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I have noticed (I'm a volunteer first responder) that many people struggle to "pay those basic expenses" the article says they have trouble with:
But they have no problems affording cigarettes.
I'm not saying there aren't exceptions, people living in only SS (most, but not all through bad choices and a lack of discipline all their lives.)
But most of them.... Get food stamps and "need help" with the power bill, but have cash for weed and tatoos
I'm disabled and living on disability. I don't have any tattoos but I DO have money for "weed" - since it is the only medication that helps me with my disabilities. Mostly it allows me to sleep, and since I sleep better now, everything else is better as well.
I haven't smoked cigarettes in over 40 years. I struggled for over 10 years trying to "get back to normal" before applying for disability, which took a lawyer and three years. If I hadn't had a son who put himself out to take me in WHILE HE WAS WORKING ON HIS OWN DOCTORATE (and hence I constituted a huge financial burden to him) I'd have ended up homeless BECAUSE OF MEDICAL STUFF.
I was a software engineer making 6 figures and was working on my own doctorate in clinical psychology. I didn't have insurance because I was IN SCHOOL. Obama care had not yet kicked in. I had other health problems (needed surgery) that hastened the onset of my ultimate disability. If I had access to health care when I needed it I would still be employable.
With an attitude like yours we can only hope you're a street cleaner who gets called to the sites of accidents as "first responder" to clean up glass. Because someone on the worst day of their life certainly doesn't need you and your condescending judgmentalism showing up to do anything personal when you clearly already have no respect for other human beings and their lives.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrkliny
We believe in freedom. That includes the freedom to do stupid things, freedom to remain ignorant in spite of 12 years of mandatory education, freedom to function at a low level and not strive to succeed in life, freedom to spent money as fast or faster than they can earn it. When people exercise their freedoms to make poor choices with poor consequences, should we feel sorry for them? Should we give up some of our resources to help them?
YES
Quote:
Originally Posted by jrkliny
Or should we take away some of their freedoms?
NO
The milk of human kindness obviously flows freely in you. You know where that comes from, right? They used to drown excess little girl babies in a bucket of milk because it was kinder than drowning them in water. NOT.
@Chemistry_Guy I'm not even going to quote a single line of your post because its all nonsense. America is NOT "busting at the seams with opportunity". Your brother fixes JUKEBOXES. If he spends more money feeding his dogs than your sister spends feeding her family, the correct assumption is that your brother is a spendthrift and your sister is frugal - not that the life of a jukebox repairman is a shining example of unlimited opportunity. Sheesh!
Go ahead and fiddle while the American economy burns. The USA is being turned into a 3rd world nation. Today's kids = and frankly for the last 30 years at least - have little to look forward to upon graduation. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars going to college so you can land that thankless clerical job that really only requires a high school education, and spend the next 10 years paying off that debt, only to be destroyed by medical bills for yourself, your spouse, or a child and then be publicly mocked here on C-D. Or you can end up stuck in one dead end job after another for pretty much the same wages, and ultimately have your life destroyed in the same way and for the same reason - pigs feeding at the trough and their I've-got-mine-and-intend-to-keep-you-from-getting-yours attitudes who are determined to crowd you out, cut off your opportunities, and keep you in your place at the very bottom of the barrel. Folks like those posting derogatory comments about the disabled and the poor on this thread. They don't want to let anyone else within sniffing distance of even the very bottom rung or the ladder of "opportunity" - and then they'll turn around and snipe on and on about how lazy and inferior you are.
I agree with mysticaltyger's assertion but with one caveat:
1. Must be able bodied and working
Obviously a stay at home mom is not going to be building up a retirement savings of her own if her husband is the one working. If they divorce or he passes on but was not good with money and has nothing to pay in alimony, division of assets, or in a will or trust, then she's SOL. At the same time, it was likely her choice to be a SAHM, so there's that.
If someone has the mental and physical capacity to work, however, it should such that people are educated in school at some point in time as to financial responsibility and how to ensure that they at least know how to save for the future, or even invest. Not likely to happen anytime really soon as there is a huge vested interest in our society for the rich who thrive off capitalism to ensure people spend all their money on what they are selling and that they remain wage slaves to them for as long as possible. I mean, that's how they became and continue to get richer, right?
But in this day and age, having the entirety of human knowledge essentially at your fingertips through the internet, it is very possible to easily learn in a short time how to properly save and invest so that you CAN achieve financial independence long before typical retirement ages. The info is out there. It's just a matter of choosing to believe it and having the desire to use it to achieve that goal.
Exactly.. Wage slave us so the rich can get richer and politicians keeps their jobs. Business try to get every cent out of ya quickly as they can before you grow smart.
We were doing really well till stage 4 tonsil cancer reared it's ugly head for my husband actually 9 years yesterday. He couldn't work for 7 months due to it. We had paid for cars and a house. Had I not got an inheritance from my dad we wouldn't have survived.
Hub went back to work, about 9 months later our truck had to be parked due to repairs we couldn't afford. A year after he was back his company got rid of owner operators then folded. We were lucky he found a company job at another place but the take home was way less then what he was making. More of my money was used to support the house. We got his truck refurbished, bought a trailer; eventually he had to max out credit cards. He got another job where he was doing well but rarely home. That eventually stopped working out so he changed jobs again. Things were going up hill finally then the rates he gets paid fell.
We put solar on the house years ago to get rid of our electric bill. It's helped a lot, it went from $500 in the summer to $50 on month of summer so far. Any home owners without it should look into one where there is no cost to you for anything. Best move we ever did.
We don't pay for cable as my son works for Comcast. He used to be with DirecTV. Our house phone is included with the package he gets. The only luxury we really have are our cell phones. I'm not sure how much the bill is. I'm on a 6+ year old Blackberry tour that barely works any more. He has a better cell because he needs it for work.
He has no health insurance thru work, what he has with Obama care isn't realistic with out of pocket so he does without. Thankfully I have Medicare but I'm disabled, some months my meds cost us $400; usually from March until August; then it's back down to under $100. I need dental work bad but can't afford to have my teeth fixed. I finally have dental insurance.
We've been slowly going back down to the bottom. Just can't seem to dig out no matter what we do. We're at the point now where there are times we barely have food in the house. We're going to be listing the house next. Hopeful that will help us rebuild our lives.
I'd like to know how many people can recover from a serious illness like my husband and still be financially sound.
Quote:
Despite a strong economy, about 40 percent of American families struggled to meet at least one of their basic needs last year, including paying for food, health care, housing or utilities.
That’s according to an Urban Institute survey of nearly 7,600 adults that found that the difficulties were most prevalent among adults with lower incomes or health issues. But it also revealed that people from all walks of life were running into similar hardships.
Its perfectly predictable that the successful (from the elite perspective) 40 year war against labor unions leads to a decline in the middle class and more despair, poverty and social ills. The labor unions built the middle class. Median wages havent increased in 20 years. "Strong economy" is media talk. Inequality continues to increase.
People need to join forces to rebuild the labor union movement and get big money out of politics. Its the only way. The billionaire class is organized. Ordinary Americans dont stand a chance without being organized. Its like a lone ranger being up against a well equipped platoon.
Its perfectly predictable that the successful (from the elite perspective) 40 year war against labor unions leads to a decline in the middle class and more despair, poverty and social ills. The labor unions built the middle class. Median wages havent increased in 20 years. "Strong economy" is media talk. Inequality continues to increase.
People need to join forces to rebuild the labor union movement and get big money out of politics. Its the only way. The billionaire class is organized. Ordinary Americans dont stand a chance without being organized. Its like a lone ranger being up against a well equipped platoon.
I agree. Strong economy is also a response to strong GDP. Roughly 18% of the GDP comes from rising health care costs.
Poverty has little connection to a "strong economy," in fact, poverty becomes even more punitive when prosperity is on the rise. Reading through the posts here, one can see the lack of empathy is actually increased by the notion that we are experiencing a kind of financial renaissance, a wider spread of prosperity causes the general view of the poor as people who are simply lazy and unmotivated. In times of economic downturns most people realize the fact that circumstances beyond the control of individuals causes some to become impoverished, but that sympathy isn't extended to those who have experienced poverty as an entrenched aspect of their lives.
Whenever the subject of poverty comes up we know there will be a resulting barroom brawl exchange of opinions, it seems that very few subjects cause such deep emotional responses, not to mention the evangelical moralizing that seems to be the order of the day for those who hold themselves up as examples of what the poor can and should be doing. In my view, this type of moral admonishment can be traced back to a time when one's own drive was the single deciding factor when considering one's chances of economic success. The unemployment lines forming in the last recession saw millions of hard working highly motivated people waiting for their slice of the new American pie. And many are still waiting..
Today we see technology as a contributor to prosperity, as well as poverty. Mechanizing the last of the low skill labor functions, and now, increasingly reaching into the upper levels of skilled work. Many of the sanctimonious posts speak to personal achievements garnered in a much different America than the one we live in today. And many among those moralizing posters would find their past feats as a thing they could never replicate today. In fact, a growing percentage of American tech workers are facing the specter of their knowledge becoming obsolete, in their forties. Yes, personal motivation is an essential part of succeeding in any economy, but, it doesn't have the weight it once did.
We actually have a greater spread of social classes among the poor than ever before, a "new" type of poverty made up of new classes of the impoverished, the illegal worker, the middle class newly displaced worker, and a growing class of the elderly poor. The fact that many who work hard all day are now among the lowest of the poor, the fact that many among the elderly poor were hardy contributors in their day, and the fact of many highly educated displaced workers being unemployed should be a obvious clue to those who think the poor are in need of their outdated advice. Spending time with the poor is a rare event for those doing well, but if that were to happen, most people, and possibly the worst critics of the poor would most likely see a far different dilemma suffered by the poor than the one they pictured. I'm doing well, but that doesn't mean I can't understand the dynamics of poverty.
You can now invest in the stock market with no minimums. You can buy Fidelity's new total stock market index fund with no minimum and a 0% expense ratio. Get your kids started.
How much money do people spend on these non-necessities?
Most people can. The problem is, they don't know it's possible. And when you tell them, they don't believe it, because they have it drummed into them by all the people around them that it's not possible, so they don't even try.
0% expense ratio? Wow, I need to switch to Fidelity.
Poverty has little connection to a "strong economy," in fact, poverty becomes even more punitive when prosperity is on the rise. Reading through the posts here, one can see the lack of empathy is actually increased by the notion that we are experiencing a kind of financial renaissance, a wider spread of prosperity causes the general view of the poor as people who are simply lazy and unmotivated. In times of economic downturns most people realize the fact that circumstances beyond the control of individuals causes some to become impoverished, but that sympathy isn't extended to those who have experienced poverty as an entrenched aspect of their lives.
Whenever the subject of poverty comes up we know there will be a resulting barroom brawl exchange of opinions, it seems that very few subjects cause such deep emotional responses, not to mention the evangelical moralizing that seems to be the order of the day for those who hold themselves up as examples of what the poor can and should be doing. In my view, this type of moral admonishment can be traced back to a time when one's own drive was the single deciding factor when considering one's chances of economic success. The unemployment lines forming in the last recession saw millions of hard working highly motivated people waiting for their slice of the new American pie. And many are still waiting..
Today we see technology as a contributor to prosperity, as well as poverty. Mechanizing the last of the low skill labor functions, and now, increasingly reaching into the upper levels of skilled work. Many of the sanctimonious posts speak to personal achievements garnered in a much different America than the one we live in today. And many among those moralizing posters would find their past feats as a thing they could never replicate today. In fact, a growing percentage of American tech workers are facing the specter of their knowledge becoming obsolete, in their forties. Yes, personal motivation is an essential part of succeeding in any economy, but, it doesn't have the weight it once did.
We actually have a greater spread of social classes among the poor than ever before, a "new" type of poverty made up of new classes of the impoverished, the illegal worker, the middle class newly displaced worker, and a growing class of the elderly poor. The fact that many who work hard all day are now among the lowest of the poor, the fact that many among the elderly poor were hardy contributors in their day, and the fact of many highly educated displaced workers being unemployed should be a obvious clue to those who think the poor are in need of their outdated advice. Spending time with the poor is a rare event for those doing well, but if that were to happen, most people, and possibly the worst critics of the poor would most likely see a far different dilemma suffered by the poor than the one they pictured. I'm doing well, but that doesn't mean I can't understand the dynamics of poverty.
Up to about the 80s/90s, we still had a lot of people involved in government who had lived through the Depression. Unlike our current economic sinking ship, the Depression hit EVERYBODY at all levels, except perhaps for the rural poor who went along their hardscrabble way. They weren't really affected by the crash because they didn't have loans, never having had enough to qualify to GET a loan, and didn't lose savings because what little they had was in the bottom of the flour tin or down the well, not in a bank.
The rich haven't been hit YET, but they will be. Their wealth is built upon a house of cards and they are busily setting fire to it at its base.
Those people - my dad's generation - well understood the idea of "there but for the grace of god ...". Many had been ruined in the crash. Some never came back from that. They are the ones responsible for the vast majority of our social programs and restrictions on banking and industry - since revoked by republican/wealthy interests - that were intended to protect the populace and stabilize the economy. Which it did for many years and the middle class boomed.
Now we have a country populated by entitled masses of people who are not only not terribly well educated, who not only do not value education, but actually actively deride education and the educated and have no respect for the opinions of experts. They all think they're experts because they read some junk on the internet. Internet education is EASY so PFFFFT to all those egg heads!
Meanwhile the churches they go to similarly deride, mock and ridicule the poor. Obviously if you were RIGHT WITH GOD you would be rich, not poor! Instead of the "divine right of kings", they now preach the "divine right of billionaires". The whole Prayer of Jabez thing that was so popular through the 90s is an example of the morally bankrupt attitude of the religious right towards the poor.
If there were a Jesus he'd be looking down on you all (I mean the hypocritical xtian majority) and saying "This is NOT what I had in mind! Where are the communes? Where are the people TAKING CARE OF EACH OTHER? How did you forget that I said as ye do unto the least among you, so ye do unto me?"
Quote:
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”
I have grown weary of the maundering of hypocritical xtians who totally ignore every single message of peace, compassion, and humility there is in the Bible, while clinging to creationist nonsense and hatred for "others" and using only those parts of the Bible (often twisted and/or taken out of context) that support their bigotry.
Last edited by Pyewackette; 08-31-2018 at 12:28 PM..
We were doing really well till stage 4 tonsil cancer reared it's ugly head for my husband actually 9 years yesterday. He couldn't work for 7 months due to it. We had paid for cars and a house. Had I not got an inheritance from my dad we wouldn't have survived.
Hub went back to work, about 9 months later our truck had to be parked due to repairs we couldn't afford. A year after he was back his company got rid of owner operators then folded. We were lucky he found a company job at another place but the take home was way less then what he was making. More of my money was used to support the house. We got his truck refurbished, bought a trailer; eventually he had to max out credit cards. He got another job where he was doing well but rarely home. That eventually stopped working out so he changed jobs again. Things were going up hill finally then the rates he gets paid fell.
We put solar on the house years ago to get rid of our electric bill. It's helped a lot, it went from $500 in the summer to $50 on month of summer so far. Any home owners without it should look into one where there is no cost to you for anything. Best move we ever did.
We don't pay for cable as my son works for Comcast. He used to be with DirecTV. Our house phone is included with the package he gets. The only luxury we really have are our cell phones. I'm not sure how much the bill is. I'm on a 6+ year old Blackberry tour that barely works any more. He has a better cell because he needs it for work.
He has no health insurance thru work, what he has with Obama care isn't realistic with out of pocket so he does without. Thankfully I have Medicare but I'm disabled, some months my meds cost us $400; usually from March until August; then it's back down to under $100. I need dental work bad but can't afford to have my teeth fixed. I finally have dental insurance.
We've been slowly going back down to the bottom. Just can't seem to dig out no matter what we do. We're at the point now where there are times we barely have food in the house. We're going to be listing the house next. Hopeful that will help us rebuild our lives.
I'd like to know how many people can recover from a serious illness like my husband and still be financially sound.
I am sorry you guys have been through so much, and I hope it improves. I too took a financial hit due to medical reasons, a back injury that kept me out of work for 10 months, until they finally did surgery. I had a disability policy that gave me $1800 a month, not nearly enough to replace my salary. I had tried to raise it years ago, but by that time I had asked my doc to try Strattera for ADD, so because of my ADD diagnosis they were going to put me in a $400 a month high risk plan.
In addition to my normal bills, I was going to PT 3 times a week for months and also a chiropractor, each a $50 co-pay each time, and I couldn't drive so I had to Uber to them. They made me get 3 epidurals at $250 co pay each. Between co-pays and Uber I spent $14,000 over my normal bills.
I had to spend my month emergency fund which was about 4 months of expenses and had to take most of the money out of my Roth, but I also put about $20,000 on credit cards, a hole I am still trying to dig out of.
So at 56 I am starting from scratch in terms of saving and paying off debt. It is hard, and I am expecting a severe set-back when my next year's insurance rate comes in, as high increases are expected this year. It's already $700 a month.
Just as a side note: I grew up in a pretty affluent home; father was a physical therapist and did very well. For awhile we had 3 homes.
BUT, we were NOT allowed to discuss money at all. I tried to ask my dad about money and if that word even came out of my mouth, he would get angry. Once he said he would disinherit me, just for asking what an annuity was. Money in any form was a taboo subject.
So, despite being "affluent", no one taught us anything about money. And of course it is not taught in school at all. My SAHM never knew how to balance a checkbook; she hardly even wrote a check.
Not passing blame; just saying that even us "not poor" sometimes were not taught the basics. I had to learn it "the hard way"....
And health care can derail the best-laid financial plans. Co-pays alone can bankrupt a person. The U.S. is absolutely insane in the for-profit health-care model. The rest of the world laughs.
Just priced a colonoscopy here: $350. It was $1,500 in 2008 last time I checked in the U.S. In 2010 I had no insurance and they wanted to charge me $40,000 for a kidney stone. C'mon!
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