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Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

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Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#31

Post by danaris »

alboaie wrote: post #2

Obviously, you can't undestant what you do not experience yourself ( at least a bit). And saddly this lack of insight could justify hunter/prey dynamics and win/loose approaches as social games. However,because most society members are inevitably loosers in such games then these games are unstable and backfire periodically ( but could take even hundres of years until a culture fails and resets the evil games)

> Obviously, you can't undestant what you do not experience yourself

Sure you can. That's what imagination and empathy are for.

I've never been truly poor myself (though I did grow up what I would term lower-middle-class), but I can understand it, because I've read about it, I know the basic concepts of what the differences are between my situation and that situation, and I'm good at putting myself in someone else's shoes and seeing things from their perspective.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#32

Post by rib3ye »

As a parent, it seems teaching empathy without direct experience, is difficult, if not impossible.

One solution that can work if forcing a person into direct contact with someone experiencing the problem. I see this class politics, and I see this in my job as a Product Designer.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#34

Post by monsieurbanana »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #13
aspaviento wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

It depends on your liabilities and other aspects like age. 6,000 EUR per month is $7,300 USD per month is tough if you’re a new pharmacist in the US and need to repay $300k of student loans and make up for 4 to 6 years of lost income and catch up retirement savings, as an example.

It's in euros though, much less likely that someone on that salary in Europe would be truly struggling, compared to someone living in the USA.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#35

Post by austincheney »

elliekelly wrote: post #6
austincheney wrote: post #4

Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.

And how would you suggest poor Americans afford the plane ticket necessary to achieve those perspectives? Just because there are people in the world who have it worse doesn’t mean poor Americans should just deal with it.

If poverty were an easily solved problem then it wouldn't be a problem at all and we wouldn't be having this discussion. That is the gap between sympathy versus empathy and differences in economic opportunity versus disadvantages of social pressures/reinforcement.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#36

Post by nanis »

Wealth is a stock measure, income is flow.

You accumulate wealth out of what you can set aside out of the flow.

Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation.

Then, when we sort of "make it" here, people who have family homes worth close to million and up (you can draw on that home equity, you know), people who know people (either family or others) who can "help" them with down-payments etc label us rich based on the flow we are receiving right now. These people tend to themselves make in the $150K range, in my experience and do not realize that the wealth they have was already accumulated in the less punitive environment of the 80s and the 90s.

I do not begrudge anyone for what they have. But I do find people who got a "hand-me down" apartment in Manhattan after growing up in a nice house in Westchester lecturing me about "the rich" and "the poor".

Except that my ability to make it in today's corporate environment depends on their political sensibilities.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#37

Post by andyana »

danaris wrote: post #31
alboaie wrote: post #2

Obviously, you can't undestant what you do not experience yourself ( at least a bit). And saddly this lack of insight could justify hunter/prey dynamics and win/loose approaches as social games. However,because most society members are inevitably loosers in such games then these games are unstable and backfire periodically ( but could take even hundres of years until a culture fails and resets the evil games)

> Obviously, you can't undestant what you do not experience yourself Sure you can. That's what imagination and empathy are for. I've never been truly poor myself (though I did grow up what I would term lower-middle-class), but I can understand it, because I've read about it, I know the basic concepts of what the differences are between my situation and that situation, and I'm good at putting myself in someone else's…

No, you can try to understand, but you have no way of knowing how it really is. As a male, I can try to understand pregnancy. There is no amount of learning that would beat the experience of a mother.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#38

Post by lotsofpulp »

danaris wrote: post #28
lotsofpulp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your liabilities and other aspects like age. 6,000 EUR per month is $7,300 USD per month is tough if you’re a new pharmacist in the US and need to repay $300k of student loans and make up for 4 to 6 years of lost income and catch up retirement savings, as an example.

Even this shows a basic lack of understanding of what "tough" means for someone who is actually poor . As soon as you put "saving for retirement" as something that's even possible , you're no longer in the realm of what's genuinely "tough". "Oh, those people making three times what I do a month have it so tough! After paying way more than the minimum on their student loans and putting aside a large chunk of money for…

And a poor person in Sudan will say poor person in US will not know what tough is.

The comment I responded to was about a politician complaining about a certain payrate. To which I wanted to show that it is possible to have to have to be stretched thin (mentally), and the politician is not thinking about having to cancel their third overseas vacation. Yes, they’re not on the very last rung of the ladder, but slipping off your rung also causes worry.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#39

Post by wpietri »

Vespasian wrote: post #30
elliekelly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this for the longest time. An embarrassingly long time. Then I volunteered with a program that helps people who qualify for EITC to prepare their taxes and budget how they’ll use their tax return to “get them out of their situation”. Person after person came in, we did their taxes, and then we went over their expenses and each case was a frustrating puzzle that was impossible to solve. There just wasn’t eno…

The ability to save money relies on the ability to "reduce your lifestyle costs" by cutting certain expenses (raising income is oftentimes not realistic. Poor People in general are not lazy) Below a certain limit there is no way to do that without loosing more money like getting rid of your car. And it's not only the obvious things. An acquaintance of mine was a single mother (ex-husband in prison) and had to decide…

> Poor People in general are not lazy

Exactly. I grew up poor and my teen employment was bust-your-ass jobs like factory and restaurant work. I was once on a contract for a large company, and throughout the day I'd watch the office employees enjoy quiet, pleasant days with plenty of chatting with coworkers. The most strenuous thing they'd do was occasionally rush from one meeting to another.

They'd all be gone by 5 and I'd stay working. Then I'd see the cleaning contractors come in and zoom through the office, working hard and never taking breaks. It always made me a little mad that most people there never even saw the hardest workers in the building, let alone appreciated them.

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