Mad, Bad, and Sad: Global

[arthwollipot]

Most poor people aren't poor because they're lazy. Most poor people are poor because the system is stacked against them, making bootstrapping themselves out of poverty almost impossible. You need money in order to make money.

[sparks]

With this, I agree.

System's fucking rigged.

[stanky]

Poverty is a design feature of our system. We need a lot of money because we're forced to buy a lifestyle we don't want or need. In the U.S., being poor is expensive. In less wealthy nations, people can live an elegant life on very little money. The towns are accommodating, in their arrangement. You can walk to the market. Kids are allowed to play. Rent is very low. Standards are low enough to allow worn shoes. Everyone has them. Happy.

Global average salary is $850, adjusted to U.S. dollars.
U.S. average is $57,000
The poverty line, for an individual in the U.S. is $13,590 in 2022

We aren't allowed to be functionally poor. We're forced to be rich or a ward of the state. In some cases, it's illegal to live sustainably.
Banks force new homes to be large, 4 times what they were in the 50's. Transportation inadequacies force the need for multiple cars per household.
The market moves out of town. The singing and playing fades. More rules happen. Grim sprawl of burb; absurd amount of $ needed, to barely make it.

Alternatives appear briefly and get crushed. No pedestrians on the hi-way permitted. Still have to pay for it, even if you hate it.
Everything about it is insane.

[Di Wundrin]

Poverty is a design feature of our system. We need a lot of money because we're forced to buy a lifestyle we don't want or need. In the U.S., being poor is expensive. In less wealthy nations, people can live an elegant life on very little money. The towns are accommodating, in their arrangement. You can walk to the market. Kids are allowed to play. Rent is very low. Standards are low enough to allow worn shoes. Everyone has them. Happy.

Global average salary is $850, adjusted to U.S. dollars.
U.S. average is $57,000
The poverty line, for an individual in the U.S. is $13,590 in 2022

We aren't allowed to be functionally poor. We're forced to be rich or a ward of the state. In some cases, it's illegal to live sustainably.
Banks force new homes to be large, 4 times what they were in the 50's. Transportation inadequacies force the need for multiple cars per household.
The market moves out of town. The singing and playing fades. More rules happen. Grim sprawl of burb; absurd amount of $ needed, to barely make it.

Alternatives appear briefly and get crushed. No pedestrians on the hi-way permitted. Still have to pay for it, even if you hate it.
Everything about it is insane.

I'm adjusting my benchmark for 'doleworthy' lately as the economy becomes more wobbly. It's a different world to the US the way things are done down here though. Arty is still in flow of it all, I've been retired too long to get a real feel of how tough it gets for some now.

Its hard for me to apply 'poverty' to people who are living in better homes, with more access to transport and cell phones and restaurant eating than I have while I'm considered to be '' their" problem for being what they somehow see as "the greedy old people who have plenty of money" i.e. a self funded retiree.
Kind of confusing sometimes.
I don't have plenty, just the value of (or rather about half of it now) of the sale of a Sydney house 20 years ago (inherited) and a rural house and going down market into a unit in a retirement village.
Couldn't hide the money in a superannuation fund so being cash it is taxable on every dollar it earns as investment. Except for the last couple of years that was batting bloody zero due tiny interest rates.

Where the confusion lies is that I have been living on less income than those on welfare do! Yet I am the 'bad guy'? I am the 'greedy' person who should pay more tax to help them out with their phone bills?
But I'd be 'good' if I'd pissed the money away on racehorses, or poker machines, or Gucchi handbags and qualified for the old aged pension and been a drain on the taxpayer. Then I'd be considered fit company by the 'socialists'?? sorry, but I just don't get that thinking.

They want to tax me more to pay for their lifestyle extras, while I can and do live quite comfortably and contentedly without them.
I have a mobile phone with dust on it. Can't drive any more. 2 buses a day comprise 'public transport'. Eating out would be the RSL or local chowy, even Maccas has left town!!
My handicaps are physical and that's just shit that happens, nobody's fault, but it does "impoverish" my life, just in another way.

I'm fine with paying my own way in life. I don't want the pension because I don't (yet) need it. It's purely a matter of self satisfaction that I support myself, I have no heirs waiting on me to die so no reason to save it up. I'm using what I have saved, earned and inherited for the purpose I always intended, to support myself in my old age. Why is that a 'bad' thing to 'progressive left' thinking'?

Why is it 'bad' that I resent those with entitlement addictions who demand that people like me "share" what they worked* all their lives for with people who have little intention of doing likewise?
* I did work for that inheritance, I earned every penny of it as unpaid housekeeper cook secretary maid and nurse for 30 years and paid all bills and maintenance in lieu of rent. just pointing that out to avoid a point being made of the difference between worked and inherited. saves time.

Alright here are the riders. Not all on the dole are 'bludgers'. But a lot are. Not all self funded retirees 'earned' it either, but most did. One way or other. As in all sectors of society there are extremes who get used as examples, when they're not examples of the average at all. We all do it don't we?
Point out Murdoch as typical of all media owners, or Greta as the average planet worrier, or Extinction Rebellion as the average "greenie".
Adolph as the average 'Nazi' Joe Stalin or Mao as the average 'commo'.. it would be funny if it wasn't so tiresome to be classified as a 'greedy old bastard' by 'greedy young bastards' if you take my meaning. Or of being a 'neo Nazi/Trumper or something equally ridiculous if the flaws in Lefty thinking are questioned. I've been a Lefty thinker too, but the Left in 'those days' had a very different agenda to what masquerades as 'Left' today.

All part of the same mind warp syndrome happening world wide. Nothing is quite as it seems to be any more.

So too 'poverty' as a buzz term means different things to different people it seems.

I do take some of your points Stanky, that it's rules rather than income that is 'impoverishing' many.

But while I have no idea who makes those house size, and restrictions in America, down here it's almost always the Labor governments who clamp the restrictions on every facet of life. "For our own good".

It becomes a Nanny state under strict supervision of busy body do gooders with no talent for contributing to a better society, only enough to get themselves onto local Councils so they can wag the finger and tell everybody else how to live.
The concept of self responsibility scares them because what they seek is control and only rules they can apply gives them that.

I'm puzzled why poor people hate the Conservatives/Repos for 'keeping them down' when actually it's the pile on of building codes, heritage listings, land usage, land taxes, stamp duty, even rules applying to what materials they can build their houses from being imposed by the 'Leftist' bureaucrats and local Councils that is putting home ownership beyond their grasp.
Rich people don't give a fuck what poor people live in, it's not them making up the rules.

It's the Left (here anyway) who make it harder and harder for farmers to make enough profit to live on and so pushes up the price of food that we export for less than we pay for it here. Something wrong in that and ir isn't down to sheer Capitalism. It's "Rulesism'. Too many, and too many of those are silly 'greenie' ones.

But it seems to be a cause for celebration when a farmer gives up and walks off his land and some overseas conglomerate buys it up and ships ALL of it's produce over seas to the 'home country'. We call that "development". I call it idiocy. especially when the price of veggies goes up accordingly.
But wadda I know?

Somehow it's the Conservatives fault that the rules and taxes applying to building a house more than doubles the cost of just the materials and labour alone would be.
But it was the unions who drove the constant application of 'safety' rules, and the Greens who drive the obsession with paperwork storms of needing to get every square inch of a block ticked off by some form of inspection none of which come free.

Rent is through the roof here because people who build houses then lease them for the income to pay the mortgage and as the house cost more than it should then the rent has to be higher. But people seem to think that some rich fuck who cuts oil deals for a living is the cause of their high rent...??

Why do they believe that spin? dunno what dots they're joining for that but it's far from the truth. They don't realise that the Party they vote for is one that has made their lives so much more complicated. They forget that those taxes on those 'greedy home owning old bastard' that seemed a good idea when they were young enough to still know everything, now arent so great when they themselves are "those greedy old homeowners".

Their own 'side' is the tax everything Party, they vote for the taxes that are keeping them 'poor' because it's "someone else" who has to pay them at the time. They don't think ahead to when those taxes will apply to them. They keep building their own hurdles higher.
If they were true 'commos, or socialists' they wouldn't want to own anything would they? .. more puzzling ideological contrary thinking.

So your point about not being 'allowed' to be contentedly poor applies here too.
When 'poor' people could build a house as small as they needed they/(we) didn't think of ourselves as poor. Just frugal. No one then told us that we must build only what some bureaucrat found pleasing to the eye. We built what we could afford to pay for and werea whole lot happier than the current generations with our lot.

When we made more money, we added an extra room on. that was 'allowed' back then without having to hire a troop of inspectors beard rubbing enviro gurus and fussing bureaucrats with 'heritage' issues marching through and adding to the costs. If the house fell over in a storm then that was down to our poor building skills. We just fixed it.
We didn't need to pay all that extra money to 'Nanny state' to make it too expensive to put it up in the first place! It's just circular stupidy really.

_Probably that's why they stop voting Left when they get old enough to own something themselves. I sure did!

ah human nature is a wunnaful thing innit?

Meanwhile I'm going to do just about the last thing I'm permitted to do tax and rule free. Go and sit in the sun on a glorious afternoon before the sun sets on it.

[President Bush]

Yet I am the 'bad guy'?

Who said you were?

[stanky]

that's what i was wondering.

[arthwollipot]

Not all on the dole are 'bludgers'. But a lot are.

Not really.

[Admin]

Not all on the dole are 'bludgers'. But a lot are.

Not really.

Reminds me of how Kiwis were seen as dole bludgers in Aussie to the extent we don't qualify for it now, despite many studies showing Kiwis in Aussie pay more tax and use less welfare dollars than Australians.

Right now, however, most people on the dole are unemployable. Whether that makes them bludgers or not is debatable, because you need to be pretty determined not to work to not have a job in 2023. I suspect the vast majority of people in both our countries who are receiving the dole are in need of help for mental illness, addiction or some other issue.

The Friedman Doctrine requires a certain amount of unemployed people or it puts too much pressure on wages, and we can't have that.

[arthwollipot]

Part of the problem is that there hasn't been enough jobs. But I think I saw recently that unemployment has recently hit its lowest rate since COVID, or something. I don't really know as it's not something that I keep on top of.

Anyway, what I can say for certain is that research has been done into Universal Basic Income (UBI) which guarantees every person enough income not to starve, regardless of their circumstances. This idea has many criticisms - some of them valid, some of them utterly spurious - and one of them is that people will simply choose to sit back, get their Basic and laze about for the rest of their life. Well, it turns out that this is one of the spurious criticisms, because it turns out that when people don't have to worry about simple things like being able to afford their next meal, on the whole they still want to work.

Yes, dole bludgers exist. But since the Howard administration, life has been made as hard as possible for them. If they don't look for work, they lose the dole. Because dole bludgers being subhuman and not worthy of living has been official government policy for decades.

[Admin]

Anyway, what I can say for certain is that research has been done into Universal Basic Income (UBI) which guarantees every person enough income not to starve, regardless of their circumstances.

I've been a fan of that idea since before it was an idea. I can vividly remember arguing the point with my older, Conservative, brother, when I was 14.

It's a fairly large black mark against the human race that it doesn't universally exist right now.

When we have a world with both multi-billionaires and people starving to death, or dying from preventable disease, we're doing it wrong.