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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#471

Post by relaxing »

carlosjobim wrote: post #445
relaxing wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think implicit in the anti-poverty argument is individuals shouldn’t have to take a vow of poverty. So the monastery is out. Not everyone is physically cut out for the merchant marines. This is also inconveniently ignores OP’s family. Not everyone wants to join the military, but that feels like it’s getting somewhere… What if the government had other jobs that paid food and shelter?

My suggestions can help some people, but not everybody. Because everybody is different. Let's continue complaining instead then? But I've worked in places like this with people who were deaf and people who had limps, and people with a ton of other problems. And hundreds of thousands of people who have families work in the merchant navy to support them, or in other similar work places. Sometimes (almost all the time)…

Well I don’t think anyone is browsing this thread because they need a solution to their own poverty.

So we’re talking about general solutions for the country at large, and solution that only works for a few means there’s still the problem of the rest of the poor to solve.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#472

Post by belviewreview »

Conservatives have three explanations for why people are poor:

  1) they are all stupid and lazy because they have absorbed liberal values

  2) they are smart enough to get ahead but can't because liberal governmental policies have ruined the economy.

  3) they are mentally inferior due to belonging to the wrong race.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#473

Post by metadope »

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…

Steve Cutts https://www.stevecutts.com> explains American unhappiness and tendency to complain (even though we've had it better than almost everyone ever).

The Pursuit Of Happiness is humanity's universal right, but our culture and the economy depends upon everybody always wanting more, and better...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#474

Post by thehappypm »

energy123 wrote: post #26
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…

I've heard it described that being poor is expensive. The poorer you are the more expensive it is. Being poor in a poor country is the most expensive. You can't just buy coffee, you can only afford a sachet of coffee. So per gram you're paying double. You can't afford medical care, so the condition gets worse and thus more expensive to do something about. You're in debt most of the time, which is expensive. You have…

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-575-0550...

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#475

Post by ValentineC »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #11

Very true but I also think that being poor is a mindset to change. I've known of people that would couch surf but they were never poor. We knew, they knew, that at anytime they could turn it around, and they did. They wanted to do things that were not the norm so they chose not to follow society's norms so they lacked money and they lived day to day. Once they changed their mind set they were able to work their way t…

> I've known of people that would couch surf but they were never poor.

I think there are some other types of behaviour that might not reflect their financial circumstances.

For example: couchsurfing because they're frugal or penny-pinching, or growing up with a "scarcity" mindset. These people aren't necessarily "broke" or "poor".

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#476

Post by potato3732842 »

vkou wrote: post #389
9rx wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money, more being able to deal with it immediately.…

> I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile When you have money, you can just buy the thing you need, instead of hoarding five metric tonnes of crap that you'll never use. If you haven't used something in the past 5 years, you can almost certainly toss it.

It's a lifestyle that snowballs. You can't "just start throwing things away" because your life has grown up around the assumptions of having your brand of junk around.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#477

Post by hiq »

losvedir wrote: post #431

I'm privileged to have never had to worry about this, growing up comfortably middle to upper middle class. With that said, I have a perpetual point of confusion here, likely due to my own blindspots and something I don't want to ask in person because it's not nice: is it an issue of budgeting? Take someone who makes $15/hr and someone who makes $16/hr. Both are poor. Both live paycheck to paycheck, have no savings, e…

> They begin the year at $0 and they end the next year at $0.

Or they're dead.

If you save an extra $2000/year, what are you supposed to do with the money if you're always hungry, if you're always cold? I'm guessing you could buy food and clothes; you'd end up at $0, just slightly better off. If there's no safety net to rely on, you'd save to be able to face the next problem, and maybe pay it less with your health (which is a kind of invisible debt).

And that's even assuming there's some certain income you can rely on. In my case, I know that for the next few months, I'd at least get unemployment benefits if I lost my job. Not everyone get that, and if you don't, the income floor is $0 and it's way harder to budget.

Another aspect to consider is that maybe the case of a single person who would be in poverty throughout a long life is not representative of poverty. Some people get out of poverty, some fall into it, some die early from it. If we're considering a single person always starting at $0 and always ending up at $0, several years in a row, we already dismiss these nuances. I'm sure you can find such examples, someone who lived to be 80 with a constant wealth of $0, but how common are they really?

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#478

Post by autoexec »

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…

It's perfectly normal for a person to complain about being screwed over even if the person next to him is being screwed even harder. There will always be somebody somewhere who has it worse than you, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't expect better for yourself than what you have, especially in a country like the US where a small number of people with more money than they could ever spend relentlessly exploit others and take from them.

Starting from nothing, it's easy to gain income and then double it, but most people eventually hit a wall and find that they can't improve their circumstances no matter what they do. Our society will conspire against them to keep them in their place. It will lay out traps for them to hold them back. Some of those traps, like payday loans, you might be able to avoid. For other traps, like our healthcare system, you will have to depend on luck to limit the number of times you are caught. Medical expenses are the reason most people in the US fall into bankruptcy.

Wealth inequality, and a lack of social mobility are huge problems in the US. In the "wealthiest nation on Earth" 1 out of every 8 Americans can't make enough money to feed themselves without government assistance, but even for the others it's easy to gain a false sense of comfort where you are well feed and entertained, but still live paycheck to paycheck and don't have savings to protect yourself from sudden unavoidable expenses. 'Today you are fine, but always one bad day from ruin' is not a comfortable way to live.

Americans complain because even though things can always be worse, they should also be better than they are. I hope Americans never stop trying to improve their situation and the situation of those around them.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#479

Post by quesera »

relaxing wrote: post #468
quesera wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the government had other jobs that paid food and shelter? They do, various and sundry, e.g. making license plates. I'm being glib, which is probably unforgivable under the circumstances, but people do this . Sometimes intentionally -- and, granted, there are often other issues in play -- but it's heartbreaking.

Ok, hear me out: jail, but you can walk right out again as soon as you are in…

Right, and I can construct theoretical models where this works well!

But they're all ripe for abuse, and that makes them politically untenable.

As a layperson in such social matters, I'd guess the real-world abuse rate would be something like 10%. This is mathematically tolerable, and socially beneficial.

But even at 0% real-world abuse, there would be righteous opposition. And at 0% + 1 predictable example, it'd be politically toxic in most of the country.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#480

Post by titanomachy »

carlosjobim wrote: post #340
decimalenough wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of mariners these days are third world nationals getting paid third world wages. Becoming a full-time monk is a slow and demanding process that takes years, you can't just rock up at a monastery and become one.

> The vast majority of mariners these days are third world nationals getting paid third world wages. So? Is the third world not included in the original article? And also, that's like saying that you can't become a farmer or a teacher, because the vast majority of farmers or teachers in the world are third world nationals getting third world wages. The merchant navy also has many ships which only hire nationally. As…

You could definitely go live and work at a monastery in exchange for room and board. They usually won’t let you become a monk right away.
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