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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

#261

Post by MomoXenosaga »

School-Cotton wrote: post #196
throwaway3699 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand that the American definition for socialism completely different than Europeans. Those words evoke memories of communism and Cold War rhetoric.

On the other hand, the European definition seems to be “social democracy” at most. Marx would have thought the name of today’s French “Socialist” Party was ridiculous.

Yes socialism and communism are two very different things in European politics. In fact in many countries socialist parties pre date communist parties.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#262

Post by rini17 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #45
FriedrichN wrote: post #3

A 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.

The worst part is that your wealthy family member is right. It is well illustrated by a quote from Terry Pratchett > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a se…

The poor is more likely to have their boots stolen. Curious omission on (defacto police) Cpt.Vimes' part.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#263

Post by rejectedandsad »

chasebank wrote: post #109
GuB-42 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that your wealthy family member is right. It is well illustrated by a quote from Terry Pratchett > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a se…

I see this everyday at a local bodega. I watched a poor family essentially grocery shop at the corner store. Toilet paper, chips, soda, canned food, etc. Their bill was over $100. I could get 3x the items, at higher quality with a trip to Costco for the same amount of money.

Yup - and it makes the fact that there are a lot of wealthy liberals that lionize bodegas for their “authenticity” even more gross.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#264

Post by AdrianB1 »

mentalpiracy wrote: post #167
gruez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the thinking that these jobs are supposed to be for teenagers, which has their income supplemented by their parents?

Why should a working persons age or living arrangement cause a devaluation of the work they are doing? Yes the instinct is to pay teenagers less because we generally cannot fathom them capable or experienced enough to do “real” work. But does this set the stage for the devaluation of entire classes of work because they’re seen as “for teens?”

They are not. But some low paid jobs exist only because they are interesting to certain demographics and some people are willing to pay for it; think about the paper boys or lawn mowing adolescents - it is the kind of thing I can do myself (I find it relaxing), but I pay for it only because it gives someone else the opportunity to have some extra pocket money easily. It is a good arrangement with your kids or some neighborhood kids and in rural areas in my country (Europe) it is sometimes an arrangement also for a nanny. In many cases the money I pay is more than the value I receive, but I still choose to pay. If someone feels the need to pay $40 for 3 hours for a nanny that is fine, but that does not make it automatically worth $40.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#265

Post by chasebank »

selectodude wrote: post #215
chasebank wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this everyday at a local bodega. I watched a poor family essentially grocery shop at the corner store. Toilet paper, chips, soda, canned food, etc. Their bill was over $100. I could get 3x the items, at higher quality with a trip to Costco for the same amount of money.

But that first trip to Costco would cost them $160 and they can't go without $60 worth of food for a week in order to save up. Being poor is incredibly expensive.

Yes, that is the point I was making in reference to the OP.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#266

Post by refurb »

baq wrote: post #170
refurb wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Not raising kids in poverty is a matter of social responsibility. I would also argue that most people don’t want kids until they have a certain level of financial security. . That’s why family planning was so successful in decreasing birth rates.

So what do you recommend to people who are in a poverty cycle but want to feel they’re free humans, not economic slaves?

That’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one.

Having a companion animal is also something a free human does. Should we tell people to get pets they can’t take care of?

You premise that people are owed the opportunity to have children is a silly one. It’s not the parent that is the priority but the child.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#267

Post by throw0101a »

nanis wrote: post #36

Wealth is a stock measure, income is flow. You accumulate wealth out of what you can set aside out of the flow. Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation. Then, when we sort of "make it" here, people who…

> Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation.

And this is where the idea (now myth?) of the American Dream came from.

When America was young, no one really had much capital. Also true for periods of large scale immigration: most folks were 'equal' in the sense of not having much of anything.

Over time wealth got concentrated, but with the Great Depression and the WW2 war economy, capital was generally became more equalized in the early- and mid-20th century.

Of course in the last 50+ years there have been no 'equalization events', and so the concentration of wealth has managed to run for a while without interruption with the obvious results.

Piketty has a lot of historical data that shows this process for number of countries:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#268

Post by jhayward »

allenrb wrote: post #150
TacticalCoder wrote: post #140

I have both my father and my uncle who became dirt poor just by making terribly poor life choices so I've got a very different take on this. They had good jobs but couldn't help screwing it up by: gambling, buying sportcars, overall trying to bite more than they could swallow (houses too big, with monthly mortgage too expensive), etc. In both cases it ended up with foreclosures / lawyers etc. My brother and I are now…

Totally agree with all of this. If you actually have the opportunity to make good money and you still wreck your finances through excessive spending, well, that is on you (barring something like a legit mental illness). Big difference between that and starting off with few skills or opportunities.

> barring something like a legit mental illness

What would be an example of a 'non-legit mental illness'?

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#269

Post by an_opabinia »

mschuster91 wrote: post #254
an_opabinia wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The incumbent homeowners voted themselves massive returns. And they felt self righteous while they were doing it to boot. We'll see. They're millionaires on paper. If there's one thing about unsophisticated people and investments, they always cash out when it's too late.

> If there's one thing about unsophisticated people and investments, they always cash out when it's too late. There is no such thing as "too late" in urban housing. Rural areas are so far "left behind" that it will take about ten times the investment that Biden wants to put up to bring it to civilized level, and he's already getting massive resistance... no way that the rural flight trend will be reversed.

> no such thing as too late

Go ahead and buy some homes for investment! Go buy some Dogecoin! Some GME! What a low information take, to say something about rural homes and Biden or whatever.

In the service of curiosity: maybe if you sold your $185,000 home from 1986 for $1.5m today, you’ll walk away a millionaire. A lot of people are looking at that arithmetic in San Francisco. And yet they do not sell! The index for months on market is at record lows. What’s going to really happen? They will watch the market fall, and then say to themselves “guess I should just wait until it goes back up in 10 years.”

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#270

Post by Jiro »

notacoward wrote: post #220
TacticalCoder wrote: post #140

I have both my father and my uncle who became dirt poor just by making terribly poor life choices so I've got a very different take on this. They had good jobs but couldn't help screwing it up by: gambling, buying sportcars, overall trying to bite more than they could swallow (houses too big, with monthly mortgage too expensive), etc. In both cases it ended up with foreclosures / lawyers etc. My brother and I are now…

I don't think anything you actually said is actually wrong, but it's adjacent to what many rich people do say - that the poor shouldn't have or do anything that just makes them happier until they're not poor. No treats, no recreation, just work at the best-paying job available as many hours as possible and save every penny. And I do have a problem with that. It's a deeply punitive and judgmental attitude, as though b…

This sounds like sour grapes to me. If side effects like being exposed to true diversity, being empathetic, etc. are so good for you that they're better than escaping poverty, that means that poverty is something to be applauded. Nobody believes that.

Poverty is bad. If you have a chance to escape poverty, and it doesn't have serious, straightforward, downsides like working 12 hours a day, or leaving your family, or killing people, you should take it. If you don't, you've made a poor life choice.

>The ones whose parents did make the more socially-acceptable choice don't seem better off materially or emotionally than the ones who had to pull themselves up later.

Wouldn't the same reasoning apply to you? If it was good for your mother to stay in poverty so you are more empathetic, shouldn't it be good for you to stay in poverty and not pull yourself up at all, so these great benefits of poverty accrue to your children as well?

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