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How poverty changes your mindset

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Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#421

Post by dfgdsfgsd »

skookumchuck wrote: post #175
aswanson wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentiments like these are why I can't Fuck with libertarians. Even though I never experienced as much, I know there but through the grace of God go I. And I don't believe in god.

Libertarianism is not about not helping others. Not even remotely. Libertarianism means you can help others as much as you want to.

True, if we're talking about poor ol' Hayek and Rothbard... but Ayn Rand discourages it and she's the standard bearer. Interestingly, I always found the aesthetics, philosophy, methods of Randianism quite Stalinist.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#422

Post by NutriSugar »

dizzystar wrote: post #260
Simon_says wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, but I'm not sure, that at her income level, the Earned Income Tax Credit will let her get a net refund from the federal government? And Texas doesn't tax income. Savings have to come from the biggest choices in your life. You've already assumed a bunch of poor choices in your model of this hypothetical person. You didn't mention your city, but I found $400-500 2 bedroom apartments on a quick Craigslist searc…

But also, she will have to work a second job because no one gives full time work at that pay level. That's the brutal cost of ACA.

It seems to me that a lot of government laws are created assuming people will continue to do what they have been regardless of how the rules changed. The idea that people will do something different in response to a law, like switching from few full time positions to lots of part time positions to avoid paying benefits, seems to be completely dismissed.

It reminds me of therapist mandated reporting of child abuse making it so those most at risk of committing child abuse no longer seeking therapy, leading to an overall increase in harm. Or the HIV laws in California that resulted in people refusing to get tested. And it makes me think that limiting ones ability to own a gun based on mental health will result in people being less likely to seek mental help. Why is there such dismissal of secondary effects of laws even after seeing them occur?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#423

Post by Simon_says »

pjonesdotca wrote: post #400
Simon_says wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course everyone is going to focus on that sentence when I also mentioned many other poor choices this hypothetical woman is making. Tragedies will occasionally come out of left field, so I believe you can find real hard luck cases where everything was sunshine and rainbows when the couple decides to have a kid. But based on the people I've known personally the people with messed up lives are a subset of the people…

6 month emergency fund? Have you seen how many people in the US are living paycheque to paycheque? I know many people who make six figures who would struggle to meet that requirement. Having grown up as a military brat I know about poor and I know that this kind of self-serving look-down-your-nose "advice" is just rationalization for living well in a society that enables sociopathy

If you can't afford a 6 month e-fund, you can't afford kids. A 6 month e-fund is not even that hard; you have to re-arrange your spending over your lifetime and not even spend less in total over your life.

I'm sorry you had to go through that as a kid. My beliefs on this subject are rooted in an empathy and caring for kids who could have had better childhoods if their parents had their shit together a little more.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#424

Post by fastball »

fencepost wrote: post #389
fastball wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me? Because yes, I'm aware of that. That is why I am so confused by OP seeming to say "in China we don't have to worry about starvation even when we're poor". It's just so far from true I don't understand why they are getting upvoted (and me downvoted).

My take would be that they weren't starving because they were poor, they were starving because there was no food to be had. Starvation in a famine is different from starvation in a land of plenty where you simply can't afford food.

If there was no food, the entire population of China would've died.

In the case of a famine, it's still the haves and the have-nots.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#425

Post by kaycebasques »

iT5rCb8x wrote: post #298
dizzystar wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in poverty as well and my reaction to money is the total opposite. I never felt connected to it all. I want to be a good saver, but my understanding of the green stuff is nearly nil. It's just sort of there and I try not to think about it. I think it's just the opposite problem. I simply don't know what to spend money on. I feel like I spend a lot of money, but somehow everyone is in deeper debt than I am.…

Man, this is infuriating. Had this been happening in a welfare state such as in most European countries, your family would have kept a roof above their head thanks to proper public housing, and your parents would have received enough money to serve their kids 3 meals a days. Not saying that's living the life, but people in the US just don't understand that stories like yours do NOT have to happen.

I find that a little historical perspective opens me up to the fact that things were different not too long ago, and the current situation is the result of concrete political actions in the not-too-distant past, which implies that concrete political actions in the present could also change the course of things.

The Community Health Act of 1963 was supposed to transfer mentally-ill patients from psychiatric hospitals to community-based centers, but "only half of the proposed centers were ever built; none were fully funded, and the act didn’t provide money to operate them long-term."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Mental_Health_Act

During the 80s "HUD's budget authority was reduced from $74 billion to $19 billion. Such alleged changes is claimed to have resulted in an inadequate supply of affordable housing to meet the growing demand of low-income populations. In 1970 there were 300,000 more low-cost rental units (6.5 million) than low-income renter households (6.2 million). By 1985, the advocacy group claimed that the number of low-cost units had fallen to 5.6 million, and the number of low-income renter households had grown to 8.9 million, a disparity of 3.3 million units."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#426

Post by [deleted] »

technofiend wrote: post #281
dizzystar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I totally get this. I have no idea why people want stuff. I have one computer, one phone, one guitar, and so on. If I could own just one set of clothing, I'd be happy with that. It isn't frugality for me, it's just that I can't stand clutter and really, what I consider. I think I missed whatever the definition of having things means.

At some point you own enough things that they own you. You can't do anything without taking all that stuff into consideration. This can make for a difficult situation if you and your partner don't agree. My ideal living situation is an empty house; my wife feels most comfortable surrounded by things.

[deleted]

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#427

Post by linkmotif »

runako wrote: post #159
linkmotif wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there’s necessarily a conflict between having empathy for people unconditionally while still asking questions like: if times were at one point good or OK but you’ve fallen into hard times now, why did you not have savings? People ask these questions because being miserly to save is hard and unpleasant, and then when others seemingly haven’t saved, it’s emotionally difficult helping them. I see people us…

All of this modulo American healthcare means a lot of people who follow this script still end up with nothing. This is especially the case for entry-level jobs and other careers that are more available to the newly arrived. If you work in a median-income job and are miserly for a long time and save up a year's income, you will have around $60k in the bank. Since you don't have a pension, materially all of this will b…

This is an absurd strawman. Th emphasis is rightly placed on “modulo”.

You’re saying that because catastrophes happen there’s no point in saving? Yes health insurance was problematic before the ACA, but it definitely served its purpose for simple things like appendectomies. Not every single instance of needing savings is one that is financially ruinous, aka pre-ACA healthcare issue that involved preexisting conditions etc.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#429

Post by dfgdsfgsd »

conanbatt wrote: post #272
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.

The malthusian argument. People outgrow their capacity to feed themselves. Good thing it is not true at all, and has been debunked and ridiculed by economists over a century ago.

Debunked by economists who are the joke of the Nobel laureates. Even the Peace prize is more respectable. 100 years in human history? Nothing. The Roman Empire took half a millennium to decay.

The Malthusian argument is a thermodynamic argument. If we grow without bound (either by number or per capita consumption) we will run out of resources like any other biological system.

The only thing that allows us to escape this is human's unique ability to transcend our biological nature - i.e. breed responsibly (Gd I hate that) and consume less.

Mainstream economics is enamored with boundless growth, therefore, we're on a crash course.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#430

Post by simonh »

fastball wrote: post #372
bildung wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Famines were sadly very common in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China People often comment on the 1958 famine as some singular event, but it actually was the 6th and last in the 20th century.

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me? Because yes, I'm aware of that. That is why I am so confused by OP seeming to say "in China we don't have to worry about starvation even when we're poor". It's just so far from true I don't understand why they are getting upvoted (and me downvoted).

At the time the poster was growing up, starvation wasn't a concern. My wife grew up around the same time, she was born in 1975. There had been a famine a generation before, but that wasn't an issue she had to worry about. What happened a generation before does not invalidate that reported experience and isn't relevant to it.

Even now, people in China are not concerned with or at risk of famine. It doesn't matter how many famines there were 50+ years ago, it won't make that untrue unless you can point to a credible reason why Chinese people today should fear famine.

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