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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#391

Post by tavavex »

empiricus wrote: post #41

I "like" when ppl talk about UBI and say "but ppl on UBI are not happy and lack purpose". Compare with being poor.

It's even more annoying when you consider that most proposals that gain any type of traction can't even ever approach the "I have everything now so I'm not going to work because I'm so lazy"-type abundance that the fear-mongers try to sell you. If we just were able to use some of all this wealth to create an absolute baseline of "enough money to not starve, have any kind of roof over your head and not be trapped in your current situation", I wonder what society could've looked like.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#392

Post by antonymoose »

wredcoll wrote: post #224
dotnet00 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think an aspect of a lot of those luckier kids is that they think being told they were lucky invalidates the hard work they feel they did, turning it into a nonsensical contest of comparing apples to oranges. My siblings have a similar complaint when my Dad essentially implies that they were lucky in having the successes they have had. They do still somewhat understand what he means, but they dislike it because the…

This definitely comes up a lot and I've never found a satisfactory way to get through to these people that you can both work hard and be lucky. The ultimate point is to get people to empathize with others, it's easy, especially in the general american culture, to treat being poor as a moral failure.

The problem is the world isn’t clean, statistics aren’t clean, it’s all mosaic. You can have noble, moral poors and rich. You can have absolute dirt bags both rich and poor.

I grew up in a take of two households, with parents divorced at a young age. Father grows up in a picture perfect well-to-do family and ends up a classic party-hard drug addled dirt bag. He died last year living alone, homeless in a tent off an interstate motel town. Mother grows up in a stereotypical “dad went out for milk” family that descended into (and rose above) poverty.

While my father just kind of floated around and lived life, my mother remembered the poverty she experienced growing up, worked her ass off in university, and worked two jobs (one professional, one as a weekend cahsier) until she retired.

Nothing any of us can write here on a forum from on high will counter lived reality.

All this is to say, I agree about empathy being needed on society, poverty can still be moral failure. Pretending it can’t is just as in constructive as any other moral argument in this topic.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#393

Post by tstrimple »

smithkl42 wrote: post #13

The post does a good job of describing a phenomenological difference between being broke and being poor, and its account seems plausible to me. But what I'm curious about is the causal difference between the two. I've known working class folks who seem like they're getting by fine, even if they're occasionally "broke", and I've known working class folks who are constantly in financial crisis, and definitely fit in th…

> I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills, intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can nevertheless end up in very different places?

They don't have the same skills. One is far more skilled at existing while poor.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#394

Post by dfxm12 »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #290
jandrewrogers wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is an element of "right country, right time" when it comes to being able to escape poverty with hard work and grit, though hard work and grit always helps. I am extremely fortunate to have been born in the US. My outcome would have been vastly harder to achieve almost anywhere else. Even in the US it was far from certain.

I'm immigrant that come to the us and always that the Americans complain is hardd to understand, like for example inflation they complain about being 3% in my country there was hyperinflation 1000%, also I didn't use to have running water(water would come every 3 days) and electricity would stop working every few days and it would take several hours or days to get fixed. then working here there is so many jobs and yo…

Some things are fake issues created by the media to give people a reasonable sounding cover to vote for politicians that have reactionary politics that they wouldn't cop to in public.

This is why you hear people say they vote for Trump because of "the economy", even though when he and his party were in power the first time, the economy was on the downturn after he implemented policy (even before COVID) and every economist said Trump's proposed policies in 2024 would be bad for the economy. They were proven correct.

People would rather seem like single issue voters who don't understand that issue than be thought of as racist, supportive of pedophilia, misogynistic, etc. See also: "but her emails"

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#395

Post by phil21 »

bombcar wrote: post #277
tekla wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both my parents came to America with less than $20 and nothing else but what they wore. I constantly think of how hard they worked to let me live such a leisurely life.

Sadly many kids (college graduates) start out with -250k$ and the clothes they're wearing. Of course, they often have family they can fall back on, and education, but debt creates an entirely new class of 'less than dirt' poor.

You have to be pretty well off to begin with in order to be in a position to take out $250k of student debt.

It’s the kids who can’t even imagine going to college due to living in poverty growing up that are actually “less than dirt poor”. Someone who went to a fancy college enough to get that far into debt is going to be extremely privileged on average.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#396

Post by 9rx »

simoncion wrote: post #370
9rx wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "from scratch". If first you must invent the universe, starvation is certain. If you have to produce the food from the ground by yourself, you will struggle to scrape enough calories out of it to survive. There is no hope of excessive weight gain here. If "from scratch" means going to the grocery store to buy a bunch of prepared ingredients that you go home with to mix up in…

> There is no hope of excessive weight gain here. Uh. We can pretty confidently say that ancient civilizations had fat folks, too. Also, butter, processed animal fats (such as lard), fatty meats... none of these are recent inventions, and they're all good at helping you to grow fat. I feel very confident in claiming that they (or things functionally just like them) have been around for a thousand years, and I expect…

> We can pretty confidently say that ancient civilizations had fat folks, too.

Not without a lot of extra help. That is why I said by yourself. If you include the input of many other people building things like a tractor you could also grow enough of your own food from the ground to exceed your normal caloric requirements without much trouble, but you're a long way from doing it from scratch at that point.

Unless, like before, you consider throwing some prepared ingredients into a bowl to be "from scratch", at which point anything goes. Perhaps opening a bag of chips is also "from scratch"? You did have to exert the effort to open it, after all.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#397

Post by jandrewrogers »

mlmonkey wrote: post #347
dmd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the photo? https://navajotimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/dq-no-wif...

The other crime in that photo is the lack of cell service, despite billions of dollars that the USG has given ATT/Verizon/T-Mo over the years. But these phone companies just give unfettered access to their networks to the various TLAs and everybody ignores the fact that they are not providing the cell service they are contractually obligated to.

Why would you expect there to be cell service there? Large parts of that area of the Mountain West are virtually uninhabited and have no telecom infrastructure to connect the cellular service to. There is literally nothing out in much of it except the occasional building every 10-20 miles which isn't enough to sustain a cellular network.

These days satellite would be cheaper in any case.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#398

Post by neuralRiot »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #252
dijit wrote: post #125

Even this does a poor job of explaining being poor. The constant open loop on everything you own, terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else; the constant churn of second-hand (and cheap/disposable) things that are already close to death before they come into your possession and- crucially: the crushing weight of knowing that any financial…

I spent years getting over the idea of saving some half broken thing because “I might need a part from that later”

As an electronic tech I find myself hoarding discarded devices because sometimes I need some part and ordering means paying shipping and 4 day (if I am lucky) waiting to get a part that costs cents just to probably find out that I need more parts.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#399

Post by lurking_swe »

blizdiddy wrote: post #172
webdood90 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disputing those things happen or that luck plays a big part. I'm commenting on what people have control over. I'm not sure what is compelling you to be so rude to a complete stranger on the internet. I'm here to discuss, have my ideas challenged, and learn.

Poor people don’t have control of their situation. You are literally victim blaming and surprised that rubs people the wrong way. Victim blaming is rude, offering your flippant two cents is rude. There, your ideas are challenged, rather than tone police go think about it.

suggestion: give people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they are out to get you, trying to blame you, or trying to attack you. Especially on hacker news.

Was it a “dumb” question? Yes. Maybe they are dumb. Maybe they are just totally out of touch because they don’t know any poor people. I don’t know because i’m not a mind reader.

It’s not a crime to ask a dumb question.

Good day.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#400

Post by nomadpenguin »

antisthenes wrote: post #198
mehulashah wrote: post #92

He right. I’ve seen poverty in India, but I misunderstood it. There was a 12 year old kid who guided our boat down the Narmada after we spread my Dads ashes. He was not in school because he wanted money. I told him I’d pay him double and continue to pay him for his days work, if he’d go back to school during the day and only row boats at night. He said no. Just give me what you owe me. He had no hope that education i…

> He had no hope that education in the government schools would meaningfully change anything for him. I have over 14 years of education in developed countries, and out of those, maybe 1 year combined meaningfully helped me in my jobs/career in terms of skills. Everything else was self-taught/learned. There's an enormous disconnect in educational systems between what skills will get people out of poverty, what skills…

> I have over 14 years of education in developed countries, and out of those, maybe 1 year combined meaningfully helped me in my jobs/career in terms of skills.

I think you're underestimating the effect of 14 years of daily training in literacy and numeracy.

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