Then you come in and argue that their experience can’t be true because you read something on Reddit. What an absurd and rude display of privilege.
And a lot of people literally do not know any better. They've never had someone teach them how to manage money and potentially had bad role models growing up. So its easy for you to say, with the knowledge it seems like you have, this is what you need to do. It's much harder to put into practice.
Especially when you consider there are many folks that do manage their money well, don't splurge on non-essentials, work multiple jobs and still cannot make ends meet.
This. If you don't know how money works, most people who offer advice are just trying to scam you. But not taking any advice is also not helpful.
If I knew how to invest in index funds 20 years ago, who knows, I might have already been halfway to retirement. Before I had kids, I was able to save a large part of my salary. But everything I did with the money -- following the advice of people pretending to be experts -- only made the money disappear.
If someone has a friendly person who spends a day or two helping them set up the system, so that all they need to do later is send extra money to a specific account once in a while, it can change their future dramatically. But many people do not have such friend.
Where does "psychology of decision making when poor and struggling" stop and personal responsibility begin? Can every suboptimal decision be excused because of "psychology of decision making when poor and struggling"?
That's why we need a UBI - to give the poor people leverage. We saw it a bit with the unemployment bonuses - companies are having to raise their wages finally and are complaining about it, and we might finally see inflation. Every keeps treating it like a bad thing, but in reality, the late 70s with high inflation were the most "equal" times historically, since inflation with wage indexation is actually more akin to a wealth tax on the rich, which I totally support.
What gave you that impression? In my initial comment I acknowledged the concept of excusing suboptimal decision making due to "psychology of decision making when poor and struggling". How is that different than what you're saying?
>3. (transitive) To provide an excuse for; to explain, with the aim of alleviating guilt or negative judgement.
Earlier in the thread there was definitely a tone of negative judgement. ie. "people show up all the time with a litany of complaints and a litany of awful, awful budget mistakes they have no interest in fixing"
(It's actually amazing this is almost a Nobel-prize worthy observation in economics. This is psychology 101.)
If you ask why or what kinds of mistakes they make, now that is where the books go deep. Suffice to say those mistakes are not unpredictable and people can be nudged to make a better (dare I say correct) choice.
Right, but I'm not the person giving the negative judgement. I specifically recognize the possibility of "excusing" them (ie. not negatively judging them) in some cases, and ask whether they should be excused in some cases or all cases. After this long conversation it appears you believe in the latter. Is this correct?
I'm not accusing you of this, but in my experience, the people who preach "personal responsibility" often do not take the time to understand the issues preventing people from making good decisions, and so aren't even working on the right problem in many cases. And in saying that, please be aware that I do feel there is a place for personal responsibility and it's an important factor in anyone improving their situation. Just not the only factor needed.
For the most part we have rent (mortgage), food, utilities, insurance, and day care (have you looked into the cost of this?) all locked up and well-budgeted, but sometimes someone leaves the door open or the hose on too long and we have an unexpectedly high utility bill. One time my wife left an entire bag of groceries behind the car and accidentally backed over it. When COVID hit and my dad was simultaneously suffering from a suppressed immune system we had to stop leaving the kids with my parents and up our daycare expenditures quite a bit. These sorts of problems aren't really problems for us, we can just cover the added expense out of our "emergency savings" bucket, but if two emergencies happen back-to-back sometimes that bucket gets depleted and we have to draw from "vacation savings" instead. Fortunately we're able to fill these buckets with hundreds of excess dollars a month, so they are usually adequate. I could see it being problematic if the buckets filled at a much slower rate.
Is it fair to say that low income earners in New York and San Francisco should move somewhere else to have kids? Will we only have McDonald's in Ohio?
If it is a necessity, by definition it cannot be cut back, unless you want to starve to death or live under a bridge.
>McDonald’s was among the top five employers of Medicaid enrollees in five of six states and SNAP recipients in eight of nine states.
>Other notable companies with a large number of employees on federal aid include Amazon, Kroger, Dollar General, and other food service and retail giants.
>About 70% of the 21 million federal aid beneficiaries worked full time, the report found.
" It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." - FDR
TLDR: Minimum wage was never intended to be less than a living wage. If you're working full time and can't afford food, why should the company get away with forcing taxpayers to make up the difference?
Your oversimplification of the issue glosses (intentionally?) over the real issue.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/minimum-wage-workers-cannot-...
>Full-time minimum wage workers cannot afford a two-bedroom rental anywhere in the U.S. and cannot afford a one-bedroom rental in 95% of U.S. counties, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report.
>In fact, the average minimum wage worker in the U.S. would need to work almost 97 hours per week to afford a fair market rate two-bedroom and 79 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom, NLIHC calculates. That’s well over two full-time jobs just to be able to afford a two-bedroom rental.
But yes, go on about how thse people need to 'dispense with luxuries' and 'work a second job.'
What do they do then? Starve?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...
About 70% of those receiving federal aid were already working full time.
each case was a frustrating puzzle
What puzzled you? The necessities should never be a puzzle. If the rent, the food, the utilities, the insurance, and the day care add up to less than the income, then everything else could be saved if you dispense with luxuries. If the necessities are more than the income, you either have to cut back on something important or work a second job. That's not fun, but it's also no puzzle.