The benefits cliff of health insurance is so real, and those cliffs exist all over the place (an example is in the SUNY system for tuition). Universal programs without means testing seem like such a better way to run things. If you have a somewhat right wing philosophy: it allows the truly exceptional individuals of every cohort to reach their potential. For left wingers: it is giving equally to everyone's shared needs from society as a whole.
On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
101–110 of 920 posts
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you will know their nature. You don’t need to be homeless to discover that some people lack sympathy. I lack sympathy. It doesn’t mean I’m an asshole. Sympathy isn’t empathy (huge distinction). Some people can’t tell the difference and everyone is just bad (cue the big tears). This is especially true if you’re a freeloa…
You may have missed the point, so I'll state it explicitly: almost all people lack empathy, it's just more than some have the self-control not to stab homeless people to death. Sympathy, gratuity, and freeloading are somewhere off in the distance. I hope you're not trying to slip in some duplicitous language to accuse me of being freeloader. What does it have to do with anything?
> almost all people lack empathy
There isn't any empirical assessment that agrees with that. A lack of empathy is narcissism, which only applies to a small percentage of any population according to most of the research on this subject.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you will know their nature. You don’t need to be homeless to discover that some people lack sympathy. I lack sympathy. It doesn’t mean I’m an asshole. Sympathy isn’t empathy (huge distinction). Some people can’t tell the difference and everyone is just bad (cue the big tears). This is especially true if you’re a freeloa…
you know "free loaders" aren't why most people are homeless right?
I didn't say that.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#104> a pretty bottom-barrel ford leases for 300-400 a month
Ford leases seem to be expensive for some reason, and not indicative of the overall market. For instance, a base model Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic can be leased for $160/month, with $0 down. With $1000 down, these figures are close to $100/month.
> A company is looking to pay a person as little as they can and keep them, so a person’s pay is determined by how rare their skills are and how much demand there is for those skills
> I mentioned this before, but I can work on cars, and I’m able to do anything less complex than a full engine or transmission rebuild
I’m sure becoming a mechanic has crossed the author’s mind at some point. I’d love to hear their thoughts on this.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#105Living in a country where there is a better social net in place, but coming from a refugee background, i regularly notice a disconnect with my peers. I do understand their financial worries and sympathize, but only because i am aware of my perspective. Oftentimes i have to remind myself that for others it is actually stressful to think about not being able to comfortably buy a house vs renting it. Meanwhile i worry a…
Seriously, some responses here are mildly bewildering in the extent people can't relate their life experience to actual poverty.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, this is exactly what he explains as the reality, and I agree that this is how the job market works. However, that's not to say that it is a good state of affairs, or that it is the only way things could work. In fact, the purpose of workers' unions is exactly to stop this kind of thinking, and it seems like this may once again start spreading a bit, given the recent movements in Amazon and other places. The pro…
I'm not sure it's ever going to be the case at the very bottom of the skill continuum that workers won't be seen as a commodity given just how replaceable they are to the company. For some jobs you could have your whole workforce strike, fire them, and replace them the next day with a minor blip in productivity. The only thing that stops that is regulation or wider organization than just that particular worker segmen…
Time was we had a labor movement and you're right: it took extraordinary actions on both sides to move the state of affairs back then.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's this in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/rich-peop... “All the way up the income-wealth spectrum,” Norton told me, “basically everyone says [they’d need] two or three times as much” to be perfectly happy. It references this study: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53540
Maybe it’s because I grew up in a frugal household, but I have basically never felt like I needed more money since properly starting my career. I mean it helps that I have tended to live in lower COL cities, but I have always saved a sufficient portion of my income, and I have never had the feeling that I want to buy something or travel somewhere and I can’t because I can’t afford it. I don’t fly first class, and I r…
I've observed that brushes with mortality or ill-health can also quickly alter one's perspective. Once one gets the perception that there's a threat of being physically unable to work for much longer, I think the drive to have an increasingly large "safety net" can become very strong.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#108The car. As he says, the car. The goddamned car. Every time you get into it, hoping that it will start. And not just when it's been sat outside your house for a while. When you stop for petrol (gas), or in the car park after buying food, sitting behind the wheel and hoping it starts again. The restrictions that get placed on you when you just can't rely on the car always starting. For your life, a mostly-starts car i…
For the wealthy, a car is expensive but mostly a convenient way to get around. For the poor, car maintenance costs can be ruinous. However, our society (excluding a few large cities) all but requires a car for day-to-day activities. Everyone drivers, but the poor bear the brunt of the cost, since they are more likely to live near noisy, polluted roads. Meanwhile, the wealthy can afford to live on quiet suburbs and cul-de-sacs. Cities and infrastructure designed for cars ("car dependency") disproportionately hurts the poor.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#109>while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth of rent as a security deposit, it’s much less normal to get it back This looks insane to an Australian. I have moved house 4 times in the past 5 years and I have never not got all of my bond back. Some states here have a rule that the bond money is held by the state so that the landowner doesn't just take that money for themselves. How can the poor ever break the cy…
I don’t know the statistics, but I live in the US, and had rented for 10+ years with 5 of 6 different landlords in 3 cities, and I always got my deposit back, and I don’t know anyone who was stiffed either. But I wasn’t staying in the worst places, but not the best either. One was an informal cash transaction rental from a Craigslist ad and it worked out.
Through 3 landlords I only got a security deposit back once. Both times it was claimed they needed the money to repaint the apartment (I didn't damage the walls or even put anything up on them).
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
That came to my mind as well. If I don't expect the deposit back and cannot afford to claim it, let's just turn the tables and make them claim something from me .
Here in the UK that would destroy any chances of renting anything decent in the future. Any agency/landlord will always ask for references from your current landlord, if you dick them over like this you can forget ever renting something that isn't a slum where people don't care about references. Also deposits are always(by law) held by a third party in escrow, and it's actually a bit of a pain to claim any money from…
In reality (in the UK), those references precede your current landlord getting to check your apartment's condition out. By the time the landlord has ascertained the state of the property, the reference has usually been given.