Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

It seems as though I see a lot of articles on FB talking about how the rich have better access to the finer things in life.

Nice neighborhoods, safer cars, better schools, etc. Just today, I even saw an article in the Washington Post talking about how the wealthy in NYC have access to better breakfast sandwiches:

Inequality in everything: The rich get better breakfast sandwiches, too - The Washington Post

(For non -New Yorkers, the classic bacon, egg and cheese on a roll is an even more defining staple of Manhattan cuisine than a 99¢ slice of pizza.)


Well, duh!

Isn’t the whole point of wealth-inequality that it gives those who have it access to finer things in life than those who don’t? These articles seem to presuppose an underlying consensus that everyone deserves equal access to housing, healthcare, education, egg sandwiches, etc., regardless of their income or wealth.

Isn’t that pretty much the same thing as espousing Marxism?

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Maybe I missed it (or the underlying tone isn't quite as apparent to me as it is to you)...

...but I didn't see anything in that article that argues that there's anything morally wrong with fancy bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches or that action should be taken to ensure equal access to fancified breakfast sandwiches. It seems like the point of the author is mostly just that it's kind of odd how a humble food is being "elevated" (to use parlance of reality cooking shows) with all kinds of expensive ingredients.

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

I think its blown out of proportion, but there are a certain set of "utilities" that all people should deserve equal access to.
Ex. Public School. Everyone pays taxes. The point of public schools are that everyone gets a good "free" education. But public schools in the nicer parts of town are usually significantly better.
Egg sandwiches is bullshit. Work hard, make money, get bitches, buy good egg sandwiches.

bahurd

iTrader: (8)

Your FB page must be entertaining. I tend to block out most of that BS... As for the article you linked to, I don't read it the same way.


To your first point, yes the richer folks do have access to the finer things in life. Duh!


Karl's dead.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Riddle me this:


All Target stores start out pretty much the same. They build 'em to spec, furnish 'em to spec, and stock 'em with the same merchandise.

Then, environmental factors begin to come into play. The behavior of both the employees and customers of the store start to determine whether the aisles are clean or littered, the merchandise carefully arranged or strewn all over the floor, the bathrooms clean and neat or filthy and smeared with poo, the fixtures and decor straight and functional or vandalized and broken, the employees helpful and attentive or apathetic and barely literate.


If you'd like to see an interesting contrast, visit the Target store in east Harlem surrounded by public housing, and then go to the one in White Plains between the Whole Foods and the Old Navy.

Target built the two stores roughly identically, and probably paid about the same to construct and furnish them. They're about the same age, and less than 20 miles apart. They pay the employees the same amount, and stock the same merchandise. But the Harlem store is somewhat trashy and unkempt, with poorly-organized merchandise and unhelpful staff, while the White Plains store is spotless and neat.




Why should we expect public schools to be any different? Garbage in, Garbage out, as they used to say in the field of early computing.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Unfortunately, I really want a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich now.

Girz0r

iTrader: (1)

Didn't get the inequality feels, just the idea that to some people "paying more means it's better". Reading the article in my opinion comes off more of an observation piece of food history & transitions into new trends.

Grabbing a breakfast sammich in the morning 'on-the-go' seems lazy. Get up earlier, make your own sammich, leave at normal said time to commute w/e crazy long route to said new york job.

2ndGearRubber

This is the real take away from the thread. Thanks Joe.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

without income inequality we'd all be slaves.


and this is for joe:

z31maniac

One of the reasons I would live in NYC is PRECISELY because not only are there world class eateries all over the city, but ALSO because there is an abundance of delicious, cheap food on nearly every corner. Literally.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

and pigeon killing rodents...

Ryan_G

iTrader: (8)

Well public schools do not receive equal funding because they are usually paid for via property taxes. Therefore, poorer areas receive less funding than richer areas because the property taxes are higher. That's not to say funding is the only issue but it create problems with obtaining proper materials in many schools throughout the country.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

This is true.

Street meat, anyone? I'm a halal-lamb-over-rice-with-white-sauce man, personally. "Five dollah."





NYC is famous for its rats. You can buy stuffed rats at the tourist stores in Times Square, right alongside the various miniature statues and buildings.

I mean, how many characters are there on The Muppets which are clearly identified as being from a specific place? So far as I know, only one. Rizzo the Rat, from New York:



(I guess you could argue that Pepe the Prawn is fairly regional as well- not as familiar with the newer characters.)




In most US states, the majority of public-school funding comes from Federal and State allocations, not from local tax revenue. (source: http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/13f33pub.pdf) States (also also county and city governments) have a nasty habit of re-allocating wealth from richer communities towards poorer communities. Here in NYC, a lot of tax dollars collected in midtown and the upper-east side wind up getting spent in The Bronx and Harlem.


And the total spending per pupil (from all sources) varies by more than 2x from one state to another, with Alaska and New Jersey (two states which are very much alike) averaging more than $16k per pupil per year, while Utah and Oklahoma spend less than $8k.



But put all that aside, and presuppose that public-school funding is, by some statistically significant amount, affected directly by the media household income of the neighborhood in which it sits. Once again, I ask "So what?"

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

From what I've seen, a community's culture has more influence on median academic achievement than any other factor. Emphasis on median, because there are always those who will either shine or tumble regardless of circumstances. This is personal observation, I will not back it up in any way with statistics.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I'll back it up with statistics.

Bangalore, India is arguably one of the top ten tech hubs of the modern world, in terms of its production of PhD-level graduates and STEM businesses. It is located in the state of Karnataka which, on average, spends ₹15,300 ($236) per pupil per year in public-school elementary education, in combined government and private funding. (source)

The Indian culture, today, promotes discipline and academic achievement. Hell, anyone who was friends with an Indian kid in grade school can tell you that. Anzir and Praveen (the two I lived across the street from) are both doctors today. Their fathers were also doctors, and their mothers, who were still married to their fathers, were doctors' wives. That **** matters more than money.

Heck, you'll see the same thing if you hang out at any random* bagel shop in Cupertino, CA. While I was there enjoying a lox bagel a few years ago, I picked up one of the local free community newspapers and browsed through it. As this was mid-Spring, it was full of notices and ads for summer-camp programs for kids. The vast majority of them were geared around some combination of robotics, software development, higher mathematics, astronomy, music, and foreign languages.

* = I suggest the Bagel Street Cafe, located at 10591 North De Anza Blvd, right across the street from Apple. Closest thing to a real NY bagel I ever found in my 8 years in California.

I'm pretty sure that none of those summer camps were funded in any significant way with public money. And, frankly, you don't find a lot of summer camps for kids which focus on high-level academic and intellectual pursuits in communities in which the majority of parents aren't highly educated intellectuals with aspirations of the same for their kids.

(Now that I think of it, it is kind of anachronistic that they're still using physical paper. In retrospect, a QR code would have seemed less out of place. But I digress...)


Likewise, there have been plenty of studies which tracked what happened when large amounts of money were channeled into the very "worst" of the public schools, serving a majority of children who lived in gang-ruled ghettos with drug-addicted mothers and most of the other **** they showed on The Wire*. A few of them were outliers; bright, shining stars held up as an example of what can happen when we give kids a chance. (They were always there, they just didn't have graduate students studying them.) The other 99.5% continued to drop out of school, join gangs, commit petty crimes, and murder each other.

* = an excellent HBO series which ran from 2002-2008. I suggest you check it out.

z31maniac

^Counter-point.

My last job I worked with a Pakistani engineer who received both his B.S. and M.S in the states. He equated "Engineers" in China/India as essentially glorified mechanics.

I believed him after spending years trying to get them to be able to properly change a redline'd AutoCAD drawings properly.

Something simple like changing a couple of dimensions and updating the Rev block would typically take 3-4 tries and possibly a phone call.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Oh, absolutely. I experienced the same thing during the latter years of my tenure with Harris, when we started having to interact with engineers in Guangzhou, China. They were technically proficient, but unimaginative, not very good at problem-solving, and valued correct procedures over correct results.

So it really comes down to a simple problem: would you rather your town be known for having an abnormally high number of violent, illiterate criminal thugs, or an abnormally high number of mediocre engineers?

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Option 1 sounds more interesting. I hate mediocre engineers.

codrus

Partly this is because many of the best engineers from India and China move to the US and get jobs here in the bay area.

--Ian

z31maniac

The thing that blows me away is why the big multi-billion corporations do this?

The last company I worked was owned by Dover Corporation. It was at their behest we start using Dover India for help with drawing changes, because they are paid much less.

But does it really end up being cheaper, if a change that would take a fresh engineering grad from the states a few hours to make, takes days, multiple emails/calls, and a senior level engineer baby sitting them the whole time?

I suspect some actuary somewhere by the numbers found it's 1.4% cheaper, but ignored efficiency. I'm seriously baffled.