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Comment by moate | Hacker News Reader

IDK how to take this/ Do these rules guarantee that if followed you won't wind up in poverty? If you break these rules (which TONS of people do) will you not escape poverty? How do these rules help someone incapable of one of them?

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These "no rule is valid unless it works for everyone 100% of the time" arguments are tiring. There is literally no rule that meets these criteria, yet humans are smart enough to recognize when something works relatively consistently for most people, and consider that a good thing. People wanting absolute guaranteed results for all cases come across as deliberately contrarian.

>>People wanting absolute guaranteed results for all cases come across as deliberately contrarian.

People making stupid generalizations that "these 3 rules..." are coming across as deliberately stupid. The world is nuanced. Saying "the way to fix poverty is this one simple thing" is useless. You want to have an actual conversation, that's fine. OP is laying down some bullshit. If he want to come back and refine is statement, great. Let's start the discussion I was instigating.

You want to infer meaning and give his bare bones comment a whole bunch of implied meaning, great. I'm trying to figure out if he's trolling or just being trite and dismissive.

The miscommunication here is I was on the same page as OP because I've seen the study he was alluding to (and actually got one of the points wrong). I incorrectly assumed that it was common knowledge. It's referenced here, and yes I am aware that this article is attempting to "debunk" it, but I think the counterpoints it makes are quite weak: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027195/haskins-sawhill-norms-...

No, I deliberately adapted them ... the rule about having a full time job is kind of ridiculous, however having a minimum education, not doing drugs or being burdened as a single parent will make having a steady job much more likely. Also dont think you need to be married (not that type of conservative) to be a good parent.

Calling them "rules" was probably a mistake. "Principles" would be a better description and of course they dont guarantee anything but I stand by the concept that anyone who aspires to follow them will most likely escape poverty. And while the concepts are simple I fully acknowledge that they could, given your circumstances, be enormously difficult to follow. But do you have a better proposal, do you think throwing some small amount of money will fix it ? Change comes from within and the conceit is that you can "fix" other people.

Statistically it virtually is a guarantee though I tend to think the three rules are 1) graduate high school. 2) get a full time job. 3) be married before having children.

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