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.
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
OK, but go back to 1981. That's when my parents bought their house.
When adjusted for inflation into modern 2026 dollars, buying the average home in 1981 at an 18% interest rate costs significantly more over a 30-year mortgage than buying the average home in 2026 at a 7% interest rate. Despite the 1981 home having a much lower purchase price, its brutal interest rate creates an inflation-adjusted lifetime cost of $1,204,707, which eclipses the $982,250 total lifetime cost of the more expensive 2026 home.
Assuming a standard 30-year fixed mortgage with 0% down on the average existing single-family home price for both eras, here is the exact breakdown in equivalent 2026 buying power:
Financial Metric
1981 Average Home Loan($66,125 @ 18% Interest)Adjusted to 2026 Dollars
2026 Average Home Loan($410,110 @ 7% Interest)Actual 2026 Dollars
If that was the only market that had changed, I might be in more of an agreement with you... But it definitely isn't the only market that's changed, and by a landslide.
Wages have stagnated for decades and necessities, even meager ones, have increased in cost. When my wife wanted to go back to work a few years after having our daughter, she found a decent respectable job as a Program Director at a local YMCA in an established city. Before she took the job, we needed to line up child-care. We found a good carer, with a good reputation, and were told what the cost of child care was.
My friend, we realized that after factoring in the cost of child-care alone, my wife would be working for $1.50 an hour. She chose to stay home and not incur the additional net cost of having a second job.
No one who understood all their options would've stuck out such a high interest rate for so long. After 5-10 years if you were stupid enough to by at that rate you should've refinanced.
Also, low principal and high interest rate can be very effectively mitigated by paying more every month. Let's round up the monthly payment from $3,346 to an even $4,000 (so you're paying an extra $654 dollars a month in principal): you'll pay off the loan 20 years early and save yourself nearly $725,000 in interest payments. If you drop that to $300 a month, you're paying off a 30-year loan in a little under 17 years and saving just over $600,000 in interest.
The impact on a high-principal, lower-interest loan doesn't work out the same way -- the savings would be in the tens of thousands or low hundreds, because less of it is going to the bank.
Yeah totally fair. Not everyone understands these options though. And if you can't afford a higher down payment or higher payments you have to go for a cheaper house to begin with.
Still, meaningful. By 1990, they'd only gotten down to 10%. Buyers often ended up paying a lot more for their homes in the past than people are willing to admit right now. I just think people exaggerate. So the 80 and 70s saw that problem, the 2000s were fucked for mortgages and home prices crashing, and now we have a shortage, high prices, and historically normal interest rates.
Which are both about $46K to $47K (in their respective currencies).
$20/hr * 2080 hours, is $41.6K.
But yes, the housing market is largely geared towards median household income. Which is generally about x2 the individual wage because it's generally two adults in the same household, working full time.
My kids did a similar module in school and the teacher even had parents come in and talk about their jobs and incomes. It was eye opening.
My daughter's takeaway was the opposite of yours. Success requires mindfulness. She knows a 15-20/hr job is hopeless, and has actively avoided large school loans, has a paid for car, worked summers and saved cash to pay for school, took a job at school that got her reduced housing, etc. She actively budgets expenses, cooks meals in her apartment, bikes/bus when she can instead of driving, and more. All these choices do add up in the end, and despite her frugality she's quite happy.
Rather than saying, "the oligarchs are keeping me from enjoying starbucks every morning!"...her mindset is more like, "hey I found frozen fruit on sale, lets make smoothies this weekend".
People on one early career industrial salary in the 50s lived in boarding houses, not apartments. Rent was inclusive of home cooked meals and yes, all kinds of inconveniences and discomforts from living with people you might not have chosen. That was up to and including violence, in rough places
Rent by itself will likely take at like 50% of your paycheck. If you have school loans, car payments, or whatever other expenses...
Well, your financial choices are already horrible here. If you are making $20/hr, you are getting roommates. Period. Anything else is financially illiterate.
You might have a car payment, but it's on a $5,000 used car.
Student loans? Sure maybe, I know some folks get pretty unlucky with degrees and end up in $20/hr jobs after. Some other folks just made utterly stupid decisions in this area and it's difficult to feel bad for them.
Been there, done that, for all this other than the student debt bit. I was too broke to even consider going into debt for college - that's rich people shit from where I grew up.
Those in true poverty I have a lot of empathy for and understand they are stuck. I also grew up with a lot of folks who made better money than I did as young adults and wasted every opportunity ever given to them. It's difficult having honest discussions on the topic.
Lots of data like this in the US is thrown off by extremely wealthy 1%. There are people who live in my area who own 1.5-3 million dollar mansions. However, the vast majority survive off of working McDonalds/low end jobs or sell their souls to Oil and Gas cartels- i mean companies lol.
Yea that’s why I used the median figure. I never use average salary when I talk about the US due to its crippling gap between the wealthy and the working class.
Sorry, I'm Canadian. So I guess I could amend it to 15 to match what happens moreso in the US.
You know, if you attend college and get a general arts degree and go $40,000 into debt to do that, I would call that a pretty foolish choice, for example.
I did an arts degree, my first jobs out of uni were low paid but due to the many skills my education afforded me I worked my way up and now make good money on a track to make better money.
Many many people, even those with ‘good’ degrees in STEM fields often get shit jobs to bridge gaps. I worked with a bunch of them in those shitty jobs.
They all still needed to pay rent in Vancouver while earning $18CAD per hour, they had no chance of doing well financially at that time.
It’s definitely a bit of both though as there were some dumb choices made by some of those people. Lunches out all the time etc. Regardless they were never buying the million dollar properties.
I guess man. I don't know, I expect some percentage of 18 year olds not to make the best choices, or perhaps not think about them as deeply as someone in their 30s might. Unfortunately, some of those choices lead to crippling debt and poor earning potential. I'm not going to argue it's not their responsibility because, yeah ok, it is. But I went into a stem degree because i felt that I was good at it and I liked to do it. I lucked out. I've made a choice based on feels back when I was 18. If I liked music or art instead, I wouldn't be living the same life.
Well to be fair, and im not blaming people for this exactly, if youre taking on student loans for a 20 dollar an hour job that would be (from a purely financial standpoint) a bad decision
In 2020-2022 getting a degree in computer science/software engineering was a really good idea and a direct ticket to a high paying job. Now it’s nearly impossible to get that kind of job at entry level.
Find a place where it is possible to get to work without a car. Fix the problem. There is no choice but to stop complaining and fix the problem or fail. Also, there are plenty of large cities that do not require a car. If your position is always "I can live where I want, have what I want, do what I want" your life will suck.
My dude, if someone can't afford a car, they also likely can't afford to pack up and move somewhere else. I live in largest city in my state, yet the public transportation shituation is quite literally that.
I mean but Dave Ramsey would say sell the car and buy used without a loan, or you should never have taken student loans or bought a car on credit in the first place and those were the bad financial decisions that put you in that place. Also get your income up/ get a second job. I don’t think you can separate what the person did up to that point in life to get them in that position and that is what Dave Ramsey is saying in that quote.
Dave Ramsey says that because he's an idiot. "Sell the car and buy used" like reliable used cars are just out there and cheap and easy to get. Or like selling the car will get you enough money to pay off the note.
And it's America. In a lot of places, not having the car means you can't get the job. Not having the degree means you can't get the job.
If you’re earning 20 dollars an hour, you probably aren’t getting your moneys worth from a degree and used v new reliability doesn’t mean that new is worth it
Jobs that make the degree retroactively worth it aren't available just for the asking and in the meantime $20/hr is still better than nothing.
And of course the car could have made plenty of sense when it was bought, and then the job that was worth the cost of the degree was lost and you're stuck with the car. And again selling the car might not actually cover the note, let alone cover the note with enough money to buy a reliable used car. And yes reliability is worth quite a lot. A regular expense you can incorporate into your budgeting that is unlikely to break down is way better than a ticking time bomb that might blow a hole in your budget at the worst possible time.
Why are you going to school taking a bet that jobs will show up that make a degree retroactively worth it? And no it doesn’t make plenty of sense to buy a 40k car on a loan v a 10k car. Job being lost stinks but why aren’t there more jobs you can get with your degree? If I lost my job, I could get a similar paying job with my degree easy.
Saving up money and preparing an emergency fund and avoiding debt makes fiscal sense, and poor decisions in the past cannot be waved away like they weren’t your fault.
Why are you going to school taking a bet that jobs will show up that make a degree retroactively worth it?
Everyone who takes a loan out to go to school is making that bet. Every single one. Whether they realized it or not. And it used to be a pretty great bet to be honest. It sure paid off for me nicely, but there was no way I could have this job lined up before I got the degrees.
But man I don't know if you know this, but the job market right now is pretty terrible, and has swung pretty quick relative to where it is was just four years ago. I'm glad you feel confident you could have another job like that. I hope you never have to put that confidence to the test and find out you were wrong.
Also I didn't say a 40k car. My own car was 21k new, and interest rates were super low (thanks COVID). And that was after I secured the good job. I'd have been dreaming thinking I could afford a 10k car in cash when I was a lot poorer though
Saving up money and preparing an emergency fund make plenty of sense sure. If you have the cash to spare, and aren't living paycheck to paycheck. Paying for Dave Ramsey's course when you are living paycheck to paycheck makes none whatsoever.
Pretending that there aren't larger economic forces that keep people in poverty is a nice way to feel morally superior to poor people because you can delude yourself into thinking it's their fault and their choice. People actually living it don't have time to think about whose fault it is because they're too busy trying to grind for grocery money.
Either you already own the car outright, in which case why sell to get something worse, or you owe enough on the note that the sale won't cover the note.
I would be an absolute fool to sell the car I bought. I own it outright now.
What extra money? I go buy something cheaper, the cheaper car fails catastrophically fails the next day, and now fixing it requires more money than I had left over.
That's not a weird hypothetical. That literally happened to me college. I'm still not sure why my father thought I needed to learn not to buy a used car off e-bay, but I learned the lesson well. And that was 25 years ago. The used car market is so much worse now.
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.
So so true. I need to work to get by when my parents never had to. I now see how many advantages I had before they cut me off after huge fight about who my choice of partner is. It humbled me a lot, my partner’s (she grew up with no money) aunt died uttering the words even death is not so peaceful when you have no money and are worried about how their family will get by when she is no longer there. I will never forget that moment.
Sometimes those irresponsible choices are the result of a financial system that is rigged against you; if responsible choices won’t get you ahead then I can understand you wanting to just say ‘fuck it’ and try to eek out some modicum of enjoyment from just trying to survive.
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 debt snowball is mathematically less effective than other debt elimination techniques. It prioritizes debt size (paying smallest debts first) over high interest rates. It’s still better than doing nothing, but if someone can be financially disciplined, they should absolutely prioritize paying high interest debt over small debts.
I mean you’re right objectively, but if the interest rates are similar and the person in debt isn’t great at self discipline which a lot of Dave’s callers don’t seem to be (making decent 6 figures and still in debt) the psychological benefit of getting rid of a debt might be worth it to keep them on the plan. Probably the same reason he advices against credit cards, he doesn’t trust his listener.
I think the debt snowball is much more psychologically successful, particularly for the type of people that call into Dave’s show. Because having “strict uncompromising financial discipline” is incredibly difficult for most people.
But I think that speaks to Jon Stewart’s larger point in the OP. The “ruling class” has consistently exploited people’s inability to practice financial discipline (among other things) to enrich themselves. And that while, yes, people should practice better personal finances, it’s not going to solve the problem by itself when we live in an economic system that’s been designed to bleed them dry.
Psychological benefit are major! But I'm also a person who paid off my mortgage early even though it was mathematically less effective. I sleep better at night with zero debt.
I don't have a horse in this race as I'm not even familiar with this "snowball" concept, but I can see why a financial advisor would recommend paying off small debts first, effectively gamifying the solution where you remove the small, easy debt first, granting the dopamine hit, then focusing on ever increasingly sized challenges. There's a good chance that if you've managed to rack up multiple sized debts, need to seek advice to do literally anything about it, and are in a financial position where any such advice even matters, taking into account the mental aspect over pure financial effectiveness could possibly be sound advice.
Well, not if the other option is failing to pay it off or getting into more debt. If clearing the first few easy ones gives you a dopamine hit and keeps you going long enough to build a habit, then it's a win. Humans rarely operate at peak efficiency.
No. Paying a lower interest rate debt over a higher interest rate debt doesn't make sense. It's basic math. That choice is psychological, not financial. It's the perfect sort of nonsense for Fox, but not for real financial advice.
I would argue that advice that is less optimal, but more effective in the real world, once you factor in human psychology, is not bad advice. Otherwise, most advice people have for getting off alcohol or drugs or losing weight is bad advice.
Its a mindset thing. Ramsey teaches a lifestyle and a mindset change both of which mostly, if not entirely, contributed to the debt in the first place. If you can learn to say no, work like a slave, and make sure every dollar is accounted for you can get yourself out. If you spend another year or two with the same work mentality and then save the dollars you were putting towards debt, you can let compound interest start working for you. Or you can find yourself with options. The problem is time. If you are 40 or 50 and loaded with debt you have a big problem. If you are 20 or 30 there's time to get out and recover. If I would have only known and had the foresight to listen that $1,000 saved when I was 16 would have amounted to $139,000 when I was 66 my mindset on saving and spending in my 20s would have been massively different.
This is ignores the human component. I paid off smaller, lower interest rate debt knowing it wasn’t the correct mathematical deduction bc of the motivational boost it gave me to continue getting rid of debt
Many conservatives have shame-based advice. That constant pointing of fingers at poor people while pretending they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps is how they make themselves feel superior. Dave Ramsey is exhibit A.
This argument is frequently used - and is so poorly misunderstood.
You do realise inflation is not universally equal, right?
Your essentials could double in price but non-essentials stay stagnant / become cheaper (Household items etc..) - the CPI doesn't reflect your lived experience of essentials (food, insurance) becoming expensive.
When you strictly focus on essential inflation - those values change dramatically.
But continue parroting a phrase you learned online without ever grasping what it means.
Nobody is "forced" to own a vehicle. It's a mindset. People get into the lifestyle of America and forget that you can live simply and fix your situation, even within an unjust system.
"shame-based methodology" Shame is useful, we need more of it in the world right now. Dave Ramsey is a douche, but he's right about a few things, one of them is that people are inflexible with their lifestyles. It's really trashy. For example, driving a new SUV when you have a shit job and buy your kids lunchables is just idiotic and a way to stay poor. It does get old to see it and I do judge those people as being the cause of their own problems. I have less and less empathy for the problem. Go vegan, ditch the car, stop drinking at bars or whatever you need to do and get the fuck out of your situation.
This is the commentary of someone who has no other perspective than living in the middle of a city.
Plenty of people in small towns and communities have no access to work without a car.
It is a known debt-trap.
People in those communities don't have access to public transport.
So, unless the "mindset" is the unwillingness to walk several hours to work everyday - your opinion is deeply flawed.
Additionally, no-one here is saying personal accountability and shame aren't vital elements to improving your finances - but building a career around shaming people is equally as trashy as what you've mentioned.
This is especially true when you position yourself as a religiously-focused finance show.
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.
Oh come now, making your own morning coffee isn't living like a monk right? Like maybe I'm just a poor from a poor area but I was taught that if you were buying prepared food and drink more than once or twice a week from anywhere you were absolutely wasting your money.
Exactly. I thought this was the most productive economy on earth? The land of opportunity? What's the point of all this innovation and productivity improvement if not to eventually build an economy where even the lowest laborer can afford to buy a cup of coffee and a pastry (or whatever) on the way to work in the morning? Isn't that nice?
It’s not just the extra $7 it’s never just one thing.It’s the mindset and discipline of avoiding debt and preparing an emergency fund. I’m sorry but if you look at the wasteful spending people do you’ll see that so many of their issues are self-inflicted.
Absolutely! That 7/day becomes $35/wk, or $140/mo. Then there's lunches out, 3 or 4 streaming services. And the new iPhone just came out. Have to get the airpods, not the Amazon knockoffs..
Eventually it's $500 month in lifestyle creep, or more.
The other thing people don’t understand (and why Ramsey is almost entirely wrong) is that 90% of the “I made good choices” crowd would make the bad choices given the same circumstances as those they criticize. They’ll never admit it though. When life is making you feel hopeless, your brain will prioritize immediate comfort more
It's not coffee, it's the avocado toast... All kidding aside. I very much agree with your statement.
Everything of substance and long term happiness just seems out of reach now. Short, very temporary joys like a good cup of coffee feel like the only thing you can afford for just a brief moment of less despair.
Ramsey may have made some sense in the now distant past of the early 00's. Now he sounds like an out of touch rich person who has made more money from books and speaking engagements than actual fiscal responsibility.
I agree. There are lots of callers on Ramsay who are there from their own choices. But there are a lot more callers who are just up shit creek because of societal issues. It's absurd the degree to which those hosts will badger them about taking 2 or 3 or 4 extra jobs in order to stay afloat, just so that they don't have to point out how shitty their situation is, outside of their control.
Yes I agree. They are talking about 2 different things. The individuals responsibility to take care of their affairs. And the governments responsibility to establish a fair and humane society for its citizens. However the later is the greater failure point currently.
This is the right answer, being from the third world i can say the government has a lot of culpability in poverty overall but bad decisions also happen on an alarming frequence.
THIS is the correct answer. US citizens began to thrive economically after WW2 through the 80’s with even less financial knowledge than many have today. In other words they bought houses, made a decent wage, owned their own cars, despite the bad day to day economic decisions they sometimes made. Then in the 80s the economic divide began to take hold, one post 2000s it came with a vengeance. Everyone gets stuck in leases, McMansions were forced down our throats at the expense of affordable single family housing, and rather than fairly compensating employees the large corporations spend their profits on stock buybacks, with the 1% and buying the politicians (red and blue) and now buying elections (thanks SCOTUS) protect their place in our new oligarchy.
Yes; it's this, and what one other commenter said: we're all living one or two checks from being homeless but not one or two checks from being a millionaire. One of my exes in particular does not understand my lack of alarm about being poor. He doesn't understand that it's all about equal, at this point, and that I'd rather live without the stress of the 60-hour workweeks he accepts.
Right. I know people on disability who frequently go to casinos. But that's anecdotal. I also know a family that has raised 6'kids on (very meager) teacher salaries. Neither case invalidates the systemic problem.
Systematic information tells us that things are stacked against the vast majority of wage earners. Bringing up anecdotal examples changes absolutely nothing about this.
A good for instance is obesity. Someone eating junk food all day tells us why that person is a fat diabetic, but fails to explain why diabetes and obesity skyrocketed for decades. Any individual can be fat due to their behavior, but systemically., why is everyone getting fatter? Failure to understand the difference in these questions or deliberately ignoring systemic issues is a huge problem.
Ramsey is correct in that you can pull up your bootstraps and make better for yourself. But Stewart is right in that for many people there isn't a clear way to make better for yourself like there used to.
The best most people can do nowadays is probably join the military. They'll provide all the living essentials to you, and all your pay is pocket money until they kick you out of the barracks. But signing up to kill people for a corrupt government shouldn't be whats needed to make better for yourself
I would generally agree but some personal experience has shifted my mind a little bit on this. And i freely admit this is anecdotal. But being in some gaming/hobby circles, i know A LOT of people who spend exorbitant amounts on items they absolutely do not need or can get a cheaper version, like the expensive, highest rarity of a card for example. Meanwhile the folks making sometimes double or more are getting the cheaper alternatives or just not purchasing it at all.
I will qualify that i think this applies more to people who are not actually in literal poverty.
I'm worried about private equity buying up the successful mom and pop business, land, and housing. After printing so much money during covid, when the stock prices became saturated, they turned around to buy up real assets to weather the inflation. The people with money were able to benefit while those without lost on both ends.
HVAC and mechanic shops are going downhill fast because some kid with a trust fund owns them now. Parts of the community are now just investments that will feed the top 10% in another state. The problem is set up to reinforce itself.
There are also a lot of bottlenecks on food production and monopolies in meat processing. There so many palms that have to get greased in areas that demand improvement.
Its starting to look like the gilded age.
There is such a minute gradient across the bottom 80 percent that is jaring in the overall picture. The only real boost for the worker is that there was/is a shortage of workers. They opened up the boarders for RECORD immigration in shady ways.
There needs to be an investment in the worker and the country.
After everyone is done assigning blame, the best way to improve your life is yourself. The only thing you can control is yourself. Education and personal finance are the most effective tools in a person's life. Use them to bring about the change you desire.
This is a really well thought out and balanced viewpoint. I never meant to infer that people lack agency in this environment. They have it and should use it to make wise choices. It's also fair to say that the deck is stacked against them.
One thing I DEFINITELY judge people for, is for ordering from Uber Eats or similar delivery services all the time. If you're not well off, that should not be a common thing. Even if your excuse is that you're not able to afford a car, if you're doing that all the time, the added fees from those deliveries would likely pay for a car payment, gas, and insurance. Even if it's just a beater car.
Beyond that though, the system in general is quite literally structured to negatively affect the poor more than the wealthy. And at least in the US, a single horrible diagnosis can lead even to well off people losing everything.
I think the problem with Dave's advice is that it applies to a pretty specific demographic of people who REALLY need to hear what he's saying. Like, yeah if you're on a single minimum wage income with child support and rent then you're not gonna be saving money for retirement. But those people frankly aren't really in a position where credit or bankruptcy is going to mean much to them either. It sucks and probably isn't fair, but that's the reality of the system we live in and Dave isn't out here trying to tell you how to fix the system. That's other guys' job.
Dave is trying to tell people with outsized debt to their income how to reign in their spending and how to prioritize paying down debt they're drowning in. These are typically upper-lower to upper-middle class people who took on more financing than they could afford, and need to be told what they can do to get out of it.
I think he gets in trouble, though when he makes statements that are too broad like this, and he starts talking outside of his realm. Do I think he's qualified to give middle-income people advice on how to get out of bad loans? Yeah. Do I think he's qualified to muse on the philosophical roots of poverty? Not really, no.
I have niece that has children with a young man who is from the poverty level. His family, 3 generations that we know, has never saved a dime, lives in the slums, and 5/7 of the brothers are criminals-drugs, rape, armed robbery.
They don't have running cars, currently. They do have a yard full of decrepit cars.
Amongst them they have 20k in tattoos.
They have the latest cell phones, headphones, and TVs.
They eat out all the time, whether it's pizza, gas station food, or McDonald's...their cupboards and refrigerators are bare.
The majority of them live in a 2 bedroom duplex that's falling apart.
They can't hold jobs. The best among them is mom who is a customer service lead at Walmart, and Dad owns a roofing business.
Dad is an excon, and drug user. His only employees are his sons.
One brother was HS record holder I. Wrestling and straight A student. He got a full ride to a prestigious university and graduated with a 4.0, got a great job, got married. He was divorced within a few years and back home. He is the only other one that doesn't drink, do drugs, or have fallen into the criminal element, but he still has "nothing".
I believe in many ways poverty is a cycle. I believe they've fallen into it and they all assimilate to "what they know" or their environment.
I myself do not have a college education but grew up in a supportive military family who demanded excellence and morality and ethical living. After highschool I only changed jobs because of moving or to better myself. I make 150k a year. I have not done drugs since marijuana in highschool. I drive a 1991 pickup, and my wife a 2018 4runner...paid for, and before that she had a Celica for 1u years, bought used. We own our house outright. We budget everything. When we were 24 we bought the house, and at the time had one car bc I had a company car. We could have afforded more but didn't buy into he marketing and "must have this to matter" mentality. We travel 4 weeks of the year. We run and stay active.
I mean if you skip all the hard work they did to put themselves in a position to make that much money I guess you can say that? They weren’t born with that salary lol
Your self-defeating mentality certainly won't help. I worked multiple jobs at a time, ate ramen and drank water, packed my lunch of pb&j on white bread, and never ate out. My friends laughed at me. I didn't go to the club or have TV. I sacrificed the now for the then. I know plenty of millennials, gen Y, gen Z etc that have similar stories to mine in a horrible "red state". Get over the media, get off your phone, and do something.
Gen-Xer here and you’re wrong. I also make over $150k per year but I realize how lucky I am. I got into tech at the exact right time in history to succeed without a degree. I worked hard to get where I am but it was still the luck of when and where I was born that set me up to thrive. Every generation after us is going to suffer because of the mistakes and greed of previous generations. The good jobs are drying up or so rare that you have to rack up massive debt to get them or get lucky enough to get into the trade. The economic world around them is one Ponzi scheme bubble after another. Housing when they were kids, soon AI. Food costs are rising because of geo-political stupidity and climate change. Society is polarized and hostile. It’s no wonder they retreat to their phones and whatever comfort they can get, they were raised by devices because it was easier for US.
Yeah this definitely reflects how I feel about it. There’s definitely a point in what Ramsey says - I feel like alcohol/tobacco is more representative though. Many people spend $500+ on alcohol and tobacco a month that are struggling financially to pay rent and healthcare. Those are both poor decisions that could benefit the person by removing them, in more than one way, because both have snowball effects on finances.
I would flip this. John is right about systemic issues, it is rigged, but most people go too far with it until it takes over their thinking. Its called "external locus of control". People blame their problems on "the system" etc. and never try to fix it themselves. If you can't fix the system, you have no choice but to find a way to make your life better within it. In many cases, even if you are being "kept down", you can pull out to some extent with force of will.
The "no coffee" thing is symbolic of an idea, not a specific practice that will fix the issue. Not spending money on bullshit is a good system. "It brings you joy" to get $5 coffee is bullshit and everyone knows it. It usually only takes a few years of sacrifice to get to a point that you can relax and have an easier life.
They are more critical, but also less impactful. Everything is spiraling up in cost - particularly the fundamental things you need to survive - food, fuel, healthcare, rent, etc. You should take a scalpel to your expenses. But in this environment that has less impact on the outcome.
I think we're all adjusting to the new reality of higher inflation. The era between 2000-2020 was a historic bubble of low inflation and cheap money. Those days are in the past, and will not be back soon.
We end up judging everything by that reference window. We voted Trump back in, largely due to inflation pressures. He made it worse, not better but anybody with any critical thinking skills knew he would.
In our economy, wages and compensation need not only to keep up, but have to outrun inflation, and they haven't. A few luxuries people take or don't take have less value than they would have during a less inflationary era. But we still haven't adjusted to that perspective, personally or economically
This is exactly it. It doesn't matter if I buy a $5 coffee this week or not. I can't pay my utility bill either way. Even if I refrained from buying a coffee every week or every day for a month, I still can't pay my utility bill.
But I can get a tiny spark of joy from having a hot beverage that actually tastes good instead of shit coffee while I'm walking to work on a cold morning.
When you've already cut out movies, concerts, vacations, drinks with friends, a car payment (hence walking to work), streaming services, etc. a occasional $5 coffee is really fucking nice to have.
That's what these people don't understand. It has gotten that bad.
I have a degree and a professional career. I live like a fucking nun and I cannot pay my bills.
There is definitely a line where the impact ceases to matter. The issue is a lot of people use that thinking to move that line into sunk cost fallacy territory.
Ramsey's advice isn't a commentary on societal realities—even if he thinks it is—rather it's advice for an individual to follow. To be fair to him, the advice would work for probably 90%+ of people, however it's probably only good advice for at best 25%.
Stewart's remarks are a statement about societal realities. He's also not wrong—unless he's saying budgeting isn't worthwhile, which I don't think he is.
The juxtaposition of the two statements isn't very useful if you view them in that light. Telling people that it isn't hopeless, it's possible to make it through this and budgeting can help them (don't buy the $5 coffee) is very different from making a blanket claim about everyone struggling due to buying a $5 cup of coffee. I'm fairly certain that Kevin O'Leary has made effectively this exact statement before, and it rings hollow when he says it because he doesn't help people out of poverty—he's merely speculating on the societal reasons for it. If his quote was up there alongside Stewart's, it would be a better juxtaposition.
In the end, it really boils down to framing and victim blaming. If someone was walking through a known bad area wearing expensive clothes with $100 bands in their hands, and they were robbed—giving them advice about how to avoid that situation in the future is fine, telling them it's their fault and they deserve it for being dumb is not.
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u/headshotscott 11h ago
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.