How does it feel to be poor?

Oniw17 said:
I'm financially independent.
Ya right.
Typical slave mentality.


Oniw17 said:
So..he's better than you financially....you make no effort to change it....and name calling
What are you talking about?
The point is to make change. I don't seen you offering solutions. You probably are not even aware that this is a problem.


Oniw17 said:
Seems fair.
Seems moronic.



Oniw17 said:
You are psychologically weak
Weak and strong. How many dozens of times have I heard this one.
Explain yourself. What exactly would be your solution?


Oniw17 said:
Until you do, things will stay as they are
Who cares. It doesn't change the points at hand.
 
Oniw17 said:
How's that? Your life is your own responsibility
If that is so, I suggest you go live in the jungle away from the institution because obviously it is not anybody's responsibility to protect your rights and liveleyhood.
So you go right ahead and be responsible for yoursef.
 
TruthSeeker said:
Well...... if you can help other people, why not?

I see the problem of poverty as an interesting challenge. It's like a huge complex puzzle. It looks interesting to me to try to solve it, and I see that if I try I might gain quite a bit of wisdom and character. So... why not?
The difference between intellects and untillects are that intellects understand that every problem can be solved.
 
cool skill said:
Ya right.
Typical slave mentality.
Slave mentality that without a job, sitting on my ass all day, at 15 years old, I make my own money? Go back to your perfect world where everything is handed to you.



What are you talking about?
The point is to make change. I don't seen you offering solutions. You probably are not even aware that this is a problem.
Solution: Get off your ass and work. There's many well-paying jobs that you can get without ever having a high school diploma. Go do cable, carpentry, construction drywall or any type of peice work self-employed, you can make $100,000 a year easy. Start up a dallar store from your house, I'll give you the website if you want. I don't know poverty is a problem? I've never lived outside of public housing in my WHOLE life. So, again, SHUT THE FUCK UP! By your mentality, you've either never been poor, or you stayed in your house, homeschooled for your whole life, sheltered from all the other kids making fun of you because you wore the same clothes 3 days in a row. You have no discipline, you deserve to to die.
Seems moronic.
Moronic that everyone gets what they earn? That is the essence of fairness.
Weak and strong. How many dozens of times have I heard this one.
Explain yourself. What exactly would be your solution?
If you had any discipline, you wouldn't be such a slacker, and you would go get a job. Be smart with you job decisions and work hard, invest in real estate. Buy a few gas stations, corner stores, and work your way up. It's not impossible, it's not even hard. By the way, at the beginning of the thread I gave a similar solution, so stop complaining that no one else is solving YOUR problems.
[/quote]Who cares. It doesn't change the points at hand.[/QUOTE]
That? The only people who really have it that bad in America are people who are here illegally. Somehow, even they tend to overcome their problems. So go back into your perfect world where everyone gives ou everything, and you don't do anything in return.
 
cool skill said:
If that is so, I suggest you go live in the jungle away from the institution because obviously it is not anybody's responsibility to protect your rights and liveleyhood.
So you go right ahead and be responsible for yoursef.
Part of living in society is that you have to contribute to society. If you don't want to, you can always go live in the jungle where you don't have to contribute to anything, or stop compaining that you don't contribute to anything and get money for not doing it.
 
TruthSeeker said:
Well...... if you can help other people, why not?

I see the problem of poverty as an interesting challenge. It's like a huge complex puzzle. It looks interesting to me to try to solve it, and I see that if I try I might gain quite a bit of wisdom and character. So... why not?
Certainly there is no obvious reason why not. But the lack of a reason not to do it is not the same thing as the responsibility to. In this world, you have the right to be selfish, for better or worse. And besides, without the option to keep your earnings for yourself, would giving them away really be anything so special? No one is applauded for paying income tax, and yet the money we compulsively give to the government is used to subsidize the poor. How come we don't regard it as philanthropy?

And let's not forget that the greatest compulsive (and voluntary!) philanthropists in the world are also the wealthiest. It shouldn't surprise you. Material affluence doesn't make you any less of a human. And as humans, we all generally tend to care most about ourselves, our families, our friends, and then others; and that is also the order in which we appropriate our funds. If you have very little money, you are going to keep the majority of it for yourself to ensure your own survival; and if you have a great abundance of money, you are still going to keep the majority of it for yourself. Such behavior is merely human. The difference is, if you have a great abundance of disposable income, you are more likely to send a large portion of it off to strangers less well off than yourself.

It is easy to criticize world culture. Western society is extremely capitalistic, so much as to even encourage selfishness. It is a new development for humanity to think of selfishness as a virtue, and it is probably not a very good one at that. But spending your life lamenting this condition will do nothing to change it. Ideals be damned; this is the current way of things. Nature and culture have made it so. The most useful question to ask is what can be done with the world we've been given.

Now, if you haven't got many material possessions, you can bitch about how little you've got. You can look at the wealthy with anger and jealousy because they have what you want. But such concern for the private affairs of others is a waste of time. Hating the rich won't put food on the table. It can only corrode your character, turning you into a bitter, spiteful human being whose use to the world has long since left him because he has been consumed in his own envious rage. You can act as cool skill acts here, justifying what you see as material inadequacy by laying the blame on everyone except yourself, rationalizing your point of view with classism, victimizing others beside just you. But wouldn't it be much healthier to decide what kind of material luxury you want, and then set out to achieve it? Anyone with the will and determination to live comfortably can. And anyone who has no such desire need not feel like he must compete with those who do.
 
It is important to remember that about 80% of financially successfully people did not plan for what they got, but they got there by luck. Its more like being at the right place at the right time, just ask any millionaire you know. In the American movie "Down and out in Beverly hills", remember what the rich man said to the homeless man? "Did you think I planned on making it in the hanger business?" LOL
 
Oniw17 said:
Solution: Get off your ass and work.
That is not a solution.
Are you even aware of the poverty existing all over the planet?
I have provided proper paradigms and methods towards solving the proble.

All you can think about is getting a job and being a slave. You claim to be working as if it such a great thing. You are nothing more than a pathetic servant for the rich.

You act like it is such a great thing that you have to put in time and labor just so you can have money with their faces on it, and no control whatsoever of anything.
You do not control your life. As long as you are dependent on your master, it is your master that is in control.
 
Oniw17 said:
Part of living in society is that you have to contribute to society.
You do not have to contribute to anything.
That is not freedom.
There is no law anywhere that says you have to contribute unless you are in a communist oppressive regime.
What the hell is your prob?

Feedom means that no individual is obligated to anything. You are certainly not contrinuting anything with your nazi mentality.
 
baumgarten said:
But wouldn't it be much healthier to decide what kind of material luxury you want, and then set out to achieve it?
No it wouldn't. Nor is it the issue.
 
TruthSeeker said:
What is it, then? Standard of living?
Yes, that's one way to label an aspect of the problem. But the solution isn't money or even earning capacity. The US throws lots of money at various social problems, yet they never seem to get much better. The primary factor here seems to me to be an issue of coordination and distribution. Government spending, particularly at a federal level, is the epitome of inefficiency. The right type of assistance rarely meets the need it's attempting to address and it almost never is designed to motivate behavior that would actually eliminate the problem.

Not, it doesn't solve it, but it improves the situation. Besides, mansions are just a little part of the problem.

It's purely subjective. The land around here is ridiculously expensive. The houses are too. A little 1 bedroom house here cost over $100,000, and this place is just as good as many many others accross the planet. So why is it so expensive?
There are number of ways to look at value. We tend to think of the price of something when we think about value but for our purpose here what we really need to focus on here is functional value, not market value.

In terms of functional value a 20,000 sqft apartment building is far more valuable than a 20,000 sqft mansion on the gold coast, yet such a mansion will have a market price many times greater due to the demand for its location and the construction materials. It's the market price that skews the perception that a mansion squanders resources.

The functional reality is that it is not nearly as disproportionate as it appears and that the difference between functional value and market value actually works to put capital back into circulation where it can benefit everyone. In short, it's good that the rich squander their money, buying big mansions on expensive property and fill them with accessories that are functionally equivalent but incredibly more expensive because it moves the money "downstream" to the builders constructing the foyer, the carpenters building the walk in closet, and the workers who made the gold-plated toilet.


Conversely, one of the things we need to work on is to get the poor, lower middle, and middle class to save and properly manage their resources, to be more astute in their use of what they do have. And to give CS a point, education is key here. One of the primary differences between the rich and the poor (and even the lower and middle classes) is that they perceive and manage their resources very differently.

You can see this evinced in those who become right through talent and fame rather that through financial acumen. How often do you hear about the musician, actor, or athlete who 15 years after the peak of their career has nothing left? How is it that someone who once earned 5 or 50 million becomes broke!?! The answer is that they never were educated about finance. They never learned how to make their resources work for them, instead they merely spent what they had, and they never invested it. 5 - 10 million becomes nothing at all if it's not properly managed. Clearly, cash is not the issue.

This goes for those who never have and never will earn 5 million. Every able bodied and minded person on the planet has resources they can use, and can reap great benefit from if they use them wisely. A quick example; throughout much of my life my family and I have kept a vegetable garden. We had fresh produce, picked and eaten when it was truly ripe or canned for the wintertime at the cost of maybe $20 worth of seeds, some time and effort, and some canning supplies. It saved us hundreds of dollars a year in grocery bills, not to mention that the food tasted better and lasted longer.


The same thing goes for every aspect of your knowledge, time, talent, and energy. You have to think ahead, you have to plan, and you have to understand the costs, risks, and benefits.

How many poor people rent an apartment instead of getting an FHA loan and purchasing their own home or condo? How many people really understand the financial consequences of renting vs owning? How many people buy Nike and Reebok instead of Kennys? How many eat BigMacs instead of red beans and rice? How many farmers attempt to go it alone instead of forming cooperatives? How many understand economies of scale or how they can invest in the commodities market to reduce their risk? How many of those complaining about high energy prices have invested in the energy market to offset their expenses?

It's not difficult to become prosperous but you have to focus your energy and resources. You have to educate yourself. And you have to act wisely. Depending... nay demanding that it be done for you is the height of stupidity. If you had the choice would Social Security be a wise investment choice? Or are we throwing good money after bad?


I'm not saying there shouldn't be a safety net or that we shouldn't care for those who cannot care for themselves. Nor am I saying that there aren't improvements to be made or wrongs to be righted. But are malaise, apathy, juvenile rebellion, and attitudes of entitlement things we can really afford or even wish to sponsor? Or do people need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, their family, their neighbors, their countries, our species, and our world?

Instead of bitching and moaning about the inequities in the world, the capitalist economy, the filthy rich, the poor, the hungry, the homeless, your salary, crime, whatever... instead of drawing up grandiose schemes of worldwide utopia that lack any semblance of problem solving or realism... I suggest getting up actually doing something. Because some of us are out here in the real world, working, and we sure as shit could use the help.

Okay... enough ranting for the moment. It's already longer than anyone will read. :)

~Raithere
 
Raithere said:
The US throws lots of money at various social problems, yet they never seem to get much better. The primary factor here seems to me to be an issue of coordination and distribution.
Close but not close enough.
The US government is using a quick fix strategy and various coping solutions.
The problem is that they all revolve around the current primitive system.
The root of the issue is that the system is screwed up from the ground up.
 
Raithere said:
The functional reality is that it is not nearly as disproportionate as it appears and that the difference between functional value and market value actually works to put capital back into circulation where it can benefit everyone. In short, it's good that the rich squander their money, buying big mansions on expensive property and fill them with accessories that are functionally equivalent but incredibly more expensive because it moves the money "downstream" to the builders constructing the foyer, the carpenters building the walk in closet, and the workers who made the gold-plated toilet.
WRONG.


Raithere said:
Clearly, cash is not the issue.
Rgiht. Education is one of the most important factors as well as simple amenities that are not difficult whatsoever for every single person to have access to.
You can give all the amenities you want to the public. Without providing proper education and facilities for mental/hpysical wellness, the masses will likely run acmuck, and eventually destroy everything including themselves, eachother, and earth.
Hmm that is what the masses are doing now. Wow! Thanks capitalism!
 
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cool skill said:
Close but not close enough.
The US government is using a quick fix strategy and various coping solutions.
The problem is that they all revolve around the current primitive system.
The root of the issue is that the system is screwed up from the ground up.
Actually the main problem is that most programs are designed to make sure the voters notice them rather than to actually solve the problem. Appealing to lobbies and special interests is a great way to get votes.

Then tell me how you think a more advanced system would work. Give me details not just more blather about what it will or should do. If we going to make any progress we have to figure out how to do it. Convince me.

~Raithere
 
Raithere said:
Because some of us are out here in the real world, working, and we sure as shit could use the help.
Screw those idiots.
How does it feel to be working all the bleeding time really?
Keep your ass laboring so you can make ends meet to put food on your family's table. Is this the lives we want for our society. Not I. Not a single child or adult need ever be without. No single child or adult should be busting their butts just to make ends meet. We have the technology and capacity to prevent this kind of crap.

As for entitlement. All humans have equal entitlement.
 
Raithere said:
Actually the main problem is that most programs are designed to make sure the voters notice them rather than to actually solve the problem. Appealing to lobbies and special interests is a great way to get votes.

Then tell me how you think a more advanced system would work. Give me details not just more blather about it will or should do. If we going to make any progress we have to figure out how to do it. Convince me.
I have given tons of examples on what a proper system is. Many examples are in every single post.

Convince you what?
That the system is shit?
That we have the technology and capacity to create a true first world civilization?
That stew p diddyots who make comments about idealism and utopia in a negative connotation is the single main indisputable root of all that perpetuates our current paradigm of ignorance and the state of our screwed up society?

I have made many inquiries trying to figure out which idiot started all these false paradigms about 'human nature' fallacies, 'idealism is bad and im just being realistic' fallacies, 'utopia misdirection' fallacies, 'there will always be X' fallacy.


As for the getting votes, it has no relevance.
I already stated that the system was screwed up from the ground up. What makes you think that getting votes is not the same thing as partaking in the completely flawed system as stated in:
"The US government is using a quick fix strategy and various coping solutions.
The problem is that they all revolve around the current primitive system."
 
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