-support (or as full as anyone gets in this country anyway)

That said, there are a class of people that are litterally hopeless as far as any immediate change in their lifestyle or behavior. The homeless populaiton is not exclusively made up of such people, but by and large encompasses most of those who are without family-provided safety nets. These are people who are alcohol dependant, have mental problems, have decades long habits of just not knowing how to function in normal society and can’t learn overnight, and so on. What to do about these people is a difficult question, and I think a different one than the general social safety net.

64

In fact, he lifted the phrase from Herbert Spencer, who coined it several years before the publishing of “The Origin of Species”; it doesn’t even appear in the first edition.

65

Mswas, fantastic post :slight_smile:

Just one question; When can i join :cool:

66

But there is certainly a correlation. It may not be the kind of correlation you are thinking of, especially if you define hard work only in the physical sense. However, generally speaking, and keeping other things equal, working harder will garner more rewards than working less hard.

Ok, but you can’t compare apples to peacocks and get many useful generalizations. If you look at a ditch digger who works 80 hours a week and an executive for a fortune 500 company who works 80 hours a week you will notice an income disparity. You will certainly be able to say that this disparity is not due solely to any difference in expended effort. So, I understand your point in such a case.

However, it is usually customary when trying to determine the effect of a particular characteristic to elliminate as much interference as possible.

Also, I should note that many of the factors you listed require effort to apply. So even if a person has more education, talent, or social capital, he can do less well than another person who puts forth more effort.

Well, certainly not by itself. However, I don’t think you can say that laziness is irrelevent to wealth accumulation either.

67

Thank you. Do you remember the work? People don’t believe when I say you can’t use evolution to support a heartless social theory by saying, ‘survival of the fittest.’

68

**The point is that there is no direct correlation between how hrad someone works and how much they get paid. **

This I can’t agree with. All else being equal, the person who works harder will go farther and be more successful than the one who is lazy. How can that be in dispute?

Success in school depends in part on intelligence, but also on work ethic. The kids who grind it out and forego watching TV every night in favor of doing homework do better than students of the same ability who do the minimum. Those harder working students get into better schools, get more scholarships, and perform better in college because they are better prepared.

Take two people who are unemployed - the one who works harder at finding a good job is more likely to be successful. I know people who, when unemployed, fire out a couple resumes, answer a few ads, and then sit on their asses while their insurance runs out. Others pound the pavement, take resumes personally to companies they would like to work for, study hard to improve their skills while they are looking for work, etc. Guess who’s more likely to be successful?

In the company I work for, employees are rated as A,B or C. A is the top 20%, as ranked by their managers. B makes up the bulk of the work force, 70%. The bottom 10% are the ‘C’ workers. The 'A’s get raises of at least 5% above inflation per year. the B’s get cost of living increases and maybe a touch more. The C’s get nothing and lose ground - the message is shape up, or ship out.

The difference between these groups is rarely due to intelligence. It has more to do with willingness to take initiative, lack of sloppy behaviour, and work ethic. In short, if you’re always exceeding your manager’s expectations, you’re going to be an ‘A’. If you just do what you’re supposed to and no more, you’re a ‘B’. If you’re always late, try to cut corners, turn in the absolute minimum and no more, have a reputation for griping or annoying your co-workers, or in other ways are a liability to the company, you’re a ‘C’.

The difference between these groups economically is HUGE. An extra 5% in raises will double the salary gap between an A and B within 15 years. Almost all the promotions come out of the ranks of the ‘A’ employees.

As a result of this system, we have employees with no degree at all or with 2 year tech diplomas making twice as much as employees with masters degrees in computing science. I’ve watched people start in our company as junior developers and rocket past people who have been there for years and wind up as their team leader and eventually as a development manager or better.

And the one big difference between the three groups is work ethic. Oh sure, some are really bright guys. But the grinders do almost as well.

If I were to pick one characteristic of anyone that was the best determinant of their success in life, I’d have to pick work ethic as #1.

69

This isn’t true for most workers. What actually happens is that positions will have pay caps. Worker A will only find that they make the same money with increased workload. The average job in the US will have management that will remove additional employees to save money. If you do the job of three people, you will find yourself ALWAYS doing the job of three people, and you will will also find that you will not recieve either a raise or a promotion. You will be used up until you burn out, and the cost savings of utilizing you for even a period of a year returns to the owners pocket. After you burn out, it goes back to three people doing that job, until another A comes along.

70

An example of how this occurs can be summed up in a position like “bagger” in a grocery store. Pay cut off is minimum wage for this position.

In a gigantic grocery store, there are a lot of tasks that a “bagger” is responsible for…

Bagging groceries
Counting bottles
mopping the floor
stocking shelves
facing shelves
cleaning bathrooms
bailing cardboard
setting up displays
breaking down displays
customer service calls
walking groceries out
collecting carts
sweeping the front of the store
managing the garbage cans all around the area
cleaning messes in general - any mess
responding to calls in general - any call
I have seen single human beings do all of these jobs when they step on the floor of a moderately sized grocery store of say … 8 registers, like your standard Albertson’s, Raley’s, Lucky’s, Safeway etc…

It’s a super-human feat to be sure, mindboggling to watch.

I have seen such employees not only eliminate every “bagger” position when they step on the floor, I have additionally seen them eliminate a deli and a produce position as well. 5 whole human beings usurped by one single human being.

You now have someone, who everytime they step on the floor, saves the owner of the store $40.00 every hour as the deli and produce positions pay around $10.00 because of register work and union stuff about that.

This person working 80 hour weeks is making around $38,000 per year (assuming they live in the right state for over-time law!!).

They are saving the store around $170,000 every year, just by virtue of being a type A employee (over-time obviously NOT calculated)

It only takes ONE type A employee to make a banner year. And employers KNOW THIS. Even if you can only keep them for a year, and you have to wait a few years until another comes along… that is still profit! If one really buckles down and takes a keen look at what store owners are actually selling, they are seling the labor of type A employees for their own profit.

This is about as average as an job in america gets… I mean, a “bagger” in a grocery store. Do you think any capitalist is going to give that person a promotion? No way in hell. In fact, grocery stores largely depend upon such a pattern to be profitable… instead of the output exceeding expectations, the only thing that may exceed an employers expectations is how frequently they encounter type A employees over a 3 decade period. That’s the difference of millions of dollars going right into their pocket.

71

What is your opinion of corporate-goverment lovefests, like the one indulged in by the Bushistas and Enron? Being an Adam Smith capitalist, I despise this sort of behavior and am of the opinion that government officials who indulge in the kind of cozy relations had between the Bush cabinet and large corporations are morally indistinguishable from the hardest-line state-economy Stalinists.

72

Absolutely indefensible. It is a statement of 100% equivalence. If I find a single person who is in poverty and not due to their own laziness, I disprove it.

I can go downtown and find a few infants fairly quicky who are living in (and suffering from the consequences of) poverty and who have not “earned” it by being lazy. To say that “people are poor because they are lazy” is vile, sinful, and hateful. It is far different from saying “laziness is a possible cause of the poverty of some people”. Your statement condemns ALL the poor, even the infants.

It’s remarkably Calvinistic, when one comes to think about it.

73

I didn’t take taxes out of that $38,000 per year… I’m sure the bagger makes less.

74

Are you crazy? Of course he is going to get a promotion. If anything he is far more likely to get a promotion than the other workers. While the capitalist surely loves having him work as a bagger, there are more important things that need doing in a grocery store. He will always be looking for excellent employees to move into those positions. And any bagger capable of doing all that work will be eager to prove himself in such a new position.

I have many friends and a brother who have done just this. Started at the bottom of a corporate job, and worked their way up to a much higher position.

75

[QUOTE=Dogface]
Absolutely indefensible. It is a statement of 100% equivalence.

[QUOTE]
No it is not. I am not saying that all people are … I am specifically saying that some people are. the word people is not the same as the words “all people”. Certainly not in the context of the rest of my post or the other posts I have in this thread.

Didn’t you accuse me of not reading your posts earlier?

76

I should have noted this earlier. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that I did not anywhere suggest that anyone ever has earned poverty. You see, you made this up. Just like you made up the proposal that I suggested all lazy poor people are lazy. I did not say that. You did not hear me say it. Your condemnation of the phrase is inappropriately applied to me.

This, BTW, is exactly what I have been harping on since the begining of the thread. Anyone else here who still thinks they have heard talkshow hosts, SDMB posters, or anyone else in the last 30 years claim that “if you’re poor, it’s because you’re lazy” care to back it up with a link or even a reference?

It took a couple pages for the sentiment to be attributed to me, but I knew it would. :slight_smile:

77

Even from a theoretical capitalist perspective that’s bonked. Excellence in bagging is by no means an indicator of excellence at higher functions. All it tells you for sure is that it would be a good idea to keep him bagging. And that’s before you start getting into how the midlevel positions in the store are decided by nepotism, and the manager doesn’t really like the bagboy anyways because he’s not a member of the Universal Church of Lucifer, and so on and so forth.

Excellence in a current position does not mean you get a meaningful promotion. You might move from Engineer II to Engineer III, but you aren’t going to move up the power scale. The best you can hope for is to leverage excellence for a raise, and even then you’re only likely to get it if the labor market is in a position where you could easily quit.

78

No, but a willingness to apply oneself in an exceptional fashion is.

Never? Not a single person has ever done this? Are you really suggesting that no bag boy has ever been promoted to a higher position because of apptitude?

79

Things are different now then they were 80, 50 or even 30 years ago to this regard. It used to be, that if you wore clean clothes, were well groomed, and showed some conscientiousness, seemed interested in your job, that you’d be looking towards a promotion or maybe even some type of raise.

Nowadays… It’s different. The grocery store will tell you that it’s the law that you as a bagger cannot be paid more than minimum wage. Now, what are we really dealing with here? High school kids to mid 20’s for the most part, people with lots of energy, lots of inexperience and lots of hope. You don’t know what you’re doing when you’re trying to do your best. You’re ability to cancel 5 employees off the schedule isn’t going to be known to you the moment you walk through that door. Management will praise you, you’ll feel this sense of esteem or whatever, this pride in what you’re doing. But what you don’t get, is that YOU are worth $170,000 in that owners pocket that year.

These types of stores practically run themselves now, to the point where the only place to cut cost is in pay… baggers are basically the only people who make the difference between a banner year and an average or mediocre year. The other jobs are dictated from corperate headquarters, ordering, what displays you use, when to use them etc…

The bread and butter of any grocery store is the type A bagger… because legally (per union contracts) they have a pay cap at minimum wage. What stores try to do, is have as large a worker pool on their roster as possible… fishing for the type A bagger. Let’s say they can keep a pool of 20 employees on the schedule for the bagger position…

This is to increase the odds that they can find a type A bagger, this is what the store is fishing for…

Even without being very lucky, you’re going to come across a type A bagger every few years. If you come across say, 3 type A baggers who keep the job for 5 years, you have literally saved 3 million (profited) over that 5 years (If you have 3 type A’s more “jounerman” jobs can be cut back as well … so each bagger becomes worth even more than the innitial $170k per year… closer to 200k per year… just make sure that they never touch a register and you’re fine.). No matter what position they occupy after that, there is NO WAY they will be worth as much to you as an owner as they were as a type A bagger – unless they’re really good at finding type A baggers to work for them! The jobs above the type A bagger are already cut and calculated to death and dictated from corperate HQ, so far as ordering and displays and campaigns (ads) and remodels etc… jobs well below the capability of the type A bagger (read and do). In grocery stores, the easiest jobs are the management jobs, these are also the people who make the least impact on the profits for the stores. All they have to do is follow the instructions on how to cycle through and detect type A baggers from a pool of young eager workers. The efficiency of nobody else on the floor matters. A checker who can check really fast may be able to take out two checkers at best. Nobody else matters. They walk around and point and sit and point and sit and gab and point and sit and gab and point and sit and follow the instruction manual from corperate HQ.

80

To tie this in with my earlier point about accepting or not accepting wealth.

Let’s say that the system changes such that exceptional type A baggers are paid 80k per year. That’s reasonable incentive to be a type A bagger, to remain a type A bagger – at least as far as what people generally think about money.

Let’s say that you have a type A bagger who REFUSES to accept 80k per year for their job. Instead, they only accept 20k, non-negotiable.

Who is doing more work?

The point being, wealthy people are lazier in ALL instances… as in, they are doing LESS work.

Type A baggers are also going to be the types who don’t care about disability benefits or social security… even though their bodies will probably be wholly mangled after a decade of being such an employee.

Who is doing more work?

The point. Wealthy people in ALL instances are doing less work.