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Why do you think people are poor?

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Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#211

Post by Produce »

Mz wrote: post #133
Produce wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the implication of everybody being well educated is that everyone will have white collar jobs or prestigious blue collar jobs. If everyone is well educated then who will want to take a job as a street cleaner when they've just spent $80k on their education? The solution is clearly not limited to just educating everyone, is it?

Real education does not necessarily mean spending big bucks. There is plenty of evidence that simply throwing money at the problem doesn't really work. A better correlation is high parental involvement and a community which values education. Also, pay alone does not determine if one is poor. It is not possible to avoid having people who are "relatively poor" as measured by absolute income. But it is possible to take…

What about a creative approach to the problem coupled with questioning our basic assumptions - why should anyone be relatively poor in the first place? Do we really need money in a high resource environment? When society is, in effect, dependent on everyone doing their part then why should someone be poorer just for the part they play? Why do we not run more social experiments on different ways of structuring things? We could section off a few islands and let the idealists create their perfect societies on them and see who does best. We could take lessons from those experiments and integrate them into mainstream society.

I'm just saying, education has been improving steadily over the last century yet the wealth gap has increased. It's clearly only one element of the solution.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#212

Post by Produce »

mhartl wrote: post #142
Produce wrote: post #107

She's completely correct that it's the culture of the rich which make them rich. What she's completely wrong about is that it's their morality that makes it so. We, the rich, the middle and upper classes, are the ones who fund prisons, we are the ones who do not share our food with our neighbors, we are the ones who refuse to mix with them and share our culture. It's like Terrence McKenna said - "Culture is not your…

I'm genuinely curious. Could you email me the word? My address is in my profile. I promise not to share it.

Anarchism!

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#213

Post by Uchikoma »

I have no clue. I think I know why I'm not poor

1. Luck to be born in Germany 2. My parents did everything despite their low incomes to get me to university and support me with everything I've ever tried - and got me out of stupid situations I got myself into 3. Luck to get a job in the early 90s for programming web sites when very few people could do that, although the job offer was out there already for 3 months. Because someone at university told me during holiday about something called "WWW" 4. Luck that my girl friend left me - somehow - and I wanted to get over that by working a lot 5. Luck that I got VC financed and become CTO of a startup during the dot com boom

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#214

Post by zokiboy »

ismarc wrote: post #206

It's hard to write this, and my opinion is probably biased because of it, but this article is nothing but a giant load of horse shit and is a carefully constructed as "feel good" to reinforce the preconceived notions the author had going into it. A little bit of background; I grew up poor, people randomly leaving food on our doorstep poor, my parents giving the bike I had bought with my own earned money to my brother…

Success of this program can be explained by the social connections made during the course - teachers were all having better quality of life - also students were shown different way of life through the lectures. If teachers were good as it seems they have backed their lessons with real life stories. In a way, the daily lessons were their out of the situation they were in.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#215

Post by sparknlaunch »

In a recent fictional book about poverty in the UK, two types if poverty were identified.

One was unintentional poverty- someone falls into trouble due to no fault of their own. Maybe illness, trauma etc

The other is intentional- individuals taking full advantage of government benefits. In the UK generations of families have been stuck in this category.

One group feel more deserving...

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#216

Post by DanBC »

sparknlaunch wrote: post #215

In a recent fictional book about poverty in the UK, two types if poverty were identified. One was unintentional poverty- someone falls into trouble due to no fault of their own. Maybe illness, trauma etc The other is intentional- individuals taking full advantage of government benefits. In the UK generations of families have been stuck in this category. One group feel more deserving...

> The other is intentional- individuals taking full advantage of government benefits. In the UK generations of families have been stuck in this category.

The UK tax and benefits system creates perverse incentives. The systems are baffling (advisors for tax or for benefits need a lot of training (accountants need degree level studying and qualifications)) and interlocking. They are handled by different government departments. Mistakes are common. If the people paying the benefit make a mistake to your detriment nothing happens. (Or if you make a mistake to your detriment.) (And if you don't notice in time you're unlikely to get that money ever.) But if they make a mistake in your favour that money will be clawed back, no matter how long ago the mistake was made. And if you make a mistake in your favour, or if you don't report their mistakes in your favour, you risk interview under caution, arrest, and prosecution.

Compare this treatment of people who are poor with, for example, very wealthy companies taking extreme borderline legal tax avoidance measures.

People who have learned dependence might not feel deserving, but getting them off benefit and into work isn't as easy as clubbing them with punishments. Especially since it was society that put them there.

Here's an example of Vodafone:

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/22/vodafone...)

They owed maybe £6bn, probably £4bn. They paid £1.2bn in a deal.

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#217

Post by hnhg »

lotharbot wrote: post #205
omgsean wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It only takes a generation and some common thinking for a family to stick together and get ahead, and ensure their children never need to borrow money from a bank to get an education, or buy a house. You don't have to be rich... but why can't we live, you know, a generation ahead? I know a guy who told me his parents paid for all his stuff, his house, etc, and therefore all his work and all that (good tech guy) was…

I know a ton of people who were "working poor" either just post-WWII or as immigrants, who nonetheless have managed to acquire some pretty good sums of wealth. Most of them don't go as far as being "a generation ahead", but their hard work and sacrifices put their kids and grandkids in position to be successful without going through the sorts of financial dire straits that others treat as normal.

education, housing and health insurance were much cheaper even just 20 years ago

Re: Why do you think people are poor?

#219

Post by vacri »

ismarc wrote: post #206

It's hard to write this, and my opinion is probably biased because of it, but this article is nothing but a giant load of horse shit and is a carefully constructed as "feel good" to reinforce the preconceived notions the author had going into it. A little bit of background; I grew up poor, people randomly leaving food on our doorstep poor, my parents giving the bike I had bought with my own earned money to my brother…

I don't think you're as much at odds with the author as you claim. What I read in the article was him trying to teach a different way of looking at things, a new angle, which is what I read you got out of your enlistment.
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