Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: North of the Cow Pasture and South of the Wind Turbines
856 posts, read 2,921,585 times
Reputation: 2280
Advertisements
I think it is LI specific because of the cost of living and the complexities of living on that sand spit, chasing a dollar which although necessary, is not always what makes people the happiest. I take a little offense from the OP using, lazy etc as reasons for their demise. Poverty is a very complex issue and I believe that for every case of a person being "poor" which is very subjective, there are "poor" people that would never consider themselves as such. I think Tom was playing devils advocate on the post, however it is something as many people have said on this forum that 100k is just makin the bakin. So what is poor on LI?
I have always lived in the shadow of great wealth on LI up to a few years ago because I relocated to an old family farm, but never considered myself poor, even though by comparison that could be interpreted as the case. However I do sort of consider myself poor. So "move"? That seems to be the one thing some people recommend here on the LI forum sometimes with some elitist sense of entitlement.
And to respond to people who let's say got theirs early for whatever reason, go hang out with some of those Cold Spring Harbor graduates in the bars of Huntington and having lived in that area I can tell you...
Either they lose it or are waiting for it, which after a year or so they will lose it. I have seen dozens and dozens of these "poor" although wealthy "poor" and then they are rich and then cleaning the rich people's pools...
Good post!
Happy and Safe Holiday Season
Last edited by Keeper; 12-19-2007 at 04:50 PM..
Reason: removed deleted quote
Location: Concrete jungle where dreams are made of.
8,900 posts, read 15,937,156 times
Reputation: 1819
Well, the kids I teach in the south Bronx basically are in a way like suburban kids as far as how their parents spend their money, just worsened. In the suburbs you have parents spending money on luxury items so they keep up with the Jonses and look good, but in the hood you have parents who spoil their kids with toys because they don't know how to say no, and the kids go hungry because they don't get fed.
My kids complain that their stomachs hurt because their parents don't give them food. But of course they'll buy them that new psp game.
One of the things I find instructive about the poor is to check out the NY Times' neediest cases. There can be crimes, illness or just plain bad luck that can send people from the middle class to the ranks of the poor. Just today they featured a 67 year old woman who takes the bus two hours each way for a low earning job. She gets mugged often. I don't think she has a lot of options.
What we owe the poor is another subject. But, certainly, we could all be in the same circumstances of those poor folks.
I'm going to agree with you here. Anything can bring about poverty; the death of a spouse, serious illness, bad investment, a crime, or being born into it. it is easy for us to say one can work hard to get out of it, but we don't see the unscrupulous slumlords, the lack of healthcare, the lack of funds to buy things we take for granted.
So what we are also talking about here are peoples' choices, which are easy to judge, but why do we get to judge? IF someone wants to change their lives, they should be able to get the resources or know how to, but if not, well, they are what they are. There are sometimes people, rich or poor, who don't know better unless someone tells them..sometimes there isn't someone to tell them. Perhaps we only owe people the idea of making their lives "better" and the avenues by which these things occur.
there's a difference between a poor family working hard and buying their kids or themselves these expensive items and a poor family living in public housing using their welfare check to pay for this stuff. that's my point! if one is working hard for money, then it's his/her perogative to spend it as they wish. it's not my business. what i am opposed to is those who don't work and spend frivolously with my tax dollars.
i don't know why poor people are poor, but one thing i can point out is there seems to be a lot of people living in projects and getting welfare sporting designer labels, owning top of the line electronics, and driving around expensive cars. i have nothing against those who work hard and try improve their lives, but it really annoys me when people take advantage of the system. those who need the help don't get it and those who don't just stay in it.
I don't know why I end up surprised each time I encounter this trash. Anyway, I've never met or known a person living in a project who had the latest electronics.
When will the working class stop beating up on the lower class? Limbaugh reminds us that a nation never got rich by taxing itself. Well, the middle class never advanced its own interests by picking on the poor.
To answer my own question, children of the rich are rich because they know how to invest.
I had this discussion with my father in law recently. Rich kids who go to college take a large gift from their parents to put down payments on condos. As residents, when attending public schools, they qualify for in state tuition. Plus, holding a mortgage, they are in debt and so pay little in taxes. And, they qualify for cheap loans and grants because they are independents.
My family never would have thought about this, because the rules weren't to be exploited for gain. But, as a professor, I know lots of young people of rich families that do this.
To sum, they pass information down. They understand how to make their money keep giving. It has a lot to do with time orientation - learning how to see what a dollar today can do for you 20 years from now. If, however, you live in a home where the clock isn't seen as a priority, you never learn to live in the future or for the future. It has a lot to do with time orientation and the patience that comes with modern, future-oriented time orientation.
Long Island´s evolution has been a disaster for those in the middle class who never expected change to come so hard and so fast. Like I said in another post, when I was growing up in NHP, we had 26 kids on my block right in my age bracket. My dad was a NYPD Sergeant in the TPF. Many others had normal jobs....post office worker, fireman, butcher, auto-body shop owner, insurance reps...you get the picture. Many had no college education because they didn´t need it to raise a family and pay a mortgage. Those people are the old of today, their houses are paid off, but their kids for the most part are gone. Why? Information and forsight. So many of these kids grew up having great childhoods, but were woefully unprepared for a 21st Century Long Island. Getting a good blue collar job was the priority for many of these kids, but they were rapidly evaporating by the time they got out of high school. A few did make it, meaning they stayed on LI and were able to buy their own houses by going to college and getting themselves employable degrees, but the precentage is low...maybe only 2 or 3 of those kids. Everybody else has moved away.
My family lucked out in a way. My dad did see some change coming (property taxes were starting to skyrocket) and he went and got his BS in Criminal Justice and then later a Masters in History and that sprung him into a commission with the USAR. That second career kept our family financially secure and influenced us into taking education seriously.
I´m sure most kids from parents with professional careers grew up differently because they had the tools available to them to succeed...starting capital, investment and educational knowledge and access to a professional networking base. Many of these kids took the right paths, made the right decisions and took advantage of opportunities simply because the knowledge was there.
In comparison, I would say that at the blue collar level there was also a fairly decent networking base, but the investment and education knowledge...and for many having any type of starting capital, really cut down on the chances that these kids would be capable of supporting a good Long Island middle class population base.
How I wish there would have been a mandatory course in High School just to teach teenagers the importance of understanding the educational, financial and investment worlds that we were eventually to face. I believe many more kids would have been prepared for change and would have stayed on LI as a result of proactive decisions. The results of not having this information is evident everytime I go back to visit my aging parents on a street with almost no kids.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Urban Mythology
