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Once poor, always poor?

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Re: Once poor, always poor?

#191

Post by vbezhenar »

When I started to pile some cash, so many opportunities opened up to save more money. Like I've got a chance to buy a good car for a good price, but I need money right now. Or I can buy plenty of food at once with a good discount, but I need to have enough money and enough refrigerator space to store it. Poor people who don't have a house, must spend tremendous money to rent it. I'm spending like $20/month to pay for house that I own. Poor people who don't have a car must spend tremendous money for taxi while I can spend laughable money for gasoline and have cheap transportation (while still keeping the option to use cheaper bus if I want).

Basically when you don't have enough money, you always struggle, you always have to pay more money for basic needs. And when you have some buffer, you often can negotiate and get better deals.

Another example is stress-free life. When I have enough money to cover my expenses for 5 years, I don't really care about being fired, for example. I know that I'll have enough time to find a work. But if one does not have that option, he'll bend before his manager, because he fears to lose work.

Also credits are a bad thing in my book. Mortgage is an exception, but only for cheapest apartments ever, so you can pay it as fast as possible.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#192

Post by baq »

vpilcx wrote: post #155
bko wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My main philosophical gripe is that it doesn't seem to really matter what your major is. Can't you just hack this by going to school for pretty much anything you're interested in and being able to work in an unrelated field? > my next gripe with it is the seemingly insurmountable debt that said education brings You've established that education is a good investment. So why not find an affordable college? It's not a…

> You've established that education is a good investment. My friend often comes to me and says, "Hey, man, how come you don't invest your money in ?" Because I'm living in poverty. People who live in poverty don't have money to invest. > So why not find an affordable college? So I did a quick calculation. Affordable, meaning junior college and public state college, would come out to roughly $23k for a bachelor. Maybe…

these are the rules of the game. you didn't create them, you have little to none influence on them. you can disagree with them on principle, you can exploit them to your benefit. you can do both.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#193

Post by nivenkos »

pjerem wrote: post #188

That’s where I can see the efficiency of free education. I live in France and I come from about the median class. I didn’t struggle in my education. But while I was a student, I saw quite a lot of people, who came from poor family being able to catch the opportunity to leave this poverty. Of course they still struggled more than me to pay their day to day expenses while I had the chance to be backed by my parents. So…

I agree, but housing is the real kicker in Europe.

Lower wages and higher taxes on working people (income and sales tax are way higher than property, inheritance and capital gains taxes (if they even exist!)) make it almost impossible to save up a reasonable deposit. Meanwhile house prices have gone to the moon. 30% rise in Stockholm in the last year alone for example, a 100+% rise in most of southern England since 2008, etc.

So you're stuck renting, and paying more for less, with no hope of building up savings for retirement (the state pension won't exist for us!).

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#194

Post by [deleted] »

vpilcx wrote: post #141
duxup wrote: post #14

> Cultural norms can also encourage poverty cycles. I often wonder about these. Growing up I watched friends whose families had what you might describe as a cultural distrust of institutions, including schools, or even anyone who seemed to “think they’re better than us” (translation anyone who did well in school or a career). They constantly made self defeating choices and seemed destined to have the same problems/ p…

I'm one of those people living in poverty that distrusts school institutions. My main philosophical gripe is that it doesn't seem to really matter what your major is. "Oh, you got a bachelors in Biology? Well, I guess that's fine. Come work at my tech company in a way that is completely unrelated to Biology." In this particular situation, it seems like the only purpose of college is to create arbitrary classist hurdl…

[deleted]

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#195

Post by dijit »

pjerem wrote: post #188

That’s where I can see the efficiency of free education. I live in France and I come from about the median class. I didn’t struggle in my education. But while I was a student, I saw quite a lot of people, who came from poor family being able to catch the opportunity to leave this poverty. Of course they still struggled more than me to pay their day to day expenses while I had the chance to be backed by my parents. So…

This is a harder problem than just "Free Education".

I grew up in the UK (in "deprived" areas, to a single parent with no income other than jobseekers allowance and some childcare from the state) and I can formerly attest that my "free education" was atrocious.

I am not sure if there was a negative feedback loop involved: School funding was determined by efficacy. How do you measure efficacy of a school? Well, test results... which people from this kind of background will not have good ones.

Another issue that perhaps is not thought much about is that 'Homework' for impoverished people is very difficult, in my case I didn't have a place to actually sit and work (no dining table, we ate on our laps). But Homework is a necessary part of education.

Add to the fact that socio-economic factors do filter into the school; things like gangs and in-groups.

Worried about gangs and gang colours: uniform

Uniforms cost money. Money people don't have.

By the time you get to the age where you're allowed to work (or go to university)- you take what you can get to get out of poverty; which is not going to be further education.

In my experience school is a temporary prison for children so that their parents can go to work, I definitely didn't learn the things I know from school. I learned them from my mum and school regurgitated them at me ad infinitum in a boring classroom in a small building surrounded by prison bars.

I do not miss free school. I strongly resent that it was ever forced on me.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#196

Post by boeingUH60 »

antupis wrote: post #100
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of such societies: the whole idea of women not being destined for childbearing is relatively new. Some countries are firmly on the course though: https://www.scb.se/en/About-us/news-and-press-releases/2020-...

About all countries https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521 there is some exceptions like Nigeria(dropping slowly) but generally fertility rate is dropping all over world.

I wish fertility drops much harder in Nigeria. We have a very high poverty rate over here (40%) [1], but projections say we'll surpass China in population by 2100 [2]. I dread to think of what'll it'll be like that projection comes to pass.

1- https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/poverty/987B9C9...

2- https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/403062-populati...

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#197

Post by throwaway55421 »

vpilcx wrote: post #148
elvatoloco123 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they did. Bezos, Gates, Buffet, Zuckerberg were all rich

In another discussion, someone tried to make the argument that Buffet was a real-life rags to riches story. Like, my guy, his father worked as a stock broker, and he used to hang out at his dad's office when he was a kid, and his dad eventually became a Congressman. I don't know why people think that's "rags to riches". I might be misinterpreting the facts but Gates got the deal to sell DOS to IBM because his Mom kne…

They're not saying that he was poor.

They're saying that he didn't start a billionaire. He multiplied his wealth by a factor of a thousand or more.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#198

Post by AussieWog93 »

vpilcx wrote: post #160
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In this particular situation, it seems like the only purpose of college is to create arbitrary classist hurdles for poor people to jump through." There are certainly a lot of useless majors. But that doesn't imply all of them are useless. "the fact that educational debt in America can never be voided through bankruptcy seems like a conscious systemic decision to create debt slaves." I'm not in the US, but isn't the…

> There are certainly a lot of useless majors. But that doesn't imply all of them are useless. It's not so much a critique of the majors but rather the professional requirements of the job listing. For jobs that don't have an innate technical (technical in the loosest sense of the term) requirement, they only want a certain class of person working there and college degrees are just how they do that. > I'm not in the…

>It's not so much a critique of the majors but rather the professional requirements of the job listing. For jobs that don't have an innate technical (technical in the loosest sense of the term) requirement, they only want a certain class of person working there and college degrees are just how they do that.

I'd go further and suggest that many of these jobs only really exist to save face for the underperforming children of the upper-middle classes.

Re: Once poor, always poor?

#200

Post by math_denial »

andrewjl wrote: post #136
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're a teenage girl, depending on your culture, your family seems to be peer pressuring you to be a mother Ironically, societies that do not steer girls to parenthood are subject to extinction. I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just the law of nature.

> It's just the law of nature. Not really, societies aren't natural because they are human constructs.

The fact that something is a social construct does not mean that it is not important and has not rules by which the members of said society have to live by. Money and democracy are social constructs too.
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