>Alternatively living in a city where rent costs $24k per year
It's OK to say that some areas are not affordable. Manhattan is a great place to live, but it is is not affordable for most people. Don't live in a place where it costs $2k/mo to rent an apartment if you don't have a salary to justify it.
>Poor people aren't poor because they consume too much in the same fashion
You cannot make that kind of universal statement. Sometimes it is an income problem. Sometimes it is a spending problem.
Poverty is also a finicky concept. We immigrated here and lived in the immigrant ghetto for the first 10 years after immigration (mid-80s to mid-90s). We didn't have a lot of stuff, but I never went hungry. Both my parents worked multiple minimum wage (or below) jobs, but there was always dinner, there was always breakfast and lunch for school - even if myself and siblings had to heat it up. Looking back, I would say it we were poor, but really what that means is we didn't have a lot of stuff and all our cloths were from consignment stores. Both my parents were able to scrape enough for a down payment on a house after 10 years of frugal living. They are retiring into a comfortable life now. What happened? My circle of immigrant friends who lived in the same ghetto, from Eastern Europe, Hong Kong, Iran, all came here with similar economic factors, all of them are doing well. How is it impossible in your world-view that an immigrant who comes to this country with no advantages, still manages to build a nice life? And yes, my experience has colored my view on poverty (at least poverty outside of mental illness and drug addiction).
I see your cynical, defeatist posts all over the place - I don't understand how immigrants can build a life, with no communal or familial roots, minimal language skills, while you, being native born having all the advantages complain about being poor and not being able to get a mortgage loan. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
It's not the 80s where you worked your way through college and 5x the median annual income bought you a median home its the 2020s there 24x the median income paid over 30 years buys you a home as long as you can afford it alongside the high cost of health healthcare and student loan debt.
Every era has always had successes and failures and a certain bar between one and the other. The bar is higher now so that the rich can extract more of the value from the system. More yet thus will fall below it that isn't defeatism nor is screaming do better at them a strategy for improvement.
> DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
Would you like to add #trysomethingnew or #learntocode
I'm 39 year old with lungs that don't work so well anymore with a sick wife, one household income from now until forever, 10s of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, and a level of education best described as "some college" in computer science.
I'm not defeatist or defeated. I have an apartment, health insurance, and I'm planning on getting through covid and keeping my income enough above rising costs to keep having a home and even some small niceties. I'm open to opportunities but I'm not in much of a position to claw my way out of the bottom half if I'm realistic about it. The United States has always had an underclass and they couldn't ALL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT in any particular era and not because of mental illness or drug addiction.
It's OK to say that some areas are not affordable. Manhattan is a great place to live, but it is is not affordable for most people. Don't live in a place where it costs $2k/mo to rent an apartment if you don't have a salary to justify it.
>Poor people aren't poor because they consume too much in the same fashion
You cannot make that kind of universal statement. Sometimes it is an income problem. Sometimes it is a spending problem.
Poverty is also a finicky concept. We immigrated here and lived in the immigrant ghetto for the first 10 years after immigration (mid-80s to mid-90s). We didn't have a lot of stuff, but I never went hungry. Both my parents worked multiple minimum wage (or below) jobs, but there was always dinner, there was always breakfast and lunch for school - even if myself and siblings had to heat it up. Looking back, I would say it we were poor, but really what that means is we didn't have a lot of stuff and all our cloths were from consignment stores. Both my parents were able to scrape enough for a down payment on a house after 10 years of frugal living. They are retiring into a comfortable life now. What happened? My circle of immigrant friends who lived in the same ghetto, from Eastern Europe, Hong Kong, Iran, all came here with similar economic factors, all of them are doing well. How is it impossible in your world-view that an immigrant who comes to this country with no advantages, still manages to build a nice life? And yes, my experience has colored my view on poverty (at least poverty outside of mental illness and drug addiction).
I see your cynical, defeatist posts all over the place - I don't understand how immigrants can build a life, with no communal or familial roots, minimal language skills, while you, being native born having all the advantages complain about being poor and not being able to get a mortgage loan. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.