131–140 of 344 posts
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Obviously it’s a lottery to the BABY. This is straightforward Rawls-liberalism.
You say that like the same baby might conceivably have been born into more than one potential family. But the opposite is true: examine any baby and you'll find that there's only one possible set of parents they can have, barring identical twins.
Humm, I have a feeling part of the story is missing here, even though i can relate as i was myself a minimum wage worker in the hospitality industry in Britain for a while (back in 1999, my annual wage was something like 8500 pounds). Long odd hours, not so pleasant interfacing with customers, 7 people sharing a flat in London, so broke at the end of the month that walking from Mayfair to Canada Water was reality bec…
I suspect, this author is driven in some peculiar way. I’ve seen it with other strongly artistic types, the drive isn’t to make money, and that allows them to do great things. Sadly, if they don’t align with value of the populace in a way that makes money, they will simply toil in poverty. Worse, is they are often easy marks to be take advantage of. I’ve even seen it in tech, people who should be making way more than they are, but continue to be underpaid because there’s a kind of playground for them to explore.
The author seems to be from UK. Is contents insurance a thing in UK? How many renters really do buy contents insurance? Genuinely interested to know how many think that contents insurance is worth it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously it’s a lottery to the BABY. This is straightforward Rawls-liberalism.
> Obviously it’s a lottery to the BABY. You say that like the same baby might conceivably have been born into more than one potential family. But the opposite is true: examine any baby and you'll find that there's only one possible set of parents they can have, barring identical twins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty clear if you read the article, and even more explicit in the news paper articles in her photos. She was a single mother with zero family support. She couldn't just work odd or long hours (and was forced to leave her existing better paid job) because there was nobody to care for her young child.
> with zero family support The article didn't say that - are you relying on another source of information? She mentions her family, but implies she wants to remain independent: Sometimes I just want to run back home and live with my parents, at the age of 32, and beg them to take care of me. I’ll be very quiet. I can cook, and I promise not to say f*ck in front of the children, Mum. I won’t fold the corners down on y…
This is where I'm getting the family info from.
"And my main point is that poverty and privilege are largely accidental. You don’t choose to be born into an income bracket, a country pile, a housing estate, a double barrelled name or a damp tenement bedsit. But ignorance is a choice. And choosing to use your privileges to patronise people whose lives are entirely beyond your experience and comprehension, is a choice."
> But ignorance is a choice. No, it's not always a choice. You might be born in a family and community that actively brainwashes their members and prevents you from coming into contact with conflicting information. This can even be true in less severe circumstances, such as being bombarded with propaganda on social media, which essentially hacks your brain.
One if the worst parts of poverty is that it steals all of your time! All your time is devoted to just surviving, so you can never really better you situation. You want to improve your situation? Not happening, you gotta work 60 hours this week so you cant study for that AWS cert or medical coding cert. Then the job you work is most likely dead end with no advancement or fake advancement. So you live pay check to pay…
And just as an addendum, tech is more meritocratic than many fields, but even tech has long-standing issues with gender, race, and age discrimination. Whether it's a pipeline problem or not, it's clear that many things besides talent close people off from working in the field.
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> And choosing to use your privileges to patronise people whose lives are entirely beyond your experience and comprehension, is a choice Not sure how that way of thinking is productive. Patronising people is bad in itself. Thinking that people you perceive as "privileged" can't comprehend you is a choice too and a form of ignorance.
> Thinking that people you perceive as "privileged" can't comprehend you is a choice too and a form of ignorance. In my experience they can't, and I do have experience in this. In one example, a few years ago I worked with some extremely rich people. I mean, exceedingly rich. Once kept negotiating on everything, even if it was to only save a few pounds. I asked for a little cash advance (£180) to allow me to do some…
A whole lot of people within all striations of the middle class assume that they kind of "get it" through osmosis because they're not rich and they were probably friends with poorer people growing up. But barring stereotypes, we always assume other people's lives, problems, decisions, challenges, and affordances are more similar to our own that others. People from the upper end of the middle class are often blind to the difficult realities of growing up lower-middle-class in meaningful ways that create similar cultural discrepancies.
That's one big paradox. Coming from poverty, I work with plenty of talented people, but nowhere as talented as the people I've studied in shitty schools. Now most of those people from my poverty times continue to be poor, because of many problems poverty brought to them. I can clearly see that, and that I was the lucky one to find a way up many times. Yet, my new social circle believe that I'm talented because of my…
Some people are indeed much better. Anyone who played sports as a kid understands this. Huge differences are immediately apparent in small children. But generally, I agree that, for most life tasks, the differences between people are not enormous. Humanity could do a much better job eliminating poverty. In the future, we may view enormous disparities in wealth as evil as we do racism today.
> In the future, we may view enormous disparities in wealth as evil as we do racism today.
A lot of people already do.
This keeps happening to me. I read a feelgood story, visit the wiki page and then realize how muddy the water is: >> Monroe has been described as an "austerity celebrity". In a January 2023 interview with Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian, Monroe acknowledged that she had recklessly spent money given by backers; she claimed "I'd go online absolutely shitfaced and buy nice furniture." Granted most poor people do stupi…
Recklessly spending is a symptom of poverty (also, ADHD, which she mentions) - spend it before it runs out. Comes from a life of having plans (No not those life kind of plans - plans to buy food, pay rent) then something urgent happens and takes away the money.
I'll be the first to agree it's stupid, but I can't blame her too harshly on that point. Seen it play out too many times. Also been there done that after a broken hip settlement (saving my other one for retirement!) - I got so fat lol
See also: lottery winners that go broke inside a few years