World's richest woman says poor should have less fun, work harder. Calls for lower minimum wage and tax cuts

[Immortal]

HappySqurriel said:

Immortal said:

 

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but do you really have any evidence for this? I mean, this is the normal right-wing argument; the poor are poor because they don't work hard enough or something to this effect. The general leftist response is either that a) they do work hard and the system is rigged to make sure they get nowhere while doing so or b) they don't work hard because they have experienced no benefit from working hard and have stopped bothering.

Idealistically, I'd like to go with your rhetoric since the idea seems to be that people are the masters of their own fate and that we aren't completely bound by circumstance, but are you entirely convinced that's the reality of the situation in general?

For your second paragraph, the liberal answer would probably be that few poor people are in the situation you described and that the majority put effort into their career and still get nowhere, rather giving them something of a right to complain about being poor.

The primary "proof" comes from seeing how the income distribution changes based on controlling certain factors ...

While they are not the only factors, age and education level play a huge role in the income of people. The older and more educated a person is the higher their income generally is; and age is an imperfect proxy of experience and effort put into their career. A 17 year old high-school drop out has (at this point in time) put in no work to develop the necessary skills within the economy and generally only has low paying career options, while the 50 year old executive vice president of a mid-sized company has spend decades building the skills to be successful and is being rewarded for it.

I'm in no way saying that anyone can reach any income level but usually there is an understandable set of steps that a person can follow to improve their standard of living. A woman I know immigrated to Canada and was working at a hotel cleaning rooms. She then entered into a local college part time and worked to become a nursing assistant (of some sort), after that she continued to go to school part time until she got her nursing degree; and now she makes a very nice wage. I find it difficult to accept people complaining about how someone else is the cause of their poverty when I see people who were dealt a much worse hand work their way to success.

I don't think I can argue with you very well given my relative lack of knowledge, but, going by the argument presented by the other member who quoted me, education is evidently much better and more effective for rich people, leading us back to poor people being born in a situation which won't let them get anywhere.

As for your anecdote, while there are obviously people who manage to get far against the odds, they are normally considered the exception. For every story about self-made millionaires (or even the less extravagant climbed-up-the-economic-ladder stories), you'd probably be faced with a dozen anecdotes from the other side telling you about people who are working/have worked insanely hard, are trying/have tried to follow the classic recipes to economic success and are still getting nowhere.

By the way, I'm honestly not completely sure if I disagree with you. Since I'm slightly left-leaning on this subject, I'm just keen to get the opposition's perspective here.