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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#661

Post by abustamam »

> 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?

This part gets me. I once saw someone on Twitter who was like "I was poor, I worked a bazillion hours a week and never saw my wife and kids, just so I could put food on the table! If I could do it, anyone can!"

And one response was just like, "if you need to do that just to make ends meet, the system is obviously broken. If I'm gonna work that hard, there better be a private jet at the end of that road"

Yeah, just because one CAN kill themselves for capitalism, doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#662

Post by abustamam »

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…

> Income inequality is one thing, but hardcore poverty, as described by the author, is a different beast

This is something I never thought of but certainly rings true. The left always talks about income inequality and poverty as if they are one and the same. And then rebuttal almost always rebut against income inequality (or being "broke") and not poverty. By conflating the two, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Perhaps we need politicians who will accurately define poverty and policies for getting folks out of poverty, and then once everyone can afford to eat, we can talk about income inequality.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#663

Post by habinero »

abustamam wrote: post #657
seec wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping stuff around and refusing to fix things are not necessarily correlated to being poor. Both my parents have been in the top 15-10% income bracket, yet they pile up all kind of useless garbage, very often refuse to invest in proper stuff because "it's too expensive", always try to find ways to get things "cheaper" and will haggle artisans to get the cheapest job possible (and then complain when the work is done…

> they really do make stupid decisions and cannot figure out things correctly Is this not the doom loop? People are poor because they don't know how to manage their money, and that keeps them poor. If it were common knowledge that payday loans were a scam / terrible financial decision then there wouldn't be a dozen in every poor neighborhood. Somewhat related is the newfound ability to finance absolutely everything,…

What an oblivious statement.

Of course poor folks know how bad payday lenders are. They're poor, not stupid. They use them because they live on razor-thin margins and life happens.

Poor folks generally manage their money down to the dollar. They have to, or they'll be out on the street.

All of the things you mentioned are middle-class problems and have nothing to do with the horrific grind that is being poor.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#664

Post by 9rx »

sgarland wrote: post #628
9rx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

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

Yes they would. Absolutely. Which means that they clearly see it as being outskirts of a city or town, not the outskirts of an urban area. You even say so yourself. It is literally written as such.

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

You did the same thing again: Outside a city, not outside of an urban area. Of course there are different community types within urban areas, just as there different community types within rural areas: e.g. hamlets, villages, small towns, it is even technically possible, albeit unusual, for a city to be rural! For example, Greenwood, British Columbia is both a city and rural.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#665

Post by dwedge »

hippo22 wrote: post #623
smallmancontrov wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I get your point but there are more factors at play here that you might not be aware of.

The debt in question was council tax, every household in the UK pays this at a monthly rate, something like £140 a month. But what most people don't know is that these monthly payments are technically a "gesture of goodwill" from the council, and if you are late for a payment they will really quickly take it to court and send bailiffs for the full yearly amount so you're looking at £1500 plus court fees plus bailiff fees for attending immediately. Easily £2000 from missing £150.

Next another little known fact - if you don't let the bailiffs in, they can't take anything. They can come back with the police if you let them in once. However they can levy on things that are outside, like a vehicle.

So that's what happened here, and once they levy on the vehicle you are not legally allowed to sell it if you sign the levy.

So the debtor in all likelihood ended up in this situation very quickly and could not sell the motorbike himself once the bailiff visited. As for the over valuation, I give you that but only in a very specific scenario - for the market where they sold it.

Now as for why they sold it so cheap, why would they care? They only care about their fees. It they can visit three times by only pretending to knock on the door and charge three times, they will. When it came to this motorbike, they got paid the fees for selling it, the auctioneer got their fee, and nobody involved had motivation to market it. We're not talking ebay or well marketed property auctions here.

In fact, the bailiff now gets to go back to tell them the debt isn't cleared and charge them for this visit as well.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#666

Post by tmoertel »

hippo22 wrote: post #650
tmoertel wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP wrote that: > [The bike] was sold at auction for £50. £35 bailiff fees for taking it there and £15 auctioneer fees, £0 off the debt. If this claim is true, then I think most people will still find this conduct outrageous: How is it in the public interest for the baliff to take actions that harm both the debtor (by taking the personally valuable bike) and the public (by wasting from $15 to $50 of the public's m…

Those fees don’t seem unreasonably high to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bailiff was operating at a loss given the time it takes to take possession and bring the goods to auction. It’s in the public’s interest to have mechanisms to quickly process insolvency in a way that attempts to fairly value property. Auctions solve that. If debtors don’t like the outcome, then they should sell the good themselves before it…

The point is that, regardless of whether the bailiff’s and auctioneer’s fees are eminently reasonable, it will always result in net-negative benefit to society (excepting the bailiff and auctioneer) whenever the bailiff confiscates property whose auction proceeds are less than the sum of those fees. It is therefore contrary to the public interest for the bailiff to confiscate property unless it can reasonably be expected to substantially clear those fees when auctioned.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#667

Post by kmijyiyxfbklao »

bccdee wrote: post #560
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.

I think that's a comforting lie people like to tell themselves. Lots of hard-working people never get their due. In reality, people who escape bad circumstances often just get lucky. That's hard to accept, because nobody "deserves" to get lucky. We want to believe we earned what we have, and that, if we had to do it all over again, we'd still end up succeeding. But often that's not true.

I think it's more comforting to think that you could've done nothing about your life being bad. It's so obvious that you need both good luck and hard work.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#668

Post by cryptonector »

MangoToupe wrote: post #539
cryptonector wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting poverty (with very limited success). Yes, it's very difficult to defeat poverty. But it has been happening world-wide. Poverty has been going down world-wide for 200 years. It's not so much through the efforts of individuals or even governments, just a network effect of technological advancements and opportunity creation (made possible by those advancement…

Only by some definitions of poverty—crucially, definitions that beg the question of rational wealth distribution. I would never, personally, defend such worldviews.

> Only by some definitions of poverty—crucially, definitions that beg the question of rational wealth distribution.

What do you care about wealth distribution? Why should anyone? As long as we each can a) not be poor, b) prosper, c) live our lives in peace, none of us should care that someone else is wealthier (or less so) than us.

"But wealth inequality!!" is just moving the goal posts: so poverty has gone down and has been going down, but you can't be satisfied with that, not even if it goes to zero. No, you want something else: power -- total power.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#669

Post by cryptonector »

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.

> It's still goddamn evil how bad we are at distributing resources

How. How on earth is it evil if you or I have a bit more wealth than the other? Who gives a flying fuck, except... except those who seek power. Total power. You can't have peace as long as you or your preferred leaders are not in total power, and you won't let the rest of us have peace either.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#670

Post by cryptonector »

fajitaforce5 wrote: post #637
cryptonector wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is nonsense. I don't even know who Steven Pinker is. Poverty two hundred years ago was way worse than poverty today in most of the world -- this is a self-evident fact to anyone with even a passing knowledge of history. No running water, no water mains, no sewers -- these things meant death from cholera and other diseases for many children, and that's just for starters.

Odd how you counter claims as fictional with zero evidence just speculation. I realize this is a discussion forum and not a policy office but I pisses me off when feelings is met with feelings and not explanation or examples. Now’s your chance to really prove your point.

That we're all less poor today that our ancestors 200 years ago is absolutely, totally self-evident. No additional evidence needed. Indeed, the inverse claim would require evidence, and extraordinary evidence at that.
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