[yummyfajitas]

It's pretty easy to argue against that comic. Most of it is made-up anecdote. 2 of the 3 testable claims it makes are completely and nonsensically wrong, almost to the point of complete fabrication. The third testable claim I don't know how to google.

Poor Americans don't live in overcrowded homes. Only 3.3% of those homes have "severe physical problems" (what I'm interpreting the comic to mean), and they typically have 2 rooms/person.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

60% of poor children have parents who didn't work at all during the year. In contrast, 51% of Americans 18-64 whole did work full time year round.

http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...

I don't have stats on classes sizes - do you? I suspect the author of that comic didn't bother to google before writing it.

I'm not even going to try and refute the made-up anecdotes, e.g. dying father, parents who don't care about academics, and a boss who looks like a dog.

[giltleaf]

You seem like just the type of person I wanted to read that comic when I decided to put that in. You're fully missing the point (forest through the trees type of thing) with those stats; the unarguable part is that life circumstances often allow some people to snowball minor successes/advantages and prevent the same from happening to others.

Basically, that comic represents a very realistic, though maybe not statistically significant if it were to be taken literally, situation. It illustrates that results are not dictated by hard work and there is not equal opportunity. It is an attempt to help people empathize.

It's not saying that the guy on the left is a shit (though maybe unaware of his blessings), but rather that the woman on the right (anecdotally representing marginalized society) may be trapped no matter how hard she works. Sure she can beat it, but look at everything else she has to overcome to do so.

[yummyfajitas]

The point is that while circumstances like what are described in the comic are super rare. If we want to take into account ridiculously rare circumstances and call it "very realistic", why stop there?

Richard's parents sent him to personal trainer who taught him to be a track star. Paula had her legs chopped off by Islamic terrorists.

Richard's parents taught him to ground his electronics projects. Paula got struck by lightning 3 times.

Richard didn't like to go to the beach. Paula had her right hand eaten by a shark.

etc.

You can prove anything if you pretend wildly improbable freak situations are somehow representative of reality.

If you want to claim we don't have equal opportunity, I don't disagree. Some folks have advantages - e.g. the author of this blog post was born into the right race to get major bonus points in the educational system, had a mother who knew how to game that system, had US citizenship, etc. In contrast, all I had was US citizenship. Most folks don't even have the citizenship, and a large number of them are members of a race that's treated even worse than mine.

But if you want to talk about the practical significance of this - whether she's actually trapped or whether she just needs to work 10% harder - then you need to think about the details, which the comic gets wildly wrong.

[giltleaf]

"You can prove anything if you pretend wildly improbable freak situations are somehow representative of reality."

That's true, but what is represented in the comic is far from "wildly improbable" and in fact comes across as pretty realistic. That's why many people like it.

It can't be that hard to believe that there are many situations where a person has several small things, often not worth studying, wrong in their lives that compound over time. That's the point.

At the end of the day, I think that we both agree more than not and that you're more taking issue with the fact that I said "impossible to argue" than the larger point, which is totally fine because it was a melodramatic thing to say.

Details the comic got right (btw, comic depicts Australia I believe, but it's equally applicable to US so we'll go with that, it's also hard to attribute the later panels to one given, testable factor, as what's depicted is the result of all the small things in life):

Houses with extended family: "57 million Americans now live in some sort of multigenerational configuration. That number has doubled since 1980," including 36% of young adults [1]

Frequent illness: "The Connecticut Commission on Children reports that children who live in poverty experience more illness than children in more affluent homes." [2]

Parents working 2 jobs: "more than 7 million people in this country were holding 2 or more jobs. That’s 5% of the total workforce" [3] The Bureau of Labor Statistics number doesn't count jobs for cash etc.

low income=shitty schools. not even going to bother to search that one.

working while in school (less time to network, study etc.): "over 78% of undergraduate students work" DOE [4]

Anyways, I'm glad you read the comic.

A lot of that stuff seems really self evident to me, but here are just some sources from random googling. [1]: http://www.newsweek.com/why-multiple-generations-families-ch... [2] http://www.livestrong.com/article/229181-effects-of-low-fami... [3] https://toughnickel.com/finding-job/Working-2-or-More-Jobs (from Bureau of Labor Statistics) [4] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77

[yummyfajitas]

Citing a bunch of statistics about non-poor people who work multiple jobs, and irrelevancies like multigenerational configuration, are not really supporting the comic.

It's quite true that people with lots of money (like Richard's parents) tend to work long hours. And 5% of the workforce - most of them non-poor - might work 2 jobs. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the comic portrays.

Similarly, attributing things like poor people getting sick more on things like a damp house (or otherwise lacking money) is simply wrong. We now have an actual randomized trial to demonstrate this. http://m.qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/131/2/687

Most likely some third hidden factor (for example low conscientiousness resulting in poor work habits and poor health habits) causes both poverty and poor health.

I'm not disputing the idea that some folks have a leg up on life. I'm simply disputing a comic that wildly misleads about the actual nature of that leg up.

Also, on the thing you are "not even going to bother to search", the question is not whether poor schools have bad outcomes. The question is whether those schools are significantly worse themselves - i.e., if we were to reduce class sizes, would outcomes improve? (Most studies suggest that small class sizes - like virtually every educational intervention - would barely change outcomes.)

[laughinghan]

I'm sorry what? Your interpretation of the comic is that it's claiming that poor Americans all live in the worst 3.3% of homes and have dying dads and bosses who look like dogs?

The comic is saying that poor children have reduced access to resources and opportunities. That is testable, and widely accepted as true. Are you saying it's false?

[yummyfajitas]

The comic explicitly claims:

Panel 2: Paulas house is full of people and not much else. It's damp and noisy and she keeps getting sick.

My interpretation of this is that Paula's house is overcrowded and has severe physical problems that make her sick. How do you interpret it?

Panel 3: That's why they're working two jobs.

My interpretation of this is that Paula's parents are working two jobs, and as a result cannot help her with homework. In contrast, Richard's parents in the left side are doing exactly that. How did you interpret it?

[laughinghan]

Like I said in grandparent, I interpret it as saying that poor children have reduced access to resources and opportunities. Which is testable and widely accepted as true.

The comic also explicitly claims that poor Americans are all named Paula, have been recommended Eazee Finance, and work as cater-waiters. Why didn't you take those literally? I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure at least one of those is also false. I think I met a poor person once who said she'd never heard of Eazee Finance. She might've misheard me, what with her poor hearing because the house she grew up in was so damp and noisy. Her name was Paula though, so anecdotally that checks out.

[douche]

With the name Paula, all I can think is that she became a really bad computer programmer[1][2], and was stuck waiting tables after the dot-com crash.

It's weird how name associations stick in your head.

[1]http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Brillant_Paula_Bean

[2]http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Brillant_Paula_Strikes_B...

[yummyfajitas]

So we are now agreed that none of the factual matters described in the comic are remotely representative of poor Americans? And actually all these extreme examples are just somehow representative of some nebulous and vague "reduced access"?

Incidentally, "reduced access" is not a testable prediction - how would I test it? What does it even refer to?

[laughinghan]

You may be surprised to learn that none of the factual matters in the story of the hare and tortoise are remotely representative of real hares and tortoises. Not only have there been no recorded instances of hares or tortoises using human speech, scientists are fairly sure that they are physiologically incapable of human phonology.

I don't understand what you're saying. There is a consensus that poor Americans are at a disadvantage when it comes to school, business, and health. Are you challenging that that's the consensus, or do you acknowledge that that's the consensus but you're challenging whether it's true?

[Tycho]

big difference between a fable and an anecdote