5 ms·
The definition of "not poor" is not supposed to amount to "barely surviving" but to "living and being productive members of society". > many people have a ves
by diffeomorphism 7y ago
The definition of "not poor" is not supposed to amount to "barely surviving" but to "living and being productive members of society".
> many people have a vested interest in conflating the two.
Just like you are conflating being poor and being a bad person:
> your core needs are met, and you have a path to thrive on - up to you to do you now.
This implicitly suggests that you are only poor because you were too lazy/stupid/<insult> to follow that path. Maybe there are people like that, but many people are poor because being poor is expensive.
- ctdonath 7y agoI implicitly suggest no such thing. At some point it's up to a competent adult to do with their lives what they see fit under the circumstances dealt them by life. They are not automatically the charge of others just because they don't achieve some nebulous whim of strangers. Each has their own dependents to prioritize.
- diffeomorphism 7y agoSo now they are poor either because they are "incompetent" or because they "saw fit" to be poor. Okay, there is nothing implicit or suggesting about this, you are explicit about it.
- ctdonath 7y agoNo. I'm saying: if they meet an objective baseline of essentials, they're not poor. And that's the core problem: everyone is tossing around the word "poor" to fit their ulterior motives (yours currently being to demean me for no apparent reason) without any agreed-on definition thereof. You're beating me up for suggesting there be an objective common definition, which happens to not be what you want it to mean (which, apparently, is whatever implication you see fit to win an unprompted argument with a stranger).