My friend's dad once told me that studies have shown that if you give $1,000,000 to someone without money and the same to a rich person that almost all the money will be gone from the poor person and will have increased when left with the rich person, because poor people don't know how to manage money and that's why they're poor.
My reaction was shock followed by, "it costs more than half a million dollars to pull someone out of poverty??? And won't putting a million dollars in the bank almost always gain interest? I wonder why people without money don't know how to put their money in the bank instead of starving!!"
Many of the UBI-type (universal basic income) studies show that most people continue to work and in many cases they are able to increase their income from work in short order.
Turns out relief from chronic money stress liberates mental resources that increase personal resilience and that translates into better employment for many.
Not that I'm aware of, just because studies haven't even been considered for long enough to have lasted any entire lifetime, to my knowledge.
However, a many have been going for decades at this point, and there's some great summaries of the findings over these expansive timeframes from the Stanford Basic Income Lab where they have a map and many other resources.
The conclusions seem to remain consistent, across studies lasting anywhere from one-time payments, to months, years, or decades, and I think that the conclusions, while not set in stone, seem to be quite comprehensively backed up to the point that if they were deployed at a larger scale, it would probably show similar outcomes.
Gosh, I don’t know. Not a domain expert, just an avid reader of primary studies on subjects I like.
It would surprise me, but I bet there are other studies you could with post-hoc data analysis, perhaps on lifetime outcomes of people who receive only a small income from a trust over a long period, like people with a moderately prosperous grandparent who put together a meager trust for them.
I know a couple of people with such a situation. They could definitely make much different life choices, even in one case where the trust paid out about the same as the take home pay from a job in retail.
I feel confident predicting that a broader survey of such folks would show vastly different life outcomes, professional attainment, marriage stability etc. when compared to people who started out without that.
It’s sort of obvious but you have to beat people over their heads with data before concepts even get widely considered.
Of course they would fare vastly better. You could work an actual retail job and have double the income. You could be a festival weenie for four years, get therapy, figure out your shit, and network with the better off festival weenies. The point being the universe of realistic and attainable life paths expands greatly with even small amounts of basic income, being able to say no to a bad deal is huge.
Which is why we will need to implement global reforms against extreme wealth. Social mobility scares the hell out of billionaires.
My dad is dead, tyvm. He was pretty sure he wasn't having a heart attack, so you're right that he was wrong.
But also my friend's dad is wrong about a lot of stuff, including when his son's and I are being sarcastic by saying "thanks Obama," and that it's an invitation for him to shit on social safety nets.
It's stupid in even more ways. The economy needs people to buy things to keep going and allow people like your friend's dad to have jobs and act condescending to people who don't have jobs.
So if everybody was "smart" like that theoretical rich person and kept all their money, there wouldn't be an economy for them to leech passive income from.
It's also been known by economists for time immemorial that the best way to improve the economy is to give money to poor people, nothing else required. Literally just giving poor people money to spend skyrockets the velocity of money, whereas the hoarders just put it in an account to do nothing but gain interest.
It's not a fair comparison. Someone in poverty will use that million in order to lift themselves out of material poverty. Which means they will pay off debts, buy property, pay college tuition for themselves and/or their descendants, possibly start a business, and a whole bunch of other things I can't think of. That would easily cost half a million. Someone who's already rich will already have all that.
I'm also very tired of people saying that pan handlers are all millionaires because they heard or read some anecdote somewhere.
Like yeah I'm sure there are scammer pan handlers, but even in that 0.0001% case it's because begging for money is easier or better than getting a job.
I recall a time back around 2008 or 2009, when my smartest coworker left Fox News on in the breakroom. (He knew better than to trust their bias, but we had few channels available and he just wanted to hear the news.) My stupidest coworker walked through the breakroom, heard some news about "Obama giving away cars to poor people" and came back into the lab ranting and raving about it.
I had a talk with that smart coworker and gently asked him not to leave that channel on again, because some of the people we work with are highly suggestable. Just then, the stupid coworker came into the room to rant the news at him.
It's weird to give someone money and care what they do with it unless you're expecting them to pay you back someday. You're giving it away, so it's expendable to you, and you'll probably never interact with the person again, so it's odd to care about the specifics beyond "I hope this helps."
You'll never give them enough money to actually change their situation, and that's not your fault but it's also not your problem, it's theirs. If they think they need a cigarette more than a sandwich, who am I to tell them they are wrong? It's their money now, not mine.
I was talking about the hypothetical scenario where you gave it to them and were miffed it didn't go towards food, so I agree 100% with what you're saying. Don't give your money away if you can't afford to let someone else do what they want with it.
A lot of people don't mind giving someone something they need without placing conditions on it. But it's okay to be different.
The problem with directly buying them food is that it has to be eaten within a fixed time window. Money can be used to buy food tomorrow, or it can even become food five years from now while being trivial to carry around. Getting money affords you the chance to take some time off from panhandling to attempt to better your situation because you know you have that backup food in your pocket. You're not going to get out of homelessness if leaving that street corner means you're probably going to be one day closer to dying of starvation.
If a random guy on the street offered you a sandwich, would you eat it? Why not, you like to save money, right? What's the problem, I'm a nice guy trying to help you here.
Among economists, this is actually a solid consensus and why many of them are in favor of policies that benefit the less wealthy parts of society. Politicians who oppose these policies often do so against scientific consensus.
more importantly, it's not just scientific consensus. Remember that trump voters don't care about the science. they care about the economy. You have to make it about the economy.
Fox news would probably say that consumerism is foolish anyways and needs to stop (because it's gluttony or sth), while we should all glorify the leaders who were wise enough in the past to invest their wealth.
The irony here is that GDP is a measure of how much money is spent, so yeah, giving money to people more likely to spend it increases GDP more then giving it to people who will put it in a bank.
It’s not really a consensus, it drives higher inflation (people are spending more) and a lot of stimulus vs tight purse economics are just doing the opposite of what they did in response to the last crash
What I think they are talking about is UBI which in limited pilot projects haven’t impacted inflation
The real benefit of uplifting the poor is that it creates a safer society for everyone and faster innovation in that society because people have time/money to do things. When flying was in it’s infancy a lot of farmers in the US had hobby planes and gliding/eventually flying was built off being accessible. Aviation laws get in the way but it’s completely foreign to think of some poor farmer in rural USA being a hobby pilot today
Oh, I agree that those policies work, for sure. I'm just interested in the statement that a "solid consensus" of economists agree - that seems unlikely to me.
The thing about UBI is that it doesn't really lend itself well to limited pilots. Being both "Universal" and "Limited" doesn't make much sense. So it's really hard to assert evidence one way or the other about what that would look like in full.
There are some "accidental" universal income scenarios like the Alaska permanent fund, but they fall short of being even "basic " income.
So you have some means tested experiments where a small selection of people get a limited term benefit among a broader population that didn't. In those scenarios the people seem to make the most of the opportunity, using that relief to prepare themselves for a more viable living after the benefit wears out. It certainly shows that people well tend to be more responsible than conservatives assume given a chance, but doesn't show what happens to the economy when all the participants assume that basic level of income, e.g so the rents just go up and erase the benefit and everything is at the same level.
I've seen some assert that more regulated basic needs would be better. If you just throw UBI and let free market reign, the businesses may ruin it. Public housing, healthcare, and basic food might do wonders more good at long as the government responsibiliy manages it instead of letting the businesses just do their thing...
The consensus is strong with regards to the question "What happens with money that you give to poor people?" and naturally becomes less strong with regards to specific effects on the economy or what policies to implement. But most economists would agree that stuff like food stamps or certain types of tax credits or (conditional) transfer payments geared towards very low-income households are often a net positive because of the immediate spending and investment in human capital. The downside is of course that these programs typically increase inflation. I don't think the consensus is anywhere near as strong as the one about climate (but few are).
The rich are so fucking stingy with their money that they have a private island and private city with no septic system and instead want to pump it into the nearby community at the other community's expense.
Like what the hell is the point of all that money if they are so utterly unwilling to spend any of it?
Maybe somebody should explain to them that the economy is supposed to be made of people spending money on goods and services, not hoarding it in the bank with their billions of other dollars.
Yep learned that crazy enough from my maga dad. He got mad at his sister in 2008 during the crash because she was hoarding the money instead of stimulating the economy. Why also was pissed Obama bailed out the banks. If he just gave all the poor people a check they will go out and spend it. Why we have the whole tax season. Technical when you get a tax refund just means you paid more in then you should have. But it's by design. Because poor people will go spend all the money. Buying cars, furniture etc. Shit they normally couldn't afford to do.
Why drives me nut. Fucking Regan his trickle down economics. It needs to be reversed. Trickle up economy does work.
And yes that works to slowly trickle money up the wealthy while the poor get something for their spending.
But today that doesn't need to happen. Now the billionaires have bought enough politicians so that they get all the money without having to deal with the poors. They just get bills written (and passed) that trickle up everyone else's tax money directly to them.
I mean Nixon started the car, But Regan shifted it into drive and threw a brick on the pedal. It's one thing to save enough money for emergencies, even major ones. But once you're up into the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and billions, it's just greed and fuck you. Go invest in solar or build homeless shelters or something you parasites.
It is pretty formulaic for the most part (it does have some more nuanced and unusual dynamics later on )but I still enjoyed it. It's like a Saturday morning cartoon you would watch while eating cereal as a kid. It's just a cozy, chill sort of show you can watch when you feel like some nostalgic, cheesy, easy watching. It takes me back to a simpler time, if that simpler time was more also more culturally progressive, and that's very comforting.
My favorite story was when a Karen told someone to not give money to the homeless man because he was going to use it to buy drugs and the man just that, "That's what i was going to spend it on anyway."
Good time to remind there exist two "models" of economy:
Commodity- Money- Commodity (where money is used for the sole purpose of getting commodities like house, food, clothes, healthcare, ...)
Money-Commodity-Money (Where the purpose of money is to turn commodities in more money, so the end goal is getting more money).
The first one is okay. Humans always did it.
The second one is a disease that starter with what we call "nowadays" Capitalism.
I'm saying that because I see on real life a lot of people conflating the two and thinking that "ending capitalism"=="ending comerce/trade/barter" when the truth is that "ending capitalism"=="ending hoarding wealth like a dragon"
Wealth gives everyone power. The difference is that when most people want to excersise the power their wealth gives them, they do so by exchanging money for goods or services. For instance, I can influence a plumber to fix my toilet by paying them.
Rich people do that too, but with a proportionally tiny amount of money. Most of their influence comes from the fact that they simply own stuff. They don't need to spend money to pay for entities they own to do what they want. If you own a voting stake in a company, you do not need to spend that stake to influence the company.
Invest it, of course! If you just invest a million per year into private equity, soon you'll be able to afford your own private jet. But those stupid poor people will rather buy avocado toast and iPhones.
GDP isn't inherently a useful measure for this though.
If I pay you 100$ to eat a dog turd, then you pay me 100$ to eat the next dog turd we see. We created 200$ worth of GDP and ate two dog turds. Yet neither of us profited in any way.
If you're into watching someone eat a turd and are willing to pay 100$ for it, then a service worth 100$ was provided in each instance.
But on a more serious note, this argument applies to the GDP in general – it's not a measure of how happy, how wealthy, or how productive the people of a given nation are. Yet, continuous growth (measured by GDP) seems to have the highest priority among so-called conservatives and neoliberals. At the same time, they're mad at poor people for increasing the GDP with government aid and don't see the irony.
By the definition of money, that cannot happen. If all the money is owned by one person, then it is not money. If all of the money is owned by one group of people and another group of people have no access to it, then that will bifurcate the economy between those two groups and the second group will use something else as a substitute. No matter how little people have, there will always be some form of trade and commerce between them. Even North Koreans today (where private trade is largely forbidden) and enslaved Africans in the pre-Civil War US (who for the most part were not legally allowed to own anything) had some form of trade amongst themselves.
Each successive dollar (or euro, pound, yen...) gets successively more difficult to extract because as people have less and less to spend they get tighter and tighter with their spending. Without state intervention, there will always be a floor to how poor you can possibly make someone, because at some point they will realise that breaking the rules and risking the punishment is a better idea than continuing to play by them. And when enough people think this way, well... just ask Louis XVI or Nicholas II how that went.
Even if a communist revolution does not occur, this happens already to a lesser extent in the impoverished areas of cities worldwide, where people would rather turn to crime than work for starvation wages. So if you are someone on the side of the political spectrum which likes to talk against crime and socialism, the policies you should champion are those which prevent the poor from needing to resort to those things (not that any such people are likely to exist on Lemmy).
Neo-feudalism. People who don't live off of investments (i.e., most of us) need to sell our labor to buy the necessities of life. Once the rich own everything and everyone else is poor, we will continue to sell our labor to pay off debts and make the lives of the wealthy comfortable in new and innovative ways.
You give billions of credit to rich people companies and create inflation. Companies go bankrupt, they create new companies and the process repeats. You stand no chance.
My knee-jerk reaction is to agree with you, because it seems like this policy would punish money hoarding and therefore keep money circulating.
Then I thought about what I would do if I had a sudden large influx of expiring cash, and quickly decided on buying illiquid assets (stocks, bonds, property, a couple fast food franchises in an underserved-but-growing area, etc) which is pretty much what the wealthy already do. The World's Richest Manchild doesn't have $300 billion in cold hard cash sitting around, he has maybe a few million in easily-accessible funds and the rest is tied up in investments (that's why he had to borrow so desperately to get the $44 billion to buy twitter - he couldn't quickly cash out his stock investments without cratering their value).
If money expired, the rich would continue to do what they already do - turn their money into long-term investment vehicles. The worst off would be the people who are in the middle - not doing so bad they have to spend every penny they make right away just to stay afloat, but not doing so well that they can invest in illiquid assets (either because they don't have enough left over after the bills are spent to realistically be able to invest or because they need a safety net in case the car needs to be replaced in a hurry or a tree falls through the roof or the hot water heater busts and ruins the floor).
'Expiring wealth' is something that would do society good by forcing the wealthy class to re-invest in their communities and peoples, whereas 'expiring cash' would just hurt those who would otherwise be on a path to being able to retire someday
Generational wealth is an area where this money hoarding really, really goes wrong, because then it's lifetime after lifetime of the accumulation and hoarding of wealth. So obviously one change I would strongly support is extremely high tax on inheritance income.
But we need to separate money from wealth, I think. Because if it takes all of us working together to generate that wealth in the first place, there is simply no possible excuse for not sharing that wealth equitably. As long as money=wealth, I'm just not sure we'll ever really accomplish that, though.
Billionaires have tons of debt they would have to rectify before they stabilize. Then you assume their liquid assets would be reduced and they would have to find ways to generate more liquidity to maintenance their properties.
Isn't that almost the same thing? No way a dollar bill that is 1 day before expired would have the same value as a dollar bill that expires in a year.
Or do you except a shop would have to accept a bill that expires in 10 seconds and they won't be able to do anything with it? Would you be fine if your employer paid you with bills that expire in 2 days?
Well, its a thought. There are a lot of variables to capitalism. Just thinking of ways to improve the system if there are people who are dead set on keeping it forever. Maybe it should lose value. If, say it was a 50 year expiration date, the exchange that generated the value has long since past.
You could also implement a buy back where the government gives you a flat rate on expired currency or a tax write off but you have to meet a minimum threshold.
To me its important to recognize that money is what we say it is. We can do whatever we like with it.
The biggest problem would be the immediate devaluing of the dollar, countries participating in our economy would attempt to purchase other currencies. So in that light it would be infeasible but maybe there are ways to transition.
Sounds like something that would be trivial for the wealthy to circumvent while being very expensive for the poor to do the same. Someone with the means can just pay someone to continuously refresh their money with new money. Unclear on how people will deal with transactions when different bills have different values from what's written on them.
Many indigenous americans including the Aztec and Mayan cultural groups used cacao as currency. I can't say if it was intentionally a method to reduce wealth hoarding but it did have that effect.
I’ve had an idea for a book, where the protagonist is a “classic build your fortune” type dismayed at the way capitalism is failing, who ends up making a currency like this; wanting everyone to make money and then spend it by the end of the month; somehow allowing the recipient to get a new extended deadline.
I have some curiosity for where the concept would go. In the story as well it’s imagined that some oligarchs will find ways to abuse the system and hoard it, but in some other cases it might trigger interesting movements.
money kinda already does expire. if you just let it sit around for long enough, it will devalue over time, typically around 2% per year. It's called inflation.
Nobody really hoards wealth by hoarding lots of paper money. Except maybe foolish people trying to save up for retirement that way. (they will make bitter experiences)
Wealthy people invest all their money into company shares, houses/apartments, or gold. That's actually why we see the price of these things constantly increase: Because the wealthy don't know where else to put their money, and so they buy these things, which creates demand for these things, which constantly increases the price for these things (by the rule of supply and demand).
Yeah, I think this is what they mean. It is a form of poor bashing: poor people don’t invest their money to create jobs, grow the economy, etc. I have a friend who is very susceptible to this type of right-wing propaganda, and i had to point out that rich people can only invest a large portion of their income because their basic needs are (abundantly) met.
Buying things is literally the economy. People spending money into it improves the economy directly. The velocity of money is a key part of a working market, and the rich impart very little of their wealth into it.
Agreed. The position of the conservatives who espouse such beliefs is incoherent. They have a whole mythology surrounding the importance of entrepreneurs that doesn’t take markets into account. For many of them, the most advanced economic text they have ever read was an Ayn Rand novel.
Cool, so be super responsible on their part instead. If they can't be trusted to save up themselves, do the saving up of all the money yourself, o wise conservative. And let's put all that money in a trust fund for them and just give them the dividends. Let's call those dividends a "Universal Basic Dividend".
They say that because when they get more money they can invest it, grow it for later. They ridicule spending it because if you're able, investment IS the smarter decision, but that assumes all your needs are already met. The Capital class can't even imagine their needs not being met, only wants that they can afford to wait for.
“Poor people are bad with money. That’s why they are poor.”
I personally think a lot of rich people are bad with money. They're just shielded from consequences because if you blow $200,000 on an expensive watch, and you have another $3,000,000 in the bank, it's not going to ruin you. I've seen numerous examples of rich people just blowing money on bullshit. Meanwhile, poor people are like snipping coupons and making $1000 last a whole month.
I think you're right but also at the same time they can afford to be bad with money. It's not really an equal comparison even for poorer people to make.
You do need to be careful about what people spend that money on. Soooo many people just funnelled their covid stimulus into cryptocurrency or NFTs or Gamestop stock in the vague hope they'll get rich, only to lose everything.
I mean, there's always going to be scams. You probably want to address that with education more than expensive "you're not allowed to buy salsa with your government money" stuff.
135 Comments
fartographer@lemmy.world · 78 pts · 1y
My friend's dad once told me that studies have shown that if you give $1,000,000 to someone without money and the same to a rich person that almost all the money will be gone from the poor person and will have increased when left with the rich person, because poor people don't know how to manage money and that's why they're poor.
My reaction was shock followed by, "it costs more than half a million dollars to pull someone out of poverty??? And won't putting a million dollars in the bank almost always gain interest? I wonder why people without money don't know how to put their money in the bank instead of starving!!"
meyotch@slrpnk.net · 90 pts · 1y
Because your dad is wrong.
Many of the UBI-type (universal basic income) studies show that most people continue to work and in many cases they are able to increase their income from work in short order.
Turns out relief from chronic money stress liberates mental resources that increase personal resilience and that translates into better employment for many.
RedFrank24@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
Has there ever been a UBI study that lasted the person's entire life?
LillyPip@lemmy.ca · 15 pts · 1y
Not that I can find. I volunteer if any scientists want to conduct one, though.
AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social · 10 pts · 1y
Not that I'm aware of, just because studies haven't even been considered for long enough to have lasted any entire lifetime, to my knowledge.
However, a many have been going for decades at this point, and there's some great summaries of the findings over these expansive timeframes from the Stanford Basic Income Lab where they have a map and many other resources.
The conclusions seem to remain consistent, across studies lasting anywhere from one-time payments, to months, years, or decades, and I think that the conclusions, while not set in stone, seem to be quite comprehensively backed up to the point that if they were deployed at a larger scale, it would probably show similar outcomes.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 1y
I believe Alaska has some sort of ubi. Maybe start there.
meyotch@slrpnk.net · 5 pts · 1y
Gosh, I don’t know. Not a domain expert, just an avid reader of primary studies on subjects I like.
It would surprise me, but I bet there are other studies you could with post-hoc data analysis, perhaps on lifetime outcomes of people who receive only a small income from a trust over a long period, like people with a moderately prosperous grandparent who put together a meager trust for them.
I know a couple of people with such a situation. They could definitely make much different life choices, even in one case where the trust paid out about the same as the take home pay from a job in retail.
I feel confident predicting that a broader survey of such folks would show vastly different life outcomes, professional attainment, marriage stability etc. when compared to people who started out without that.
It’s sort of obvious but you have to beat people over their heads with data before concepts even get widely considered.
Of course they would fare vastly better. You could work an actual retail job and have double the income. You could be a festival weenie for four years, get therapy, figure out your shit, and network with the better off festival weenies. The point being the universe of realistic and attainable life paths expands greatly with even small amounts of basic income, being able to say no to a bad deal is huge.
Which is why we will need to implement global reforms against extreme wealth. Social mobility scares the hell out of billionaires.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
My dad is dead, tyvm. He was pretty sure he wasn't having a heart attack, so you're right that he was wrong.
But also my friend's dad is wrong about a lot of stuff, including when his son's and I are being sarcastic by saying "thanks Obama," and that it's an invitation for him to shit on social safety nets.
Don_alForno@feddit.org · 26 pts · 1y
It's stupid in even more ways. The economy needs people to buy things to keep going and allow people like your friend's dad to have jobs and act condescending to people who don't have jobs.
So if everybody was "smart" like that theoretical rich person and kept all their money, there wouldn't be an economy for them to leech passive income from.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Nuh uh. The economy needs billionaires to peepee money on me.
benignintervention@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 1y
If you water a dying plant, it will drink. It's almost like people without enough money need it for something
Cenzorrll@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
It's also been known by economists for time immemorial that the best way to improve the economy is to give money to poor people, nothing else required. Literally just giving poor people money to spend skyrockets the velocity of money, whereas the hoarders just put it in an account to do nothing but gain interest.
SpaceShort@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 1y
It's not a fair comparison. Someone in poverty will use that million in order to lift themselves out of material poverty. Which means they will pay off debts, buy property, pay college tuition for themselves and/or their descendants, possibly start a business, and a whole bunch of other things I can't think of. That would easily cost half a million. Someone who's already rich will already have all that.
shalafi@lemmy.world · 59 pts · 1y
We're in one of the richest countries in the world and the minimum wage is lower now than it was thirty-five years ago.
There are homeless people everywhere...
This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought he's just going to use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought: "That's what I'm going to use it on!"
"Why am I judging this poor bastard?"
People love to judge homeless guys.
Like if you give him the money he's just going to waste it. He's going to waste the money.
Well, he lives in a box, what do you want him to do? Save it up and buy a wall unit?
Take a little run to the store for a throw rug and a CD rack?
He's homeless!
I walked behind this guy the other day. A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looks right at the homeless guy and goes: "Why don't you go get a job, you bum?"
People always say that to homeless guys, "Get a job", like it's always that easy.
This homeless guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants.
I'm guessing his resume ain't all up to date.
I'm predicting some problems during the interview process.
I'm pretty sure even McDonald's has a "Underwear Go Inside The Pants" policy.
Not that they enforce it really strictly, but technically, I'm sure it is on the books.
aesthelete@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 1y
I'm also very tired of people saying that pan handlers are all millionaires because they heard or read some anecdote somewhere.
Like yeah I'm sure there are scammer pan handlers, but even in that 0.0001% case it's because begging for money is easier or better than getting a job.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1y
I recall a time back around 2008 or 2009, when my smartest coworker left Fox News on in the breakroom. (He knew better than to trust their bias, but we had few channels available and he just wanted to hear the news.) My stupidest coworker walked through the breakroom, heard some news about "Obama giving away cars to poor people" and came back into the lab ranting and raving about it.
I had a talk with that smart coworker and gently asked him not to leave that channel on again, because some of the people we work with are highly suggestable. Just then, the stupid coworker came into the room to rant the news at him.
He instantly understood.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Fox News has been a plague on our society for almost 30 years. I’m so sick of its existence.
creamlike504@jlai.lu · 5 pts · 1y
Lazyboy - Underwear Goes Inside the Pants
Malfeasant@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Steve Hughes?
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 1y
Use it for food.
FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 1y
It's weird to give someone money and care what they do with it unless you're expecting them to pay you back someday. You're giving it away, so it's expendable to you, and you'll probably never interact with the person again, so it's odd to care about the specifics beyond "I hope this helps."
You'll never give them enough money to actually change their situation, and that's not your fault but it's also not your problem, it's theirs. If they think they need a cigarette more than a sandwich, who am I to tell them they are wrong? It's their money now, not mine.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · -10 pts · 1y
And until I give it away, it's mine, not theirs. Who are you to tell me I'm wrong for how I decide who to give it away to or not?
FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
I was talking about the hypothetical scenario where you gave it to them and were miffed it didn't go towards food, so I agree 100% with what you're saying. Don't give your money away if you can't afford to let someone else do what they want with it.
A lot of people don't mind giving someone something they need without placing conditions on it. But it's okay to be different.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · -1 pts · 1y
I agree I have no say in what they do with the money, only whether I choose to give it to them or not.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 1y
Have you considered that if you really want homeless people to have food, you can just buy them food?
howrar@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
The problem with directly buying them food is that it has to be eaten within a fixed time window. Money can be used to buy food tomorrow, or it can even become food five years from now while being trivial to carry around. Getting money affords you the chance to take some time off from panhandling to attempt to better your situation because you know you have that backup food in your pocket. You're not going to get out of homelessness if leaving that street corner means you're probably going to be one day closer to dying of starvation.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · -6 pts · 1y
Yes, and when they get mad and say they want money (which has happened more than once), you know what they were going to use it for.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y
If a random guy on the street offered you a sandwich, would you eat it? Why not, you like to save money, right? What's the problem, I'm a nice guy trying to help you here.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1y
I offered to buy them food. I'm not sure why you thought I'd just buy some first without making sure they wanted it.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 1y
That's fair. It's their body, you have no say in what they do with it ;)
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · -4 pts · 1y
Nope, only in what I choose to do or not do to help them destroy it.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 53 pts · 1y
Among economists, this is actually a solid consensus and why many of them are in favor of policies that benefit the less wealthy parts of society. Politicians who oppose these policies often do so against scientific consensus.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 11 pts · 1y
more importantly, it's not just scientific consensus. Remember that trump voters don't care about the science. they care about the economy. You have to make it about the economy.
13igTyme@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Hoarding money and never spending it is good for the economy... Somehow, give me a minute I need to see what Fox news says so I can just repeat that.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 1y
Fox news would probably say that consumerism is foolish anyways and needs to stop (because it's gluttony or sth), while we should all glorify the leaders who were wise enough in the past to invest their wealth.
beejboytyson@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Lol it's not about economy
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 6 pts · 1y
The irony here is that GDP is a measure of how much money is spent, so yeah, giving money to people more likely to spend it increases GDP more then giving it to people who will put it in a bank.
naught101@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
Is this true? I know there has been research on the consensus among climate scientists (Oreskes, 2004), is there something similar for economists?
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 1y
It’s not really a consensus, it drives higher inflation (people are spending more) and a lot of stimulus vs tight purse economics are just doing the opposite of what they did in response to the last crash
What I think they are talking about is UBI which in limited pilot projects haven’t impacted inflation
The real benefit of uplifting the poor is that it creates a safer society for everyone and faster innovation in that society because people have time/money to do things. When flying was in it’s infancy a lot of farmers in the US had hobby planes and gliding/eventually flying was built off being accessible. Aviation laws get in the way but it’s completely foreign to think of some poor farmer in rural USA being a hobby pilot today
naught101@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Oh, I agree that those policies work, for sure. I'm just interested in the statement that a "solid consensus" of economists agree - that seems unlikely to me.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
The thing about UBI is that it doesn't really lend itself well to limited pilots. Being both "Universal" and "Limited" doesn't make much sense. So it's really hard to assert evidence one way or the other about what that would look like in full.
There are some "accidental" universal income scenarios like the Alaska permanent fund, but they fall short of being even "basic " income.
So you have some means tested experiments where a small selection of people get a limited term benefit among a broader population that didn't. In those scenarios the people seem to make the most of the opportunity, using that relief to prepare themselves for a more viable living after the benefit wears out. It certainly shows that people well tend to be more responsible than conservatives assume given a chance, but doesn't show what happens to the economy when all the participants assume that basic level of income, e.g so the rents just go up and erase the benefit and everything is at the same level.
I've seen some assert that more regulated basic needs would be better. If you just throw UBI and let free market reign, the businesses may ruin it. Public housing, healthcare, and basic food might do wonders more good at long as the government responsibiliy manages it instead of letting the businesses just do their thing...
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y
The consensus is strong with regards to the question "What happens with money that you give to poor people?" and naturally becomes less strong with regards to specific effects on the economy or what policies to implement. But most economists would agree that stuff like food stamps or certain types of tax credits or (conditional) transfer payments geared towards very low-income households are often a net positive because of the immediate spending and investment in human capital. The downside is of course that these programs typically increase inflation. I don't think the consensus is anywhere near as strong as the one about climate (but few are).
naught101@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Right, but I'm asking where you're getting your evidence for this consensus.
PlayfulParrot@piefed.social · 47 pts · 1y
0li0li@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1y
I agreed! We can't just give them things, they won't be poor anymore! What's next, taxing the rich?
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 28 pts · 1y
The rich are so fucking stingy with their money that they have a private island and private city with no septic system and instead want to pump it into the nearby community at the other community's expense.
Like what the hell is the point of all that money if they are so utterly unwilling to spend any of it?
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Next on Ask a Dragon!
Tiger666@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1y
How do you think they get rich?
MBech@feddit.dk · 5 pts · 1y
You don't get rich from being stingy. You get rich by abusing workers.
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 1 pts · 1y
Beat me to it.
Etterra@discuss.online · 25 pts · 1y
Maybe somebody should explain to them that the economy is supposed to be made of people spending money on goods and services, not hoarding it in the bank with their billions of other dollars.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
Yep learned that crazy enough from my maga dad. He got mad at his sister in 2008 during the crash because she was hoarding the money instead of stimulating the economy. Why also was pissed Obama bailed out the banks. If he just gave all the poor people a check they will go out and spend it. Why we have the whole tax season. Technical when you get a tax refund just means you paid more in then you should have. But it's by design. Because poor people will go spend all the money. Buying cars, furniture etc. Shit they normally couldn't afford to do.
Why drives me nut. Fucking Regan his trickle down economics. It needs to be reversed. Trickle up economy does work.
naught101@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Your sentences could do with a few more words each
GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
And yes that works to slowly trickle money up the wealthy while the poor get something for their spending.
But today that doesn't need to happen. Now the billionaires have bought enough politicians so that they get all the money without having to deal with the poors. They just get bills written (and passed) that trickle up everyone else's tax money directly to them.
Etterra@discuss.online · 3 pts · 1y
I mean Nixon started the car, But Regan shifted it into drive and threw a brick on the pedal. It's one thing to save enough money for emergencies, even major ones. But once you're up into the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, and billions, it's just greed and fuck you. Go invest in solar or build homeless shelters or something you parasites.
matchaotter@lemmy.zip · 25 pts · 1y
Upvoting not for the political meme but to encourage the spread of She-ra content
Katana314@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Man I got a few episodes into that and it already felt formulaic…
And I could never get used to people, even villains, using the word “Princesses” as some entity of fear and cautious reverence.
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 1y
It is pretty formulaic for the most part (it does have some more nuanced and unusual dynamics later on )but I still enjoyed it. It's like a Saturday morning cartoon you would watch while eating cereal as a kid. It's just a cozy, chill sort of show you can watch when you feel like some nostalgic, cheesy, easy watching. It takes me back to a simpler time, if that simpler time was more also more culturally progressive, and that's very comforting.
historythemystery@lemmy.org · 1 pts · 317d
It does get better as it goes on. Personally I think seasons after season 1, are stronger, but that's me.
historythemystery@lemmy.org · 1 pts · 317d
Totally down with that. The more She-Ra content the better!
Malfeasant@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 1y
"they'll just spend it on drugs and drinking"
That's all I was going to spend it on...
(Paraphrased from Steve Hughes)
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 15 pts · 1y
My favorite story was when a Karen told someone to not give money to the homeless man because he was going to use it to buy drugs and the man just that, "That's what i was going to spend it on anyway."
TeoTwawki@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 1y
The ultra wealthy have a tendency to just hoard it, accumulating far more than they will even use, and act like that is normal and the purpose of it.
nekbardrun@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
Good time to remind there exist two "models" of economy:
Commodity- Money- Commodity (where money is used for the sole purpose of getting commodities like house, food, clothes, healthcare, ...)
Money-Commodity-Money (Where the purpose of money is to turn commodities in more money, so the end goal is getting more money).
The first one is okay. Humans always did it.
The second one is a disease that starter with what we call "nowadays" Capitalism.
I'm saying that because I see on real life a lot of people conflating the two and thinking that "ending capitalism"=="ending comerce/trade/barter" when the truth is that "ending capitalism"=="ending hoarding wealth like a dragon"
Tiger666@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 1y
They accumulate wealth because it gives them power. Power is what drives their greed. Greed is what is killing our society.
homura1650@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Wealth gives everyone power. The difference is that when most people want to excersise the power their wealth gives them, they do so by exchanging money for goods or services. For instance, I can influence a plumber to fix my toilet by paying them.
Rich people do that too, but with a proportionally tiny amount of money. Most of their influence comes from the fact that they simply own stuff. They don't need to spend money to pay for entities they own to do what they want. If you own a voting stake in a company, you do not need to spend that stake to influence the company.
mr_account@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 1y
Poor people don't bribe the politicians making these decisions, so it's not in the best interest of the politicians.
plyth@feddit.org · 16 pts · 1y
They explicitly don't want it but the right thing to do would be to spend some money on the means of production.
Create a cooperative and start accumulating capital for the proletarians.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 1y
How dare those communist scum create a small business, and become independent of welfare! Steaming
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1y
Invest it, of course! If you just invest a million per year into private equity, soon you'll be able to afford your own private jet. But those stupid poor people will rather buy avocado toast and iPhones.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 12 pts · 1y
I mean that's kinda the point though. Giving poor people money sothat they spend it, it's called consumerism. It's what makes the economy go round.
oppy1984@lemdro.id · 3 pts · 1y
While true, they are worried that people will spend money on drugs and those aren't taxable, that's what they're really talking about.
ftbd@feddit.org · 12 pts · 1y
Conservatives are mad at poor people for uuuh... (checks notes): Using government aid to increase the GDP.
Bubbey@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
GDP isn't inherently a useful measure for this though. If I pay you 100$ to eat a dog turd, then you pay me 100$ to eat the next dog turd we see. We created 200$ worth of GDP and ate two dog turds. Yet neither of us profited in any way.
ftbd@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1y
If you're into watching someone eat a turd and are willing to pay 100$ for it, then a service worth 100$ was provided in each instance.
But on a more serious note, this argument applies to the GDP in general – it's not a measure of how happy, how wealthy, or how productive the people of a given nation are. Yet, continuous growth (measured by GDP) seems to have the highest priority among so-called conservatives and neoliberals. At the same time, they're mad at poor people for increasing the GDP with government aid and don't see the irony.
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1y
The current situation is one I've been wracking my brain over for more than a decade.
What happens when there's no more money to firehose from the poor to the rich. When all the blood is squeezed out of the stone.
NateNate60@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1y
By the definition of money, that cannot happen. If all the money is owned by one person, then it is not money. If all of the money is owned by one group of people and another group of people have no access to it, then that will bifurcate the economy between those two groups and the second group will use something else as a substitute. No matter how little people have, there will always be some form of trade and commerce between them. Even North Koreans today (where private trade is largely forbidden) and enslaved Africans in the pre-Civil War US (who for the most part were not legally allowed to own anything) had some form of trade amongst themselves.
Each successive dollar (or euro, pound, yen...) gets successively more difficult to extract because as people have less and less to spend they get tighter and tighter with their spending. Without state intervention, there will always be a floor to how poor you can possibly make someone, because at some point they will realise that breaking the rules and risking the punishment is a better idea than continuing to play by them. And when enough people think this way, well... just ask Louis XVI or Nicholas II how that went.
Even if a communist revolution does not occur, this happens already to a lesser extent in the impoverished areas of cities worldwide, where people would rather turn to crime than work for starvation wages. So if you are someone on the side of the political spectrum which likes to talk against crime and socialism, the policies you should champion are those which prevent the poor from needing to resort to those things (not that any such people are likely to exist on Lemmy).
balderdash9@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 1y
Neo-feudalism. People who don't live off of investments (i.e., most of us) need to sell our labor to buy the necessities of life. Once the rich own everything and everyone else is poor, we will continue to sell our labor to pay off debts and make the lives of the wealthy comfortable in new and innovative ways.
vane@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
You give billions of credit to rich people companies and create inflation. Companies go bankrupt, they create new companies and the process repeats. You stand no chance.
Tiger666@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1y
That's when we strike with pitchforks.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y
Well they got tanks :/
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 1y
Money should have an expiration date. There, I said it.
gabereal@sopuli.xyz · 19 pts · 1y
My knee-jerk reaction is to agree with you, because it seems like this policy would punish money hoarding and therefore keep money circulating.
Then I thought about what I would do if I had a sudden large influx of expiring cash, and quickly decided on buying illiquid assets (stocks, bonds, property, a couple fast food franchises in an underserved-but-growing area, etc) which is pretty much what the wealthy already do. The World's Richest Manchild doesn't have $300 billion in cold hard cash sitting around, he has maybe a few million in easily-accessible funds and the rest is tied up in investments (that's why he had to borrow so desperately to get the $44 billion to buy twitter - he couldn't quickly cash out his stock investments without cratering their value).
If money expired, the rich would continue to do what they already do - turn their money into long-term investment vehicles. The worst off would be the people who are in the middle - not doing so bad they have to spend every penny they make right away just to stay afloat, but not doing so well that they can invest in illiquid assets (either because they don't have enough left over after the bills are spent to realistically be able to invest or because they need a safety net in case the car needs to be replaced in a hurry or a tree falls through the roof or the hot water heater busts and ruins the floor).
'Expiring wealth' is something that would do society good by forcing the wealthy class to re-invest in their communities and peoples, whereas 'expiring cash' would just hurt those who would otherwise be on a path to being able to retire someday
forrgott@lemmy.sdf.org · 6 pts · 1y
Generational wealth is an area where this money hoarding really, really goes wrong, because then it's lifetime after lifetime of the accumulation and hoarding of wealth. So obviously one change I would strongly support is extremely high tax on inheritance income.
But we need to separate money from wealth, I think. Because if it takes all of us working together to generate that wealth in the first place, there is simply no possible excuse for not sharing that wealth equitably. As long as money=wealth, I'm just not sure we'll ever really accomplish that, though.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
Billionaires have tons of debt they would have to rectify before they stabilize. Then you assume their liquid assets would be reduced and they would have to find ways to generate more liquidity to maintenance their properties.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
That is literally what inflation is for. Central banks try to keep inflation at around 2% to discourage hoarding money.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 1y
This is not what im talking about and they are not 1 for 1 analogous.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
What are you talking about than?
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y
Hard expiration date tied to the day the currency was created.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
Isn't that almost the same thing? No way a dollar bill that is 1 day before expired would have the same value as a dollar bill that expires in a year.
Or do you except a shop would have to accept a bill that expires in 10 seconds and they won't be able to do anything with it? Would you be fine if your employer paid you with bills that expire in 2 days?
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
Well, its a thought. There are a lot of variables to capitalism. Just thinking of ways to improve the system if there are people who are dead set on keeping it forever. Maybe it should lose value. If, say it was a 50 year expiration date, the exchange that generated the value has long since past.
You could also implement a buy back where the government gives you a flat rate on expired currency or a tax write off but you have to meet a minimum threshold.
To me its important to recognize that money is what we say it is. We can do whatever we like with it.
The biggest problem would be the immediate devaluing of the dollar, countries participating in our economy would attempt to purchase other currencies. So in that light it would be infeasible but maybe there are ways to transition.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Again, at 2% yearly inflation, the money would have only 37% of its original value after 50 years. And inflation tends to get higher.
People who "hoard money" usually invest it into something.
howrar@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
Sounds like something that would be trivial for the wealthy to circumvent while being very expensive for the poor to do the same. Someone with the means can just pay someone to continuously refresh their money with new money. Unclear on how people will deal with transactions when different bills have different values from what's written on them.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
Why would poor people have difficulty living with this change? They live hand to mouth.
howrar@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1y
And they'll stay there if they can't save up any money.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1y
Many indigenous americans including the Aztec and Mayan cultural groups used cacao as currency. I can't say if it was intentionally a method to reduce wealth hoarding but it did have that effect.
Katana314@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
I’ve had an idea for a book, where the protagonist is a “classic build your fortune” type dismayed at the way capitalism is failing, who ends up making a currency like this; wanting everyone to make money and then spend it by the end of the month; somehow allowing the recipient to get a new extended deadline.
I have some curiosity for where the concept would go. In the story as well it’s imagined that some oligarchs will find ways to abuse the system and hoard it, but in some other cases it might trigger interesting movements.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 1y
money kinda already does expire. if you just let it sit around for long enough, it will devalue over time, typically around 2% per year. It's called inflation.
Nobody really hoards wealth by hoarding lots of paper money. Except maybe foolish people trying to save up for retirement that way. (they will make bitter experiences)
Wealthy people invest all their money into company shares, houses/apartments, or gold. That's actually why we see the price of these things constantly increase: Because the wealthy don't know where else to put their money, and so they buy these things, which creates demand for these things, which constantly increases the price for these things (by the rule of supply and demand).
wabafee@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
Your suppose to shove the money to the closest representatives asshole.
bacon_pdp@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1y
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 1y
Yeah, I think this is what they mean. It is a form of poor bashing: poor people don’t invest their money to create jobs, grow the economy, etc. I have a friend who is very susceptible to this type of right-wing propaganda, and i had to point out that rich people can only invest a large portion of their income because their basic needs are (abundantly) met.
rainwall@piefed.social · 20 pts · 1y
Buying things is literally the economy. People spending money into it improves the economy directly. The velocity of money is a key part of a working market, and the rich impart very little of their wealth into it.
lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Agreed. The position of the conservatives who espouse such beliefs is incoherent. They have a whole mythology surrounding the importance of entrepreneurs that doesn’t take markets into account. For many of them, the most advanced economic text they have ever read was an Ayn Rand novel.
onnekas@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 1y
Boil it, mash it, stick it in a stew.
absolutejank@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y
you’re supposed to put it into shady cryptocurrencies. that’s your money making money for you, homeless people haven’t unlocked nft strats yet
theacharnian@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 1y
Cool, so be super responsible on their part instead. If they can't be trusted to save up themselves, do the saving up of all the money yourself, o wise conservative. And let's put all that money in a trust fund for them and just give them the dividends. Let's call those dividends a "Universal Basic Dividend".
PugJesus@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y
Automatic upvote for She-Ra.
joyjoy@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 1y
You're supposed to give it back to them in the form of investments.
nekbardrun@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1y
Ei seu caralhudo!
Use the original meme of Nazaré Tedesco (Senhora do Destino)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7QA0ogagEc
Or else we will make you come to Brazil and have 100% free healthcare and free public school/grad school!
Also we will make you watch "novelas" (brazilian drama) like Kubanacan and O Beijo do Vampiro!
peteypete420@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1y
Is that She Ra in the meme? Forgive me im less aware of stuff than I used to be.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 10 pts · 1y
That's Adora, who turns into She-ra but is not currently She-ra. From the show She-ra.
tacosanonymous@mander.xyz · 5 pts · 1y
Yes. She can defeat any enemy except geometry.
Nico_198X@europe.pub · 1 pts · 1y
That DOES sound like Adora...
BabyVi@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y
That's Adora.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
Stimulating the economy baby
Red_October@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y
They say that because when they get more money they can invest it, grow it for later. They ridicule spending it because if you're able, investment IS the smarter decision, but that assumes all your needs are already met. The Capital class can't even imagine their needs not being met, only wants that they can afford to wait for.
Smoogs@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y
Their argument for not paying taxes is old. And boring.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y
griff@lemmings.world · 2 pts · 1y
Maybe they need to eat, for example?
jsomae@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1y
invest it
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
Not sure if that was ever the issue? I don't think I've seen people taking issue with that.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 1y
Republicans will trot out the 'ol "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day" line.
Kayday@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1y
I think it's two different conservative talking points morphed together:
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network · 5 pts · 1y
I personally think a lot of rich people are bad with money. They're just shielded from consequences because if you blow $200,000 on an expensive watch, and you have another $3,000,000 in the bank, it's not going to ruin you. I've seen numerous examples of rich people just blowing money on bullshit. Meanwhile, poor people are like snipping coupons and making $1000 last a whole month.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y
I think you're right but also at the same time they can afford to be bad with money. It's not really an equal comparison even for poorer people to make.
RedFrank24@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 1y
You do need to be careful about what people spend that money on. Soooo many people just funnelled their covid stimulus into cryptocurrency or NFTs or Gamestop stock in the vague hope they'll get rich, only to lose everything.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network · 9 pts · 1y
I mean, there's always going to be scams. You probably want to address that with education more than expensive "you're not allowed to buy salsa with your government money" stuff.