291–300 of 310 posts
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Especially in postsecondary education, which is artificially limited and will absorb some factor of all the additional subsidies it's given.
Given the student loan crisis, the supply seems to be artificially unlimited, not restricted.
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In Israel in the 60-80's the state created "rent to own" housing projects for poor people. It worked pretty well.
Paying a mortgage isn't much different than a rent to own scheme.
Have you tried applying for a mortgage and renting?
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If so, turn it into a perpetually profitable self-funding charity that fronts the poor the money to get the cheaper option in return for a cut of the savings. It's probably not possible because there are factors other than what you described.
Isn't this essentially the whole premise behind microfinance (microloans), which are a form of charity?
Try doing that in US....
This is something I enjoy about our jobs up in Scandinavia - the salaries are very compressed around the mean. Engineers, Lawyers, and other similar professions tend to earn 2x-3x of what the absolute minimum wage jobs earn. That's quite the difference compared to other countries, where Engineers can earn 5x-20x. People here are still motivated to seek higher education and better paid jobs, even though they could liv…
I wonder what's the effect on emigration/immigration. It sounds like the gap between Scandinavia and other part of the world would make it tempting for high performers to leave.
You obviously can be a high performer with good life prospects there. You won't accumulate as much wealth as somewhere else, but the culture where you grew up also gives much less value to financial status. Good life, quite enough money, and good standing in the society means little reason to emigrate.
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I think what you've identified is that the poor have gotten better off due to technical innovations reducing the price of basic goods and enhancing their functionality -- while on average wages have tracked inflation. This is a systemic improvement. Meanwhile, the rich have gotten exponentially richer, as public policies have shifted ever more in their favor. For much the 1900s the top income tax bracket in the US wa…
> The poor have gotten slightly better off, the wealthy have gotten dramatically better off, and the gap between the two has widened. That's a fairly common perception. Most often summarized in "the rich get richer, the poor poorer" (at least on a relative basis). I was born in a Communist country, and I have another perception. Poverty has different levels. The most abject poverty is when you go hungry. My family di…
I remember going to another country to get pasta and rice by the bag - so that we had something to eat... just 25 years ago. That has little to do with poor growth distribution in US.
Having lived in a post-communist country and gaining wealth, I can see now in US that it's drastically harder to be better off here. It's a case of "everyone starts as poor" comparing to "poor have a lot of obstacles in holding onto wealth". You need at least $1mil in generational benefits to be well off in US.(either cash, quality education or other means)
The worst part for US - even moving to a rich place like NYC will not give you the necessary boost anymore(median NYC income is below national median)
Easy answer: because expenses are higher for poor people. Instead of buying a home, the lower class rent their whole life. Instead of their daddy giving them a home, the middle class pay interest on a mortgage most of their life. Instead of buying a 20-pack of $necessary_product that costs $20 and will last for months, the lower class buy a 2-pack that costs $5 and lasts a couple weeks because they need the $15 to pa…
>Easy answer: because expenses are higher for poor people As a person who mentors poor people, it's not always this.. Don't get me wrong, there are some poor people who are poor by choice. They usually don't feel like victim and aren't stressed about them being poor. They are pleasant to deal with as they understand the trade off they are making. They are very small % of poor people. Here is the difference I see: 1.…
It's not the reason why people are poor, it's the result of being poor and being treated as such.
Without making the jump from washing plates/factory work to software I don't know how I would have escaped(still haven't) considering my pay increased 4 times. Just brutal when you trade hours for money directly at a low rate, I was doing 70hrs washing plates before and it was nothing ha. Edit: there is the thought of living within your means, personally with a roommate I could live on $10-$20K a year which you can m…
I was also lucky, because my sister left to work in Italy. That would make all of the difference...
If I didn't have: - free education secondary and higher - low cost local transport - a suit given by my sister - 4 tickets to another city to interview(paid by my sister) - low cost internet - rent paid by my sister
I would have been just another bum, because that 10y period included being kicked out onto the street... because some nice "rich people" used my schizophrenic mother in a tax avoidance scheme... and got away with it.
There's a lot of luck that is involved in getting out of poverty, that most arrogant middle class individuals completely ignore.
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Not who you asked, but without extra means you end up with free time any time you're not working. You can't afford to do anything. If you don't have a job where you can simply take on more hours, but it's also not predictable enough that you can get a second job, you just end up with a lot of useless free time on short notice. Can't afford hobbies, trips, no significant other (being poor doesn't help your dating life…
> what else is there to do? If things are tight enough, you spend all that useless "free time" hunting for more work. You feel you can't afford to just enjoy the time. More gigs. More waiting for an Uber request. More time polishing your resume, or your profile on Fiverr. Or improving your "Github is the new resume" look. Then it's not really free time. It's a job, but you're not paid every hour you're working on it.…
Presuming there's an Uber and you have a driver's license(they're not free you know) and a car.
>More gigs.
You are aware that gig economy is just about 5 years old, right? And you have to be in a high demand area to do it.
There were coders for hire sites for a long time, but that paid complete crap.
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Given the student loan crisis, the supply seems to be artificially unlimited, not restricted.
You're talking about the supply of dollars, I'm talking about the supply of university admissions slots.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_debt#United_States
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You're talking about the supply of dollars, I'm talking about the supply of university admissions slots.
One is a proxy for the other. There is $1.5T [1] in total outstanding student debt. There would not be such a large amount without a number of factors, but the most important piece of this puzzle is the number of students and that correlates 1:1 to with admission slots. So as I originally posited, there are enough admission slots (probably way too many given default rates) at the aggregate level. Maybe there are not…