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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#621

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

dwedge wrote: post #364
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…

> 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…

Speaking with conservatively minded friends on this subject, they just shrug it off, smug in the knowledge that if they were in that situation they would immediately be able to pull themselves out of it. The fact that other people don't just do that is because they make poor decisions and therefore its all about 'personal responsibility'. There really is no convincing them otherwise.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#622

Post by hippo22 »

bccdee wrote: post #558
hippo22 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think you've even thought about this for 30 seconds. > If it could easily fetch more money, it would have been bid higher than £50. Have you ever been to one of these auctions? I haven't. If I want a used vehicle, I go to a trusted dealership. Few people attend auctions, hence demand is low, hence prices are low. When there's no incentive to sell something for what it's worth, the seller will put in less effo…

The point is that, before the bike was collected and put up for auction, the debtor could have sold the bike to pay the debts. Then, once the bike was put up for auction, buyers could have bid on it if it was really worth more.

Multiple people in this story had a financial incentive to profit from the bike, yet no one did. The only evidence we have of the bike's value is OP's claim. Does it not seem more likely that OP is simply wrong about the bike's value?

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#623

Post by hippo22 »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #550
hippo22 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> If it could easily fetch more money, it would have been bid higher than £50. You know that isn't true. Auctions are noisy and poorly conducted auctions are worse. This is about some combination of sadism and negligence.

Again, the debtor could have sold the bike themselves and they didn't. Bidders could have recognized the bike's value but they didn't. This is a story about OP overvaluing a bike and nothing else.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#624

Post by luxpir »

PeaceTed wrote: post #533
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…

So much of this poverty is hidden because it makes people feel uneasy and yet it needs to be exposed, not as a means to shame them or to give you pity to feel bad about yourself but to realise, there is an imbalance and we are all part of it in a small way. That collectively, as nations, we don't need to give up a little to make a lot of change. Because as it stands there is this notion of person all responsibility,…

I agree. I also don't know how that could realistically be achieved, with everything nowadays being lowest common denominator, aid budgets being slashed and drawbridges being raised. It would take an extraordinary initiative by an extraordinary person or group.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#625

Post by hippo22 »

lurk2 wrote: post #601
hippo22 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Whenever "the poor" are debated, it seems that people always assume they're totally incapable of helping themselves. You just argued the bike wouldn’t have been sufficient to pay the debt. How would the owner have helped himself by selling it?

OP's central claim was that the bike should have been able to cover the debt, but, due to systemic malice on the bailiff's part, the bike only covered small fraction of the debt. My point is that OP is simply over-valuing the bike. If you change OP's story to: the bailiff got a decent price for the bike and took a small fee for the service, it becomes a lot less outrageous.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#626

Post by hippo22 »

shroobani wrote: post #594
hippo22 wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

This story clearly occurs in the UK.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#627

Post by sgarland »

9rx wrote: post #580
simoncion wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suburban is ... originally referring to... Like you said, this is irrelevant. Cities aren't planned or built like that, and really haven't been... since the founding of the USA, at the very latest. (If they were, the Brits would have had a much more difficult time capturing D.C. than they did.)

Nice history lesson that you've written for absolutely no reason, but we still don't know what there is other than rural and urban. Pointlessly pointing out obvious things like that there can be suburbs within urban areas, like there can be hamlets in rural areas, does not answer the question or serve any purpose whatsoever.

> Nice history lesson that you've written for absolutely no reason…

This you?

> …originally referring to the portion of an urban area found outside of the wall. The physical walls aren't often found anymore, but the term still refers to an urban area that surrounds where a wall might have been placed historically.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#628

Post by sgarland »

9rx wrote: post #313
sgarland wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you understand how little some people have. Especially in rural (or really, anything that isn’t urban) areas, where you have to have a car for transportation, because public transit doesn’t exist. Keeping an old car running and insured isn’t cheap.

> Especially in rural (or really, anything that isn’t urban) areas What isn't urban but also not rural? I've seen disagreement over exactly where urban begins. A density of ~400 people per km², with a minimum of 1-2,000 people is a common definition, although the OECD targets a density of 1,500 people per km², with a minimum of 7,000 people, to capture all the variation throughout the nations it tracks. Regardless, i…

From Merriam-Webster:

> suburb (noun):

> a: an outlying part of a city or town

> b: a smaller community adjacent to or within commuting distance of a city

> c: suburbs plural : the residential area on the outskirts of a city or large town

I strongly suspect that if you polled random people, they would say something along the lines of b or c.

There are also exurbs, whose definition further drives home the point that it isn’t binary:

> a region or settlement that lies outside a city and usually beyond its suburbs and that often is inhabited chiefly by well-to-do families

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#629

Post by ndriscoll »

bccdee wrote: post #562
kelvinjps10 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Most Americans have a car (in my country this is a luxury) Using this as an example to illustrate a broader point: Most Americans can't afford not to have a car. Public transit in the US is next to non-existent in many places. If you want a job, you probably need a car to drive to work every day. So you take out huge loans to pay for the cheapest car you can find: now your financial situation is precarious because…

To be fair to iPhone point, that's sort of like saying they have a used Gucci bag. A new Motorola phone is cheaper than a 5 year old used iPhone ($130 for a new 2024 moto g vs ~$150-200 for an iPhone 12). A used Motorola is even cheaper (sub $100). Apple has always been a luxury brand. It's basically trivial next to housing, but I still can't imagine buying an Apple product.
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