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What sticks out to me is that it sticks out to you (and the author and so many others besides). I have actually been on food stamps. I never ate so well. Before

What sticks out to me is that it sticks out to you (and the author and so many others besides). I have actually been on food stamps. I never ate so well. Before I had food stamps I was just a typical working poor person. I had never spent as much on groceries as I was able to on food stamps. Food stamps are accepted at regular grocery stores -- the same ones you shop at. You can get anything you want, more or less. It's totally up to you. You can, of course, use them to buy vegetables. In fact, I was a vegetarian the entire time I was on food stamps! It's just so odd to me as someone who has actually been very poor that according you (and seemingly the rest of the professional managerial class) I was at that time completely without agency. Nothing I did or didn't do was in my control, apparently. I was but flotsam in an ocean of systemic effects. I have to tell you, that's not how it felt to me. I felt like a person making choices. Poor people typically know lots of other poor people. I knew a lot of poor people. Some of them made good choices. Many of them made very bad choices. The ones who made good choices are universally doing well 20 years later.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>I have actually been on food stamps. yeah, were you a family on food stamps? Two adults, one kid? Or were you a single person on food stamps? I was a single person and like you I did pretty well, I sort of have the feeling that the dynamic would be different for a family though, it seems from what I know of family life is more problems show up and then you don't manage to take care of it the way you can as a single young person.
- dionidium 4y ago
  There's no doubt about it, which again underscores the importance of good choices. Babies aren't dropped off by a stork. You have to insert semen into a woman's body on one of like three days each month. Don't do that! And just to re-emphasize something I said in another comment: people make mistakes and this is an extraordinarily wealthy society. I'm a strong proponent of a welfare state. I don't want anybody to starve because they made bad choices. But getting pregnant when you're young and poor is correctly described as a bad choice! Ejaculating inside a woman who is ovulating isn't something that happens to you while you're sleeping. The correct message to somebody who has fallen through the ice in the middle of a lake on a winter morning is, "let me help you." The correct message to everybody else is that there are things you can do to avoid falling through the ice.
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    right nobody ever gets ejaculated into by anyone they didn't want ejaculating into them, nobody ever ejaculates into someone when doing well and then loses job, child has problems, one of partners dies and not able to take care of child etc. A person is in some way a sort of god that has complete control over the world and can only be brought low by making a 'bad' choice.
    - dionidium 4y ago
      This is nihilism. We can acknowledge that some people have better luck than others without entirely rejecting the notion that there are good and bad choices.
      - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
        well, it seems more to me that you do not acknowledge that there are things outside one's control, that good choices can only surmount so much.
        dionidium 4y ago
        This reminds me a bit of the debate about the blank slate, which presupposes that there’s one side who thinks human development is all nurture and another side that thinks it’s all nature. But actually only one of those sides exists. That is to say, there are people who think it is entirely nurture and who reject genetic explanations for behavior whenever they’re proposed, but there are no people who think it’s entirely genetics and who believe environment is never a factor. That second group simply doesn’t exist. Every single person who believes genetics are a significant factor in life outcomes also believes that environment matters. There is only one side that takes a hard line. So it is here. There isn’t a side that thinks everything is environmental and a second side that thinks you can overcome anything with choices and hard work. The side that thinks choices and hard work matter also acknowledges that environment is very often a factor and that there may be situations that are insurmountable. It’s the other side that takes a hard line, that never acknowledges the role of choices, that always cowers from telling people that there are things they might do to improve their situation. Of course life outcomes are a mix of nature and nurture. And of course (even though choices matter) there exist people who make all the right choices who nevertheless are held back by external factors. But believing what I just said entails admitting that choices do matter!
throwaway22032 4y ago
I'm pretty much here with you as a UK prole, for what it's worth. I constantly feel like middle class individuals just don't "get" what it's like to be poor. It's really common for there to be this sort of "woe is them" mindset, as if they're talking about farm animals or something that fundamentally has less intelligence/autonomy. The vast majority of my schoolfriends who worked hard, focused on the correct things, and budgeted well, did well. The ones that went to prison or had children at age 18 didn't. None of us are billionaires, but neither are we all some sort of sub-human, toothless, brainless mass. One of the amusing things about having money now, is that I have to "play along" to some extent. I can't just tell someone that they're an idiot for trying to find a place in London when they're a single person without any real income to speak of, even though 99% of people back in my hometown not only think that's not unreasonable, but that it's completely self-evident. Some people face real barriers. Try being born into a country in which a Western visa costs a month or more of your wages. Hell, try just being on an H1-B. The way we talk about "poverty" in the West makes an absolute mockery of that.
paganel 4y ago
My family became suddenly very poor when I was in highschool and then in the first years of me going to uni. Like living in a half-finished house in the countryside with no electrical power for a couple of months-poor (when things had really become bad). That was happening 20 to 25 years ago, and in the meantime I have managed to attain a middle-class status, sort of (I still don't own an apartment, never mind an actual house), enough to say that I can't complain about my present financial situation. Even so, I'm fully and acutely aware that my choices alone wouldn't have made all that possible. I also needed luck, lots of it, and the presence of people whom had no obligation to me whatsoever, at least on paper, but who nevertheless helped me at some crucial points in my past. Yes, it was my choice to make good on that help and to take advantage of some of the luck I had, but, again, my choices alone, without said luck and without those people that have helped me would have meant nothing.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

>I have actually been on food stamps. yeah, were you a family on food stamps? Two adults, one kid? Or were you a single person on food stamps? I was a single person and like you I did pretty well, I sort of have the feeling that the dynamic would be different for a family though, it seems from what I know of family life is more problems show up and then you don't manage to take care of it the way you can as a single young person.

dionidium 4y ago
There's no doubt about it, which again underscores the importance of good choices. Babies aren't dropped off by a stork. You have to insert semen into a woman's body on one of like three days each month. Don't do that! And just to re-emphasize something I said in another comment: people make mistakes and this is an extraordinarily wealthy society. I'm a strong proponent of a welfare state. I don't want anybody to starve because they made bad choices. But getting pregnant when you're young and poor is correctly described as a bad choice! Ejaculating inside a woman who is ovulating isn't something that happens to you while you're sleeping. The correct message to somebody who has fallen through the ice in the middle of a lake on a winter morning is, "let me help you." The correct message to everybody else is that there are things you can do to avoid falling through the ice.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  right nobody ever gets ejaculated into by anyone they didn't want ejaculating into them, nobody ever ejaculates into someone when doing well and then loses job, child has problems, one of partners dies and not able to take care of child etc. A person is in some way a sort of god that has complete control over the world and can only be brought low by making a 'bad' choice.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    This is nihilism. We can acknowledge that some people have better luck than others without entirely rejecting the notion that there are good and bad choices.
    - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
      well, it seems more to me that you do not acknowledge that there are things outside one's control, that good choices can only surmount so much.
      - dionidium 4y ago
        This reminds me a bit of the debate about the blank slate, which presupposes that there’s one side who thinks human development is all nurture and another side that thinks it’s all nature. But actually only one of those sides exists. That is to say, there are people who think it is entirely nurture and who reject genetic explanations for behavior whenever they’re proposed, but there are no people who think it’s entirely genetics and who believe environment is never a factor. That second group simply doesn’t exist. Every single person who believes genetics are a significant factor in life outcomes also believes that environment matters. There is only one side that takes a hard line. So it is here. There isn’t a side that thinks everything is environmental and a second side that thinks you can overcome anything with choices and hard work. The side that thinks choices and hard work matter also acknowledges that environment is very often a factor and that there may be situations that are insurmountable. It’s the other side that takes a hard line, that never acknowledges the role of choices, that always cowers from telling people that there are things they might do to improve their situation. Of course life outcomes are a mix of nature and nurture. And of course (even though choices matter) there exist people who make all the right choices who nevertheless are held back by external factors. But believing what I just said entails admitting that choices do matter!

throwaway22032 4y ago

I'm pretty much here with you as a UK prole, for what it's worth. I constantly feel like middle class individuals just don't "get" what it's like to be poor. It's really common for there to be this sort of "woe is them" mindset, as if they're talking about farm animals or something that fundamentally has less intelligence/autonomy. The vast majority of my schoolfriends who worked hard, focused on the correct things, and budgeted well, did well. The ones that went to prison or had children at age 18 didn't. None of us are billionaires, but neither are we all some sort of sub-human, toothless, brainless mass. One of the amusing things about having money now, is that I have to "play along" to some extent. I can't just tell someone that they're an idiot for trying to find a place in London when they're a single person without any real income to speak of, even though 99% of people back in my hometown not only think that's not unreasonable, but that it's completely self-evident. Some people face real barriers. Try being born into a country in which a Western visa costs a month or more of your wages. Hell, try just being on an H1-B. The way we talk about "poverty" in the West makes an absolute mockery of that.

paganel 4y ago

My family became suddenly very poor when I was in highschool and then in the first years of me going to uni. Like living in a half-finished house in the countryside with no electrical power for a couple of months-poor (when things had really become bad). That was happening 20 to 25 years ago, and in the meantime I have managed to attain a middle-class status, sort of (I still don't own an apartment, never mind an actual house), enough to say that I can't complain about my present financial situation. Even so, I'm fully and acutely aware that my choices alone wouldn't have made all that possible. I also needed luck, lots of it, and the presence of people whom had no obligation to me whatsoever, at least on paper, but who nevertheless helped me at some crucial points in my past. Yes, it was my choice to make good on that help and to take advantage of some of the luck I had, but, again, my choices alone, without said luck and without those people that have helped me would have meant nothing.