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On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

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Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#731

Post by baby »

chmod600 wrote: post #546
whack wrote: post #377

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…

When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do. But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to m…

> But the constant drumbeat of unfairness and victimhood is a counterproductive tactic in the policymaking process.

I don't get it, do you think the system is fair? Do you think it's fine to have so many homeless people in the US because they were given a fair chance? Do you think it's fair that you can go bankrupt due to a medical issue?

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#732

Post by tasuki »

robotnikman wrote: post #695
busterarm wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow former-poor here. It's the kind of thing that casts a shadow over your whole life. And in this industry, nobody is comfortable talking about it. Most of the people I work with graduated from school as guaranteed millionaires. I hear things get said by people that are so far from the orbit of my reality and I cringe. Reading the article was really eye opening for me because I hadn't thought of all of the life s…

As someone who also grew up in a poorer family I can relate as well, both the disconnect from people in the industry I've talked to and the skills I picked up growing up. My dad had a bunch of tools growing up which he used to do household repairs and repairs on the cars, I remember for the longest time my parents driving an old station wagon with a lot of duct tape holding things together or covering leaks and the a…

I grew up upper middle class, our car had no air conditioning, my father was doing car repairs himself. I'm from Eastern Europe, a relatively wealthy country compared to much of the rest of the world.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#733

Post by 14 »

Just read this this morning before work and thought how I can relate to having to fix my own cars and now I am better off and don’t car stress any more but if forced me to learn a lot along the way. Then at work my coworker is telling me she was at the transmission shop and Toyota and car still isn’t running well. I look and knew right away she had a bad air filter. 25$ back on the road full power

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#734

Post by WalterBright »

acdha wrote: post #722
WalterBright wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> caving immediately after someone demonstrated knowledge of their legal rights and lack of fear to contact the justice system. Sounds like the solution. When I was younger, people would try to take advantage of me, but all it takes is a bit of standing up for yourself and they concede.

Yes, but note that your standing to do so varies considerably — I've never had problems doing that as a white man but I know people who declined to involve the city / law enforcement because they had had past bad experiences due to being black, gay, etc. If the landlord threatens to call the cops and you know a history of people like you having been mistreated or simply blown off, you might give up and accept it as a…

If you believe that nobody has tried to cheat me, steal from me, take advantage of my ignorance and inexperience, steamroll me, threaten me, con me, etc., you're very mistaken.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#735

Post by ubermonkey »

throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

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…

I have never been Poor, but the kinds of reactions you describe can take root with even pretty transient financial stress.

I had a couple very thin years -- savings dwindling, and then gone; work was scarce. Collectors were calling. I was afraid I was going to lose my house. My power got cut off.

I scraped by, and got out of it, and find myself now in a very fortunate position -- better off than I was before, excellent income, minimal debt (and zero consumer debt), etc. -- but even a couple years of that kind of instability leaves a mark. It's not as much as throwaway's, but I'm very debt-averse. I'm very risk-averse. We save a LOT. I'll never be in that position again.

I find that most people never consider how precarious their position really is until an object lesson comes along.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#736

Post by RGamma »

Seeing this thread I understand why the "U"SA have become so fucked. Sorry to all those 90s kids who grew up in the illusion of a middle-class society.

Carrot for the well-situated, stick for the rest. The truly amazing thing is how this system creates its own proponents without any diction or explicit coercion like ideologies of old. And by obfuscating its workings with complicated black boxes in the form of financial and legal entities it can stay diffuse and difficult to pinpoint.

Gratz to those who made it, could have been much easier in the rest of the first world though.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#737

Post by screye »

chmod600 wrote: post #546
whack wrote: post #377

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…

When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do. But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to m…

> When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do.

> But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to make it to a comfortable place.

This exact dichotomy comes up when I give advice. I have started calling it 'advice for persons' vs 'advice for peoples' (the grammatical peculiarity is on purpose). Both are often completely different.

OP's advice is great for persons. It doesn't work for policy making which is decidedly about peoples. But, I don't think that was its intention to begin with.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#738

Post by nostrademons »

estaseuropano wrote: post #712
chmod600 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do. But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to m…

How about a reality hat: the world does not offer everyone equal chances. You live in a country surrounded by fences and border patrol exactly to keep those that were less lucky from trying to get some of that luck. Even when born in the country, there are better and worse schools, better and worse social infrastructure, a billion different glass ceilings according to color, gender, age, accent or faith. Your comment…

I saw nothing of the sort in chmod600's comment. They even led with "When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do."

Policymakers in Washington and poor immigrants on the streets need different advice, because they control different things. If you are President or Congressperson in the U.S.A, then by all means: let's have a more humane immigration system, and universal health care, and a social safety net.

But if you're a poor immigrant in this country, none of that policy is up to you. Non-citizens don't get to vote; Congresspeople do not listen to them. They risk being deported for the slightest infraction. They often require their employer to sponsor their continued stay in the U.S. They lack financial resources, and oftentimes job skills. They lack cultural capital and a support network.

But they can control several things. They can control where they choose to settle, and move to areas with more opportunity. They can control what they choose to spend money on, and not let anything out the door that isn't absolutely essential for survival. They can control what they do with their time, and allocate that to building new skills and pursuing new opportunities. If they don't do all of those things, they will fall behind, through the cracks, because that's how life is for poor non-citizens in America. It's usually worse for poor non-citizens in the countries they came from, too.

Being able to think systemically, act collectively, and be free from any sort of reprisal or consequence is itself a form of privilege. I thought that chmod600's comment acknowledged reality more than yours did, because not everybody has that privilege. And if you're one of the many people who don't, your best option is to think about your own enlightened self-interest, act according to the options available to you, consider consequences carefully, and not feel too guilty about doing the best that you can.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#739

Post by vmception »

throwaway284239 wrote: post #615
vmception wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because (as I learned that day) not having insurance is a criminal offense > Can't afford the ticket I got for not being registered so here is where you got lucky, not having prior outstanding non-payment or not having prior potentially or actual criminal offenses on your record. non-payment of the ticket would have led to harsher punishment upon your next infraction, which is much more likely to happen when your n…

I know you didn't mean it this way but I would not describe any part of this experience as "lucky." But you're right. The patrolman came right out and said that he was knocking down the no-insurance charge to an unregistered citation because I didn't have a criminal record. What he didn't know is that I do have a criminal record, just not in that state. Guess his systems don't connect to the federal ones. So yeah. "L…

yes, it takes an outside perspective to identity the luck involved because people in every socioeconomic class and background all have their own challenges that they faced whether they will receive empathy for it or not

for your post I was mainly aiming to point out to others how a cycle effects a large portion of American society, disproportionately affecting minorities relative to their population. The prior unpaid ticket and prior leniency leads to the harsher penalty for the next infraction, which is all more likely to happen when there is an assumption of suspicion and over-policing. This practically ensures that violent infractions become the only choices available to people and harms our collective society. Despite there no longer being racially exclusionary laws, and despite there (typically) being no individual person consciously trying to disenfranchisement someone, it is still easy to quantify how a result becomes so common.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#740

Post by dahfizz »

covidthrow wrote: post #692
whimsicalism wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of all private wealth is inherited, not earned through work, by the wealthiest 5% of households. In that context, why focus on giving small portions of wealth to those in poverty (even if they aren't working as hard as you think they ought to)?

If one were to redistribute all of the top 5%'s wealth at once: - it wouldn't be liquid, so you'd be giving part ownership in assets - the value would be slightly less than median yearly income per recipient. At a pretty sizeable 5% average return, the individuals would net about $2,000 a year. - if they chose to sell the assets, they would end up with about one year's median income and then it's gone I'm not sure ho…

> I'm not sure how much money you think lives up at the top, but redistributing it is not sustainable, and it's certainly not enough to magically pull everyone out of poverty indefinitely.

People just do not understand this. You could take away every penny from every billionaire in this country. If you sold everything they had, you would not have enough money to fund the federal government for even one year. And now the money is gone; you can no longer collect tax from the ex-wealthy.

Nevertheless, "just tax the rich" is treated as the solution to all problems. I guess people hear all the talk about the "top one tenth of one percent" and they imagine literally bottomless bank accounts.

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