The irony is that most positions to help the poor make you poor. Social work pays terribly. Nonprofit salaries are low. They entice young people into volunteer positions when they’re drowning in student debt and have barely any personal savings. You really make a sacrifice.
Help the poor -> Help I’m poor
This is basically the central concern of David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs theory, though he focused more on the other side of the issue, how the most meaningless jobs tend to be the most compensated.
Working as intended
Which is why I push back when people complain about employees at non-profits making a decent salary.
If you can make 10% more working at a for-profit company, then you are asking people working at non-profit companies to donate 10% of their salary. So unless the person complaining is donating 10% of their salary to charity, they don’t really have anything to complain about… 😅
The poorest are those who help. Teachers, nurses, care providers, child care, service workers, retail employees.
If you want to be helpful you’re gonna pay for it.
Almost all these people make more than I did in my career, they are not the poorest by a long shot
Teachers make $40k-$60k a year depending on the region. They aren’t rich your job is bad.
Must be an American thing. Where I live, teachers make 65k-110k depending on experience and position.
It’s also a thing in (parts of) Europe, too, unfortunately. Only college professors were paid decently. “Were” because I don’t have up-to-date info.
All I ever hear is “oh the poor teachers” when they get paid more than me, get way better benefits, and get away more time off. Fuck the teachers.
Resenting other workers because they happen to be better compensated than you is the opposite of class consciousness.
You’re directing your hate on a group of people largely working overtime and underpaid to provide an essential service, and not the system that put both of you in a place to where you are contributing to society but not adequately rewarded for that hard work.
Someone out there is even worse off than you, and they might be saying “Fuck agingelderly.”
Unless they understand the actual problem, then they would be saying “Fuck billionaires” or maybe “Fuck Regan”.
What career did you do?
Meanwhile, the bullies and jerks in school go on to become wealthy grifters.
I’m not even poor. But by god, it’s hard to find hours in the day or money in the bank to do anything that feels material and meaningful.
That’s being poor
You can sustain yourself (very comfortably) without having the industrial scale resources to affect your community in the aggregate.
If you don’t have time for life, then you’re poor. The French would have burned down a hundred cars by now
The US produces 100 cars about every four minutes. So I’d say this is a negligible impact long term.
Also, Macron’s France is just Hillary’s America. It hasn’t done dick shit to curb poverty or resolve the social tension between French Capital and its Labor movement. A great deal of these protests are coming from French fascist pensioners, rioting over the country’s immigrant population. Just burning a few dozen cars once a month is not reshaping the French economy in any meaningful capacity.
I feel this. I help where I can and it feels like an infinitely deep abyss of need unfillable by what resources I can provide. In times past I’ve been able to come up with $1000 to help someone and before its been the difference between life success and failure. Now $1000 may only fix a single problem for the person and they have 3 to 4 other problems of equal weight with equal consequences. So fixing the one still causes their lives to go off the rails from the other remaining problems.
It makes me feel helpless to not be able to do anything meaningful.
i’m in a similar situation, not poor, but not making enough to get ahead or do anything.
that’s not poor. i’ve been poor. this isn’t that
I still try you know. Organize, advise, sometimes join a cookout. We survive together you know.
“Lord, I don’t even need a billion, I could do a lot of good work with just $100 million. Because it’s not about the money for me.”
“the poverty war will be over when I begin to fight, if it took a dime to go around the world I couldn’t get out of sight”
Well you sure aint helping yourself
And I can’t even help myself as much as I need 🥲
I was poor in 99 already
Tell me about it… in '99 I could barely afford a snickers bar
I mean I was 5, but still… I’m sure I could’ve done better if I’d just grinded a little harder
People ranting over a meme… some dude said join a communist party lol
Tankies gonna tank. Unions are fine, but there’s never been a communist party that didn’t just turn into a dictatorship
Lemmy.world users being delusional as usual
Not that I am in one, but I’m sure there must be a communist party somewhere in the world that is doing fine on a local level. I can’t imagine how those even could become dictatorships with the powers of a mayor alone, surely those count?
The secret ingredient is to make everyone suffer equally
why does no one ever mention mutual aid?
we don’t always have to use their exploitative slave making system. find small ways to benefit your local communities directly. better yet team up with others who are transparent about the efficient ways they try to accurately address the issues that are harming our people.
Scott’s Tots
If you need help chances are good your city town whathaveyou has support systems you can take advantage of to get back on your feet.
Not everywhere does, unfortunately. My city has a food bank, yes, but if you need housing there are hoops to go through to even get a shelter bed. When I went there, they said I needed a referral (no idea from whom) or proof of eviction. I wasn’t evicted, my boyfriend just decided to move and drop me, so that was out of the question. Then the low income housing situation is literally a lottery, one that takes months if not years for a place to open up.
Then social programs vary from place to place. Some states may say I’m eligible for food stamps, while others tell me that I’d only be eligible if I had a kid. When I tried to sign up in Florida, I was straight up told that if I wanted benefits, I had to have a baby. Yeah, I’m struggling to feed and house myself, lemme bring a child into this situation, great idea.
The US truly hates the poor.
Yeah it’s a trap. My friend got stuck in a cycle of needing shelter before he finally was able to get his own place again. Then he died. So even that victory was short lived.
Damn, I’m sorry about your friend.
Hey thanks, i appreciate that
Big mood
