[We] find that, if the program pushes individuals above a threshold level of initial assets, then they escape poverty, but, if it does not, they slide back into poverty…Our findings imply that large one-off transfers that enable people to take on more productive occupations can help alleviate persistent poverty.
Their paper clearly illustrates that many poor people stay poor not because of their talent/motivation, but because they are in low-paying jobs that they must work to survive."
More on this here: https://ofdollarsanddata.com/why-do-poor-people-stay-poor/
And to add insult to injury, people will rather think you deserve it than face the fact that we're all in the same stinking boat.
I am in New Zealand, which is fairly civilised, and I think your statement is mostly wrong.
Firstly, I have seen people get some government help, but it is rarely enough. Even with government help and sharing the load with siblings you may still need to help your parents full time.
Secondly, many people choose to look after their parents because they want to, or sometimes they don’t trust that others will give them the same quality of care. Even with high quality private care, I have seen plenty of children dedicate a lot of time to their parents (similarly friends looking after sick friends).
For some children it is acceptable for them to hand parents over to aged care, provided by the state. Many other children choose instead to do as much as they can to help their parents, often because they have experience of the systems and see the reality of overburdened elderly care.
When infirm people have nobody else to help them except government services, their care is sometimes of low quality, although still expensive for the economy to provide. A mature economy with many elderly perhaps doesn’t have enough people to provide the number of dedicated hours needed to support all of their infirm? I did a quick search and it looks like New Zealand spends about 1% of GDP on long term aged health care. That seems surprisingly low to me - although I didn’t look at how much other countries spend. https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=crown+expenditure+%22aged%...
He also could probably have declared bankruptcy early and been able to focus more on learning useful skills instead of killing himself trying to pay bills he never could. That is what bankruptcy is for.
But hard to say what was really going on.
Something tells me you've never even come close to walking in those shoes.
The second you stop generating profit, the state starts treating you like a broken toy.
There are methods to avoid being destroyed by situations like this, but some never try or don’t bother to even figure it out. Doesn’t mean it still isn’t hard work, and stressful as hell, but it is there to stop the destruction. Folks have to look and try though.
the battle cry of every 20-something laissez faire evangelist
Shit sucks sometimes. It's often hard or nearly impossible to cope. Sometimes the terribleness comes from those you loved the most, or least expected it from. Sometimes it comes from a literal random stranger. Life isn't fair, and there is no guarantee - and fundamentally cannot be - that things work out for anyone, no matter how right or wrong their actions.
Sometimes this kills someone directly. Sometimes it just wears them down, sometimes someone can take a direct hit to the face that would kill most others and just smile.
Often the bigger part of the damage or ongoing problems stem from our own inability to face reality, what is going on, and make use of the tools we do have and what we have around us to actually make things better - but that is a problem no one can fix but us. Ultimately, we end up with the consequences of this, deserved or not. There is no magic bullet to solve this either, just hard and uncomfortable work.
There are tools however, and our current society provides a LOT of them. I fully recognize how hard it is to use them during hard times. Probably more than 99% of the posters here. But pretending they don't exist or aren't available is BS as well. Pretending that they don't exist and that is why society is unfair and fucked up because of this is also just wrong and corrosive to society - and people even actually using these tools.
How many people read these posts and actually think there IS no other option and they're permanently fucked, and so never actually take the actions they can to make it better - or even take drastically worse actions that just compound the problem?
A lot more than anyone wants to think about, I can assure you.
Bankruptcy exists. I've seen many people use it (including one close friend) and everyone came out fine at the end. Was it embarrassing for them? Yes. Was it fun? No.
I've always worked my ass off and saved money to avoid the risk, and still barely survived, as I saw how unfun it was as a child and felt many of the effects first hand. But it worked for them to do it, and I knew I had the option if it went even further south.
The whole point of bankruptcy is to get the creditors off your back so you can actually get your life back on track again - like learn a useful skill, or get a new job despite the market being screwed, or not go homeless, or build back a functional life after crippling medical issues and/or debt.
Is it guaranteed that said person will do so? No - there is no way to even attempt to give such a guarantee.
Is it a useful tool someone can use to do so? Yes, you bet.
And if you think I'm 20, lol.
From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"
I think healthcare in the US is riddled with ways to "accidentally"* spend the entire accumulation of your wealth, leaving absolutely nothing to the next generation.
Long term care is needed by a lot of folks over the age of 65 (~70% of adults age 65 will require at least partial long term care).
Even "reasonably cheap" care (in my experience, roughly the same quality as living in a college dorm, with a roommate and a meal plan) can easily run 10k/month - or 120k a year.
Of those needing long term care (roughly half of all folks): Men will need that care for an average of ~2 years, women nearly 4 years. 20% will need that care for 5 years or longer.
I watched my parents spend all of their inheritance covering long term care costs for their parents (Alzheimers is a bitch). Once the inheritance was gone, they worked longer than they would have preferred to continue covering those costs (my mother only retired this year when my grandmother died of covid - as horrendous as it sounds, it was almost a blessing).
My personal take is that "single family homes" and "private healthcare" are a literal fucking disaster for long term wealth inequality. That policy combination takes a lot of middle class families and leaves them poor.
* - I personally don't think it's an accident at all, I think it's very, very intentional.
...
> * - I personally don't think it's an accident at all, I think it's very, very intentional.
Its extremely intentional wealth stealing, and it's even worse than just lost generational wealth transfer. Filial responsibility laws mean that your illness and long-term care are your children's financial burden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws .
In the worst cases, people estranged from their parents for decades end up bankrupted. Depending on what state your grandmother lived in - your mother may have been on the hook even if she hadn't chosen to keep working to care for her mom.[1]
The idea that paying for elderly parents' expensive (intentionally or accidentally) care is a choice only applies to people in less than half of the states. These laws make the only choice "pay the provider directly now" or "pay the provider costs and late fees, etc via the courts". So anyone who wants to claim that the people who care for their parents are chosing to do so is claiming wrong - if your parent spends their last days in one of 26 states, the parent is chosing what your wealth is used for.
[1] I hope that didn't come across as suggesting your mom was only making a financial choice, or that she didn't make her choice out of love. I'm sorry you lost your grandmother and I hope your mom enjoys her retirement.
Families should take care of their own. If nobody is willing to do that for you, you probably aren't deserving.
Might be more fair to say ‘every tomahawk missle fired randomly at a target at the Middle East is an entire middle class families lifetime income down the tubes’.
I can only imagine the hardships your family endured for this sentence to come out. I'm glad things are working out for you guys and I'm sorry for your loss.
That's not true, the money isn't just lost. The money is passed to the children of the person who extracts the money from the sick people. It's by design.
I can't imagine there are too many people in this world with half a million dollars ready to go.
The only reason I see expenses really causing massive debt is if you choose to accept/request medical procedures you can't pay for.
While it's morbid to consider the idea of just letting yourself die because you don't want to go into debt, it still is a choice... isn't it?
Medical technology is quite advanced these days. Advanced != free. And there's a thing where the longer you try to prolong someone's life the more progressively expensive it becomes, not just from a "price of care" perspective but an "[externalized] cost of care" perspective. Is it worth X carbon dioxide emissions to keep a person on a "level-III dialysis machine"? Is it worth X acres of rainforest to extract an anticancer drug to keep someone's cancer at bay?
Anyways the political divide, in the US, between the left's clueless utopianism and the right's underhanded support of market-distorting profitmongers, has become so farcical that it's impossible to question if humans should have "a general right to have their life extended" even if there are actual, difficult questions to go around.
[0] capital We, as in "the state"
[1] if you ever have the experience of being by the bedside of someone who is dying (n=2 for me), you will see people who come to visit, and have so much pathos, I suspect largely due to their own hangups about death. To be at your best in your role, you will want to shoo them away as quickly as possible.
Have you ever been to a US hospital? They don’t have a menu where you browse treatments and prices. You get your treatment and then later on you get a massive bill
That’s all putting aside the fact that a society allowing people to suffer from treatable illnesses is completely unnecessary and cruel considering that providing free care to everyone is something many countries do successfully
At the extreme end of diminishing returns, I'd guess that most deaths of elderly people in hospital are preventable because machines to perform the function of failed heart, lungs, kidneys, GI tract, etc. exist. But it's expensive, and countries with socialized healthcare don't pay for it for everyone because they don't have infinite money. My dad died this way when his lungs filled with fluid while in hospital.
What part of my comment are you referring to? I can’t really tell from what you wrote
I'm saying no country provides free healthcare for all treatable illnesses. And not providing it is necessary because the cost would be too great.
I agree it's cruel though.
No. I'm glad I could clear up this very difficult topic for you.
I understand if you are unconscious, you can't decide, or in a coma. But what if you are lucid and asked by a doctor if you want a procedure or not?
Sure, if anyone wants to use their time to learn something new that would be a plus for them.
That said, the formula is a political choice just as the UBI benefits are a political choice. We could give everyone the same SSA benefits regardless of prior income and index the amounts to age instead. UBI and SSA could be the same administration with lower amounts for younger people and higher amounts for retirees.
https://www.aarp.org/retirement/social-security/questions-an...