Waiting for busses isn’t a poverty problem, it’s a policy problem.
It’s both.
In fact, poverty itself is a policy choice of forced deprivation.
Yes he was a fascist. Also our buddy Epstein was involved in Iran contra https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-iran-contra-planes-leslie-wexner-pottinger-leese-arms-weapons-smuggling
over here it’s very common to not be able to afford a personal vehicle. 1 hour commutes each way, while standing in a crowded hot bus is not only normal but even sorta decent.
at least we have shitty broken sidewalks.
A brief personal report about fried chicken prices in America…
- 2025: $24-$26 dollars for 24 pieces.
- 2026: $26, $28, and now $31 dollars.
Also, I am seeing many items suffering from shrinkflation. Terrific. 😒
Time poverty is a totally real and utterly overlooked hindrance
It’s ruinning my friendships. I can’t even fully be there for peolle, and they resent that.
One example I can think of is in the woodworking/DIY work I do. A common frustration of DIY projects is you often end up making many many trips to hardware stores. Often they’re not even big runs, you just need an item to continue the project. You absolutely need it, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve already been the the store twice today.
One way to reduce this problem is to buy more than you need. I once built a dust collection system out of PVC pipe and fittings. When starting, I went and bought way more parts than I knew I would need. I can afford to do this, and I knew that I would end up returning a good number of them. And I made sure to buy from a place with easy returns. But when working on a big project, I’ll happily by 20-50% more of something than I’ll need, just to reduce the number of emergency trips back to the hardware store. Saves so much time to just buy way more than you need and then return all the extras at the end of the project.
I enjoy the design aspect so I spend extra time challenging myself to make it in one run. I sketch everything up in detail and treat it like design me is handling the project of to diy’er me. Unexpected things that can’t really be seen don’t count like rotted joists, missing insulating, or other sub surface stuff but if project manager me fails I have to buy contractor me beer, if project manager me nails it then we celebrate with beer.
It makes things more fun for me but being able to afford what you’re talking about is a very valid point it just inspired me to share the mental game I play on myself to make things more enjoyable.
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that bad public transportation is a conscious choice by the government.
Okay maybe I missed the Terry Prachett quote, but he wrote (paraphrasing) basically buying an awesome pair of boots that last takes decent coin, the people who need boots to last that long can never afford them so pay more for multiple cheap ones. Again paraphrased, but maybe it’ll encourage more people to read him, think I read a few years ago but anytime anyone quotes him sounds worthwhile.
If this was said, I apologize, sort of quickly scrolled to check so may have missed. But seriously why do we make things so expensive to be less well off? Sounds downright stupid, unless you’re making the dough I imagine. We should be making sure people can live comfortably especially with multiple jobs (though again not my preferred outcome, why should anyone need to work more than one full time job anyway?)
I just wish people could be comfortable with a single job even as a single parent if they need or would like to raise a kid. Though also think we’re a tad overpopulated but that’s not this discussion and still think if we allow it as a society then it should be possible as a single parent.
I am no kids person for the record, dated some mothers over the years but currently a dink (dual income no kids) more an 80s term.
The original, excellent passage:
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
That’s a marker of the upwardly mobile. At some point they reach a threshold of wealth where they can be paying other people for their time.
Those who stay poor might look at them like they’re spending money recklessly to pay for the help. They don’t realize the financial crossover that’s happening.
Another thing about being poor is that once you get a bit of money its like pouring water onto a desert because of all the deferred things. Clothes, car repairs and tires, debt, dentist, medical care, shoes. The hole people get in is deeper than it looks. A few thousand can evaporate disappointingly quickly.
You know what’s also wild?
Paying Elon Musk for a blue checkmark.
And the mecical bills one accrues for treatment of the ailments that are brought on by an immune system weakened by constant stress.
Being poor is super expensive. When you don’t have enough money in your bank account they’ll charge you a monthly fee. When you’re too poor to have an account, you have to go to a check cashing place and pay to get paid. Too poor to have awesome credit? You have to pay higher interest fees and larger deposits.
I’ve never understood check cashing places.
I thought people only went to them because they didn’t want to wait for checks to clear, or they didn’t want a paper trail on a checking account, because it would get automatically garnished for child support.
Are you saying that someone could actually be so poor that a bank will refuse them from opening a checking account? What risk is there to the bank if it goes empty?
Banks have a separate system, like the credit rating system, they use just for depositors. Credit scores reflect the risk to lend money to you. But the banks keep other scores and lists of depositors. Too many overdrafts or transactions their AI considers suspicious? You can be blacklisted from opening an account at any bank.
One thing is financial literacy.
A lot of people come from a cycle of poverty where no one around them can explain why it’s a good idea to have a bank account.
Also, there are predatory banks that demand minimum amounts to start any account. If you don’t have $200.00 to start an account it’s hard to start an account.
Back in the day, banks encouraged little kids to start bank accounts with just a few dollars. I had a bank book when I was 12. Those days are long gone. I went to Bank of America with a check from a BOA account and they wanted to charge me. I could wait to get to my own bank, but other folks wouldn’t have that option.
We also used to have a 70% wealth tax in those “good ol days” pre Reagan
Reagan was a good family man who believed in small town values and honesty.
He threw away his wife for a bimbo after moving to Hollywood.
I understand your comment to be snark. From what I remember:
Reagan was a commie scare guy who blacklisted his enemies in the screenactors guild if they didnt share his conservative viewpoint.
Reaganomics was flatly stupid or a con job, take your pick-- just tax cuts for the rich that were supposed to trickle down and never did, and massive swathes of dergulation, including environmental rules. His deregulation of the banking industry caused the savings and loan crisis that cost a lot of people their life savings, and destroyed the US economy for a good long time and caused a recession.
Iran Contra happened on his watch (although he claims he knew nothing about it). The CIA were literally flying pallets of cocaine into florida air force bases on private cargo planes and selling them on our streets to make money. I find it hard to beleive that a single lowly colonel could have run all of it, using the presidents CIA.
He was a bad B-list actor. His movies sucked really bad, even back then.
He was reportedly a closetted bisexual (with Howard cook before he was married) whose shame steered him to slow walk AIDs treatments for 6 years while his surgeon general screamed for him to allow it, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands who needed treatment during an explosion of AIDS.
The only good thing about him was that he wasnt under AIPAC’s thumb. But he still gets an F on policy and basic decency, although republicans and dems both adored his grandfather-leader BS act. The man was a complete idiot, as are his followers.
Oliver North 'American Dad"
never seen that one, pretty good!
Credit Unions for example require a share purchase usually so while it’s usually quite small some people can’t afford to loose even $5.
Sometimes it’s also debt, guy owes his normal bank a fuckload of money so uses the cash checking to cash his check, he might lose a bit in fees but it’s probably less than what the bank would of taken. I’ve seen alot of contractors in this situation.
can’t afford to loose even $5.
Is that what they mean when they say money’s tight?
They don’t want to risk people overdrafting and just changing banks.
Then don’t give them overdraft? I bet a lot of them don’t even want it and would rather it just reject any payments that would put it in the negative because they charge extra for using overdraft, too.
You don’t understand. They WANT to de-bank poor people.
Nah I understand, showing some problem has a simple solution that gets ignored shows that that problem isn’t the real problem.
There’s not a high risk of making much money off then, so it’s considered a waste of time and resources
The SiFi movie “In Time” staring Justin Timberlake is meh quality wise, but the premise is really interesting… That the currency of that universe is the time someone has left to live. They do an interesting job playing with how wealth inequality changes behavior of people with and without time to spare
Same with being disabled, growing up I thought disabled people just got helped by everyone in society with everything. Turns out most of the time it’s “do what you were doing before except harder.”
Or if you’re too mentally ill and in so much pain that working is hard but society deems you worthless
The secret is to already have a job that doesn’t notice you’re not working
Capitalism deems them unexploitable, they still have worth in society
This is what I point out whenever someone tries to tell me, “The only fair thing in life is everyone gets 24 hours in a day.”
That doesn’t mean shit when someone with a private jet can be on a different continent in hours.
“We all have the same 24 hours in a day”
I fucking hate that saying so much. I’ve started telling people just because you and everyone else at the marathon might have the same 23 miles to go, when 9/10 of you are shackled to a heavy steel ball, and at least half are dragging 2 or 3, then that distance means fuck all.
A marathon isn’t that hard. Just buy a car!
I like to use a private jet. I can be so much more productive!
Someone to prepare your meals and do your shopping and run your kids around. All of these things take time that adds up in a week.
