same old stan

[Leo]

Hold on. Don't mix up the way things always have been with the way things should be. The government could pay for every single person to have the bare minimum in order to survive, and it would cost the taxpayers almost nothing compared to our other expenses. People wouldn't "live off of the system" because no one wants the bare minimum. People want money to spend on the things they like, to go out out to eat, to watch movies, to go to concerts etc. no one wants to just survive, people want to LIVE. And this is proven by countries which have implemented such programs, refered to as basic universal income, which still have great economies and no one really lives off the taxpayer dollars because it's simply not enough to have an enjoyable life. That's about as socialist as I get. I don't believe that luxuries should be socialized, because that takes away incentive for people to work. I also don't believe that business owners shouldn't make more than their employees, because that takes away incentive to run a business. I think capitalism can work, but these socialist programs are needed to keep it from being exploited, and then even if it does they are there to safeguard the poor. Let dying of poverty be a thing of the past, told about in stories but not a current reality.

WTF
FOOK YOU

The Idea that a nonworking or less paid individual, which means the individual is putting less in the system, should receive govt cash is in no way indicative of a healthy
society.
If you want to really live, then you need to really work by inventing, providing, or creating a service society will really pay you for,
This may mean educating yourself or training to enhance your desirability, thus your pay.
But the idea that you receive pay just because you exist is a level of laziness that should never be reached.

Addressing poverty in the US is as simple as working on the educational system, being tough on crime, teaching basic nutrition, and promoting the nuclear family and not having kids before your education is complete and you are married.

My eldest daughter is 28 today, She lived at home for 5 years while going to college and working to become the RN she is today.
During those 5 years, she lived rent-free so she could save for a down payment on a house and pay off her student loan.
Then she went and put her down payment on the house she wanted and is now paying on her own home and has paid off her student debt.

Now she wastes money on levels I never could or would. But she can do that as she is being a responsible adult.
I may not agree on all her spending, although her savings look good too but she is accountable as an adult to herself and is a healthy contributing citizen.
That should be the goal.

As parents, it is your role to be the government in your scenario.
5 years of no bills for 5 years of hard work equals freedom for your child from poverty.
Simple.

Your hands-out approach teaches laziness and encourages people to be less than what they can be.
Which probably leads to suicide.

Without the knowledge and skills required for well-compensated work in the modern workplace, each succeeding generation of undereducated adults merely replaces the one before it without achieving any upward mobility or escape from poverty.

Ahh, I see you're promoting the myth that the harder you work, the more rich you'll become. The hardest working people are the poor. The people that have to work overtime every week to support their families, the single mothers, the factory workers, the miners, the school teachers etc. I don't believe in a welfare system that promotes laziness. I believe in a welfare system that helps people in need. I also think it wouldn't be a bad idea for people to only be eligible for these programs if they are already working or if there is evidence they have been attempting to get a job, similar to how unemployment pay works. People "exploiting the system" just refers to trading their welfare money for things like drugs. People do that anyway, regardless of if it's welfare money. If people want to throw away their opportunity to have a stable life who am I to stop them?

[Meliva]

And I see you're promoting the myth that hard work isn't a big factor in determining success.

A saying I heard that is pretty accurate is this. Hard work doesn't guarantee success, but it does really boost your chances. You also need to be smart with your money and investments and have some luck. If you lack all 3 of those things, you're doomed to poverty. If you got at least one, you probably won't be well off, but also won't be living in a gutter. Get 2 and you're most likely going to be well off. Or at least be able to set up your kids to someday be well off.

Luck is a factor you can't control or influence. But you can control hard work and your choices and investments. Unless you get absolutely sh*t luck, it's possible to get out of poverty with hard work and good choices.

edit- you also need to remember that even if you were born into bad circumstances, born into a poor family, with a lot of problems, that doesn't mean your kids need to suffer the same fate. If you work hard, are smart with your choices and money, and don't get hit with a bunch of real bad luck, you can set your children to be able to have a better life then you did. Generational wealth is a very powerful thing.

[Dmanwuzhere]

I don’t recall saying you’ll be rich.
You aren’t entitled or owed that status.
What I am saying is in the example I presented,
my daughter will be fine and not draw a wage that will hinder her upward mobility.
That was her hard works just reward.
Now let’s say she moaned and groaned about social issues
Screamed no pies no piece everywhere she could
Got a million tats piercings dyed her hair and said she deserved to be rich,

I would tell her that’s nice do you need a ride to your Burger King job.

Leo your anger at the rich isn’t really anger it’s jealousy.

Just say, hey I’m going to beeitch and moan because I’ll never be rich and I’ll understand.

It certainly fits with the rest of your childish dreams you wish were reality.

[Meliva]

yup. And I'm willing to bet dman, that if your daughter keeps making good choices, and raises any kids she has or may have right, they'll build on her success and be well off too. Rinse and repeat and someday your descendants may be rich themselves.

[Leo]

Yes you're right. I'm not angry that my grandma was refused the meds she needs, or that they raised the price of inhalers to $500, or that I now have a $2500 bill from that ambulance I had to call, or that the music I've released is targeted by bots and subsequently taken down, or that my neighbor was evicted after her landlord committed insurance fraud in her name, or that the leaders of the party that's supposed to represent me don't give a damn about what the people want because they're paid off by billionaires. I'm not angry. Clearly I'm just jealous because I wish I was rich.

[Dmanwuzhere]

yup. And I'm willing to bet dman, that if your daughter keeps making good choices, and raises any kids she has or may have right, they'll build on her success and be well off too. Rinse and repeat and someday your descendants may be rich themselves.

This is how it's done minus divine intervention, ie, lottery, great idea, etc

[Dmanwuzhere]

Yes you're right. I'm not angry that my grandma was refused the meds she needs, or that they raised the price of inhalers to $500, or that I now have a $2500 bill from that ambulance I had to call, or that the music I've released is targeted by bots and subsequently taken down, or that my neighbor was evicted after her landlord committed insurance fraud in her name, or that the leaders of the party that's supposed to represent me don't give a damn about what the people want because they're paid off by billionaires. I'm not angry. Clearly I'm just jealous because I wish I was rich.

That's it? That's all you got?
I have a list of trials and tribulations that would fill this topic for days.
I could cry and moan or I do what I did and work through them making the best decision I can and move forward or minimizing the backtrack.

What on God's green earth makes you think you are so special that your life should not see hardship?
STFU and quit whining, and you may develop into a man.
This whiney image does not build character or allow you to learn.

Finding out your music sucks is probably a good thing.

My daughter would stand in front of a mirror and lip sync Taylor Swift for a portion of her life swearing she was going to be the next her,
It was cute until it wasn't.
Then I had to turn the music off and told her to sing without it.
Once she heard the difference and realized she was nowhere close
I explained it was not lack of talent but lack of training, and I couldn't afford to make her dream a reality.

Find something you like I told her
So she latched onto interior design, which she is good at
but our location makes that a tough gig

Then she latched onto to nursing because for the past 3 years
She had cleaned her papaw's fist sized open wound on his head from cancer and changed his diapers with her mom
and I did his physical therapy and bathed him
She didn't realize til he died how much she enjoyed spending that time with him
Now, as a nurse, her papaw is forever there.

Will she realize her million dollar dreams?... probably not
but she will live decently and enjoy her job, which is the true blessing
Because I can't think of all the hours I've worked anywhere I was that blessed
but I was blessed by being able to provide, which is another type of blessing

Hard work is the key but family is the motivation

There is never time for whining when you are busy building
I said what I said

[Leo]

"stop crying limborol MuHHH!!" It's like every word I say passing through your eyes and comes out your mouth. Hardships are something everyone deals with yes. But when the hardships are caused by other people, that's grounds for war, or civil suites, or both. But when it's an individual against an enormous corporation with a massive team of expert lawyers and 60 years of corporate-backed legislation on the topic, there is no longer a fair way to deal with it. The system is so full of corruption it's ridiculous. There's no basis for any claim that people need to stop whining and work harder. We're working harder. We've stopped buying our $8 daily coffees and opened savings accounts, CDs, roth IRAs and invested in Bitcoin. But our necks are still getting crushed by the corporate elite every day. It's not a matter of jealous because they have more wealth than we do. Simply having more than others is no grounds for hatred or systemic change. But they use their wealth to squeeze the lifeblood from us, to keep us poor and make themselves even richer, to ruin every enjoyable aspect of life for us until we are living in a dystopian society. It's not jealousy, and it's not that we don't work hard enough. The cost of living is at crippling amounts while the median income has hardly changed at all. The amount that used to be able to get you a nice house and a nice car and plenty of luxuries for a 4 person family can now hardly afford you a 2 bedroom apartment with a shitty management company and a diet of instant ramen. What are we working so hard for? Hell, my $100,000 college education better get me more than just the bare minimum living standard, considering I'm going into a "high demand" and "high paying" field. We are now at pre-french revolution levels of wealth disparity.

[Dmanwuzhere]

"stop crying limborol MuHHH!!" It's like every word I say passing through your eyes and comes out your mouth. Hardships are something everyone deals with yes. But when the hardships are caused by other people, that's grounds for war, or civil suites, or both. But when it's an individual against an enormous corporation with a massive team of expert lawyers and 60 years of corporate-backed legislation on the topic, there is no longer a fair way to deal with it. The system is so full of corruption it's ridiculous. There's no basis for any claim that people need to stop whining and work harder. We're working harder. We've stopped buying our $8 daily coffees and opened savings accounts, CDs, roth IRAs and invested in Bitcoin. But our necks are still getting crushed by the corporate elite every day. It's not a matter of jealous because they have more wealth than we do. Simply having more than others is no grounds for hatred or systemic change. But they use their wealth to squeeze the lifeblood from us, to keep us poor and make themselves even richer, to ruin every enjoyable aspect of life for us until we are living in a dystopian society. It's not jealousy, and it's not that we don't work hard enough. The cost of living is at crippling amounts while the median income has hardly changed at all. The amount that used to be able to get you a nice house and a nice car and plenty of luxuries for a 4 person family can now hardly afford you a 2 bedroom apartment with a shitty management company and a diet of instant ramen. What are we working so hard for? Hell, my $100,000 college education better get me more than just the bare minimum living standard, considering I'm going into a "high demand" and "high paying" field. We are now at pre-french revolution levels of wealth disparity.

I never bought 2-dollar coffees, let alone 8-dollar coffees.
I figured you get more by the pound.
But I wonder why you didn't think 8 dollars for a cup of coffee wasn't squeezing the lifeblood from you
asking for a friend

I also wonder what opening the border up to millions of illegals would do to the housing market
Doesn't a smaller supply with a larger population create markups in housing?
Asking for a friend

I didn't know Ramen came in the flavor
of quarter cow. Where do you get it?
Asking for a friend

What companies are you dealing with?
Are they forcing you to contract with them?
Asking for a friend

For someone getting a free ride, you sure cry a lot

[Leo]

I never bought the $8 coffees lol. I always make my own coffee at home but I was referring to how some people would tell Gen z and millennials their financial problems would go away if they stopped buying coffee every morning. Not to say I don't think it's not a good spending habit but there's definitely more at play than that.

There's more to the housing market than illegal immigrants. It more likely has something to do with the fact that we have an exponentially growing population but the amount of land we can develop on doesn't increase. Looking at data, there doesn't seem to be much correlation between the number of immigrants and the average cost of housing in a given year.

Luckily I have support when I need it from my family and am in a decently good living situation. That however doesn't prevent me from being grateful for what I have and acknowledging those around me who are not as fortunate. I have neighbors, friends, coworkers, and even some family that have been squished by the system. One even was homeless for a couple of months. I should also mention when I was a baby I was homeless for about 4 months and we stayed in a tent in a state park campground because we couldn't afford rent.

As for companies, let's start with insurance. Legally, you are required to have car insurance if you want to drive on public roads and you can't get your license without it. Just so happens that those same companies are parasites and will at all costs avoid paying what they are obligated to pay. Healthcare is another example. Per Obamacare, everyone must have healthcare. But once again, the companies that provide this insurance are greedy parasites that will do anything to take your money in premiums, deductibles and copays without paying the bills they are supposed to. Yes, we are forced to contract with them. It is the law. Basic necessities are also corporatized, an action which you defend, so therefore you are forced to contract them. Unless you want to go live in a hand built wooden shack in the woods and hunt rabbits for every meal, you have to buy food, you have to pay your water bill and your electricity bill. And your rent. Why is it that it's the things that people need the most that always get the biggest price gouges. For example they raised the price of my brother's epi pen to $500, and they raised the price of my grandma's insulin to $350. Each one costs about $.20 to make.

People getting rich off of the desperation of others is wrong. Doesn't matter if you're red or blue or neither, this has been a communally shared sentiment for a very long time, with the only people that disagree being the ones getting rich.