What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
1–10 of 462 posts
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#2Poverty is profitable to other people. People who are in poverty often have to depend on services that are overpriced and predatory. From check cashing services, and payday lenders, to not being able to go to a grocery store where prices are better, but instead depending on smaller stores of convenience where the prices are often higher. The lottery depends on those in poverty. Sometimes I think even the police and city governments depend on people in poverty to pay a large portion of fines.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#3What if? That's the whole idea of it. It's what keeps highly profitable (to the employee) jobs churning...
Nobody would work in the conditions needed for diamond extraction or sweatshop clothing making for example, if it wasn't for dire poverty.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#4The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
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 the 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 socioeconomic unfairness.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#5People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not!
The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. The other landlord has also built herself a business in real-estate and now can afford to take a vacation? Good for her, seriously. She's providing housing and her tenants/customers are providing her income. Building such a business (and I assume running a 131 unit mobile home park) is absolutely work, the value of which is evident by the paying tenants.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#6Poverty is profitable to other people. People who are in poverty often have to depend on services that are overpriced and predatory. From check cashing services, and payday lenders, to not being able to go to a grocery store where prices are better, but instead depending on smaller stores of convenience where the prices are often higher. The lottery depends on those in poverty. Sometimes I think even the police and c…
Of course they do. IMO towing (especially here in SF where the price for getting your car towed is astronomical relatively speaking), lottery, all those types of gov't fines are really just a tax on the poor. If you're well off you don't really give a damn about getting your car towed a fee here and there, besides the inconvenience, but for someone who depends on their rinky-dink car to get to and from work, getting towed and having to pay a fee that is in some cases equivalent to the value of the car itself basically just fucks their entire life up.
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#7At first, when people are getting poorer, it is probably more profitable then in the long term (if nobody can spend money, how can it be profitable).
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#8At first, when people are getting poorer, it is probably more profitable then in the long term (if nobody can spend money, how can it be profitable).
Who cares if you're rich by then?
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#9Shocking! Landlords are wealthier than their tenants. I would think this is true not just of trailer parks, but also downtown condos.
How dare these landlords take vacations… in Jamaica!
Re: What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?
#10People in poverty use services and consume goods. Someone provides those goods and services. Would they be better off if every business closed their doors to the impoverished, so as to not "make a buck off the poor"? Of course not! The trailer park owner in the article owns 131 units and "makes" (presumably grosses) $400K a year. Those units are about $250 per month, hardly the stuff of Viking-style pillaging, IMO. T…
Predatory businesses are still exploitation.
> Building such a business (and I assume running a 131 unit mobile home park) is absolutely work, the value of which is evident by the paying tenants.
Running a sweatshop is still work, the value of which is evident by its customers.
Just because someone needs to work or a place to live doesn't make it right or commendable.