If You Are Over 30 And You Are Poor

In this thread, let's not forget people, like my husband and me... that received a non violent felony for a drug charge. In our case, when I was 19 and he was 22 we sold ecstasy tads to an undercover that someone was nice enough to introduce ourselves to. I am happy staying at home with the kids at this given time but I have years of college with an almost straight 4.0 gpa in... experience in many fields that I tried to do and was told, sorry, it's not a misdemeanor...gotta go. (they usually tell you a few weeks in)... I pretty much realised that my major from college was useless with a felony. That's not to say every one is, but that one was.

My husband makes decent money right now though not a lot. Meaning above 50 grand a year but below 70 grand. But that's only because he has field experience for multiple...multiple years in a couple that doesn't exist here anymore.. and doesn't mind a little physical work. It wouldn't work for me. And he could do better. Back when he was laid off from previous place and UC was running out he had to apply places.. Put an app into walmart for stocking shelves as a temp. thing. They wouldn't hire him.

So it's not easy. In addition to his experience, etc... the company he's at it's a progressive, organic food distributor. So you have to find the right places.

It closes a lot of doors for a lot of people. The criminal justice system needs to be reformed.

 

I didn't.

For some reason I heard about this shit many, many, many years ago. (he lives near me) and honest to GOD I was calling it for years and people thought I was nuts.

 

This is totally one of those threads where I have to stop and think...ok...what the fuck did I say in this thread?

 

I was just re-reading this thread and cracking the fuck up over post 74. And then...Bill Cosby... Man, I've been saying for years... smh.

 

Yeah the whole thread derailed then LOL I re-read too and realized my initial reply was pretty acidic because I felt some kind of condescending, judgemental attitude from the OP. That kind of attitude has a knack to make me feel like being mean, sometimes even brutal, while making my point. :devil: It's kind of a touchy subject for everybody no matter in which group we fit in, the rich, the poor or the middle class, and I don't mean by that we shouldn't talk about it but we should avoid to make generalized, ignorant statements that bring the conversation nowhere.

 

The thing is that college is stressful and difficult and requires that you learn to manage your time properly and if you really want a good CV with volunteering and research and stuff then you have to learn the skill of not getting frustrated while you run around to 20 different people's offices. This is the reason that people will hire somebody with a degree in the wrong field. No, you're right, it's not necessarily about the learning -- it's about the fact that it proves that you can handle a lot of stress and frustration.

Also; if you care so much about PC brainwashing, you basically just don't study polisci or women's studies, and maybe not anthropology or psychology either. It is a trend I am noticing that pisses me off too. It seems like you are no longer allowed to question social orthodoxies, especially in school. But, it is really only a widespread issue in certain social sciences. I think that you could even study sociology without too much PC indoctrination, just not gender or political science. I think that the SJW puritan groups are relatively small, but they are very very loud. Their presence is over-represented on university campuses.

We also live in a place where education is actually affordable. It is insane how expensive school is in the US. Here, we can go to an "ivy-league" level school for a fraction of the cost, plus we have a bunch of other good universities. There is definitely opportunity in this city, even for the relatively poor. It's even a good place to start a business. There is a thriving startup culture and lots of people looking to invest money, or spend money.

I guess to answer this question you have to take into account the culture surrounding education. In some places in europe, education is free. In the US, on the other hand, it's pretty much reserved for the rich. I think that there is a lot less upward mobility there than in some other countries. Who wants to graduate college and spend years trying to pay off their massive debts?

At the end of the day, success depends, for the most part, on circumstance. Of course motivation and not fucking up are important. But there are certain degrees of success that are simply unattainable for people born at the wrong place or at the wrong time. For example, pretty much every CEO of a major tech company today had to be born in 1954-1955. This is because they pretty much had to be in the right place at the right time. They had to be coming of age just around the time that computer time-sharing became popular in the late 60s. And if you look at all of the big tech CEOs, they were all born between 1953 and 56 max.

When it comes to really high degrees of success, it seems to be a matter of being at the right place and time. Of course, there is some upward mobility for everyone, but you're not going to be Bill Gates or Steve Jobs unless you were born directly in the middle of the 1950s.

 

Being self-employed gives me flexibility. But it also means that I have multiple bosses telling me what to do. Especially if I'm double-dipping, or working as many as 4 projects at the same time. I don't do it like that anymore because it's just such a nightmare. But I paid off the house, such as it is and put the kids through college.

But I was poor as all hell from the time I joined the Navy, at 17 (4 LONG years in a sucky environment) till about 1995 when I finally gained enough reputation to start getting callbacks instead of layoffs. But another reason I became a contract worker is because I was really sick of layoffs and the fact that a "permanent" job was a fucking lie. There's no such thing. Anything that seems like it doesn't pay squat. I also had to dodge my drug habit a lot, so being constantly on the job market was precarious.

In 1997 I doubled my income with my first dedicated writing job. IT went well till late 2001 when the bottom dropped out and I sat on unemployment for over a year. A very demoralizing time. But toward the end of it I had become an expert with coupons, farmer's markets and making my own booze. It was a break I didn't know I needed.

What I hated about being broke was the way the whole fucking system seems to be skewed against you. When you deposit you check into the bank, it has to be before 2PM or it goes in on midnight of the NEXT day. AND they take the checks you wrote out first, THEN apply your deposits. Why? Because when they do this there's a better chance checks will bounce. BUT, the bank, being so nice about it all, will cover the check so you don't have to pay an additional fee from the merchant. Of course, the bank gets $25 or so for each one of these interceptions they make. Putting wage earners in the hole if something odd happens.

The legal system is just as jacked up when you're poor. When you have nothing, it's easier to justify tossing you straight into jail. I've been jailed over a speeding ticket and had to pay all sorts of extra crap just because I didn't have enough cash or a credit card. I had to call others to bail me out. It set me back financially for weeks. When you're that broke, such a setback can hamper your ability to work or look for work. Or eat!

Employers are also a bunch of shits about jobs these days. They have always tried to use gaps on a resume as a way to wangle a lower pay rate. But these days they are specifically discriminating against long-term unemployed people. Why? First of all, any time you draw unemployment, future prospective employers red flag you. You have already proven you will take an employer to task if they lay you off. They have to pay around $50% of your unemployment, so they will do just about anything to avoid such a debt. Including character assassination and random drug tests which are used to disqualify people. Another filter they use is a college degree.

Some places want a college degree for work that doesn't come close to needing one. It's just another "personality" filter they use to try to find the unicorn of "perfect employee". A perfect employee in the lower paying world is one who is never sick, has no children, has a car that never breaks, is always available to work late and never asks for more money. What people in the US should be asking is, If we have so many people with PhD educations selling cars, why are we importing people under H1b for these jobs?

As automation replaces people, and not just laborers, our whole world has to change. But the wealthy among us aren't getting that message. As technology improves they only see a way to extract more and the rest of us be damned. I'm not saying we need to rob them, but I am saying that we need more economic choices if such a system can't work for everyone. What we have now is very close to a global monopoly on trade systems and economic models.

I was poor in my 30s. I had to repair my own cars, toasters and clothing dryers. I had employers rip me off and the state do nothing because I was a salesman, for which no such protections exist. I showed up at an Italian restaurant for work after a week off for "remodeling" to find it was now Chinese and nobody knew nothing about my last check. When you're broke, this sort of shit happens often. Keeping you broke. It's hard enough to stay fed.

And I suspect the "system" overall is geared toward making it absolutely necessary to have at least 1 close "partner" to share the bills with so that both of you can slow the freefall that is the economy. It's rigged for the old fashioned ideas of marriage and family. It has never been friendly to single people. But it also has penalties for marriage (aside from the obvious). And yes, it was pioneered by white people, but that alone does not make the system "racist" by any means. It has always been classist, color doesn't matter. If you're broke, you have to climb a wet ladder out of the well.
Jal

 

if you live in a rich country, and since you have internet access of some kind odds are pretty good that you do, its also probably not obvious, not something you think about every day, but if you're over 30 and your poor, well, guess what, welcome to more then 2/3rds of humanity.

 

I agree with most of your points except for your point about how unemployment works. Employers (in my state anyway) do not pay any of the unemployment benefits to workers. It's probably worded as "unemployment benefits" on the employees paperwork but on our paperwork from the state it is worded as "unemployment insurance". That's basically what it is. We pay into a fund based on our exposure to "liability". So in my case, I pay 1.05% of my payroll to the state. That covers me for any claims against my business. I never have any claims and that number would go up if I did. So businesses with higher justified, paid claims will pay more. When someone files for unemployment, the employer has a right to challenge that claim. It then goes before an administrative judge who will decide the case. The losing side has the opportunity to appeal that ruling at no cost to either side. More often than not, the side that doesn't follow through on the appeal process loses because they thought they won and ignored the appeal. So they don't show up and lose. (Many times, these hearings can be done over the phone in my state).