501–510 of 920 posts
Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…
The thing that most people, including those in this thread, don't understand about poverty, is that the side-effects don't magically go away after you are an adult. Reading the replies here, I do get the typical sense of "well, they are people who made poor choices, sort of feel sorry for them, can't relate." In reality, many poor adults were poor children. The funny thing, is that in the glorious US of A, the main d…
How do you know anyone is thinking that?
Here's what I think about poor/homeless/rich/whatever people in general: nothing. They don't exist in my mind, I'm thinking about my own life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of dismissive attitude toward peoples' problems is unhelpful. Following your line of reasoning, there are people with crippling diseases in the world. People worrying about a place to live etc should remember that their problems are child's play compared to theirs. And those people should remember their problems are child's play compared to someone being targeted by genocide. There are nearly 8 billion peop…
That is really a terrible argument. I am sorry but I am not going to feel sorry about you just because you are stressed about which crazy expensive private school your kids should go to. It is not really a worst-off competition it is just that at absolute level of suffering your issues are ignorable.
I'm curious, how do you go about establishing that level? Do you think it's really absolute, rather than relative to the stressors the observer feels? In reality, I think that's how most people actually operate. Something (extremely roughly) along the lines of: T >= O, where T is suffering of the target and O is suffering of the observer, results in empathy.
That gets caught up in the fact that suffering is more about perception, and is itself relative. So maybe we have to say both are level of suffering as perceived by the observer.
Something along the lines of "if I perceive you as suffering more than I do, I can have empathy for you". For what it's worth, I think this gets at the heart of the difference between sympathy (largely pity) and empathy more generally.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A basic, simple loan like this also is often good for your credit record.
Unless your credit score is absolutely perfect, the APR on a used car loan is easily 8-10% That's a pretty big chunk of change to spend to boost your credit record https://www.bankrate.com/loans/auto-loans/rates/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re-read the objected to line: "I made it and you can too." Note that I emphasized "can" in that quote. "Can", not "will". This isn't a guarantee by throwaway-0987, it's words of encouragement to try. On a forum that celebrates startup moonshots, I find it odd that anyone would piss on the idea that trying is worth while.
I genuinely don't know if even "can" is applicable to allpoor people in this context. A person who has a similar background but ended up with a chronic illness preventing them from working... that dream of working for 200k/yr is impossible.
I think the "can" is applicable here and can think that even while acknowledging there are people who can't physically work. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll ask: is this the only reason you object to using the word "can"? What would be more accurate in your view?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone. I love your story. There's also a ton of people who will delight in cherry-picking your story, as justification for not expanding the social safety net. "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy" A few factors to consider: - You had an aunt you could live with - As a yo…
If you're talking to the people in the professional class already, your points are valid. If you're talking to someone in OP's situation back then, your points are dispiriting. I know you didn't mean it that way, but it is important to a person who is in a disadvantaged situation to not hear well-meaning members of the professional class saying what sounds like, "you can't make your situation better until the whole s…
The trick is separating "Don't give up" from "it's your fault if you haven't escpaed poverty."
Cause it's also dispiriting to have worked your ass off for 10+ years and still be poor and have someone telling you if you were trying hard enough you would be in a different position.
I'd generally agree but some Ikea stuff is so cheap that it's not a big deal. $10 for a nice little table is fine. They also tend to have a discount section for returns and minor defects, those can be decent deals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone. I love your story. There's also a ton of people who will delight in cherry-picking your story, as justification for not expanding the social safety net. "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy" A few factors to consider: - You had an aunt you could live with - As a yo…
3 of the 5 factors you list boil down to "OP made good decisions and worked hard". I'm not sure how that is a counter argument to "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy". From their description, it doesn't sound like living with his Aunt was a tremendous boon either. I don't mean to argue against a social safety net (free college in this example was certainly a good thing). I jus…
Who do you think wakes up and thinks, "I love poverty. This life is so easy"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$100 / month on gas, $200 / month for a car payment, $100 / month for insurance. That's not even accounting for maintenance.
$1200 a year insurance? Seems a huge amount! Is this one of those things where it's for some reason more expensive for poor people?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That claim doesn’t even pass the sniff test. The idea that 80% of people - which must include those born into multi generational deprived families just by numbers alone - suddenly find themselves for a period of time on the other side of the glass ceiling of poverty, it’s outrageous. I’d love to be corrected on this.
Walkedaway is exaggerating a claim made by the conservative American Enterprise Institute: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/some-amazing-findings-on-inco... This is how they counter all the talk about the 1%. They suggest that 56% of people will be in the top 10% for one year or more. In their entire working lives. Distortions include: -income is not wealth -some kinds of income are very uneven year-over-year -jumping…