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I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

itsmevox.substack.com

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Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#81

Post by ahoka »

avalys wrote: post #8
Telaneo wrote: post #5

> If your worth is not determined by your productivity, then what remains of you underneath it all? Everything else. You are worth so much more than your productivity. I'm glad I never got sucked into the protestant work ethic, since defining yourself based on your labour and the value you generate from that sounds woefully narrow-minded (this doesn't feel like quite the right word, but close enough). It's probably h…

Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?

What a tone deaf comment.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#82

Post by inigyou »

bestouff wrote: post #62
theflyingelvis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It almost seems as if you are trolling. Surely we can, at least, agree that the excesses you mention exist only because of those who produce.

A society where just stating this is called trolling is such a sad society. I pity you and you brainwashed siblings.

it's a very common trolling tactic to imply a controversial thing while overtly saying a less controversial thing

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#83

Post by meta_gunslinger »

iammjm wrote: post #74
meta_gunslinger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wrong decision is not being insured for disaster and not saving enough when you were able to work, electing to spend the money instead. Not being unlucky with your health or having an accident. That's clearly stated in my original response if you care to read and not knee-jekingly respond. For someone who has been born disabled, the conversation should be moved to the people who brought them to life and are respo…

Look at all those people worldwide “electing” to spend their money to feed and shelter themselves and their families with barely anything else left afterwards. The should’ve elected otherwise! It’s insane how some people here are disconnected from the realities of the majority of people worldwide. All those years of education and the infinite access to information and still it’s an enigma to them the fact that the ma…

You can speak for yourself, because you know nothing about my background and your ideological bias leads you to embarrassing assumptions.

My family until my parents generation were dirt poor in one of those countries you would also call piss poor.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#85

Post by pj_mukh »

Telaneo wrote: post #68
pj_mukh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We have enough excess in society” How are you measuring this? Hopefully something better than stock prices.

The other commentor mentioned food and clothes to you. I'll add that I can get food for free locally (soup kitchen style, although I don't think they actually serve soup) if I really need it. Around 10% of houses in the US are vacant, although I'm sure a fair amount are that for good reasons (shitty locations, old and worn to high hell). This to me sounds like a resource allocation problem and not a lack-of-resources…

Yes to all of this, and want to double stress the Housing theory of everything [1]. Most of the "scarcity" people feel today in the North American context is driven by housing. And there simply isn't enough of it. And citing badly measured vacancy stats does a huge disservice to the effort to fix this.

I agree we can do a lot better. And I have no moral qualms about giving the excess away to everyone who needs it. But I need people to admit that it will require a lot of work till we can sufficiently claim we have a real realizable "excess".

And that work requires the current system to work more "efficiently" and with "higher productivity", in the economic definition of the word, not as a personal valuation as OP defines.

[1]: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#86

Post by inigyou »

a-french-anon wrote: post #58
Telaneo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've considered suicide because I was unable to make ends meet. I don't want others to experience that. Is that too much to ask?

Of course nobody sane wants something like this to happen. The problem isn't the people unable to make ends meets, it's the unwilling.

How can you even tell the difference?

Most people can't. They just assign everyone to the bucket of unwilling.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#87

Post by reactordev »

Telaneo wrote: post #13
avalys wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who produces the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, the energy you use, the medicine you consume, etc. while you airily define ‘productivity’ as reading the classics and spending time with friends?

We have enough excess in society that we can spare enough of those things to those who are unable to take care of themselves.

Do you know how tone deaf this is? Some people literally can’t afford their medication and you are saying “meh, we have too much already”

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#88

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Zababa wrote: post #57
pharrington wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it can be measured by the overstocked food that gets discarded everyday, and by the houses that are vacant nine months a year.

This assumes production of food is the bottleneck rather than distribution. If distribution is actually the bottleneck, overstocked food is not a measure of excess in society.

But individual grocery stores throw out a lot of food each day. So the problem isn't distribution, it's that nobody bought it.

Re: I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

#89

Post by eigenman »

ghusto wrote: post #42

> Earn slightly too much, and vital support disappears My reading of this is that the threshhold for the USA government to withdraw financial (and other?) support for disabled people is too low, is that right?

Not only is it too low, but it is the discontinuity in support. This leads to perverse incentives where for the wage you could make, you’d barely clear the threshold to lose benefits and make barely more money than on government support.

This isn’t an argument to remove support—it’s an argument to remove binary thresholds with smooth ramps to incentivize people to work.

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