Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.

This argument reminds me of web designers who blame users for the mistakes they make when presented with a horrible user interface -- that there is no system so terrible that the user can't be a moral failure, 100% responsible for their own misfortune.

Generally yes, poor people are less capable of gaining the "expertise" to do many things, because they are busy trying to stay alive. It's textbook hierarchy of needs.

Noticed other replies; why the fixation on car insurance? I thought we were talking about structural impediments to poor people?

>Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.

This is in the context of a discussion about starting your own business. If you're on the tier of hierarchy of needs where you're struggling for food, then sure, maybe you shouldn't be starting your own business at this point. However, if you have the intellectual capacity to buy car insurance, and also are in a position to be starting your own business, you almost certainly have the cognitive ability to purchase disability insurance.

i.e., being poor is harder than it looks ...

Somehow we've gotten from there to a point where you're suggesting that a poor person who is somehow capable of starting their own small business is, by the very nature of being poor, fundamentally incapable of making a good decision regarding disability insurance options. And it is because of this fundamental lack of cognitive ability that we need a regulatory environment demanding that the business owner (who is themself) must purchase disability insurance on their behalf?

I'm sorry, but you've just gotten to the point of nonsense.

I don't think anyone is actually suggesting that.

I was suggesting, essentially, that poverty is a vicious cycle. That, to quote the movie Hell or High Water, "I been poor my whole life. So were my parents, an their parents before 'em ... It's like a disease, passing from generation to generation. Becomes, a sickness, that's what it is ... Infects every person you know"

And obviously this isn't a universal. There are always exceptions, that goes without saying.

>It's also expensive, inconvenient, time-consuming, and risky to be poor. None of the suggestions you make are "easy" for poor people.

>Consider how much time, energy, and expertise it takes even to research disability insurance and buy the appropriate product.

This whole thing is about me calling out rectang for suggesting that poor people are too stupid to buy disability insurance.

You: "The soft bigotry of low expectations..."

You: But what if you're mentally disabled?

You: Jane

;)

The long answer to this question is, in fact, extremely long.

My contention is that this is a disgustingly classist view against poor people. Poor people, by and large, seem perfectly capable of purchasing car insurance, and disability insurance is generally less complicated.

If you're confused, then you have a lot in common with many Uber drivers!

That language, offloads, is loaded. This idea that it's someone else's responsibility to handle even the most trivial of life's decisions for us is toxic. If you don't understand the basic concepts around running a small business, there's plenty of books on the subject in the library.

Where on earth is that number coming from? Uber?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/internal-uber-driv...

"In early 2015, a study commissioned by Uber found that drivers in 20 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, were grossing around $17 an hour.... But the $17-an-hour figure was based on data from 2014, when Uber rates in most cities were higher than they were in late 2015. It was also based on gross earnings and did not account for driver expenses."

This is from an article complaining about how little Uber drivers make...

>But in three large metropolitan cities, drivers make far less than the national average, about $20 per hour, after expenses.

"None of these advertisements mention driver expenses. The same goes for the alerts Uber sends to drivers — sometimes five times a day or more — telling them that other drivers on the road were making $20 or $30 an hour in gross fares."

Yes, if you're poor it will be harder to buy health insurance, but you can avoid consumer debt at virtually any income. You can save up an emergency fund at virtually any income level. The fact that it might get more difficult to do any of these things as you get closer and closer to the lowest end of the poverty spectrum... is that really the argument we're trying to have? Because that seems like a silly thing to interject in a conversation about people who are going to be starting and running small businesses.

You have to have sufficient income to consistently cover basics with money leftover. Some people simply don't have that.