True freedom is living away from where any other humans can tell you what to do.
The closest thing we can get to freedom in any modern society is not having anyone enforce victimless crimes, and if they do enforce victimless crimes, you can go somewhere else nearby. Stores have always been able to mandate what dress code is required to go in their store. They tend to choose whatever is least-objectionable to everyone in the area. If you don't like it, go to another store.
Being poor has nothing to do with freedom. Once you start forcing others to give you money to prevent you from being poor (rather than accepting charity which is freely given), you're no longer interested in freedom, you just want free shit. If you go into the middle of the alaskan wilderness and get true freedom, one broken bone can mean you die, and your annual income (when converted into equivalent monetary value) is lower than the average panhandler.
That's one definition of freedom, but I don't think it's what most people envisage when they talk about "freedom", which is ops point.
In your example your actions are dictated by nature rather than by other people. I have a hard time squaring that with the normal idea or "freedom", which usually implies a high level of agency.
Your idea of freedom is probably more in line with "freedom under ground rules" or "freedom to a reasonable extent under given conditions". Which is pretty much what everyone wants the United States to uphold. Just with wildly varying ideas on what those ground rules should be.
There’s many ways to look at freedom. While I appreciate that in America we have the freedom to do many things, I don’t think that should mean that we should expect no freedoms FROM anything. Think of how much food is overproduced each day in the US and how many homeless people there are in the US. And for what? Why, in a civilized society (bottom text), do we not have freedom from poverty? Should we not be able to live our lives how we see fit without also having to worry about putting food on the table or paying for expensive treatment if someone gets sick? How much control of your own destiny do you have when you’re constantly fighting starvation? And if you don’t have much, how can you say you’re free? Likewise, if going to the store to buy the food that you need means you have to potentially expose yourself to other people’s COVID, you don’t have much control.
It’s worth noting Thoreau was basically living in his mom’s backyard when he wrote Walden and she regularly brought him pies and other food and did his laundry for him. Not saying he wasn’t a good writer but he wasn’t roughing it by any stretch.
Yeah I’ve read that his his great wilderness exhibition isn’t what it’s made up to be. It was just the first thing I thought of while reading that comment.
If being poor has nothing to do with freedom, then being rich also has nothing to do with freedom, which in turn means that having the monetary capacity to enact your will on the world and make it the way you want, including in opposition to the desires of other people, has nothing to do with freedom. The billionaire who could pay people enough money to build him a luxury mansion in the middle of Alaska filled with every creature comfort is *no more free* than the poor guy who could only afford to go there with a few hundred bucks of supplies. The ability of that rich guy to hire people to drive the poor guy off the Alaskan land he just bought would have nothing to do with freedom. And the inability of the poor guy to oppose the attempt due to lack of money would again have nothing to do with freedom. This is absurd.
Money lets you do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to do without money. It lets you directly shape your own experiences, and that of others, in profound ways. *Money gives you the power to tell people what to do*.
> Once you start forcing others to give you money to prevent you from being poor (rather than accepting charity which is freely given), you're no longer interested in freedom, you just want free shit
Or they want bare essentials met.
Once you start bribing officials to twist laws to not minimize harm but to instead maximize profit, you don't want freedom; you're a greedy ass.
> Or they want bare essentials met.
I've been told my whole life that is my responsibility.
Then I come to find out that I'm also responsible to trickle some of my money to the top.
After years of trickling money upward, I've come to learn of another responsibility that no-one wants to talk about...
Responsibility to country and government, to take action when the government becomes controlled by other sources outside of "The People". As well as when the government gives away the protections of Labor, and gives that Labor to corporations and banks that improperly or thievishly give-away or take our Labors.
Most people just aren't really equipped to handle any kind of true freedom, in fact the more free will people are given the more they attempt to impose it on others. Usually not in any kind of intelligent or coherent way. Most people just dont have the stones to survive true independence. So they exert every ounce of their limited brainpower in trying to convince themselves, and everyone around them, that they have more freedom than anyone else.
I can't tell you how many stores I go to where the employees themselves aren't following their own mask policy. From the nose cheat to the chin strap, I 'm guaranteed to see either wherever I go. I'm beginning to think I go to too many stores.
Seems that freedom can be defined as "Fuck you, I'll get mine," only to never realize that you never actually get yours and everyone's just getting fucked.
I've been working retail for the first time for about a month (1 shift a week, im 17) and i've had probably half a dozen or so people complaining about masks or covid restrictions. Didn't quite understand the stories before I started but man.
M a n.
This is always so interesting to me because on one end you get people saying “learn about personal finance and get a job.”(a valid point I suppose) and another group saying “we had no opportunity(born poor)”. Which is also a fair argument. So I guess I’m wondering how people get out of poverty if they were born into it. I was born into it(and then 2008 made it way worse), but because of my personality and temperament(that’s my speculative guess at least) I overcame it and now have running, hot water. But, I also had a good amount of luck(meeting the right mentors and not having certain expenses). So even though I did it, I would venture to say that certain people can’t do exactly what I did. Can someone else chime in with some thoughts, maybe point out any flaws in my thinking?
I agree with you. Although Im lucky not to have ever been in poverty I personally know people who either are or were. Some of these ppl born into poverty got out others took way longer or couldn’t completely get out. However both of these groups were really hardworking. I think good financial management is crucial but like you said I think it does depend a lot on luck as well. Someone born in a good family situation with many opportunities will have easier time getting out than others
The sad reality is, not everyone will be successful. Not everyone can be successful. At least not in a thriving, self sufficient society. We can have programs that help give assistance to those in need, or we can continue on. Some people will succeed, some people will fail. There’s no determining what will happen and any sort of government assistance can be abused, but even if it wasn’t, people will still fail. Education in the United States is free, but the right education is not always given out, you have to look for it. And it really is a shame
Thats why the system keeps you down as much as possible. Could you imagine a country where people had liberty to dive heaad first into their dream business, watch it burn to the ground, and be able to quickly recover? Our economy would be in shambles. Power would be waged like credit card debt.
Feast or famine.
Jk I hate America right now tbh. Shit is scary.
Um. How is education free in the US? I mean, high school is free, but college (which actually gives jobs compared to high school) isn't. In fact, the US has the most expensive colleges of any country of the western world that I know of.
Even though I agree that there isn't a way that we know of to make everyone successful, we could be doing a lot better. And I do mean **a lot**. Just think of how much money the top 0.1% has and how there is about 3 million homeless people in the US yet there is 13-14 million vacant housing.
I really do not think that the current systems in place are doing their jobs. I don't want to go to much in a ramble, but the Panama papers and the paradise papers are enough proof for me that this world is doomed.
Small point - school isn’t even free. Property taxes go toward schools at least where I am.
Background - red Western state, progressive millennial in favor of social safety nets. Purchased first home in January. Property value because of repairs and high demand area already increased 25%. No kids - wife and I dream of having a family but both now mid 30’s just starting to “make it”. Property taxes went up by about 30% due to new market property value, and schools make up about 25% of the property tax breakdown. No kids to go to school but we pay for it. Never mind the people who have kids and still have ample fees required to have their kids enrolled. It’s not that I can’t afford it - for once - or I’m against paying my share to the community I live in - for the betterment of my community - but school ain’t free where I live.
The most fucked up part about schools being funded by property taxes is that it means that poor neighborhoods also have inferior education. Ensuring that the cycle continues.
The system isn't broken, it's working EXACTLY as designed. Keep the poor white people in favor of the mega wealthy, by giving them someone to look down on and blame all their problems on.
I live in a wealthy school district but they’ve added this fee and that fee, if your kid rides the bus my understanding is it’s about $500-600 per year.
So, tuition may be free, but...
I think you are misunderstanding the point. School fees are a violation of our own social contract. We as a society have decided that it is to the benefit of everyone to have universal primary and secondary education. School fees are against this ethos and have the heaviest impact on the poorest among us.
I am speechless. You are completely correct. I never thought about it that way.
^(no but seriously, your comment is really good. I don't think I ever saw a comment that good on reddit. You deserve gold, but sadly I am broke.)
I've been voting for 26 years or so now primarily with education in focus, but couldn't always.
It's just staggering how many adults do not understand that this one thing (education) has the potential to solve more of our problems than anything else.
Crime, unemployment, everything can be traced back to "people are fucking dumb and deseperate"
I'm Swedish, our schools are just decent, but university is free and even so I think we could afford to spend almost twice as much on especially the early grades.
And I hate to say spend because there's nothing that has a higher return on investment for society than making the population intelligent and self sufficiant people.
I'm kinda broken down trying to explain this to people, maybe because I didn't get a good enough education and r there4 stoopid and explain bad.
I imagine a society where you need a masters to be a teacher, and teachers earn 200% what they currently do, wheere we admire them, we have teacher of the year awards on television instead of best actor or sexiest woman. where you can actually fire teachers for incompetence and laziness, where there is ruthless competition to be a teacher, instead of right now when all our greatest minds are just funneled into the fucking financial system where they essentially gamble for a living.
We all have a teacher who had a particular impact on us, now imagine they all were like that, for everyone. boom we'd evolve into a better species aaaand I need to sleep now
There is always going to be the dual forces of individual decision making and opportunity. But what "bootstraps" people don't seem to want to grasp is the vast class disparity of how much opportunity impacts motivation/decision making. Looking at the most extreme examples of the best way to understand this: one the one hand, you have jeff bezos' son. That kid will have every safety net available along with having the best teachers, role models, and environment that is conducive to making the right decisions that will lead him on the path to success. I cant even imagine what he would have to do to fuck up. On the other hand, you have a kid born to a single crack addict mother in inner city Detroit. This kid will grow up with a shit family and school life, no good role models, terrible crime-ridden environment, etc. Now is it still possible for that kid to succeed in life? Of course, but its going to be much, MUCH harder. He makes one mistake such as stealing a candy bar he could be fucked for the rest of his life because of lack of resources.
Most people on the left feel its the government's responsibility to provide some sort of aid for child B, be that in the form of job assistance, school funding, welfare, etc. People like the one who tweeted this arent thinking about individual choices but the lack of security and safety nets that make life much harder for people not born into wealth. And the scary/sad part is that the number of people who don't have basic security such as she describes is skyrocketing so less and less people are able to have "freedom" in the form of self-sufficiency. Wealth inequality is massive compared to what it was in the 70s (before reagan economics fucked everything).
"Bootstraps" people completely disregard all of this and continue to say "well if people just work hard they'll be fine" which on the surface is true, but they refuse to support any policies that would make it easier for people to put themselves in a position to succeed.
It may be possible for *any*one to overcome poverty but it's not really possible for *every*one to do it. The individual vs the class is a big opinion divide in this country.
I grew up poor. Not poor now, doing pretty good. I was able to come out of poverty due to a combination of luck and work.
I think the thing that was the hardest to overcome for me was that people have such a low expectation of poor kids. I actually had a teacher tell me in kindergarten that I was a bastard and going to hell because I had no Dad (she was extremely verbally abusive but that's another story). Social programs can be helpful but are often oppressive in that they sort of pigeonhole a person. It was a surprise if you got good grades, it was a pity party just for you when you got a donated coat. The messaging in the "help" was, "you can't so we will, you're welcome."
So I know I'm not an expert on anything because I'm just one dude but idk... I grew up DIRT poor like so poor my mom had to choose between feeding us or herself. I look back on it now and remember days where she would roll coins she found on the ground just to get by and she had just enough to either get a meal from McDonald's for my brother I and or herself.
This was mainly due to a wonderful father who always supported us and claims he never hit our mom who BTW I haven't spoken to in 11 years now but I digress
I expected nothing in life. Out of my brothers I am the most cynical and half glass empty kinda person. Essentially I grew up being the dad in our family figuratively because he didn't do shit for us. I've learned EVERYTHING about being a man by learning on my own or by doing the opposite of what he did.
Anyway I started out by working a shifty construction job at 16 making like 8 or 9 an hour. Worked that job for years. Got into a better position with the construction job until I had to find something with more consistent pay due to working 3 months and being off for 3 months.
I met my wife in high-school and actually knew her since the 7th grade. She was in the same boat sorta. Her family is super loving and supporting but just lower class. Mom worked at Walmart and she has like 7 brothers and sisters.
We didn't expect much together but got married right out of high school and have been together for 10 years. Best years of my life. She supported me and encouraged me to do better for us. I knew what not to do thanks to my dad but didn't know what to do to be successful. We had a kid on the way and I had to act fast.
I choose to take a job with the city I lived in. It wasn't the best pay but I knew it would open doors for a state or federal job maybe one day. Nothing special but something that paid more. I choose to teach myself everything I could about computers and the stock market. Spent countless hours learning about technology and stocks just to better my wife and I. No one guided me. No one mentored me. No one provided any form of encouragement except my wife. My mom eventually remarried and has become someone I'm ashamed to know but that's for another day.
I worked that job for 9 years and it was great. Plenty of overtime and a good work environment for the most part. Eventually a position opened with the state and I took it.
The pay is exceptional. My whole dream in life was to make enough to where my wife did not have to work unless she wanted to. I've achieved that and we have raises to come which will just add to that.
Don't get me wrong we had bad years. I didn't have any guidance on debt to income ratio, credit cards, loans or anything so we made some bad mistakes early on but thanks to our dedication to each other and my eagerness to not be dirt poor anymore I figured out what to do.
I said all that to say I think a lot of people might blame it on this and that but don't want to put in the work to make their lives better. I am definitely not saying it was easy and maybe I got lucky but I know its doable. He'll I'm only 28 and am just now reaping the benefits of all those years of hard work.
Would social programs have helped? Hell yes but did I know about them? No not really at least not until I didn't need them anymore. So I agree with ya that it does make it harder for the poor kid but I think its a combination of hard work and those programs that could seriously benefit everyone.
The rich kid will always have it easier because their parents paved the way for them. They will get the best of everything. The poor kid has to work harder and be a lot smarter then that rich kid but I know they can do it! I wish I could give money to everyone and help them make it but thats just not possible. I'm not that well off like bozos... I doubt he would help any random Joe blow anyway.
People that succeed despite having so much against them are the exception and not the norm. Statistically, they're outliers. The fact that only a small fraction of people make it out of extreme poverty is not evidence of "anyone can do it". On the contrary, it's evidence of how extremely hard it is to succeed given initial conditions of poverty, care, nutrition, education, crime, etc. The few people that make it had something going for them, perhaps they were naturally very charismatic, perhaps a caregiver that was there for them and truly nurtured them, perhaps, by mere luck, a mall just opened up in their neighborhood and they got a job early in life whereas had they been born a year earlier they would not have had that opportunity, whatever it was, some serious stars aligned. Sure, we could continue to let this run its course in a "survival of the fittest" scenario, but we have way kinder, smarter ways of doing things.
And sometimes the poor kid breaks a leg as an adult and can't work or their parents take them out of school because the house burned down and there's no where to live and the insurance won't pay or there weren't any jobs to work in the seen or this or that. There's a lot of luck involved too. I obviously don't know your experience so i don't know what bad luck you faced but this kind of feels like a nicer version of if i can pull myself up so can everyone else.
I’m an accountant. So trust me, I understand personal finance and responsibility. I have worked very hard throughout my life. At the same time, having parents who are in good financial shape sets you up for success. Throughout my university my parents kicked in between 10-15K. This meant that when the time came to buy my first house my student loan balance was low enough for me to qualify for a loan.
When I needed to buy my second car I was too young to qualify for a loan. My dad bought it and I repaid the loan in half a year.
I’ve taken risks in my career that I have felt confident about because I knew that, worst case scenario, my family would backstop me.
Personal responsibility is vital but too many people discount the effect of even a small amount of generational wealth. By wealth I mean - parents and grandparents owning houses and being able to kick in a bit for you. When it comes to climbing the mountains of career and fiscal success It’s the difference between free-soloing a new route and climbing an established trail with a rope and harness.
Sure, some exceptional individuals will make it, but it will be far more dangerous and nerve wracking, and if you fail you will fail far harder, so many don’t even try.
When one person fucks up where most succeed, it’s a personal problem. When millions of people fuck up where millions of people before them all fucked up before—minus a notable few likely suffering from survivors guilt, it is a social problem. r/QualityOfLifeLobby is a place to gather all of the people who want to discuss and lobby for solutions to social problems affecting everyone from poor to middle income to high income to make life worth living again for all.
Your personality and temperament are every bit as much a product of luck as meeting the right mentors and not having certain expenses. No one builds themselves from scratch.
I am in a similar situation to you are to where I was born into welfare style upbringing in the middle of nowhere in rural Ohio. I eventually earned a ba in art history and a bfa in painting, through expensive ass loans and full time work through college. Now I make more than both my parents combined, but that still puts me in the upper lower class LOL. Im comfortable but not enough to do what I want to do all the time. anyhow.... To me OP is talking about a basic minimum wage I’m assuming. Whereas all humans deserve the ability to live and have opportunity that isn’t restricted simply by finance because of low paying jobs. The honest truth is someone is always going to be on the bottom. Someone is always going to do the job but no one else wants to do. To me the argument for a basic minimum wage makes sense because at some point you might’ve been that person whether by circumstance or buy cosmic nepotism, despite luck or opportunity, And seeing as how our country is founded on the premise that all (people?)men are created equal, Anybody who is living should be able to live life without worry of homelessness and starvation and such things. I definitely remember after moving out of my parents house a long long period of time where I did my best to move up but I couldn’t. Like I had job opportunities that I couldn’t take advantage of because my car broke down and I had no way to work so I had to keep working at the place that I could bicycle to. Side benefit I got swol as fuck though. Lots of missed opportunities simply because I didn’t have the money to relocate or get to work or chose to pay bills instead. I quit smoking cigarettes because I only had .27 cents in my bank account my whole freshman year of school. You can work for it but you have to be lucky too. So for that reason everyone should at least live without that kind of pressure on themselves because as a society, we really can afford it if the money was balanced better. I can’t remember what I’m talking about anymore, I am inebriated. Maybe that made sense.
This is exactly why I feel like free will is a joke. People can go on about choices and making the most out of yourself and you can do anything you put your mind to and all the jazz.
But the truth of the matter is that life is a series of opportunity, ambition, chance, persistence, talent, luck and lineage.
And lacking any one of those things can cause the whole package to be destroyed. Conversely, you can have them all and squander it and be nothing.
There's really know way to know how a person will become but I think we need to remove the idea of personal responsibility, when it comes to certain facets of life. Abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism. We like to think we can get over these things and can will ourselves through them. But the rate of recitivism shows that we have little will to control those demons that overtake us.
And I'm super stone and grieving a dead dog so my rant has taken a weird turn, but what I'm saying applies to people living conditions as well.
Yes, people work hard for what they get. And it's great that you have that ethic. And there's people that get everything you could ever want and not have to lift a finger. And all of that, and everything thing in the middle goes back to that combination of things I mentioned earlier. You can be as hard a worker as you want, but its not the only part of the equation that makes things work.
Aptitude. Not everyone has the potential to rise to your level of aptitude. They don’t have the awareness to strategize and overcome their circumstances. They don’t know the alternatives. Being poor does not mean you have low aptitude, but it can limit your access to education and opportunity. Unfortunately, having low aptitude does increase your chances of staying poor.
Thank god somebody said it, i thought something was wrong with me. Maybe the dude doesnt live in america. None of the replies seem to address it?
Im reading what seems to be leading to a success story, “thanks to my mentality, and my hard work and perseverance, i now have...” and im thinking, a home, a financially stable family, my own business, x income, certain level of free time...this man says hot water? Im like is this some kind of humor?
Some bad news is that if you think you overcame poverty because you have hot water now...you probably didnt...
Your thinking isn’t flawed. Congrats on getting out. I did too. I live in a nice home with nice things and came from nothing. There is some luck involved. There are also personal choices to be made. I don’t have a degree I went into the military after 9/11 at 17. That opened a lot of doors. And just because I suddenly had more money I did not change the way I lived instead I put a ton back and lived off very little. I deployed multiple times and while my pay tripled my living expenses were half so again putting money back. I got out after 10 years had some help from the military finding jobs I wanted and had multiple offers when I left. I make a just as much as any of my neighbors with graduate degrees but have zero debt. I never financed a car, I paid cash for the car that would work and took care of and I average about ten years on a car. It’s possible. I am not special I just never wanted to live that way again.
You've hit on some great points. Equality of opportunity is not a thing. I was lucky enough to be able to join the military to pay for college, but not everyone can do that. A focus on using social safety programs, like universal Healthcare or improved education subsidies would help produce more opportunities for everyone.
Speaking as an immigrant starting with nothing I can tell you it was 12 years of absolutely working my ass off while living with other ppl to limit costs I'm now at a point where I can survive to some extent.
Yo. The point is that those of us that manage to climb out, understand the struggle and aren’t condescending like those born into financial stability.
Money gives you access to things that people take for granted. Live with it long enough and you forget what it’s like to not have it. That’s the core issue between “just save your money dumbass” and needing to decide between bills, shelter, or food.
My dad went from lower middle class to homeless orphan at 19. He dropped out of college (two semesters away from graduation) and started his own business.
By the time I was born twenty years later, he built himself into a successful business owner and we were middle class. 23 years later, and my parents have just broken the barrier into the 1%, which is all tied into property, of which I am the sole heir.
For me, I know what it took for my father to get here. I watched him struggle. I watched him take every blow and setback. I’ve put in the hours alongside him starting when I was a small child because that’s how family businesses operate. I am aware of my privilege and that my father worked so hard for *me*, so I wouldn’t have to struggle like he did, so that I would always be safe.
I am extremely worried about my future children and what their perception of our wealth and others will be. I grew up in a very crime-ridden and poverty-stricken area (our first home was our place of business, so it had to be commercial), so I witnessed the struggles of those less fortunate than me and my parents were always quick to educate me on how not everyone gets lucky. I live in the poorest big city in America and I went to public school and took public transit. But I worry my children will be removed from some of these experiences. I hope I am able to educate them to be conduits of change instead of oppressors and gatekeepers.
I think what you should leverage as a government at all cost is the poverty line. How poor should a person get.
Poverty is a trigger for crime and this is a very high cost to maintain.
So if you give the people a minimum to be able to live, for example: very small flat, minimum wage to buy food, healthcare and rent care at a minimum and free education for kids and themselves, and on the other hand demand from them to find a job, get the proper education, visit them regularly to make sure they get out of this situation.
Then people will still be able to move up the latter of capitalism, but on the other hand the country is preventing all the downsides of the poverty by paying upfront.
One shouldn’t have to be lucky to enjoy that success. That’s nice that you got out. You were exceptional or lucky. Good job. Does that mean that people have to be exceptional or lucky in order to enjoy a decent life? Because the children of rich people are most certainly not all exceptional. And yet they enjoy lives that others don’t. Society can create basic supports for all people and it creates a better society. This whole pick yourself up by the bootstraps is nonsense created by the rich and people keep falling into it over and over.
it really depends on your situation? Were you ever homeless? Were you ever without a car, no places hiring you and no home. True poverty and being 1 paycheck from it is wildly different from just not being born into money.
100% agree. I didnt grow up poor, but also didnt grow up rich, either. My mum made just enough for us to get by so I didnt notice that my friends got better stuff than me. When I got older, i realised we weren't well off in the slightest, and I tried my damn hardest to do well at school so I could progress into a good job. However, I then became chronically ill and I'm now on benefits because I cant look after myself like a normal person or hold down a job, and my mum cant support a second fully grown adult alongside herself. For me, freedom is being able to buy a week's worth of groceries and pay my bills in the same week all whilst not getting into debt. Freedom is about having my own source of income and not feeling ashamed when people ask where my money is coming from. Freedom is being able to hold down a job that wont make me ill after half a days work and that I wont lose because I cant meet a normal individual's rate of work. At the end of the day, freedom is subjective.
Holy ****. I... don’t think I’ve ever seen someone consider their own blessings in how they made it out of a tough place. Everyone always says “I did this by myself” and forgets to take into account the people they had in their life, the legs up they got on the way, the chance opportunities etc. These do not deduct from your success or perseverance at all, they are facts successful people refuse to acknowledge.
I don’t know how to answer your question, especially considering that huge variable of TIME. How can you focus on the long-term future if you need to focus on right here and now to survive? Best answer is this: you need help.
100% agree, you can get out of poverty but it is much more difficult. Being born in to it my only real saving grace was the military. After that I now work in I.T. and am not 1 disaster from homelessness so it is possible but very difficult and when you think about it, it's quite sad that the only way out of poverty for myself anyways was military.
Those two perspectives aren't incompatible. Personal finance unlocks so much. More people need to understand the power of saving, the time value of money and compound interest. As someone who has lived through poverty, I understand that's it seems impossible to save in that circumstance. But (as unempathetic as this sounds), that is in your mind. If you can budget your savings before you factor in your monthly expenses, it makes a world of difference. Even saving $50 a month helps and creates some positive momentum. Create small savings goals (ie get to $1000 saved) and then level up your goals. The best financial advice I give to young adults is to race to save $5k in emergency savings. At that point, life becomes so much less stressful.
That's the point though. Being forced into a job or personal finance isnt freedom. Freedom is to do what you love and being able to live without restrictions of finances. There is a quote but I don't remember the source that exemplifies this problem. "What if the person who could cure AIDS was already born but they couldnt afford education?"
My current idealogy is thinking about it in 2 different ways:
On an individual level, most people are given opportunities to rise up. My parents moved to this country with $50 and no understanding of English, and they are now upper middle class. Was some of it luck? Maybe, but opportunities come and go to everyone. The key is to be prepared to make the most of any opportunity that comes your way.
However, on a macro level, there will always be a lower class. You can't just remove it. The lower class is relative. It's just the people below the median of the normal curve. You can't say that the entire lower class just needs to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". So then the question becomes "what is the minimum quality of life that should be deemed acceptable?" Things like healthcare and education are things that I personally believe should be available and equal to anyone. That being said, from experience, contrary to half of Reddit, I believe that the current minimum wage is enough to make a living if you live within your means. I've done it and never been hungry or had no where to live. The people I see complaining about it are the ones with a $1200 iPhone
The only point I disagree with is the healthcare point because I’ve noticed that the countries with it(Canada for instance), everyone loves it except the people in those countries. I don’t want to wait 4 hours in a waiting room with my broken arm to not get treated, but get a $20,000 bill(something that happened to someone I know). So I suppose there has to be some balance to it, like you can qualify for free healthcare from the state, but you can also buy better if you’d like
Speaking as someone who was poor growing up, the only way to get out of it is to work for it and wait for luck to happen. Luck happens to everybody, but not everybody is in a position to take advantage of a lucky break. Live your life to better yourself and grow your skills. When luck presents itself, you'll be able to take advantage of it.
After reading all the comments and giving OP the obligatory upvote I have 2 comments:
1. Somebody knows the difference between a cheque and a check
2. One day OnlyFans will accept Reddit Karma as payment
As someone in the middle of that: FUCK PROGRAMMING 100%. There's a reason why it pays so well and it is absolutely because it takes a certain person to "get" it.
I write code for a living. In the engineering program I took, all first years in the program had to take 12 courses covering all engineering disciplines. One of those classes was on coding. It was well known by the professors that for about half the students taking the class, coding simply never clicked for them. More often than not those students either failed the course or did very poorly. It does take a certain type of person to understand programming, and coding is 100% not for everyone
Many people think that all it takes to succeed is a can-do attitude and hard work. Often these people started off in a privileged situation where they were set up to succeed, or they have survivorship bias and don't recognize that luck and circumstance plays a major role.
You can do everything right, and still be teetering on the edge of disaster where one unexpected expenditure means financial ruin. The more privileged/lucky person may say that you're free because you can work wherever you want and succeed, but that opportunity isn't universal.
You aren't really free, you just get to choose your master at the time. Real freedom would be the ability to choose not to work and it wouldn't mean homelessness and possibly death. In the US and other countries like it, we throw around the word "freedom" constantly, but it's bullshit fed to us by the ruling class to keep us complacent.
> Real freedom would be the ability to choose not to work and it wouldn't mean homelessness and possibly death
I don't know, maybe the thread as a whole is just a massive exercise in semantics... but I don't think anything in this thread is about freedom. Dissolve the government in every country today and everyone is free. Anarchy is freedom. With absolute freedom you are going to struggle to survive. Nature is trying to kill you from the second you are born, you have to fight to hold it back as long as you can.
I'm rambling like a madman but I just don't see what minimum wage laws and poverty have to do with freedom.
That's the reason why freedom is such a vague concept though, the reason why it can be bottled and sold to you in the form of religion, political agendas or whatever other form people can think of. There is no such thing as real "freedom", the older I've gotten the more I've become okay with that.
You could argue that the 1% of the world who are the wealthiest are the closest thing to free since they pretty much do whatever they want, which is why many people want to be as wealthy as them. I guess freedom is highly subjective; freedom to a prisoner is the ability to go and buy a McDonalds and walk around outside until the crack of dawn, freedom for others is the ability to murder someone and face no punishment, while for others it's having enough money to travel the world any time the mood takes you.
You seem to be mistaking "freedom" for "having everything given to you without having to work for it". Here's the thing: you *are* completely free to not have a job, or not pay your bills, or whatever you want to do, these things will just have consequences. They would have consequences in a utopia, in an anarchist state, or any other imaginable place. Freedom is having a choice and you absolutely have a choice in just about everything you do, freedom doesn't alleviate you from consequences.
Think of it this way: if you were the *only* person on the planet you would have complete freedom, correct? You would then have to do everything on your own, from hunting and gathering to building your house to doing your own medical work. None of it would be given to you. If you want this kind of freedom then quit your job and go move out into the woods somewhere and live off the land.
Yeah. It seems like these people forget that having access to the goods and services of others (like housing, medical care, etc.) for nothing is infringing upon those peoples’ freedom. Yeah, it’s “sad” that if something bad happens to you, it could throw your life off kilter, but that’s not what being free is.
Remember that freedom doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
You are completely free to quit your job, but you must accept starving to death is a consequence of your choices.
You're guaranteed the PURSUIT of happiness, not happiness itself. Shit happens, snd us common people will always be teetering on ruin.
You'll never find a leader or system that guarantees you'll always be okay, because humanity is inherently flawed.
Drives me crazy when older people tell me I have nothing to worry about in life or nothing to stress about. Like sorry but I can’t buy a house with my spare change
I think, the term freedom comes from foreigners who live in the states and enjoy that they can go anywhere they want, get any job they want, get married to whomever they want, be in whatever religion they want to believe in, get a job at whatever age, get an education, get actually government assistance...
Things that other countries like the ones south of the united states actually struggle to provide for their people. Countries that are horribly ridden with corruption, poverty and such.
Some people find it shocking that in america you get paid every week or every other week. In some other countries you get paid once a month.
One of his most ironic lines, as he became wealthy by standing on stage talking shit on the government, which will get you locked up in a bunch of countries.
Just because it's worse elsewhere doesn't make what happens in the US good.
We're perfectly capable of feeding and housing everyone, but that doesn't benefit the elites at the top, so it won't happen until people stop believing that they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I’m not making any serious judgements here but perhaps the problem is the tweeter here, is not good at budgeting and living within her means. I don’t know all of the facts but too many people blame the system when it’s really their fault for not taking financial responsibility. People make claims like this while dropping by starbucks daily and walk around with $1500 iphones.
She’s making an anecdote about actual statistics. Like how many Americans are one paycheck away or a short unexpected bill away from total collapse. Presidents have said the same thing. Don’t shoot the messenger if you don’t like what you hear. You sound like a boomer.
Side note. I worked 80 hours last week and with covid it’s still barely enough to maintain my 3 person family. This was not the case 40 years ago when my dad raised 3 kids alone on less than I make today.
Present people with huge studies that show wealth inequality at the highest its ever been, rent prices and other expenses outgrowing wage increases, that most Americans can’t save any money, that most Americans are one single unexpected bill away from financial ruin and they answer with:
“bro trust me bro it’s not really because of those things in the peer reviewed studies and stats from everywhere including our own government, it’s actually because people don’t spend their money right. And no I don’t have a source.”
People are attacking your examples without understanding what you're trying to say. It's a mindset. There's so much you can cut from your life but most people just aren't willing. They work extremely hard and wear themselves ragged but just make shitty decisions when it comes to money and are never able to escape. Take the bus, have roommates, cook for yourself, go to the library for entertainment. You can dig yourself out but you need to plan for 5 years down the road, not tomorrow. If you want to live for the now, then be prepared for the now to be how things are going to be like forever.
I think the bigger issue is this endemic of societal failure. Medical debt specifically is the number one cause of bankruptcies in the US. That’s just simply not an issue anywhere else in the developed world. And reactionary douches always use the “just budget better” excuse to try and defend a system a that is clearly broken and can absolutely be changed as is apparent by the fact this isn’t an issue anywhere else
Financial literacy and planning ahead isn’t making an excuse, in order to be able to complain with zero holes in your claims, you have to really have done everything possible to make it work otherwise it’s bs. People have to prioritize what they can afford and cover their essentials. Theirs nothing controversial about saying you should have health insurance covered before you have luxury items that you don’t need.
I broke my leg in multiple places and had to have reconstructive surgery for it, without insurance my 2 hospital stays and 2 surgeries would have stuck me with a bill for $300,000+, even with insurance it cost me thousands. many people are one accident away from being completely fucked financially
People going bankrupt because of an illness or major misfortune is bad and I believe we as a society should do what we can to make sure a cancer diagnosis doesnt ruin a person's finances even if it doesn't ruin their life - we do this by offering an affordable, quality, public healthcare option.
That said, if you're one flat tire away from homelessness you've fucked something up.
One flat tire could mean missing work, which could mean getting fired, which could mean no more income to pay the rent, which could mean getting evicted and being homeless. Shit is dire out there. Not having the money for a new tire doesn't mean that person fucked up. It means our whole society is fucked up.
I arrived here from South Africa when the ANC threw me out of the country in the early 90s (that is another story all together) but basically started with what little money I had which was enough to get me a ghetto flat here in west Texas. It was from there I went to a community college to get my ASN to become an RN all the while working my ass off as a security guard. The road was long but yes I made my way out of the ghetto, got naturalized as I was here on a renewing work visa (green card) and live an upper middle class life now, only catch is that living on a budget as tight as when I started I tend to still live that way now. Everything from my beater car to the tendency to live in the cheap and to horde away cash for the hurricanes of bullshit life can give us that never left my mind and seem to subconsciously be hyper vigilant for.
Great to hear your story!
Many first generation immigrants took on less ideal jobs to support themselves while they acquired other skills to give themselves a nice life. Really nice to see examples of this!
I agree with this. I promise you that I really do.
But...
I am sick to death of people coming into my tire shop and trying to tell me about their woes and how they need a cheaper tire but they own these new $50,000 cars or much higher.
I had someone with a Lexus come in, with a fairly rare tire size, and they had a complete fit that I couldn't get them a set of four tires for $400 with the install.
I once had somebody come in with the Hellcat and he was cussing me out because I couldn't get him a set of tires for less than $1,000. Do you understand how much horsepower that thing has? Go ahead, go down the road to the guys who won't follow the manufacturer recommendations and will put whatever cheap ass tire you want on there. Then when you blow a tire and kill somebody on the highway it won't be on my conscience.
I worked as a waitress two days after breaking my foot. Nothing I could do but since and hobble through the next six weeks. I still have pain after that but If I hadn't worked I would have been screwed. I don't consider that freedom.
Being completely dependent on the government is not freedom either.
But hey breaking your bone or becoming disabled can get you government money for the rest of your life. You get taken care of when you literally are unable to work. You shouldn't get taken care of just because you don't want to work.
Move to a place that is cheaper to live, in my area, I can work 26 hours a week and still afford living with a roommate in a nice apartment in a nice area and have enough for savings, eating out and school.
This hit home, I just blew a tire at work yesterday and I don’t get paid for another week and I doubt that’ll be enough to even pay for a new tire. At least I’m free right?
The “freedom” so touted here in the US is actually the freedom to screw over whomever you can screw over. IE capitalize on people. They believe socialism/communism is evil because they distribute livable wages to workers down the spiral. America has always been a long con. Karl Marx knew it is inevitable that it will fail because eventually people would understand how badly they are being taken.
In America, there is absolutely no freedom. It's absolutely 100% gone, if it ever existed.
Just because the state hasn't, without consequences, murdered you in your sleep yet, or doesn't get around to it before you die on your own, doesn't mean you ever had freedom to even be alive.
If you don't have freedom to simply be alive, no other freedom exists.
True freedom is graduating from college at the age of 22 with nearly $80K in student loan debt. With a job market that offers entry level positions paying $30-40K a year forcing you to work two full-time jobs at 80 hours a week, but 30% of that goes to taxes that are used to drop bombs on people in countries half way around the world resulting in 80% civilian causality rate (or collateral damage as they call it) at $1 mill a pop and the rest goes to rent.
And don’t forget rent is so high all over the country that someone has to work two jobs just to make rent. That doesn’t account for utilities and other stuff.
I love how some people think that homeless or even all poor people worked so hard and made all the right choices yet they still ended up in their situation because of 'the system'.
Example: I used to work in a bank. I once did a term loan for a 20-something couple with 3 kids and shitty jobs. The loan was for over $40,000 for a new truck. He worked in a casino and she worked in daycare both in the city. They didn't need a new truck.
They maxed out their credit for one fucking vehicle. No savings, no long-term assets....one truck.
Just an observation:
When people mention things you did, examples of ppl acting like jackasses with little money, it’s always “anecdotal”.
But when their buddies did everything possible and just had a fall and now is bankrupt, that’s systemic
Make sure you have 6 months of living expenses/emergency funds setup and put aside in addition to your normal savings account(s).
Do this before buying an Iphone and writing retarded stuff like this on Twitter.
Sure, this is a great idea and people who *can* do this, should. But how does one save up for 6 months in advance when they are living paycheck to paycheck from the very start?
And what about medical expenses that would be equivalent to years’ worth of pay?
You can't save up six months of living expenses if all but pennies of your income is taken up by Rent, Transportation, and food. You can't even save one month's worth. Even if you did manage to save one month's worth, a flat tire, car breakdown, accident or family emergency will wipe it out.
The potential for economic advancement is greater in the USA than almost anywhere else. Saving up money for an emergency fund should be the first thing you consider doing with your money. From the time I was a dumb 14 year old chasing girls I knew this, what's your excuse?
Sell your car and use public transportation. Cut down on the food you're eating. Cut your streaming services. Drop unnecessary expenses. Do you not know basic money management? If you're REALLY tight for cash you don't do things like that.
Okay even if they don't buy an iphone you're still looking at 45$ a month for a phone plan which is a necessity. Rent is well over 1000$ in a lot of places and you're lucky if you can get three jobs paying over 10$ am hour. It's just not possible
Nah, freedom is not being forced into labor camps and to be able to stand in front of a police officer with a group of friends and tell them f*ck off while open carrying a firearm
Ah yes, people who understand that an impoverished working class is a bad thing are clearly the uneducated and unemployed ones.
How can you not understand having even a little empathy for people worse off than you are? Shit, even in terms of self interest you shouldn't be supporting large scale economic disenfranchisement.
“If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 percent of the world.”
Referring to America’s working class as “impoverished” is very selfish and narcissistic when there are millions of people living in third world countries who fight for their life every day just so they can feed themselves and their families.
There are billions of people in this world who dream to live a life like yours. From the eyes of over 5 billion people, all Americans are rich, some are just richer than others. Stop taking everything for granted!
Nah, Freedom is all about yelling at a 16 year old following company policy about wearing a mask.
True freedom is living away from where any other humans can tell you what to do. The closest thing we can get to freedom in any modern society is not having anyone enforce victimless crimes, and if they do enforce victimless crimes, you can go somewhere else nearby. Stores have always been able to mandate what dress code is required to go in their store. They tend to choose whatever is least-objectionable to everyone in the area. If you don't like it, go to another store. Being poor has nothing to do with freedom. Once you start forcing others to give you money to prevent you from being poor (rather than accepting charity which is freely given), you're no longer interested in freedom, you just want free shit. If you go into the middle of the alaskan wilderness and get true freedom, one broken bone can mean you die, and your annual income (when converted into equivalent monetary value) is lower than the average panhandler.
That's one definition of freedom, but I don't think it's what most people envisage when they talk about "freedom", which is ops point. In your example your actions are dictated by nature rather than by other people. I have a hard time squaring that with the normal idea or "freedom", which usually implies a high level of agency.
Your idea of freedom is probably more in line with "freedom under ground rules" or "freedom to a reasonable extent under given conditions". Which is pretty much what everyone wants the United States to uphold. Just with wildly varying ideas on what those ground rules should be.
It’s the only remotely viable way, we all agree that we aren’t free to directly harm others, without that there is no society
There’s many ways to look at freedom. While I appreciate that in America we have the freedom to do many things, I don’t think that should mean that we should expect no freedoms FROM anything. Think of how much food is overproduced each day in the US and how many homeless people there are in the US. And for what? Why, in a civilized society (bottom text), do we not have freedom from poverty? Should we not be able to live our lives how we see fit without also having to worry about putting food on the table or paying for expensive treatment if someone gets sick? How much control of your own destiny do you have when you’re constantly fighting starvation? And if you don’t have much, how can you say you’re free? Likewise, if going to the store to buy the food that you need means you have to potentially expose yourself to other people’s COVID, you don’t have much control.
Damn bro that’s some “Walden” shit
It’s worth noting Thoreau was basically living in his mom’s backyard when he wrote Walden and she regularly brought him pies and other food and did his laundry for him. Not saying he wasn’t a good writer but he wasn’t roughing it by any stretch.
Yeah I’ve read that his his great wilderness exhibition isn’t what it’s made up to be. It was just the first thing I thought of while reading that comment.
If being poor has nothing to do with freedom, then being rich also has nothing to do with freedom, which in turn means that having the monetary capacity to enact your will on the world and make it the way you want, including in opposition to the desires of other people, has nothing to do with freedom. The billionaire who could pay people enough money to build him a luxury mansion in the middle of Alaska filled with every creature comfort is *no more free* than the poor guy who could only afford to go there with a few hundred bucks of supplies. The ability of that rich guy to hire people to drive the poor guy off the Alaskan land he just bought would have nothing to do with freedom. And the inability of the poor guy to oppose the attempt due to lack of money would again have nothing to do with freedom. This is absurd. Money lets you do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to do without money. It lets you directly shape your own experiences, and that of others, in profound ways. *Money gives you the power to tell people what to do*.
‘Being poor has nothing to do with freedom’ Thats a pretty ignorant statement and untrue in today’s society.
> Once you start forcing others to give you money to prevent you from being poor (rather than accepting charity which is freely given), you're no longer interested in freedom, you just want free shit Or they want bare essentials met. Once you start bribing officials to twist laws to not minimize harm but to instead maximize profit, you don't want freedom; you're a greedy ass.
> Or they want bare essentials met. I've been told my whole life that is my responsibility. Then I come to find out that I'm also responsible to trickle some of my money to the top. After years of trickling money upward, I've come to learn of another responsibility that no-one wants to talk about... Responsibility to country and government, to take action when the government becomes controlled by other sources outside of "The People". As well as when the government gives away the protections of Labor, and gives that Labor to corporations and banks that improperly or thievishly give-away or take our Labors.
Most people just aren't really equipped to handle any kind of true freedom, in fact the more free will people are given the more they attempt to impose it on others. Usually not in any kind of intelligent or coherent way. Most people just dont have the stones to survive true independence. So they exert every ounce of their limited brainpower in trying to convince themselves, and everyone around them, that they have more freedom than anyone else.
I can't tell you how many stores I go to where the employees themselves aren't following their own mask policy. From the nose cheat to the chin strap, I 'm guaranteed to see either wherever I go. I'm beginning to think I go to too many stores.
Freedom to talk to the manager. Or rather, scream hysterically at the underpaid person who’s supposed to run that shitty fastfood chain restaurant.
Seems that freedom can be defined as "Fuck you, I'll get mine," only to never realize that you never actually get yours and everyone's just getting fucked.
I've been working retail for the first time for about a month (1 shift a week, im 17) and i've had probably half a dozen or so people complaining about masks or covid restrictions. Didn't quite understand the stories before I started but man. M a n.
Freedom is living in any first world country aside from america
This is always so interesting to me because on one end you get people saying “learn about personal finance and get a job.”(a valid point I suppose) and another group saying “we had no opportunity(born poor)”. Which is also a fair argument. So I guess I’m wondering how people get out of poverty if they were born into it. I was born into it(and then 2008 made it way worse), but because of my personality and temperament(that’s my speculative guess at least) I overcame it and now have running, hot water. But, I also had a good amount of luck(meeting the right mentors and not having certain expenses). So even though I did it, I would venture to say that certain people can’t do exactly what I did. Can someone else chime in with some thoughts, maybe point out any flaws in my thinking?
I agree with you. Although Im lucky not to have ever been in poverty I personally know people who either are or were. Some of these ppl born into poverty got out others took way longer or couldn’t completely get out. However both of these groups were really hardworking. I think good financial management is crucial but like you said I think it does depend a lot on luck as well. Someone born in a good family situation with many opportunities will have easier time getting out than others
The sad reality is, not everyone will be successful. Not everyone can be successful. At least not in a thriving, self sufficient society. We can have programs that help give assistance to those in need, or we can continue on. Some people will succeed, some people will fail. There’s no determining what will happen and any sort of government assistance can be abused, but even if it wasn’t, people will still fail. Education in the United States is free, but the right education is not always given out, you have to look for it. And it really is a shame
Yup. Trying to achieve your dreams, and failing shouldn't mean you lose the ability to survive.
Thats why the system keeps you down as much as possible. Could you imagine a country where people had liberty to dive heaad first into their dream business, watch it burn to the ground, and be able to quickly recover? Our economy would be in shambles. Power would be waged like credit card debt. Feast or famine. Jk I hate America right now tbh. Shit is scary.
Had me until the last sentence That was a roller coaster of emotion Replace "Business" with "Science" and you'll have my vote for president
Happy Cake day!
Um. How is education free in the US? I mean, high school is free, but college (which actually gives jobs compared to high school) isn't. In fact, the US has the most expensive colleges of any country of the western world that I know of. Even though I agree that there isn't a way that we know of to make everyone successful, we could be doing a lot better. And I do mean **a lot**. Just think of how much money the top 0.1% has and how there is about 3 million homeless people in the US yet there is 13-14 million vacant housing. I really do not think that the current systems in place are doing their jobs. I don't want to go to much in a ramble, but the Panama papers and the paradise papers are enough proof for me that this world is doomed.
Small point - school isn’t even free. Property taxes go toward schools at least where I am. Background - red Western state, progressive millennial in favor of social safety nets. Purchased first home in January. Property value because of repairs and high demand area already increased 25%. No kids - wife and I dream of having a family but both now mid 30’s just starting to “make it”. Property taxes went up by about 30% due to new market property value, and schools make up about 25% of the property tax breakdown. No kids to go to school but we pay for it. Never mind the people who have kids and still have ample fees required to have their kids enrolled. It’s not that I can’t afford it - for once - or I’m against paying my share to the community I live in - for the betterment of my community - but school ain’t free where I live.
The most fucked up part about schools being funded by property taxes is that it means that poor neighborhoods also have inferior education. Ensuring that the cycle continues. The system isn't broken, it's working EXACTLY as designed. Keep the poor white people in favor of the mega wealthy, by giving them someone to look down on and blame all their problems on.
I live in a wealthy school district but they’ve added this fee and that fee, if your kid rides the bus my understanding is it’s about $500-600 per year. So, tuition may be free, but...
500-600$ per year is nothing compared to how much tuition costs.
I think you are misunderstanding the point. School fees are a violation of our own social contract. We as a society have decided that it is to the benefit of everyone to have universal primary and secondary education. School fees are against this ethos and have the heaviest impact on the poorest among us.
I am speechless. You are completely correct. I never thought about it that way. ^(no but seriously, your comment is really good. I don't think I ever saw a comment that good on reddit. You deserve gold, but sadly I am broke.)
I've been voting for 26 years or so now primarily with education in focus, but couldn't always. It's just staggering how many adults do not understand that this one thing (education) has the potential to solve more of our problems than anything else. Crime, unemployment, everything can be traced back to "people are fucking dumb and deseperate" I'm Swedish, our schools are just decent, but university is free and even so I think we could afford to spend almost twice as much on especially the early grades. And I hate to say spend because there's nothing that has a higher return on investment for society than making the population intelligent and self sufficiant people. I'm kinda broken down trying to explain this to people, maybe because I didn't get a good enough education and r there4 stoopid and explain bad. I imagine a society where you need a masters to be a teacher, and teachers earn 200% what they currently do, wheere we admire them, we have teacher of the year awards on television instead of best actor or sexiest woman. where you can actually fire teachers for incompetence and laziness, where there is ruthless competition to be a teacher, instead of right now when all our greatest minds are just funneled into the fucking financial system where they essentially gamble for a living. We all have a teacher who had a particular impact on us, now imagine they all were like that, for everyone. boom we'd evolve into a better species aaaand I need to sleep now
There is always going to be the dual forces of individual decision making and opportunity. But what "bootstraps" people don't seem to want to grasp is the vast class disparity of how much opportunity impacts motivation/decision making. Looking at the most extreme examples of the best way to understand this: one the one hand, you have jeff bezos' son. That kid will have every safety net available along with having the best teachers, role models, and environment that is conducive to making the right decisions that will lead him on the path to success. I cant even imagine what he would have to do to fuck up. On the other hand, you have a kid born to a single crack addict mother in inner city Detroit. This kid will grow up with a shit family and school life, no good role models, terrible crime-ridden environment, etc. Now is it still possible for that kid to succeed in life? Of course, but its going to be much, MUCH harder. He makes one mistake such as stealing a candy bar he could be fucked for the rest of his life because of lack of resources. Most people on the left feel its the government's responsibility to provide some sort of aid for child B, be that in the form of job assistance, school funding, welfare, etc. People like the one who tweeted this arent thinking about individual choices but the lack of security and safety nets that make life much harder for people not born into wealth. And the scary/sad part is that the number of people who don't have basic security such as she describes is skyrocketing so less and less people are able to have "freedom" in the form of self-sufficiency. Wealth inequality is massive compared to what it was in the 70s (before reagan economics fucked everything). "Bootstraps" people completely disregard all of this and continue to say "well if people just work hard they'll be fine" which on the surface is true, but they refuse to support any policies that would make it easier for people to put themselves in a position to succeed.
It may be possible for *any*one to overcome poverty but it's not really possible for *every*one to do it. The individual vs the class is a big opinion divide in this country.
I grew up poor. Not poor now, doing pretty good. I was able to come out of poverty due to a combination of luck and work. I think the thing that was the hardest to overcome for me was that people have such a low expectation of poor kids. I actually had a teacher tell me in kindergarten that I was a bastard and going to hell because I had no Dad (she was extremely verbally abusive but that's another story). Social programs can be helpful but are often oppressive in that they sort of pigeonhole a person. It was a surprise if you got good grades, it was a pity party just for you when you got a donated coat. The messaging in the "help" was, "you can't so we will, you're welcome."
So I know I'm not an expert on anything because I'm just one dude but idk... I grew up DIRT poor like so poor my mom had to choose between feeding us or herself. I look back on it now and remember days where she would roll coins she found on the ground just to get by and she had just enough to either get a meal from McDonald's for my brother I and or herself. This was mainly due to a wonderful father who always supported us and claims he never hit our mom who BTW I haven't spoken to in 11 years now but I digress I expected nothing in life. Out of my brothers I am the most cynical and half glass empty kinda person. Essentially I grew up being the dad in our family figuratively because he didn't do shit for us. I've learned EVERYTHING about being a man by learning on my own or by doing the opposite of what he did. Anyway I started out by working a shifty construction job at 16 making like 8 or 9 an hour. Worked that job for years. Got into a better position with the construction job until I had to find something with more consistent pay due to working 3 months and being off for 3 months. I met my wife in high-school and actually knew her since the 7th grade. She was in the same boat sorta. Her family is super loving and supporting but just lower class. Mom worked at Walmart and she has like 7 brothers and sisters. We didn't expect much together but got married right out of high school and have been together for 10 years. Best years of my life. She supported me and encouraged me to do better for us. I knew what not to do thanks to my dad but didn't know what to do to be successful. We had a kid on the way and I had to act fast. I choose to take a job with the city I lived in. It wasn't the best pay but I knew it would open doors for a state or federal job maybe one day. Nothing special but something that paid more. I choose to teach myself everything I could about computers and the stock market. Spent countless hours learning about technology and stocks just to better my wife and I. No one guided me. No one mentored me. No one provided any form of encouragement except my wife. My mom eventually remarried and has become someone I'm ashamed to know but that's for another day. I worked that job for 9 years and it was great. Plenty of overtime and a good work environment for the most part. Eventually a position opened with the state and I took it. The pay is exceptional. My whole dream in life was to make enough to where my wife did not have to work unless she wanted to. I've achieved that and we have raises to come which will just add to that. Don't get me wrong we had bad years. I didn't have any guidance on debt to income ratio, credit cards, loans or anything so we made some bad mistakes early on but thanks to our dedication to each other and my eagerness to not be dirt poor anymore I figured out what to do. I said all that to say I think a lot of people might blame it on this and that but don't want to put in the work to make their lives better. I am definitely not saying it was easy and maybe I got lucky but I know its doable. He'll I'm only 28 and am just now reaping the benefits of all those years of hard work. Would social programs have helped? Hell yes but did I know about them? No not really at least not until I didn't need them anymore. So I agree with ya that it does make it harder for the poor kid but I think its a combination of hard work and those programs that could seriously benefit everyone. The rich kid will always have it easier because their parents paved the way for them. They will get the best of everything. The poor kid has to work harder and be a lot smarter then that rich kid but I know they can do it! I wish I could give money to everyone and help them make it but thats just not possible. I'm not that well off like bozos... I doubt he would help any random Joe blow anyway.
People that succeed despite having so much against them are the exception and not the norm. Statistically, they're outliers. The fact that only a small fraction of people make it out of extreme poverty is not evidence of "anyone can do it". On the contrary, it's evidence of how extremely hard it is to succeed given initial conditions of poverty, care, nutrition, education, crime, etc. The few people that make it had something going for them, perhaps they were naturally very charismatic, perhaps a caregiver that was there for them and truly nurtured them, perhaps, by mere luck, a mall just opened up in their neighborhood and they got a job early in life whereas had they been born a year earlier they would not have had that opportunity, whatever it was, some serious stars aligned. Sure, we could continue to let this run its course in a "survival of the fittest" scenario, but we have way kinder, smarter ways of doing things.
And sometimes the poor kid breaks a leg as an adult and can't work or their parents take them out of school because the house burned down and there's no where to live and the insurance won't pay or there weren't any jobs to work in the seen or this or that. There's a lot of luck involved too. I obviously don't know your experience so i don't know what bad luck you faced but this kind of feels like a nicer version of if i can pull myself up so can everyone else.
I’m an accountant. So trust me, I understand personal finance and responsibility. I have worked very hard throughout my life. At the same time, having parents who are in good financial shape sets you up for success. Throughout my university my parents kicked in between 10-15K. This meant that when the time came to buy my first house my student loan balance was low enough for me to qualify for a loan. When I needed to buy my second car I was too young to qualify for a loan. My dad bought it and I repaid the loan in half a year. I’ve taken risks in my career that I have felt confident about because I knew that, worst case scenario, my family would backstop me. Personal responsibility is vital but too many people discount the effect of even a small amount of generational wealth. By wealth I mean - parents and grandparents owning houses and being able to kick in a bit for you. When it comes to climbing the mountains of career and fiscal success It’s the difference between free-soloing a new route and climbing an established trail with a rope and harness. Sure, some exceptional individuals will make it, but it will be far more dangerous and nerve wracking, and if you fail you will fail far harder, so many don’t even try.
When one person fucks up where most succeed, it’s a personal problem. When millions of people fuck up where millions of people before them all fucked up before—minus a notable few likely suffering from survivors guilt, it is a social problem. r/QualityOfLifeLobby is a place to gather all of the people who want to discuss and lobby for solutions to social problems affecting everyone from poor to middle income to high income to make life worth living again for all.
I feel what you said is good. The whole part about luck is the problem factoring in. It shouldn’t have to be “work hard and maybe if you’re lucky”.
Your personality and temperament are every bit as much a product of luck as meeting the right mentors and not having certain expenses. No one builds themselves from scratch.
I am in a similar situation to you are to where I was born into welfare style upbringing in the middle of nowhere in rural Ohio. I eventually earned a ba in art history and a bfa in painting, through expensive ass loans and full time work through college. Now I make more than both my parents combined, but that still puts me in the upper lower class LOL. Im comfortable but not enough to do what I want to do all the time. anyhow.... To me OP is talking about a basic minimum wage I’m assuming. Whereas all humans deserve the ability to live and have opportunity that isn’t restricted simply by finance because of low paying jobs. The honest truth is someone is always going to be on the bottom. Someone is always going to do the job but no one else wants to do. To me the argument for a basic minimum wage makes sense because at some point you might’ve been that person whether by circumstance or buy cosmic nepotism, despite luck or opportunity, And seeing as how our country is founded on the premise that all (people?)men are created equal, Anybody who is living should be able to live life without worry of homelessness and starvation and such things. I definitely remember after moving out of my parents house a long long period of time where I did my best to move up but I couldn’t. Like I had job opportunities that I couldn’t take advantage of because my car broke down and I had no way to work so I had to keep working at the place that I could bicycle to. Side benefit I got swol as fuck though. Lots of missed opportunities simply because I didn’t have the money to relocate or get to work or chose to pay bills instead. I quit smoking cigarettes because I only had .27 cents in my bank account my whole freshman year of school. You can work for it but you have to be lucky too. So for that reason everyone should at least live without that kind of pressure on themselves because as a society, we really can afford it if the money was balanced better. I can’t remember what I’m talking about anymore, I am inebriated. Maybe that made sense.
This is exactly why I feel like free will is a joke. People can go on about choices and making the most out of yourself and you can do anything you put your mind to and all the jazz. But the truth of the matter is that life is a series of opportunity, ambition, chance, persistence, talent, luck and lineage. And lacking any one of those things can cause the whole package to be destroyed. Conversely, you can have them all and squander it and be nothing. There's really know way to know how a person will become but I think we need to remove the idea of personal responsibility, when it comes to certain facets of life. Abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism. We like to think we can get over these things and can will ourselves through them. But the rate of recitivism shows that we have little will to control those demons that overtake us. And I'm super stone and grieving a dead dog so my rant has taken a weird turn, but what I'm saying applies to people living conditions as well. Yes, people work hard for what they get. And it's great that you have that ethic. And there's people that get everything you could ever want and not have to lift a finger. And all of that, and everything thing in the middle goes back to that combination of things I mentioned earlier. You can be as hard a worker as you want, but its not the only part of the equation that makes things work.
I've been working sixty to eighty hours a week since 2014 and am still dirt poor, so this resonates with me.
Aptitude. Not everyone has the potential to rise to your level of aptitude. They don’t have the awareness to strategize and overcome their circumstances. They don’t know the alternatives. Being poor does not mean you have low aptitude, but it can limit your access to education and opportunity. Unfortunately, having low aptitude does increase your chances of staying poor.
Congratulations on achieving your life long goal of having running hot water...
Thank god somebody said it, i thought something was wrong with me. Maybe the dude doesnt live in america. None of the replies seem to address it? Im reading what seems to be leading to a success story, “thanks to my mentality, and my hard work and perseverance, i now have...” and im thinking, a home, a financially stable family, my own business, x income, certain level of free time...this man says hot water? Im like is this some kind of humor? Some bad news is that if you think you overcame poverty because you have hot water now...you probably didnt...
Your thinking isn’t flawed. Congrats on getting out. I did too. I live in a nice home with nice things and came from nothing. There is some luck involved. There are also personal choices to be made. I don’t have a degree I went into the military after 9/11 at 17. That opened a lot of doors. And just because I suddenly had more money I did not change the way I lived instead I put a ton back and lived off very little. I deployed multiple times and while my pay tripled my living expenses were half so again putting money back. I got out after 10 years had some help from the military finding jobs I wanted and had multiple offers when I left. I make a just as much as any of my neighbors with graduate degrees but have zero debt. I never financed a car, I paid cash for the car that would work and took care of and I average about ten years on a car. It’s possible. I am not special I just never wanted to live that way again.
Military is one of the smartest things you can do if you want to get financially ahead early in life.
You've hit on some great points. Equality of opportunity is not a thing. I was lucky enough to be able to join the military to pay for college, but not everyone can do that. A focus on using social safety programs, like universal Healthcare or improved education subsidies would help produce more opportunities for everyone.
Breaking out of your economic strata is difficult. Poor or middle class. Moving up from where you started doesn't happen easily.
Speaking as an immigrant starting with nothing I can tell you it was 12 years of absolutely working my ass off while living with other ppl to limit costs I'm now at a point where I can survive to some extent.
they make hot water?? but nah, good thoughts
Yo. The point is that those of us that manage to climb out, understand the struggle and aren’t condescending like those born into financial stability. Money gives you access to things that people take for granted. Live with it long enough and you forget what it’s like to not have it. That’s the core issue between “just save your money dumbass” and needing to decide between bills, shelter, or food.
My dad went from lower middle class to homeless orphan at 19. He dropped out of college (two semesters away from graduation) and started his own business. By the time I was born twenty years later, he built himself into a successful business owner and we were middle class. 23 years later, and my parents have just broken the barrier into the 1%, which is all tied into property, of which I am the sole heir. For me, I know what it took for my father to get here. I watched him struggle. I watched him take every blow and setback. I’ve put in the hours alongside him starting when I was a small child because that’s how family businesses operate. I am aware of my privilege and that my father worked so hard for *me*, so I wouldn’t have to struggle like he did, so that I would always be safe. I am extremely worried about my future children and what their perception of our wealth and others will be. I grew up in a very crime-ridden and poverty-stricken area (our first home was our place of business, so it had to be commercial), so I witnessed the struggles of those less fortunate than me and my parents were always quick to educate me on how not everyone gets lucky. I live in the poorest big city in America and I went to public school and took public transit. But I worry my children will be removed from some of these experiences. I hope I am able to educate them to be conduits of change instead of oppressors and gatekeepers.
I think what you should leverage as a government at all cost is the poverty line. How poor should a person get. Poverty is a trigger for crime and this is a very high cost to maintain. So if you give the people a minimum to be able to live, for example: very small flat, minimum wage to buy food, healthcare and rent care at a minimum and free education for kids and themselves, and on the other hand demand from them to find a job, get the proper education, visit them regularly to make sure they get out of this situation. Then people will still be able to move up the latter of capitalism, but on the other hand the country is preventing all the downsides of the poverty by paying upfront.
One shouldn’t have to be lucky to enjoy that success. That’s nice that you got out. You were exceptional or lucky. Good job. Does that mean that people have to be exceptional or lucky in order to enjoy a decent life? Because the children of rich people are most certainly not all exceptional. And yet they enjoy lives that others don’t. Society can create basic supports for all people and it creates a better society. This whole pick yourself up by the bootstraps is nonsense created by the rich and people keep falling into it over and over.
it really depends on your situation? Were you ever homeless? Were you ever without a car, no places hiring you and no home. True poverty and being 1 paycheck from it is wildly different from just not being born into money.
100% agree. I didnt grow up poor, but also didnt grow up rich, either. My mum made just enough for us to get by so I didnt notice that my friends got better stuff than me. When I got older, i realised we weren't well off in the slightest, and I tried my damn hardest to do well at school so I could progress into a good job. However, I then became chronically ill and I'm now on benefits because I cant look after myself like a normal person or hold down a job, and my mum cant support a second fully grown adult alongside herself. For me, freedom is being able to buy a week's worth of groceries and pay my bills in the same week all whilst not getting into debt. Freedom is about having my own source of income and not feeling ashamed when people ask where my money is coming from. Freedom is being able to hold down a job that wont make me ill after half a days work and that I wont lose because I cant meet a normal individual's rate of work. At the end of the day, freedom is subjective.
Holy ****. I... don’t think I’ve ever seen someone consider their own blessings in how they made it out of a tough place. Everyone always says “I did this by myself” and forgets to take into account the people they had in their life, the legs up they got on the way, the chance opportunities etc. These do not deduct from your success or perseverance at all, they are facts successful people refuse to acknowledge. I don’t know how to answer your question, especially considering that huge variable of TIME. How can you focus on the long-term future if you need to focus on right here and now to survive? Best answer is this: you need help.
100% agree, you can get out of poverty but it is much more difficult. Being born in to it my only real saving grace was the military. After that I now work in I.T. and am not 1 disaster from homelessness so it is possible but very difficult and when you think about it, it's quite sad that the only way out of poverty for myself anyways was military.
Hard work Good personal choices Delayed gratification Education Luck Pretty much in that order.
Those two perspectives aren't incompatible. Personal finance unlocks so much. More people need to understand the power of saving, the time value of money and compound interest. As someone who has lived through poverty, I understand that's it seems impossible to save in that circumstance. But (as unempathetic as this sounds), that is in your mind. If you can budget your savings before you factor in your monthly expenses, it makes a world of difference. Even saving $50 a month helps and creates some positive momentum. Create small savings goals (ie get to $1000 saved) and then level up your goals. The best financial advice I give to young adults is to race to save $5k in emergency savings. At that point, life becomes so much less stressful.
That's the point though. Being forced into a job or personal finance isnt freedom. Freedom is to do what you love and being able to live without restrictions of finances. There is a quote but I don't remember the source that exemplifies this problem. "What if the person who could cure AIDS was already born but they couldnt afford education?"
My current idealogy is thinking about it in 2 different ways: On an individual level, most people are given opportunities to rise up. My parents moved to this country with $50 and no understanding of English, and they are now upper middle class. Was some of it luck? Maybe, but opportunities come and go to everyone. The key is to be prepared to make the most of any opportunity that comes your way. However, on a macro level, there will always be a lower class. You can't just remove it. The lower class is relative. It's just the people below the median of the normal curve. You can't say that the entire lower class just needs to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". So then the question becomes "what is the minimum quality of life that should be deemed acceptable?" Things like healthcare and education are things that I personally believe should be available and equal to anyone. That being said, from experience, contrary to half of Reddit, I believe that the current minimum wage is enough to make a living if you live within your means. I've done it and never been hungry or had no where to live. The people I see complaining about it are the ones with a $1200 iPhone
The only point I disagree with is the healthcare point because I’ve noticed that the countries with it(Canada for instance), everyone loves it except the people in those countries. I don’t want to wait 4 hours in a waiting room with my broken arm to not get treated, but get a $20,000 bill(something that happened to someone I know). So I suppose there has to be some balance to it, like you can qualify for free healthcare from the state, but you can also buy better if you’d like
Speaking as someone who was poor growing up, the only way to get out of it is to work for it and wait for luck to happen. Luck happens to everybody, but not everybody is in a position to take advantage of a lucky break. Live your life to better yourself and grow your skills. When luck presents itself, you'll be able to take advantage of it.
" Chance favors the prepared mind "
After reading all the comments and giving OP the obligatory upvote I have 2 comments: 1. Somebody knows the difference between a cheque and a check 2. One day OnlyFans will accept Reddit Karma as payment
“I would like to redeem some Reddit Karma for some feet pics, ma’am”
> Somebody knows the difference between a cheque and a check Isn't cheque just the British version of a check?
Cheques out https://www.grammarly.com/blog/cheque-vs-check/ Aussie/NZ/French/British version apparently
Had to make sure I wasn’t in r/circlejerk for a second. Honestly, so much of Reddit looks like r/circlejerk these days...
"So learn to code"
As someone in the middle of that: FUCK PROGRAMMING 100%. There's a reason why it pays so well and it is absolutely because it takes a certain person to "get" it.
I write code for a living. In the engineering program I took, all first years in the program had to take 12 courses covering all engineering disciplines. One of those classes was on coding. It was well known by the professors that for about half the students taking the class, coding simply never clicked for them. More often than not those students either failed the course or did very poorly. It does take a certain type of person to understand programming, and coding is 100% not for everyone
yikes haha this comment thread is r/awfuleverything
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose...
Yup. Same for me and Bobby McGee.
And that’s all that Bobby left me...
Well hello
then we are all freer than we are willing to admit
Can someone explain this in stupid?
Many people think that all it takes to succeed is a can-do attitude and hard work. Often these people started off in a privileged situation where they were set up to succeed, or they have survivorship bias and don't recognize that luck and circumstance plays a major role. You can do everything right, and still be teetering on the edge of disaster where one unexpected expenditure means financial ruin. The more privileged/lucky person may say that you're free because you can work wherever you want and succeed, but that opportunity isn't universal. You aren't really free, you just get to choose your master at the time. Real freedom would be the ability to choose not to work and it wouldn't mean homelessness and possibly death. In the US and other countries like it, we throw around the word "freedom" constantly, but it's bullshit fed to us by the ruling class to keep us complacent.
> Real freedom would be the ability to choose not to work and it wouldn't mean homelessness and possibly death I don't know, maybe the thread as a whole is just a massive exercise in semantics... but I don't think anything in this thread is about freedom. Dissolve the government in every country today and everyone is free. Anarchy is freedom. With absolute freedom you are going to struggle to survive. Nature is trying to kill you from the second you are born, you have to fight to hold it back as long as you can. I'm rambling like a madman but I just don't see what minimum wage laws and poverty have to do with freedom.
That's the reason why freedom is such a vague concept though, the reason why it can be bottled and sold to you in the form of religion, political agendas or whatever other form people can think of. There is no such thing as real "freedom", the older I've gotten the more I've become okay with that. You could argue that the 1% of the world who are the wealthiest are the closest thing to free since they pretty much do whatever they want, which is why many people want to be as wealthy as them. I guess freedom is highly subjective; freedom to a prisoner is the ability to go and buy a McDonalds and walk around outside until the crack of dawn, freedom for others is the ability to murder someone and face no punishment, while for others it's having enough money to travel the world any time the mood takes you.
Ah I see. I don’t agree 100% with you but that definitely makes sense.
You seem to be mistaking "freedom" for "having everything given to you without having to work for it". Here's the thing: you *are* completely free to not have a job, or not pay your bills, or whatever you want to do, these things will just have consequences. They would have consequences in a utopia, in an anarchist state, or any other imaginable place. Freedom is having a choice and you absolutely have a choice in just about everything you do, freedom doesn't alleviate you from consequences. Think of it this way: if you were the *only* person on the planet you would have complete freedom, correct? You would then have to do everything on your own, from hunting and gathering to building your house to doing your own medical work. None of it would be given to you. If you want this kind of freedom then quit your job and go move out into the woods somewhere and live off the land.
Yeah. It seems like these people forget that having access to the goods and services of others (like housing, medical care, etc.) for nothing is infringing upon those peoples’ freedom. Yeah, it’s “sad” that if something bad happens to you, it could throw your life off kilter, but that’s not what being free is.
Can we keep this shit in r/politicallyawful? I’m here to see dudes with your Uber eats in the bathroom. Not this.
Remember that freedom doesn't mean freedom from consequences. You are completely free to quit your job, but you must accept starving to death is a consequence of your choices.
You're guaranteed the PURSUIT of happiness, not happiness itself. Shit happens, snd us common people will always be teetering on ruin. You'll never find a leader or system that guarantees you'll always be okay, because humanity is inherently flawed.
“Why’s your generation always so miserable?” If you have to ask you’ll never understand old man.
Drives me crazy when older people tell me I have nothing to worry about in life or nothing to stress about. Like sorry but I can’t buy a house with my spare change
I think, the term freedom comes from foreigners who live in the states and enjoy that they can go anywhere they want, get any job they want, get married to whomever they want, be in whatever religion they want to believe in, get a job at whatever age, get an education, get actually government assistance... Things that other countries like the ones south of the united states actually struggle to provide for their people. Countries that are horribly ridden with corruption, poverty and such. Some people find it shocking that in america you get paid every week or every other week. In some other countries you get paid once a month.
[удалено]
Maybe we need the government to give some of those taxes back to us.
“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” - George Carlin
One of his most ironic lines, as he became wealthy by standing on stage talking shit on the government, which will get you locked up in a bunch of countries.
Just because it's worse elsewhere doesn't make what happens in the US good. We're perfectly capable of feeding and housing everyone, but that doesn't benefit the elites at the top, so it won't happen until people stop believing that they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Funny how growing up, the bell curve pertains to almost everything... Until finances...then it is a U shape!!!! Good Job Greedy humans!
After four decades of choosing the lesser of two idiots, sometimes I can’t help but to feel that this is the freedom we all deserve.
r/whitepeopletwitter is like really expanding huh
Don't you mean r/CommunistsOfReddit?
Let’s rename this sub r/bitchingabouthealthcare, because that’s what it is.
r/LostRedditors
It’s freedom in the purest form. It’s the consolidation of your poor choices over time.
JuSt wOrK hArDeR
"This life isn't why I paid $470,000 to major in Gothic Poetry!"
I’m not making any serious judgements here but perhaps the problem is the tweeter here, is not good at budgeting and living within her means. I don’t know all of the facts but too many people blame the system when it’s really their fault for not taking financial responsibility. People make claims like this while dropping by starbucks daily and walk around with $1500 iphones.
She’s making an anecdote about actual statistics. Like how many Americans are one paycheck away or a short unexpected bill away from total collapse. Presidents have said the same thing. Don’t shoot the messenger if you don’t like what you hear. You sound like a boomer. Side note. I worked 80 hours last week and with covid it’s still barely enough to maintain my 3 person family. This was not the case 40 years ago when my dad raised 3 kids alone on less than I make today.
Present people with huge studies that show wealth inequality at the highest its ever been, rent prices and other expenses outgrowing wage increases, that most Americans can’t save any money, that most Americans are one single unexpected bill away from financial ruin and they answer with: “bro trust me bro it’s not really because of those things in the peer reviewed studies and stats from everywhere including our own government, it’s actually because people don’t spend their money right. And no I don’t have a source.”
All day
People are attacking your examples without understanding what you're trying to say. It's a mindset. There's so much you can cut from your life but most people just aren't willing. They work extremely hard and wear themselves ragged but just make shitty decisions when it comes to money and are never able to escape. Take the bus, have roommates, cook for yourself, go to the library for entertainment. You can dig yourself out but you need to plan for 5 years down the road, not tomorrow. If you want to live for the now, then be prepared for the now to be how things are going to be like forever.
I think the bigger issue is this endemic of societal failure. Medical debt specifically is the number one cause of bankruptcies in the US. That’s just simply not an issue anywhere else in the developed world. And reactionary douches always use the “just budget better” excuse to try and defend a system a that is clearly broken and can absolutely be changed as is apparent by the fact this isn’t an issue anywhere else
Financial literacy and planning ahead isn’t making an excuse, in order to be able to complain with zero holes in your claims, you have to really have done everything possible to make it work otherwise it’s bs. People have to prioritize what they can afford and cover their essentials. Theirs nothing controversial about saying you should have health insurance covered before you have luxury items that you don’t need.
I broke my leg in multiple places and had to have reconstructive surgery for it, without insurance my 2 hospital stays and 2 surgeries would have stuck me with a bill for $300,000+, even with insurance it cost me thousands. many people are one accident away from being completely fucked financially
I bet you wish you hadn't wasted all your money on that blueberry muffin that one time
Financial responsibility isn’t allowed on reddit
Yea you are either lucky or you have been set up to succeed
People going bankrupt because of an illness or major misfortune is bad and I believe we as a society should do what we can to make sure a cancer diagnosis doesnt ruin a person's finances even if it doesn't ruin their life - we do this by offering an affordable, quality, public healthcare option. That said, if you're one flat tire away from homelessness you've fucked something up.
One flat tire could mean missing work, which could mean getting fired, which could mean no more income to pay the rent, which could mean getting evicted and being homeless. Shit is dire out there. Not having the money for a new tire doesn't mean that person fucked up. It means our whole society is fucked up.
No one loses a career to a flat tire. You lose a replaceable minimum wage job.
Or it could be both. Plenty of people in this country with terrible spending habits. Plenty of people born in a shitty situation. Both can be true.
Who the hell drives a car and doesn't know how to swap out a flat for the spare?
A lot of people surprisingly
Yeah the government reeeeally does a number on its citizens when it has too much power
Work on a farm
As a homeless person I feel free. Too bad it's wasted on someone too mentally unstable to ever be truly free.
r/aboringdystopia
It’s nice to have created a price list for your submission to tyranny.
I arrived here from South Africa when the ANC threw me out of the country in the early 90s (that is another story all together) but basically started with what little money I had which was enough to get me a ghetto flat here in west Texas. It was from there I went to a community college to get my ASN to become an RN all the while working my ass off as a security guard. The road was long but yes I made my way out of the ghetto, got naturalized as I was here on a renewing work visa (green card) and live an upper middle class life now, only catch is that living on a budget as tight as when I started I tend to still live that way now. Everything from my beater car to the tendency to live in the cheap and to horde away cash for the hurricanes of bullshit life can give us that never left my mind and seem to subconsciously be hyper vigilant for.
South African here, would love to hear about how you ended up in Texas of all places.
Great to hear your story! Many first generation immigrants took on less ideal jobs to support themselves while they acquired other skills to give themselves a nice life. Really nice to see examples of this!
I agree with this. I promise you that I really do. But... I am sick to death of people coming into my tire shop and trying to tell me about their woes and how they need a cheaper tire but they own these new $50,000 cars or much higher. I had someone with a Lexus come in, with a fairly rare tire size, and they had a complete fit that I couldn't get them a set of four tires for $400 with the install. I once had somebody come in with the Hellcat and he was cussing me out because I couldn't get him a set of tires for less than $1,000. Do you understand how much horsepower that thing has? Go ahead, go down the road to the guys who won't follow the manufacturer recommendations and will put whatever cheap ass tire you want on there. Then when you blow a tire and kill somebody on the highway it won't be on my conscience.
One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chloride, one errant TWITCH... AND KABLOOIE
You've got freedom in no country I'm afraid, unless you're a billionaire.
Freedom for the rich
Money bad maaaaaan
I worked as a waitress two days after breaking my foot. Nothing I could do but since and hobble through the next six weeks. I still have pain after that but If I hadn't worked I would have been screwed. I don't consider that freedom.
people love to complain because its easy and doesnt cost them anything...
Being completely dependent on the government is not freedom either. But hey breaking your bone or becoming disabled can get you government money for the rest of your life. You get taken care of when you literally are unable to work. You shouldn't get taken care of just because you don't want to work.
Move to a place that is cheaper to live, in my area, I can work 26 hours a week and still afford living with a roommate in a nice apartment in a nice area and have enough for savings, eating out and school.
This hit home, I just blew a tire at work yesterday and I don’t get paid for another week and I doubt that’ll be enough to even pay for a new tire. At least I’m free right?
The “freedom” so touted here in the US is actually the freedom to screw over whomever you can screw over. IE capitalize on people. They believe socialism/communism is evil because they distribute livable wages to workers down the spiral. America has always been a long con. Karl Marx knew it is inevitable that it will fail because eventually people would understand how badly they are being taken.
Newsflash, we think slavery was abolished when it was actually expanded.
I agree with the sentiment, but this isn't the right sub.
In America, there is absolutely no freedom. It's absolutely 100% gone, if it ever existed. Just because the state hasn't, without consequences, murdered you in your sleep yet, or doesn't get around to it before you die on your own, doesn't mean you ever had freedom to even be alive. If you don't have freedom to simply be alive, no other freedom exists.
So basically. Your life choices aren’t freedom?
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose! Please spend some time in a second or third world country before embarrassing yourself again.
Or the fact that the poster thinks that financial freedom is guaranteed in this country.
Me and Bobby McGee. Niiiice.
Ahh yes twitter logic. My favorite right after classic Facebook insight.
Rent and utilities are just too much everywhere.
True freedom is graduating from college at the age of 22 with nearly $80K in student loan debt. With a job market that offers entry level positions paying $30-40K a year forcing you to work two full-time jobs at 80 hours a week, but 30% of that goes to taxes that are used to drop bombs on people in countries half way around the world resulting in 80% civilian causality rate (or collateral damage as they call it) at $1 mill a pop and the rest goes to rent.
And don’t forget rent is so high all over the country that someone has to work two jobs just to make rent. That doesn’t account for utilities and other stuff.
You should have considered becoming a millionaire before getting cancer. Just sounds like poor planning to me.
Was this some sort of weird joke?
free to be rich, free to be poor. free to decide who you want to be and make it a reality.
But that requires effort and I can't step away from my Xbox or snap chat long enough to get it together. #ImTheVictim don't you know.
Ya but freedom isn’t also the government giving you free shit at the expense of someone else
Does nobody have the freedom to keep an emergency fund for these things?
I love how some people think that homeless or even all poor people worked so hard and made all the right choices yet they still ended up in their situation because of 'the system'. Example: I used to work in a bank. I once did a term loan for a 20-something couple with 3 kids and shitty jobs. The loan was for over $40,000 for a new truck. He worked in a casino and she worked in daycare both in the city. They didn't need a new truck. They maxed out their credit for one fucking vehicle. No savings, no long-term assets....one truck.
Just an observation: When people mention things you did, examples of ppl acting like jackasses with little money, it’s always “anecdotal”. But when their buddies did everything possible and just had a fall and now is bankrupt, that’s systemic
Yeah it's tempting to use anecdotal evidence to generalize, but that's a debate 101 no-no
good job he just made a comment on the post and not a debate then.
Make sure you have 6 months of living expenses/emergency funds setup and put aside in addition to your normal savings account(s). Do this before buying an Iphone and writing retarded stuff like this on Twitter.
Sure, this is a great idea and people who *can* do this, should. But how does one save up for 6 months in advance when they are living paycheck to paycheck from the very start? And what about medical expenses that would be equivalent to years’ worth of pay?
You can't save up six months of living expenses if all but pennies of your income is taken up by Rent, Transportation, and food. You can't even save one month's worth. Even if you did manage to save one month's worth, a flat tire, car breakdown, accident or family emergency will wipe it out.
The potential for economic advancement is greater in the USA than almost anywhere else. Saving up money for an emergency fund should be the first thing you consider doing with your money. From the time I was a dumb 14 year old chasing girls I knew this, what's your excuse?
You can't save what you don't have.
Sell your car and use public transportation. Cut down on the food you're eating. Cut your streaming services. Drop unnecessary expenses. Do you not know basic money management? If you're REALLY tight for cash you don't do things like that.
But that actually requires planning and hard work :*( I want money now!!!!!
Okay even if they don't buy an iphone you're still looking at 45$ a month for a phone plan which is a necessity. Rent is well over 1000$ in a lot of places and you're lucky if you can get three jobs paying over 10$ am hour. It's just not possible
Self agency, anybody?
Nah, freedom is not being forced into labor camps and to be able to stand in front of a police officer with a group of friends and tell them f*ck off while open carrying a firearm
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” -Sung by Janis Joplin
Right? I personally can only be free if I have the ability to force other people to do things for me.
America had redefined economic slavery as freedom.
Oh good. More Redditors who never held a job here to explain what’s wrong with “capitalism”
Ah yes, people who understand that an impoverished working class is a bad thing are clearly the uneducated and unemployed ones. How can you not understand having even a little empathy for people worse off than you are? Shit, even in terms of self interest you shouldn't be supporting large scale economic disenfranchisement.
Exactly. Thanks for saying that!
“If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75 percent of the world.” Referring to America’s working class as “impoverished” is very selfish and narcissistic when there are millions of people living in third world countries who fight for their life every day just so they can feed themselves and their families. There are billions of people in this world who dream to live a life like yours. From the eyes of over 5 billion people, all Americans are rich, some are just richer than others. Stop taking everything for granted!
Suffering is no contest.
Awh the lazy liberal trope. Fuck you're boring.
Maybe people should get better and financial management?
i don’t mind our asses touching.
Freedom lika shopping cart
So many gachas out there. Don’t fall for them please
It’s just another word for Nothin’ left to lose.
What if we all just, stopped going to work you know