This is Real, That's Not • Hacker News Board

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#361

Post by jeegsy » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

RickJWagner wrote: post #215

iddan wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike in Europe, in the US going to university or college requires huge amounts of money and usually require students to take loans. And unlike other types of loans it is nearly impossible to declare bankruptcy for student loans. There is a great summarising it: https://youtu.be/pVKEsiNMPNc

Father of 3 here, one recently graduated and one about to start US college. With reasonable preparation, college is very affordable. Scholarships are easily obtained with a good ACT or SAT score. Both of these are well documented, a few months of self-study practically guarantees a good score. My experience has been that good preparation puts out of pocket costs below $10k per year. (I think that's actually on the hi…

> Scholarships are easily obtained with a good ACT or SAT score

Ha ha ha. Having gone to college and recalling some folks I met, and listening to some stories from a friend who is a high school teacher at a public school, I laughed hard at that

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#362

Post by dakial1 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #246

dakial1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly my thought while I was reading the text. I live in Brazil and while we certainly have homeless and poverty here, this specific situation of someone with skill and education becoming homeless is something ultra rare, to te point that I never saw, hears or read of anyone in this situation. Even very modest people earning little money are able to get a roof over their heads. The usual case of homelessnes…

> healthy and sane people living in the streets for some time and most of the time the justification is indebtness There is a strong selection bias here: homeless people who are addicts or suffer from mental health issues are significantly less likely to be on a computer writing interesting articles of their experience. I volunteered at a soup kitchen in SF a number of years ago. At the orientation meeting, the direc…

  >There is a strong selection bias here: homeless people who are addicts or suffer from mental health issues are  significantly less likely to be on a computer writing interesting articles of their experience.

Good point. But shouldn't we see those kinds of articles in other countries as well? Maybe #4 (down-on-their-luck) might be proportionally smaller in the US but bigger in comparison to the same group in other countries?

One interesting thing also is #3, why are veterans homeless? PTSD?

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#363

Post by zeckalpha » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #311

zeckalpha wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t the OP do those things and still end up homeless?

So? Should the millions of students who rely on loans have their opportunity for an education taken away because of that?

No, I’m saying there’s no single way to 100% prevent homelessness

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#364

Post by cleansingfire » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #99

cleansingfire wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hear "Money doesn't buy happiness" my internal response is always "but poverty can ensure misery"

Poverty does not in fact ensure misery. Victor Frankel wrote about surviving the most hideous depredations imaginable in World War II concentration camps. It was obvious from the first that a defeatist attitude killed you, and that determination to survive was essential. Knowing this helped me through many years of misery.

Determination is orthogonal to happiness. Survivor guilt over what may have been done to survive, demonstrates this.