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Once poor, always poor?

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Re: Once poor, always poor?

#181

Post by inglor_cz »

sh4un wrote: post #59
duxup wrote: post #14

> Cultural norms can also encourage poverty cycles. I often wonder about these. Growing up I watched friends whose families had what you might describe as a cultural distrust of institutions, including schools, or even anyone who seemed to “think they’re better than us” (translation anyone who did well in school or a career). They constantly made self defeating choices and seemed destined to have the same problems/ p…

Poor people are used to being victims so it's hard to trust other people. When you look at it deeper, if these are poor minorities in a white mans world, no matter what there will never be trust. Hard to trust the same people who are oppressing you. Many policy maker are born well off, so it's hard to relate. When the social workers are driving in BMW's and talking to you like you're retarded... It's ongoing. I have…

As usual in the American racial discourse, this argument entirely ignores the huge gaping hole in its side that is the Asian community.

Casual racism against Asians is pretty strong, not just in the US, in Europe, too. (My own country has a significant Vietnamese community and casual racism against them was absolutely shocking in the 1990s. It has since become less pronounced, but is still there.)

And yet they thrive in your so-called "white mans world" and within two generations, sometimes only one generation, after arriving from formerly colonized and impoverished countries, they become MPs, ministers, professors and investors.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#182

Post by unsigner »

krapp wrote: post #39
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're a teenage girl, depending on your culture, your family seems to be peer pressuring you to be a mother Ironically, societies that do not steer girls to parenthood are subject to extinction. I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just the law of nature.

>Ironically, societies that do not steer girls to parenthood are subject to extinction. Which societies have gone extinct due to this?

Eastern Europe is firmly on this path under the twin depopulation factors of abysmal fertility and powerful brain drain towards the West. Come visit a middle-sized town anywhere in the Three Seas region and you’ll see industry, infrastructure, housing built for a much larger, more successful civilization.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#183

Post by thaumasiotes »

vpilcx wrote: post #180
thaumasiotes wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One rationale that I heard that seems reasonable at face value is since you can't give back your education, that's the justification for not being able to declare bankruptcy. It goes a little further than that. It doesn't really matter that you can't give back the education. It's that the loan is entirely unsecured - there's no collateral, but also the people who get student loans typically don't have any assets. S…

If that were the case though, why wouldn't that apply to credit card debt?

It does. That's why my first credit card had a limit of $800. It eventually rose all the way to $1400.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#184

Post by bluejay2 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #166
vpilcx wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are certainly a lot of useless majors. But that doesn't imply all of them are useless. It's not so much a critique of the majors but rather the professional requirements of the job listing. For jobs that don't have an innate technical (technical in the loosest sense of the term) requirement, they only want a certain class of person working there and college degrees are just how they do that. > I'm not in the…

> One rationale that I heard that seems reasonable at face value is since you can't give back your education, that's the justification for not being able to declare bankruptcy. It goes a little further than that. It doesn't really matter that you can't give back the education. It's that the loan is entirely unsecured - there's no collateral, but also the people who get student loans typically don't have any assets. S…

I can't reply directly to the poster who asked:

> why wouldn't that apply to credit card debt?

So I'll just leave an answer here. Credit cards, when they are issued to college-aged kids with little to no income or assets, are typically issued with very small credit lines (i.e. we're talking much smaller amounts than students loans) and/or require a co-signer, like a parent with an established credit history.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#185

Post by vpilcx »

beebmam wrote: post #173
vpilcx wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those people living in poverty that distrusts school institutions. My main philosophical gripe is that it doesn't seem to really matter what your major is. "Oh, you got a bachelors in Biology? Well, I guess that's fine. Come work at my tech company in a way that is completely unrelated to Biology." In this particular situation, it seems like the only purpose of college is to create arbitrary classist hurdl…

I'm seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence you're using to justify your biases. This isn't an attack on you; I think you would have a tremendous amount to gain from a science education. Please consider it for the future of you and your family.

It's anecdotal evidence because I was responding to an anecdote someone else was giving with my own personal perspective.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#186

Post by unsigner »

Lich wrote: post #118
ivanmontillam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to burst the bubble, but there's a reason why Elon Musk asked for a breakdown of costs for such a plan a few weeks ago. Throwing money at foundations doesn't automagically solves the problem. Sometimes it happens that if you donate clothes to some African communities, corruption will take over and your donation will not reach the hands of those in most need. The clothes will instead be sold into the illegal marke…

A breakdown was provided by the UN. He never responded.

What was provided was a bill how to spend the money within about a year, not “solve world hunger”.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#187

Post by sh4un »

anovikov wrote: post #110
hackcasual wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could have generational wealth. This whole thing reminds me of the ugliness that was the anti-welfare propaganda of the 70's

What's wrong about it? I can only praise a person who has generational wealth and doesn't need to work, yet chose the socially beneficial occupation of a social worker (which is neither well-paid nor, let's be honest, well-respected, but necessary job), to do their part?

It's all trust. This is what makes this hard, and you can see here no one has experience in this field so everyone has a dumb ass comment.

A lot of people regardless of status will still try to have pride. I used to help homeless people and they would often have a lot of trust issues and often prefer to be homeless rather than help.

While a social worker may dress up and drive a nice car because they have money, the poor people they are helping don't have trust in them for many reasons. One is that they have nothing, and then they see someone that wants to help and that person is getting richer while they are getting poorer.

Same reason people get miffed at donating to the United way only to find out the CEO was making something like 750k a year and asking me to donate 10% of my pay automatically deducted to them. Lol

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#188

Post by pjerem »

That’s where I can see the efficiency of free education.

I live in France and I come from about the median class. I didn’t struggle in my education.

But while I was a student, I saw quite a lot of people, who came from poor family being able to catch the opportunity to leave this poverty. Of course they still struggled more than me to pay their day to day expenses while I had the chance to be backed by my parents. Some of them have a better situation than me.

Of course, the fact that I was surrounded by tech students probably is an important variable. But I saw it happening outside of this circle too.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from enough, and there is still a lot of people abandoning studies because of money issues in France and we should fix that.

But managing to get through your studies to your first job with zero, or some manageable debt, is the way to leave poverty.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#189

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

vpilcx wrote: post #141
duxup wrote: post #14

> Cultural norms can also encourage poverty cycles. I often wonder about these. Growing up I watched friends whose families had what you might describe as a cultural distrust of institutions, including schools, or even anyone who seemed to “think they’re better than us” (translation anyone who did well in school or a career). They constantly made self defeating choices and seemed destined to have the same problems/ p…

I'm one of those people living in poverty that distrusts school institutions. My main philosophical gripe is that it doesn't seem to really matter what your major is. "Oh, you got a bachelors in Biology? Well, I guess that's fine. Come work at my tech company in a way that is completely unrelated to Biology." In this particular situation, it seems like the only purpose of college is to create arbitrary classist hurdl…

> Now, obviously, that's not the case with all education, but my next gripe with it is the seemingly insurmountable debt that said education brings. Literally, all of my friends that have gone to college are no where near paying their debt off and I'm in my late 30s.

I grew up lower middle class - not poor - took on a healthy amount of debt to get a CS degree from a crappy college in West Virginia.

Most of my classmates are doing quite well, and I'm working at Google - with a fellow classmate, literally in the 1% now (both of us, out of a class of only 8).

I know plenty of rich kids who went to Stanford and studied philosophy or underwater basket weaving, and they're killing it.

But that doesn't mean poor people have no opportunity. Sure, it's not equal. But it's far from hopeless.

I think there's a lot of people who look at the world and see how unfair it is and think: why even try?

The world is not fair, never has been, never will be even close to it. You just have to accept where you started from and try your best. And we can try to push for a fairer world, but don't hold your breath. If anything, inequality is skyrocketing and the world is becoming less fair.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#190

Post by lucian1900 »

unsigner wrote: post #182
krapp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ironically, societies that do not steer girls to parenthood are subject to extinction. Which societies have gone extinct due to this?

Eastern Europe is firmly on this path under the twin depopulation factors of abysmal fertility and powerful brain drain towards the West. Come visit a middle-sized town anywhere in the Three Seas region and you’ll see industry, infrastructure, housing built for a much larger, more successful civilization.

That is due to imposing “shock therapy” and neoliberalism on the populations of the defeated socialist countries as punishment.

It has nothing to do with what girls are encouraged to do.

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