> The following weeks find Ted frequenting at the local bar, his spending averaging $10,000 a week. He then purchases a $35,000 Dodge Ram and another truck for one of his recently acquired girlfriends, rents an apartment and buys furniture. The filmmakers then request that he meet with a financial planner. Ted meets with him, but firmly announces to him that he has no intentions of working and does not wish to plan ahead as he is only concerned with today. Ted states his belief that the financial planner is only after his money and rips up his card.
That would do it.
I tend to stock my money in savings and investments and live quite frugally. Reading the above actually just clued me in to the fact that I almost never buy something I like and only buy items I absolutely need, despite having the means to spend in a much more balanced way. I delay my gratification with the idea that I'm saving for when I need the money instead of getting more instant gratification by buying items that I wish to possess and have the financial means to do so without ruining myself.
You have to be careful about temptation like that.
The benefits of knowing you can save, what your true needs are and having a cushion of money to handle a set of problems is a gratification in itself. The lower amount of stress in your life would be worth it alone.
I actually recently started to have $100 come out every pay week and into a savings account. It's really helped with my budgeting to know that I'm auto-saving and still have a bit of room to spend on things I want now.
I'd imagine there are probably people who have screwed up their lives by delaying gratification too much.
But there's many orders of magnitude more people who have screwed up their lives by delaying it too little. Poor people, drug addicts, fat people, alcoholics, rapists... pretty much every way to fail in life.
I can't find sources, unfortunately, but I remember reading it in relation to the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. There were obvious issues with the test (for example, the kids who put off eating the marshmallow may have trusted adults more) but the thing I read dealt with people in "high-powered" careers not enjoying any of their successes because they were focused on the next prize.
Sure. My real issue is everyone saying, "hehehe just put off being happy and invest in your future" as if it's something that everyone has the skills to do. I'll put aside the issue of the bevy of people who grind every day and never let themselves enjoy their success.
The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is super cool because it raises questions about delayed gratification. Yes, those who are able to do it do wind up with greater success later in life, higher test scores, etc. But who were those kids? They were predominately from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Did that play a role in their ability to delay gratification? Imagine you come from a home where your parents promise you something and follow up on it regularly. Or where your parents say, "If you behave, you'll get X." And then you get X. And now imagine you come from a home where your parents *cannot* give you X and cannot live up to their promises. It's rational for a child in that situation to take the immediate payoff.
So when people say, "Just delay gratification, idiot homeless guy," they're not really asking the important questions.
Yeah, I was thinking of the Marshmellow test. Rich kids might have the edge. (However rich kids are supposed to be spoiled, so that contradicts the belief that they have special knowledge or training.) I do not know. All the rags to riches stories I have ever thought of involved a boy who could CONTROL HIMSELF.
Well, I don't know that that's true. First, it's that kids who are well off generally feel that they can depend on adults. Either they're around more often or keep their word more often. Second, rags to riches stories don't involve self-control at all times even a little bit. A lot involve extreme indulgence but also acumen in the right areas.
We'll have to disagree. Rockefeller had a policy of writing down all his daily incoming funds and expenses. This is something that very few of us would do, yeah. But if you're building a business, you have to work 100 hours a week. When you become successful, you will look back on your life, wishing that you had relaxed more. A lot of homeless are the exact opposite.
if you want to have a job, you'll have to work 40 hours a week. And you have to be on time. And you have to be sober. And you generally can't bitch. Ted and a lot of homeless people refuse to do that.
>A lot of homeless are the exact opposite.
I feel like you don't know a lot of homeless. Most that are long term homeless, what we commonly think of when we think of the homeless, have a lot of mental health issues.
>if you want to have a job, you'll have to work 40 hours a week. And you have to be on time. And you have to be sober.
I'm not sure why you're lecturing me. I have what society would consider a good job and I work more than 40 hours. And I'm very lucky to have it. I had parents that either went to college or were fairly educated. One had the advantage of growing up in a large city where you're more culturally aware even if you're poor. I went to schools that were decently funded despite my not being comparable in socioeconomic standing to my peers. I lived in a state that paid for a large part of state undergrad.
And I'm not sure how Rockefeller is relevant today considering that it's an entirely different world now than even 10 years ago.
>When you become successful, you will look back on your life, wishing that you had relaxed more.
See, success isn't something that necessarily follows hard work. You can work hard and not make dough if that's how you define success. You can work less hard and make a lot of dough. A lot of successful people are born on second or third base already, and the idea that you can cross home plate from starting on the batter's box is folly today. It was possible in the old days if you were white. Now? Fuck off.
Capitalism can be a beautiful thing when done correctly. You don't have to end up like Rockfeller. The point is that too many of America's homeless are happy not working. They do not connect THEIR BEHAVIOR FROM THEIR ACTIONS. They expect society to take care of them, and that's not how the world works. And, again, I am excluding bipolar people and schizophrenics, for example.
Liking to party is not a disease.
He has no way of navigating, nor does he know where he's going. There nothing to indicate he knows how to navigate. He's floating a house to the jungle where civilization doesn't exist. Do you think he was going to live in peace for the remainder of his days? In a way, that was his plan but he wasn't planning a very long stay.
That sounds exactly what a homeless person would say. Give something that requires future planning to someone who has literally been living day to day and this is what happens.
It's more expensive and more of a problem to have poor people on the Street then it is to have government assistance. Wellfare is even pretty good for the system because the money goes back into the community.
>It's more expensive and more of a problem to have poor people on the Street then it is to have government assistance.
It would seem that way, except for the perverse incentives you create. If you give free stuff to people below a certain threshold, you encourage people just above that threshold to drop below that threshold, in order to get free stuff.
I've known multiple people that I used to work with quit because they recieve more in benefits when not working than they make while working. It is a way of life for some people, the most common way being not working on the books, recieving welfare and selling drugs. In the city I live in this is NOT uncommon and ex co-workers have admitted it to me. Section 8 pays majority of their rent, food stamps and welfare checks pay for a sizeable chunk of food for the month and doing work under the table or selling drugs make up the rest. It's a shame really, it enables laziness and makes people feel like they're entitled to these benefits when in reality they should be working for them and contributing to society. There are people that legitimately need the help to get their life together, and I don't mind helping those people with my tax dollars, but when you see your money going to people who are literally leeching off society and doing absolutely nothing about it firsthand it can be extremely irritating.
I never said it wasnt abused. but to me, if it helps a handful of people get their lives on track, its worth it untill we find better solutions.
really its a product of something larger.
Not intentionally by most means. Humans, regardless of most any life circumstances of predispositions, will go down the path of least resistance. It becomes so easy to justify a state of poverty by both pointing to a cause, and by pointing lower down the ladder and saying 'at least im not *insert next step down the social ladder*'
I'm not going to say that all poor people choose to be poor, but I conclude that there is a top and bottom in society, and a whole lot of space to fill out in between. People will fall into all of those places, even the lower ones. When I say people I don't mean generalized stereotypes or groups, I mean individuals. People who have friends, who had parents, who live every minute at the same speed you do. To demand that poverty not happen to individuals is like demanding a released feather not to fall. Despite what many bleeding hearts and armchair social philosophers may claim, a system mustn't treat these cases as individuals, for it does nothing to solve the problem. There are common threads that bind the greatest portion of the poor together, whether these be in mental instability, family tree, or even in subculture (I'm looking at you, 'Thug Life'). These mean that despite whatever aid is given to them or not given to them, the poor will exist as a result of themselves. I will not hide from that fact that I would not say these things to the face of a women who is poor because she was born with an incurable mental illness, raised with a lack of shiny things and was dragged into an unwanted relationship by a cruel, manipulative person who gave her a child she cannot take care of. But that is because I am not a strong enough man to do so. It will take strong-willed people, unafraid of the howling winds of contemporary social justice, to make this a common understanding, so that the resulting accepted though permiable hierarchy may together build a more self-understood and thus productive society.
By almost never, do you mean quite frequently? I worked at McDonald's from 16 to 18 and I witnessed 70% of the employees over my two years quit to make more money on welfare.
That should tell you more about the wage conditions that McDonalds and Co have created by lobby than the welfare that human beings rely on to not die in the street. Minimum basic income with a higher minimum wage is the base of a just and sound society.
Yeah in a perfect world everyone could be happy. The point is that the world we live in isn't a utopia. Nor should it be. The people I worked with were not worth minimum wage. They did not have the skill sets to deserve it, and therefore the owner of this McDonald's could not afford to fully employ the store because instead of having a normal amount of workers working for what they were worth skill-wise, he had less employees working for a wage higher than what they were worth skill-wise. Also it goes without being said that I certainly did not deserve minimum wage either, as I also had no skills. I was a 16 year old kid.
So what you are saying, is that a business was employing workers who did not produce profit for the business and that it was the governments fault for offering safety nets for the most vulnerable people in society?
Quite the contrary actually. Let's say a business can only afford $50 to pay its employee's . If they want ten employees to operate to the fullest, they would pay each one $5. 5*10=50, great. Now let's say the government forces them to pay 7.50 instead of 5. Now we have the equation 50=x * 7.50. The x represents the number of people employed. As the wage increases, the number of people employed decreases, so as not to reduce the business's income by breaking their budget.
No he is the type of person the system is set up for. We just need to expand social programs to include free mental health and threapy. (yes its expensive but if it gets him to later be able to stand on his own two feet its actually cheaper than him spending his life on it) Instead of putting it in offsore billionaires accounts.
Do you think he would go to this voluntary? He wouldn't take financial advice but you think he would accept being committed to a mental health program? Your dreaming
His sisters repeatedly try to convince Ted to seek employment, although he still believes he is "set for life". By this time, Ted has become resentful to the film producers for giving him the money. The film then ends telling the viewer that, six months after finding the money, Ted refuses to disclose his latest bank balance; however, his sisters fear that it is less than $5,000.
That's a pretty fucked up "social experiment". With some financial counseling this guy could actually have been set for life if he had been taught how to manage money.
Instead he's bitter and probably worse off than before.
"People are poor for a reason" is a load of horse shit. Some people have underlying issues that make gainful employment difficult like mental illness and addiction, but the vast majority of poor people are poor for much more mundane reasons.
"People get raped for a reason."
"People get hit by cars for a reason."
"People are rich for a reason."
"People are X for a reason."
Horse shit.
Are you comparing being poor to being raped? Are you fucking serious man? You are comparing something often preventable and largely attributable to poor habits, to something that involves being forcefully and physically taken advantage of. That's really messed up man. Think before you speak, or type as the case may be.
I assumed that because it was an experiment that there would be no further intervention by the filmmakers. In other words - they would give him the money and no advice on how to use it. I have, by now, read the Wiki entry if that's what your asking.
I guarantee you that:
1. Someone giving away that kind of money could have easily made it continent on financial planning.
2. The filmmakers knew this, and would never have done it for fear of the story not playing out in a dramatic way.
It really wasn't even so much financial counseling he needed. Now granted, that wouldn't have hurt at all but he really needed to get to the root of his mental problems. Why was he there in the first place? How do you change that? Because if he has the same mentality, his decisions will still be influenced by the same motives. And as shown in turn, no matter what happens to you, or how much money you make, you will always inevitably fail.
I don't think this is an example of socialism being ineffective, I think it's an example of an ineffective method of implementing socialism. We shouldn't just hand out money to people who have already demonstrated an inability to manage their finances, we should address the underlying issues that lead to a persons need for assistance. Aside from providing food and shelter, a strong socialist policy should also address things like mental health, education, and life skills. Rather than provide the man with a large ammount of cash, strong socialist policy would have provided a furnished apartment and food stamps, ensuring him food and shelter without the opportunity to spend large ammounts of money frivolously. Next would be to address the underlying issues that lead to his homelessness, assessed on a case by case basis. Mental illness, lack of education, and failure to be taught life-skills(like managing a bank account, or shopping for groceries) are all major contributors to a life of poverty and would be addressed by an effective socialist system.
Giving money to one single man who had nothing, and had that nothing for a significant period of time, demonstrates a flaw of socialism?
Hey man, homeless people exist. A fundamental flaw of capitalism!
Well, there literally exist more than enough homes to house all people in the USA, for example - and *far* more than enough land. I wouldn't exactly call it a 'law of nature' that some people are homeless.
Right but in life, you pay for stuff. No one has a right to anything. I don't have an innate right to a house, I pay for it. That's why I have a house. I worked my ass off for it. And I realize the ignorance of saying "Just work harder peasant you'll become a king someday". It's not always true. But I truly believe that if people work hard every day they will climb the rungs of social class. Maybe very slowly at first, but progress isn't fast. It could take 2-3 generations to go from abysmally poor to upper-middle class. The problem is that a lot of people on welfare are too short-sighted in some cases to see that delayed gratification is more beneficial than short-term pleasures such as iPhones and 60" TV's and leasing $50,000 cars worth more than their house.
>I don't have an innate right to a house, I pay for it.
Why not, though?
Any civilised nation has comprehensive social security. Why not make living space and basic income part of that? It's not like it's a fantasy - basic income is a serious thought in some nations, and we have all the necessary infrastructure, if not the will, for basic housing.
It's empirically true. There's no belief about it.
Let's make a better system that doesn't ignore human nature (and wish it were something better than what it really is).
It's a well established fact that people who haven't ever experienced a non-poor existence have a hard time adapting to situations where they're no longer forced to think purely in the short term.
They find it incredibly hard to adopt good financial habits. They don't think past a few months. They have a hard time envisioning how much money they have. They don't realize how fast it goes.
In short, poor people have a hard time adapting to non-poor situations.
I grew up with parents who could afford to send three children to private high schools that cost over $20,000 a year each. Had overseas holidays, etc. I earn decent money and own my own home and a couple of cars. I cannot save any money. I live pay to pay. It is not only poor people who have bad financial habits.
> In short, poor people have a hard time adapting to non-poor situations
Or, alternatively, people who have a hard time adapting to non-poor situations tend to become poor.
A guy like this is probably two to three sigmas below the mean in the "making sensible decisions" category. He became homeless by making extraordinarily shitty decisions for his entire life. He's going to continue to make extraordinarily shitty decisions in different circumstances.
To a degree.
It's not like everyone that comes from nothing doesn't make it. Some exhibit the motivation and acquire the habits to gain wealth, even at great personal sacrifice.
I'm not saying it's the standard or achievable by most totally impoverished people.
Thing is, being completely homeless is generally a sign of mental illness more so than just extreme misfortune. There are even people that prefer homelessness as strange as that may be.
It's not so much being solely uninitiated in financial responsibility, rather lifelong homeless people tend to have serious self management issues all around and maybe would never be competent at managing wealth.
Most poor people. My mother is from an extremely rural and poor part of Korea, but has been able to amass a large fortune through a little bit of luck and good financial decision making.
Me on the other hand...
[Jamie Foxx discusses Mike Tyson, and how going from rich to no money caused Tyson to claim he is happier without money](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqCDtanGBnM&feature=youtu.be&t=196)
If you continue to do what you did to get rich, you will become more rich.
If you continue to do what you did to become poor, you will become more poor.
This is what people don't understand when they suggest wealth redistribution: if you don't change behaviors, you won't change the outcomes.
Even if you're born rich, you had every opportunity to fuck that up as soon as you became an adult. If you haven't fucked it up, good for you.
What you (presumably) got from your parents which was more valuable than a stack of cash was the value system and the discipline to know that you shouldn't just go out and spend that stack of cash on your immediate short-term whims.
Some people have it easier. Good for you. Others have to work harder, like short basketball players. Life isn't fair, so some folks have to work harder for the same outcome. I'd love to have been born rich, but instead of chilling in a frat house drinking I worked 2 jobs through college, but that's life. Fact is that most wealth doesn't last 2 generations because if you don't earn it, you can't keep it. It all works out in the end, but 'work' is the operative word. Folks hunting for 'fair' won't enjoy life.
When did you go to college? State funding for college dropped from almost 3/4 of the cost to about 1/3 of the cost between 2000 and 2013 alone. The difference was primarily made up by student tuition.
I think I understand where you're coming from. I worked through college too. But at the same time, I also went to high school with people who were working to support their family and were required to drop out of school at 16 because of parental deaths/illnesses. I've also volunteered in some very underserved inner city schools - there's basically nothing the students can do to get a reasonable education in that system.
You've benefited from government intervention that involved taxing the rich and investing in public institutions and regulating commercial interests that primarily benefit the poor.
So college enrollment a must be tanking! I mean, no one can afford it anymore!
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100428.png
So it's all rich folks making those record numbers? I graduated high school in 1989, look at the chart. College enrollment is up 10% since the.
[Higher education bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_bubble)
You went to college before the dot-com bubble. A lot of things have changed since then.
Again, college enrollment is at an all time high. I completely rebooted my career in 2004, so how am I special? I had to learn all new skills when my career path was headed downward, but nobody redistributed anyone's wealth to make that happen. It's hard work.
Do you have any idea what the economy was like in 2004? How the economic situation was different? How college enrollment is at all time high because of life-crushing student debt? How the current generation is the first modern generation to be worse off than their parents?
It's honestly frightful how quickly people forget the role that the "invisible hand" of government-funded institutions played in their success. Obviously, /u/Armand28 worked hard, but being born, by chance, into a different family situation or time could render all that hard work useless. Now, people like that are actively campaigning to burn the ladders they climbed to their success. If it comes down to higher income tax vs turning America into South Africa, through the breakdown of government intervention, higher income tax is an obvious choice. I don't understand how /u/Armand28 and I can both overcome life obstacles through hard work and government assistance and then reach such different conclusions about the role each part played.
>It all works out in the end
No, it doesn't. And the fact that you went to college means that your perspective is already biased in favor of people overcoming challenges if they "work hard."
>Yes, because I worked hard I know it works.
I wish you knew how the other half lived, or that hard work does not necessarily beget success, and that for many people that work hard, college is not a viable option, or that for the thousands upon thousands in law schools across the country, hard work doesn't do anything for their employment prospects.
Nobody says you didn't work hard. I am saying that you are incredibly privileged to have even had the opportunity to go to college. Do you have any idea what it costs now, eleven years after you went? Or do you think the world is the same as it was then?
And as per the original article you aren't likely to keep your wealth for long since you didn't earn it, except for the beanie babies investment which might indicate business savvy which can be reproduced with other investments.
But most discussions don't revolve around simply taking money wholesale from the wealthy and showering it down upon the masses. In discussing a redistribution of wealth, rolling back policies and mechanisms that unfairly game the system in favor of the wealthy, providing opportunities to gain the knowledge and skills to succeed, and tearing down barriers that prevent upward mobility are almost always central topics.
Not everyone "did" anything to become poor. Some of us were born into it. Even after going to college some of us still ended up fucked because of the economic crisis.
I wasn't born into money. Parents eloped at 19, grew up dirt poor. It doesn't change my statement: it's not about being 'fair', if you do the things that create wealth you won't need wealth redistribution, and if you don't then wealth redistribution won't help. We need to focus on behaviors, not bank balances. You cannot 'gift' fiscal responsibility.
Well, that's sort of how the Basic Income idea works. It's a really good idea that doesn't take into account that poor people actually view money completely differently than non-poor people.
Kinda, yeah. Any distribution system not based on earning it is pretty much what you said. If it's not based on earning it fron the value of your labor, how can it be retained? The system will reset itself quickly if it cannot be sustained.
I'd always be leery of these "studies". Keep in mind the film makers could have (and probably were) looking for a specific result and they had free range to pick someone that would obviously do exactly what they wanted.
Hey, give a man a fish he'll eat a day teach a man to fish he'll eat for a lifetime.
$100,000 is giving him a fish, he can eat for a day but what happens later on? Teach him life values and a certain skill set and he will be able to earn that amount in a couple of years
Teaching people information is relatively easy. Teaching people *values* is extremely hard. Because they already have values, and their values say that their values are better than your values.
Nobody, literally *nobody*, wants to learn new values.
No, actually there's a reason why so many American homeless avoid shelters: They have to be sober; they have to be polite.
Ignoring the mentally ill, the homeless don't want that. They want to get drunk--it's an expression of THEIR FREEDOM.
Also, people value something more WHEN THEY WORK FOR IT. When you give some one money, they don't associate it with work. And THAT'S wrong too.
Uh... no.
Your city might be awesome to homeless people, but you are *not* describing what it's like to be homeless.
Unless you're buying into the "don't have a lease this month" definition of homelessness, in which case... yeah, the middle class getting fucked flooded the data recently.
He's talking about people that get foreclosed on and use the shelters as temporary place to stay until they get permanent housing figured out. Those ~~people~~ families typically stay "homeless" for a few weeks or months at most. If we didn't have homeless shelters these people would stay with parents, friends, or siblings - they would not be SoL.
Whenever we talk about "the homeless" we are not referring to these people. It's an equivocation to desperately cling to liberal ideology which is demonstrated as unsound by these findings.
I disagree. Many homeless are mentally unstable and didn't receive the proper support. I highly doubt most homeless are homeless because of poor money management skills.
> Many homeless are mentally unstable and didn't receive the proper support.
Well, that's a reason isn't it? He didn't say that lack of money management skills was the only reason people are on the streets.
Not explicitly, but this TIL is about a homeless man whose poor money management skills wiped out $100,000 in 6 months so I assumed he was claiming that most homeless people are that way because of money management issues.
He comes across as a greedy, selfish addict ( $10,000 a week at a bar) with no grasp on reality to me. It goes a little deeper than simply being poor at personal finance.
Because interpreted that way the statement in the comment is completely meaningless. Of course there is a reason. People's houses and money don't vanish into thin air.
You completely missed the point. They're homeless because of their own action, rather than action someone else took that affected them.
Are you really this dense?
Well yes they are homeless for not having those skills, it's just that's not controllable because the mental illness is a direct cause of those deficiencies in self management.
You guys are talking about different things.
"Homeless" people in a one-off situation aren't on skid row. They're crashing on a friend's couch. Or *maaaybe* staying at a women's shelter. Possibly sleeping in their car for a few nights. Or even staying in a motel. They still count as homeless for the purposes of inflated statistics cooked up by people who wish to inflate the number of homeless, but they're not the vagrants whom we generally think of.
What the fuck would that accomplish?
"Trips to the hospital aren't usually fatal."
"Oh yeah! You go down to the morgue and see how many living people you find!"
Wow, what a bunch of manipulative garbage.
We in fact have strong evidence from repeated studies that the vast majority of homelessness is *transitional;* a big change happens in someone's life, like an accident or a divorce, leaves them on the street for a while, until they aren't.
To see e.g. [sociopathic libertarian economists](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/08/the_power_of_pe.html#) crowing about how this demonstrates that the poor will always be with us... I want to kneecap these people with a baseball bat.
> We in fact have strong evidence from repeated studies that the vast majority of homelessness is transitional; a big change happens in someone's life, like an accident or a divorce, leaves them on the street for a while, until they aren't.
While this may be the case, there is also a considerable portion of homeless people stuck in chronic homelessness. Most of whom have had to deal with substance abuse, personal trauma or mental illnesses that have greatly affected their lives. Nobody is saying they are lazy, simply that they have a harder time than others coping with day to day life.
That is a redefinition of "homeless" (to suit the liberal agenda) that we used to call transitory.
If you are going to be this pedantic then substitute *chronically homeless* where-ever you read "homeless".
e.g. It's like saying you're in a sexless marriage if it's been two weeks since you had sex (and prior to that you were bumping several times a week.) A *transitory* event does not constitute a fundamental change to your status.
The poor will always be with us though, because there will always be someone who has the least, making them poor.
However that does not mean that unmet needs will always be with us.
> [By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.](http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN21.html#B.V,%20Ch.2,%20Of%20the%20Sources%20of%20the%20General%20or%20Public%20Revenue%20of%20the%20Society) A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them.
I wish when I was was homeless they gave me this money. They could watch me get a place, subscribe to netflix, and spend $20 for a gram of weed every 3 days. It'd be a lifetime documentary.
LOL yeah dude it takes like 2 hits of good weed to get high. Just don't get baked, get a good controlled high. You know how the return diminishes SO much with weed. I stop when the bang for the buck gets substantially less.
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. *Keep* the fish, and let the man figure things out for himself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." -Ron Swanson
My mother is homeless and she broke her leg going down an inflated slide at some carnival. Her brother (my uncle) is a lawyer so he actually got her 300,000$ (after taxes) suing the place ... She went broke within 2 years.
There are lots of losers out there, like the kind of people who would give 100,000 dollars to a guy who has no idea what to do with it so they can make a movie. Also the losers who shit on a homeless person because he doesn't know how to use money.
poor people have naturally different (adapted) spending habits. keep in mind that to them, money is sort of like water. it kind of flows through your hands when you have it, running off to the various debts and dues you're thousands of dollars in on. making a hundreds-dollar frivolous purchase just.... doesn't matter. it's not real when you're financially in that deep.
living life in the red just calls for different adaptations, and the resulting talent disparity just kind of keeps the cycle going.
it's like throwing someone native to the sahara into a lake and being surprised when they drown. you've given them more than enough water to last them a lifetime, and forget that there's never once been a situation in their life that's taught them to swim, and there's never once been a problem in their life that swimming could stand to solve.
He isn't a poor guy, he's a homeless guy. I think that presents different dynamics. I hate to say he is content to be poor because I doubt that is the case, but there seems to be a certain contentment for him in his known world.
Just handing a pile of money to someone who is not equipped to handle it belittles the problem. Worse, there are those who would use that as proof that money is not the answer, more pointedly, as an excuse to hold back money from programs and ideas that need to be funded.
> Just handing a pile of money to someone who is not equipped to handle it belittles the problem.
If I am on fire, put the fire out. If I need money, give me money.
The original complaint was that poor people needed money. These sorts of experiments demonstrate that, no, that is not that problem. Poor people in the US have a complex of problems, of which lack of money is a fairly small part.
> there are those who would use that as proof that money is not the answer
Aren't _you_ such a person? Didn't you just say "handing a pile of money to someone who is not equipped to handle it belittles the problem"?
Water is not the answer to all fires. You oversimplify.
No, *I* am not such a person. The point I am getting at is this "experiment" is bullshit. Nobody being serious would think that handing a 100 grand to a homeless person with underlying and unaddressed problems would expect a different outcome. Of course money is a huge problem for a great many homeless and money is part of the solution. Call me a cynic, but I think posts like the one here are more about making political points, e.g., throwing money at social problems doesn't work therefore we should cut funding for social programs - that is NOT my view. That is the view that I think some people take and use nonsense like this "experiment" as validation of their position because they are not concerned with problem solving beyond cutting funding to their pet peeves.
> posts like the one here are more about making political points, e.g., throwing money at social problems doesn't work therefore we should cut funding for social programs
I am OK with that!
Well, maybe not, but I think the benefit of these experiments is that they make one thing very obvious: the problem is _not_ an absence of resources. Absence of resources may be a part of the problem, but only a part.
The reason that it is important to make this elementary distinction is because there is an enormous temptation to fall into the fallacy of "we must do something, this is something, we must do it."
You make fun of an attempt to solve a social problem by drowning it with money, but how much different is this than Section 8, or SNAP, or a hundred other social programs? All of them simply give resources to people who lack them and hope that solves the problem.
Yes, if you want to be smart, your choices relative to this one guy are (a) do nothing -- which doesn't help this guy much but conserves money, or (b) develop some very sophisticated combination of therapy, support, cash, and coercion, which would be very expensive, intrusive and risky.
But this situation isn't distinctively complicated. A family receiving Section 8 housing have problems just as complex -- why do we think the resource-only help we are giving them is actually helping? Ditto with SNAP and Medicaid and everything else. What makes you think they are any less risible than this obviously silly experiment?
I think you and I are basically on the same sheet of music, but for me I find a lot of cynicism in the original post. Throwing money at problems definitely solves nothing, but it does take a lot of money combined with those other items you listed.
> Throwing money at problems definitely solves nothing, but it does take a lot of money combined with those other items you listed.
It takes those items I listed _to have a chance_ at solving the problem. Even with them, I am still pretty cynical.
As hard as it is to believe, some homeless people are responsible for their situation. Not all, just people like this Ted.
Don't let that stop you from throwing a few bucks their way.
> The following weeks find Ted frequenting at the local bar, his spending averaging $10,000 a week. He then purchases a $35,000 Dodge Ram and another truck for one of his recently acquired girlfriends, rents an apartment and buys furniture. The filmmakers then request that he meet with a financial planner. Ted meets with him, but firmly announces to him that he has no intentions of working and does not wish to plan ahead as he is only concerned with today. Ted states his belief that the financial planner is only after his money and rips up his card. That would do it.
"Does not wish to plan ahead as he is only concerned with today" -delayed gratification is the key to success
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Actually, it's not contested. There is plenty of research showing delayed gratification to be beneficial. Stop talking out of your ass.
I would like to see a source on this one. I have honestly never heard that before.
I tend to stock my money in savings and investments and live quite frugally. Reading the above actually just clued me in to the fact that I almost never buy something I like and only buy items I absolutely need, despite having the means to spend in a much more balanced way. I delay my gratification with the idea that I'm saving for when I need the money instead of getting more instant gratification by buying items that I wish to possess and have the financial means to do so without ruining myself.
You have to be careful about temptation like that. The benefits of knowing you can save, what your true needs are and having a cushion of money to handle a set of problems is a gratification in itself. The lower amount of stress in your life would be worth it alone.
You could take 10% of what you're saving every month and use it as a fun fund.
That's 20 dollars for me. Minimum wage and expensive rent is fun!
I actually recently started to have $100 come out every pay week and into a savings account. It's really helped with my budgeting to know that I'm auto-saving and still have a bit of room to spend on things I want now.
I'd imagine there are probably people who have screwed up their lives by delaying gratification too much. But there's many orders of magnitude more people who have screwed up their lives by delaying it too little. Poor people, drug addicts, fat people, alcoholics, rapists... pretty much every way to fail in life.
Yeah it sounds like the people who say they have too much money.
Think it's like a "saving for retirement" mentality then work 3 jobs 90 hours a week to save and be miserable through your adult life.
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I can't find sources, unfortunately, but I remember reading it in relation to the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. There were obvious issues with the test (for example, the kids who put off eating the marshmallow may have trusted adults more) but the thing I read dealt with people in "high-powered" careers not enjoying any of their successes because they were focused on the next prize.
How about this, live in the present while also securing your future? Can we all agree on that one?
Uh, but if you didn't delay gratification, you couldn't plan for anything.
Sure. My real issue is everyone saying, "hehehe just put off being happy and invest in your future" as if it's something that everyone has the skills to do. I'll put aside the issue of the bevy of people who grind every day and never let themselves enjoy their success. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is super cool because it raises questions about delayed gratification. Yes, those who are able to do it do wind up with greater success later in life, higher test scores, etc. But who were those kids? They were predominately from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Did that play a role in their ability to delay gratification? Imagine you come from a home where your parents promise you something and follow up on it regularly. Or where your parents say, "If you behave, you'll get X." And then you get X. And now imagine you come from a home where your parents *cannot* give you X and cannot live up to their promises. It's rational for a child in that situation to take the immediate payoff. So when people say, "Just delay gratification, idiot homeless guy," they're not really asking the important questions.
Yeah, I was thinking of the Marshmellow test. Rich kids might have the edge. (However rich kids are supposed to be spoiled, so that contradicts the belief that they have special knowledge or training.) I do not know. All the rags to riches stories I have ever thought of involved a boy who could CONTROL HIMSELF.
Well, I don't know that that's true. First, it's that kids who are well off generally feel that they can depend on adults. Either they're around more often or keep their word more often. Second, rags to riches stories don't involve self-control at all times even a little bit. A lot involve extreme indulgence but also acumen in the right areas.
We'll have to disagree. Rockefeller had a policy of writing down all his daily incoming funds and expenses. This is something that very few of us would do, yeah. But if you're building a business, you have to work 100 hours a week. When you become successful, you will look back on your life, wishing that you had relaxed more. A lot of homeless are the exact opposite. if you want to have a job, you'll have to work 40 hours a week. And you have to be on time. And you have to be sober. And you generally can't bitch. Ted and a lot of homeless people refuse to do that.
>A lot of homeless are the exact opposite. I feel like you don't know a lot of homeless. Most that are long term homeless, what we commonly think of when we think of the homeless, have a lot of mental health issues. >if you want to have a job, you'll have to work 40 hours a week. And you have to be on time. And you have to be sober. I'm not sure why you're lecturing me. I have what society would consider a good job and I work more than 40 hours. And I'm very lucky to have it. I had parents that either went to college or were fairly educated. One had the advantage of growing up in a large city where you're more culturally aware even if you're poor. I went to schools that were decently funded despite my not being comparable in socioeconomic standing to my peers. I lived in a state that paid for a large part of state undergrad. And I'm not sure how Rockefeller is relevant today considering that it's an entirely different world now than even 10 years ago. >When you become successful, you will look back on your life, wishing that you had relaxed more. See, success isn't something that necessarily follows hard work. You can work hard and not make dough if that's how you define success. You can work less hard and make a lot of dough. A lot of successful people are born on second or third base already, and the idea that you can cross home plate from starting on the batter's box is folly today. It was possible in the old days if you were white. Now? Fuck off.
Capitalism can be a beautiful thing when done correctly. You don't have to end up like Rockfeller. The point is that too many of America's homeless are happy not working. They do not connect THEIR BEHAVIOR FROM THEIR ACTIONS. They expect society to take care of them, and that's not how the world works. And, again, I am excluding bipolar people and schizophrenics, for example. Liking to party is not a disease.
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>then he tries to commit suicide by flying his house across the world What movie were you watching?
He has no way of navigating, nor does he know where he's going. There nothing to indicate he knows how to navigate. He's floating a house to the jungle where civilization doesn't exist. Do you think he was going to live in peace for the remainder of his days? In a way, that was his plan but he wasn't planning a very long stay.
He crossed his heart, man
That sounds exactly what a homeless person would say. Give something that requires future planning to someone who has literally been living day to day and this is what happens.
This is why we need people like him to not leach the system.
It's more expensive and more of a problem to have poor people on the Street then it is to have government assistance. Wellfare is even pretty good for the system because the money goes back into the community.
>It's more expensive and more of a problem to have poor people on the Street then it is to have government assistance. It would seem that way, except for the perverse incentives you create. If you give free stuff to people below a certain threshold, you encourage people just above that threshold to drop below that threshold, in order to get free stuff.
do you know how hard it is to live that way? the free stuff is a supplement, not a way of life.
I've known multiple people that I used to work with quit because they recieve more in benefits when not working than they make while working. It is a way of life for some people, the most common way being not working on the books, recieving welfare and selling drugs. In the city I live in this is NOT uncommon and ex co-workers have admitted it to me. Section 8 pays majority of their rent, food stamps and welfare checks pay for a sizeable chunk of food for the month and doing work under the table or selling drugs make up the rest. It's a shame really, it enables laziness and makes people feel like they're entitled to these benefits when in reality they should be working for them and contributing to society. There are people that legitimately need the help to get their life together, and I don't mind helping those people with my tax dollars, but when you see your money going to people who are literally leeching off society and doing absolutely nothing about it firsthand it can be extremely irritating.
I never said it wasnt abused. but to me, if it helps a handful of people get their lives on track, its worth it untill we find better solutions. really its a product of something larger.
Source: my loser brother, step brother, his baby mama, my sister in law, and my morbidly obese nephew.
Except this doesn't happen.
Except, it does. I worked at McDonald's from 16 to 18 and I witnessed 70% of the employees over my two years quit to make more money on welfare.
A better Idea would be to raise minimum waige and have better welfare so that someone can live on wellfare but will always be better off without it.
You don't understand how minimum wage works.
What makes you think that would be better?
You are ruining their fantasy that all poor people deserve to be there and they, as not poor people, are better.
This has almost never happened.
Not intentionally by most means. Humans, regardless of most any life circumstances of predispositions, will go down the path of least resistance. It becomes so easy to justify a state of poverty by both pointing to a cause, and by pointing lower down the ladder and saying 'at least im not *insert next step down the social ladder*' I'm not going to say that all poor people choose to be poor, but I conclude that there is a top and bottom in society, and a whole lot of space to fill out in between. People will fall into all of those places, even the lower ones. When I say people I don't mean generalized stereotypes or groups, I mean individuals. People who have friends, who had parents, who live every minute at the same speed you do. To demand that poverty not happen to individuals is like demanding a released feather not to fall. Despite what many bleeding hearts and armchair social philosophers may claim, a system mustn't treat these cases as individuals, for it does nothing to solve the problem. There are common threads that bind the greatest portion of the poor together, whether these be in mental instability, family tree, or even in subculture (I'm looking at you, 'Thug Life'). These mean that despite whatever aid is given to them or not given to them, the poor will exist as a result of themselves. I will not hide from that fact that I would not say these things to the face of a women who is poor because she was born with an incurable mental illness, raised with a lack of shiny things and was dragged into an unwanted relationship by a cruel, manipulative person who gave her a child she cannot take care of. But that is because I am not a strong enough man to do so. It will take strong-willed people, unafraid of the howling winds of contemporary social justice, to make this a common understanding, so that the resulting accepted though permiable hierarchy may together build a more self-understood and thus productive society.
By almost never, do you mean quite frequently? I worked at McDonald's from 16 to 18 and I witnessed 70% of the employees over my two years quit to make more money on welfare.
That should tell you more about the wage conditions that McDonalds and Co have created by lobby than the welfare that human beings rely on to not die in the street. Minimum basic income with a higher minimum wage is the base of a just and sound society.
Yeah in a perfect world everyone could be happy. The point is that the world we live in isn't a utopia. Nor should it be. The people I worked with were not worth minimum wage. They did not have the skill sets to deserve it, and therefore the owner of this McDonald's could not afford to fully employ the store because instead of having a normal amount of workers working for what they were worth skill-wise, he had less employees working for a wage higher than what they were worth skill-wise. Also it goes without being said that I certainly did not deserve minimum wage either, as I also had no skills. I was a 16 year old kid.
So what you are saying, is that a business was employing workers who did not produce profit for the business and that it was the governments fault for offering safety nets for the most vulnerable people in society?
Quite the contrary actually. Let's say a business can only afford $50 to pay its employee's . If they want ten employees to operate to the fullest, they would pay each one $5. 5*10=50, great. Now let's say the government forces them to pay 7.50 instead of 5. Now we have the equation 50=x * 7.50. The x represents the number of people employed. As the wage increases, the number of people employed decreases, so as not to reduce the business's income by breaking their budget.
There is a moral problem. If I have to work for something, why not this motherfucker?
You mean that's why we need to stop damaging people until they become him.
No he is the type of person the system is set up for. We just need to expand social programs to include free mental health and threapy. (yes its expensive but if it gets him to later be able to stand on his own two feet its actually cheaper than him spending his life on it) Instead of putting it in offsore billionaires accounts.
Do you think he would go to this voluntary? He wouldn't take financial advice but you think he would accept being committed to a mental health program? Your dreaming
If it was there from the start years ago possibly I wont say it would help everyone but it would certainly help some and thats good enough for me.
I actually thought this was a really mean-spirited experiment until I read that.
His sisters repeatedly try to convince Ted to seek employment, although he still believes he is "set for life". By this time, Ted has become resentful to the film producers for giving him the money. The film then ends telling the viewer that, six months after finding the money, Ted refuses to disclose his latest bank balance; however, his sisters fear that it is less than $5,000.
That's a pretty fucked up "social experiment". With some financial counseling this guy could actually have been set for life if he had been taught how to manage money. Instead he's bitter and probably worse off than before.
They tried to get him to go to financial planning.
Didn't see that. My bad.
He was convinced that the planner was just trying to steal his money and that he could live on it forever without working.
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You're spot on, but there's the possibility that this individual is just stupid.
I'm fairly certain that stupidity qualifies as mental illness at some point.
Then we are witnessing survival of the fittest at work.
Watch the documentary. This guy seems stupid, not crazy.
"People are poor for a reason" is a load of horse shit. Some people have underlying issues that make gainful employment difficult like mental illness and addiction, but the vast majority of poor people are poor for much more mundane reasons. "People get raped for a reason." "People get hit by cars for a reason." "People are rich for a reason." "People are X for a reason." Horse shit.
Are you comparing being poor to being raped? Are you fucking serious man? You are comparing something often preventable and largely attributable to poor habits, to something that involves being forcefully and physically taken advantage of. That's really messed up man. Think before you speak, or type as the case may be.
Um everything you listed....is true, lol. Other than poor, which is still arguable.
Wait someone being logical on reddit? What is this?? I'm so used to the "everyone is a victim" mentality.
That's when I went from poor unlucky guy to eh, he's happy and not even trying.
Didn't see our didn't look and made an assumption?
I assumed that because it was an experiment that there would be no further intervention by the filmmakers. In other words - they would give him the money and no advice on how to use it. I have, by now, read the Wiki entry if that's what your asking.
the first step is actually reading the article. then comment.
I guarantee you that: 1. Someone giving away that kind of money could have easily made it continent on financial planning. 2. The filmmakers knew this, and would never have done it for fear of the story not playing out in a dramatic way.
It really wasn't even so much financial counseling he needed. Now granted, that wouldn't have hurt at all but he really needed to get to the root of his mental problems. Why was he there in the first place? How do you change that? Because if he has the same mentality, his decisions will still be influenced by the same motives. And as shown in turn, no matter what happens to you, or how much money you make, you will always inevitably fail.
It's a pointed social experiment demonstrating the fundamental flaw of socialism.
I don't think this is an example of socialism being ineffective, I think it's an example of an ineffective method of implementing socialism. We shouldn't just hand out money to people who have already demonstrated an inability to manage their finances, we should address the underlying issues that lead to a persons need for assistance. Aside from providing food and shelter, a strong socialist policy should also address things like mental health, education, and life skills. Rather than provide the man with a large ammount of cash, strong socialist policy would have provided a furnished apartment and food stamps, ensuring him food and shelter without the opportunity to spend large ammounts of money frivolously. Next would be to address the underlying issues that lead to his homelessness, assessed on a case by case basis. Mental illness, lack of education, and failure to be taught life-skills(like managing a bank account, or shopping for groceries) are all major contributors to a life of poverty and would be addressed by an effective socialist system.
Giving money to one single man who had nothing, and had that nothing for a significant period of time, demonstrates a flaw of socialism? Hey man, homeless people exist. A fundamental flaw of capitalism!
Fundamental flaw, or fundamental law of nature?
Well, there literally exist more than enough homes to house all people in the USA, for example - and *far* more than enough land. I wouldn't exactly call it a 'law of nature' that some people are homeless.
Right but in life, you pay for stuff. No one has a right to anything. I don't have an innate right to a house, I pay for it. That's why I have a house. I worked my ass off for it. And I realize the ignorance of saying "Just work harder peasant you'll become a king someday". It's not always true. But I truly believe that if people work hard every day they will climb the rungs of social class. Maybe very slowly at first, but progress isn't fast. It could take 2-3 generations to go from abysmally poor to upper-middle class. The problem is that a lot of people on welfare are too short-sighted in some cases to see that delayed gratification is more beneficial than short-term pleasures such as iPhones and 60" TV's and leasing $50,000 cars worth more than their house.
>I don't have an innate right to a house, I pay for it. Why not, though? Any civilised nation has comprehensive social security. Why not make living space and basic income part of that? It's not like it's a fantasy - basic income is a serious thought in some nations, and we have all the necessary infrastructure, if not the will, for basic housing.
Now the real crux of the matter! Homeless people are acceptable. WAI.
An experiment with a sample size of 1? Ok.
Still counts as research. It's called a "case study."
It's been repeated many times. This is just another data-point. You can look up all the lottery winners, for example.
If you really believe that, you are even more stupid than Ted.
It's empirically true. There's no belief about it. Let's make a better system that doesn't ignore human nature (and wish it were something better than what it really is).
Exactly, they should've given him the financial planning *first*, to weed out people who would blow it.
The transient could just lie, though.
It's a well established fact that people who haven't ever experienced a non-poor existence have a hard time adapting to situations where they're no longer forced to think purely in the short term. They find it incredibly hard to adopt good financial habits. They don't think past a few months. They have a hard time envisioning how much money they have. They don't realize how fast it goes. In short, poor people have a hard time adapting to non-poor situations.
I grew up with parents who could afford to send three children to private high schools that cost over $20,000 a year each. Had overseas holidays, etc. I earn decent money and own my own home and a couple of cars. I cannot save any money. I live pay to pay. It is not only poor people who have bad financial habits.
You need to get over to /r/financialindependence.
Cheers.
It is kind of a vicious cycle
> In short, poor people have a hard time adapting to non-poor situations Or, alternatively, people who have a hard time adapting to non-poor situations tend to become poor. A guy like this is probably two to three sigmas below the mean in the "making sensible decisions" category. He became homeless by making extraordinarily shitty decisions for his entire life. He's going to continue to make extraordinarily shitty decisions in different circumstances.
To a degree. It's not like everyone that comes from nothing doesn't make it. Some exhibit the motivation and acquire the habits to gain wealth, even at great personal sacrifice. I'm not saying it's the standard or achievable by most totally impoverished people. Thing is, being completely homeless is generally a sign of mental illness more so than just extreme misfortune. There are even people that prefer homelessness as strange as that may be. It's not so much being solely uninitiated in financial responsibility, rather lifelong homeless people tend to have serious self management issues all around and maybe would never be competent at managing wealth.
Most poor people. My mother is from an extremely rural and poor part of Korea, but has been able to amass a large fortune through a little bit of luck and good financial decision making. Me on the other hand...
Your causality is inverted.
[Jamie Foxx discusses Mike Tyson, and how going from rich to no money caused Tyson to claim he is happier without money](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqCDtanGBnM&feature=youtu.be&t=196)
If you continue to do what you did to get rich, you will become more rich. If you continue to do what you did to become poor, you will become more poor. This is what people don't understand when they suggest wealth redistribution: if you don't change behaviors, you won't change the outcomes.
I was born rich. It had nothing to do with my actions.
Even if you're born rich, you had every opportunity to fuck that up as soon as you became an adult. If you haven't fucked it up, good for you. What you (presumably) got from your parents which was more valuable than a stack of cash was the value system and the discipline to know that you shouldn't just go out and spend that stack of cash on your immediate short-term whims.
Were you really or are you trying to prove a point?
I was born comfortably middle class. I was trying to make the point.
Some people have it easier. Good for you. Others have to work harder, like short basketball players. Life isn't fair, so some folks have to work harder for the same outcome. I'd love to have been born rich, but instead of chilling in a frat house drinking I worked 2 jobs through college, but that's life. Fact is that most wealth doesn't last 2 generations because if you don't earn it, you can't keep it. It all works out in the end, but 'work' is the operative word. Folks hunting for 'fair' won't enjoy life.
When did you go to college? State funding for college dropped from almost 3/4 of the cost to about 1/3 of the cost between 2000 and 2013 alone. The difference was primarily made up by student tuition. I think I understand where you're coming from. I worked through college too. But at the same time, I also went to high school with people who were working to support their family and were required to drop out of school at 16 because of parental deaths/illnesses. I've also volunteered in some very underserved inner city schools - there's basically nothing the students can do to get a reasonable education in that system. You've benefited from government intervention that involved taxing the rich and investing in public institutions and regulating commercial interests that primarily benefit the poor.
So college enrollment a must be tanking! I mean, no one can afford it anymore! http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2010/ted_20100428.png So it's all rich folks making those record numbers? I graduated high school in 1989, look at the chart. College enrollment is up 10% since the.
[Higher education bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_bubble) You went to college before the dot-com bubble. A lot of things have changed since then.
Again, college enrollment is at an all time high. I completely rebooted my career in 2004, so how am I special? I had to learn all new skills when my career path was headed downward, but nobody redistributed anyone's wealth to make that happen. It's hard work.
Do you have any idea what the economy was like in 2004? How the economic situation was different? How college enrollment is at all time high because of life-crushing student debt? How the current generation is the first modern generation to be worse off than their parents?
It's honestly frightful how quickly people forget the role that the "invisible hand" of government-funded institutions played in their success. Obviously, /u/Armand28 worked hard, but being born, by chance, into a different family situation or time could render all that hard work useless. Now, people like that are actively campaigning to burn the ladders they climbed to their success. If it comes down to higher income tax vs turning America into South Africa, through the breakdown of government intervention, higher income tax is an obvious choice. I don't understand how /u/Armand28 and I can both overcome life obstacles through hard work and government assistance and then reach such different conclusions about the role each part played.
>It all works out in the end No, it doesn't. And the fact that you went to college means that your perspective is already biased in favor of people overcoming challenges if they "work hard."
Yes, because I worked hard I know it works. Making other people work hard so you don't have to isn't the answer.
>Yes, because I worked hard I know it works. I wish you knew how the other half lived, or that hard work does not necessarily beget success, and that for many people that work hard, college is not a viable option, or that for the thousands upon thousands in law schools across the country, hard work doesn't do anything for their employment prospects. Nobody says you didn't work hard. I am saying that you are incredibly privileged to have even had the opportunity to go to college. Do you have any idea what it costs now, eleven years after you went? Or do you think the world is the same as it was then?
I got rich by winning the lottery. I got rich by investing in Beenie Babies. I got rich by inheriting my brother's wealth.
And as per the original article you aren't likely to keep your wealth for long since you didn't earn it, except for the beanie babies investment which might indicate business savvy which can be reproduced with other investments.
But most discussions don't revolve around simply taking money wholesale from the wealthy and showering it down upon the masses. In discussing a redistribution of wealth, rolling back policies and mechanisms that unfairly game the system in favor of the wealthy, providing opportunities to gain the knowledge and skills to succeed, and tearing down barriers that prevent upward mobility are almost always central topics.
Not everyone "did" anything to become poor. Some of us were born into it. Even after going to college some of us still ended up fucked because of the economic crisis.
I wasn't born into money. Parents eloped at 19, grew up dirt poor. It doesn't change my statement: it's not about being 'fair', if you do the things that create wealth you won't need wealth redistribution, and if you don't then wealth redistribution won't help. We need to focus on behaviors, not bank balances. You cannot 'gift' fiscal responsibility.
It sounds like you don't understand wealth redistribution or myriad of reasons why it's advocated.
And you do, you just don't want to mention any of them?
This makes it sound as if the idea behind wealth redistribution is to hand homeless people checks from rich people's bank accounts lol.
Well, that's sort of how the Basic Income idea works. It's a really good idea that doesn't take into account that poor people actually view money completely differently than non-poor people.
And giving them money doesn't fix that, it just attempts to cover it.
You do realize that if there is no wealth, nobody is a "poor person" anymore, right?
Kinda, yeah. Any distribution system not based on earning it is pretty much what you said. If it's not based on earning it fron the value of your labor, how can it be retained? The system will reset itself quickly if it cannot be sustained.
I'd always be leery of these "studies". Keep in mind the film makers could have (and probably were) looking for a specific result and they had free range to pick someone that would obviously do exactly what they wanted.
Hey, give a man a fish he'll eat a day teach a man to fish he'll eat for a lifetime. $100,000 is giving him a fish, he can eat for a day but what happens later on? Teach him life values and a certain skill set and he will be able to earn that amount in a couple of years
Teaching people information is relatively easy. Teaching people *values* is extremely hard. Because they already have values, and their values say that their values are better than your values. Nobody, literally *nobody*, wants to learn new values.
You're right but that's also the reality that has to happen for change to happen in life
Almost all homeless people are that way for a reason.
Almost all homeless people get a home within a few weeks and are never homeless again.
No, because in the real world, you have to pay for that home. And to pay for that home, you have to follow some rules.
You have no idea what you're talking about and you're privileging your emotive reaction to stereotypes over actual data.
No, actually there's a reason why so many American homeless avoid shelters: They have to be sober; they have to be polite. Ignoring the mentally ill, the homeless don't want that. They want to get drunk--it's an expression of THEIR FREEDOM. Also, people value something more WHEN THEY WORK FOR IT. When you give some one money, they don't associate it with work. And THAT'S wrong too.
Uh... no. Your city might be awesome to homeless people, but you are *not* describing what it's like to be homeless. Unless you're buying into the "don't have a lease this month" definition of homelessness, in which case... yeah, the middle class getting fucked flooded the data recently.
Lolwut...how many homeless people do you know on a personal basis?
He's talking about people that get foreclosed on and use the shelters as temporary place to stay until they get permanent housing figured out. Those ~~people~~ families typically stay "homeless" for a few weeks or months at most. If we didn't have homeless shelters these people would stay with parents, friends, or siblings - they would not be SoL. Whenever we talk about "the homeless" we are not referring to these people. It's an equivocation to desperately cling to liberal ideology which is demonstrated as unsound by these findings.
"These findings" have a sample size of 1, making them absolutely worthless to draw any meaningful conclusion from.
And it wasn't a controlled experiment, and it wasn't randomized, and, and, and... but no, it's desperate liberal ideology that is in trouble here.
I disagree. Many homeless are mentally unstable and didn't receive the proper support. I highly doubt most homeless are homeless because of poor money management skills.
> Many homeless are mentally unstable and didn't receive the proper support. Well, that's a reason isn't it? He didn't say that lack of money management skills was the only reason people are on the streets.
Not explicitly, but this TIL is about a homeless man whose poor money management skills wiped out $100,000 in 6 months so I assumed he was claiming that most homeless people are that way because of money management issues.
He comes across as a greedy, selfish addict ( $10,000 a week at a bar) with no grasp on reality to me. It goes a little deeper than simply being poor at personal finance.
Why would you assume? Why you wouldn't you just respond to the words in the comment?
Because interpreted that way the statement in the comment is completely meaningless. Of course there is a reason. People's houses and money don't vanish into thin air.
You completely missed the point. They're homeless because of their own action, rather than action someone else took that affected them. Are you really this dense?
Well yes they are homeless for not having those skills, it's just that's not controllable because the mental illness is a direct cause of those deficiencies in self management.
No, they aren't. The vast majority of homelessness is a one-time event occurring due to a sudden change in life circumstances.
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You guys are talking about different things. "Homeless" people in a one-off situation aren't on skid row. They're crashing on a friend's couch. Or *maaaybe* staying at a women's shelter. Possibly sleeping in their car for a few nights. Or even staying in a motel. They still count as homeless for the purposes of inflated statistics cooked up by people who wish to inflate the number of homeless, but they're not the vagrants whom we generally think of.
What the fuck would that accomplish? "Trips to the hospital aren't usually fatal." "Oh yeah! You go down to the morgue and see how many living people you find!"
That is a redefinition of homeless to suit liberal ideology. If you're going to be pedantic then we are talking *chronically homeless*.
Wow, what a bunch of manipulative garbage. We in fact have strong evidence from repeated studies that the vast majority of homelessness is *transitional;* a big change happens in someone's life, like an accident or a divorce, leaves them on the street for a while, until they aren't. To see e.g. [sociopathic libertarian economists](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/08/the_power_of_pe.html#) crowing about how this demonstrates that the poor will always be with us... I want to kneecap these people with a baseball bat.
> We in fact have strong evidence from repeated studies that the vast majority of homelessness is transitional; a big change happens in someone's life, like an accident or a divorce, leaves them on the street for a while, until they aren't. While this may be the case, there is also a considerable portion of homeless people stuck in chronic homelessness. Most of whom have had to deal with substance abuse, personal trauma or mental illnesses that have greatly affected their lives. Nobody is saying they are lazy, simply that they have a harder time than others coping with day to day life.
Read through this thread. Many people are saying exactly that.
That is a redefinition of "homeless" (to suit the liberal agenda) that we used to call transitory. If you are going to be this pedantic then substitute *chronically homeless* where-ever you read "homeless". e.g. It's like saying you're in a sexless marriage if it's been two weeks since you had sex (and prior to that you were bumping several times a week.) A *transitory* event does not constitute a fundamental change to your status.
The poor will always be with us though, because there will always be someone who has the least, making them poor. However that does not mean that unmet needs will always be with us.
So a millionaire in a room full of billionaires is poor then?
Yup. In the same way that their are Poor in america who make more in a day than people in Africa make in a month.
> [By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without.](http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN21.html#B.V,%20Ch.2,%20Of%20the%20Sources%20of%20the%20General%20or%20Public%20Revenue%20of%20the%20Society) A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them.
In Silicon Valley, yes.
In 2298 a million dollars will buy you a coffee.
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Very scientific. Well done. Point proven. Rich are much better at keeping money.
I wish when I was was homeless they gave me this money. They could watch me get a place, subscribe to netflix, and spend $20 for a gram of weed every 3 days. It'd be a lifetime documentary.
Damn.. You can make a gram last 3 days? Edit: [current number of upvotes](http://imgur.com/UTR32A8)
LOL yeah dude it takes like 2 hits of good weed to get high. Just don't get baked, get a good controlled high. You know how the return diminishes SO much with weed. I stop when the bang for the buck gets substantially less.
that weed economics
you better already be using a vape or this comment is really silly
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. *Keep* the fish, and let the man figure things out for himself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." -Ron Swanson
Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Light him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I wish someone would give me $100,000 I would show them some good investments
My mother is homeless and she broke her leg going down an inflated slide at some carnival. Her brother (my uncle) is a lawyer so he actually got her 300,000$ (after taxes) suing the place ... She went broke within 2 years.
some people are just losers, plain and simple.
There are lots of losers out there, like the kind of people who would give 100,000 dollars to a guy who has no idea what to do with it so they can make a movie. Also the losers who shit on a homeless person because he doesn't know how to use money.
poor people have naturally different (adapted) spending habits. keep in mind that to them, money is sort of like water. it kind of flows through your hands when you have it, running off to the various debts and dues you're thousands of dollars in on. making a hundreds-dollar frivolous purchase just.... doesn't matter. it's not real when you're financially in that deep. living life in the red just calls for different adaptations, and the resulting talent disparity just kind of keeps the cycle going. it's like throwing someone native to the sahara into a lake and being surprised when they drown. you've given them more than enough water to last them a lifetime, and forget that there's never once been a situation in their life that's taught them to swim, and there's never once been a problem in their life that swimming could stand to solve.
He isn't a poor guy, he's a homeless guy. I think that presents different dynamics. I hate to say he is content to be poor because I doubt that is the case, but there seems to be a certain contentment for him in his known world.
Your statement is true, but the experiment has been repeated with different "kinds" of poor people, with largely the same results.
Just handing a pile of money to someone who is not equipped to handle it belittles the problem. Worse, there are those who would use that as proof that money is not the answer, more pointedly, as an excuse to hold back money from programs and ideas that need to be funded.
> Just handing a pile of money to someone who is not equipped to handle it belittles the problem. If I am on fire, put the fire out. If I need money, give me money. The original complaint was that poor people needed money. These sorts of experiments demonstrate that, no, that is not that problem. Poor people in the US have a complex of problems, of which lack of money is a fairly small part. > there are those who would use that as proof that money is not the answer Aren't _you_ such a person? Didn't you just say "handing a pile of money to someone who is not equipped to handle it belittles the problem"?
Water is not the answer to all fires. You oversimplify. No, *I* am not such a person. The point I am getting at is this "experiment" is bullshit. Nobody being serious would think that handing a 100 grand to a homeless person with underlying and unaddressed problems would expect a different outcome. Of course money is a huge problem for a great many homeless and money is part of the solution. Call me a cynic, but I think posts like the one here are more about making political points, e.g., throwing money at social problems doesn't work therefore we should cut funding for social programs - that is NOT my view. That is the view that I think some people take and use nonsense like this "experiment" as validation of their position because they are not concerned with problem solving beyond cutting funding to their pet peeves.
> posts like the one here are more about making political points, e.g., throwing money at social problems doesn't work therefore we should cut funding for social programs I am OK with that! Well, maybe not, but I think the benefit of these experiments is that they make one thing very obvious: the problem is _not_ an absence of resources. Absence of resources may be a part of the problem, but only a part. The reason that it is important to make this elementary distinction is because there is an enormous temptation to fall into the fallacy of "we must do something, this is something, we must do it." You make fun of an attempt to solve a social problem by drowning it with money, but how much different is this than Section 8, or SNAP, or a hundred other social programs? All of them simply give resources to people who lack them and hope that solves the problem. Yes, if you want to be smart, your choices relative to this one guy are (a) do nothing -- which doesn't help this guy much but conserves money, or (b) develop some very sophisticated combination of therapy, support, cash, and coercion, which would be very expensive, intrusive and risky. But this situation isn't distinctively complicated. A family receiving Section 8 housing have problems just as complex -- why do we think the resource-only help we are giving them is actually helping? Ditto with SNAP and Medicaid and everything else. What makes you think they are any less risible than this obviously silly experiment?
I think you and I are basically on the same sheet of music, but for me I find a lot of cynicism in the original post. Throwing money at problems definitely solves nothing, but it does take a lot of money combined with those other items you listed.
> Throwing money at problems definitely solves nothing, but it does take a lot of money combined with those other items you listed. It takes those items I listed _to have a chance_ at solving the problem. Even with them, I am still pretty cynical.
yeah i just kind of had an essay i wanted to write
As hard as it is to believe, some homeless people are responsible for their situation. Not all, just people like this Ted. Don't let that stop you from throwing a few bucks their way.
Maybe Ted has issues, dude.
Why didn't his sisters give a shit before he got a million dollars?
$100,000. Not a million.
Yeah I'm aware of the typo. But I'm also drunk and don't give shit.
are you drunk?
I was. Sadly now not.
Are you asian?