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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#591

Post by inemesitaffia »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #452
tstrimple wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. We routinely ignore things like this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low... > The average income is just $18,046 (£13,850) a year, and almost a third of the population live below the official US poverty line. The most elementary waste disposal infrastructure is often non-existent. > Some 73% of residents included in the Baylor survey reported that they had been exposed to r…

Yup. Also: everyone reading this, celebrate that Flint, Michigan finally has water that's clean by Federal standards after just over ELEVEN. FUCKING. YEARS. That's right, America, land of opportunity, the wealthiest country on the face of the Earth (at time of comment), needed just over eleven years to get one city's inhabitants water that wasn't full to the tits with lead. That's not NO lead, mind you, it's just now…

People are paying attention.

Don't forget who was President during the time and sold us the idea it was fixed that year.

I had no idea it wasn't all fixed until someone there told sometime in the last two years.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#592

Post by suchoudh »

Never thought about this difference before. It has given me a lot of new ground to explore. Thanks for the effort.

Found the post to be Shockingly true.

"You have to live it to understand it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, its a tarpit and getting out of it without someone handing you a branch (and if you no longer have the strength to pull yourself out) then you’ll be stuck in it forever. "

In India there is a concept of "Langar" at Sikh temples where you get free hygienic vegeterian food.

The weather is also a lot forgiving ( as of this year you will not die of cold or a heatstroke in summers - but this situation is changing with extremes weathers due to climate change)

I do not have a solution .. but am looking on this problem of poverty due to job losses since a long time.

If you know of some good pointers to look at pls share.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#593

Post by twothreeone »

belviewreview wrote: post #472

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.

Particularly the numerous variations of 2 have found widespread success when explaining to the poor the reasons for why they are poor:

2.a) the foreigners / jews / muslims invading and pillaging our glorious, Christian home country are stealing their jobs

2.b) the socialists / communists / antifa bureaucrats are stealing their wages

This can be tailored and highly specific towards the target audience (e.g., Facebook Ads, Twitter Bots, in a small town with abandoned industry), alternatively keeping it broad and widely accessible (for Podcasts, banners, or national TV). What really matters for explaining this with impact though is the tone. It is imperative to be loud and angry, ideally you are yelling at your audience. Repeat yourself often and use the most limited vocabulary possible. You need to empathize with the anger of the poor for the clear and obvious injustice that has happened to them. Leaning into that emotion will make anyone happily abandon any remains of rationality and critical thinking, which they have experienced as being completely futile in advancing their own quality of life, or improving their family's living situation. Which is of course the reason why Conservatives would like to have as many poor people as possible amongst their constituencies, and are fighting hard to actively push more people into poverty. They know those people will be their most faithful voters.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#594

Post by shroobani »

hippo22 wrote: post #545
dwedge wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to avoid being unable to eat. As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up the paperwork. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor owed somewhere around £400…

[flagged]

If you don't have a vehicle you can't do anything, if this person was anywhere other than a large east coast city losing your vehicle is death. Have you ever tried to go somewhere in the south without a car? Pick two points even a couple miles away from each other around Kansas City, Kansas and genuinely think about how you would physically do it. You can't go anywhere so you can't work so you can't pay rent, you can't do anything. What is even the point of not going to prison except the fact you would have to stay in jail for a few months and you might be literally devoured by bedbugs?

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#595

Post by phil21 »

slaughtr wrote: post #570
phil21 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do not at all need to be well off to take $250k in student debt. In fact, the worse off you are the easier it is to do so. It’s how the US federal student loan aide works, essentially. The less you have the more they’ll loan.

Totally different from my lived experience.

Friends who grew up in middle class to upper middle class suburbs and parenting all took on college debt to varying degrees and varying outcomes 20 years later.

Friends who grew up with me in the inner city around poverty and who grew up poor or worse didn’t even consider college as an option due to the costs.

Almost no one growing up in actual poverty is going to be considering taking on six figures of college debt. The concept itself is utterly foreign and absurd. You simply already know at a young age it’s out of reach short of a full ride (sports or academic) scholarship. Even if you wanted to, your family doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for you to graduate college before you contribute to helping care for parents or younger siblings. This fact is socially reinforced by both family and your peers.

The folks I know who ended up with massive life-ending crippling student debt all grew up insanely privileged compared to the average around me. They all pretended to grow up “lower middle class” but they are outright lying to themselves (and others) about it.

It’s been interesting watching the student debt forgiveness debate under this lense. I don’t think a certain class of people understands just how tone deaf they are on the subject.

Sure there are outliers, but I’m talking about generalizations here.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#596

Post by Jensson »

Vera_Wilde wrote: post #575
throwaway173738 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like a bunch of apes took over our society and worked as hard as possible to make everything as cruel as possible for no particular reason.

Hah! Yeah, the bonobo/chimp contrast shows it’s not an inevitability. We just optimized for the wrong equilibrium.

The difference between bonobos and chimps are genetics and not culture, you can't train chimps to live like bonobos and vice versa.

Us humans still has the genes that made us conquer and enslave the whole world, every single human culture that has ever existed enslave and murder animals, as we needed to do that to survive. You ain't gonna change those genes, so we just have to do the best we can with the genes we have and our genes are like Chimpanzees in that we want to murder and eat and exploit others, without that humans didn't get b12 and died out, so all our ancestors lived that way.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#597

Post by Jensson »

MangoToupe wrote: post #561
Redoubts wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Global_c...

This doesn't alter anything about what I said. It's still goddamn evil how bad we are at distributing resources in this world. Justice would look like actions that are not legal to advocate for in this country.

Most resources go to average people, how is that bad? Wealth is not resource distribution, consumption is, and by far the most consumption is done by the middle class.

Consumption tax is said to be regressive since it doesn't work on rich people since they invest, that should tell you that consumption is much more evenly distributed than wealth is.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#598

Post by yibg »

djtango wrote: post #573
yibg wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree on the mentality it creates and how long it lasts. I’m fairly well off now, but grew up very poor. First developing world poor where running water and toilets were shared with the whole building, the whole family crammed into a single room. Then western world poor, where my parents and some friends that lived together (to save money) would walk to get groceries, buy one bus ticket to have one person…

Something I find interesting is that my mother grew up in similar conditions - poor in Borneo in the 50s, my aunt was literally born in the jungle while hiding from the Japanese And yet my mum's family were raised that they were broke, not poor. There were definitely some echoes/overlap like we were raised that wasting food is one of the most egregious sins one can ever commit, and my mum has a compulsion of overpack…

I think also perhaps the reasons for being poor. My family was poor but so was everyone else. It was structural. So as a result (my hypothesis), there wasn’t even the hope of being rich, just not so poor. So for instance the mentality was always to save, not invest, because no one has the money to invest could afford to lose whatever meager savings there was.

As a result my up bringing was filled with lessons to play it safe, don’t take risks, get a stable job etc.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#599

Post by Jensson »

mayoff wrote: post #200
monero-xmr wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wealthy but I wasnt always. When I was 22 through 30 I didn’t take a single vacation that wasn’t driving to a long weekend. My wife and I both pulled 60 to 70 hour weeks for our entire 20s (I still do). No one “deserves” free time. If you don’t want to work 70 hours a week and want to watch Netflix instead, go for it, but don’t bitch to me

Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this and I hope no one else does." Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this so everyone else should too."

No they think "its bullshit that you can't get out of it, since I did it myself". The argument from the left is not "we should help poor people since they are miserable" its that "its impossible for poor people to help themselves", why do left wing people try to make that bullshit claim that will just create more oponents?

I think we should help poor people, but I also think that its not hard for poor people to work hard and stop being poor today. If you want my support just say you wanna help poor people, don't try to tell me that its impossible for poor people to help themselves because then I will argue against you.

Like, why equate the two opinions "you can work yourself out of poverty" and "we shouldn't help poor people", those are two entirely different kinds of opinions.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#600

Post by dijit »

Jensson wrote: post #596
Vera_Wilde wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! Yeah, the bonobo/chimp contrast shows it’s not an inevitability. We just optimized for the wrong equilibrium.

The difference between bonobos and chimps are genetics and not culture, you can't train chimps to live like bonobos and vice versa. Us humans still has the genes that made us conquer and enslave the whole world, every single human culture that has ever existed enslave and murder animals, as we needed to do that to survive. You ain't gonna change those genes, so we just have to do the best we can with the genes we hav…

Farming is an invention, the majority of human history was spent without farming of any kind, something like 80% of human history was in the hunter/gatherer phase.

We should not underestimate the fact that where we excel is that we are better at passing off information to our offspring. This makes improvement over long periods possible as we can build off the backs of our ancestors.

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