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Looks like this "poor" woman has decided, voluntarily, that her previous attempts at making money were not succeeding and now she is writing and publishing a book:

This is an extract from Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado, to be published at £14.99 by Virago on 2 October. Click here to buy it for £11.99 with free UK p&p

Looks like she found the answer to her problem of "poverty". 

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47 minutes ago, Dustin86 said:

...it is written by a poor person on the subject of why poor people make bad financial decisions. ...

Underlying it all, there's this basic assumption: in the author's words "we will never not be poor". While it is understandable, it is also the primary assumption that has to change. Otherwise, no other fundamental change will happen.

Everyone -- rich, poor or middle-class -- has a certain self-image of who they are in terms of social-cohort ("who we are... ... what social class am I"). And, in a sense, most people are "trapped" in this self-image. For instance, a middle-class person might assume "I will never rise to the C-suite, but I might end life as a second-level supervisor". Hard to use the word "trapped" for this: since an American in that class has a standard of living better than most people on the globe. The point is this: these assumptions form an important context to other decisions; these assumptions limit most people to staying close to their "assumed-class". It becomes a real issue -- often a life-or-death issue -- when you're poor. 

[As an aside, too many people among the blue-collar middle-class in the U.S. have been sticking to out-dated assumptions about the type of choices they should be making, even though the alarm bells of change have been sounding since the Japanese boom of the 70's and 80's. Many have swarmed to Donald Trump in protest, thinking there was a social contract that guaranteed those assumptions.

Consider immigrants from third-world countries who are among the "educated middle class" in their original countries. Many of them come to the U.S. with a few thousand dollars and with an education. A generation later, their kids will probably attend one of the top few schools in their state. Do not compare them to the poor American, but compare them to the many blue-collar American Trump-supporters who have a much better starting point in terms of physical things, but not in terms of their assumptions about who they are; whose kids too often do not aspire to join the "educated classes", let alone seeing themselves as leaders of future organizations.  end-aside]

There's no easy answer to: "how can one change the assumptions of the poorer classes?" A more manageable question is: "how does one particular poor person change her assumptions?" Still, not easy; but manageable. Also, the more one remains in poverty, the more difficult it will be (on average) to get out. For instance, if the author of that article had decided to break out when she was in high-school, would she have had kids? Kids are not merely a money-expense; one has to spend so much time on kids in their younger years that it is a huge decision that will impact everything else for many years. I hear her rationalization for smoking, but would she smoke if she had different assumptions about her future? Would she think that she's unable to get any job that pays better than a cook just because she doesn't look like a Hollywood stereotype of an executive secretary. [Aside: It makes sense to dress and talk for the class and the role to which one aspires. For instance, a black person might complain about stereotyping, but if he is in a situation like a job-interview, his best course is to dress and talk etc. in ways that do not reinforce someone else's irrational stereotype. That is not the time to be complaining about social injustice.]

She's in college, so I hope she's doing something that will get a her a better-paying job. Maybe she will aspire to save $1,000 to put as deposit for a secured credit-card, which will then make some other aspects of her life easier. At an individual level, if one does not have serious health or disability issues, the answer is to change your assumptions about who you are going to be, but then tackle little objectives one at a time, ascending a flight of stairs.

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

I read this article in the news a while back, it is written by a poor person on the subject of why poor people make bad financial decisions. Ever since reading this article, I have been very, very curious to hear the Objectivist response to it.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/21/linda-tirado-poverty-hand-to-mouth-extract

People make bad decisions because they're irrational, not because they're poor.

And no, being poor isn't what makes you irrational. Not making an effort to be rational does (not because you're busy, but because you're intellectually dishonest...being busy is entirely irrelevant to the issue, you can be rational while busy just as easily as you can be rational while doing nothing), and being influenced by irrational ideas does. Being poor, being busy, etc. does not.

Like this woman demonstrates, being irrational and evading basic facts and logic takes time and effort too. It probably took her more effort to write that irrational article than it would've taken her to write a rational one.

Edited by Nicky
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I really don't have patience for this kind of article, so I only skimmed. This attitude -- "I will never not be poor" -- is utterly destructive.

At the same time, I think it's important to recognize that one's circumstances do have an impact. Growing up with wealth offers opportunities and advantages that growing up in poverty does not (which is why we prefer to be wealthy, among other things). Though growing up wealthy does not guarantee personal success, and growing up poor does not prevent it, I think we can recognize that the advantages which wealth confers make personal success either more likely -- or easier -- than without the same. (This is the nature of their "advantage.")

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2 hours ago, DonAthos said:

I really don't have patience for this kind of article, so I only skimmed. This attitude -- "I will never not be poor" -- is utterly destructive.

At the same time, I think it's important to recognize that one's circumstances do have an impact. Growing up with wealth offers opportunities and advantages that growing up in poverty does not (which is why we prefer to be wealthy, among other things). Though growing up wealthy does not guarantee personal success, and growing up poor does not prevent it, I think we can recognize that the advantages which wealth confers make personal success either more likely -- or easier -- than without the same. (This is the nature of their "advantage.")

I wouldn't say "growing up rich" is what gives some people an advantage. What gives some people an advantage is receiving help (from their family, friends, their family's friends and connections, etc.).

But it's really not the same thing. There's no causal relationship between the amount of money a person's parents have, and the quality of help they receive growing up. Relatively poor parents can in fact help their children enormously through a rational, moral upbringing, through instilling good work ethic, and even providing an education that is superior in quality to just letting the public school system take care of it.

There's for instance this story, about a family in Alabama that is home schooling their ten children: seven of them have gone to college so far...by the age of 12 (and it's not college for the sake of college, either...on of the grown kids is a doctor, one is a composer, another one is working on his doctorate, etc.). http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/18485-homeschool-family-sends-seven-kids-to-college-all-by-age-12

Obviously, those kids are receiving far more help from their family, towards being successful and leading proper lives, than Paris Hilton ever did.

And sure, when we're talking about extreme, third world poverty, then it becomes impossible to properly help children. There is no way out of poverty for kids in rural India or Africa, or any other socialist hellhole. But, in developed countries, failing to offer one's children a path to success is entirely the parents' fault. Shifting the blame onto anyone else, or blaming not being a millionaire, is delusional.

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54 minutes ago, Nicky said:

I wouldn't say "growing up rich" is what gives some people an advantage. What gives some people an advantage is receiving help (from their family, friends, their family's friends and connections, etc.).

What I had written was:

"Growing up with wealth offers opportunities and advantages that growing up in poverty does not..."

Do you disagree with that, as stated?

It's not to say that there aren't other factors. It isn't even to say that wealth is the most important factor. But it is to say that wealth is a factor.

Some of the "help" you mention may also be related to wealth. Parents who have the resources to educate themselves, purchase materials, hire tutors, enroll a child in a particular school, get quality medical care, take family vacations, and etc., are perhaps better situated to help their child in various respects than those who do not. Some parents efforts to achieve material stability may leave them too tired/stressed to be able to offer their children much beyond basic care.

Or to look at this another way, there is a wide gulf between those parents devoted to helping their children and those who are not (or to whatever degree they are so devoted). But wealth is a means of achieving our ends. Between parents equally devoted to help their children, wealth provides a (literally) material advantage.

54 minutes ago, Nicky said:

But it's really not the same thing. There's no causal relationship between the amount of money a person's parents have, and the quality of help they receive growing up.

Certainly there's no 1-to-1 relationship, yet it is a factor.

54 minutes ago, Nicky said:

Relatively poor parents can in fact help their children enormously through a rational, moral upbringing, through instilling good work ethic, and even providing an education that is superior in quality to just letting the public school system take care of it.

Absolutely true.

54 minutes ago, Nicky said:

But, in developed countries, failing to offer one's children a path to success is entirely the parents' fault. Shifting the blame onto anyone else, or blaming not being a millionaire, is delusional.

Given any set of circumstances (even living in a "socialist hellhole") it is the individual's responsibility to make the best possible decisions for himself. He will be the one, primarily at least, to suffer the consequences if he does not. Yet it is no denial of such individual responsibility to recognize that the circumstances matter to the choices one has available.

How we're raised, specifically, has an impact on our development, and this extends to money and so much more than that, too. A child brought up in a fundamentalist religious household may have more to overcome than otherwise; so, too, a child beaten or berated by his parents; so, too, a child brought up in poverty, along with those things which often attend poverty (including poor education, poor diet/health, poor access to resources, poor neighborhoods, etc).

We can refer to these things as "challenges" because they are challenging. While it is morally praiseworthy when we rise up to overcome such challenges or obstacles, or perhaps worthy of censure when we do not, we still are correct to recognize them for what they are.

Starting from poverty, all else being equal, it is harder to achieve those markers of success (college degrees, financial independence/wealth, etc.) than starting from riches. Again, this is one of the reasons we prefer to be wealthy: it helps us to achieve our ends, including raising our children and providing them with the sorts of "help" that we believe will do them the most good.

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I am not, for all my frustration, opposed to capitalism. Most westerners, poor ones included, aren’t. We like the idea that anyone can succeed. What I am opposed to is the sort of capitalism that sucks the life out of a whole bunch of the citizenry and then demands that they do better with whatever they have left. If we could just agree that poor people are doing the necessary grunt work and that there is dignity in that too, we’d be able to make it less onerous.

Put another way: I’m not saying that someone doesn’t have to scrub the toilets around here. All I’m saying is that maybe instead of being grossed out by the very idea of toilets, you could thank the people doing the cleaning, because if not for them, you’d have to do it your damn self.

5 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

This was followed by a dissertation on the evils of the minimum wage (not that we have one, but that it's too low), temp agencies (which are the best thing to happen to the poor since ramen noodles) and the fact that companies are allowed to fire their employees.

Here too, is a switch on the term capitalism. She's not opposed to capitalism, per se, as most westerners, poor included.

But then she associates the sucking the life out of the citizenry and demand they do with what they have left. This seconds Nicky's point about the irrational. She's not informed about the nature Capitalism, and it shows here. 

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Freedom is about choice. Some people make good choices and some don't, but you're allowed to make them for yourself.

It's not easy to make wise decisions when you're struggling just to make ends meet. Trust me; I've been there; I know how hard it is.

However, the author of that article is suggesting that she'd be willing to trade those choices for some better food and some job security. As a "poor" Objectivist, I do not share her suicidal sentiment.

 

I think it would be better to starve in a gutter of my own choosing than to live as the most pampered pet in the world.

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14 hours ago, Dustin86 said:

I read this article in the news a while back, it is written by a poor person on the subject of why poor people make bad financial decisions. Ever since reading this article, I have been very, very curious to hear the Objectivist response to it.

The article is about why being poor is difficult, not why poor people make that make bad financial decisions. She admits to some mistakes, but mostly she describes just what it's like to be poor, that's it. The bit about temporary jobs is a good point, it's hardly admirable to hire somebody only long enough to keep them as temporary, then intend to rehire them later. She also talks about unpaid internships. Sure, you don't have to take them, but it's more like trying to get people to work for free by trading "connections" or good letter of recommendation. That's the stuff that makes for a society based on favors and impressions rather than actual ability even if a free market exists.

It's all well and good, but it's more like she sees life as "life sucks, then you die". At the end, she talks about how people cope with life and says rich people have an easier time coping thanks to the money that they have.

"Why are other people’s coping mechanisms better than poor people’s? Because they’re prettier. People with more money drink better wine out of nicer glasses. And maybe they get a prescription for benzodiazepines from their own personal on-call psychiatrist instead of buying a pack of cigarettes. They can buy whatever they like and it’s OK, because retail therapy is a recognised course of treatment for the upper classes. Poor people don’t have those luxuries. We smoke because it’s a fast, quick hit of dopamine. We eat junk because it’s cheap and it lights up the pleasure centres of our brain. And we do drugs because it’s an effective way to feel good or escape something."

So, my response is: yup, nihilist attitudes sucks. I like to call it "working class nihilism", it's nothing new. 

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18 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

It's not easy to make wise decisions when you're struggling just to make ends meet. Trust me; I've been there; I know how hard it is.

You may not see it yet, but what you describe is the crucible that can be used to forge the wise decisions, or shrug off the necessity to do so, looking for excuses instead. When every dollar counts, they can either be spent to further your life's goals, or squandered to pander to the whim of the moment. As Micheal Hurd points out here,

On 3/29/2016 at 8:26 AM, Michael J. Hurd Ph.D. said:

Money is more than just a piece of paper. It represents the fruit of your labors. Whether you earned minimum wage or made millions by taking investment risks, your money represents what philosopher/author Ayn Rand called, “a frozen form of productive energy.” Money symbolizes the sum total of your efforts to date. Of course you’ll feel possessive about it! It represents your labors so far in life.

What Linda Tirado is missing here is the relationship of money to what it is that makes money possible. In the sense that she is publishing a book, she gets it implicitly. To the extent she does not get it explicitly, she is adding to the din of the crescendo which is extinguishing, rather than igniting the lights of civilization.

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1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

What Linda Tirado is missing here is the relationship of money to what it is that makes money possible.

I hadn't thought of that. :worry:

 

1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

You may not see it yet, but what you describe is the crucible that can be used to forge the wise decisions, or shrug off the necessity to do so, looking for excuses instead.

 

Sorry; I'm still having a bit of difficulty thinking in straight lines, after that article. Could you clarify what you mean?

 

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

The bit about temporary jobs is a good point, it's hardly admirable to hire somebody only long enough to keep them as temporary, then intend to rehire them later.

So... Quit?

 

Yeah; not all temp agencies are knights in shining armor (I've worked for a few that were run by outright crooks) but they're the closest thing left to an at-will, contractual hire.

 

If you hire a full-time employee then the law requires you to pay them at least $X per hour, pay for their dental care, pay for their medical bills, pay for their time off, et cetera. And if that employee isn't worth all of those hidden costs, in terms of raw productivity, then you can either fire them or run at a loss for as long as the company can tolerate it.

 

It's hard enough for unskilled laborers to find a job, right now. To take temp agencies out of the equation would make it financially impossible to hire anyone who hasn't already been trained in that job. 

If you think millenials are insufferable, wait and see what happens to the generation that grows up legally forbidden to work. It'll be like that scene in Atlas Shrugged about the teenage boys with dark eyes, who would've been great industrialists in another world, but had been reduced by legislative noose to living on backroom deals in the dead of night.

 

And yes, this article is a test case with legislative nooses in mind.

 

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

It's all well and good, but it's more like she sees life as "life sucks, then you die".

https://youtu.be/Z_ZiRT8Nwkk

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You may not see it yet, but what you describe is the crucible that can be used to forge the wise decisions, or shrug off the necessity to do so, looking for excuses instead.

6 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

You may not see it yet, but what you describe is the crucible that can be used to forge the wise decisions, or shrug off the necessity to do so, looking for excuses instead.

When money is short in amount (like time), how you choose to spend it is either to do so wisely, or foolishly.

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18 hours ago, DonAthos said:

What I had written was:

"Growing up with wealth offers opportunities and advantages that growing up in poverty does not..."

Do you disagree with that, as stated?

No, I just don't think it's particularly relevant or insightful. It's like telling a painter "you need red paint to be a painter, Sir". Sure, he needs red paint, but the more helpful advice would've been "you need paint to be a painter...all kinds of colors, red, blue, yellow, etc.".

Financial help is one type of help you may receive from your parents...not a special type, not even the most important type. Focusing on it strikes me as foolish.

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2 hours ago, Nicky said:

No, I just don't think it's particularly relevant or insightful. It's like telling a painter "you need red paint to be a painter, Sir". Sure, he needs red paint, but the more helpful advice would've been "you need paint to be a painter...all kinds of colors, red, blue, yellow, etc.".

Financial help is one type of help you may receive from your parents...not a special type, not even the most important type. Focusing on it strikes me as foolish.

Foolishness is ignoring reality, or treating things as other than they are. Acknowledging the importance of wealth in raising children is acknowledging reality.

And if such wealth was reduced to "financial help" -- say a million dollar loan to a young Donald Trump, or similar -- then perhaps it would be right to say that such a thing is not really very consequential (or maybe it is: for all I can tell, Trump ought to be a used car salesman, rather than a Presidential candidate... or who knows, maybe he is -- maybe Trump's Used Cars is a huge, classy lot somewhere among the docks of New Jersey, where you can buy Trump Steaks from out of his trunk).

But wealth often relates to several other aspects of life which form part of an upbringing or the kinds of "help" a child might receive, and not accidentally. Poor parents might not be able to spend as much time with their children as otherwise, or provide tools of education or recreation, or access to health services or a nutritious diet. The neighborhood might not be as good, which potentially means an increased exposure not only to physical hazard, but also negative mental and spiritual influences.

These are all often a part of "poverty," which is not simply the number attached to some bank account.

To say that a man of sufficient character can overcome all of these sorts of obstacles is true, and to say that poor parents may/must still seek to instill important virtues in their children (along with what education, nutrition, etc. they are able) is also true, and deeply important, but if we're evaluating the situation honestly, we must also recognize the difficulty of rising out of such a situation. We sometimes remark on the success of people who come from humble origins because it is remarkable.

And rather than the comparison of needing red paint to be a painter (although... red is one of the primary colors, so it is somewhat more important to have on hand than, say, chartreuse), let's consider the relationship of height and playing in the NBA. Must one be seven feet tall to play in the NBA? Not at all. Muggsy Bogues played at 5' 3". But that's a significant feat, unusual and noteworthy. I'd dare say that it's harder -- significantly so -- to pursue professional basketball at 5' 3" than it is at 7' 0". We expect to see taller people in the NBA, accordingly, and marvel when someone under 6 feet manages to achieve the same thing. (And to date, I believe that there still has only been the one Muggsy Bogues.)

If a man is born with a preset adult height of 5' 3" and wishes to play professional basketball, the answer is not to lament his fate, give up, or curse the "unfairness" of the situation. But acknowledging the steeper hill to climb to achieve his goals that his circumstances necessitate, and the attendant difficulty? That's appreciating and acknowledging reality for what it is.

And while I believe that people born poor have many opportunities to rise out of poverty (and while I don't think it's on par with going to the NBA as a five-footer; at least, not in the USA), acknowledging the difficulty of such a thing is not foolish, even as we rightly observe that such difficulty can be overcome, given the proper mentality.

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7 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

I'm sorry for jumping down your throat about temp agencies, there. The anger I directed at you was a response to the article, itself, and I'd like to apologize for that.

No one, not even the writer of the article, suggested banning temp jobs. The writer didn't even claim that the minimum wage should be raised. There was no call for anything anti-capitalist. She was just describing the experience of being poor, and some difficulties. If there are temp jobs intending to string you along and attempting to treat you as a permanent employee, this is not proper. Even if that should be legal, it is still mistreatment.

But the thing to notice is the writer is pretty nihilistic. Being poor sucks, being rich sucks a tad bit less. Capitalist or communist, it still sucks. Life has no apparent value, just look how depressing this is. Rich people on their prescription opiates, poor people drinking booze, what does it matter any more? She'll scrape by one day just to continue the repetitiveness of life. The people suck, it's a dog-eat-dog world.

That's a pretty standard nihilistic way to look at things. I don't get the sense she thinks life is full of possibilities, just toil. This type of attitude is how post-punk music grew - working class toil. Think Joy Division. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGMDBppWBOo There are no "heroes", we are all flawed apparently.  This is in contrast to immigrants in the past who were probably in a similar stressful situation, but didn't see it as all misery. There probably always will be companies with questionable practices, and we'd live in a better society without them. But it doesn't have to make us feel miserable.

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18 hours ago, Eiuol said:

No one, not even the writer of the article, suggested banning temp jobs. The writer didn't even claim that the minimum wage should be raised. There was no call for anything anti-capitalist.

I had come to the conclusion that it must be a test case because I'd assumed that there must be some purpose in writing the whole thing; something to be accomplished by it. I see now that's not the case. It's not suggesting that we do anything about anything; the author is just showing off her open sores (which is something I personally despise).

 

So, you're right; the "Objectivist response" (if anything) would probably be - so what? 

Life is not about pain.

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As a counter-anecdotal story, a little while ago there was a news story about a girl who had been homeless and had shifted from school to school, and was admitted to Harvard. Not suggesting that the typical poor person, with a little bit of grit, can get into Harvard, but aiming to be respectably lower-middle class is  well within reach.

 

Edited by softwareNerd
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