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Old 10-26-2020, 09:37 AM
 
1,488 posts, read 1,956,373 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by citidata18 View Post
None of that makes a difference.

You admitted in a prior post that your basic needs were supported by your parents for those 3 years you lived with them, even if they weren't making much. Of course anyone could save a ton of their money with a fairly average job if a similar arrangement was available to them.

Think about individuals who have parents that couldn't/can't even afford to provide for their children's basic necessities. You definitely had an advantage over them.
Got it, so by your logic ANYTHING no matter how small is an "unfair advantage." Then stop ignoring the true reason (which you conveniently pretend no one mentioned) why you don't get to complain. You were born in the US. That alone gives you a huge advantage over most places around the world where its truly impossible to get ahead. You keep ignoring that because actual facts like that are things you cannot dispute even with the nonsense you have posted here. These silly little "advantages" that I supposedly have that you point out has no place in a productive/logical discussion. Why stop there? Next thing I know you will say me even having parents is a HUGE advantage since those poor orphans did without one.

Do you realize that even statistically speaking your arguments are beyond ludicrous? On his best year my father made $17K up to about 2004. That essentially put my living situation at the bottom of the barrel below 84% of US households. In other words, you are actually sitting here trying to argue that me growing up in the 16th percentile was "too much of an advantage" and it was that "HUGE financial support" that my parents provided me on that poor level of income that led to my success. Stop with the madness!

Its you who has no clue about the real poor in the US. I do and I know the enormous amount of effort, working smart/hard and discipline it takes to climb out of that hole. I grew up sometimes living in 1 bedroom with 4 people with NOTHING but utensils and a bed sheet to sleep on (literally nothing else, no TV, chairs, table etc.). I grew up without ac, new cloths, new shoes because my parents could not afford these things. I grew up in neighborhoods where most kids end up joining gangs, dealing drugs or dead. In fact, most of my childhood friends ended up in those situations. I can go on and on but I'm sure you will always find a "huge advantage" no matter how dire my life has been.
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Old 10-26-2020, 12:37 PM
 
10,609 posts, read 5,582,770 times
Reputation: 18889
Quote:
Originally Posted by citidata18 View Post
Think about individuals who have parents that couldn't/can't even afford to provide for their children's basic necessities. You definitely had an advantage over them.
Do you advocate for a strict meritocracy?
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Old 10-26-2020, 12:38 PM
 
10,609 posts, read 5,582,770 times
Reputation: 18889
Quote:
Originally Posted by lieqiang View Post
Yep, it's a myth that resentful people cling to.
It helps some of them rationalize their own lack of accomplishment.
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Old 10-26-2020, 08:33 PM
 
8,063 posts, read 3,396,976 times
Reputation: 5601
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lincolnian View Post
There are no guarantees in life. However, if one is young and in decent health there are numerous opportunities to begin building a better life no matter what the current state of economic conditions is at present. I have seen young people start with a discarded lawn mower sitting at the curb, soliciting homes in the neighborhood to cut their lawn for $20 and then growing their neighborhood lawn business into an extensive landscaping business with top notch equipment within 2 or 3 years where they had a small crew working for them.

I personally know people who scraped together $500 to take a RE licensing course and then worked 80 hours a week after getting licensed and within a couple of years they were earning over $100,000 a year with no college education. A few years later they had a team of people working for them and were making $250,000 a year. They continue to work very hard but they are now considered "rich" by many viewing from the outside who have degrees and earn significantly less money.

There are many ways to gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed including college, trade school, apprentice programs and trial and error from hard work. If the area one lives in limits one's opportunities then there are countless areas in the US (and the world) to move to that offer better alternatives. For those whose age, health or a physical disability places limits on certain types of work there are many agencies, public and private that are willing to help.
I have never been in decent health. I was born a blue baby and nearly died. I was slow to learn to walk because I was born with a crooked knee. I have been ill from the time I was born.

I started job hunting when I was sixteen years old. I am now in my 40s. Every time I did get hired, I was fired not long after. I always have stayed sick and I have got sicker as I got older. Right now much of my mental concentration goes towards managing my multiple health problems, including auto immune disease so severe that I have nearly died from it and the doctors have had me on chemo for over two years to shut my immune system down because it was killing me. Society blames me for being unemployed and insists I am a bum and "you could get a job if you wanted to" and other such things. I have never had a true friend my whole life.

I was kicked off disability and the government is trying to make me pay back what I received in disability payments. I am not even allowed to have an income. I am so exhausted from managing day to day illnesses that I cannot focus on much of anything. Thanks to a car wreck I now have a spinal cord injury to add to what I already have wrong with me. I have not been granted anything to relieve any of the pain, but when I try to suicide to escape it then society wants to lock me up and judge me. If most people was in the kind of pain I am forced to live in without any kind of relief then they may want to die too. I can still walk, but each step I take is painful. My legs randomly give out and I fall a lot. Society is filled with sadists.

At the time I was kicked off disability I had seven sets of doctors I saw and was on 18 different medications, many which caused severe fatigue. The government insisted I was fine to drive like that. So, I have government permission basically to drive while severely impaired. Now I have another doctor I see because of the car wreck, but no additional medicines.

It would endanger my life to move out of the area. I have to get my chemo treatments to keep my immune system shut down. It costs taxpayers over half a million dollars a year to keep me alive.

I have three college degrees and am still not worth minimum wage. It took 8 years to get a 2 year graduate degree because I was sick all the time. I even get turned down for volunteer positions. I haven't been employed in over ten years and the last job didn't even last two months. I applied everywhere but was denied. With all of my health problems I don't get to socialize, so I don't even have three references to put on an application. My applications go in the trash. I have no friends. I stay home most of the time sick and in pain.

Some people were shocked when I was booted off disability because I am so messed up. I fought for my innocence for three years, but they decided I was a fraud and I was guilty without a chance to prove my innocence. My abusive father tried to obtain control over my disability money and when he couldn't he wrote a letter to SSA claiming I was a fraud, but he wrote it as though my daughter had wrote it. From the moment they received the letter I was considered guilty and they sought to paint me that way. I am too sick to work a job. I am forced to exist with zero income. I even submitted evidence that the fraud investigators fabricated much of the allegations in the fraud report and the evidence was ignored. For example, they claimed that I had my food stamps terminated with the innuendo that it was for fraud. I went to the food stamp office in the town I was living at the time the report was written and they supplied me with proof that those claims were lies. I had never been terminated from food stamps. There wasn't much in the report that was true, and the stuff that was true should not have anything to do with whether or not someone is disabled. For example, the investigators saw me in public talking on a cell phone and eating inside of a fast food restaurant. I was followed around for months with them taking video and pictures, but they did not find anything showing fraud so they just made stuff up instead.

I went through the fraud report and gathered evidence that punched holes throughout the thing and it didn't matter because everyone's mind was already made up that I was guilty. It wasn't even hard to gather the evidence. Like the food stamp allegation, for example, all I had to do was go to the food stamp office and explain the situation and they printed off documents. It would have been obvious to any unbiased person that I was being falsely accused. They even lied about what my medical records said in the fraud report. The judge that kicked me off went by what the fraud report said my medical records said and ignored the actual medical records. Then the judge also lied about what was in my medical records, of those he actually did read, in his decision. There was a huge box worth of medical records. As soon as fraud was alleged against me I was considered guilty and that was that.

I have food stamps, for now. Because I am not on disability anymore, the food stamp office keeps wanting to demand I work 20 hours a week in order to keep my food stamps. This would literally be a death sentence since employers have refused to employ me for over a decade now and I was never healthy enough to work 20 hours/week consistently back when I still got hired before being fired for being sick. A therapist has been signing a waiver form to give me more time of exemption, but if she stops doing so then I'll be cut off. If you don't receive food stamps and/or be in compliance with the work requirements then housing is terminated. So, my having housing and food is dependent upon the therapist filling out the form ever so often as demanded by the food stamp office. Even though I have no income, the minimum rent I have to pay is $52/month. I paid it until the end of the lease with the stimulus. If it weren't for the stimulus then I likely would still be homeless anyway. Kind of hard to come up with that kind of money with no income.

The stress from worrying about my medical issues and financial issues is overwhelming. Three of my medications are for anxiety. At any moment I could be cut off what little is left to keep me alive and I won't be able to survive. I am completely powerless to do anything about it. I definitely have never had an opportunity to not be poor.
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Old 10-27-2020, 08:41 AM
 
19,580 posts, read 17,859,815 times
Reputation: 17114
Quote:
Originally Posted by prospectheightsresident View Post
Assuming that what you write is true and that people "check their privilege," how is that going to make your or anyone else's life better?
LOL. I've never thought about it that way.

We (we = society) should acknowledge there is a thread of accuracy in the "privilege" arguments. However, just a thread.......many people use these arguments to deflect honest debate, and yes criticisms, as to why so many Americans swing and miss at life.

The real reason in my mind is so many never leave the on-deck circle.
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Old 10-27-2020, 09:06 AM
 
24,528 posts, read 18,079,774 times
Reputation: 40216
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
LOL. I've never thought about it that way.

We (we = society) should acknowledge there is a thread of accuracy in the "privilege" arguments. However, just a thread.......many people use these arguments to deflect honest debate, and yes criticisms, as to why so many Americans swing and miss at life.

The real reason in my mind is so many never leave the on-deck circle.
It’s really hard to overcome bad parents and/or a broken home. The “privilege” is mostly having parents who impart an education ethic. If you don’t have 21st century job skills, you’re stuck in low paying repetitive task jobs where there is a glut of cheap labor driving the price down to near-minimum wage.

It’s why socioeconomic class mobility is so lousy in the United States. I’m not sure that flinging infinite resources at education would budge the needle much.
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Old 10-27-2020, 03:52 PM
 
Location: Honolulu/DMV Area/NYC
30,536 posts, read 18,015,833 times
Reputation: 34298
Quote:
Originally Posted by EDS_ View Post
LOL. I've never thought about it that way.

We (we = society) should acknowledge there is a thread of accuracy in the "privilege" arguments. However, just a thread.......many people use these arguments to deflect honest debate, and yes criticisms, as to why so many Americans swing and miss at life.

The real reason in my mind is so many never leave the on-deck circle.


It's just always been mindboggling to me that some spend so much time trying to get others to admit something or believe as they do when it will have zero impact on their lives.

I'm spending too much time working on improving and bettering myself to be crying for people to admit their "privilege"
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Old 10-29-2020, 04:04 AM
 
Location: South Carolina
3,008 posts, read 2,260,207 times
Reputation: 2147
Quote:
Originally Posted by lieqiang View Post
Not necessarily.

Half the population is below average, being a member of that 165 million member club doesn't automatically mean one is making low wages. To take that further making low wages doesn't automatically mean someone needs help either.
No they may not but I bet you there is a good chance they are. How do you really think someone who is below average is gonna go to college or learn a trade it is more likely they will work at Walmart or in a restaurant? They are very few jobs a person with below average IQ could make good money.
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Old 10-29-2020, 04:14 AM
 
Location: South Carolina
3,008 posts, read 2,260,207 times
Reputation: 2147
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thatsright19 View Post
You have no idea how charitable I am or how much tax I pay.

Maybe I think working for 4 months out of the year for it to be simply taken from me and my family and given to the whims of what others consider to be the greater good is wrong. Maybe I want to dictate what cause it goes to.

Maybe I don’t care about other people’s college education when I still haven’t paid for mine. I have my own medical bills. Why do I want to worry about paying someone else’s when I already literally pay tens of thousands of taxes, and pay for medical insurance, and then pay the thousands left over still.


If someone is below average, they’re just that. This may be hard for you to comprehend but it’s impossible not to have poor people. It’s impossible not to have people below average. There isn’t some utopia where you can make everyone have good outcomes without good inputs.

And I know what it’s like to be poor. I’ve been poor. I’ve seen some of the poorest cities in this country. I’ve seen it from both sides. Some people cannot be helped. Period. And still others, quite frankly shouldn’t be helped.
Your right I do not know if you give to charity but then again anyone can say they give to charity does not mean they really do. From what you written and how you seem to only care about yourself and how you think about poor people I really doubt you give to charity that helps the poor. I would say most everyone can
be helped there may be some who do not want to but that is a small group. You want to believe they can't be helped so then it makes you feel you do not have to help them. Who are you to say who should and should not be helped what give you that right? Even if someone is poor because they made bad decisions they are still human and deserve compassion and understanding apparently something a lot of people on this forum never learned.
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Old 10-29-2020, 06:24 AM
 
5,902 posts, read 4,401,112 times
Reputation: 13426
Quote:
Originally Posted by Storm Eagle View Post
Your right I do not know if you give to charity but then again anyone can say they give to charity does not mean they really do. From what you written and how you seem to only care about yourself and how you think about poor people I really doubt you give to charity that helps the poor. I would say most everyone can
be helped there may be some who do not want to but that is a small group. You want to believe they can't be helped so then it makes you feel you do not have to help them. Who are you to say who should and should not be helped what give you that right? Even if someone is poor because they made bad decisions they are still human and deserve compassion and understanding apparently something a lot of people on this forum never learned.
This is exactly the kind of post you see from people that don’t know what the hell theyre talking about. You launch into attacks about character and morals, and you have no clue what mine are. You also apparently have paid absolutely zero attention to my posts in this thread if the above is your conclusion.

If fact, I’ve BEEN poor. As a child my family had our cars taken, our lights cut out. We were eventually homeless. My dad used to borrow our birthday money for our school lunches. When I was in college starting out, a car accident destroyed my $3,000 car and my books...and my calculator. I had nothing. My car rolled into a ditch and the water made my books blow up to several times their original size. My state pulled the funding for some of the minor scholarships that I earned because of their funding issues.

https://youtu.be/kVUsyOySDC4

https://youtu.be/Bg_Q7KYWG1g

https://youtu.be/oYJ7__zNko4

Last edited by Thatsright19; 10-29-2020 at 06:52 AM..
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