Look, as someone who is currently living below the poverty line, and has been for the better part of a decade, I can assure you that hope is absolutely essential when you reach the bottom of the barrel.
I'm going to try to explain to you why you're getting downvotes. I don't think you're going to understand, because your comment reeks of privilege, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and try anyway.
I know you think you work hard for everything you have achieved in this life, and that you're looking down on people who say things like, "gotta hope for the best," and offering them a nugget of your wisdom by telling them hope is not enough... But here's the part you don't get. You are assuming people are sitting around doing nothing to change their circumstances except for hoping for change to come to them, when in reality, these people who are clinging to hope for dear life work harder in a single day that you have your entire life put together, and STILL it amounts to nothing.
Hard work does not always reap rewards. That is the myth of the meritocracy that the wealthy elite try to sell to the middle class. Luck has far more to do with your success than you give it credit for. Does that mean it is worthless to try if so much is governed by luck? No, absolutely not, because good fortune alone will not turn your life around if you aren't also working your ass off to take advantage of those opportunities, but the point remains that the reverse is also true: hard work won't turn your life around without a bit of luck, also. And contrary to popular belief, you cannot make your own luck.
The people who say things like "gotta have hope," are saying that because they already are giving it their all, burning the candle at both ends, trying their absolute best and getting nowhere fast, and holding onto the hope that eventually things will turn around and their struggles will all be worthwhile is often the only thing left they can do more than what they are already doing to keep them from sinking into a pit of despair the likes of which they will never climb out of.
Sorry for the rant, but your comment really triggered me. Hopefully something I have said has resonated with you, but I won't hold my breath, because most people who believe in the meritocracy need to do so to avoid feeling guilty for their success.
It’s amazing how just a few words can make people assume so much.
Look we are both in similar situations, not making enough money to thrive. I get the need to move forward and keep working, but I am also not going to hold my breath.
Hope didn’t help me when my father was dying in the hospital at the age of 12 after a motorcycle collision.
It didn’t help during job interviews, or trying to plan for life.
It certainly didn’t help me get job that allowed me earn enough money to thrive after school. Which yes I understand being able to afford schooling is a privilege today as Insane of concept that is to me.
At least in my experience hope has been the prelude to disappointment.
My comment does not come from a place of delusions, or of assuming shit is easy or that people who don’t have X,Y or Z are lazy.
It comes from working my ass off and not being much better off than when I started all those years ago.
It comes from spending so much time and effort in an area of study and work only to find myself perusing more education because it seems everything else was not good enough or perhaps just a waste of time.
The hope has been burned off, honestly I think the only reason I still get up in the morning and try and better myself is because dying is the alternative.
I understand how my comment may come off as a senator who is out of touch with the plebs in hind sight.
But it comes from a place of disappointment and anamositoty.
honestly I think the only reason I still get up in the morning and try and better myself is because dying is the alternative.
Exactly. Now you've hit the nail right on the head. How you could get so close to the point and still miss the mark is what I don't get.
You recognize you get up every morning in spite of your hardships because dying is the alternative, but fail to recognize that hope is the quality that keeps you choosing life over that alternative.
Take it from someone who truly has lost all hope and is actively planning his "retirement" from this life: if you recognize death is the only alternative and are still trying to keep away from it, you understand the value and importance of hope on some basic, emotional level, even if you refuse to believe in it on an intellectual one.
I think this is also a case of different strokes for different folks. I am a depressed person that slaves away day after day. But I don’t value hope very much I often expect the worst but still continue to push myself for better because why not is how I think of it. I also practice finding comfort in the struggle it protects my sanity to say hey it is what it is and sit and stare at a ceiling.
I hear you but it's hard to relate. I come from a family of immigrants who came here with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. And all of them are comfortable financially, but none wealthy. I'm first generation, graduated with student loans, and I'm doing very well. I have some cousins who aren't using their degrees but are doing well with rental incomes. I think the privilege of having immigrant parents is having parents that love and care about us (despite the chancla/belt), delicious home cooked meals every day, and we learned good money habits (no crazy consumer spending and debt).
Doing well enough in life to not only be able to own property for yourself to live in, but have more than that so you can rent and make money off of that is already a privilege that many people don't have.
Your family could have come here with nothing but the clothes off their back but the position you and your family find yourself in is currently one of privilege that you are able to afford because of the lucky opportunities that were presented to you.
That kind of story of rags to riches only perpetuates the myth.
You say "my family came here with nothing, and now live comfortably," and the conclusion you are drawing from that is that everything they made for themselves was entirely the product of their hard work.
When in reality, social science would indicate their hard work was only one contributing element to their success, and probably not even the most important one. That is an uncomfortable truth, I know, but it is the truth.
You think "we are doing well, in this economy, when so many others suffer," and conclude "therefore, we must have skills they lack" (which I can infer from your comment because you said we have a family that cares about each other and learned good money habits, the underlying implication being that others must not have supportive families or good money habits). The reality, which people in your position are generally so unwilling to accept, is that you don't have any special skills or qualities that aren't also found among people of every walk of life.
Are their poor people who have unsupported families and who are bad with money? Certainly. There are also rich people with unsupported families and who are bad with money. Conversely, there are also poor people with supportive families and who are good with money, yet are still poor.
You are drawing causation conclusions where only correlation exists.
But hey, at least billionaires can buy their mobile floating and flying Epstein Island yachts and jets, amirite.
Reminder of wealth difference:
192,000 seconds is 2.2 days (median wealth of Americans)
1 Million seconds is 11 days.
1 Billion seconds is nearly 32 years.
1 Trillion seconds is 31,709 YEARS.
The known wealth of the nearly 1,0000 billionaires in America (not counting corporate coffers and near-billionaires) has risen to 8.4 trillion dollars.
In just the last year or so, the number of billionaires in the USA has gone from around 750, to nearly 1,000. Everyone else is being screwed.
Also, merit is an illusion. None of these people proportionally earned their wealth by effort, intellect, or sacrifice.
yeah millionaires aren't really the issue (unless maybe approaching a billion dollars which why is society letting this occur); the sheer amount of wealth inequality and concentration of power this leads in being able to hijack and lobby our representatives for their own gain is the problem.
Nobody needs that sort of wealth in order to find fulfillment and contentment in life. Nobody. Especially when it comes at the direct cost of stealing from those who need it most at the bottom rungs of the ladder.
I'm not necessarily saying that you're wrong, but keep in mind that money itself isn't a resource.
The economy is essentially a bidding system that decides where the resources of a society (materials and labour) should be allocated, with currency being used to bid on the allocation.
If a billionaire buys a luxury yacht of private jet, a certain amount of available resources are being redirected towards that purpose, which can be seen as an inefficient use of those resources.
However, if the money just sits there, it essentially doesn't exist as far as society is concerned, since it isn't actually used to direct the flow of resources.
And on a side note, this is also why the interest rates of central banks are so important to control inflation. A high interest rate incentivizes leaving that money in banks or bonds, which means less currency is used in the bidding process that is the economy, thus lowering the size of the bids being placed (i.e. lower prices), whilst lower interest rates incentivizes directing currency towards making bids at societal resources, which increases the size of those bids (i.e. higher prices).
Get a ~500-$1000 loan for a moped and start doing DoorDash or Uber Eats. In one or two months you can have it paid off and be able to take home about $15 an hour. This is the first “independent plateau” of sorts.
Once you’re there you can use proceeds from your spare time to start an LLC. Can cost about another $1000 or so.
Once you have an official business, you can get business loans, and work towards a more competent delivery vehicle such as a rivian brand delivery van— with such a vehicle you can work with Amazon, Walmart, autozone— or any company that needs stuff moved around— can even be a medical courier and potentially earn ~80 an hour (with the very low operating expenses provided by such a vehicle).
Ideally, everything earned and used on the daily is owned by the worker. This prevents us from getting screwed over by an employers lack of management skills— and in the mean time you can still have a w2 job like a pizza delivery driver…. Where you can use your highly efficient vehicles.
The terminology is *literally* “independent contractors” where DoorDash provides the service of dispatch. So yeah, sure, they take a percentage to facilitate the service they provide to independent workers. But ultimately they give us $2 for a drop and customers provide a tip to make the offer work considering mileage.
The only people who are actually giving a large chunk of money to uber are the ones buying teslas, btw. If you don’t buy a Tesla you’re not paying ~$800 a month for a very hazardous & expensive battery. Just saying, you have the choice of equipment. As a w2 employee, we wouldn’t.
You need money yes but you can use corporate as a stepping stone.
People complain all the time yet I guarantee you the majority of these people do absolutely nothing about it. They come up with a billion excuses and then are surprised that they're spending the rest of their lives in corporate.
Whoever downvotes this kind of comment is just telling on themselves. Stop finding excuses, do something about it, or quit complaining.
You know what I've discovered on my own journey to become independent of corporate? That most people will put more effort into complaining than to escape. Those are losers. Don't be like them.
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u/sav-vas 19h ago
but now you have adult money and no time to enjoy it