7 ms·

Bullshit. I know plenty of people who raise families in single family homes while being the sole breadwinner doing a trade. They just don't live beyond their me

Bullshit. I know plenty of people who raise families in single family homes while being the sole breadwinner doing a trade. They just don't live beyond their means, and didn't incur a large amount of debt, student or otherwise. They're just hard working, responsible people, and they're some of the happiest folks I know. Most notably, they hate playing the "victim".

balls187 6y ago
I can counter your anecdotal evidence with my own: I also know families that are hard working, responsible, still still cannot afford to make ends meet. Likewise, I know families who are none of those things, and have never known a real struggle. Implying that not being able to achieve the American Dream is result of not working hard, and/or living beyond your means is a gross oversimplification and frankly ignorant. This simulation illustrates that when you have low income how hard it is to make ends meet. http://makethemonth.ca/ http://makethemonth.ca/
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  I'm just arguing that it's attainable, contrary to what the article says. It is in most cases, if you're hard working and responsible. > Implying that not being able to achieve the American Dream is result of not working hard, and/or living beyond your means is a gross oversimplification and frankly ignorant. Not at all, there are always a few outliers, because, besides the occasional run of just bad luck, a lot of people who appear to be responsible really aren't.
  - balls187 6y ago
    What you refer to as "bad luck" is really a system that (perhaps inadvertently) overly penalizes people with limited income. There are a lot of incidental costs associated in life that those of us with savings, and or good incomes can absorb. For those without savings and/or limited income, it becomes a game of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
    - scruple 6y ago
      > For those without savings and/or limited income, it becomes a game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Yep. And in many of these situations Peter is future you and Paul is current you.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    Interesting how you keep emphasizing the word responsible, as if saying that word loudly enough is sufficient to make up for structural racism and sexism, a legacy of racially skewed criminal records, uneven economic growth in different towns/regions and unpredictable, life-altering medical debt (to name a few concerns).
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Those all can matter. But responsible vs irresponsible also matters. Given the same external circumstances, responsible behavior should lead to better outcomes on average. I explicitly deny that we are completely at the mercy of external forces. Our choices have effects that matter.
      - standardUser 6y ago
        Being black, female, gay, etc are not usually considered choices, but are variously correlated with lower pay, higher unemployment, increased interactions with law enforcement, disproportionately high penalties from the justice system, worse medical outcomes and so on. Then there's the luck issue. If you get in a car accident in the wrong place with poor insurance, that helicopter ride and subsequent treatment can completely decimate the finances of a middle or lower income household for a generation. But yeah, if you're a white straight man and you're able to dodge any crippling medical bills, it doesn't take much more than responsibility to sustain a decent life.
        AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        OK, since you seem to have totally ignored my point, let me try again. If you're black, female, gay, etc, you may well have lower pay, higher unemployment, increased interaction with law enforcement, etc. That's all true, and is something that we as a society should work on changing. But within that flawed social environment, black female gay people who decide, say, to use their spare time to try to pick up new skills will probably have better outcomes on average than those in the exact same circumstances who decide to lose themselves in alcohol. The environment is flawed. Within that flawed environment, individual choices still matter.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    It's not "bad luck". It's capitalism. And responsibility costs money. It's much harder to be responsible when you're poor. The immediate threat of poverty alters your decision making process, as does the malnutrition from only being able to afford garbage food. And that's assuming a fair and equitable system, without structural racism or other forms of ingrained discrimination. Let's quit pretending this is normal or acceptable, or that some free market solution will come along. The solution is wealth redistribution.
  - griffinkelly 6y ago
    I'm in the national guard, and have numerous friends who joined the military right out of high school and been able to make a great living. Serve 20+ and get a pension, healthcare, and you're set--something few jobs in the private sector even offer. Sure you wont be making millions of bucks, but you have a nice steady income.
    - balls187 6y ago
      1) thanks for your service. 2) It's not a coincidence that military targets enlistments from low income areas. It wasn't until my dad made E4 that he was able to quit his second job working at a gas station. Sometimes, those soldiers weren't able to escape their upbringing. I'd hear stories of my dad's GIs who would spend their money on alcohol and drugs, and eventually got chaptered out.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Yes, it’s known that if you’re low income, you should look for government employment offering defined benefit pensions, otherwise there’s no way you will earn enough to save enough for your older years.
  - greedo 6y ago
    I had a great IT career going up until 2005 when I had cancer. My company promised to keep me on until I was healthy, but fired me Christmas week. I was unemployed (unemployable actually do to the cancer) until mid 2006. I had over 60K in medical debt, plus being unemployed wiped out my emergency fund. Before this, I was responsible with my money, had life insurance, retirement fund, lived within my means. Yet one out of control cell grew into a "run of just bad luck." I'm not alone.
    - MrDresden 6y ago
      I am sorry to hear about what you went through, and hope life has been kinder to you since. These kinds of stories are why I, as a north European, have a hard time imagining living in the US. Sure a SE job will pay much more net in the US, but you have litte to no social net that dampens your fall when it comes (as it does for us all). My partner was diagnosed with cancer little over a year ago. She had all (100%) of her medical bills taken care of by the state. She took 6 months off work on full pay, as she and all living here have a legal right to do. Her employer added 3 months of fully paid medical leave on top of that. She can not be fired due to a medical issue arrising. She has now finished her treatment, full remission and is back at work.
      - greedo 6y ago
        Glad to hear your partner is doing well. Cancer sucks. Life has been kind to me since I was ill, partially because IT is a good field to be in, and mostly because my family was upper-middle class and able to help financially. I can't imagine how I'd be if I didn't have the help from my parents, or had a job that was more physical. I guess I would have had to declare bankruptcy, with all the costs that entails.
- Simon_says 6y ago
  stronglikedan said doing a trade, not completely unskilled labor. The makethemonth website might not teach the lesson you want it to.
  - balls187 6y ago
    That's burying the lede--which is the families lived the middle class lifestyle because they were hardworking, and responsible. One point I want to emphasize "responsible" in his example really just means not making a single mistake, ever.
- phaemon 6y ago
  That's a terrible simulator. Something bad happens every day, the sums are crazy (75 for a cellphone bill?), basically it's too much. I've been poor. You have good as well as bad days. I remember the day I won £75 with £1 on a fruit machine. I also remember the days I'd put £10 in and get nothing. I remember the unexpected bill but they weren't every day, they would be every 6 months so you hadn't accounted for them. It would be more realistic if it allowed those little moments of triumph, only to snatch it away later.
marklubi 6y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted, other than the fact that others can't comprehend what you said. There are a lot of people out there that don't feel the need to spend money to be happy.
- necheffa 6y ago
  Probably the thinly veiles "all it takes is a little hard work and grit, don't know why all these peasants complain about being poor" attitude.
  - fullshark 6y ago
    aka it refutes the political point this piece is making that people want to agree with.
    - multjoy 6y ago
      An unsourced anecdote refutes nothing.
    - necheffa 6y ago
      It really doesn't. Proof by contradiction only goes so far on this topic. Particularly when you lean on anecdotes from your personal bubble. If we want to play that game, I can refute the refutal with my own anecdote. I grew up very poor but managed to get to a place several rungs up the socio-economic ladder higher than where I was as a kid. Sure, I worked hard and gritted my way through things like having to skip meals. But a good number of things had to line up just right for me to get where I am today. It was just as much about me seizing opportunities as it was just being lucky enough to have a shot at them in the first place. It is a lot easier to make opportunities for yourself when you aren't worried about where your next meal is coming from or when you can afford leisure activities that build out your network. When you start off at the bottom, there is no magic Disney formula you follow to reach success. It is entirely possible to do everything right and still end up stuck in destitution.
- mikestew 6y ago
lotsofpulp 6y ago
Can you list the retirement savings date for these plenty of “responsible” people? Unless they were government employees with ridiculous gold plated defined benefit pensions, I don’t see how the math works for saving sufficient money while earning median plus or minus a standard deviation wages for an individual. Also, please list if they had jobs with medical insurance pre ACA, and whether or not they have experienced any healthcare events in their family.
CarelessExpert 6y ago
> I know plenty of people And I know plenty of statistical evidence that says you're wrong. Just looking at wage stagnation and inflation numbers is enough to demonstrate there's a real problem being experienced by people every single day. But, hey, I'm sure your anecdotes are every bit as compelling...
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  The statistical "evidence" indicates that a lot of people would rather play "victim", by expecting someone other than them to magically correct their course.
  - greedo 6y ago
    What evidence? The studies that have shown the failure of trickledown economics to do anything other than line the pockets of the .01%? George Carlin had it right when he said the game was rigged.
- throwaway98797 6y ago
  Seems unfortunate that we focus so much effort on tracking income statistics vs well being ones. It’s clear that money is poorly correlated with a satisfied life. I wish there was a way to track that with minimal bias. Income is a red herring above certain thresholds.

balls187 6y ago

I can counter your anecdotal evidence with my own: I also know families that are hard working, responsible, still still cannot afford to make ends meet. Likewise, I know families who are none of those things, and have never known a real struggle. Implying that not being able to achieve the American Dream is result of not working hard, and/or living beyond your means is a gross oversimplification and frankly ignorant. This simulation illustrates that when you have low income how hard it is to make ends meet. http://makethemonth.ca/ http://makethemonth.ca/

stronglikedan 6y ago
I'm just arguing that it's attainable, contrary to what the article says. It is in most cases, if you're hard working and responsible. > Implying that not being able to achieve the American Dream is result of not working hard, and/or living beyond your means is a gross oversimplification and frankly ignorant. Not at all, there are always a few outliers, because, besides the occasional run of just bad luck, a lot of people who appear to be responsible really aren't.
- balls187 6y ago
  What you refer to as "bad luck" is really a system that (perhaps inadvertently) overly penalizes people with limited income. There are a lot of incidental costs associated in life that those of us with savings, and or good incomes can absorb. For those without savings and/or limited income, it becomes a game of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
  - scruple 6y ago
    > For those without savings and/or limited income, it becomes a game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Yep. And in many of these situations Peter is future you and Paul is current you.
- standardUser 6y ago
  Interesting how you keep emphasizing the word responsible, as if saying that word loudly enough is sufficient to make up for structural racism and sexism, a legacy of racially skewed criminal records, uneven economic growth in different towns/regions and unpredictable, life-altering medical debt (to name a few concerns).
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Those all can matter. But responsible vs irresponsible also matters. Given the same external circumstances, responsible behavior should lead to better outcomes on average. I explicitly deny that we are completely at the mercy of external forces. Our choices have effects that matter.
    - standardUser 6y ago
      Being black, female, gay, etc are not usually considered choices, but are variously correlated with lower pay, higher unemployment, increased interactions with law enforcement, disproportionately high penalties from the justice system, worse medical outcomes and so on. Then there's the luck issue. If you get in a car accident in the wrong place with poor insurance, that helicopter ride and subsequent treatment can completely decimate the finances of a middle or lower income household for a generation. But yeah, if you're a white straight man and you're able to dodge any crippling medical bills, it doesn't take much more than responsibility to sustain a decent life.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        OK, since you seem to have totally ignored my point, let me try again. If you're black, female, gay, etc, you may well have lower pay, higher unemployment, increased interaction with law enforcement, etc. That's all true, and is something that we as a society should work on changing. But within that flawed social environment, black female gay people who decide, say, to use their spare time to try to pick up new skills will probably have better outcomes on average than those in the exact same circumstances who decide to lose themselves in alcohol. The environment is flawed. Within that flawed environment, individual choices still matter.
- bitwize 6y ago
  It's not "bad luck". It's capitalism. And responsibility costs money. It's much harder to be responsible when you're poor. The immediate threat of poverty alters your decision making process, as does the malnutrition from only being able to afford garbage food. And that's assuming a fair and equitable system, without structural racism or other forms of ingrained discrimination. Let's quit pretending this is normal or acceptable, or that some free market solution will come along. The solution is wealth redistribution.
- griffinkelly 6y ago
  I'm in the national guard, and have numerous friends who joined the military right out of high school and been able to make a great living. Serve 20+ and get a pension, healthcare, and you're set--something few jobs in the private sector even offer. Sure you wont be making millions of bucks, but you have a nice steady income.
  - balls187 6y ago
    1) thanks for your service. 2) It's not a coincidence that military targets enlistments from low income areas. It wasn't until my dad made E4 that he was able to quit his second job working at a gas station. Sometimes, those soldiers weren't able to escape their upbringing. I'd hear stories of my dad's GIs who would spend their money on alcohol and drugs, and eventually got chaptered out.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Yes, it’s known that if you’re low income, you should look for government employment offering defined benefit pensions, otherwise there’s no way you will earn enough to save enough for your older years.
- greedo 6y ago
  I had a great IT career going up until 2005 when I had cancer. My company promised to keep me on until I was healthy, but fired me Christmas week. I was unemployed (unemployable actually do to the cancer) until mid 2006. I had over 60K in medical debt, plus being unemployed wiped out my emergency fund. Before this, I was responsible with my money, had life insurance, retirement fund, lived within my means. Yet one out of control cell grew into a "run of just bad luck." I'm not alone.
  - MrDresden 6y ago
    I am sorry to hear about what you went through, and hope life has been kinder to you since. These kinds of stories are why I, as a north European, have a hard time imagining living in the US. Sure a SE job will pay much more net in the US, but you have litte to no social net that dampens your fall when it comes (as it does for us all). My partner was diagnosed with cancer little over a year ago. She had all (100%) of her medical bills taken care of by the state. She took 6 months off work on full pay, as she and all living here have a legal right to do. Her employer added 3 months of fully paid medical leave on top of that. She can not be fired due to a medical issue arrising. She has now finished her treatment, full remission and is back at work.
    - greedo 6y ago
      Glad to hear your partner is doing well. Cancer sucks. Life has been kind to me since I was ill, partially because IT is a good field to be in, and mostly because my family was upper-middle class and able to help financially. I can't imagine how I'd be if I didn't have the help from my parents, or had a job that was more physical. I guess I would have had to declare bankruptcy, with all the costs that entails.
Simon_says 6y ago
stronglikedan said doing a trade, not completely unskilled labor. The makethemonth website might not teach the lesson you want it to.
- balls187 6y ago
  That's burying the lede--which is the families lived the middle class lifestyle because they were hardworking, and responsible. One point I want to emphasize "responsible" in his example really just means not making a single mistake, ever.
phaemon 6y ago
That's a terrible simulator. Something bad happens every day, the sums are crazy (75 for a cellphone bill?), basically it's too much. I've been poor. You have good as well as bad days. I remember the day I won £75 with £1 on a fruit machine. I also remember the days I'd put £10 in and get nothing. I remember the unexpected bill but they weren't every day, they would be every 6 months so you hadn't accounted for them. It would be more realistic if it allowed those little moments of triumph, only to snatch it away later.

marklubi 6y ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted, other than the fact that others can't comprehend what you said. There are a lot of people out there that don't feel the need to spend money to be happy.

necheffa 6y ago
Probably the thinly veiles "all it takes is a little hard work and grit, don't know why all these peasants complain about being poor" attitude.
- fullshark 6y ago
  aka it refutes the political point this piece is making that people want to agree with.
  - multjoy 6y ago
    An unsourced anecdote refutes nothing.
  - necheffa 6y ago
    It really doesn't. Proof by contradiction only goes so far on this topic. Particularly when you lean on anecdotes from your personal bubble. If we want to play that game, I can refute the refutal with my own anecdote. I grew up very poor but managed to get to a place several rungs up the socio-economic ladder higher than where I was as a kid. Sure, I worked hard and gritted my way through things like having to skip meals. But a good number of things had to line up just right for me to get where I am today. It was just as much about me seizing opportunities as it was just being lucky enough to have a shot at them in the first place. It is a lot easier to make opportunities for yourself when you aren't worried about where your next meal is coming from or when you can afford leisure activities that build out your network. When you start off at the bottom, there is no magic Disney formula you follow to reach success. It is entirely possible to do everything right and still end up stuck in destitution.
mikestew 6y ago

lotsofpulp 6y ago

Can you list the retirement savings date for these plenty of “responsible” people? Unless they were government employees with ridiculous gold plated defined benefit pensions, I don’t see how the math works for saving sufficient money while earning median plus or minus a standard deviation wages for an individual. Also, please list if they had jobs with medical insurance pre ACA, and whether or not they have experienced any healthcare events in their family.

CarelessExpert 6y ago

> I know plenty of people And I know plenty of statistical evidence that says you're wrong. Just looking at wage stagnation and inflation numbers is enough to demonstrate there's a real problem being experienced by people every single day. But, hey, I'm sure your anecdotes are every bit as compelling...

stronglikedan 6y ago
The statistical "evidence" indicates that a lot of people would rather play "victim", by expecting someone other than them to magically correct their course.
- greedo 6y ago
  What evidence? The studies that have shown the failure of trickledown economics to do anything other than line the pockets of the .01%? George Carlin had it right when he said the game was rigged.
throwaway98797 6y ago
Seems unfortunate that we focus so much effort on tracking income statistics vs well being ones. It’s clear that money is poorly correlated with a satisfied life. I wish there was a way to track that with minimal bias. Income is a red herring above certain thresholds.