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I didn't say anything about money, did I? I didn't even imply it. Money does factor in, but it is indirect. Why are poor people poor? Mostly because they act poor. Bad English, bad manners, and generally unpleasant to be around if you're of average or above intelligence. I grew up poor, but I never acted poor, which is why I've managed to get where I am today. It's not about money, it's about culture. There's a vast cultural gap between those at the bottom of our society and those who are truly in the middle and above. All of those hipsters in Brooklyn that I make fun of, they may be living near the poverty line as artists or whatever it is they do, but they still don't fit in with poor society. You may have to worry about them showing up to work, but you generally don't have to worry about them robbing the place, or insulting customers or any of the other stuff that goes into working within society. If you want a job, you have to make your employer comfortable about hiring you. If you walk in like Spud from Trainspotting they'll toss you out on your ass, politely.

You make it clear with every post you wrote on the subject that you have no first-hand experience with the poor, they're just objects that you learned about in textbooks.

Last edited by Jay (2013-01-28 07:23:55)

I am not talking about the poor. I am talking about your frame of mind. You seem to think your value as a human went up once you entered another tax bracket.

It is sad that you internalized inferiority because you were poor in a school of rich Jews.

Macbeth wrote:

I am not talking about the poor. I am talking about your frame of mind. You seem to think your value as a human went up once you entered another tax bracket.

It is sad that you internalized inferiority because you were poor in a school of rich Jews.

My value as a human being did go up. I have a more rare skillset that people value over others, and pay me a commensurate sum for it. Society has deemed that what I provide is more valuable than the service they get from a McDonald's cashier and it's reflected in my paycheck. Why is this so appalling to you? Do you honestly believe that every human being is equal? Of course not, otherwise you wouldn't be so enamored of the ultra-paternalistic Progressive politics you spout here. If anyone is projecting an inferiority complex, it's you, because you know you'll never make as much money as me with the degree you're studying. You're trying to make me feel bad about the money I make and make yourself feel better in return. I don't feel guilty. I worked my ass off.

Jay wrote:

I didn't say anything about money, did I? I didn't even imply it. Money does factor in, but it is indirect. Why are poor people poor? Mostly because they act poor. Bad English, bad manners, and generally unpleasant to be around if you're of average or above intelligence. I grew up poor, but I never acted poor, which is why I've managed to get where I am today. It's not about money, it's about culture. There's a vast cultural gap between those at the bottom of our society and those who are truly in the middle and above. All of those hipsters in Brooklyn that I make fun of, they may be living near the poverty line as artists or whatever it is they do, but they still don't fit in with poor society. You may have to worry about them showing up to work, but you generally don't have to worry about them robbing the place, or insulting customers or any of the other stuff that goes into working within society. If you want a job, you have to make your employer comfortable about hiring you. If you walk in like Spud from Trainspotting they'll toss you out on your ass, politely.

You make it clear with every post you wrote on the subject that you have no first-hand experience with the poor, they're just objects that you learned about in textbooks.

The tl;dr version is: poor people have bad social skills, lack intelligence and culture. Nice generalisation.

I work on a daily basis with people who are poor, as they are all on disability pensions due to mental illness. One woman has five degrees, including psychology (not sure on the rest). Another was a draftsman, another an electrician who was married with four kids and owned his own home before he developed schizophrenia in 1997, now he lives by himself in government housing with the public trust controlling his money.

Yes, some people dress a bit oddly, or have non-conforming behaviours, or say bizarre things. This does not make them stupid or uncultured.

Making your blanket statements about poor people is saying a big, ignorant "fuck you". Well done, give yourself a pat on the back. Arsehole.

Jaekus wrote:

Jay wrote:

I didn't say anything about money, did I? I didn't even imply it. Money does factor in, but it is indirect. Why are poor people poor? Mostly because they act poor. Bad English, bad manners, and generally unpleasant to be around if you're of average or above intelligence. I grew up poor, but I never acted poor, which is why I've managed to get where I am today. It's not about money, it's about culture. There's a vast cultural gap between those at the bottom of our society and those who are truly in the middle and above. All of those hipsters in Brooklyn that I make fun of, they may be living near the poverty line as artists or whatever it is they do, but they still don't fit in with poor society. You may have to worry about them showing up to work, but you generally don't have to worry about them robbing the place, or insulting customers or any of the other stuff that goes into working within society. If you want a job, you have to make your employer comfortable about hiring you. If you walk in like Spud from Trainspotting they'll toss you out on your ass, politely.

You make it clear with every post you wrote on the subject that you have no first-hand experience with the poor, they're just objects that you learned about in textbooks.

The tl;dr version is: poor people have bad social skills, lack intelligence and culture. Nice generalisation.

I work on a daily basis with people who are poor, as they are all on disability pensions due to mental illness. One woman has five degrees, including psychology (not sure on the rest). Another was a draftsman, another an electrician who was married with four kids and owned his own home before he developed schizophrenia in 1997, now he lives by himself in government housing with the public trust controlling his money.

Yes, some people dress a bit oddly, or have non-conforming behaviours, or say bizarre things. This does not make them stupid or uncultured.

Making your blanket statements about poor people is saying a big, ignorant "fuck you". Well done, give yourself a pat on the back. Arsehole.

I know it was a generalization, and doesn't apply to all. I certainly wasn't including the mentally ill in my post, they are obviously a different issue. I was talking about the physically able.

Shocking wrote:

Jay wrote:

Shocking wrote:

The value of your contribution to society isn't always reflected in the size of your paycheck, nor does it always reflect how in demand or rare a skillset is. Many government jobs pay much less than private sector equivalents.

The low pay is offset by better benefits and a pension. Public sector workers also work a lot less hard...

Most of the time yeah, but consider for example nursing; necessary, in high demand, low pay.

the extreme example would be elite military personnel probably. Even if you get all the way to the CIA's SAD pay probably still kinda sucks.

That has more to do with the concrete rank/pay structure than anything else though. Special forces units tend to break the rank structure and promote people 'out of position' in order to reward them with higher pay. An E-7 in a line unit is a platoon sergeant and they have very strict slotting requirements. An E-7 in an SF unit could be the medic or the guy in the back providing covering fire with a machine gun. But yes, on the whole, the pay is on the low side, but no one joins the military to get rich anyway

Jay thinks am I jealous he gets to embarrass his cousin who is sleeping with a rich basketball player by trying to argue economics with him on Facebook.

My dad probably makes more than both of your parents combined. I don't care about how much money you have.

You know how people who never had anything nice become super defensive and proud if they get something even a little nice or cool? You know how sad that is? That is you. You think I am jealous that you make money because you never had money and think a middle class income is a great accomplishment that we are all jealous of.

Congrats for finally making it into the average income bracket. You can put that on a gravestone.

Shocking wrote:

Well you get my point . It in no way reflects the demands of the job.

Right, and in almost every profession there are a million things that impact how much money someone makes. In the US, our major sports leagues maintain monopolies over their sports by limiting the number of teams and players etc. This, coupled with the ridiculous television money they extort out of everyone with a cable television bill, helps prop up ownership profits and player salaries. It's why we have baseball players getting paid $30M a year. Yeah, that player is awesome at the game, and he entertains millions of people, but he's not exactly earning that income in a competitive open market, so his salary is inflated. Same goes for any profession with barriers to entry (my own included), but at least those are semi-justifiable protections for the public. You don't want an unlicensed doctor performing surgery, or an unlicensed engineer designing skyscrapers etc.

I've argued on here in the past that a players worth is a strict reflection of their value to society, and in a truly free market, such would be the case, but we don't live in one so there have to be a million caveats. In general though, salary is a reflection of positive societal impact and scarcity of skillset. It's not perfect by any means, but it's a decent rule of thumb. Anyway, back to work!

My self image is, and was fine, thanks. I don't define myself by how much money is in my pocket no matter what you may think.

still business as usual here I see

(cont. from PM)

[jay] i grew up in upper-middle, what in america would definitely be called the 'upper' (since your definition of middle is laughable to us snooty british; most middle are actually just comfortable working class in mundane jobs). to ME, you look like a try-hard. and i have the raising and background of the class you so clearly aspire to. you lecture macbeth on how he can't talk about poor people, because they automatically 'despise' any sort of 'Other' lecturing them on 'how it is'. well i'm applying the exact same logic to you, my friend: you come across as risible when you talk about having 'made it' and now being 'above' poor people. who are you to discriminate based on class? you have to alienate half of your own LIFE to perform such a trick: throwing away all your childhood (incl. childhood friends who were poor / didn't make it out, im guessing...). how disgusting. how self-loathing. all because you want to go to the yacht club and act like you are part of the moneyed, privately/prestigiously educated set. well you patently are not. you may have read a few history books, and you may now be a professional - surely a massive achievement in the 21st century! to join the professional bourgeoisie, that has only existed since the late-17th century! - but middle-class affluent you are not. you talk about poor people having a 'gap' of cultural education: true. but to me, you have this same gap from the classes that you now self-promote yourself as. you don't have an elite education. you have no real clue about culture. you've autodidactically taken up a few pursuits, ostensibly to 'refine' yourself; but auto-didacts are considered arrivistes, and crass, to the already-in-class. if you're going to stress the importance of class distinctions and class generalizations so much... well, if you're going to play that game: know your place. these are your own rules.

i find it ethically dubious and quite cute & amusing that you are trying so hard to wedge a gap of distinction between yourself and the class you are from. not all working class/poor people have 'bad manners' - you are not some super-rare example of a person raised in a household with manners! upper-class people can be rude and arrogant, terrible at inter-personal skills; poor people can be polite and courteous at all times. wealth and status do not confer an automatic entitlement to social grace and élan. that's just you transparently staking way too much of your personal value on a paycheque... so shallow. it is condescending to your own class to talk of them 'lacking' something essential that you have cultivated in yourself. don't you think you're being a little myopic and... selective... with your own personal past? the only way you ever made it to college, remember, was through a welfare program, especially designed to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds to perform a military service and get a college education (tacitly acknowledged, then, as being previously out of reach). so you got on the social mobility ladder and used state money as a lever to propel yourself to the heady heights of an average, professional job. now you're all of a sudden handing out damning edicts about the 'poor' and their quasi-victorian underclass status? please. to someone that was born - quite comfortably; i'm fine with it - into privilege, this looks like disingenuous self-deception in the extreme. mala fides, my friend, mala fides (if you possess the cultural/social capital that separates you from those uncultured lower class swines, you should surely know how to comprehend basic latin without the cursory google search: all privileged people have rudimentary classics educations, dear boy). you've read into libertarianism, and still retain a small germ of that ayn rand in you, so as to genuinely convince yourself that you are now, in verifiable fact, a  'slice above' a certain class. this is repugnant. this is the very definition of false consciousness; ideology in practice: taking perspective as absolute truth. you've built your ego a thin papery shell with a few political dogmas and philosophical tracts, and now you consider yourself eminently entitled and 'above' those who have not. this is the invertebrate flopping-around of an utterly facile mind.

you'd do well not to bring up the class issue, full-stop, really, considering it's a game you are not ever going to 'win' at. try and cover-up or at least ameliorate that jarring chip-on-your-shoulder; tourniquet the bleeding insecurity. to people who are quite comfortably middle/upper class, who pay it no great bother, because it simply is part of their Being, not something outwardly and through great effort to be cultivated, you look like the example par excellence of a (not-quite) nouveau riche sellout. don't sell-out your identity and what really constitutes you as a person for material wealth, jay: don't alienate yourself from your own past just because now you drive a mid-range 4x4 with air-con and electric windows. that's a lot of emotional baggage to carry around your whole life.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2013-01-28 09:41:11)

As well all know from the 2012 election, having material wealth does not prevent you from being socially inept

There are homeless guys I've talked to with more inter - personal skills than Mitt Romney

Just saying

Last edited by Spearhead (2013-01-28 10:18:46)