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The haves and have nots


Airehead

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I heard a speaker talking about the influence of poverty. She was fabulous. One of her scenarios was about poor people asking at dinner, "Did you get enough to eat?"  While those with more financial means are likely to ask, How was it?  Did you like it?"

This really made me think. My grandmother always wanted us to be full.  She was the youngest of 8 in a very poor family.   My other grandmother was very rich. She wanted tasty morsels and fine wines. 

It does explain some of the difficulties my parents had figuring each other out. 

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53 minutes ago, Airehead said:

I heard a speaker talking about the influence of poverty. She was fabulous. One of her scenarios was about poor people asking at dinner, "Did you get enough to eat?"  While those with more financial means are likely to ask, How was it?  Did you like it?"

This really made me think. My grandmother always wanted us to be full.  She was the youngest of 8 in a very poor family.   My other grandmother was very rich. She wanted tasty morsels and fine wines. 

It does explain some of the difficulties my parents had figuring each other out. 

A traditional Chinese greeting....of several decades and centuries ago and probably might pertain more to those living in rural mainland China:

Instead of saying Hello, how are you?  You are greeted:  Have you eaten yet?

When I was a young child, I recall my mother greeting others from same original district (back in China) but in Canada.

My parents have experienced real starvation in their respective villages in China.  My mother talks about people eating garlic bulbs...and not much else.  My mother did not cook with garlic ...and she still doesn't.

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That's definitely true with regard to my immigrant Grandmother.  Times were hard when she first came to America and food was not plentiful.   Even decades later, nobody would ever go to her house and leave hungry.  My Dad didn't take after his Mom in many ways, but he definitely picked up that trait from her.

My Mom would comment that you knew you'd go hungry if you went to a rich person's wedding.

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Interesting how spot on she was. She went on to say this influences how she sees and reacts to the world. We discussed how poverty or middle class or wealthy influence how we respond to things at work in many ways.-- not just about food. 

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Most wealthy people I know, started with nothing.  The poverty and perception of having nothing can be a great motivator.  For others though, being disadvantaged runs for generations.  It can be a mindset of low expectations.  My siblings fit both categories with a wealthy over achieving brother who had the perception of being poor growing up.  My sister thought we had enough and she wasn't motivated at all to achieve more.  She succeeded. 

I agree with your commentary, late.  We haven't been honest with ourselves and Canada's debt load is very similar to the US before the economic crisis of 2008.  Household debt is ridiculous and is mainly driven by millionaire Asian immigration which has driven housing costs to extremes in the two most popular cities.  

I have two daughters approaching 30, still at home and a recent study in Canada showed I am like 78% of my age group.  The cost of living has increased dramatically in Canada and the job market favours contract work for their generation.  Employment security is a thing of the past.  The are both engaged and I seem to have inherited two liabilities from other families as well. As a friend of mine says, "You need to stop cooking with cheese".  

I am thinking they will eventually just take over the house.  Maybe I shouldn't fight that.  I will have built in caretakers.. :) 

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10 minutes ago, Zackny said:

  I will have built in caretakers

better get that in writing?

Having family locally or in house is a big advantage as we age. My wife would have ended up in a nursing home and traveling by ambulance if I hadn’t been able to take care of her. A lot of medical procedures you are not allowed to drive yourself home. I guess living in a city there is public transportation but family transportation is better.

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My aunt has two adult (in their fifties) children living at home (one found a job late last week, though), another aunt has one in his 40's living at home and working at Starbucks.  This doesn't seem that uncommon, oddly enough.  I don't think our employment figures are truthful at all.

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24 minutes ago, Randomguy said:

My aunt has two adult (in their fifties) children living at home (one found a job late last week, though), another aunt has one in his 40's living at home and working at Starbucks.  This doesn't seem that uncommon, oddly enough.  I don't think our employment figures are truthful at all.

As in old#7’s LAJ you have to be willing to work to be employed. I have offered employment to people that said they couldn’t find a job. They were not interested.

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1 hour ago, Longjohn said:

As in old#7’s LAJ you have to be willing to work to be employed. I have offered employment to people that said they couldn’t find a job. They were not interested.

After a lay off I applied for a entry level management position where I was a GM before.   Company asked why this position & I told them I need a job and an opportunity to work my way back up.  Little did I know they had a Sr manager on performance notice and his replacement had just walked in the door!  Within a year I was making what I was before.

Ive never been afraid to apply for lower paying jobs as you never know where they could lead and you can still look while employed.  That and the pay & benefits are better than unemployment.

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14 hours ago, shootingstar said:

A traditional Chinese greeting....of several decades and centuries ago and probably might pertain more to those living in rural mainland China:

Instead of saying Hello, how are you?  You are greeted:  Have you eaten yet?

When I was a young child, I recall my mother greeting others from same original district (back in China) but in Canada.

My parents have experienced real starvation in their respective villages in China.  My mother talks about people eating garlic bulbs...and not much else.  My mother did not cook with garlic ...and she still doesn't.

In Texas we greet people with "Howdy, ya'll!  Jeet yet?"  Or that is how it sounds when we ask "did you eat yet?"

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11 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Meh, I own their existence.  :) 

Good luck.

The way how some parents might do it, is for the 2nd property, rent it low to adult child and have them live it, while the also act as resident landlord to do simple duties. Incredibly my parents managed to scrape together funds to have a mortgage on a 2nd place and that's where some of us adult children lived for lst few years during and after university.  We were required to pay abit of rent plus mow lawn, shovel snow, etc.  with absentee landlord parents living 100 km. away. We did have renters from outside the family, also living on site.  In hindsight it helped us financially to save money for our own home down payments later, learn the reality of living away from (overprotective) parents/ look after a house.

At the time, I thought parents were insane after just paying off the principal residence, etc.  Now we realize their enormous sacrifice to us.

My mother has not requested any of us to live with her.  But she is looked after by several siblings dropping by doing stuff each week.

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On 3/18/2019 at 6:02 PM, Airehead said:

I heard a speaker talking about the influence of poverty. She was fabulous. One of her scenarios was about poor people asking at dinner, "Did you get enough to eat?"  While those with more financial means are likely to ask, How was it?  Did you like it?"

This really made me think. My grandmother always wanted us to be full.  She was the youngest of 8 in a very poor family.   My other grandmother was very rich. She wanted tasty morsels and fine wines. 

It does explain some of the difficulties my parents had figuring each other out. 

After my immigrant parents moved out from my great-uncle's house (with 7 children), they moved...to a converted garage.  Yea,  in Ontario.  I think I was a baby.  My mother had enough of the drafty place and insisted something better.  So they moved after a few months. I didn't know of this until just a few months ago. 

One of the reasons why parents didn't want to visit China..was to deal with requests for money from relatives...when they themselves were poor.  The perception was everyone in Canada was richer than folks back in China.  Which in the 1950's-1970's, that was true when China was still poor under Mao who ruled as a violent tyrant.  

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I have a number of friends who, like my siblings and me, grew up in poor families where there were few vacations throughout childhood, more than two restaurant meals per year was exceptional, no gloves some winters, and spread the jam thin on the bread to make the jar last.

A good number of us who pointed in the right direction by parents and teachers and other educated adults in our lives and we made sure we learned skills that would guarantee decent livings and we were not extremely wise. We also terned to make sure we were comfortable though not rich in retirement.

I think, in some ways, growing up impoverished gave us a greater appreciation for what it means to have good job skills and we were motivated and found ways to obtain them, either by working our way through college, night school, or finding management-track jobs with shipyards, steel mills, Montgomery Ward, or getting good jobs with Social Security, NSA, the Fire Department, etc.  I know I was very motivated: I was going to be a chemist and would not be denied.

This was, of course, NOT true for all my fellow impoverished childhood friends. Many of their parents thought college was a waste of time and they developed similar attitudes. One of my aunts, at my high school graduation party, asked my father why I was too lazy to go to work and going to college instead - despite the fact she was living comfortably due to her husband, my father's oldest brother, having had a couple years of college despite The Depression and had a great job as a civil engineer.  After I, then my sister, graduated from college and weren't making any more than a neighbor's kids we grew up with who had gone to work straight from high school, that neighbor asked my mother, almost mockingly, "What good was college?"

Several years later I was chief chemist of process development for a subsidiary of Dow Chemical and my sister was Coordinator of Bone Marrow Transplants at Johns Hopkins Hospital - my brother was still in school.  We two earned more than his three unskilled kids put together and had steady jobs and skills that meant we'd always have jobs where his didn't.  Mom was too classy to say to the neighbor, "THAT is what college was good for!"

Is poverty good to experience? It leaves emotional scars you carry through life -some of which make you stronger or wiser and some of which make you not take chances that might expand your life.  So I wouldn't recommend it.  But early poverty doesn't mean you're condemned to a life of constant sorrow!

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1 hour ago, MickinMD said:

Is poverty good to experience? It leaves emotional scars you carry through life -some of which make you stronger or wiser and some of which make you not take chances that might expand your life.  So I wouldn't recommend it.  But early poverty doesn't mean you're condemned to a life of constant sorrow!

It helps if the parents don't push psychological burden of being poor onto their children. That they instill in children, hope, hard work, etc. I knew my father's salary when I was 13 yrs. old. He told me, when bought our lst house. How many kids at that age know the salary of at least 1 parent?

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Inflation makes it hard to figure out how well parents actually were doing. My dad bought a couple acres of property, Had a well drilled and septic system installed, and a new house built. He bought a new car every three years. We took vacations every year. My mom was a stay at home mom. After I graduated high school I went to work with my dad at the local factory where my dad worked. I made $80 a week, my dad was making about $110. It was a different world back then. My family was not wealthy by any means but we had a rich life and always knew we were loved.

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When my daughter was young, I had to pause and ask myself why I became infuriated when I saw that she had left food on her plate. I realised that this was because as a child, the idea of leaving food uneaten was unthinkable... given that we had just enough and no more to eat. It was basic food , and food such as chicken or steak was unknown to us until we were in our teens. This was the reason that a scrap of uneaten chicken left on my daughter's plate set me in a rage which was, of course, unfair to her as she had not shared my life-experience.

Like it or not....we are all shaped by our experience.

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11 hours ago, MickinMD said:

  But early poverty doesn't mean you're condemned to a life of constant sorrow!

The number of people escaping poverty has slowed to a crawl.

The situation is so bad that a number of writers are saying it has stopped. Which it hasn't, but the number has dropped so far that for most, if you get poor, you stay there. And it's not hard to get there.

Since the 80s, we've slowly and steadily made life harder for the poor. Now it's going to take real effort to turn this around.

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3 hours ago, late said:

The number of people escaping poverty has slowed to a crawl.

The situation is so bad that a number of writers are saying it has stopped. Which it hasn't, but the number has dropped so far that for most, if you get poor, you stay there. And it's not hard to get there.

Since the 80s, we've slowly and steadily made life harder for the poor. Now it's going to take real effort to turn this around.

Excellent points! As I've said many times, we Baby Boomers should be ashamed as how much harder we have made it since the '80's for young people with limited money to work their way through college the way our Depression-raised parents did for us.

It has even gotten to the point where if you are poor, it costs you more to buy the same things.  For example, average groceries a poor person gets at Walmart for $100 cost me $94 because I have good enough credit for a 2% cash-back credit card and I have a smartphone many poor can't afford that is required to run the Walmart Savings Catcher app that gives me an avg. 4% back on Walmart groceries.

When my doctor added a Vitamin D test to my diabetic blood test, the lab messed up my BCBS ID and its computer assumed I didn't have insurance. So I got a bill in the mail for that 1 test for $256.  The other 12 tests were 100% covered by BCBS which was charged LESS for all of them put together.  A 1 minute phone call straightened out the error and soon I got an EOB statement from BCBS showing they paid 100% of the Vitamin D test: $15!  So, if you're poor an uninsured, that lab would charge you $256 for a test it charges BCBS $15!

Still, I taught a lot of students who pulled themselves out of poverty.  One was a girl whose mother deserted the family, her father was an financially irresponsible drunk, and she worked part-time and was the main financial supporter, feeder, and clother of her two younger siblings.

She excelled in school and, in her Senior year, was accepted for admission the following summer by the United States Naval Academy - located just 1/2 hour's drive from our high school.  She considered turning Navy down because she feared what would happen to her siblings.  We teachers pointed out that she would be a paid member of the U.S. Navy while at the academy and would be close enough to keep tabs on and financially help those kids - who were getting old enough to take over for what she had done for them.

So she went to Navy, graduated and - last I heard - was enjoying a Navy career.

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My father's mother was an orphan in NYC during the Depression. I don't remember her meals, because she was super disorganized and never served dinner before 9 pm. But boy was she a hoarder. She almost got evicted from her senior high rise apartment because it was unsafe, my mom had to go and throw tons of stuff out to prevent that. Why did she need stacks of newspapers up to the ceiling? I will never know other than "you never know when you might need [something]".

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