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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#291

Post by ToucanLoucan »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #234
wagwang wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents grew up poor in manner that is more extreme than anything OP described in the post and they always remind me that its just hard work and grit.

That, and an environmnet that allows folks "from the wrong side of the tracks," to get ahead. For all its faults, the US is just such a place. I suspect that many other nations are starting to improve. At one time, the UK was a nation that you couldn't get ahead, unless you were of a certain class. I think that it is much more like the US, nowadays. You can hear lots of cockney accents in Harrods.

> That, and an environmnet that allows folks "from the wrong side of the tracks," to get ahead.

Vast swathes of this country look no better than the developing nations Sarah McLaughlin would go to to sing sad music and hold little kids to beg people for money in television ads.

Like I don't think you're wrong necessarily but at the same time, it really, really matters which tracks you're on the wrong side of.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#292

Post by bashmelek »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15

I like this guy’s backstory[0]. I grew up in Africa. The poverty I saw, as a child, was foundational in my own personal development. There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes. I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting poverty (with very limited success). They believe that poverty is probably the single biggest problem in the world, to…

I live comfortably in the United States. I consider myself middle class. I worry about my job and increasing costs. But I’m okay.

I do feel like that we really could end global poverty if we tried, and that people like me ought to contribute.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#293

Post by dugidugout »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #204
rsyring wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't considered that until reading comments like this. It's possible...probable even. In that case, was he really poor? His whole argument is that being poor is a permanent state. If he's not poor now, was he ever?

His comment that you can get out- two people did- may either be a claim that his own escape doesn’t prove that escape is possible for all, or a batman reference. I lack the media literacy to be sure which.

It fits the Batman reference, somewhat.

Bruce Wayne (Batman's public-facing identity) was imprisoned in a pit where he was the second person to ever escape.

What I find a bit ironic, is this allegory can be used to reach the opposite perspective OP is trying to dispel. The bit about the "hopefulness" doesn't only refer to the light at the opening of the pit, but also in that the "escape" mechanism was actually being facilitated by the prison. This "escape" was supposedly designed to enact the "true despair" the OP was highlighting. The element they left out, was the fact this was done by extending a "support" rope from the opening which was deliberately too short to be useful. This causes Bruce to muster his own raw physical and mental strength to make the climb without the rope and ultimately prevail through personal will-power.

I guess OP would say Bruce is actually only "broke" here and not "poor".

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#294

Post by zarl »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #232
zarl wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in America who do not have electricity or even running water in their homes. This is just not true. America has many problems but access to electricity/running water simply is not one of them.

The US still has some really remote backwaters. Not too many but you can find them if you know where to look.

I'm not saying literally everyone in America has electricity/running water. I'm saying it's a rare exception, not "hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people".

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#295

Post by charcircuit »

hexator wrote: post #37

Understanding poverty starts with empathy. People thinking that "poor is a mindset" are lacking in that. It's not that simple! You can't just mind your way out of poverty! This isn't a math problem.

>This isn't a math problem.

It's an optimization problem, which I would consider a category of math problems. Not wanting to perform a solution or not being able to figure out a solution, or know how to find someone to solve it for them is a mind problem.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#296

Post by coffeeaddict1 »

posix86 wrote: post #233

Travelling to a 3rd world country with genuinely poor people can help, a bit. When you see the houses genuinely poor people live in, it purs things into perspective. Being in appartment where the roof... is broken. And you have no way to fix it. No way. There's cold coming inside, mold on the walls, no real kitchen, no real bed, "living room"?? Lol. You grow up not getting a proper education, your parents have worked…

> Travelling to a 3rd world country with genuinely poor people can help, a bit.

I agree with this. For anyone who's young and can afford, I wholeheartedly recommend travelling to a poor country. It will truly give you a lot perspective on the world and appreciate your life more.

Having said that, I often see people grossly misunderstanding that just because you visited a poor country you understand the lives of the people you saw (e.g. their cultures, opinions and lifestyle). It really does not. You only get a very superficial glimpse, but it takes years to embody their experience in your mind.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#297

Post by ge96 »

I'm "low-rich" (middle class?) poor eg. I have a six-fig job but I also have almost six-fig of debt, so I have after paying all my bills (mostly debt) almost nothing left. But I have an apt/cool cheap car, toys like 2nd hand computers/cameras. I've been in debt for the last 15 years since I went into college. I don't eat canned food often actually trying to fast as it's hard to not gain weight when I spend most of my time sitting in a chair in front of a computer. I do recreational drinking so it's not like I'm absolutely poor.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#298

Post by jcranmer »

zarl wrote: post #163
reaperducer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes. Americans are very often blind to the poverty in their own backyards. There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in America who do not have electricity or even running water in their homes. I'm always reminded of a photograph from a few years ago in the Navajo Times showing a handful of children sit…

> There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in America who do not have electricity or even running water in their homes. This is just not true. America has many problems but access to electricity/running water simply is not one of them.

It's difficult to find trustworthy statistics quickly, but the penetration of electricity and running water in US households is only about 99%. At the scale of the US (~130 million households), 1% of households lacking electricity equates to over a million households and somewhat more in terms of number of people. So yeah, there's probably about 1-2 million people in the US without running water and/or electricity.

Where are these people? Probably the largest concentration of such people are on the various Native American reservations (I believe ~15% of the Navajo Reservation lacks running water). The hinterlands of Alaska also likely has a high number of these houses.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#299

Post by cycomanic »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #265
wahern wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that it is much more like the US, nowadays. IIRC, mobility indexes crossed quite a few years ago. IOW, UK is better than the US in this respect. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index , though it's a claim I've read based on other data and before that particular index was compiled.

Social mobility doesn't measure financial welfare and is only weakly correlated with the ability to improve your financial situation. It is largely a measure of wage compression in the economy. If everyone makes similar wages then the population will be highly socially mobile even if those wages are mediocre. Absolute economic mobility matters much more in terms of having an opportunity to get out of poverty. High ec…

Your statement doesn't really make sense and contradicts what research [1] is saying so you really back that up with a good argument and evidence.

[1] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...

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