> I've been poor and tired a long time ago. I know what it is like.
How many times have they turned off your water?
"When someone is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m trying to determine how poor exactly they were, there’s one evergreen question I ask that has never failed to give me a good idea of what kind of situation I’m dealing with. That question is: “How many times have they turned off your water?”."
Please forgive me my curiosity. The linked article was somewhat eye-opening for me on who is poor and who isn't, and I now keep asking this question too. So, how many?
The issue is not how many times my water has been turned off. The question is what has led the water to be turned off at someone's house that has had their water turned off.
At some point, sure, there is nothing you can do. If someone has had polio and is in one of those polio breathing machines (https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/av7qWyq_700b.jpg), then yes, there's nothing anyone can do there, for sure. Or if someone runs out into a busy street and gets run over and killed because they didn't look, nobody can bring them back to life.
But if you put aside those examples, I need to know what they did, and where they are, and what they are capable of doing. Based on that information, I could advise them on what to do so that it doesn't happen in the future.
Unfortunately, as I have learned the hard way, I could share this info with people on how to prevent it from happening in the future, but only 1 person out of 10,000 will actually want to change their life and do things a new way. That's the hard cold facts. A person who gets their water turned off over and over is doing the same exact things that get their water turned off over and over. If I had 100% control of their money, and could force their arms and legs to do what I want them to do, it wouldn't happen.
I mean, I looked on indeed.com and there is a job that pays $35/hour to answer phones, do light filing, front desk receptionist. That's $70K per year. I could go to that person, help them fill out a resume, send it to the company, tell them how to dress and role play with them on how to interview, but 9,999 times out of 10,000, we'll do all that work and they won't show up to the interview. And have some kind of excuse, of which I know what most of the excuses would be.
> But if you put aside those examples, I need to know what they did, and where they are, and what they are capable of doing.
Interestingly enough, the article I linked in my previous comment[0], and another one by the same person[1], have answers to your questions. Also, that particular person managed to get out of poverty eventually, and wrote a follow-up post on that[2].
So that's the guy who was /really/ poor, and struggled for a while. He has some insight on what it is like and why it is so hard to get out. I guess he'd be infuriated by this patronizing "hey, that's easy, why don't you just...", even though he does not write it out loud.
Let's have more compassion to those who are less lucky than us, fellow stranger, shall we?
How many times have they turned off your water?
"When someone is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m trying to determine how poor exactly they were, there’s one evergreen question I ask that has never failed to give me a good idea of what kind of situation I’m dealing with. That question is: “How many times have they turned off your water?”."
That's from here: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-be...
Please forgive me my curiosity. The linked article was somewhat eye-opening for me on who is poor and who isn't, and I now keep asking this question too. So, how many?