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Being poor vs. being broke

blog.ctms.me

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#301

Post by wredcoll »

stego-tech wrote: post #221

I’ve ridden the spectrum, as it were. I grew up upper middle class, with a sprawling McMansion, a car for each sibling, a country club membership, the works. I’ve been broke, squandering money and racking up debt, but finding enough escape hatches to avoid irreparable harm. I’ve been homeless, getting by through the good graces of friends and family until I got back on my feet through the help of a good friend and wi…

> "What happened to society? I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, they gave me encouragement, and they gave me a vision. That came from my education".

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#302

Post by ztetranz »

mc32 wrote: post #61
dukeofdoom wrote: post #7

It's also owning lower quality goods, that plague you by breaking all the time. So the maintenance cost (time and energy) is quite high. It's almost better not to have things when you're poor, because the things you have are just a big headache. I think it's also that increasingly working people are living in old houses that were never built properly, and now have lots of problems. And even new things you buy, are ju…

Poor people also can use a washboard and line dry their clothing. Not as convenient as having machines but just about everyone did it like this till the ‘40s & ‘50s.

Most HOAs don't allow clotheslines because it makes it look as if poor people live there.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#303

Post by igor47 »

gopher_space wrote: post #271
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.

Immigrants show up in America having been knocked down by life here zero times and then compare themselves to people who've been knocked down generationally .

Is "by life here" doing the heavy lifting in your comment? Because obviously immigrants haven't been knocked down by life here.

I agree that folks have a pretty tough life generationally in America's rust belt. I disagree that this is unique or uniquely bad compared to many other places in the world. Although there is something pretty unique about the way American culture processes or encodes the hardship. Individualism can really make things worse...

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#304

Post by projektfu »

msm_ wrote: post #246
carlosjobim wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess because the ratio of people complaining about poverty is 10 000 to 1 compared to people who give solutions to poverty. There are solutions to poverty, which the individual person can follow, but nobody wants to talk about those. It has always amazed me, because poverty is hell. Who wouldn't want to get out of that, and who wouldn't want his fellow brother to get out of that? I could talk about it here, but I…

Occam's razor. Either: * There are solutions to poverty, which the individual person can follow, but (even though poverty is hell) people ignore them and prefer to stay poor * The solutions to poverty you think about actually aren't. The money-deprived people already know about them and (having much more knowledge about poor people's world) know they don't work. Since you - like almost everyone here - are a smart per…

Either:

1. There are solutions to organization and staying on task, that person can use, to successfully manage their lives, or

2. Those solutions actually aren't. They only work for people who would have been organized anyway.

Casting this dichotomy into a different area that I understand better helps me to see what you are saying. I think that it also gives me an idea that this is not a dichotomy. There are solutions to poverty for the individual. The individual must be aware of them, use them, and keep using them, until they are no longer poor. Then, they have to have a system to avoid returning to poverty. The sum total of this is much harder than it seems, so to many people it seems like those solutions cannot work. Sure, to a person for whom these approaches work, who has become broke and homeless, they can do it, but that is cold comfort for those who cannot escape poverty.

Thanks for the insight.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#306

Post by BobaFloutist »

gopher_space wrote: post #271
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.

Immigrants show up in America having been knocked down by life here zero times and then compare themselves to people who've been knocked down generationally .

I don't know how to tell you that some people have war in their country.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#307

Post by SilverElfin »

merth wrote: post #12

I have poor friends, they spend more on Netflix, Gym, Starbucks, IPhones, steam games etc then me, and they are poor for atleast last 10-20 years. I almost never have any of these and I have given them that classic suggestions like the cancelling the gym membership that he/she rarely or never uses, and it doesnt work, they keep spending money on garbage with money they don't have.

I see this all the time in developed countries. The “poor” in a place like America are different from the poor elsewhere. Often times, the poor in America are just people making bad decisions, living beyond their means. You see it in the places they choose to live in, the cars they own, the number of children they have, etc.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#308

Post by wredcoll »

mc32 wrote: post #286
dukeofdoom wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember an interview with some billionaire talking about how people should grow their own food. He underpays his workers. One the surface great idea. Aside for the fact that it's hugely inefficient and why we have massive farms to take care of the inefficiency problem. Innovation was supposed to take care of this so poor people don't have to substance farm in cities. I mean by all means do that as a hobby. But kee…

When I was a broke college student I don’t have access to a washer and dryer, so I either went to a laundromat or on occasion just washed clothing in a tub and put them up to dry. Wear jeans; they don’t need frequent washing -some manufacturers indeed recommend very infrequent washing. It’s totally doable. Growing your own fruits and veggies is out of the question. It’s stupid -the only ones that make sense are herbs…

Sure, the point is that doing all of that is more expensive, in terms of time, money, flexibility and stress, than owning a washing machine.

The difference is that you need $x00 to invest into the washing machine to then benefit fromt over the next decade+

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#309

Post by wat10000 »

wat10000 wrote: post #29
rsyring wrote: post #2

https://blog.ctms.me/about/ It would appear from the about page and the article that he has the requisite skills to earn an income that should move him out of the "poor" category: - auto mechanic - digital tech - landscaping I'm not trying to dismiss the difficult realities associated with being poor. But if you have the skills to make more money and bring your family out of the "poor" category, why wouldn't you do t…

I'm pretty sure the author's membership in the "poor" category is in the past tense.

I poked around their blog some more out of curiosity and I can't figure out what his situation is. In a year-old article about burnout and vacation, he mentions burning out from a job in marketing, and ends by saying therapy isn't an option because he lives under the poverty line and can't even afford to get vital blood work done. Maybe this hit so hard that it actually made him unable to do more remunerative work. But it sure feels like he's poor by choice. Which is odd because this article seems like a pretty good description of what it's like to be poor not by choice. There is an almost throwaway line that stands out at me now:

"Should I work a second job and never see my wife? My kids? Should I never have any personal time? Should my entire life revolve around money? Should I kill myself for capitalism?"

The rest of the article is about how you can't just choose to stop being poor. And in the middle of all this is something that boils down to, "I could stop being poor, I just don't like the tradeoff." Which is certainly his right, but it makes this whole thing feel like poverty cosplay.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#310

Post by [deleted] »

diet_mtn_dew wrote: post #134
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 I cannot find a citation for a number that large of people who do not have access to electricity in the USA, would you happen to have one?

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