I am homeless because I don't work, but really all I desire is a good spot to put my tent. Of course I enjoy free food and amenities such as the library, but I also volunteer at the soup kitchens and some other functions from time-to-time at least. I have no desire to work 50 hours or more a week at a thankless job at this time. That does not mean I'm comfortable with being a "smooch", just that I think it's kind of irrelevant.
We need to give up the blame/excuses game and focus on the health of communities as a whole.
I wonder if your current lifestyle will make it difficult to transition to another lifestyle when it's no longer sustainable or you tire of it. At least you're volunteering and as odd as I find it to be homeless and spending time on this site, it suggests an interest in and connection to activities that will work out later.
BTW, a mooch is someone who lives off others ("to mooch" is also a verb). A smooch is slang for a kiss.
It's also more difficult to live that way when others are depending upon you.
I don't code BTW; I found HN by chance and noticed there are many general interest articles so I don't see it as a problem.
I didn’t assume you code, I don’t really.
Esteem is one of Maslow's deficiency needs.
Why because you're setting yourself up for failure. It's nice to get thanks and consider it a surrendeptious gift or happy moment but to consider it any more than that just highlights all the times you need thanks.
Furthermore, you shouldn't do anything for the thanks of others. If you do what's best for you you'll probably be satisfied and if you so something for someone else be it an individual an organization or otherwise it should be because of a reason that you've resolved the thing you're doing is worth the donation of effort and time whether it's to help a friend, family member or an organization (excluding paid jobs like volunteering and I say do something as in volunteer effort or time).
People who need to be thanked and actually end up working for charities churches and other such things for credit, self worth or priase end up being the most obnoxus and ultimately selfish people in those organizations and lose sight of the best next thing to do for the purpose of that thing or person or organization because they are consumed with having their own praise highlighted. With personal friend said family needing thanks is like holding something over someone's head.
For example, I don't take ask or accept money from family (no judgment to people who do or really need to) because in my family they will hold it over your head forever and want a million other things from you and endlessly guilt trip you so it's not worth it to me but I've also been fortunate to never really have been in such a desperate spot.
The point, people who perpetuate that attitude end up being the people who, like the other day, someone scoffed at me sarcastically and only at that point did I realize that they had apparently opened the door for me and I had not noticed and insulted them by not saying thanks.
Now, this seems rude of me for sure but let's pause in this for a second to look at this further, given the situation I was in it was not reasonable that I would notice at all for a host of reasons, but furthermore, when you do a small something for a random stranger you should accept you know literally nothing about their life or current situation so to immediately judge their behavior towards you for something they never asked you or bothered you for is actually ridiculous, and finally if you opened the door for someone and are so worked up about it that merely not getting an oral thanks makes you vocally angry hostile and upset this is mildly disturbing right? Who are you angry at? What were you expecting. If you're opening the door for someone to genuinely help them and make their day better, another way to look at if is all the more grateful you should feel if you opened the door for someone who was so busy or having such a bad day they wouldn't even notice. You just made their life better and they didn't even realize it. But aha, it's the fact that you need recognition from a random stranger that is the issue with you, and not the person who've you've chosen to be mad at because you've decided they have acted unjustly towards you.
I always look for people who are seeking recognition and extra appreciation and are wary of them because in my mind they need it, they will topple over people to get it, or will feel entitled to things and their satisfaction depends on external praise which makes me nervous and question their own internal compass. Especially in business.
On the flipside, especially personally outside of professional situations but also in professional situations, I find people who are giving, humble and expect nothing in return I can potebtially trust because I know they are helping me without wanting something in return. Also people I find who are truly successful in their own right are giving in general and have helpful hearts and want to see other people do well. People always playing the ioweu uowme game is too stressful.
That being said I'm an engineer so when my professional work environment starts to feel like a game of politics I'm outty. So maybe this is an outlier opinion but I think people tend to gravitate towards humble trusting workers.
Maybe people who need thanks and recognition don't do well in corporate environments because pay is not enough and getting recognition consistently is something almost noone gets not even ceos and faces of famously successful companies, they are the most prone to scruinty and judgment and controversy and that will always scale to be true the more you seek out positions where praise is apart of the incentive package.
Of course there is no one size fits all, but once you are exposed to a greater existence that door never closes.
You should ask them! In fact, I'd love for you to get back to us on how the conversation unfolded. After all, any decision requires some origin, maybe confronting them with questions about affordability, work/life balance and quality of life, plus some alternative cities and a roadmap to getting housing and employment there, makes them decide to move in a few years.
Writing a $1k check every month just for the privilege of a 500ft^2 dump in a crowded and expensive city is pretty painful.
The world's a lot bigger than just Irvine and Mexico...
Well California Community Colleges received $9.2 billion in state funding last year: http://www.lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3372
So the same thing that makes California expensive (strong economy, high taxes) helps subsidize education for lower earning Californians like you.
I think they did it for you, not for them, and you should be very grateful.
I initially assumed strong Spanish-speaking community, other Mexican immigrants...but you can get that in Arizona for half the price. So then I wondered if the quality of life in L. A. is so much better than it was in Mexico (I mean, they moved for a reason, right?) that it never occurred to them to wonder if it can be had for less.
But they’re your parents, ask them. :-)
Trulia is showing the median sales price in Irvine for the past year-ish at $766k [0]. Zillow is showing the median sales price at $764k [1]. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it's the only data I could find.
*affordable is relative - I'm talking homes in the 500-600k range
Couldn't agree more. A few years ago, I found myself doing so much overtime that I had no life outside of work. No time for family, no time for hobbies, throw civics completely out the window. I came to the conclusion that there's no amount of money that makes that worth it. Except I had the option to relax and still make enough money for my basics. If not working overtime would actually mean having to move somewhere that I didn't know anyone, or not feeding or housing my family, I think I'd probably just get used to the idea of working overtime forever.
> I've never asked them why we initially didn't move to a cheaper state when we migrated from Mexico, but I assume they enjoy the quality of life here. Though I'm skeptical on whether the trade offs are worth it.
You obviously know your parents better than I do, but I would assume anyone migrating with kids to another country -- which would be scary as hell -- would be looking for the strongest support system. Having relatives or friends nearby might be important, or even having Spanish speaking neighbors and businesses within reach. While there are lots of cheaper places to live than Irvine/California, California is also friendlier to immigrants than other states.
Having lived in Mexico and seen that standards of living and work are different than the US, I might also assume your parents believe they are making a trade off that is worth it relative to what their lives in Mexico might be, rather than optimizing cost of living in the US. And I don't know, but as a parent I can imagine they might have their hopes resting on you, and not care much about their own quality of life. ;)
> my father works the entire week as a gardener with his own workers and clients
If he has a business, he can't move without starting over from scratch. I started a business, which failed, and got some perspective on how hard small business in the US can be, and how unsupportive this country is in certain ways. Taxes and health care are a nightmare when you're bootstrapping a small business. And I have literally nothing to complain about, I was so lucky compared to the position your father's in, I can't really imagine how hard starting and sustaining a gardening business is when you have a family.
> Which is not to say work is bad, after all
There's a pervasive belief in the US (and globally, I imagine) in the benefits and necessities of hard work. While I personally share and appreciate the optimism, I do wonder if that works against us. Rich people all talk about how hard they worked and believe hard work is why they got where they are. Yet nobody has ever made it to the top by pulling the most overtime at McDonalds or working harder at being the best janitor. Maybe the opportunity to do hard work that leads to economic leverage is the thing. School would be one example. It may be true that you have to work hard once you get the opportunity, but working hard doesn't necessarily do anything to achieve opportunity, and maybe working too hard at something that isn't leveraging might reduce the chances for the opportunity to work hard at something that could change your trajectory.
This is one of the many things that irk me about how Republicans sell their business rhetoric to their people. They're always talking about small businesses but it seems evident there's little they want to do to actually help small businesses.
Decoupling healthcare from employment would save money for businesses that have employees as well as make it easier for people that want to start a business to leave jobs where there's that 'health care security'.
I can't speak too much to taxes but it seems silly that here in CA to have a business you pay $800/yr to the franchise tax board. I'm sure you have further stories about how that becomes even more complex as the business grows.
I believe this is why the 'keep the government out of my business' line of thinking appeals to people and makes them think Republicans have their interests at heart (evidence points otherwise but still...). It becomes very complicated and expensive very quickly.
Being at the bottom of the economic ladder makes this easier, since creating value good enough for survival is the primary goal and a lot of things done well enough can do that. Often though higher talents are not used or recognized in the daily grind and the ability to create more value is not utilized. For example, I worked at a grocery store as a teenager and the store management would roll their eyes when I would come up with all sorts of ideas for things that were above my pay grade. My next job after that was doing C programming on financial software. I saw my old boss at the grocery store one day and told her about my new job. She chuckled and said she imagined I might go on to do something like that.
McDonald's isn't a great example because many franchise owners started out as employees. In fact McDonald's requires franchisees to work in their stores, you are an owner-operator not an owner-investor.
Though what I find hard to believe is how my family does it. I attend a local community college close by, and have been doing so for the past four years after high school. Every year I fill out the FASFA (a Free Application for Student Aid limited to only six years), and I usually ask my parents for their tax record of the past year which gives me a look at our overall income.
My parents for the last four years combined have made roughly an average of $31,000/yr. I've never asked them why we initially didn't move to a cheaper state when we migrated from Mexico, but I assume they enjoy the quality of life here. Though I'm skeptical on whether the trade offs are worth it. We give up most of our life for work, so we may have a few hours off in the week and the weekend. And the the latter applies to my mother, older sister, and I, it does not apply to my father who works the entire week as a gardener with his own workers and clients and only gets a few hours each week (more now since it gets dark earlier with autumn/winter daylight savings).
Though above all, I find it odd that we give our only life (?) to living for rent, food, and necessities. Which is not to say work is bad, after all, work I think has three functions: “to give a man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.” But otherwise, I still believe there ought to be a healthier and more natural approach to modern day work and life balance.
The quote above is from E.F. Shumacher’s Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. A book I have come to admire and tend to revisit from time to time.