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This is a teenager

pudding.cool

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Re: This is a teenager

#531

Post by adventured »

petesergeant wrote: post #522
ciupicri wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.

Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund, housing assistance, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children

The US in fact has a gigantic welfare state support system. The US spends more of its GDP on social welfare than either Canada or Australia, and we spend it poorly unfortunately (our return on investment is not great, we spend too much for too weak of results, as with healthcare).

To add to your list: housing, healthcare, food programs exist at the local + state + federal levels. The US state government system is huge unto itself, like having an entire other federal government nearly.

There are thousands of government support programs between the state + federal levels of government.

People outside of the US are almost entirely ignorant of how large the government systems in the US are. They're not as big as in France or Denmark obviously, they are still sizable compared to the median peer nation (on a GDP % basis).

Re: This is a teenager

#532

Post by gfiorav »

ciupicri wrote: post #520
l0c0b0x wrote: post #519

I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful co…

Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.

It doesn't shock me that there's anti-US propaganda. It shocks me that people on this site routinely fall for it.

Re: This is a teenager

#533

Post by macintux »

petesergeant wrote: post #522
ciupicri wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.

Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund, housing assistance, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children

Those safety nets have huge gaps. The government doesn't want to be accused of harboring freeloaders (or, perhaps more accurately, a significant chunk of the population would rather people be homeless than a few "welfare queens" be permitted to cheat the system), so many who are genuinely in need can't get it.

Re: This is a teenager

#534

Post by Aeolun »

l0c0b0x wrote: post #519

I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful co…

I guess what we learn from this is that not everyone is as enterprising as you? While on some level I’d say that, of course you can do it if you want to. There’s many people for whom that is just too much of a leap, and it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.

Re: This is a teenager

#535

Post by petesergeant »

macintux wrote: post #533
petesergeant wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund, housing assistance, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children

Those safety nets have huge gaps. The government doesn't want to be accused of harboring freeloaders (or, perhaps more accurately, a significant chunk of the population would rather people be homeless than a few "welfare queens" be permitted to cheat the system), so many who are genuinely in need can't get it.

That’s true of most rich countries. The big difference between the US and most rich countries is universal healthcare.

Re: This is a teenager

#536

Post by bglazer »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #402
imacomputertoo wrote: post #209

The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. I wish they had shown percentages with the visualization. They choose not to. I was underwhelmed by some points that seemed like they should have been more shocking. Look at the huge number of people in the many adverse experiences category who made it to college, and make a high salary.…

The person in the story might has well have been me - I repeated 7th grade - Was suspended Multiple times - Lived in 11 different houses - Lived with a teacher for two months - Good friend murdered - Mom of good friend murdered by their Father - Gnarly parents divorce with police etc regularly I joined the AF because I read a book about John Boyd and figured I could pursue technology that I saw in the movies so I got…

I mean you did join a government organization that provided a (more or less) guaranteed job and training.

Also, this is a genuine question, how much of the chaos in your life was due to financial hardship? Do you think just having more money would have lessened the chaos?

Re: This is a teenager

#537

Post by rajamaka »

petesergeant wrote: post #522
ciupicri wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.

Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund, housing assistance, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children

Also all the non governmental safety nets. Food banks, charities, mutual aid networks, shelters and religious orgs.

Re: This is a teenager

#538

Post by petesergeant »

Aeolun wrote: post #534
l0c0b0x wrote: post #519

I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful co…

I guess what we learn from this is that not everyone is as enterprising as you? While on some level I’d say that, of course you can do it if you want to. There’s many people for whom that is just too much of a leap, and it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.

> it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it

While I’d agree, you’ve read the OP’s comment in a significantly darker light than I did, or than I can get the text to support

Re: This is a teenager

#539

Post by Aeolun »

gfiorav wrote: post #532
ciupicri wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.

It doesn't shock me that there's anti-US propaganda. It shocks me that people on this site routinely fall for it.

I think it’s more that we routinely see very poor and mentally ill people in the US get zero support?

It’s not a great stretch to go from there to assume they don’t have any social security at all.

If it’s available but many people cannot or do not know to make use of it, is it really social security? If they do make use of it and it’s still not enough, does that change things?

Re: This is a teenager

#540

Post by jandrese »

sabarn01 wrote: post #456
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, likely intentionally, understated. I cannot speak for the author, but the gist I got is that our society thrusts wholly unprepared people into adulthood and we could get a lot of improvements from just making it harder for people to fail at adulting. IYKYK and if you don’t you will get fucked - repeatedly. Basic life skills are not taught so it’s up to the individual if their family fails. Importantly,…

The outcome of this has been to make it harder to fail as a kid. We don't hold kids back anymore and we don't suspend kids anymore. At some point in time the rubber meets the road and you will be held accountable and have to be. We could improve the social safety net but we never want to match other countries that have more supervision of their at risk population. When I worked temp jobs there wasn't a place I worked…

I went to primary school in the 80s and 90s and even back then it was pretty hard to be held back a grade level. Typically it only happened when a kid missed a lot of school, like they were hit by a car and spent 2 months in the hospital. Failing grades alone didn't usually cause it, at least the kids who seemed completely uninterested in school still somehow managed to graduate.
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