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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 12:11:02 GMT -5
Can't argue with that. It's always going to be tough to make the top 1% but the top 5% isn't too tough a nut for most people to crack if they really wanted to do so. Let's all take a moment to fully absorb the utter absurdity of the notion that "most people" should be in the top 5% of income earners. Just let the sheer mathematical impossibility of the notion wash over you..... While I appreciate your flair for it, I'll ask you not to be so daft. At present income rates, it takes a household income of a bit over $150k to make it into the top 5% of earners in the US. If one makes it a priority in his household, that's not too tough a nut to crack. Obviously, if everyone made that a priority, the curve would change, but we all know that automatically and don't require pedantic monologues to account for it. Anyone who has lived in this world can easily see that the long term poor are mostly either stupid, lazy or addicted to something that's not conducive to increasing their net worth, or all three.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 13:01:39 GMT -5
Anyone who has lived in this world can easily see that the long term poor are mostly either stupid, lazy or addicted to something that's not conducive to increasing their net worth, or all three. Condescending, elitist hogwash. You realize, don't you, that almost 40% of people living in poverty are CHILDREN? Yet you persist in the notion that they are poor because they are "lazy, stupid or addicted"? For shame.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 13:02:44 GMT -5
Anyone who has lived in this world can easily see that the long term poor are mostly either stupid, lazy or addicted to something that's not conducive to increasing their net worth, or all three. Condescending, elitist hogwash. You realize, don't you, that almost 40% of people living in poverty are CHILDREN? Yet you persist in the notion that they are poor because they are "lazy, stupid or addicted"? For shame. Didn't I just ask you not to be so daft?
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 13:42:09 GMT -5
"Daft" is advancing a notion that poverty is sheerly a function of laziness or addiction. For someone who admits to having very little personal contact with "poor people", you cling to these wild oversimplifications about who they are and what they experience with a telling unwillingness to consider dissenting perspectives or to look beyond your own stereotypes and to view poverty as the complex matter that it is.
There are certainly lazy, drug addicted and stupid people among the poor. There are also lazy, drug addicted people among the rich. There are many hard-working and resourceful people among the wealthy, but there are also many resourceful and hard working people among the poor.
There are a number of external factors that are well beyond the control of individuals that can severely limit their socioeconomic mobility. Family history/composition, mental illness, access to quality education, culture, etc. play big roles in the ability of people living in poverty to advance. For you to take such a monochromatic perspective regarding people that you admit not to have much contact with is a disservice and an outrage.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 13:48:34 GMT -5
Well fiddle dee dee. I've outraged you. Now I feel all sad and empty inside.
As long as we're on the path of the ridiculous, let me point out your outrageous undercounting of poor children. Since children are not economic units and, therefore, are nearly universally devoid of both income and assets I just want to express my outrage that you find only 40% of children to be poor when, in reality, it's nearly 100%.
For shame.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 14:02:59 GMT -5
Well fiddle dee dee. I've outraged you. Now I feel all sad and empty inside. As long as we're on the path of the ridiculous, let me point out your outrageous undercounting of poor children. Since children are not economic units and, therefore, are nearly universally devoid of both income and assets I just want to express my outrage that you find only 40% of children to be poor when, in reality, it's nearly 100%. For shame. I didn't claim that "40% of children are poor". I claimed that nearly 40% of people who live in poverty are children. That's an important distinction, and I hope that it eases your outrage.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 14:22:19 GMT -5
Well, now that we're getting back to what we actually wrote, let's have a look at this.
People fall prey to all sorts of bad circumstances in life and wind up living in crappy apartments on the wrong side of town. Only the lazy stupid or addicted stay there for very long.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 14:41:05 GMT -5
People fall prey to all sorts of bad circumstances in life and wind up living in crappy apartments on the wrong side of town. Only the lazy stupid or addicted stay there for very long. That's a wild overgeneralization coming from someone who openly admits to not knowing much about the subject in the first place.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 16:00:23 GMT -5
People fall prey to all sorts of bad circumstances in life and wind up living in crappy apartments on the wrong side of town. Only the lazy stupid or addicted stay there for very long. That's a wild overgeneralization coming from someone who openly admits to not knowing much about the subject in the first place. I didn't say that I don't know much about the subject. I said that I don't deal with a lot of poor people. When I do go into a house in the ghetto, they almost invariably have a huge TV and no books.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 16:14:38 GMT -5
I didn't say that I don't know much about the subject. I said that I don't deal with a lot of poor people. That doesn't stop you from judging them, though. And you casually judge the circumstances and motivations of millions of people based on that extremely limited and wholly tangential observation. I've seen "huge TV and no books" in many houses, rich and poor. It's no basis to make the kinds of sweeping, baseless generalizations that you are making.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 16:24:41 GMT -5
Sure it is. A blind man could see why the people who live in the ghetto year after year are stuck there. They're dumbasses who would rather smoke, drink and play the lotto than make a plan for success.
Ever see a rent-a-center in an upper middle class neighborhood? No. Why? Because the people who live there are too smart to pay $5k for a $2k television. Why? Because the people who live there have learned something called self discipline.
Is that universally and permanently true? Nope. People move in and out of both neighborhoods but the ones who are in the same spot year after year are there for a reason.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 16:34:16 GMT -5
Sure it is. A blind man could see why the people who live in the ghetto year after year are stuck there. They're dumbasses who would rather smoke, drink and play the lotto than make a plan for success. You keep repeating it, but it doesn't make it more true. and it is astonishing that you can't see the abject snobbery of calling all people that live in neighborhoods that you see as somehow less affluent than your own as "dumbasses". Again, there are poor people that do indeed make unwise financial decisions - often at the urging of more well-off people who will benefit from those unwise decisions. So now that you've identified this as a problem, do you think that we should limit the degree to which rent-a-centers, check-cashing joints and other predatory businesses are able to exploit the fact that some people do not have high levels of financial literacy? Or are you content just claiming that people who have less than you have are all "stupid", "dumbasses" and "undisciplined" - while looking the other way when unscrupulous people take advantage of that fact and aggravate the cycles of poverty? It's disingenuous to say in one breath that it's "not your problem" and then turn around and bitch and moan about "freeloaders" who are somehow "taking your money". Or several reasons. But there are many more reasons than the cherry-picked ones that you have chosen to focus on, and those reasons do not rely on the assumption that poor people are lazy, stupid, addicted and otherwise flawed individuals.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 17:34:26 GMT -5
I think you've got that backwards. The hock shops are in the ghetto because that's where the market is, not the other way around. If your version were true, we could just open libraries and technical schools to make prosperity abound.
Perhaps instead we could look at why people need these services by examining the fee schedules employed by banks to discourage small depositors. Personally, I would rather let the market work it out but if you want to limit predatory lending you need to look at the big boys as well as the small.
I didn't do either of those things. I'm a fan of a good number of the social assistance programs that are in place. I think that they're managed fantastically poorly, but the theory is sound.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 4, 2012 17:45:09 GMT -5
The hock shops are in the ghetto because that's where the market is. The market for exploiting people who have low levels of financial security and low levels of financial literacy. Do you think that this is appropriate or do you think that it has a high probability of exacerbating the problems that already exist? Agreed. Low-income populations are poorly served by the traditional banking sector, which creates the conditions in which loan sharks, payday vultures and other unsavory types swoop in to take advantage. This kind of dynamic erodes a community's social and economic infrastructure and reinforces patterns of poverty. Yet another reason why poverty is often described by informed observers as a "cycle" - and not the result of a moral failing by poor individuals.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 4, 2012 19:47:51 GMT -5
I would say that a properly regulated second tier financial industry is vastly preferable to the ad hoc criminal based lending institutions that would thrive in it's absence.
If there's a cycle to poverty, the primary cause is that stupid people quickly breed more stupid people. The smart ones always figure out that starting a new generation every 15 years and spending their already limited funds on lottery tickets is a losing proposition. When they figure that out, they also learn that the door to the rest of the world is standing wide open waiting for them to walk through it.
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Post by elgusano on Mar 5, 2012 1:29:30 GMT -5
But it takes so much effort! It's just not fair!
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Post by duke on Mar 5, 2012 9:36:12 GMT -5
But it takes so much effort! It's just not fair! Not really unfair until the vipers realize that Johnny and Jane Doe will simply never have the intelligence to exit underprivileged class because mommy and daddy were drunk when the kids were conceived and perhaps often during gestation. The child's body and mental foundation that was laid was more like styrofoam than concrete through no fault of their own.
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Post by elgusano on Mar 5, 2012 11:06:49 GMT -5
And that justifies incentives to lack of effort in what way?
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Post by Sgt K USMC on Mar 5, 2012 11:09:18 GMT -5
I mostly agree with you on this one Fredo.
Mostly...
But I did work in a number of Rent-A-Centers across the country... (as well as Rent Way and Colortime, etc…)
3 of the 5 I was assigned to were in upper middle class neighborhoods.
One of our best customers was Garth Brookes in fact.
I'd characterize your assessment of the 'terminally poor' as pretty much dead on, also mainly because of my time in rent to own. I have seen just how far people will go to have that big screen in spite of having starving kids and human filth covering every surface of their home, people that would rather pay for a pimped out living room than electricity, food or water… people that have more bugs in their home than there are people in Calcutta.
However there are a number of people who are legitimately poor due to circumstances beyond their control… believe it or not, they do exist.
A good group to highlight on this are disabled vets. The VA does not make any of us millionaires, barely take care of our medical issues (to the point of under treatment or lack of treatment) and because we generally cannot get insurance from private companies are required to either pay out of pocket or go through state agencies.
This is of course a small minority… the disabled… But it is a statistical group that bears keeping in mind, that should not be lumped in with the rest of those who have the means but lack the desire to improve themselves.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 5, 2012 11:17:11 GMT -5
I think it goes without saying that we would exclude the mentally or physically handicapped from the standards that we apply to the able bodied. To a degree, we could also exclude the elderly in most cases.
A person who's been a good saver can always get swindled or fall on bad times late in life and lack the necessary time to make it up,but those are exceptions to a rule that's generally true. I worked in a pawn shop many years ago, so I've seen how that tribe lives and it's utter stupidity to think that they're somehow being kept down by anyone but themselves.
That said, about one person in 50 uses that particular service because it's the only credit available to them. If you need 50 bucks until the end of the week and you have no other resources, what else can you do? It's a heck of a lot better deal than getting it from Vinnie down at the pool hall.
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Post by Sgt K USMC on Mar 5, 2012 11:25:06 GMT -5
Indeed… I mentioned all of this because while it's obvious that this group should be considered… you tend to not do so when characterizing the poor. Consider it a reminder that some of us are poor biased on things we can't control. Of course the flip side to that is the argument (logical one too) that in fact we very well could have avoided our circumstances by simply not joining the military, or getting old… That being said… Small price to pay, still worth it.
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Post by Fredo on Mar 5, 2012 11:43:54 GMT -5
The one trait that truly separates the successful person from the rest, even more than raw intelligence, is the ability to delay gratification.
People who can wait to fulfill their desires need not make a substantial income to prosper. When work was plentiful, nearly everyone who works for me had a nicer truck than mine. Today, all those trucks are gone and they're carpooling. What do you see when you drive through the ghetto? Brand new cars in every second driveway. It's that kind of stuff that adds up over the course of a lifetime.
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Post by vimeiro on Mar 5, 2012 11:47:53 GMT -5
So if we exclude the 36% of people living in poverty who are children, along with the elderly, the "mentally and physically handicapped" and disabled vets, we are looking at a very healthy percentage if not a solid majority of the poor for whom it would be inappropriate if not prohibitively unfair to characterize as "lazy, stupid or addicted".
It's amazing how quickly base overgeneralizations and condescending stereotypes utterly melt away when when subjected to even the most basic degree of critical rigor.
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Post by Sgt K USMC on Mar 5, 2012 19:55:33 GMT -5
The one trait that truly separates the successful person from the rest, even more than raw intelligence, is the ability to delay gratification. People who can wait to fulfill their desires need not make a substantial income to prosper. When work was plentiful, nearly everyone who works for me had a nicer truck than mine. Today, all those trucks are gone and they're carpooling. What do you see when you drive through the ghetto? Brand new cars in every second driveway. It's that kind of stuff that adds up over the course of a lifetime. Sadly this too is true. Guess I am lucky in this. I like firearms, so I save up for them. I like Terminator... So I saved up for my Terminator stuff... When working in Rent to own it was not uncommon to go into a neighborhood full of expensive cars to drop off a big screen... That just so happened to be section 8 or had no food in the fridge.
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Post by duke on Mar 5, 2012 20:36:56 GMT -5
I seen the same thing Sarge. Almost everyone detests hogs. I just don't like to see every person that is affluent viewing an address as the end all discussion point for reasons a person is living at that address. Just because some abuse the system is not reason to kill a concept.
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