I may feel older some days, but is 48 actually old?
4 Likes
Youāre in the Middle Aged Guy Heart Attack Zone, if that cheers you up.
8 Likes
[quote=āMindysan33, post:53, topic:69938ā]
shutting down campuses over black kids being shot,
[/quote]Well just damn, if college administrators are running around shooting black kids, that really needs to stop beaucoups quick. Where do I sign up???
Itās a protest against racism, which includes cops murdering black kids. there are a whole other set of issues included in that.
Itās 2015. How about we shut the racism in our society down and move on to something better and more inclusive.
12 Likes
If both your parents had TAs or RAs and were employed as grad assistants at the same time, c. 10-12 years ago, then they were bringing in between $30,000 to $40,000 each year. That is enough to live a middle class life in upstate New York c. 2002; in fact, I was living a middle class life in Chagrin Falls, OH at that very time, on 45K.
Iām currently in a PhD program, raising a daughter. The $20,000 to $22,000 that I alone receive is not sufficient to maintain a middle class life for 2 people on the west coast without other sources of income. As a middle aged widow raising the minor child of a deceased, I have social security income. Between the 2, I do fine. I also ā like your parents ā know how to maximize what comes in.
Not everyone in this country is PhD material. You are arguing, essentially: āmy top-2%-of-the-population parents could make a middle class life on 30K 12 years ago; everyone else should be able to do the same nowā. This argument fails in a number of ways, even without knowing the particulars of their circumstances.
- Your parentsā undergraduate debt was likely negligible compared to that of young people today, regardless of where they obtained their undergraduate educations. 2) Their families were quite possibly in better shape than those of young people today. In a number of ways. More American families then owned real estate that was increasing in value. They still had something to fall back on.
If your parents came from outside the U.S., they likely possessed other natural benefits, many of which still pertain today. Foreign graduate students in the U.S. often come from intact middle classes within their own societies. Those from Asia commonly have extensive extended family support systems and theyāve all been through a fierce weeding-out process in order to make it to the graduate level in a U.S. university.
Disdaining the average American for not being as immensely able as your parents ā or as me ā is just nonsense.
13 Likes
Iām not sure that homelessness and nomadism are the same things. You seem to be saying they are, but I could be interpreting your remarks the wrong way. To me, nomadism is having a home/shelter and possessions and moving around with them, while homelessness is not having a home/shelter and no or few possessions. Others here seem to regard homelessness as what you refer to as nomadism.
Correct me if Iām wrong, please, yāall!
2 Likes
Yes, I have experience with living nomadically in the Northeastern US. Both in squats and outdoors.
That seems to be what a lot of people get from me, but I am not saying that people should be independent or disconnect. What I am saying is that people need to be more careful and deliberate in who they are interdependent with, and who they connect to. Yet people keep insisting to me that these mean the same thing. Being treated fairly in the long run starts by dealing with those who are willing to communicate with you as an equal. Just like you wouldnāt (I assume) voluntarily enter an abusive personal relationship today and hope it gets better later - apply the same caution to employers, governments, banks, insurance, etc.
As I get older, I do have more health problems also. But for me, how I live is far more important than how long I live. Ten years of living properly is worth more than thirty years of living against my values. And I also need to consider how the systems I might use affect other people. Is using a system to prolong my life viable if itās exploiting me? If itās others? If it does not function according to its own rules, does it not bring me into disrepute? For me, quality of life is based upon how equitable my life is, rather than how comfortable I may be. And survival is hardly a goal in itself.
Reconsider textbook econ in the context that economists generally come to it from the point of view of trying to figure out inequality between unmeritocratic aristocrats and the qualified people who do the work, and econ history suddenly makes sense. Especially the early days of Smith, Ricardo, Veblen, and Keynes. Not so much the trickle-down bullshit of CNBC.
Aristocrats and their tame academics have always been on the know-nothing side. Donāt go down that road. At the end lies Bolshevism and Randian libertarianism. Both are crap.
4 Likes
There can be a lot of overlap. I often use them interchangeably for myself. Technically, nomadic living is not anchored to a fixed location. While homelessness simply involves no home. Some homeless people refuse to travel, even when they say there is nothing keeping them there. I have often been nomadic in the same urban areas, for increased variety and to attract less attention to myself. Sometimes I have been employed and appeared to have a normal life, other times, not as much.
Others here have sometimes used the distinction that nomadism is voluntary, whereas homelessness is involuntary. I donāt subscribe to this, myself.
A funny distinction is that many cultures dismiss homelessness as innately being problematic, something to ācombatā, whereas nomadism is usually described as being a legitimate lifestyle choice - provided that people do it far away from North America and Europe. Even though both continents have histories with thousands of years of nomadism, they tend to get pissy about it, even though people in these enlightened liberal places are supposedly free to choose how they live.
A hole! We would have been happy in a hole. We shared a drain. With four other families!
(apologies to the late Mr. Pratchett.)
9 Likes
I think a majority of homeless would like a soft bed and a roof over their heads. It does not look like a very desirable life.
5 Likes
While weāve managed to gut manufacturing jobs and make small business ownership extremely difficult, weāve also managed to introduce cheap goods and incremental luxuries farther down the economic ladder than theyāve ever been. Now, though you canāt have the ābest of everything,ā there are a lot of little victories in the form of fancy coffee, microbrewed beer, music players and portable computers, etc. that most everyone can swing even on a Starbucks wage. While people donāt have the real wealth, they are actually in many ways living a standard of living that was unthinkable in terms of the things that surround them.
The only thing that will bring back a wider prosperity and give us a middle class again is to diversify the economic ecosystem ā find ways to start new businesses that can support one or two families, use the newer distribution models to make it possible to micro manufacture locally, etc. Itās a shame when all the investment for new business is going into predatory dot-com schemes and not into smaller sustainable businesses built on peopleās passions. The seed money that has gone to Uber could have built hundreds of small businesses.
4 Likes
I have known people whose homelessness or nomadic life was something of a lifestyle choice. That isnāt most peopleās choice though, and it often causes much more problems than it solves. I really think the only way to solve this is to eliminate this culture of individualism and cargo cult-like hero worship of oppressive systems. We are being trained not to give a fuck about each otherās needs.
10 Likes
I realized this in a personally profound way about two years ago, when I found myself lying to someone at a gas station about whether I could give them a cigarette. It just sort of struck me between the eyes.
Thatās when I decided that I can afford to help people out. If I want to say no when someone asks for help, I have to stop and think of an acceptable and ethical reason. So far, I havenāt found one. So Iāve emptied my wallet for people numerous times, paid for tanks of gas, given people rides so they could get to shelter for the night, handed over the car blanket, given out a cartonās worth of cigarettes in the last six months. And it all feels wonderful helping people out. But I know Iām doing piddly crap efficiency-wise, and should just volunteer at a shelter or soup kitchen.
I forgot to get to the point!
I think if everyone followed suit, an appreciable number of people would notice that helping people out when they ask feels really fucking good, and they might start doing it voluntarily.
11 Likes
Voting is another important area - as we feel the pinch of financial hardship, there can be pressure to accept the prisonerās dilemma of protecting our own interests and playing into the hands of powerful people rather than accepting other peopleās well-being as our responsibility in society - and thereby helping ourselves.
4 Likes
Itās amazing how many school levies just barely squeak through in my voting district.
Itās like people are saying āI donāt have any kids, why should my tax dollars go to educating other peopleās snot-nosed brats?ā
4 Likes
Because educated adults in good jobs will help to pay for your retirement?
3 Likes
Well yeah! My dadās a christian fundie, very conservative, but heās willing to listen to reason in some cases, and has taught me never to be afraid to pay my taxes. The reason why we have our current civilization is because people are willing to give some of their money for the sake of making everyoneās lives better.
9 Likes
We invited my in-laws to live with us, but refused to come to the US or help them with healthcare if they stayed in the US. Their āinsuranceā amounted to a limited number of GP visits a year and a couple of other things. No support if anything was actually wrong with them. My father-in-law has some heart problems and mother-in-law has needed a hip replacement for three our four years, but she continued to work as a gardener - they were basically on borrowed time before going bankrupt. Their current insurance in Germany costs less than the old one, and my mother-in-law did get her operation along with a month of therapy by the Baltic Sea. My father-in-law had a scare a few weeks ago and had to go to the hospital overnight for tests, but what really scared him while he was waiting to be treated was how much all of this would cost.
Despite all of this, my father-in-law goes on about how terrible Obamacare is and how people have lost their insurance and so on. I know itās not a perfect system by any means, but brainwashing seems to be the only way I can describe this attitude. When youāve gotten to the point of othering yourself without realising it, itās basically mission accomplished for Fox News and those they support.
11 Likes
Well, youāve hit a nail in the head.
Define āquality of lifeā.
1 Like
