[headmelted]

Spoken as someone well north of the poverty line.

The reason for some people not having the money around is undoubtedly poor decision making, but for a great many others they simply have no gainful employment, no prospects of obtaining gainful employment and are often trapped in debt spirals due to past financial desperation.

I'm real happy for you that you're so far removed from their situation that none of this occured to you.

[devonkim]

The problem with being poor is that it is extremely taxing on both your time, your ability to make rational decisions, and even IQ. Being poor is, in effect, a disability that keeps one from being able to make it out of that situation itself. Depression and many other mental conditions are treated similarly in American society where we oftentimes point to people that are successful with depression and ignore the sheer massive weight that depression by and large keeps most of its sufferers from achieving success.

The whole individual agency and moral superiority complex of American culture is more and more sickening to me as I grow older and see how most people simply with a rational set of actions and existing opportunities better off not pursuing what used to be the better options due to structural problems. Endless optimism only works so far for attitudes that help with success until you’re truly at a rock bottom point and nobody wants to be near someone that’s failed so much out of social niceties alone.

[ralusek]

It wasn't my point to suggest that poverty is not a difficult position to be in, my point was to suggest that there is a serious problem with shrugging off the role of personal responsibility. I am very aware of what it means to be broke, you often don't even know where to begin. I'm not saying that they're poor because their situation at birth was necessarily fair, I'm not saying that nobody should change anything to help remedy their situation. What I am saying that in this country, at this time, the reality is that if 40% of the country does not have $400 saved for an emergency, given all of the available social services, there is a serious problem of priority and character.

There are obvious exceptions for individuals suffering from unavoidable medical circumstances and the like, and I am fully willing to criticize our existing healthcare system's failings in providing suitable mitigation against such circumstances. But we're talking about 40% of the country.

[ralusek]

Being trapped in a debt spiral due to past financial desperation is just a way of iterating forward in the loop of bad decision making. What I am saying is that to enter financial desperation in the United States is not actually possible if you utilize the available social safety net and make proper decisions.

[seorphates]

It looks like you believe stability is simply a matter of 100% good decision making and that lower middle class is just one bus fare and two transfer passes away. You're painting a picture with a brush as wide as your canvas and with only one color on your palette.

I think we are mostly products of our surroundings so, yes, good decisions can help a lot. It just seems placing that level of "blame" is counter-productive and just does not represent reality on the ground. Trapped is trapped, you used the word yourself. I'd wager you have little idea the sorts of life traps that are laid out there. Having debt is pretty easy even with a better than average stability matrix. A single hit with bad luck is simply made worse as the "socially permitted" trolls eat their prey where no "socially permitted" social safety net exists that could possibly save them.

What is that? Trickle-down blame? You got yours? I simply don't understand the economics of "it's your own damn fault" with the force of a gavel.

[internetman55]

Tbh I think we should take the people who run scam schools and just ban them for the country. Or have stricter regulation and accreditation I guess

[sjg007]

We try to regulate them but republicans keep them in.

[Retric]

The number of allowed bad decisions drops dramatically as you slide down the wealth scale. Saying you need to be correct 99.999% of the time is simply not a viable strategy. Especially when people are actively trying to get you to make bad decisions like enrolling in a for profit collage.

The vast US homeless population suggests we don't really have a safety net, so much as a safety rope you need to hold on tight and pray. Consider, if all the homeless people showed up in the same place that would instantly be in the top 10 US cities.

[selimthegrim]

And once you've enrolled in that for-profit college, surprise! You can choose to keep your student status to keep your loans in deferment but now you're not eligible for food stamps while an enrolled student unless you work a minimum of 20 hours a week/earn ~$680 a month.

[cuckcuckspruce]

Untrue. Get majorly sick or in a major accident and lose your insurance because your job finds a reason to restructure your department. Trust me, you will enter financial desperation very quickly while you wait for the social safety net to catch up, and by that time you're thousands of dollars in debt, likely already out of your house, and totally screwed.

[kaybe]

All of you couldn't do a better job to make me very very glad of the taxes and other money I pay to the state and public health insurance here in Germany. As long as we can protect this system this will never happen to me or my neighbours.

[skookumchuck]

40% of Americans are not and never were majorly sick. Unless you count drug addicts and winos.

Yes, I've lost jobs before because of corporate restructuring.

[alasdair_]

>Being trapped in a debt spiral due to past financial desperation is just a way of iterating forward in the loop of bad decision making.

Imagine you went to a crappy school where you spent most of your days trying to avoid gangs rather than learning anything. You did everything people told you to do and you applied to some for-profit bullshit college that accepted you. You signed some paperwork that you literally didn't understand the details of (because of said shitty school and parents who have never dealt with this situation before and for-profit colleges that explicitly set out to target people exactly like you). Now you have $50,000 in debt that you literally can't even declare bankruptcy on and no marketable skills. What do you now do?

To blame it all on personal responsibility degenerates into a No True Scotsman argument very quickly. It's the kind of overly simplistic thinking that makes thirteen year old kids think Ayn Rand had it all figured out and never think further than than her heroic fantasy novels.

(I admit, I actually really like Ayn Rand's philosophy if it's seen as an ideal, rather than something that is practically p[possible. Marx and Engels were also idealists and in their perfect world everyone would be happy too.)

Humans are not born with an innate understanding of optimal decision making and the power of compound interest. Our environment shapes us to a massive degree and you're discounting this.

[skookumchuck]

None of my public school classes ever mentioned compound interest.

[harikb]

If you have Netflix, watch the documentary "Dirty Money". Then come back and tell us you wouldn't have been in the same situation had some event in your past not gone your favor.

[s73v3r_]

Try it. I will bet you a million dollars that you would not be able to do it in any meaningful amount of time.