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Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

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Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#361

Post by sdwa »

celticmusic wrote: post #288
hestipod wrote: post #33

I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, wa…

I think there's a lot of nuance that gets missed, but before I get into it, a few things about me. 1. I grew up extremely poor. By poor I mean living in a pup-tent down by the river. Going to school with duct tape around my shoes to hold them together. eating beans and oatmeal for 3 meals a day months at a time. Having 3 sets of clothes, all of them involving sweats, and recycling them throughout the week. You get th…

You're lucky that things worked well for you in spite of your poverty. Most people born into poverty are not so lucky.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#362

Post by homakov »

Lucadg wrote: post #220
icebraining wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual, if you're well-off you have extra options. Get $500k to buy some property (which you can then rent) in Portugal or Spain and you get residency (and later can apply for citizenship). Then again, if you have access to $500k, the safety net is probably less interesting.

Greece has a similar program if I'm not mistaken.

$250k. But why go this way? You're limited to live in those southern european countries. You can't live e.g. in Netherlands with golden visa of Portugal or Greece.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#363

Post by Lucadg »

homakov wrote: post #362
Lucadg wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece has a similar program if I'm not mistaken.

$250k. But why go this way? You're limited to live in those southern european countries. You can't live e.g. in Netherlands with golden visa of Portugal or Greece.

interesting, I didn't know that

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#364

Post by icebraining »

homakov wrote: post #362
Lucadg wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece has a similar program if I'm not mistaken.

$250k. But why go this way? You're limited to live in those southern european countries. You can't live e.g. in Netherlands with golden visa of Portugal or Greece.

It just takes five years to get citizenship in Portugal, then you can.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#365

Post by mantale »

lm28469 wrote: post #129
ThJ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these…

I feel like it's partly made to avoid people abusing the system. In France for example a lot of people go to the doctor for the most ridiculous things because 1: it's free (at least at the individual level) and 2: it's an easy way to get a sick leave (sick leaves have been exploding in the last few years). Same with emergency rooms, people don't know what an emergency is, they just use them as walk in clinic. Every t…

Doctor visit are never free in France you always pay 1€ which is deducted from future reimbursements. Also you still have to pay 70% of the 25€ unless you have additional private insurance.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#366

Post by maxheadroom »

ckris wrote: post #346
CalRobert wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying a poor American can go work at Burger King in Sweden? That's revelatory.

Yes, you can get a work permit as for example a dishwasher at a restaurant (In theory at Burger King, but maybe they wouldn't hire unqualified migrants for image reasons). You can also bring your family and kids. I think you don't have the right to some things for the first year though. But as long as you are paid the normal wage and benefits you can get permanent residency after four years, and citizenship after ano…

This entirely depends on if the employer is willing to initiate the application for the permit for you to fulfil the role. See the authority on this here (in English for obvious reasons)[0].

Edit: "Authority on this" as in Migrationsverket is the entity that receives the application and ultimately decides to grant/deny it.

[0] - https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#367

Post by close04 »

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #319
close04 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one reader certainly doesn't. You're asking everybody for evidence that could stand up even in court while you respond with anecdotal data and personal experience based on biased, incomplete, or generic data. "I live and work in rural US and suddenly I can afford a lot more than I could if I had one of those jobs I found after an internet search for London" does not pass the bar you expect other people's evi…

"People are dying due to lack of healthcare!" "Who?" "This guy tweeted about it" "I'm going to need more than that" "Here is a study where they claim it happens in aggregate" "Who died specifically and what were the circumstances of that death" "PEOPLE ARE DYING" pretty much how this debate goes every single time

If you consider that study data bad so be it. But then accept that your data is equally bad at best. And I'm being generous here, you provided no "data" to speak of. No aggregate data, no study, not even a hint of specificity.

On one hand you talk about London (very specific), on the other it's "rural US" (97% of US!). Nothing about the actual job or its conditions, what you looked at to compare, etc.

I mean it's absurd to discredit a study with sources and actual figures but try to pretend your claim looks like anything more than an impulse comment.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#368

Post by close04 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #326
close04 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one reader certainly doesn't. You're asking everybody for evidence that could stand up even in court while you respond with anecdotal data and personal experience based on biased, incomplete, or generic data. "I live and work in rural US and suddenly I can afford a lot more than I could if I had one of those jobs I found after an internet search for London" does not pass the bar you expect other people's evi…

To make this anecdote into a data point the GP should post his whole financial history. E.g. how much they made and spent. What do they own and then we can also check what can they buy. For example, can he buy a typical hip surgery, which over time is likely? CLL treatments? Medical transport should it be necessary? Hire a nurse? Get a broken limb in a cast? ... Not lose a job because they cannot get to it for a mont…

No, he would have to say something just slightly more specific like: "rural means a suburb of City X". Or "I'm a programmer working remotely for a Fortune 500 company". Anything that can make the rest of the statement meaningful. I mean I understand not wanting to give out personal details but then don't bring it up if it's so generic.

I can tell you rural Kazakhstan can pay 5 times more than the same job in US. But without giving you details it will seem like an exaggeration or flat out lie. It's not, just a cherry picked example.

If a study comes up with figures that don't have particular names attached (data protection and all that) then unless you have some evidence to disprove it we can take it at face value. Fighting it with empty hands and generic unverifiable counterarguments feels like trying to save face.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#369

Post by ShinTakuya »

celticmusic wrote: post #299
ShinTakuya wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but the statement the original commentor made wasn't that it was "unlikely" for you to be poor. He said "cannot". What you mention in your comment is logical, but you moved the goalposts by using the word "unlikely". Can and cannot are vastly different words to likely and unlikely. Put simply, one claims it's impossible to be poor if you do X. The other claims it's possible to be poor but you have a better chanc…

thank you for calling that out, more people need to be called out when doing that crap.

Yeah it's a pet peeve when people move the goalposts to make themselves look smart/correct. I actually am against the conservative position myself but I prefer more clear reasoning. In my case it's because I don't think the "good decisions" are always realistically available when you're in poverty.

Re: Stop Blaming America’s Poor for Their Poverty

#370

Post by fatbird »

cglace wrote: post #354
fatbird wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignored the substance of my point: a dishwasher is an employee of a licenced/regulated business operator, who is answerable to a regulatory regime. The state has a regulatory handle on the dishwasher already, and doesn't need to licence them or force them to take training to ensure minimal standards. Cosmetologists are usually independent contractors and are the responsible party, equivalent in legal terms to the…

I understand what you are saying. However, I believe your conclusion is absurd. Considering most of the US does not require licensing for a "shampoo technician", it would appear you are arguing for something that is currently a fringe practice to become mainstream. Is that correct? Also, a cosmetologist and a shampoo technician are two distinct positions.

I'm not arguing for more or less regulation. I'm arguing that we have a societal interest in having some direct or indirect regulatory handle on many jobs that don't obviously require it, and cases like you're raising of the dishwasher, where regulation seems obviously unnecessary, are in fact indirectly regulated--and the costs of regulating the dishwasher, among other restaurant employees, are actually quite significant (meaning that '300 hours' of regulatory training, appropriately targeted at the business owner, isn't as obviously unreasonable as it appears).

You're holding up 300 hours of training for a dishwasher as a reductio ad absurdum of professional regulation of hair washers in salons, when what's obviously happened is a local regulation saying that salon 'workers' (again, actually independent contractors) need a diploma from a cosmetology school. 300 hours is less than 10 weeks of full-time school; a 3 month program teaching salon workers how to effectively, hygienically and with due respect for local business regulations, work in a salon. When you see 'even the hairwasher needs a cosmetology diploma', it's closing a back door where the not-a-cosmetologist hair washer is allowed to do all the things a cosmetologist does for cheaper--and without the required training to actually be an independent contractor.

I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone on my condo building's strata council (i.e. HOA). I'm continually dealing with the push and pull of rules at the most petty level, part of which means people being shockingly petty about avoiding the plain intent of a reasonable rule. You'll never see the truth of the saying 'decisions are made by those who show up' as you will in a minor bureaucratic positions like strata/HOA. It's a constant battle against senior citizens who want your garbage bagged up into one of eight separate classifications and the guy who argues that his truck that hangs six feet out of his stall in the parkade isn't a problem because the rule says "don't block the lane" without specifying by how much.

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