Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
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Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#2Obviously, you can't undestant what you do not experience yourself ( at least a bit). And saddly this lack of insight could justify hunter/prey dynamics and win/loose approaches as social games. However,because most society members are inevitably loosers in such games then these games are unstable and backfire periodically ( but could take even hundres of years until a culture fails and resets the evil games)
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#3A more distant but very wealthy family member once said that people wouldn't be so poor if they just saved up money. That perfectly illustrated the difficulty rich people have understanding poor people to me.
I was really young, but that really stuck with me.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#4Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#5A more distant but very wealthy family member once said that people wouldn't be so poor if they just saved up money. That perfectly illustrated the difficulty rich people have understanding poor people to me. I was really young, but that really stuck with me.
I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo.
Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#6Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
And how would you suggest poor Americans afford the plane ticket necessary to achieve those perspectives? Just because there are people in the world who have it worse doesn’t mean poor Americans should just deal with it.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#7Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
You're not wrong.
But, poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor, because of the abundance of credit and debt.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#8Fantastic substack post on being poor: https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-the-experience-...
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#9Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
Obviously there are worse places than the US (for example, straight up dying of starvation is pretty rare), but the poor in the US are materially worse off than those pretty much anywhere else in the rich world.
https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/ameri...
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#10Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
Having lived in the third world, I would say that the American poors are probably the closest you're going to get to "third world poor" anywhere in the developed world. Life expectancy, crime rates, housing quality and disease in poor American communities are on level incomparable to any other developed country I can think of.