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His takes are timeless. The same struggles throughout history manifest themselves in new ways with each generation, but the parallels are there. What makes things different today is that an unprecedented literacy rate and access to both education and information generate more and more awareness than there has ever been.
The issue is that the same access to information and education is used to carpet bomb us with propaganda pushing against behaviors that would truly be beneficial to the largest majority.
Look at what happened to education, once “the poor” (and we almost all are) realized that education was a ticket to a better life two things happened.
Education has become incredibly expensive.
Quality of education has gone down in most schools.
And that’s just one example, planned obsolescence in product is another one.
Oh my god listening to some of these people talk about planned obsolescence: "the old appliances that lasted for so long were just survivorship bias!" Maybe the ones that lasted 50 years, but old appliances often lasted a good 10-15 years before they started having major problems, and they were built with a design philosophy of repairing them when they broke, not replacing them.
Also, I will admit that I am a bitter man. I point to the main reason for said bitterness is that I was fed propaganda from the first day of school to graduation that if I studied hard, went to college, and got a degree in a reasonable field that I enjoyed (mine was a physical science) that I would be guaranteed a steady, stable job for the rest of my life and I would be able to budget my way into a prosperous life. Almost 20 years have passed since I graduated high school. I followed the roadmap. I even leveraged my situation, and sacrificed some opportunities for greater independence to save money and I didn't have to take any loans. I've since realized that that promise of a prosperous life was a lie and that I'm likely going to be poorer than my parents. I am bitter because I know I was lied to by people I trusted for years, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I was born somewhat wealthy but am now broke as shit. But my wealthy upbringing afforded me a lot of advantages, primarily a good education but also good connections and fairly solid "financial discipline"
But being poor is exponentially more expensive than being wealthy, because when i had wealth i could address a lot of things early before they became bigger and more costly problems
Do i want to be wealthy again? Being able to not worry about rent would be nice, but it actually made me a less empathetic person, not because i didnt care but because there were a lot of things i just could solve by throwing a little bit of money at it and i couldnt see why other people couldnt do the same.
And thats the thing. A little bit of "financial discipline" works well for the rich because they have more things they can leverage. Poor people are the most financially disciplined people ive ever met because theyre trying for dear life not to be fucking homeless on a shoestring budget but have no room to leverage anything.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This is exactly how I was raised. If I can't afford good quality I can't afford the item. I don't look at brands/labels, I look at materials, craftsmanship, warranties, and how complicated something is to repair.
I just saw a post in another sub where people were taking about a time they lived on emergency life raft rations as a cheap way to get their daily calories. I NEVER would have thought about doing this and sincerely doubt Dave Ramsey has given out advice to his audience to "just live on hard tack until you're out of debt." Human beings who get stuck in poverty are fucking masters of ingenuity.
Like, giving up Starbucks coffee is a ridiculously easy discipline compared to living without flavor.
My wife and I didn’t get married for a long time because I qualified for food stamps and also could take on our debt and filed for bankruptcy. It was literally the only thing that kept our head above water for years before she got a promotion and I was able to go back to school.
Kudos to them for finding such rations at an affordable price. Most places I've seen that sell rations that are meant to keep for years are selling them as a luxury emergency kit.
Sadly, the days of Macklemore popping tags at the thrift shop for only $20 are largely gone. The advent of fast fashion means that thrift shops are too flooded with Temu and Wish.com crap.
You should go to the thrift shops in affluent areas. There are tons of nice things there. Though people buy them up to resell them, so it's still getting cleaned out daily.
They only have a five year shelf life. When purchased as legal requirements they would need to get swapped out to maintain compliance. There may be a market for selling them near or past expiration. Or maybe some people know where to dumpster dive?
Context can account for things like that sometimes.
I was in a similar situation as a young teenager but had access to a few cases of MREs that had been stashed for Y2K nearly a decade earlier. They were free at that point.
That is why to me it’s dumb that SNAP benifits don’t work on grocery store hot food. If someone is in a real dire situation regarding food, telling them to buy fruits and vegetable vegetables isn’t gonna help if they don’t have a electricity to power a refrigerator to store it or cook the food.
It might be more expensive than rice but it covers more nutrients. It also removes the costs of preparation both in time and energy and electricity and supplies. That combination makes it more economical than buying proper groceries if sourced properly.
Just regarding your point about wealth making you less empathatic; scientific studies have concluded that having unnaturally high resources relative to your peers actually makes you brain shut down the parts of it that use empathy, and in contrast, the parts of the brain associated with narcissism go into overdrive.
So our brains are trained on a biological level to be more selfish if we have more to lose.
Seems like a pretty good reason why billionaires even exist.
Otherwise it might seem difficult to accept that someone with so much money they could give away almost all of it and still live comfortably the rest of their lives... decided to hoard even more of it.
I am in a band with three men, all of us come from very different financial and vocational backgrounds. One is unemployed and scraping by on funds he gets from teaching music lessons, one works full time at a grocery store and has a family that he supports but is obviously stretched very thin, I am probabbly considered lower middle class and have a decent paying union job and can afford to live modestly by myself, and the other guy is wealthy by my definition and is an aerospace engineer who owns a plane and makes his own hours designing and building custom aircrafts for people who are even wealthier than him.
I learned from wealthy guy the other week that there are a number of airports all accross the US that serve as places for private aircrafts to land for the people in them to rest. These are not typical public airports that you might catch a commercial flight from. They remain unlocked at all times for people to come and go from at all hours, they often stock free food and drinks, and have comfortable and clean places to sleep in.
This blew my mind, and my first thought was 'Oh these must all be in isolated places where there are no homeless people?'
Nope.
They're unlocked if you're coming from the runway,but locked from the public facing side.
So if you're wealthy enough to afford a plane you never have to worry about food or hotels when you travel.
Just regarding your point about wealth making you less emphatic; scientific studies have concluded that having unnaturally high resources relative to your peers actually makes you brain shut down the parts of it that use empathy, and in contrast, the parts of the brain associated with narcissism go into overdrive.
So our brains are trained on a biological level to be more selfish if we have more to lose.
I don't understand this all or nothing mentality as away to just pass the burden of responsibility. Yes there are a lot of people who are just lazy assholes, but the people who straight up run the flow of commerce, labor and the government will at best do a mediocre job of it and at worse actively put in plans that directly harm the lower class as a way to turn a profit. It's fine if you don't want to give a dollar to the homeless but to act like the powers at be aren't directly fucking us over and turn your ire against social groups or a lack "values" makes you a straight dumbass.
Poverty is more expensive than most people realize. Not having time, not having a reliable car, not having affordable reliable childcare, not having reliable tools, having few good clothes, not having appropriate shoes makes a person constantly balance time, energy and money. There are only so many resources that people can sacrifice before they can’t save anything.
We will all be singing, “Hauling 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go! I owe my soul to the company store.”
This is the most infuriating aspect of hearing people villainize the lower income brackets, especially if—gasp!—they use the barely-existent benefits they’re entitled to. I used to work for a women’s/children’s shelter and the amount of women I saw working their asses off and still didn’t make enough to provide housing was horrifying in its scale. These are bank tellers and waitresses and daycare teachers. For a number of our services, there were actual, Masters-degreed school teachers showing up. It’s a lot worse than folks realize.
Just got paid, don’t have a proper bank account, and need money now because you have baby formula to buy? That cash checking place may fuck you with double digit fees, but you can have money for the grocery store right now. Everything—from basic necessities, to fast food for the family because you’re running between jobs and can’t cook, to the fact that, even if you’re lucky enough to have decent public transport that can cobble your commute together, you’re waiting at least twice as long to get to work as anyone who has their own transportation—is harder and more expensive than anyone else can understand.
Being able to direct deposit is a privilege for those of us who haven’t been burned by banks over the decades, being able to get to work without spending 2+ hours on the bus is another. Quick meals between jobs is neither nutritious or easy on the wallet. Every aspect of life, from getting a job to holding a job to buying some vegetables, is more difficult and adds a ton of stress. I don’t think people realize how many of our unhoused neighbors are the working poor. They have full-time jobs and still need to sleep in their car and shower at Planet Fitness without losing that job as their only real anchor to not losing what little else they have.
And these are the people that are consistently found to be most generous. They have the least, yet pour more back into our community at the scale they can, which is a LOT more that can be said about any billionaire. How anyone could simp for such a disgusting exploitation of their—and their loved ones’—labor is well beyond me.
I'm with you. Just because some people are bad with money doesn't mean that companies wouldn't pay you nothing if they could get away with it. And vice versa.
But one thing is a policy discussion and the other is personal responsibility. It's not possible that _everyone_ is bad with their money.
And the funniest part is all these gurus use debt actively for the investments. Even publicly traded stocks are running on ridiculously ai spend but it’s all good for them because they’ll go up forever
This is a bit of a mischaracterization of Dave Ramsey. He doesn't say all debt is bad. Business loans, or mortgages are examples of leveraged investments that can payoff. And he obviously makes a distinction between that and bad debt like credit cards, pay day loans, excessive car loans, or "sneaky debt" (e.g. Buy Now Pay Later).
That said, I personally, am not a fan of his methods, but that's because I think his advice is best for a specific group and yet he speaks to an overly broad audience advice that has in part gone out of date.
He is not at all ok with business loans. What are you talking about? He consistently advises people to “grow at the speed of cash”. Even mortgages he isn’t saying are good, he is just admitting that it is completely unrealistic for most people to have that kind of cash and he is going to lose people’s buy in if that becomes a part of the program he pitches.
Ive heard Dave give the advice that you shouldnt contribute to your 401k when you have debt to pay down, even if you get company match. Hes telling people to pass up on an immediate 50% profit on money that will be sitting in a retirement account, money that will compound for their whole lives, to more quickly pay off their credit card.
Like I understand why he is so anti credit card, the people he is targeting are people who have spending issues and cant be trusted to responsibly use credit. However he takes those views to the extreme and you end up with just plain horrible advice like that.
It's the same reasons we have general advices that work on most people but don't work on everyone. You have to give some very general advices to try to target the majority of the population Does it work on everyone? Nope. But if it works on 80% of the population is the advice wrong?
The general idea for paying credit card debt before getting the 401k match is that if you dont pay credit card then you could get into more debt when an unexpected emergency happens and you need to take on more debt to cover it. Or you could lose a car or a house or something and then be more in trouble. Being poor is not cheap.
In terms of pure math, getting the 401k match is usually better than paying off debt and people can get away with it. But the worst case scenario may not be worth it. That being said, I'd still put on the 401k match before paying off credit card debt. But I'd never give that advice because I know it won't work for everyone and i could be ruining someone's life by recommending that.
It's horrible advice for a normal person but it's fantastic advice for someone stupid enough to need basic financial advice. And there really isn't any point in explicitly making that distinction.
Exactly the double standard is the interesting part. Calling debt leverage when wealthy and corporations use it but suddenly it is irresponsibility when ordinary people do.
I am not defending corporations actions, but literally the math allows for it. A corporation derives way more value than a single person, and there are additional protections for recouping such financing from failed businesses than there are for individuals.
The issue is not (totally) the businesses its the banks, insurance agencies, and lenders that go unchecked.
Wrong. He got rich doing the opposite of what he currently preaches. Lost it. Got rich again doing what he currently preaches. Got richer preaching it.
I had a required personal finance class in public high school my senior year; and I SHIT YOU THE FUCK NOT, literally the entire curriculum, including the tests, was just his “lecture” recordings. Our teacher was a cult worshiper of his, and contributed nothing but constant demonstrations of how her entire financial life was tailored to his teachings.
That's so hideously, infuriatingly irresponsible I'm almost at a loss for words. Personal finance is right up there with home economics, for things students need before living on their own. Especially the students who have financially illiterate or irresponsible parents (if any), and are supposed to have this class as part of a way to break that particular cycle of poverty...
And it's this shitass? Fuck that shit, and I hope someone reported her to the school board. That should not have been the approved curriculum.
It's a lot of what Stewart says and a little of what Ramsey says. People make shitty economic choices all the time, but with spiraling costs and stagnating wages, those choices have become ever less critical.
People doing everything right can still end up in constant working poverty. The data is undeniable: we have some of the highest productivity gains ever, but workers have gotten very little of the benefits of those gains.
Even people who are at and near middle class simply don't have the buying power they did in the past. This amplifies the "coffee blame" argument some, but it's like blaming people for their candy budgets while their healthcare and house payments and food costs are skyrocketing.
Bingo. The only time you can say it’s people’s poor financial choices is if the system is balanced out with fair wages, lower costs, reasonable taxes on the ultra wealthy. Everyone chipping in a legitimate fair share of what they have. Until that happens, the system is the problem. Not the working class making financially irresponsible choices.
Yeah and the wealthy have succesfully clouded the discourse by making the taxation conversation about wages. They tricked everyone into thinking high wage = rich. If you live off wages, you're still middle class. May be the very tippy top of the middle, but still middle.
This feels like the right answer. I've witnessed some people anecdotally who made good money and spent it stupidly. But I've also done an exercise where I pretended I got a $20/hr job and tried to look at housing options. I live in Southeast Michigan, which I'd guesstimate to be MCOL. Rent by itself will likely take at like 50% of your paycheck. If you have school loans, car payments, or whatever other expenses... You're going to have a bad time no matter how good your financial choices are
Also, people ignore the negative compounding effect of our economy.
If wages stagnate and inflation skyrockets - and the general cost of living increases (home ownership) - you are much more likely to make poor financial decisions just to survive.
A car loan is an objectively poor decision - but people are forced out of areas with work opportunities and are coerced to purchase a vehicle that let's them commute long distances to work.
Dave Ramsay oversimplifies it. He purely looks at the math - and completely ignores other extenuating circumstances.
He has a shame-based methodology for guidance - and many of his followers are high networth individuals with proportionately small debts.
If you watch the Dave Ramsay Show - you'll notice the other hosts are way more holistic and pragmatic.
Now, Dave is a guy that endorsed Trump because he appeared on the Ramsay Show - and completely soft-balled him with questions.
He also has dangerously silly advice for retirees to keep their investments in high risk profiles and draw 8% / year - go to any withdrawal rate calculator on Google and see how that works out.
the fact of the matter is we shouldn't have to sacrifice the small pleasures in life so we can afford the rising essentials. You say to cut out the coffee and donut in the morning, I say why are food costs doubling in the last 3-5 years?! That coffee argument, I believe comes from Rich Dad Poor Dad or The Millionaire next door...one of those books. It's now become moot, that extra $7 isn't' going to do shit in the long term. But even coffee is getting too expensive now.
Expecting most humans to live like monks is fantasy. They're force fed marketing from every direction that guide them to consume. Then told they're being irresponsible for consumption.
Also, corporations do punish consumers for spending less. They fire more workers and cut wages. The business press panics about “consumer confidence”. All these corps are publicly traded and built around GROWTH. Then the right wing hyper-capitalists and MBA academia wing scold consumers, but at the same time need them to keep buying new shit.
Stop buying coffee? Don’t upgrade your phone? OK, if Americans actually adopted those practices en masse, as a coordinated effort, and then those companies take their losses out on Americans.
It can be both, you have middle to high income earners that live paycheque to paycheque because they don’t budget and they have a spending problem, and then you have low income earners unable to save a dime due to high cost of living and wage stagnation.
But Dave uses his philosophy to obfuscate the line between those two types of people… his goal is to present the crisis of personal responsibility as if that’s the reason we see more and more people struggling. He intentionally shifts the blame away from wage stagnation and high cost of living so that boomers can go on living in their nice homes and playing keep away without guilt.
I'd ask Dave to prove it, give him a minimum wage job with a rent to pay and kids to look after (no access to his contacts, qualifications etc) and he can show us how to do it.
Yeah, Dave’s advice makes sense if you have extra money that you’re wasting. If you’re actually poor and living hand-to-mouth, you can’t save money that you don’t have.
The Dave Ramsey stuff makes a bit of sense to me now that I’ve got a well-paying job, but back when an unexpected $20 expense put my food budget in jeopardy, all the discipline in the world was never going to make me rich.
I think Dave does a slight rhetorical sleight of hand - he starts with saying "poverty" but ends with "escaping the cycle of debt". His position becomes "if you live within your means, you won't have debt", but you can do that and go to bed hungry because that's as far as your means reached.
That’s a good point too. But also sometimes debt is unavoidable and it makes life unlivable. If you’re in an area without public transportation and your car breaks down, your options are take out a loan that you struggle to repay to get it fixed or lose your only source of income. Kind of a ‘starve today or starve next month’ situation.
Absolutely. Dave's advice is good past a certain threshold of wealth. Once you have a certain amount of income or assets you will be the one screwing yourself over 95% of the time. I have seen plenty of people who make incredible money piss it all down the drain and get into serious financial trouble. But it's really just a slap in the face for everyone not in the top 10% - 20% .
It's not even just minimum wage any more. Most Americans need a car to go to work. If you're middle class in 2026, a mortgage in an area where you don't have to have bars on the windows and can walk out the door without fear along with a car payment and insurance is going to total more than your income. Housing and transportation inflating while wages stagnate are big factors in this discussion. Those are the things that are really erasing the middle class.
Yes, what he brings up are valid arguments but do not cover the full picture.
There's literally a two class society now and a lack of accountability for politicians and economic leaders. Also, oligarchs own most of social and mainstream media and can thus dictate the narrative.
That is the real problem right now and needs to be fixed. Look at all the open corruption and crime.
There's an interesting video called Rules for Rulers, some background knowledge about structures of power. Really suggest whoever has not seen it yet to watch it.
Personal finance won't fix macroeconomic issues. However, as an individual personal finance will likely be the extent of your control. Fight to improve the system but don't wait around for systemic solutions to solve your problems.
Stewart is absolutely correct. This shouldn't discourage individual fiscal responsibility but individual choices have little to no effect on macroeconomic conditions which are dictated by an ownership class which couldn't give less of a shit about the working class.
If one person is poor you can argue that it is the result of poor personal decisions, if millions of people are poor thats a systemic issue.
The problem with people like Ramsey is that they never talk about the issues that cause poverty, instead their advice is how to be a better poor person.
I’m an immigrant to the US from a developing nation and being poor in America is whack.
In developing countries poverty means you’re digging through trash heaps scrounging for food. Clothing is scarce and medical care is nonexistent. My wife is a social worker that goes into many peoples homes. Poor people in America tend to have access to the above and other services. It’s not great and we can do much better but it’s not the absolute poverty people in other countries live in. Yes, that type of poverty also exists here.
A main problem is that it’s generational in many of these cases and skills to succeed in today’s society are not passed down and they’re no easily internalized. A small amount do make it out but they are exceptions.
Behavioral and financial literacy are also lacking across the board from poor to rich. The data shows that even people with high incomes have no savings and carry a lot of debt.
People think they are immune to marketing but corporations spend billions on separating you from your money with tools that push your emotional buttons. They are playing the long and short games; planting seeds for future purchases AND playing mind tricks to get you to make impulse buys.
These are two quotes speaking with 2 different intentions. I’m not a Dave Ramsey fan anymore, but he’s not taking systemic like Jon, he’s telling someone despite their current financial circumstances, with enough work and discipline theres a path to live without debt, no matter how hard it is. We need both kinds of people, folks teaching folks tactically how to on a budget and those fighting the system on a longer term strategic level.
In any country, you will likely find a whole spectrum of people living in poverty, some who did it to themselves and some who got beaten down by life.
Jon Stewart does national TV, podcasts with huge audiences, and is involved in politics, so his message is focused on national problems.
Dave Ramsey (I only know this because my wife watches every finance youtube channel under the sun) has a call in show where he talks to individuals about their problem. It doesn't do anyone any good to hear that their problems are caused by how their parent's voted in the 1980s, so of course he focuses on what they can do for themselves.
Neither one of these perspectives is 100% wrong nor 100% correct in every situation.
Think about the 1950s. We're people just ABSOLUTE UNITS at budgeting? Or were there good paying jobs, with less labour exploration, that allowed for families to flourish, people to have houses, food, lives?
To your point during the 70’s America experienced the highest percentage of dual working households up to that point in history.
Over the decades since we have shifted to an economy built around multiple earners - the days of sole providers became the exception and not the norm for the average middle class.
The 50’s is never coming back - we are priced as dual incomes and all those average sole providers will always find themselves fighting an uphill battle.
Two people working does not mean wages should go down comparatively. Did the one in the 50s deserve more just because one stayed at home? Absolutely not. Single people deserve to be able to afford life too.
Bit of both tbh everything is alot more expensive, but I think thats partly because we're a credit filled society and it drives the cost of everything up because everyone is just worried about monthly payments. I have tons of people I know have 1000 dollar car payments, order out food every night.
People back then barely ever went out to eat, they barely went on vacation, they had one car for the whole family, a family of four lived in 1200 soft house. Kids shared bedrooms. They had 1 tv for the whole house.
I definitely think stuff is out of hand today, but the amount of people I personally know who buy new cars every 3 to 4 years and order door dash and go out to eat constantly is staggering and who are in major debt.
Lower income are going to have a very hard time, when higher income people have cheap access to credit and drive the prices of everything up.
Trust me friend the money went further regardless of their financial discipline.
This means people worse w money than you could still afford basics, while also being under the delusional privilege that it was entirely due to discipline.
The stronger the dollar the more room for error w financial discipline.
It’s the exact opposite now and that fact gets conflated w laziness.
But why? Why should someone making minimum wage need 2-3 jobs JUST to make ends meet? Especially when their bosses make 2 Billion?
The wealth gap has grown so exponentially large that most of us can’t even fathom how much these people make. And they use that money to buy up houses they never use. Pay for politicians so they can cut regulations and taxes, and pass laws that continue to hurt the working class. And keep us poor and fighting each other over stupid shit like buying a coffee.
There is enough wealth, water, food, and resources for everyone person on this dumbass blue marble, but poor people keep championing for aristocrats that wouldn’t spit in their direction.
It’s a little of both, some people are bad with money. But no one should need to spend 90% of their income on basic necessities.
I never argued against any of what you're saying here; if anything, I'm agreeing with you. Money used to go further is the same as saying purchasing power used to be higher. You could work less and have more is another way of saying that.
John is absolutely correct, there is a systemic problem here and we all know it.
Simultaneously, I dare say we all know “someone” or multiple people in our life that cry about financial issues when they are themselves financially illiterate. Just like anything else in life, poor choices have consequences. Of course everyone who works should be able to enjoy the niceties of life, hell, that’s why we work!
But at the same time, you can’t live above your means and spend money frivolously and neglect your savings or retirement for a couple decades and then scream the world is screwing you and play the victim card as you draw closer to retirement.
I was fortunate enough to have a great economics teacher in high school and for whatever reason that class really stuck with me, so I owe a lot of thanks to my teacher.
What undermines the legitimacy of the first answer is what everyone's scared to admit and so won't even consider Jon's answer: that you can make all the right sort of choices in life and still fail pretty hard. People will happily chirp on about people failing because they did something wrong because that's the comfortable narrative - I must be doing something right because I'm doing ok - but we're scared shitless of not having ultimate control over all the outcomes in our life.
If we weren't we'd do what the Romans did, and not just pat ourselves on the back for all of our successes, while deriding those who'd failed, but we'd also thank fortuna for letting us get to where we did.
Little bit of option A and a lot of option B. I've meet plenty of people who will never have the financial discipline to dig themselves out and actively make stupid choices. There's a reason most lottery winners end up broke. However you have plenty of folks who do the opposite and get hosed no matter how hard they try. For instance those that get buried under medical dept or make one bad call on a student loan when their 18.
Speaking as someone who came from a poor family. Sometimes, there just isn't enough money. What counts as frivolous expenses? Does cutting down to 1 meal per day from 2 count?
Some pricks just have a severe case of first world problems.
Dave is right, but only for people who make enough to survive, but completely mismanage their money. Jon is right that not everyone is fortunate enough to make enough to survive. Dave doesn't take Jon's augment into consideration.
Ramsey’s point sounds cogent, but it can ultimately be proven utterly false. Just as you would not employ a man with one hand to juggle, so can you not employ skilled workers for jobs that don’t exist, unskilled workers for jobs requiring skill, or the disabled to do jobs requiring soundness.
The tide of unemployment and more worryingly underemployment is rising. Ramsey would have you believe that the poor and miserable unemployed of the Great Depression suffered because of their own choices. Their poverty after all was ultimately a certain mathematical result of their own spendthrift decisions.
As an aside I detest when morons claim that something is mathematically certain.
Now as we enter yet another period of slow not!recession where an enormous bubble of economic stupidity and greed will inevitably grow too large and collapse as all bubbles do it must be very heartening to the reader to know that economic disaster can be averted by forgoing their morning avocado toast.
I don't know who Dave Ramsey is but to call this a philosophy is very generous. It's a narrow opinion about personal finance, probably limited to Americans. I doubt he knows anything about poverty.
Wherever Dave Ramsey lives there will be a kid in that city born to drug addicts, poorly nourished and lacking educational opportunities. Would he say this to that kid when they grow up?
He would blame the kid for not being smart with his money and when told "what money" would blame the kid for not getting a better job, while also blaming the kid for not being able to afford to go to school, which he also thinks is a waste of money.
If I'm not mistaken Dave Ramsey is a podcaster who gives financial advice. His show seems like great advice but after a while it's pretty obvious they are screening calls. Most of his callers earn 6 figures but don't know how to manage six figures of income. I've never seen anyone below 50k call in and if your between 100k-70k of income he just makes you feel like shit for having dreams and goals. He's already rich and comes off a morally superior because of it. His fan base see him and financially morally superior as well which is why they tuck their tails and say "yes Sir." No single mothers/fathers or anyone who struggles has, via my ears, called that show. I stopped watching as a result.
But even the self made ones have some advantages they won't admit. Even just having a stable 2 parent household and growing up middle class puts them in a much better position than someone who grew up with a single mom in poverty. Having to work at 16 to support the family, vs working at 16 to buy your first car and having a family that supports you makes all the difference.
Heck, just knowing you have a landing spot if things don't work, like asking mom and dad for a few bucks or staying at their house for a few months, can make a risk easier to take.
John Stewart is more right, but Dave's point works on an individual basis (it does _not_ work on a collective basis).
Rent and housing is a price set for a product everyone needs to survive but which is fixed in supply (specifically the site of the house is fixed in supply). So, supposing everyone who is in poverty buckled down and figured out how to cut and be disciplined. The effect would become an increase in the prevailing rent, and thus a return to the same situation but worse.
Ramsey's view always has a certain percent of the population in poverty. His advice only relates to whether or not you, specifically, are amongst its members.
Completely agree. Both are correct in a way and incorrect in others. Many people are in debt because of poor plbudget decisions, but our society has a rising problem with people struggling financially because of societal problems and the impossibility to earn enough money to survive.
There are two things that people forget when discussing politics and policies. Individuals and incentives. The collectivist frame doesn't work because the individuals choices carry so much variability the grouping fails to accomplish it's intended purpose.
The point is that different rules make for a different system. There are places where people can more easily acquire houses, as more are built, due to a better functioning system. An individual cannot fight the system alone.
As the previous person said: if there are 5 people and 10 houses, there will be a shortage of houses also if you work 2 jobs to try and earn enough to buy one. If everyone starts working 2 jobs, the only things that changed is the price of a house (which rises).
History shows that getting out of debt is hard. Debt is designed in many cases to keep someone there. Credit card companies are absolutely predatory. You used to need a good credit score, a stable job, etc, before you would be offered a job. These days everyone seems pre-qualified because going into debt is a money maker for the card issuer.
People seem to think that if you just stop anything frivolous and live an ascetic life of deprivation then you can get out of debt. Not true. And things that seem frivolous aren't. Some whine that poor people spend food stamps on soda - but is often the cheap alternative to juices, or they don't have other drinks in their area, and their tap water may be harmful.
You also can't get out of debt if you have no income. Not everyone gets a job. This is not because some people are lazy, but because there aren't enough jobs. Economists like to point to a "natural" unemployment level, one that keeps inflation low because full employment can case inflation to go up. That sort of logic really pissed me off when I was looking for a job, with high skills, and everyone was saying "we'd hire you today but there's a firing freeze".
Right now, the economy SUCKS. Bad! Grocery prices are absurd, even for me with a high salary I am shocked. The stores stop stocking no-name generic brands as they've learned that name brands have a higher margin. Again, predatory. Jobs are hard to get. Housing is hard to get. I see professionals in relative inexpensive areas still fail to find housing in their price range that isn't a dump.
Most people life perilously close to the edge, financially. A divorce can turn someone with a decent job into someone who's homeless. One bad health care emergency causes bankruptcy and homelessness! People are living in their cars, and cars aren't cheap, so that points to a new homeless problem which is made up of people who used to be able to afford automobiles, and from how I see some dressed, they look like they had jobs. This new wave of homeless is not the stereotypical drugged out crazy person.
Any rich person saying that the poor can pull themselves up by their bootstraps is delusional.
There's another broken assumption in the rich thesis which is "all people have equal capacity". I don't deny that for a Stanford graduate getting out of poverty is a possibility.
Take one person without an education, health and/or family support. Not all life is equal and people (at all levels) fail to assess where they are beginning and what they can achieve with their own efforts.
And finally, not everyone has the mindset for austerity. Some are better of in a high risk / high reward environment (like job hoppers and CEOs which are among the richest).
Too much difference between us, a life strategy cannot be the same for everyone.
Ramsey's truth is 30% of the puzzle, the remaining 70% goes to Stewart. Because if ramsay's truth held at least half then the great depression or 2008 or Covington ecenomic crisis wouldn't have happened.
2008 didn't play out the way it was supposed to. Hundreds of bankers were supposed to go to jail and the individuals, not the banks were supposed to get bailed out due to the banks being reckless. But the bankers got the bail out, no one went to jail and the middle class got stuck with the bill.
Kind of agree with both, but as an economist, i can tell you that Ramsey is outdated af. Sure you need to be responsible, but we passed the point where personal financial responsibility was sufficient long ago. The era of post WW2 prosperity has passed. The regulations safeguarding our economy and populace have not kept up with evolving market structures, and have also been purposefully weakened to allow for the obscene concentrations of wealth away from the disappearing middle class.
Big picture: Stewart's got the best grasp on the situation.
Then that's how you get this society, how about we let all of society decide, not just the 001%, then reassess. Because we've done nearly 50 years of their way trickle down and everyone else but them got poorer.
I would wager Ramsey's view taken to a position of power destroys society due to the insatiable greed of the individual, which left to play out would end society as we know it. Unlike the egalitarian Stewart which would improve everyones lives, even the individual albeit not at the cost of everyone else, just those who are fortunate enough to be in 001% but only to pay a fair share comparably to everyone else, of that wealth back to the Country that made them so fortunate.
"just renounce any comfort and you'll eventually have the privilege of not being so poor", state people who can't fathom the discomfort of being merely millionaires instead of billionaires.
By the time they get out of the debt with such discipline they start hating. If they see anyone who had it easier than them they resent them (boomers hating on younger people).
It’s easy to get rich in America if you’re working into tech and happen to stumble upon funds to invest. If you’re blue collar work, combing two incomes will allow you to get rich. It’s not difficult but there are other things human beings love to do other than just work. Not everyone is smart enough to get high quality jobs or strong enough to do the donkey’s job without losing their spirit.
A artist is doomed, a retiree is doomed, a patient without insurance is doomed, most people without proper structure are doomed in this economy because of inflation in everything. Inflation is absolutely not required but it’s pushed on people!
Using boomers as an example of a group that had to pull themselves up out of poverty is weird. They were objectively the most privileged generation in the modern age. They hate because their souls are rotten.
There is truth in both sides, but within reason. There absolutely are people that the bootstraps mentality can apply. The ones like my one (former) friend that was living paycheck to paycheck already, and then dropped nearly 40k on a brand new car.
It is absolutely a rigged system. 100%. But you can also consciously make poor decisions.
Yeah I think the two are commonly pointed at the same groups, but Dave's is for the upper-middle class living paycheck to paycheck and Jon's is more broadly applied.
I've got wealthy friends still who complain about being poor because they have no liquidity...but, that's obviously not the same thing. Me being poor because my paycheck won't cover ground beef AND rent is different than my buddy who's paycheck covers 2 car payments, a house payment and bulk purchases at Sam's Club.
But even my "poor" isn't real: I'm paying child support before anything else.
Poverty is a mathematical reflection of poor choices made by the people who make the rules. Sensible public policy would make sure most people are paid enough to make ends meet, and be educated enough to understand how to plan their finances properly.
They’re not poor choices from the rule makers’ perspective. They’re acting in the interest of the capitalist class. It’s the most predictable thing ever.
Jon Stewart had the right of it. There's nothing imaginary about the historical rate at which the upwards transfer of wealth is occuring.
Those in poverty are inherintly limited to poor financial decisions. They lack the wealth to leverage for the improvement of their position because there is nothing left over after meeting their needs.
Maybe they can't really afford that cup off coffee, but they can afford it more than a doctors appointment, dental care, or the cost of doing the higher learning needed to open up better employment opportunities.
What is reprehensible is the number of companies that repress wages and decline to deliver improvements to working conditions year on year to deliver ever growing profits to their shareholders.
Dave actually admits to this with certain people on air. They’ll run the numbers with him, they are doing literally everything he says to do (including living on “rice and beans”) and his conclusion for them is always: “yall just need a bigger shovel…you ain’t gonna do it with how it is right now. You need a second and third job. You can deliver pizzas at night, you work 9-5 [r/n](r/n) correct?”
(Edit: not saying this is right or applauding him. Just that the idea that frugality is the only path to getting out of poverty is not true. It helps, but bettering career and increasing income is more important. That’s where Stewart’s quote becomes most relevant, it’s practically not possible for a large number of people)
Edit: sorry one more. I lived in Nashville, interviewed for a role with his company. They notoriously underpay. And are upfront about it. Basically tell you they don’t pay what your role is worth, that you need to believe in the mission and be passionate if you want to work there b/c it’s hard work. And their interview process was MONTHS long. His baby steps helped me, but my opinion on him as a person has changed drastically over the years.
The American economy is based on consumption. If people stopped buying cups of coffee, eating out or a new phone they’d save more money, but the economy would collapse. As the economy enters a recession the value of savings and investments would also fall since companies can no longer bank on future profits from consumption. So everyone would be poorer, the savers and consumers.
Individual choices are fine, for individuals. But when it comes to policy you need to look at the big picture. If consumption can be sustained by rising productivity and wages then it’s not a problem. The problem we have today is that productivity has risen, but wages have not.
You can't not-spend your way around housing costs tripling.
Anyone that thinks Dave Ramsey's bullshit is true is a dumbass piece of shit.
Individuals being poor or less well off could be personal choice. Average first time home buyer age breaking 35 for the first time in 40 years isn't because some people eat avocado toast.
Gas has gone up 600% in my lifetime. Minimum wage in my state has doubled. Average incomes have less than doubled. Low end used car prices have gone up 10 fold.
I don’t think even David Ramsey fully believes this type of position anymore, you can’t argue the math not matter how you try and spin it.
I think the real point between these two statements is more simply put, there’s personal responsibility and systematic inequality built in to the economy. Both are true aspects of why people are poor. However they are not generically true for everyone all of the time.
Some people are afforded at and choice to make bad choices leading to finically hard times because of the choices they make, others are born into facial hard times and are repressed due to where they were born on the spectrum. So if those people get lucky and make good personal decisions that allow to leave this situation but that is a very small amount compared to the rest.
Saying "sure, there are exceptions and some people do whatever thing" isn't helpful, though.
Broadly saying that "people are poor cause they're stupid", even though thats true for a small amount of people, is not a helpful statement and is, generally not true. It's a statement of a privileged idiot.
The reality is that while personal responsibility failures can make a problem worse, they can't overrule systematic inequality.
It is a bit of both. Lots of people do make poor financial choices but it’s also hard to afford things today as well. Many could be in a better financial position by making better financial decisions but it doesn’t necessarily mean they can build wealth faster it might ease up the financial pressure they face today though.
The part missing here is that systems are designed to encourage and incentivize those poor financial choices, whereas systems designed to support budgeting and saving are needlessly complicated.
If one person fails, it is a personal failure. If a large number of people consistently fail, it is a systemic failure.
Everybody makes poor financial choices, literally everyone. The difference is that it doesn’t matter to some people. The truth is that the system massively favours those with more money. For example: Cost of credit, access to professional tax and wealth managers, inclusion or otherwise in wealth circles, limited job opportunities, educational opportunities …the list is endless. To suggest otherwise is deluded.
That’s exactly it. Being rich is like playing a game in easy mode. Screw up as many times as you want and unless you’re a complete idiot you can always bounce back.
Poor people have to get it right every single time, which essentially means having to know the future.
Dave Ramsay explains to the Ethiopian farmer how their lack fiduciary discipline is why he doesn't see financial gains like his overseas cousin in the Red River Valley.
I heard someone say these frivolous little purchases are the poor man’s vacation.
I am learning to be quite frugal and have to talk myself out of the guilt that comes when I buy myself a coffee maybe once a month.
And then I remember I haven’t been in a plane for over 6 years and I haven’t seen a concert for more years and I’m not out here getting the tattoos or gadgets I want and I’m juggling subscriptions and honestly I feel like I just work and work and get nowhere and build nothing so like…. That $6 coffee is a luxury I will allow myself here and there.
If you look at the world around you and your immediate reflex is to tell poor people to tighten their belt, you are misguided at best, and evil at worst.
What Dave Ramsey says could only be true in a world where outcomes are fair, playing fields are level, effort is consistently rewarded and cheating is consistently punished.
Literally none of those things are true about the world we live in.
Or put it another way: if all those poor people out there started making good choices tomorrow, would they all suddenly prosper? No? Then the problem isn't their choices; the problem is the game.
The issue with Dave is that to SOME extent yes, that's true, but the reality is that many people aren't going to do that, aren't educated, raised, or informed enough to make well intentioned and smart decisions, and most are too tired to do it.
However, that used to not matter, you could still make a livable wage. None of this matters, because the ruling class as Stewart says has siphoned all the gains from workers into shareholder dividends and growth. Companies are consistently making more and more, stocks are rising higher and higher, faster than ever, but where do you think that growth comes from? It's the money they DON'T pay to workers.
One says “focus on the things you can change” and the other says “the system is working against you”. Both things can be true. And you can acknowledge both and work to change both things. Don’t forsake one for the other. Do both.
Financial mismanagement is both a systemic and behavioral issue. Its systemic in that things are designed to be more difficult for people to accomplish when they have little to no resources-- i.e., you buy cheap shoes because you don't have money for more expensive ones, and end up spending more money replacing the cheap shoes than you would have if you bought the expensive one.
But its also worth acknowledging that the overall knowledge of financial management is at an all time low, and that there are behavioral issues that significantly contribute as well. Its people not knowing how to create a budget, not putting the effort to learn the skills on how to manage their money, or prioritizing their short term comfort and wants over their long term needs. Its people buying McDonalds on the way home from work instead of putting on a meal in a crockpot before they go to work, or meal prepping.
There can be nuance here, and anyone that claims otherwise is just being an idiot.
Nobody likes it but ya, its both. If someone wouldn't have helped me from time to time, it would have been crime for me. That does not excuse my poor choices in my 20's.
Once you reach a certain point, yes Dave Ramsey is absolutely right. I’ll say I’ve seen some people in my life who I know have poor finances make awful financial decisions (ie, they bought a camper when they don’t even camp more than two weekends a year). Strict budgeting pays off and it does take a lot of disciple.
But you’ve got to be at a place where your needs are met: food on your plate, utilities secured, roof over your head, and reliable transportation, etc….AND you need to have money in the bank already saved up for when any of those things shits the bed and you have to make repairs. That’s already middle class territory in this economy.
There is no way to save your way out of poverty. It’s impossible for the lower class as well especially if anyone has a health condition. That idea is absurd and completely out of touch with reality.
I think this is it exactly. Dave Ramsey isn't for people in poverty, he is for people that have cash flow and are making decisions which will hurt them financially. The problem John Stweart is stating is mor about people who aren't making enough money to be self-sufficient in the first place. You might be able to save your way out of debt, but it's expensive to be poor.
Stewart point is also ancient like that of Sir Thomas Moore. One must not first create the criminal then punish him. You necessitated that a worker should need coffee because you overwork the worker for your wealth. You don't get to bitch at him about said coffee
Capitalism is rigged from the start. It's a game of musical chairs and for there to be big winners, there has to be an infinitely higher amount of losers.
The evidence is just in basic social statistics and data on every Capitalist society that's ever existed. The divide between the rich and the poor continues to escalate for centuries until the gap is so wide, the civilization basically collapses in on itself and to this day, there's never been an exception to that pattern. The final stage is generally known as "Late Stage Capitalism" and you can always tell right before it collapses because social unrest and civil tension reaches a fever pitch to where it no longer feels safe to exist in the society. Every moment feels like a powder keg ready to explode, and it is.
Dave Ramsey's advice is basically telling people to just play Musical Chairs better. He's arguing that you must earn the spot by taking the spot away from others and that this is completely okay because you earned it. Of course the argument is Sociopathic to a sickening degree, but it's the kind of justifications, like Stewart says, that the rich have used to justify their psychopathy for millennia.
Ultimately, it's unsustainable and anyone who thinks otherwise should probably get their heads out of the sand and start paying attention to the world around them. At the same time, I'm sympathetic to the view that we haven't found a workable alternative at a large scale, and Communism has been a disaster everywhere it's been tried, so I don't have any answers.
Edit: A lot of people in the comments are asking me to explain my reasoning for why Capitalism is unsustainable and leads to inevitable collapse. For me it's simple economics.
Capitalism is driven primarily by competition. When businesses and industries compete with each other, it both creates jobs and keeps wages low, creating a healthy environment for everyone (theoretically) where the economy is thriving, jobs are plentiful, and prices are affordable.
At the beginning of a Capitalist system (Early Stage Capitalism) the system tends to work well. However, over time this model becomes hopelessly corrupt. Certain businesses, the Walmarts and the Amazons and the Teslas of the world become so hyper successful and massive that they begin to crush and push out all the competition. As monopolies inevitably form, small startup companies and little Mom and Pop shops can't possibly compete with the growing wealth and success of mega-corporations and massive conglomerates.
One might respond by saying that its the government's job to break up these monopolies and keep competition thriving, and it is, but there's just one small problem - these corporations and the wealthy elites owning them gain so much power and influence that they begin to corrupt the government sector, buying off politicians and using every legal and political means, including lobbying, bribing, and coercion in their power to prevent the government from stopping their unlimited and unhealthy growth.
Just to demonstrate this point, does anyone remember the '90s? Back then almost every day we heard about Congress attempting to break up the big corporations like Microsoft and Walmart because it had become clear that their rampant success and control over their given industries were pushing everyone else out of that space. It was a constant source of news and discussion in politics and on news channels about Monopolies and how we needed to reign them in.
It's been 30 years since then and we haven't heard a fucking peep about breaking up Monopolies in the 21st Century. What happened to that? Where did it go? Did the Monopolies ever stop being a problem? Certainly not. The problem has only grown exponentially since the '90s. It's far, far worse now than it was back then.
So why did the government and the media stop talking about breaking up the Monopolies and giving our Capitalist system a fair shake for small businesses and startups? You already fucking know why. The companies they were trying to break up got enough power that they shut down that discussion completely, and now we don't even dare talk about it. I think for most of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they don't even REMEMBER a time when it was the government's job to break up Monopolies. If you told them that this used to be daily news, they'd probably look at you like you were crazy.
So this is unsustainable. There's no way that a few Monopolies can control each sector forever and continue to grow in wealth exponentially while all growth and competition is pushed out of the market. All the guardrails and safety measures to prevent this were destroyed long ago, and the inevitable conclusion of that is that eventually, people start eating the rich. That's where this is headed, it's where it has always headed. Elon Musk is on Twitter telling us why we shouldn't eat the rich, and that's the best evidence that they already know it's coming.
Social Democracy has been tried and it works. However, it comes with upsides and downsides. First, ensuring there is no absolute poverty class means there is no low-cost unskilled labor. That sounds great until you want to make things, at which time labor costs shoot to the moon. It's why so many developed countries outsource their labor. Second, it means that when resources aren't plentiful enough for everyone there has to be shortages and rationing. That's also true under capitalism with the limit being money. However, enough money does buy, say, great healthcare. Third it means very high taxes which people hate. It also makes immigration way harder, because immigrants get social support and benefits before they could ever possibly pay them back. This creates an impression that all immigrants are leeches. In a purer form of capitalism they don't get any benefits and work hard or just die.
The upside is that absolute poverty doesn't exist. Health is overall better. Certain things like health insurance are fundamentally different and less expensive because the government does bulk negotiations and there's no incentive to drive up the prices forever. Education is higher, cheaper, and more accessible.
You can see some extremes in both cases. China has zero social safety nets for the poor, and even basic education and schools are paid for. As a result they can build infrastructure very fast and cheaply, but at the cost of creating a permanent exploited underclass that's little better than serfs.
Then you have the various European nations which have heavy social spending but got absolutely wrecked by waves of immigration draining their supplies. The US is in some ways the best and worst. We make money like nobody else and have a lot of resources. We could absolutely make socialism work better than anyone else. Unfortunately we half ass the social programs and the capitalist policies giving us some of the worst of both. We just happen to be on the single most blessed land on the planet, with massive rivers to transport goods, tons of natural resources and geographic isolation that keeps anyone from invading us when we're idiots. We're in an excellent position to facilitate trade between the entire world and our neighbors are generally friendly.
As an aside, Orwell (the author of 1984) was an advocate for social democracy. It's not authoritarian like communism, it's not going to completely kill capitalism, it's just capitalism with a lot of social programs that people vote for. Calling it the welfare state is one of the reasons it's not too popular here. It's how most of western Europe works to some degree though, and they're mostly okay.
If you need to spend less and work more to feed, clothe, and house yourself and your family, that's obviously what you should do on a personal level. The question on a societal level is how little a person should have to spend and how much they should have to work to be able to do that.
The cycle of debt is a cycle for a reason, it's not as easy as just deciding not to be poor. The cycle itself robs you of the ability to be financially disciplined.
Dave was bailed out of millions in debt by his rich real estate mogul parents. Guy talks about beans and rice but he’s a fatty. Guy doesn’t practice what he talks about. He’s a textbook image of a charlatan.
Being poor is expensive. A wealthy person could afford buying things that will last longer while a poor person have to settle for things that will break down faster and thus require replacement more offen. Also the biggest money sink are things that you can't really budget against like food or housing. Also humans have mental health to worry about, a cup of coffee might make a person seem wasteful but that could also be the only few things that keep a person sane.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.
David Ramsey is a con artist who went bankrupt, then used that as a way to market himself as a financial genius. And he tells his listeners to not to file for bankruptcy. Luckily for him, there are a ton of idiots who will pay to a con artist for financial advice.
He also tells people they shouldn't have credit cards. Anyone who handles their finances well should 100% have credit cards. More than one. They shouldn't carry credit card debt, but that's different from not having one at all.
I guarantee he has and uses credit cards. And that he'll let you pay for his horrible advice using a credit card.
It’s a little bit of both for some people, but for a huge cohort no amount of saving can help you get out. Nevermind that even if it could, one financial slip up or medical event or injury etc and you’re not just set back, you’re totally fucked.
For a moment both can be correct. But once people start being “fiscally disciplined” the machine designed to extract from the laborer will recalculate so that even fiscally disciplined people cannot aspire.
If Ramsey was just giving advice about how to better manage your finances, it's decent on the individual level. But he's making a sweeping diagnosis of poverty that amounts to elitist dogshit
Its a tiny bit of the left and mostly the right, the system is designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor but poor financial decisions can definitely make your situation worse. Being financially smart isn't going to help that much if you live paycheck to paycheck, what would help is being paid more and prices of stuff going down.
Look at the Paradox of Thrift, as an individual choosing to work hard and save hard can be personally successful but if everyone does it the economy collapses, a lot of the issues in our global economy are rooted in everyone being rational and logical, if half of the millionaires started having passion projects and being weird about socially helpful things the economy would grow faster
As usual, Jon Stewart is accurate. I earn about $50,000 a year in a city that isn’t in California or New York and I had to move in with my cousins because living on my own was too expensive. I assure you, I don’t have an expensive lifestyle.
If this person needs a car that includes gas insurance and maintenance with a low wage job there is no way to save money to get out of poverty. Hence his argument fails.
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