How poverty changes your mindset

Post by losteric » Mon, Feb 26, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

ashelmire wrote: post #74

adrr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% of society can't be brought out of poverty. Here's an example: If we motivated everyone to get a college education, we would have people flipping burgers who are college educated making min wage and living in poverty while struggling to put food on the table.

We're not going to have humans flipping burgers in a few years. A lot of these low-wage, low-skill jobs are finally on the brink of being automated. There will be new opportunities to replace them, as there always are. I'm pretty optimistic about the future of the economy - we have a huge number of skill-demanding fields that are growing, and many of them are facing real difficulty, which is exactly what creates dema…

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Feb 26, 2018, 2:15 AM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #72

adrr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% of society can't be brought out of poverty. Here's an example: If we motivated everyone to get a college education, we would have people flipping burgers who are college educated making min wage and living in poverty while struggling to put food on the table.

Not everyone needs college, there are trade schools and the like that can help you get a better job. Why can’t minimum wage be raised to provide a better standard of living?

Post by chlorophyl » Mon, Feb 26, 2018, 2:16 AM UTC

zouhair wrote: post #50

redm wrote: post #15

I'm sure how people deal with stress and difficult situations varies from person to person. My personal story and 2-cents: When I was 17 I went through a period of near destitute. I was living on my own, my father had passed away, and I had dropped out of school. Yet, I found myself with some very good jobs, such as GE Capital, a big Oil and Gas companies IT department, etc. Regardless of the opportunity, my arroganc…

You being 17 when that happened helped a lot too. If the same happens when you are 40 or 45 getting out of the gutter would be nigh on impossible.

Post by haZard_OS » Mon, Feb 26, 2018, 2:18 AM UTC

bojackstorkman wrote: post #30

I love how when this comes up, it's people either saying "Here was my experience when I was poor in the past." or "Here is what I think about economics or the wording of this article." Don't get me wrong, I know what website I'm on. But in all seriousness, is there room for currently poor people in this discussion?

  Without going into too much detail: I am exactly one semester away from a degree in the natural sciences but can no longer afford to attend classes - I am a single father with 3 children (two of which live with me) and I pay child support every month to my ex-wife who makes ~$80K per annum. I played her way through graduate school but she left and we divorced very soon after she finished school.

  I am almost 40 years old and I have been looking for a steady job for months...but imagine trying to convince someone to hire you for a job with the schedule restrictions that come with having multiple children in a lackluster economy. 

  I could go on but the message here is simply that poverty can easily be a self-perpetuating condition that becomes extraordinarily difficult to extract oneself from. It often seems like I am caught between multiple Catch-22 situations like some sort of 6-dimensional Chinese finger-trap.

Post by linkmotif » Mon, Feb 26, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

kraig911 wrote: post #69

I hate seeing people's comments on stories around this topic. I grew up in poverty and food stamps from time to time. My dad was a roughneck and when the oil bust happened in the 80's there was a time we lived out of our car -- my whole family. here was literally nothing to do in the oil patch during that bust. There was literally no work. But people don't understand true hopelessness. My dad did everything he could…