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You're totally right -- and I'm not saying you're advocating that position -- but it's a terrible answer to say to people: Just get rich enough not to have thos
by fapjacks 8y ago
You're totally right -- and I'm not saying you're advocating that position -- but it's a terrible answer to say to people: Just get rich enough not to have those problems.
For years I almost blew a head gasket trying to convince my mother that there is a whole industry designed to keep people poor. She didn't grow up poor, but she grew up working class in a time before that industry pervaded absolutely everywhere. My mom became very successful later in life (just after I'd left the house). I didn't grow up super poor, but I was aware at a young age of not having things most other folks had, and I could sense my parents' anxiety about finances. Then as a young adult, I hit this industry like a brick wall and spent many years dirt poor, like stealing-spaghetti-from-the-grocery-store poor, with any edge I gained pretty quickly shaved off by some damned nickel-and-dime thing. And I was raised not to ask for (or expect) help or support from anyone. My family was/is a very sink-or-swim kind of family, and incidentally I very much credit that and my own insecurities about money (and service in the infantry) with any and all of my successes in life. But anyway, in a bizarre twist, it wasn't until I had become successful that she actually took me seriously about the industry designed to keep people poor! She just couldn't bring herself to believe that it's in anyone's financial interest to keep people poor. But it's absolutely true and absolutely exists. I lived for years surrounded by it and even today, every time I login to Facebook it's like a news feed of the latest shenanigans of this industry. Lots of friends back home in my black-hole hometown stuck there with zero options. Incidentally, even though it seems like my mom sometimes lives in a completely different universe, the older I get, the more I appreciate her perspective for how much it teaches me about myself and the world.
- phnofive 8y agoThe person you're replying to is offering a counter-point to the perspective of the person he's replying to - that despite contentment with a modest income, the things that bug him are in fact a symptom of that income. The person you're replying to is not suggesting that changing income is easy.
- moonka 8y agoYou nailed it. It is scary how easy it is to fall into the poverty trap even if you do almost everything right, and how hard it can be to get out.
- tim333 8y ago>She just couldn't bring herself to believe that it's in anyone's financial interest to keep people poor. I'm not sure it is in the interests of the kinds of players that keep people poor to do so. They mostly just seem to be taking advantage of whoever they can without motivations in that direction. For example the medical industry grabs peoples money, which causes quite a lot of poverty, because they like money, not because they want their customers poor. Is there an example of an industry that does want people poor? I can't think of many examples - maybe in apartheid South Africa it was in some of the whites interest to keep the blacks poor as cheap labour but I don't think that kind of thing really applies in the US?
- kurthr 8y agoPay day loan vendors... if you can pay them off, they've lost.
- tim333 8y agoI chatted to a guy who worked for one of those. Apparently either wealthy or very hard up customers were not profitable - the wealthy pay to quickly, the hard up not at all. What they wanted were people on the borderline that could pay back eventually having run up some interest.
- kurthr 8y agoYou can always pay them off with another loan... until you can't. At a typical $30 of "finance charges" for a $100 loan for 2 weeks (over 400% apr) you only need a few cycles to pay off the principal with fees... then it's all profit!
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- tim333 8y agoYou'd think so though the leading one in the UK, Wonga seems to be going bust from customer compensation claims. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/07/wonga-loans-where-did-it-all-go-wrong https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/07/wonga-loans...
- kermittd 8y agoYep. It seems the less you have more will be taken from you. I think industry’s cater to low wage earners know their customers have so few options.