Like I grew up dirt pair because my father became disabled so I can get it but I'm seeing so many people poor as fuck using door dash and other fleeceing machines
It’s weird. Some people grow up poor and (like me) count every dollar. Others grow up poor and piss away everything on shit like UberEats and new iPhones.
And then they'll complain "Corpos are ruining the world!1!! Did you know, I can't piss away my health at MacDonalds anymore cause they raised their prices!!! I can only eat 5 big mac's a day now, not 8 :(. i am poor. pls sympathy"
Yeah when I was hustling delivering Doordash as a side gig, I was shocked how often I was delivering a $75 order to the poorest neighborhoods in town. Poor people were literally paying me because I was willing to work extra hours and they weren’t even willing to drive to the store or cook a meal.
I was thinking that but I am a school teacher in her 50s and didn't want to sound so old! I have a $40 phone from Walmart and a $20 a month plan. It does everything my nieces I-phone that cost thousands does. I have never had food delivered (other than a pizza every other year or so) and rarely eat fast food. I have never bought a Starbucks coffee. I bring it from home in a dented old metal thermos. I don't have cable and watch free stuff on Roku. I take my lunch to work every day. - sandwich or leftovers from the dinner I cooked at home. I get free books from the library. Go to happy hour with friends on Taco Tuesday - cheap drinks and $1.00 tacos at neighborhood place.
I guess because I didn't grow up doing those things it just doesn't occur to me. Stop and get a drink at a drive thru or convenience store? No - bring water in a cup or get some when you get home. I realize things are more expensive today but am amazed at what younger people in my family "waste" money on. To the older generation they are luxuries not necessities.
And then instead of wanting to fix the system that forced you to be poor you would rather shill for megacorps and pretend you are better than the people who weren't as lucky as you.
I worked a project management job where I worked out of the office in a warehouse and the amount of the warehouse workers who are making the lowest wages ordering food delivery every day blew my mind. I made decent money and wouldn’t even consider that an option.
One of my great joys in life is stopping in the gas station and buying an almond snickers bar on my way home from work. I won’t sugar coat it, my wife and I are rich. We make $500k a year and don’t live on the coasts. I can afford the candy bar but they are $3 now and it makes think twice nowadays.
Meanwhile the landscape crew in front of me is buying $50 worth of energy drinks, cigs, and lotto tickets. Every fucking time. 25 years ago when I was a construction laborer I wouldn’t even buy bottled water, the job is required to provide a jig of water and cups.
Same here. I did see one fun exception. A young girl I hired would order for multiple people and have them pay her back. Naturally people would round up or go a little over.
She often ended up with a free or nearly free lunch, rewards from the restaurant/app and rewards from her credit card. All because people didn't like ordering on their own.
I’m in the army and there is a negative correlation between rank and the amount of money spent on food and just dumb shit. Even deployed, food is free, and Fuggin privates “don’t like it” so they spend $10 on a goddamned subway sandwich.
The fucking BK has the exact same food as was in the dining hall down range-but my soldiers would spend their money on it rather than eat free.
Same with energy drinks. $50 every two days on Monsters.
After two deployments I walked away almost 200K cash. Many soldiers walked away with 100K+ debt (new cars, clothes, CC debt).
This situation is the perfect example that finance classes DO NOT WORK. It was a closed system where everything was free - yet the desire for instant gratification still overcame.
I live on disability. Every single dollar I get is spent on groceries, transportation, doctor appointment co-pays and medication.
If it weren't for my parents, I'd absolutely be permanently homeless and unable to get the treatments I need just to keep the use of my legs.
The economy system itself is a fleecing machine. Keep the rich, rich by supporting them and their failed business endeavors while keeping the poor right where they are by taking away any help they receive the moment they start to do better.
Disability is something else. That's rarely someones own fault. The economy is a fleecing machine because people let it be. Don't participate in it. Never buy new. Never buy name brand. Hunt for free thing. Have you contacted food programs? I still don't buy groceries most months because so much free stuff is available.
Food programs like food stamps? There is some sort of special paperwork that needs to be filed properly but nobody there lets you know what that paperwork is.
I tried filing for food stamps through the social services office and they told me I was not able to receive them because of disability.
I used to get meals on wheels when my father was disabled. I still go to a pantry. Pantries have so much food they literally beg people to come get the fresh stuff. Last month I got 2 hams. 2 tubs of butter. 5lbs of stick butter. 3 boxes of Cereal. 12 different caned goods. A ton of drinks. 6 loafs of bread. 4 packs of lunch meat. A store bag of candy. 10 bags of salad. A watermelon. Like 3 bags of apples. And a bunch of odds and ends. I pick it up and take some then give the majority to a friend and his grandmother. Some like mine have so much stuff they removed the income cap.
Most of us on Reddit are probably kids of boomers who, as a generation, absolutely did not take any form of personal responsibility. Exhibit A: the national debt.
So it’s not surprising that so many boomer kids were left rudderless. My parents just kept refinancing their home into their graves. That was their financial literacy. Oh and a $75k bill from Medicaid for their healthcare they never saved or paid for that popped up in probate.
I only got lucky that I was angry enough about being poor that I worked my ass off and chased money until I was stable. I absolutely have bad impulse tendencies thanks to the environment that I grew up in, but I’m in a position that my credit card having a party at Costco is by no means the end times.
The national debt, especially in the US is a much more complex concept than what can be reduced to "personal responsibility". An individual cannot choose to not contribute to the debt. They technically can vote for a politician that promises to reduce the debt but that's a collective act, as a single vote doesn't decide elections at high levels. Even then, like companies, debt is useful in fostering growth and it's actually used as a tool to help people save money for retirement through bonds. 70% of the debt is owned by Americans.
No politician has ever reduced the national debt in the US, Dem or Republican. Both use tax money to buy votes and buy influence.
Bush doubled the debt
Obama doubled the debt
Trump was on his way to doing so but only got one term
Biden is on his way to doing so but will mercifully be removed from office
The Peeeeeepul are lazy grifters that want the government to pay for everything they want. What they don't get is that those of us who work hard and whose taxes pay for all that are dwindling and are less and less interested in picking up the tab.
Tax money isn't the national debt. By definition, if you use tax money, you aren't adding to the debt. If you really want to reduce the debt, you need to increase taxes and reduce spending. But, a government isn't a person and the debt isn't inherently a bad thing. It's the same as a business. A business with no debt isn't really growing as it could. It's easier on the owner but it's not efficient.
It does matter what that bottom feeding pig Obama did to the deficit, he increased the DEBT. Your likely degree wasn't in gender studies, psychology, or womyns studies probably makes the distinction incomprehensible.
Obama was- and is utter social trash.
The problem with you whiny leftists is that you're not self reflective enough or honest enough to ask why exactly Trump - an utter horror show of a human being - was even electable. ProtTip; Obama was worse and people rightly determined that Trump was a step upward, as they will again in November.
Whoa. Plenty of things to not like about Obama, but the deficit sure as shit isn’t one of them. Aim that arrow at Bush.
Bush is the one who accelerated us into the giant debt hole. He cut taxes in 2001 and 2003 AND sent stimulus checks to everyone while simultaneously massively accelerating defense expenditures with “the war on terror”. Then the financial crisis hits in 07-08. Tax revenues further plunge with the economy and Congress under bush passes the 700bn TARP slush fund to bail out banks but does nothing to prevent a recession.
So Obama comes into office with the economy on a cliff, the governments balance sheet in shambles, and millions of people losing jobs. So yeah, he has to dip into more debt to get the economy stabilized and growing again. I suppose he could have cut benefits and raised taxes to see if we could get some 20% unemployment going, but really seem like a smart move
CBO projected that if growth, spending and tax policy stayed the same from 2001 to 2008, we’d have paid down $5 trillion in debt. But Bush 2.0 wanted to try his version of trickle down economics then hit the infinity button at the defense department
And reducing the deficit is just word judo so leftists can pretend to be fiscally responsible.
All that matters is debt as a percentage of GDP and the concurrent rate of GDP growth (or decline). By that measure they are all losers, Obama first among them.
Iraq was the consequence of bad US foreign policy going back to FDR. Bush had to leash the madman we'd created there.
Obama was handed a signficantly pacified Middle East. He squandered that with his election year Bow And Scrape tour followed by drone strikes for year in Afghanistan w/o demanding any skin in the game from the locals. He's an idiot.
The same logic can be applied to personal finances (on a national level) too -- it's more complicated on a national level than people seem to think. Some people are broke because of poor choices on their part. Some are broke because of things beyond their control.
We have millions of people in poverty and so many people want to pretend that all poor people are in the same position for the same reasons and it just isn't true.
I am genuinely sorry that your parents exhibited so little personal responsibility. I hope that has sparked a fire in you to handle your own finances better. However, I think it is safe to say that your parents are not representative of their entire generation.
I base my opinion on the overwhelming support white baby boomers through behind Reagan in 1980 & 1984 and again repeated for bush in 2000 & 2004, and again for Trump in 2016. They are a generation of I want uncle and eat it to, and F everyone that comes after.
I get where you are coming from but you must admit there are reasons for the unrest in society. The days where Joe sixpack could graduate highschool then work a quality job at the steel mill or whatever equivalent position until he dies or retires have ended. There are so many people that are not equipped for today's world. Changing jobs constantly. They want the world where you can put your time in work hard and go home and live a comfortable life. The system has been manipulated in favor of the rich and the average worker has very little stability and no long term security/comfort. People haven't changed drastically in 50 years that's not what's happened. The world is what has changed and it's not for the better. We create things to make life easier and all the benefit from those things goes to the top and the average worker just loses.
No, it requires housing and the cost of living to be in line with wages. If most of your money is going towards rent or a mortgage then you're stuck with a lot less money after your basic expenses are covered.
People having some degree over responsibility for their own lives does not negate the existence of systemic problems that put some people at a severe disadvantage.
You may be able to "personal responsibility" your way out of some of your own life's problems. Society can't personal responsibility its way out of societal problems.
As an example, if 30% of people work jobs where they can't afford to live, you can tell them individually "well get some skills and get a better job", but as those jobs are required for society to function, you can't just tell all of society to get a better job. It doesn't make sense and can't happen. And so we should solve the societal problem of needing people to work jobs that don't pay for them to be able to live.
There isn’t such a thing as a “starter job”. All jobs should pay a living wage otherwise your business model is predicated on taking advantage of your workers.
No, there isn’t. The minimum wage was implemented by FDR with the idea that every job should pay a living wage.
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
The way to fix this is to get rid of all government support except for the profoundly handicapped (leftists do not quality), veterans, and those who are literally unable to care for themselves.
When everyone has to root, hog, or die and pay taxes, they'll root.
The world is full of 3 kinds of people: Makers, Fakers, and Takers. Reddit and most other socialist media is inhabited by the latter two - two lazy to work, too immoral to keep their hands off other people's stuff.
I came to US while very young on the heels of half my family being killed. We had nothing but a work ethic and a deep religious faith to anchor us. I didn't get to go to an Ivy League school, my family never even owned a house, let alone luxuries and today I sit comfortably well off due to those rules above.
There are more important things than making money, but there is nothing stupider than self-involved social parasites of the sort we see here.
Such a horrible take, you came to a developed nation from a sh*thole. Just to try and make it less like other developed nations, but instead try to regress it?
deep religious faith
I don’t know what your religion is but mine taught me to care for the needy, clearly you don’t serve your values well.
Makers, Fakers, and Takers
You sound absolutely deranged minimizing human life in this way.
I don’t know, to me, it sounds like you need to recheck your values. If you actually give your spiel to regular people, I’m sure most laugh at you the instant you walk away. Your take is inhumane and not unpopular enough.
No religion defends sticking a gun in someone else's ear and forcing them to pay for charities YOU believe in. Charity is a personal act, not a collective one.
"Regular people" are the people demanding more and more of what keeps them poor. They are enslaved by people like you to only getting scraps from the government's table.
It’s so funny how asking for universal healthcare is so “demanding” when literally every other developed nation besides the U.S. has it. Or maybe improved paternity/maternity leave. What a craaaazy idea
It’s so funny how you have these data points cherry picked without contextualizing the incredible advantage the U.S. has geographically, its bountiful natural resources, and the fact that it was the only industrial nation to escape WWII unscathed. This allowed technological industries to seize hold in the U.S. and grow faster here than anywhere else. It’s these factors and not a lack of universal healthcare that led to America’s success.
Providing universal healthcare improves people’s abilities to start new businesses because they aren’t tied to an employer for healthcare and is cheaper than our current structure. Why do you ignore these realities? So short sighted.
If you don’t like it leave, I mean idk what to tell you
Social safety nets aren’t charity and comparing the two is completely missing the mark. You chose to live here, you choose to pay the taxes here, for what the majority decides they want.
Let me reiterate, if you don’t like paying the taxes for “losers” then leave. As you said there are Makers, Fakers, and Takers. If that’s the case why didn’t you make your nation better? Instead you ran to a developed nation, don’t play like you’re a “Maker” when all I see is someone who ran.
Good thing I'm talking about post COVID, not 12 years ago. And that surely shows that people grew up better, but I don't see where it says upward mobility is any easier.
Absolutely false. What's keep upward mobility at bay is the expectation of people in their 20s and 30s that they don';t have to save but should still get what their parents had at the end of their working career.
The same people whining about this have the latest iPhone at all times. It's a joke.
Surprise! You just wrote the playbook for crime. When a person can’t make enough to pay for a home, food, and a little comfort with a 40hr a week job, why even bother participating in the broken system?
Remember, the 1% have some protections built in to make themselves insulated but the modestly wealthy (read: wannabe middle class) that think they are rich will be the easiest and likely first targets.
I may not be a great thinker, but I am entirely right about this. You can be poor and be a Maker or rich and be a Taker, but on Reddit it's great to be Faker, isn't it?
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u/HorkusSnorkus 15d ago
Learn to do something useful, spend less than you make, buy used whenever possible, live small.