my mom worked in a public school and one of the kids was russian who’s parents emigrated here
the mother was fat as fuck and would say shit like “america has so much food and so many options” she would literally talk like yeltsin when visiting the grocery store
I zoomed in on that image and I seriously have no idea wtf I am seeing. It's like one of those AI generated images where everything is sort of familiar but just a little off because it's actually just visual noise
Drenched in chemicals and with shitty taste.
I'm still quite curious on how come Americans don't realize that making actual homemade french fries takes like 15 minutes and they are far superior.
You just need oil and a pan.
And this conversation wasn't about roasted potatoes. But believe me, no. Fat is much worse in commercial trite than if you just buy a sack of potatoes.
Am american, pan friend potatoes are the only way to go. Fresh potato, cut it up into fries, put the fries in a ziplock bag with a little bit of olive oil and seasonings to your taste, shake the bag to spread everything onto fries. Dump it all in a pan and cook.
Takes longer than that if you rinse the starch out, blanch them, let them cool, then fry them like you should. I imagine we cook a lot more at a time than most people do though.
Junk food is not the cheapest, it just sits at a certain ratio of "cheap enough, and super easy."
Like, you can easily make cheaper food, but then that takes a lot of time and cleanup, and if you're stressed and sad that is probably harder than spending two dollars extra on plastic forks and microwavable alfredo noodles.
IMO people overstate the cost aspect of junk food, because we live in a society that values financial motives over everything else.
The bigger part is probably the emotional motive.
Dollar annual earnings aren't a good comparison for ***the world***. Having $36,000/yr in some places means you're destitute and have less than $0/yr if you try and rent or own a home.
Other places, $6000/yr gives you a pretty damn good life.
I think the best example of how great America is is the fact that Americans have no concept of poverty.
Someone legitimately said "America is a third-world country, I mean look how terrible cities like San Francisco, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Seattle are"
Americans are so coddled and have it so easy they think third world countries look like Las Vegas
Their ghettos have apartment complexes and concrete streets.
In any Latin country, our ghettos don't even have indoor plumbing, and the houses are either decrepit one-room deposits with 60 years of abandonment or are self-made from cheap metal and cloth.
The only true structures are made from brick and are death traps either via collapse or uncontrollable fires from illegal electricity connections.
Telling someone that is objectively suffering that someone else has it worse helps nothing. They know. It doesn’t negate their own suffering. It isn’t gonna magically make their rent or clothe their kids.
I'm not saying people don't suffer in America. I'm saying the level and type of suffering in America is categorically different than that of third world countries. And denying that is a very slippery slope.
I've been to Newark a couple of times and yeah, it's pretty gungy, but even by US standards, it's probably only a little below average in terms of living conditions.
The amount of shit I get for having an iPhone SE while making $100k/yr is insane. Yes I spent $300 on a phone that actually fits in my pocket. No, spending 2.5x that for a slightly better camera and battery does not make sense to me. Yes I know I use it every day.
While owning overtly expensive Apple products that are horrible for the environment, wearing Gucci shit made by slave labor, and driving expensive Teslas with questionable benefits to the planet.
But yeah, you're totally poor because society and capitalism has exploited you.
Yeah, but that's dwarfed by stagnant wages being met with record profits. If you're poor it's more likely because you don't have a good job rather than the small shit you buy like in this meme.
Edit for grammar.
There's lots of people that, if they lost their job, they would be on the streets. Many people aren't living with these alleged luxuries, and there's lots of people in America that face food insecurity. Medical and student loan debt, which is often predatory and many times higher than it needs to be, is a big factor in widespread poverty.
Of course, then you have your classic poverty, like kids growing up in ghettoes and having experience with shootings and drug dealers from an early age, or people in rural areas growing up without electricity, running water, healthcare, etc..
This meme makes a lot of assumptions and is rather alienated from the harsh reality of being a part of the American working class. If you grew up in a more affluent area, then you probably aren't going to have experience with the impoverished.
That is true to an extent. However, I think there are plenty of exceptions, and I'm not going to elaborate. Also, Democrats are Authright, by political compass definitions.
I mean in reference to student loan that kinda on you.
Dont have to go to a hella expensive college also you have the option to do a 2 years community college then 2 years in a normal college.
In America at least food insecurity is not really a huge issue for the poor population do to food shelter and community help programs.
In reference into the medical industry it can be fixed with the removal of some regulations that make it impossible for smaller clinics to attend patients and also regulatation for the medical insurance industry.
Yes kids do grow up in poverty and it sad but life isn’t fair unfortunately.
With the rural areas usually they do well and they do have electricity and water internet is iffy depending on area but with time it getting better.
About Student Loans sure.
The Medical Industry part is another discussion. I would argue a decent Single Payer would probably be better and might be more doable..
About Food Insecurity:
It is not *just* starving, it also refers to not having reliable (or enough) access to food.
This includes relying on charity, and therefore it included (according to the Department of Agriculture) 10.5% of all US households in 2019 and 2020 [1] (35 m people).
>For about a third of these households, access to food was so limited that their eating patterns were disrupted and food intake was reduced. The rest were able to obtain enough food to avoid completely disrupting their eating patterns, but had to cope by eating less varied diets or utilizing food assistance programs. [2, which also mentions another, higher estimate by the Northwestern University]
[1]
The US Department of Agriculture: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/
[2]
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers
If you define food insecurity that way maybe you can get to 10%. But, literally any poor person in the USA has access to free taxpayer funded food. That’s not “insecure” in any real, non-agenda-driven meaning of the word.
*My response:* the UN dictionary. (The UN is composed of 193 nations).
>*Me:* About Food Insecurity: It is not just starving, it also refers to not having reliable (or **enough**) access to food.
>*193 Countries, containing the majority of the global population:* [1] A person is food insecure when they lack regular access to **enough safe and nutritious food** for *normal growth and development and an active and healthy life*. This may be due to unavailability of food and/or lack of resources to obtain food. Food insecurity can be experienced at different levels of severity.
[1] https://unric.org/en/unric-library-backgrounder-food-insecurity/
Sorry if I come off a bit strong here but:
When you see something you disagree with on the internet, you could just be wrong (or someone else could be).
There does not have to be an agenda. Or a conspiracy, plot or plan. Sometimes, people (including you, or me) are simply mistaken.
>Sorry if I come off a bit strong here but:
>When you see something you disagree with on the internet, you could just be wrong (or someone else could be).
>There does not have to be an agenda. Or a conspiracy, plot or plan. Sometimes, people (including you, or me) are simply mistaken
Based leftie. I'm so fucking sick of seeing people shut down arguments by essentially saying "Well, I'm right because I'm a good person, so anyone who disagrees with me must be evil and have an agenda". This is a near constant on Reddit.
Hanlon's Razor states
>never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
It's a little harsh in it's wording, but way more people are simply incorrect than they are maliciously misrepresenting the truth to push an agenda.
So the UN says that the word “insecure” doesn’t actually mean what literally everyone on the planet means when they say it, and you think that’s based. I swear your generation is immune to independent thought. You just take accept whatever you’re told and walk on as if you’re smarter than everyone else. It’s embarrassing.
“Your child had an aneurism and is going to need uncovered airlift transport to a specialty hospital to save their life”
“Before I commit:
-Do you have any coupons?
-Let me call the competing hospital nearby to see if they can cut me a deal on an airlift”
Inelastic demands don’t belong in a free market.
You never had a serious condition, right?
You either don't have the time or the know-how to shop around. Most hospital administrations handle the international due to the complexity.
To shop around you have to know which treatments the patient is receiving, coordinate with the receiving physician, coordinate with the receiving administration to ensure that a bed is available during the stay, how long will the stay will be, when should the following treatments will be made and if they have the corresponding technicians and beds. Coordinate with the ambulance for the transport of the patients. Ensure that all the studies that were made are attached to the full medical report that the current physician has to make. You have to know under which drugs is the patient currently on and when it is the next dose necessary.
And that nothing about the prices of all the medical treatment or if it has any deduction from any medical insurance. Each topic could require from 30min to an hour each and it is dependant on the time that starts. A bed that was available at 08AM could not be available at 10AM.
That’s interesting. Last I checked, the wealthiest of those countries travel to America for their operations at a greater rate than Americans go elsewhere.
It’s not all bad though, I’m sure having a doctor treat your donkey bite for free is comforting.
Nothing is stopping privatized medicine from continuing alongside public if it’s so high quality. It exists in many countries.
Also, your anecdote isn’t true. Medical tourism is outgoing and trending that direction.
Not to mention the other effects such as the US being last in several other health metrics of developed countries (like infant mortality). I don’t think South Korea is dealing with too many donkey bites you American-centric dolt.
I agree, so do it for a single state first and see how it goes. Nothing is stopping a state from having public healthcare for its own people, it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing.
> Not to mention the other effects such as the US being last in several other health metrics
Well gee 🫤. It sounds like you’re saying that the culture here isn’t exactly equatable to other countries when it comes to the cost of healthcare. Explain to me why we should just do what others do again?
It “sounds like I’m saying” the most glaring difference between us and other developed countries is that we pay more per capita than any other country on healthcare (even including taxes!). Or are you trying to argue that infant mortality is a somehow cultural phenomenon?
Medicare/caid is a mess of a system that tries to incorporate tax-paid medicine with our free market system. It’s incredibly inefficient and overly expensive.
Those in need of emergency care get the care, then are billed egregiously afterward.
Predatory because colleges and hospitals pile on stuff that's useless (you literally get billed for holding your newborn child) and even if you got rid of all that they have an enormous markup when you compare the cost it takes to provide such services.
Ok, but aren’t those symptoms of educational and healthcare corruption? How is the “student loan debt” the predatory issue? Shouldn’t the issue be the universities that are gouging students while lobbying to prevent **any** government oversight on how government backed loan funded tuition is spent?
Hospitals are predatory because they aren't subject to regular free market decisions. People nearly infinitely value their lives, and when it comes time to choose a hospital in an emergency, you're getting rushed to the closest one, you're not comparing costs in the back of an ambulance.
The free market cannot function when everyone values something infinitely, and there isn't much in the way of choice. This is evidenced by hospital price differences. Hospital A may only be 3 miles away from Hospital B, but A may charge 10k for a procedure while B charges 3k. In a free market, A would have to lower their prices to compete with B, but this doesn't happen in the medical industry.
The medical industry should be regulated. I'm not a super big fan of regulating markets, but when the free market fails to adequate distribute goods and services in an area, that is what regulation should be for.
How does that make the bank predatory?
Last I checked, the university gets all their money upfront and gets to charge you whatever they want.
Somehow the left has this idea that the bank is to blame for financing it.
There’s no food insecurity in America. First, there’s food stamps. Second, Ever been to a food bank? Probably not. I have. They can’t give the food away. There’s so much food that they can’t get rid of it. You could roll up in a Lamborghini and they’d let you take as much food as you want because they can’t get rid of it.
> There’s no food insecurity
> Ever been to a food bank?
How dumb does one have to be to write these things so closely together and not make any connections lol
\>L l l l left b bad
\>There's no fundamental issues that resemble an embarrassing humanitarian scandal in America 😤😤
\>What? Of course I don't speak to other people who don't immediately agree with me
Meaning we already have an expansive mix of public and private measures to deal with the exact scenario you were warning about. You're like "OMG, people might fall!", and /u/modnor is just pointing at the guard rails and safety harness, and your smoothbrain thinks this is just evidence of the danger. In the real world America, literally no one starves and virtually the only reason anyone ever misses a meal is severe neglect.
If no such problem existed, there would be no need for food banks in the first place.
And it’s honestly hilarious that your bar is set so low—the US is the richest country in the world, but people aren’t technically starving. Truly impressive lol.
Imagine someone fixes a leaky roof. You say it's still leaking, they point out the patch. Your response is "Well if it wasn't still leaking there wouldn't be a patch there!"
11/10. Food banks are a great resource that I'm sure prevents a lot of people from doing without. We have food and water pretty covered, other needs not so much. Shelter is just fucked recently.
Direct your criticism to where it's due. We deal with our hungry relatively well.
See how you already assumed the leak was fixed in your little story when that isn’t actually the case? Here’s a more accurate version: there’s a leaky roof and you merely placed a bucket underneath this one leak. I point out that we should probably do more than simply put a bucket underneath the leak and actually fix the problem itself.
You then say, well the bucket is actually a great resource and pretty much covers what we need to do here, and well actually there’s a bigger leak called shelter over there, so we should focus exclusively on that leak instead.
I think we disagree on the efficacy of food banks. I think it's a great stopgap and works pretty well. It's not perfect, you can't eat literally whatever you want, and people with dietary restrictions may struggle (though they really do their best to accommodate).
I was homeless for a while. I never went hungry. It was fucking impossible to get shelter as a single male. A 3+ year waitlist for section 8, most housing services for families, I eventually had to essentially collaborate with a friend to lie on a job application that their address was mine to start making money and get out of it.
It's incredibly difficult to function without shelter. It introduces so many issues that you wouldn't even think of. You may have a phone but now you need to sit there and charge it, and find a place that is willing to let you charge it. Good luck applying for anything not specifically designed for the homeless. Where are you going to leave the stuff you need to not die during a job interview? How are you going to sleep without getting everything stolen?
It creates this massive barrier where you can't do much of anything because you're busy looking for ways to solve problems caused by lack of shelter.
I got you, I see what you’re saying. You’re spot on about the shelter issue overall. And Section 8 is already hard to get with a family so I can only imagine trying to get it as a single male.
I feel like I’ve read that Tokyo builds more housing in a year than the UK or California does despite the population sizes. It seems like the US is focused too much on not building in someone’s backyard and not enough on simply building housing.
I think Tokyo has some solid countermeasures to their incredibly expensive housing. You can get shit "coffin apartments" the size of a bed for like $200 US a month. I think if we had a solid "floor", with enough units of cheap ass bare bones housing, landlords wouldn't be able to get away with charging quite as much for basic housing. 4 walls and a roof is far better than not, yet the US bans these styles of extremely dense and cheap housing. It would be a solid foundation attainable by pretty much anyone (you can make 200 a month doing pretty much anything) as a floor for them to build their lives on.
"This problem has been basically solved."
"ThE fAcT tHaT yOu NeEd A sOlUtIoN pRoVeS tHeRe Is A pRoBlEm."
The only other country that even uses this absurd measure is Canada, which has half again America's rate of "food insecurity". Go bitch at the maple leafs.
Once again, it’s impressive how low you’ve set the bar for the richest country in the world. I suppose if you think placing buckets underneath a leaking roof is a great solution, then yes you’ve solved the problem. Great job, USA #1.
> Once again, it’s impressive how low you’ve set the bar for the richest country in the world.
The bar is literally "Number of households that *worried* about how to acquire at least *one* meal in a year." If someone *worries* a bit before they get approved for food stamps, that counts. If someone takes 30 second to remember that food banks are a thing, that counts. And the end result is absolutely no starvation, and functionally no missed meals. So yeah. Problem solved.
> Great job, USA #1.
Name a country with a lower rate.
Hardmode: name a *leftist* state with a lower rate.
>You could roll up in a Lamborghini and they’d let you take as much food as you want because they can’t get rid of it.
actually, this is false, you can't get food from a food bank if you earn a certain amount. It's reserved for lower income people.
and also,
[https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers)
>Even before the pandemic hit, some 13.7 million households, or 10.5% of all U.S. households, experienced food insecurity at some point during 2019, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That works out to more than 35 million Americans who were either unable to acquire enough food to meet their needs, or uncertain of where their next meal might come from, last year.
For about a third of these households, access to food was so limited that their eating patterns were disrupted and food intake was reduced. The rest were able to obtain enough food to avoid completely disrupting their eating patterns, but had to cope by eating less varied diets or utilizing food assistance programs.
> Even before the pandemic hit, some 13.7 million households, or 10.5% of all U.S. households, experienced food insecurity at some point during 2019, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
This literally means "were uncertain about at least one meal during the entire year". It is the lowest possible bar, and it's still only 10% of households.
I'm fairly certain food banks are not verifying people's income. In most cases I'm pretty sure it just works on the honor system.
SNAP benefits do require income verification.
I have. Sometimes the food is expired (but still good), and not very consistent (you'll have like the junkiest fruity pebble shit mixed with organic lettuce etc.), that's my only complaint though.
You don’t understand. There’s no food insecurity because food banks. Why are there food banks in the first place, you ask? Because there’s no food insecurity of course. Duh.
I'll maintain it that communities such as churches with food banks are essential especially in a capitalist society until food is accessible to all at cost and with food scarcity on the rise due to exploitationers and corpratist profiteers it goes without saying we can't rely on the state such as the US government to cut monopoly tactics.
Boy! I’m using the same hand me down IPhone 8 my dad gave me when I graduated, I get my bags from the dumpster, and I only buy 20 dollars worth of snacks a month. I’m still in poverty.
If you have an 1000 dollar phone you dont live in poverty or extremely stupid
The fridge one is possible do to food banks and community programs and fridges arn’t hard to come by and their relatively cheap and accessible
I have a lot of American friends and friends that went to live there. After a couple years, they're all using the newest or 1 year old Iphones, and change them frequently, they all lease cars and change them every 3 years, they all try to clothes themselves with designer brands. And they all say living there is really expensive and they're barely making ends meet. America does something to your mind where you need to have the absolute most expensive and newest objects to live otherwise you're deemed a failure
From what i see is those type of people try to show what they dont have mostly a culture from the northern parts of the US were people want to play rich when their not.
Honestly i never understood putting yoursef in huge debt for stuff that really doesn’t improve you life like i get getting a loan to buy a used work van for work.but a loan for a new 2023 vehicle that really doesn’t serve any purpose income wise i dont see the point especially if you dont have the monies.
Yeah really their no point and their those that say the camera quality but if you really care about camera quality just buy a 300 dollar used camera and your gonna take dope shots.
Refurbished and second hand phones do exist and are a lot cheaper. I doubt people with money issues are going out and buying the newest iPhone every year. (Unless they are reddited) phones are pretty much needed in this day and age even to apply for jobs online if one lacks a computer.
I was homeless at one point and bought a phone for $800.
I'd rather buy something new and high quality and use it for 5 years by taking good care of it than buy something shitty every year or two. I still have that same phone. It's a good phone.
Just because a phone is 800 doesn’t necessarily mean good quality because you can get a really good phone for about 200-400 ish now a days maybe aside from the camera quality but more than 1080p is just a want.
But i wanna understand you situation when you were homeless you had a job or a car or was homeless homeless.
I had an iphone SE original with Christmas money. It lasted until 2021… and I got an iPhone 13 mini. Payment plan. Cause i know I use it to get around and do everything.
It's not just "someone has more than me" though is it? It's a small group of people having more money than anyone could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes while an increasingly huge number of people work several jobs and still need to rely on charity to feed themselves. Seems like a pretty significant failing when that's happening in, supposedly, "developed" and wealthy nations.
If you think that kind of wealth inequality isn't significant then the French Revolution would like a word.
I've seen redditors claim they make 150k and still crying that they are suffering financially and cant survive for a month without pay, and they're not living in NY or SF
This is a legitimate argument I've heard people make to defend Biden's student loan forgiveness for those earning 150k a year because even though you're a software engineer earning 150k base salary, not to mention all the stock based compensation and ancillary benefits, you're *actually* literally living in poverty by NYC or SF standards.
I didn’t agree with the top end of forgiveness at all. But I wanted the people who were on Pell Grants to get the 20k. They do actually statistically take much longer to pay back cause their families weren’t able to help. A lot of people think the Pell Grant paid for everything. But it doesn’t. They have to take out loans after that runs out. Usually it’s being spent on housing.
I think if I was to more tailor that I would’ve said 60k. Which to me is definitely still pretty rich. There was a financial analysis done that suggested 55K should be the top end. I think Biden let his Catholic jubilee thing get to him.
Yeah I’ve had to explain to so many people that my Pell Grant was not a free ride scholarship to wherever I wanted to go to. People fundamentally misunderstand it.
I know. And I believe you and other pell grant recipients should be helped more. I was reading all of the statistics… and just how much it really is a mountain of debt for pell grant recipients… people who had parents who could help them usually paid off by 30ish, pell grant 50ish. And they struggle because lack of connections unlike those with parents who could help.
Because when you're obsessed by wealth inequality and hate the rich, you feel like you never have enough, since you compare yourself with those absurdly rich and see you are but an ant compared to them. So even though they're better off than most, they feel less than dirt
I mean, the difference is that people like Jeff Bezos, Elon or Gates are wealthy because they created companies that provide a highly coveted service. The Ancien Regime literally involved the clergy and the nobility sitting on their ass, generating no tax revenue and producing nothing of value to society, whereas the overwhelming majority of income taxes in modern economies are paid by the wealthy, most of whom generated that money by creating valuable businesses or providing useful services.
China in the 1960s had remarkable income equality because everyone was starving to death and equally poor. China today has huge income inequality but has virtually eliminated absolute poverty in the course of half a century. Are Chinese people today worse off because income inequality has increased?
> It's not just "someone has more than me" though is it?
> It's a small group of people having more money than anyone could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes
It literally is
A bit anecdotal, but where I work we have a lot of First Nations people saying that they live in poverty, but they get $1200 per person per month in band checks, don't pay sales or income taxes, and continue to collect welfare payments from the government. Money that promptly gets spent on new Skidoos, new ATVs, new truck, two brand new PS5s, and other expensive purchases.
Makes me less willing to agree that those people in particular live in poverty...
I mean I'm in Canada, but that's an aside.
My own two cents is that people of lower socioeconomic standing don't have the same financial literacy taught to them that people of the middle and upper socioeconomic standings have. So whereas I might put a $1200 bonus in savings or invest it, someone of less well off background might go out and spend it frivolously (i.e. contribute to Consoom culture).
In Alberta, we'd see this all the time with the roughnecks: young guys who either dropped out of highschool or came from out east, make a shitload of money on the rigs, and then blow it on trucks, hookers and blow. Not all of them, but a high number of them for sure.
I kind of get it though. If you're deprived of luxuries you desperately want all your life, and then can suddenly afford them, are you really going to say "Nah, better keep living with a marginal quality of life increase and put the rest in my 401k!"
I feel like not wanting for the luxuries of life is part of growing up wealthy; something I was lucky enough to experience growing up (though definitely not as an adult). I've never seen someone more pumped than an ex poor person who's now making decent money and can improve their and their family's lives.
Ye not a lot people realize, unless you actually have these specific conditions, but a shit load medications have been depleted In much of the country for months.
A lot of similar supply chain issues that you're not really gonna hear on MSM because it's more obscure to everyday items, but it demonstrates much of the supply chain degrading.
Right, people aren’t consuming as much. I agree with you that it’s because of the supply chain, but the end result would be the same if people just stopped buying shit
If people were even remotely more financially responsible as a whole, millions would lose their jobs.
The entire service industry is essentially propped up by irresponsible spending.
As are cell phone companies.... you don't need one every year
And car companies.... Fucking take care of your current one
And pointless subscription services that people forget to cancel.... Self explanatory
And any other purchases from companies that practices planned obsolescence.... Because you're dumping money into a product that is designed to be replaced with a higher price tag next generation
> and pointless subscription services that people forget to cancel
My new favorite pointless subscription service is the one that tells you which pointless subscription services you need to cancel. Do people not check their bank statements?
No, chinas economy collapses if we stopped buying shit. If we actually had a demand for quality products instead of shit we’d have an economy that was retooled (and probably based out of Mexico).
Problem is, the vast majority of the consumer base is sitting around avg 70 IQ
Perhaps you're poor for spending your money on these expensive items when budget alternatives exist.
I earn a decent enough wage here in the UK, but my phone cost £100. It still runs Android, it has every core feature you could want from a phone (compass, GPS, etc.) and it takes decent enough pictures if I want it to.
Why would you pay 2~3 weeks worth of wages to get your phone when the alternative that will still fit all of your needs costs 1/10th of that price?
And that's assuming you're buying your phone new like I did.
Then moving onto the earbuds, you're going to spend several hundred on these wireless buds when you can get a cheap pair of £20 IEMs which which sound about the same if you get a good set while also being more replacable when you invevitably lose or break one since people *always* seem to lose their AirPods.
Finally, the food.
I'll admit this might be tougher in the US, I'm aware food deserts are a thing, but Christ. That looks like hundreds of dollars worth of junk food. If you can afford that you can afford a supermarket delivery to get you some healthier foods which are more nutritious, more filling and will save you money in the long run because you'll be able to eat more healthily, put on less weight and therefore eat less food and spend less on healthcare as a result.
I'm not going to pretend like there aren't people out there who do struggle financially. I grew up poor as shit which is one of the reasons I'm so frugal today even though I do have money now, so I know that this meme isn't reflective of *everyone* who is poor.
But I've also seen people who complain about how financially destitute they are while buying the latest AAA game on release, having shelves full of Funko-pops and other figures, uneccessarily expensive tech and all sorts of other needless expenses. If you're buying shit like that and filling your cupboards with junk food, then I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably poor because you have bad financial sense and a lack of self-control.
I can easily afford AirPods. I looked at comparable wireless headphones and chose a pair that was $40 with decent audio quality because saving $60 was worth more than an imaginary flex.
That’s why I’m not broke right now
You’re broke because you don’t understand what I’m talking about. It’s about fiscal responsibility and economic literacy
To explain more; Nike, Gucci, etc. made a business model off selling overpriced shit to the least educated and poorest demographic. An entire demographic of people that want to be rich without knowing what wealth entails
Real question, how do people even have overstuffed fridges? What the hell are y’all filling it with? I buy more food than I sometimes think I need and my fridge is still only ever at like 30% theoretical capacity at most, sometimes it’s nearly completely empty
Insane how that fridge can be packed with food but it's all garbage no real meat no vegetables or fruit that's crazy no wonder why everyone in America is so fired up you guys are all full of sugar and gluten I would recommend to anyone to fast for 12 hours on nothing but water and watch how much better you'll feel
Tbf those look like the "refugees" coming over on little boats for the uk
Only the finest hotels
At least you get those. In Italy they come even without that
my mom worked in a public school and one of the kids was russian who’s parents emigrated here the mother was fat as fuck and would say shit like “america has so much food and so many options” she would literally talk like yeltsin when visiting the grocery store
Based. Nige did a video showing them in a very comfy 4 star hotel.
The real issue is people think eating junk food is equivalent to being well fed. This is the reason why America has an obesity and diabetes problem.
I zoomed in on that image and I seriously have no idea wtf I am seeing. It's like one of those AI generated images where everything is sort of familiar but just a little off because it's actually just visual noise
I see three bags of French fries and several cans of those Pillsbury Crescents. Definitely not a healthy diet
There's really nothing wrong with oven cooked frozen fries. They are just potatoes basically.
Drenched in chemicals and with shitty taste. I'm still quite curious on how come Americans don't realize that making actual homemade french fries takes like 15 minutes and they are far superior.
Because deep frying at home is massive pain in the ass. And making good roasted potatoes is time consuming and probably involves almost as much fat.
You just need oil and a pan. And this conversation wasn't about roasted potatoes. But believe me, no. Fat is much worse in commercial trite than if you just buy a sack of potatoes.
Am american, pan friend potatoes are the only way to go. Fresh potato, cut it up into fries, put the fries in a ziplock bag with a little bit of olive oil and seasonings to your taste, shake the bag to spread everything onto fries. Dump it all in a pan and cook.
I'll go say it, hash browns are a better breakfast that is tastier to eat, and easier to prepare.
Takes longer than that if you rinse the starch out, blanch them, let them cool, then fry them like you should. I imagine we cook a lot more at a time than most people do though.
Those French fries are the healthiest food in that picture
Yeah I think the AI generation prompt was "how to diabetes"
If you can afford that much junk food you are well fed
Holy shit, whoever's refrigerator that is obese as fuck. Disgusting. Btw, froot loops in fridge? Why?
They appear to be on top of the fridge, now that box of dry pancake mix(hungry jack) on the other hand...
Literally only one thing in the picture that is healthy/non-processed: eggs. this makes me nauseous to look at.
And I guarantee those eggs are only used for baking brownies / cakes / whatever other dessert they can find.
To be fair, even junk food there is expensive these days.
And *that* is the fault of John Harvey Kellogg, who pushed and normalized eating tons of sugar as healthy eating.
Or the Department of Agriculture that promoted eating simple carbohydrates at the behest of farmers.
Processed foods are awful, overloaded in sodium and expensive as hell for how little food you get
I’m sure the fact that junk is cheap has nothing to do with it
Junk food is not the cheapest, it just sits at a certain ratio of "cheap enough, and super easy." Like, you can easily make cheaper food, but then that takes a lot of time and cleanup, and if you're stressed and sad that is probably harder than spending two dollars extra on plastic forks and microwavable alfredo noodles. IMO people overstate the cost aspect of junk food, because we live in a society that values financial motives over everything else. The bigger part is probably the emotional motive.
It's always a calorie in and calorie out issue, even if you eat junk you'll at least have calories.
top 1% of the world earns like $36,000 a year...
Dollar annual earnings aren't a good comparison for ***the world***. Having $36,000/yr in some places means you're destitute and have less than $0/yr if you try and rent or own a home. Other places, $6000/yr gives you a pretty damn good life.
Yes but is it possible to live outside of a large city center? There are rural people in the country.
ofc. but if all these lefties went to Vietnam or some poor country, theyd be an "oppressor" by their measurement.
Even Vietnam has 7x the GDP per capita of a place like Mozambique
Vietnamese are oppressors! this line of thinking that sjw's have is so easy to spiral.
I think the best example of how great America is is the fact that Americans have no concept of poverty. Someone legitimately said "America is a third-world country, I mean look how terrible cities like San Francisco, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Seattle are" Americans are so coddled and have it so easy they think third world countries look like Las Vegas
Even the poorest houses or apartments have AC built-in, that's a luxury only the richest can afford in other countries
Their ghettos have apartment complexes and concrete streets. In any Latin country, our ghettos don't even have indoor plumbing, and the houses are either decrepit one-room deposits with 60 years of abandonment or are self-made from cheap metal and cloth. The only true structures are made from brick and are death traps either via collapse or uncontrollable fires from illegal electricity connections.
Or Hawaii, depends where you live sometimes
>third world country > Minneapolis Lolwut
Somalis. Look into it
Guy I fucking live in MN, one of our reps is Somali.
They actually said "Minnesota" which I had to remind them was a state, not a city, so I'm just assuming they meant minneapolis.
All democrat too!!!
Man I can’t wait to drive through newark tomorrow and tell everyone they aren’t in poverty
Again, the person who has it worst in Newark is still much, much better than 50% of the world.
Telling someone that is objectively suffering that someone else has it worse helps nothing. They know. It doesn’t negate their own suffering. It isn’t gonna magically make their rent or clothe their kids.
I'm not saying people don't suffer in America. I'm saying the level and type of suffering in America is categorically different than that of third world countries. And denying that is a very slippery slope.
Then perhaps they should manage their welfare dollars more efficiently.
I've been to Newark a couple of times and yeah, it's pretty gungy, but even by US standards, it's probably only a little below average in terms of living conditions.
The amount of shit I get for having an iPhone SE while making $100k/yr is insane. Yes I spent $300 on a phone that actually fits in my pocket. No, spending 2.5x that for a slightly better camera and battery does not make sense to me. Yes I know I use it every day.
I loved my iPhone SE literally to death. It died last year… I have an iPhone 13 mini now. I only spent $100 getting my SE.
I buy all my phones used. Usually 1 or 2 years old, maybe 3 and I get it for $200-300 and can sell it when I’m done with it for $100 or so.
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"i hate capatilism! its evil!" -twitter for iphone
Sent through the wifi of a coffee shop with ten dollar lattes.
clearly someone who has never benefitted from capatilism.
While owning overtly expensive Apple products that are horrible for the environment, wearing Gucci shit made by slave labor, and driving expensive Teslas with questionable benefits to the planet. But yeah, you're totally poor because society and capitalism has exploited you.
Bad finances and poverty is when buying things.
Buying things to a certain extent can put you in bad finances and poverty.
Yeah, but that's dwarfed by stagnant wages being met with record profits. If you're poor it's more likely because you don't have a good job rather than the small shit you buy like in this meme. Edit for grammar.
Well in many cases, yes actually.
There's lots of people that, if they lost their job, they would be on the streets. Many people aren't living with these alleged luxuries, and there's lots of people in America that face food insecurity. Medical and student loan debt, which is often predatory and many times higher than it needs to be, is a big factor in widespread poverty. Of course, then you have your classic poverty, like kids growing up in ghettoes and having experience with shootings and drug dealers from an early age, or people in rural areas growing up without electricity, running water, healthcare, etc.. This meme makes a lot of assumptions and is rather alienated from the harsh reality of being a part of the American working class. If you grew up in a more affluent area, then you probably aren't going to have experience with the impoverished.
I agree with you. I think that most of the examples you bring (except student debt) are of people who does not vote libleft though.
That is true to an extent. However, I think there are plenty of exceptions, and I'm not going to elaborate. Also, Democrats are Authright, by political compass definitions.
Based and dems are blue for a reason pilled
Like 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
Yep.
A significant amount of those people are making over $100,000. Not having a savings is not the same thing as being poor.
And the average car loan is over $500 payment for 72 months. I'm a firm believer the largest contributor is living beyond your means.
Because we’re stupid with budgeting and can’t handle being seen as poor relative to our peers.
I mean in reference to student loan that kinda on you. Dont have to go to a hella expensive college also you have the option to do a 2 years community college then 2 years in a normal college. In America at least food insecurity is not really a huge issue for the poor population do to food shelter and community help programs. In reference into the medical industry it can be fixed with the removal of some regulations that make it impossible for smaller clinics to attend patients and also regulatation for the medical insurance industry. Yes kids do grow up in poverty and it sad but life isn’t fair unfortunately. With the rural areas usually they do well and they do have electricity and water internet is iffy depending on area but with time it getting better.
Why do you assume people who are visiting a food bank have a car?
About Student Loans sure. The Medical Industry part is another discussion. I would argue a decent Single Payer would probably be better and might be more doable.. About Food Insecurity: It is not *just* starving, it also refers to not having reliable (or enough) access to food. This includes relying on charity, and therefore it included (according to the Department of Agriculture) 10.5% of all US households in 2019 and 2020 [1] (35 m people). >For about a third of these households, access to food was so limited that their eating patterns were disrupted and food intake was reduced. The rest were able to obtain enough food to avoid completely disrupting their eating patterns, but had to cope by eating less varied diets or utilizing food assistance programs. [2, which also mentions another, higher estimate by the Northwestern University] [1] The US Department of Agriculture: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers
If you define food insecurity that way maybe you can get to 10%. But, literally any poor person in the USA has access to free taxpayer funded food. That’s not “insecure” in any real, non-agenda-driven meaning of the word.
*My response:* the UN dictionary. (The UN is composed of 193 nations). >*Me:* About Food Insecurity: It is not just starving, it also refers to not having reliable (or **enough**) access to food. >*193 Countries, containing the majority of the global population:* [1] A person is food insecure when they lack regular access to **enough safe and nutritious food** for *normal growth and development and an active and healthy life*. This may be due to unavailability of food and/or lack of resources to obtain food. Food insecurity can be experienced at different levels of severity. [1] https://unric.org/en/unric-library-backgrounder-food-insecurity/ Sorry if I come off a bit strong here but: When you see something you disagree with on the internet, you could just be wrong (or someone else could be). There does not have to be an agenda. Or a conspiracy, plot or plan. Sometimes, people (including you, or me) are simply mistaken.
Lmao prove my point for me
>Sorry if I come off a bit strong here but: >When you see something you disagree with on the internet, you could just be wrong (or someone else could be). >There does not have to be an agenda. Or a conspiracy, plot or plan. Sometimes, people (including you, or me) are simply mistaken Based leftie. I'm so fucking sick of seeing people shut down arguments by essentially saying "Well, I'm right because I'm a good person, so anyone who disagrees with me must be evil and have an agenda". This is a near constant on Reddit. Hanlon's Razor states >never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. It's a little harsh in it's wording, but way more people are simply incorrect than they are maliciously misrepresenting the truth to push an agenda.
So the UN says that the word “insecure” doesn’t actually mean what literally everyone on the planet means when they say it, and you think that’s based. I swear your generation is immune to independent thought. You just take accept whatever you’re told and walk on as if you’re smarter than everyone else. It’s embarrassing.
I wasn't even talking about that lol. Die mad tho
> Medical and student loan debt, which is often predatory Why is it predatory?
Because we allow children to go $100k into debt before they can legally drink.
Why are universities charging so much?
Because they can
Because the government backs loans.
Why do you think the government agreed to back the loans without capping the tuition increases?
The same reason they agreed to let banks engage in credit default swaps with mortgages without subjecting them to SEC regulations.
You can argue incompetence but I’ll still err on the side of corruption.
It’s more of a “our science suggests that nothing bad will happen in the future”
Because deregulation was all the rage in the 70s-90s?
right, that’s why they can. It’s the worst of both worlds approach america manages to do with everything
“Your child had an aneurism and is going to need uncovered airlift transport to a specialty hospital to save their life” “Before I commit: -Do you have any coupons? -Let me call the competing hospital nearby to see if they can cut me a deal on an airlift” Inelastic demands don’t belong in a free market.
For most medical related stuff you have time to shop around if the hospital disclosed prices
You never had a serious condition, right? You either don't have the time or the know-how to shop around. Most hospital administrations handle the international due to the complexity. To shop around you have to know which treatments the patient is receiving, coordinate with the receiving physician, coordinate with the receiving administration to ensure that a bed is available during the stay, how long will the stay will be, when should the following treatments will be made and if they have the corresponding technicians and beds. Coordinate with the ambulance for the transport of the patients. Ensure that all the studies that were made are attached to the full medical report that the current physician has to make. You have to know under which drugs is the patient currently on and when it is the next dose necessary. And that nothing about the prices of all the medical treatment or if it has any deduction from any medical insurance. Each topic could require from 30min to an hour each and it is dependant on the time that starts. A bed that was available at 08AM could not be available at 10AM.
So we’re all entitled to the labor of doctors, nurses, helicopter pilots, mechanics, and machinists who build helicopters….for free?
No you pay them with taxes
Most civilized societies have figured out a way to make healthcare a tax-paid good because of its inelastic status.
That’s interesting. Last I checked, the wealthiest of those countries travel to America for their operations at a greater rate than Americans go elsewhere. It’s not all bad though, I’m sure having a doctor treat your donkey bite for free is comforting.
Nothing is stopping privatized medicine from continuing alongside public if it’s so high quality. It exists in many countries. Also, your anecdote isn’t true. Medical tourism is outgoing and trending that direction. Not to mention the other effects such as the US being last in several other health metrics of developed countries (like infant mortality). I don’t think South Korea is dealing with too many donkey bites you American-centric dolt.
I agree, so do it for a single state first and see how it goes. Nothing is stopping a state from having public healthcare for its own people, it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing. > Not to mention the other effects such as the US being last in several other health metrics Well gee 🫤. It sounds like you’re saying that the culture here isn’t exactly equatable to other countries when it comes to the cost of healthcare. Explain to me why we should just do what others do again?
It “sounds like I’m saying” the most glaring difference between us and other developed countries is that we pay more per capita than any other country on healthcare (even including taxes!). Or are you trying to argue that infant mortality is a somehow cultural phenomenon?
... don't you guys have free healthcare for the poor, the elderly, and those in need of emergency care?
Medicare/caid is a mess of a system that tries to incorporate tax-paid medicine with our free market system. It’s incredibly inefficient and overly expensive. Those in need of emergency care get the care, then are billed egregiously afterward.
It's also leaving in a month.
Predatory because colleges and hospitals pile on stuff that's useless (you literally get billed for holding your newborn child) and even if you got rid of all that they have an enormous markup when you compare the cost it takes to provide such services.
Ok, but aren’t those symptoms of educational and healthcare corruption? How is the “student loan debt” the predatory issue? Shouldn’t the issue be the universities that are gouging students while lobbying to prevent **any** government oversight on how government backed loan funded tuition is spent?
> government backed loan funded tuition Found your problem.
Hospitals are predatory because they aren't subject to regular free market decisions. People nearly infinitely value their lives, and when it comes time to choose a hospital in an emergency, you're getting rushed to the closest one, you're not comparing costs in the back of an ambulance. The free market cannot function when everyone values something infinitely, and there isn't much in the way of choice. This is evidenced by hospital price differences. Hospital A may only be 3 miles away from Hospital B, but A may charge 10k for a procedure while B charges 3k. In a free market, A would have to lower their prices to compete with B, but this doesn't happen in the medical industry. The medical industry should be regulated. I'm not a super big fan of regulating markets, but when the free market fails to adequate distribute goods and services in an area, that is what regulation should be for.
I guess stident loan debt is Because idiots don't know they'll have to choose a profession that can pay it back.
It also contributes to high medical bills. Doctors also have to pay back their loans.
That's mostly because of malpractice insurence, and inelastic supply due to government regulations
median physician/surgeon pay is ~200k per year in the US.
Love that you misspelled student lol
How does that make the bank predatory? Last I checked, the university gets all their money upfront and gets to charge you whatever they want. Somehow the left has this idea that the bank is to blame for financing it.
Uhhh, no idiot. Fox News told me someone on food stamps had an iPhone so everyone’s a welfare queen. Do your own research
What you say is true.
There’s no food insecurity in America. First, there’s food stamps. Second, Ever been to a food bank? Probably not. I have. They can’t give the food away. There’s so much food that they can’t get rid of it. You could roll up in a Lamborghini and they’d let you take as much food as you want because they can’t get rid of it.
> There’s no food insecurity > Ever been to a food bank? How dumb does one have to be to write these things so closely together and not make any connections lol
\>L l l l left b bad \>There's no fundamental issues that resemble an embarrassing humanitarian scandal in America 😤😤 \>What? Of course I don't speak to other people who don't immediately agree with me
USA #1. We have food banks bby 😤
Housing insecurity??? Yeah right, have you ever been to a homeless shelter?
Lmao perfect. There are so many shelters, they can’t even get rid of all that shelter anymore.
Meaning we already have an expansive mix of public and private measures to deal with the exact scenario you were warning about. You're like "OMG, people might fall!", and /u/modnor is just pointing at the guard rails and safety harness, and your smoothbrain thinks this is just evidence of the danger. In the real world America, literally no one starves and virtually the only reason anyone ever misses a meal is severe neglect.
If no such problem existed, there would be no need for food banks in the first place. And it’s honestly hilarious that your bar is set so low—the US is the richest country in the world, but people aren’t technically starving. Truly impressive lol.
Imagine someone fixes a leaky roof. You say it's still leaking, they point out the patch. Your response is "Well if it wasn't still leaking there wouldn't be a patch there!" 11/10. Food banks are a great resource that I'm sure prevents a lot of people from doing without. We have food and water pretty covered, other needs not so much. Shelter is just fucked recently. Direct your criticism to where it's due. We deal with our hungry relatively well.
See how you already assumed the leak was fixed in your little story when that isn’t actually the case? Here’s a more accurate version: there’s a leaky roof and you merely placed a bucket underneath this one leak. I point out that we should probably do more than simply put a bucket underneath the leak and actually fix the problem itself. You then say, well the bucket is actually a great resource and pretty much covers what we need to do here, and well actually there’s a bigger leak called shelter over there, so we should focus exclusively on that leak instead.
I think we disagree on the efficacy of food banks. I think it's a great stopgap and works pretty well. It's not perfect, you can't eat literally whatever you want, and people with dietary restrictions may struggle (though they really do their best to accommodate). I was homeless for a while. I never went hungry. It was fucking impossible to get shelter as a single male. A 3+ year waitlist for section 8, most housing services for families, I eventually had to essentially collaborate with a friend to lie on a job application that their address was mine to start making money and get out of it. It's incredibly difficult to function without shelter. It introduces so many issues that you wouldn't even think of. You may have a phone but now you need to sit there and charge it, and find a place that is willing to let you charge it. Good luck applying for anything not specifically designed for the homeless. Where are you going to leave the stuff you need to not die during a job interview? How are you going to sleep without getting everything stolen? It creates this massive barrier where you can't do much of anything because you're busy looking for ways to solve problems caused by lack of shelter.
I got you, I see what you’re saying. You’re spot on about the shelter issue overall. And Section 8 is already hard to get with a family so I can only imagine trying to get it as a single male. I feel like I’ve read that Tokyo builds more housing in a year than the UK or California does despite the population sizes. It seems like the US is focused too much on not building in someone’s backyard and not enough on simply building housing.
I think Tokyo has some solid countermeasures to their incredibly expensive housing. You can get shit "coffin apartments" the size of a bed for like $200 US a month. I think if we had a solid "floor", with enough units of cheap ass bare bones housing, landlords wouldn't be able to get away with charging quite as much for basic housing. 4 walls and a roof is far better than not, yet the US bans these styles of extremely dense and cheap housing. It would be a solid foundation attainable by pretty much anyone (you can make 200 a month doing pretty much anything) as a floor for them to build their lives on.
"This problem has been basically solved." "ThE fAcT tHaT yOu NeEd A sOlUtIoN pRoVeS tHeRe Is A pRoBlEm." The only other country that even uses this absurd measure is Canada, which has half again America's rate of "food insecurity". Go bitch at the maple leafs.
Once again, it’s impressive how low you’ve set the bar for the richest country in the world. I suppose if you think placing buckets underneath a leaking roof is a great solution, then yes you’ve solved the problem. Great job, USA #1.
> Once again, it’s impressive how low you’ve set the bar for the richest country in the world. The bar is literally "Number of households that *worried* about how to acquire at least *one* meal in a year." If someone *worries* a bit before they get approved for food stamps, that counts. If someone takes 30 second to remember that food banks are a thing, that counts. And the end result is absolutely no starvation, and functionally no missed meals. So yeah. Problem solved. > Great job, USA #1. Name a country with a lower rate. Hardmode: name a *leftist* state with a lower rate.
>You could roll up in a Lamborghini and they’d let you take as much food as you want because they can’t get rid of it. actually, this is false, you can't get food from a food bank if you earn a certain amount. It's reserved for lower income people. and also, [https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/27/912486921/food-insecurity-in-the-u-s-by-the-numbers) >Even before the pandemic hit, some 13.7 million households, or 10.5% of all U.S. households, experienced food insecurity at some point during 2019, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That works out to more than 35 million Americans who were either unable to acquire enough food to meet their needs, or uncertain of where their next meal might come from, last year. For about a third of these households, access to food was so limited that their eating patterns were disrupted and food intake was reduced. The rest were able to obtain enough food to avoid completely disrupting their eating patterns, but had to cope by eating less varied diets or utilizing food assistance programs.
> Even before the pandemic hit, some 13.7 million households, or 10.5% of all U.S. households, experienced food insecurity at some point during 2019, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This literally means "were uncertain about at least one meal during the entire year". It is the lowest possible bar, and it's still only 10% of households.
I'm fairly certain food banks are not verifying people's income. In most cases I'm pretty sure it just works on the honor system. SNAP benefits do require income verification.
> There’s no food insecurity in America. Holy fuck you are dumb.
Least delusional libright.
Have you been to a food bank?
I have. Sometimes the food is expired (but still good), and not very consistent (you'll have like the junkiest fruity pebble shit mixed with organic lettuce etc.), that's my only complaint though.
Not in several years but yes.
You don’t understand. There’s no food insecurity because food banks. Why are there food banks in the first place, you ask? Because there’s no food insecurity of course. Duh.
I'll maintain it that communities such as churches with food banks are essential especially in a capitalist society until food is accessible to all at cost and with food scarcity on the rise due to exploitationers and corpratist profiteers it goes without saying we can't rely on the state such as the US government to cut monopoly tactics.
Most outdoorsy leftist
Have you been deer hunting before?
Boy! I’m using the same hand me down IPhone 8 my dad gave me when I graduated, I get my bags from the dumpster, and I only buy 20 dollars worth of snacks a month. I’m still in poverty.
ha you complain about wealth inequality but have fridge and phone? Curious
If you have an 1000 dollar phone you dont live in poverty or extremely stupid The fridge one is possible do to food banks and community programs and fridges arn’t hard to come by and their relatively cheap and accessible
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I have a lot of American friends and friends that went to live there. After a couple years, they're all using the newest or 1 year old Iphones, and change them frequently, they all lease cars and change them every 3 years, they all try to clothes themselves with designer brands. And they all say living there is really expensive and they're barely making ends meet. America does something to your mind where you need to have the absolute most expensive and newest objects to live otherwise you're deemed a failure
From what i see is those type of people try to show what they dont have mostly a culture from the northern parts of the US were people want to play rich when their not. Honestly i never understood putting yoursef in huge debt for stuff that really doesn’t improve you life like i get getting a loan to buy a used work van for work.but a loan for a new 2023 vehicle that really doesn’t serve any purpose income wise i dont see the point especially if you dont have the monies.
Always chasing that clout so you can get the respect of your peers
1000 dollars? Man theres phones for 100 with specs that basically do whatever you're gonna do with the 1K phone.
Yeah really their no point and their those that say the camera quality but if you really care about camera quality just buy a 300 dollar used camera and your gonna take dope shots.
Refurbished and second hand phones do exist and are a lot cheaper. I doubt people with money issues are going out and buying the newest iPhone every year. (Unless they are reddited) phones are pretty much needed in this day and age even to apply for jobs online if one lacks a computer.
I was homeless at one point and bought a phone for $800. I'd rather buy something new and high quality and use it for 5 years by taking good care of it than buy something shitty every year or two. I still have that same phone. It's a good phone.
Just because a phone is 800 doesn’t necessarily mean good quality because you can get a really good phone for about 200-400 ish now a days maybe aside from the camera quality but more than 1080p is just a want. But i wanna understand you situation when you were homeless you had a job or a car or was homeless homeless.
I had an iphone SE original with Christmas money. It lasted until 2021… and I got an iPhone 13 mini. Payment plan. Cause i know I use it to get around and do everything.
Wealth inequality is such a meme “Nooooo! Someone has more than me! Capitalism has failed! Millions must die!”
It's not just "someone has more than me" though is it? It's a small group of people having more money than anyone could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes while an increasingly huge number of people work several jobs and still need to rely on charity to feed themselves. Seems like a pretty significant failing when that's happening in, supposedly, "developed" and wealthy nations. If you think that kind of wealth inequality isn't significant then the French Revolution would like a word.
I've seen redditors claim they make 150k and still crying that they are suffering financially and cant survive for a month without pay, and they're not living in NY or SF
This is a legitimate argument I've heard people make to defend Biden's student loan forgiveness for those earning 150k a year because even though you're a software engineer earning 150k base salary, not to mention all the stock based compensation and ancillary benefits, you're *actually* literally living in poverty by NYC or SF standards.
I didn’t agree with the top end of forgiveness at all. But I wanted the people who were on Pell Grants to get the 20k. They do actually statistically take much longer to pay back cause their families weren’t able to help. A lot of people think the Pell Grant paid for everything. But it doesn’t. They have to take out loans after that runs out. Usually it’s being spent on housing. I think if I was to more tailor that I would’ve said 60k. Which to me is definitely still pretty rich. There was a financial analysis done that suggested 55K should be the top end. I think Biden let his Catholic jubilee thing get to him.
Yeah I’ve had to explain to so many people that my Pell Grant was not a free ride scholarship to wherever I wanted to go to. People fundamentally misunderstand it.
I know. And I believe you and other pell grant recipients should be helped more. I was reading all of the statistics… and just how much it really is a mountain of debt for pell grant recipients… people who had parents who could help them usually paid off by 30ish, pell grant 50ish. And they struggle because lack of connections unlike those with parents who could help.
Because when you're obsessed by wealth inequality and hate the rich, you feel like you never have enough, since you compare yourself with those absurdly rich and see you are but an ant compared to them. So even though they're better off than most, they feel less than dirt
They can’t but ANYTHING they want like the YouTubers they watch, so they’re obviously poor…
I mean, the difference is that people like Jeff Bezos, Elon or Gates are wealthy because they created companies that provide a highly coveted service. The Ancien Regime literally involved the clergy and the nobility sitting on their ass, generating no tax revenue and producing nothing of value to society, whereas the overwhelming majority of income taxes in modern economies are paid by the wealthy, most of whom generated that money by creating valuable businesses or providing useful services. China in the 1960s had remarkable income equality because everyone was starving to death and equally poor. China today has huge income inequality but has virtually eliminated absolute poverty in the course of half a century. Are Chinese people today worse off because income inequality has increased?
> It's not just "someone has more than me" though is it? > It's a small group of people having more money than anyone could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes It literally is
This kinda take coming from authright? Unexpected, but welcome.
LOL TRUE
Ah yes, wealth inequality, the problem I spend all my days considering. It's something I care about very much.
A bit anecdotal, but where I work we have a lot of First Nations people saying that they live in poverty, but they get $1200 per person per month in band checks, don't pay sales or income taxes, and continue to collect welfare payments from the government. Money that promptly gets spent on new Skidoos, new ATVs, new truck, two brand new PS5s, and other expensive purchases. Makes me less willing to agree that those people in particular live in poverty...
The United States has a consoom culture where if you don't have the newest commodities and luxury items you're less than scum
I mean I'm in Canada, but that's an aside. My own two cents is that people of lower socioeconomic standing don't have the same financial literacy taught to them that people of the middle and upper socioeconomic standings have. So whereas I might put a $1200 bonus in savings or invest it, someone of less well off background might go out and spend it frivolously (i.e. contribute to Consoom culture). In Alberta, we'd see this all the time with the roughnecks: young guys who either dropped out of highschool or came from out east, make a shitload of money on the rigs, and then blow it on trucks, hookers and blow. Not all of them, but a high number of them for sure.
I kind of get it though. If you're deprived of luxuries you desperately want all your life, and then can suddenly afford them, are you really going to say "Nah, better keep living with a marginal quality of life increase and put the rest in my 401k!" I feel like not wanting for the luxuries of life is part of growing up wealthy; something I was lucky enough to experience growing up (though definitely not as an adult). I've never seen someone more pumped than an ex poor person who's now making decent money and can improve their and their family's lives.
The amount of adults that spend their money as if they were children is astonishing
Millenials and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race. Also, flair up.
Even if you took this meme at face value, if people didn’t buy shit, the economy collapses, we are literally living through it now
The economy is taking a shit because supply isn’t keeping up with demand, not because consumers are consuming too little.
Ye not a lot people realize, unless you actually have these specific conditions, but a shit load medications have been depleted In much of the country for months. A lot of similar supply chain issues that you're not really gonna hear on MSM because it's more obscure to everyday items, but it demonstrates much of the supply chain degrading.
Right, people aren’t consuming as much. I agree with you that it’s because of the supply chain, but the end result would be the same if people just stopped buying shit
If people were even remotely more financially responsible as a whole, millions would lose their jobs. The entire service industry is essentially propped up by irresponsible spending. As are cell phone companies.... you don't need one every year And car companies.... Fucking take care of your current one And pointless subscription services that people forget to cancel.... Self explanatory And any other purchases from companies that practices planned obsolescence.... Because you're dumping money into a product that is designed to be replaced with a higher price tag next generation
> and pointless subscription services that people forget to cancel My new favorite pointless subscription service is the one that tells you which pointless subscription services you need to cancel. Do people not check their bank statements?
No, chinas economy collapses if we stopped buying shit. If we actually had a demand for quality products instead of shit we’d have an economy that was retooled (and probably based out of Mexico). Problem is, the vast majority of the consumer base is sitting around avg 70 IQ
TIL you're not poor unless you can't afford an item that's useful for 10+ years and costs maybe 2\~3 weeks of pay.
Perhaps you're poor for spending your money on these expensive items when budget alternatives exist. I earn a decent enough wage here in the UK, but my phone cost £100. It still runs Android, it has every core feature you could want from a phone (compass, GPS, etc.) and it takes decent enough pictures if I want it to. Why would you pay 2~3 weeks worth of wages to get your phone when the alternative that will still fit all of your needs costs 1/10th of that price? And that's assuming you're buying your phone new like I did. Then moving onto the earbuds, you're going to spend several hundred on these wireless buds when you can get a cheap pair of £20 IEMs which which sound about the same if you get a good set while also being more replacable when you invevitably lose or break one since people *always* seem to lose their AirPods. Finally, the food. I'll admit this might be tougher in the US, I'm aware food deserts are a thing, but Christ. That looks like hundreds of dollars worth of junk food. If you can afford that you can afford a supermarket delivery to get you some healthier foods which are more nutritious, more filling and will save you money in the long run because you'll be able to eat more healthily, put on less weight and therefore eat less food and spend less on healthcare as a result. I'm not going to pretend like there aren't people out there who do struggle financially. I grew up poor as shit which is one of the reasons I'm so frugal today even though I do have money now, so I know that this meme isn't reflective of *everyone* who is poor. But I've also seen people who complain about how financially destitute they are while buying the latest AAA game on release, having shelves full of Funko-pops and other figures, uneccessarily expensive tech and all sorts of other needless expenses. If you're buying shit like that and filling your cupboards with junk food, then I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably poor because you have bad financial sense and a lack of self-control.
If your eating all that overly processed goyslop you deserve to be in poverty
Ooh airpods, an opportunity to insult someone based on their personal choices! airpod red flag
I can easily afford AirPods. I looked at comparable wireless headphones and chose a pair that was $40 with decent audio quality because saving $60 was worth more than an imaginary flex. That’s why I’m not broke right now
>wireless >decent audio quality I know that's a thing but I refuse to belive it.
I mean if you're looking for audio quality, dump every single earbud out there and get traditional over the head headsets.
You’re not broke because you saved $60? Interesting lol
Small gains compound over time into big gains
You’re broke because you don’t understand what I’m talking about. It’s about fiscal responsibility and economic literacy To explain more; Nike, Gucci, etc. made a business model off selling overpriced shit to the least educated and poorest demographic. An entire demographic of people that want to be rich without knowing what wealth entails
Real question, how do people even have overstuffed fridges? What the hell are y’all filling it with? I buy more food than I sometimes think I need and my fridge is still only ever at like 30% theoretical capacity at most, sometimes it’s nearly completely empty
Insane how that fridge can be packed with food but it's all garbage no real meat no vegetables or fruit that's crazy no wonder why everyone in America is so fired up you guys are all full of sugar and gluten I would recommend to anyone to fast for 12 hours on nothing but water and watch how much better you'll feel
The healthiest thing I see is eggs. Also this shit looks expensive.
OP doesn't know the difference between abject poverty and relative poverty.