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There will always be people who are poorer than others, but there’s nothing prohibiting poor people from working their way up the ladder beside government regul
by dreta 10y ago
There will always be people who are poorer than others, but there’s nothing prohibiting poor people from working their way up the ladder beside government regulations.
Poor people are hurt most by government programs like welfare, and laws like minimum wage. Private enterprise allows people to make a living for themselves by providing services to people who need them. By working harder than others they can break out of poverty, instead of relying on the government to keep everybody down for the sake of "equality”. This used to be a norm.
"When governments directly provide a service, they often provide living wages and decent benefits to workers. When private companies take control, they often slash wages and benefits in an attempt to cut labor costs, replacing stable, middle class jobs with poverty-level jobs.”
This is so incredibly disingenuous. All this is saying is that it’s beneficial to the society that the government creates artificial jobs that can’t sustain themselves and gives immunity from market fluctuation to people who perform these jobs at the cost of regular taxpayers who aren’t immune, and have to train themselves in new fields, and change jobs. The government can’t just provide these benefits without negatively affecting the rest of the society.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- r_smart 10y agoI feel like a lot of people here don't understand this because they've never been poor in America. I would never want to deny help to someone who needs it, but as most of these social programs are structured, they're a trap. I was poor for most of my life. It was making the conscious decision to not be poor, making a plan and working my ass off that let me get out of poverty. Nothing got in my way other than my own ability to succeed. Nobody tried to stop me (well some friends and family were less than encouraging, but I'm used to that). So people read your comment, and it sounds like a fiction to them, hence the downvotes. N.B.: Yes I took education loans made available by the government. But most of it wasn't subsidized since it was my 2nd bachelor's degree, and the rates on that stuff is usury currently. I don't really want to get into a debate about that stuff, but just mention it as I figure somebody might ask. In a world without readily available loans, I would like to think I would have just made a different plan.
- dreta 10y agoPeople like you made US what it is today, and instead of elevating success stories like yours people would rather complain that life is unfair, and that others have it better. Parents or grandparents of people who are the middle class today went through what you did, only a few decades ago.
- r_smart 10y agoThanks for the compliment. I certainly wasn't trying to paint myself as the poster boy for anything, but I think my story can be interesting for people who haven't experienced poverty, especially because I bought into a lot of the kind of thinking you describe, and letting that go was a large part of getting out of being poor. I actually am a second generation immigrant (my mother is from Panama), and even after my parents split we had a pretty hard-scrabble life with her working for minimum wage, and my father being self-employed and not much better off. Still they never took advantage of welfare programs (well, not until after I was raised, but that's a different conversation), and there was a pride associated with not doing it. It'd be foolish to say that people should never take help if it's available, but I think it's often overlooked just what a deleterious effect it can have on a person's morale. Further, as the old saying goes: Necessity is the mother of invention. People will live in whatever situation they can tolerate, so changing what you can tolerate is the necessary first step to improving your lot in life. *edit: changed 'and even after we split' to 'and even after my parents split' because I clearly lost focus on what I was writing in the middle of that sentence.
- sebastianconcpt 10y agoI'm amazed that this comment got downvoted. How is that so many people reject the notion that is the productive sector who pays for the public sector to have _all_ the public money?