Can aesthetic pleasure silence moral outrage?
— David Mo

I don't know if I would call the experience of reading Dostoevsky an esthetic pleasure. He was not a fine stylist in the usual sense (for that try someone like Turgenev). There is a wicked pleasure to be had in his caustic humor, but when Dostoevsky is in his more serious mood, reading him is about as pleasurable as a hallucinatory fever. — SophistiCat

Does anyone have the poems? The only info I could find on D's anti-semitism was from a letter where he responded to a Jew who accused him of anti-semitism:

"I am not an enemy of the Jews at all and never have been. But as you say, its 40-century existence proves that this tribe has exceptional vitality, which would not help, during the course of its history, taking the form of various Status in Statu .... how can they fail to find themselves, even if only partially, at variance with the indigenous population – the Russian tribe?"

There's probably some merit to the charge of him creating Jewish stereotypes with some of his characters, but are we really going to crucify him for this? Would we crucify Shakespeare for Shylock? Honestly, in Russia in the 1860s-1880s I would just expect a certain level of religiously based anti-semitism to be relatively normal. Devotion to a strong, centralized leadership is also more common in Russia given that the country has survived invasion after invasion due to these leaders being able to fight off these foreign invaders. I'm just providing historical context here.

"But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic."

On what grounds have Dostoyevsky made such a remark? Is there at all any truth in this?

Also, I wonder if we could have a general discussion on Dostoyevsky's Notes From The Underground. — Zeus

He's critiquing rationalism. I've felt the same way recently.

The world is a complex, messy place and system-builders often attempt to sort of gloss over this with a set of rationalistic rules that first and foremost guide their way of viewing this world. The problem is that this often results in creating a false sense of certainty and glossing over the subtleties of certain fields and proclaiming themselves experts in areas where they are not (for them experience and data is of secondary importance; a knowledge of the relevant a priori principles is.)

Such system-building, top-down approaches to the world were popular in Kant's time and remain popular in some fields today.

I was reading about this earlier. It happens across party lines and it's very glaring.

Obviously we have a stock market crisis on our hands, but the main reason is the virus and the day to day measures that we're taking to prevent it like not leaving our houses and economic activity coming to a halt. It's a bottom up issue rather than a top down one.

If performance is in the black then wealth will concentrate merely because most people have no position to begin with.

Actually according to Gallup 55% of Americans hold stock. But yes, stock gains tend to go towards those who have the most invested. Similarly, stock declines hit - in dollar amounts - those with the most invested.

There is risk and opportunity, but there is more opportunity for those who are already well positioned, and much more risk for those who are not.

Yes, and this is key. What does it mean to be well positioned? Ideally, looking at it now - it means a large cash reserve that can come buy the bottom (whether that's in stocks or real estate or maybe starting a business) and basically timing things perfect. However, there are wealthy people who have most of their assets in real estate (I'd say that this is the case for a lot of wealthy people) - like an airbnb tycoon - who despite having millions in assets are also in quite a bit of debt and possibly over-leveraged and with tourism and travel on the decline these tycoons are in trouble. It's not like they can instantly sell their holdings like a stock either because it's real estate and it's less liquid. Real estate can take months to sell. Those airbnb tycoons or landlords might also have employees who could get laid off. Ripple effects.

I do believe that there is opportunity here and in a perfect world the wealthy would be able to buy the bottom and everything just turns green there. It would be the best for the lower classes as well because it would probably lead to a hiring boom if the wealthy could time it just right but it takes a lot of guts to put your money on the line after, say, 4 months of carnage.

Paycheck to Paycheck with no health insurance in America is not well positioned...

Agreed.

The closer someone is pushed toward the bottom, the exponentially worse their living conditions seem to get. Since basic nutrition is already on the concern-table for many American families, I'm confident that the breaking point isn't actually that far off.

The question is how do we solve it. I'm not going to complain if they start sending us $1000 checks every month. The proposals on how much to send have reached as high as $4500/month. There's no real limit to how much the government can print. Hell, they could send us $10k/month if they wanted but what happens to the value of the US dollar? Short term alleviation comes at a cost longer cost. I'm having serious doubts about the US dollar right now.

Don't get me wrong - this crisis does scare me. I'm fortunate enough to not be at the bottom, but I'm certainly not at the top either. The thing is, the crisis is with Main Street, not Wall Street. I'm in favor of implementing policies which help the poor or those in need during this time, we just need to make sure those policies come with an acceptable trade-off. As of now I tentatively support UBI. And yes, those without savings or an emergency fund will be hit hard. I personally have lost a pretty significant amount of money but I'm not threatened with homelessness or paying for expenses.

Stock purchasing is for day traders and portfolio managers

You know that you can also do this? I do this and I wouldn't really consider myself either unless I'm my own "portfolio manager."

but assuming that investors have insight on the whole, they will wait and begin buying when appropriate.

This is questionable. Traditional financial wisdom advises against timing the market, and instead riding out the storm. Of course in this case we may just need to make an exception (personally, I have sold most of my holdings). In any case, over the past few decades fund managers have not generally speaking outperformed the S&P.

but really my point is that the richer you are, the less you are affected, and the more you stand to gain, relatively speaking.

I feel like we need to define "affected" here a little better. On one hand, the wealthy have lost more than the poor in dollar terms this past week by far. Generally speaking, it seems like people are getting knocked down a peg - so everyone becomes less wealthy. On the very bottom of the social ladder you have the homeless who probably aren't affected by this very much at all. But above them are the poor who are now in a serious situation and threatened with homelessness. The middle class now risk becoming poor in a recession and the wealthy may risk becoming middle class or less wealthy.

If the rich are trying to time the market then they have more to gain and also more to lose if they mistime it. I think if everything were to crash we'd all be more equal, relatively speaking. You would just have a ton of wealth destroyed and everyone would be poor. Even if a rich person did time the market well who would buy his products?

And when stocks are at their lowest when we finally turn the corner on the covid, those who were strong enough to survive the squeeze will be left to buy

You would need to be able to call the bottom, which is easier said than done. There's nothing quite like "buying the bottom" only to have things drop another 15-20%. I also think it takes some guts to deploy capital after, say, the dow has been bleeding for 3-4 months.

I'll tell you my strategy - wait until covids cases maybe worldwide (or at least in the US) have started to decrease for 3 days or so then maybe jump back in.

So, I think some rich are gonna get wrecked and some will do well if they're able to time things perfectly. I don't have the exact breakdown nor do I quite know what you're referring to as rich.

Now, as I mentioned before, if you have more than you need, why not give it away? It seems most logically.

To save it in case some possible disaster scenario or to pass on children so they can start off life in a better place.

Ok, but then the point is trivial - and I don't mean that disparagingly.

I wouldn't consider personal finance trivial. When I hear trivial I think obvious and easy. I think it requires discipline and rejecting materialism. I also think it requires resourcefulness and being able to squeeze extra income sources out of places that many people wouldn't think to go to. It allows one to map out and be conscious/take control of their own future.

Why scrap it? -- life is just unfair, and that's the way it is. No?

I may have been unclear; I'm not just "on board" with all unfairness. In the case of the war on drugs I believe the government is overstepping its bounds. A lot of technological advancement isn't "fair" - workers get put out of work, but ultimately it is for the better. The war on drugs is just overwhelmingly negative... the only people who "win" I guess would be the agencies that receive federal funding, but "the people" certainly don't. At least the consumers win when we get lower prices as a result of better technology and other jobs are created elsewhere.

I'll have to pull a Socrates and pick on the word "fair," in this case. You're sounding a bit like Thomas Hobbes to me, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.

I mean human life. This point should be pretty uncontentious - some of us have full, wonderful lives and others have short and terrible lives. Even if you were to put people in some sort of utopia I'd still consider this a facet of human existence... you would still have miserable people. You will always have miserable people unless your utopia involves drugging people up until they're zombies. There's always winners and losers in society. I'm not judging the losers; I'm just stating how it is.

But regardless, we're discussing politics, which is something we've created, not a factual claim about life itself. Within that specific domain, I just don't think we can observe unfair policies, laws, etc., and say "well lots of things are unfair."

This is fine, with the exception that you need to be careful in cases where you disenfranchise one group to empower another. I'm fine with making plenty of things more fair, but we just need to talk about the specifics and how its implemented.

I do notice this though: People tend to push for equality in areas where they're disenfranchised. If genetic scientists were able to come up with a way to control human height or good looks who do you think would be pushing for equality in that area? Probably short and ugly people. People tend to be interested in equalizing the playing field in areas where they're disadvantaged and then they ignore other ones where they're fine. However, equalizing all playing field just isn't a remotely reasonable option (my reference point here is disability communities.)

Politics, additionally, does have the potential to touch every domain of human affairs. This is of course not what the founding fathers had in mind, but we both know this idea has been demonstrated.

It's how I view things too, Carlos. But, as you know, it's only one part of an important issue. The other part is to ask what effect the environment has on individual choices and responsibility. The environment includes: housing, income, access to healthcare, education, food, etc., and the quality of these resources, filtering systems, laws, discrimination, tax codes, judicial bias (if you're rich, it's a slap on the wrist; if you're poor [whether white or black] you get 10 years), drug polices (and others) that disproportionately effect poor and minority communities, and on and on.

We could spend a billion years on each one of these topics. The one that stuck out at me the most drug policies which I do have sympathy for. I've always been against the war on drugs and I do believe it disproportionately affects minorities and the poor. Yes, legislation can certainly cause damage.

When it comes to housing and income there is still a personal factor. I understand this is not the case with children, but when people buy houses there's a ton of decisions there that can either be made well or poorly. Income can also be changed. I don't feel like you're in disagreement with any of what I've said here, so I'll just go ahead and reiterate my point:

If we're looking to actually help individuals our focus should tend to be on microeconomic decisions as opposed to macroeconomic ones. If you're a financial advisor and a struggling person comes into your office it makes more sense to have them write up a budget and analyze their goals than to blame NAFTA or deregulation. I'm not discounting these... but again, start with the small first and then work your way up. Do not gloss over the small and immediately resort to the big when analyzing individuals.

you'll find that the game we're playing isn't equal or fair but, in fact, tilted in many ways towards certain groups.

Oh of course it is but so is life itself. There's no "system" on earth that's fair and I don't quite know what fair would look like. Sure, I'm with you that the war on drugs is unfair. Lets scrap it. But on a deeper level life itself absent any system whatsoever is horribly unfair. I think this could be an interesting point of discussion; what do you do with this fact concerning the unfairness of life itself?

If someone loses in chess its because they've made a mistake, no question about it. This doesn't disprove game theory; two game theory optimal actors would just be drawing against each other in the long run. The minute one of them deviates from that they'd now be losing.

I'm not asking about the nationwide prevalence as compared to 30 years ago. I was asking if it happens is it a problem for that particular family? Similarly, when people marry younger those marriages tend not to last and divorce can be very expensive especially when there's kids. I'm in the military so we deal with these issues of young men wanting to get married super young and have kids extremely often and we advise them to hold off and get their finances in order as has been the advice for decades if not centuries now.

I can tell none of this matters to you and it's entirely theoretical. Try coming back to the issue when an issue like this actually matters in reality.

Do you have a child? Would you like them getting pregnant at 17? Clearly since this is a non-issue you should be fine with it.

A significant chunk of those without a high school education are immigrants who moved here. We're not just counting high school drop outs in that figure.

I'm also not entirely sure if I'm hearing you right when you say that waiting until 21 to get married and have a kid is "superfluous." Are you saying teenage pregnancy is not a problem? The overarching idea here - and this really shouldn't be particularly contentious - is that people should wait until they're older and more financially secure (and ideally married as well) - before they commit to having children. Even 21 seems very young to me.

18k/year is a bit more doable when you're childless.

The cost might not be your primary concern, but for a single parent or two parents working low wage, dead end jobs paying for daycare and all those little expenses can add up. There is a significant cost and it's felt more and more the closer you are to the edge.

If money's their aim, they should never have kids, never marry, and never hire Hanover to do their taxes. But no, the point you just made isn't objectionable to me.

I think this is questionable. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but kids will often help support you in old age and can certainly help build family wealth in the long term. A marriage can also potentially help cement a second stream of income or at the very least free up time for one of the partners as the other focuses on the chores or raising kids. Of course both of these things can go wrong too.

There's no reason to get mad. You've spent a lot of time and energy talking about the brookings institute when my main point all along is just that people should wait to have kids.... presumably until they're a little more financially secure. Is this point really that offensive?

This isn't about ideology either. I'm asking you a direct question.

If you wait until you can afford children, you'll never have them

Sure, then go have 3 kids when you're a single mom working as a part time barista. Those are tomorrow's problems anyways.

I'm obviously not saying you need 250k in the bank right then and there.

The point I'm making is a simple one: your emphasis, when looking at class, poverty, income, etc., tends to be the personal responsibility of the poor and working classes. You place the onus on them while largely ignoring (but not denying) the role of the system in which they live, learn and grow. But that's a very narrow analysis.

The reason why I do this is because microeconomic and personal decisions (say, regarding addiction for instance) affect everyone. They do so in often a direct and concrete way. There is also way, way more consensus on personal finance. The choices are an every day thing, and everyone must deal with them. This is just how I view things. I find it odd when people immediately point to complex, big picture items which may only affect some small part of the population in an unclear way and point that that above all else.

If you're raised in severe poverty, can't focus in school and so drop out, have parents that are abusive drug addicts, surrounded by gang violence and police discrimination, etc., do you have a level of personal responsibility? Absolutely. Even here. And it's also important to say, because it's not about convincing people they're helpless or that they're victims. But again, these factors aren't simply "excuses" either.

I absolutely acknowledge that some people are dealt bad hands. In this case their goal isn't to become rich... it's to survive. Maybe by the time they're an adult they could make it to the lower middle or middle class but note that if it's not a priority for them then it's not a priority... that's perfectly fine. Not everyone defines success with wealth and that's fine. I'm not here to push the idea that wealth = success across the board.

I am not saying that everybody is directly responsible for their own poverty. I'm not even saying that people are morally obliged to try to climb out of it/that poor people are morally inferior. I'm just saying that if you're seriously looking to help people it helps to first focus on individual life choices and decisions and then we can move onto systemic factors.

I will acknowledge systemic factors, by the way. But there is many of these and instead of trying to, I don't know... ban charging interest or something ridiculous like that which would have enormous economy-wide effects... maybe instead focus on the small and gradually build up.

What happens in poor inner city communities, or what happens in Wuhan, China,

In the case of inner city schools the issue is complex. It's not just a simple matter of giving them more money. Is there gang violence in the area? Could these kids even afford to go to college if they made it? What is their parents role in their life? With China we have even less actual control when we live in the US. We might have some nice ideas about what they should do but our actual ability to enact change is not high.

The study was done by brookings institute... it's a left wing think tank.

And not having children would save you a ton of money obviously, but that's a tall order for a lot of people, so if you're planning on having children (which most people are) it makes sense to say at least wait until you're financially secure.

It should be clear that having children - especially many of them - before one is financially stable should be avoided if your priority is to avoid poverty. I don't know how you can argue against that. Same thing with high school education.

Yes, and for many others it isn't. They work very hard and are still screwed. To highlight and rail on one and not the other, particularly when there's far more evidence to support the latter, exposes your own prejudices.

Personal decisions are huge. I shouldn't have to explain this. If you have children that's a huge burden especially as an unmarried, single parent. In fact, that's probably the biggest predictor of poverty. Do you know how much raising a child costs? Around $250k from cradle to the time they're 18. Now lets just throw in 3 kids.

My approach is to examine the micro before we approach the macro.

I'm going by brookings institute here - a left wing institute.

Top 3 predictors of poverty:

1. Graduating from high school.

2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.

3. Having a full-time job.

If you do all those three things, your chance of falling into poverty is just 2 percent. Meanwhile, you’ll have a 74 percent chance of being in the middle class.

https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20120127/OPINION/801258741

It's really quite a good article.

If only good jobs (whatever that even is) gets you coverage then that means poor people just get shafted (again), besides the lower wages they also have to pay more for healthcare because their coverage is worse or non-existent and they usually have worse lifestyle choices requiring more healthcare.

We have like 74 million people on medicare. Another maybe 6-7 million who are eligible but don't sign up. We also have another 20 million veterans who again get free, government healthcare. government involvement in healthcare is huge in the US. the government will subsidize you if you're low income. the ones who get shafted are the middle class who do earn pay but they get squeezed a little. everybody agrees that healthcare needs reform in the US the issue is how exactly to do it, but don't pretend like we're just on a private, free market system right now.

What happens after the confusions are dispelled? Does that speak to the veracity of the cleared ground, or is it simply a case of being better off to do whatever else is required than before? I'm always wary of leaving the implicit accounts our use of language has as the final word, when their analysis is intended only to be the first.

According to Wittgenstein the philosophical problems disappear when the confusions are dispelled.

I'm not sure if you are bilingual or not, but if you aren't -- trust me, a language isn't just a collection of words and grammar it's a worldview with its own implicit assumptions and ways of categorizing the world. Philosophical problems which arise in one language may not arise in another and other languages may give rise to philosophical problems that english speakers would consider ridiculous.

Who was he talking to when he said that? Whenever someone mentions whipping in conjunction with a winking face my mind can't help but go there.

it seems to me you believe we're not in fact living in a rigged economy and plutocracy, and that systemic biases either don't exist or are minimal.

When you say "rigged" I think casino games. I don't believe that there is a council of evil billionaires at the top who spend their time trying to keep poor people poor. I do believe that certain laws and regulations work against the poor though.

Obviously some people have advantages and others have disadvantages. Come to think of it, even if the system were 100% meritocratic I think a strong case could be made that it would still be unfair. After all, it's no one's fault if one were to have a learning disability or autism.

Remember when we were talking about having a productive conversation? I feel like this isn't it. I'm happy to steer the convo into my productive waters though.

Are you saying that people are poor because they are not financially responsible?

Not necessarily, but this is the case for some people.

No, Welfare queens and other outlier examples, which are used to justify cutting funding and a general hatred towards the poor, are rare. I put the entire context in -- in case it was an accident that you left it out.

This discussion isn't about welfare queens. I never mentioned that term or said that poor people are abusing the welfare system. I'm solely concerned with economic mobility and I cited data which stated that only 1 in 5 white people who grew up in the bottom 10% actually stayed as adults and 42% of blacks do. Sure, like winning the lottery.

Sure. What's your point?

Financial responsibility is first and foremost a personal responsibility.

I'm sure plenty of people do it, as I've stated before. Many more try very hard and fail to do so.

I just can't believe you when you say that the American dream is a myth or like winning the lottery when I grew up in a neighborhood where most people were maybe 1st or 2nd generation immigration who came over to the US with not much money and yet here we are in a decent neighborhood. You make out economic mobility to be a myth when I just don't think that's the case.

but when it comes to the American Dream of "if you just work hard enough, sky's the limit," we all have to become delusional.

It's not just about hard work. You're putting up an easy, naive target here that no one really believes.

Yeah, and those grapes they eat are probably sour anyway.

I'm being 100% honest I would not want the job.

"Probably right." I love this. I guess you're a true believer in the American dream. Fine. Don't let me disillusion you if it makes you happy. But in my view, it's a complete delusion

Then why has my family done it? Why did I grow up around people who also did it? Apparently none of us exist in your world.

Because this is very rare. You can always find outliers to justify your general attitude, but it ignores the wider and much more important data.

Escaping poverty is very rare? I don't think so.

"Recent research has uncovered striking racial differences in the likelihood of upward mobility (Corcoran & Matsudaira, 2005; Isaacs, 2007; Kearney, 2006; Mazumder, 2005). An analysis of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) revealed that 42% of Blacks born in the bottom tenth of the income distribution remained in the same income bracket as adults. Only 17% of Whites showed this same pattern."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4108157/

Even with this racial inequality you still have most blacks escaping this situation.

I'm not talking about going from poor to rich. Going from poor to lower middle class is a huge accomplishment.

I'm interested in longitudinal studies which follow individuals across time here.

"If."

That issue is retirement. Shouldn't be too hard to recognize. If someone is earning decent money and does not save any of it and wakes up at age 65 one day and is annoyed that they have to keep working then I'm sorry but you've made your own bed.

Well since you yourself are one of these "people," do you consider yourself helpless? OK then, neither to they. That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm dealing with facts, on which we presumably agree: one group of people do not have access to the same resources and do not get the same opportunities as another group of people. You, for example, will never be a general or a CEO. Never.

I would never want to be a general, have you ever seen one come to a military base? They have zero privacy. They need a caravan of security and other high ranking officers around them at all times. God, what a terrible life.

You're also probably right that I'll never be a CEO of some big company, but who cares about working at a big company? The beautiful thing about this economy is that you can be your own boss. It's entirely within the realm of possibility to start your own business where you can be your own CEO.

I'm also a bit of a mover and a shaker, by the way. My salary is not my only form of income. I'm a semi-professional poker player (live near a casino), pretty decent investor/trader, and churning credit cards has netted me a few extra grand here and there. But I suppose none of this stability "really" matters because I'll never be a fortune 500 CEO or a billionaire. Your attitude contributes to your problem. Wealth isn't made in a day, it's often made through generations. Just upping yourself by one class and being able to raise your children in that class is a huge accomplishment. It's sad that you don't see this.

Going from working class to middle class may be considered "upward mobility," I suppose. But, like I said, that's really an illusion. You have as much power in this country as myself or a janitor.

Okay, I'll have to tell some of my co-workers that their move out of poverty and section 8 housing and food stamps into the actual middle class is all just an "illusion." The home they own and the stability they now have means zero because they're not a billionaire able to influence politics and buy senators.

Do you tell overweight people who just ran their first 5k that their time wasn't great?

Even a 1% percenter will never have the wealth that Bloomberg does. How much actual political power do you think someone with, say, $10M has in the grand scheme of things? Tell it Martin Shkreli and Harvey Weinstein (who both had more than $10M).

I'm sure you feel proud about it, to the point where you can now look down on the people making less money than you or not taken care of by the government as you are, as simply weak and lazy and stupid. It's a very self-serving position: I got to where I am because of hard work and merit, and anyone else can as well if they weren't so lazy and didn't choose to be coddled.

Yes, on my free time I enjoy walking around in uniform and telling homeless people to "get a job" and minimum wage earners to "work harder." It's really great fun.

The military was a last ditch effort for me, so now I'm not some flag waving working class conservative. I honestly don't even care what people do or how much they earn, but if someone is going to do nothing to even attempt to get their situation in order and then blame the system on it I'm so done with them.

If someone is able to foresee a problem 40-50 years away and proceeds to ignore it and then finds themselves in dire straits, well, maybe look to yourself first before blaming the entire system.

Yes, there is risk involved there, in the sense that high-reward investment will involve a lot of short-term ups and downs along the way toward gradual long-term gains.

There is no gradual long term gain most of the time with riskier assets. This is especially the case the riskier you go - look at how many small cap altcoins (cryptocurrencies) just crash in value and go to 0. Same thing with penny stocks. Even if you invest in like 100 penny stocks there's absolutely no guarantee you're going to end up "winning big." This isn't how it works.

There is a likely long term gain with the S&P, but that is over like a 30 year time period. If you're going to go picking individual stocks or crypto you can lose a considerable amount of your investment. There is no long term prize for holding. There's only your belief that there is one.

In any case I still do invest in the S&P. I believe in the long-term value proposition and I would like for poorer families to build up an emergency fund and have that excess capital to where they can afford to take on some risk and put money in the stock market and pile it away for the long term. This is way different from telling them to invest in penny stocks or random cryptocurrencies though.

The real issue is if the ways to get out of povetry diminish or grow.

That's a good way to look at it.

In our meritocratic World education is the important way for upward social mobility. If there are no stipends, no way for even a very talented pupil to get into the best schools, then there is a huge problem. If the only route is joining the armed forces...that cannot be good.

I agree, joining the armed forces shouldn't be the go-to solution. My generation was often told growing up to get an education and you'll be fine. I'm a millennial by the way, and I don't think this vision imparted by our parents has really panned out. We're saddled with student debt and many of us have degrees which aren't particularly useful for the real world.

There are plenty of scholarships, by the way. There are also state schools which offer a heavily discounted price to in-state students (and these schools are often quite decent.) If you're looking at a private college it can be quite expensive (think around $50k/year USD if not more) and it's questionable how much it's worth it at this point especially if someone is going for, say, art history. Someone could be spending $200k over 4 years for an art history degree, and this often means going into debt.

Personally, I think people should work with their strengths. I have a few friends who are quieter guys and good students and they do fine as engineers. I know other who, while okay students, are much more charismatic and have been doing well as salespeople. School shouldn't break the bank. There's also trade school, but in practice many of the upper middle class wouldn't want to send their child there out of pride. It's totally a pride thing.

That doesn't make it "fine". However, if 70% of the population was drinking and driving I would think it ridiculous to think I am going to solve (even partially) that problem by saying, "hey, why don't all you people stop drunk driving and act right!"

I wouldn't expect me simply saying "hey, stop drunk driving!" to solve the problem, but it still is one's responsibility not to do that. Personal finance is more of a personal thing, and I don't know your situation, but for me it's been very relevant.

We can talk about vague, abstract notions like responsibility all day, but for me it was simply having an experience where in college I had a brush with poverty. I very clearly remember not having money for a sandwich and the guy behind the counter was nice enough to give it to me for free. My bank account was drained due to automatic charges which I simply didn't really care enough (or know how) to monitor and I kept wondering what happened to everything. I don't ever want to be in that situation again.

And what if they are born with flat feet, so the army doesn't want them?

Lucky for you, flat feet are no longer disqualifying. Even if a condition is disqualifying you can get a waiver (as I did.) The military is only one option. Will trade school disqualify you for having flat feet?

Will she find a proper job when she grows up, to pay the healthcare bill? And what if she is too lazy to do the work?

People with disabilities are in a different category. They can get government assistance and we can't expect them do the same things that abled people would do. One of the people I went to school with has Williams Syndrome which means he has an IQ of maybe around 60ish. He's very friendly and he does work part time at a community center or something along those lines. Obviously we can't hold the same expectations for these people as someone else who is able.

To argue this is all merit-based, simply a matter of proper work ethic or motivation, is simply not true.

It's not all merit based and it's not all based on hard work. But you know what? Hard work couldn't hurt.

Class matters.

Absolutely.

The idea that you can "move upwards" is an illusion.

Then why do I - someone who is enlisted military - work around plenty of people who were born into poverty and are now middle class and able to afford homes? Some service members own several homes. This is just not true.

You know there are plenty of examples of people who simply don't get the opportunities or resources that other people do.

People are just a helpless bunch, aren't they?

But each play costs $1,000.

I've mentioned this before: There is no minimum cost to enter stocks or cryptocurrency. You could throw $5 into an extremely high risk one.

Investing in start ups is a different game, I'll agree with you there.

You're treating investment like it's a blackjack table with a $20k minimum or something and despite being a good deal a loss means losing everything. This isn't how normal investments operate. Maybe this is how start-up investment is.... I don't know. I don't invest in start ups. I do know that venture capitalism definitely does require expertise and remember my start up fact from last post: Something like 90% of start ups go broke within the first few years. You could easily invest in 10 or 20 start ups and they all fail. It's not statistically an inevitability that all of the start ups you invest in will earn you money in the long-run. You could just go broke (and plenty of VCs do lose money.)

I am not defending the current financial system either. I hate the accredited investor system which gives higher net worth individuals investment access to riskier, early-stage investments deemed "too risky" for normal folks. I think the rationale here is paternalism, but in any case I'm against it.

I don't even care about reforming the system anymore; it's beyond redemption. Burn it down. It's outrageous that banks and other companies charge so much for remittances.

That's why I'm into crypto, if you can't tell. We're building our own system. You're welcome to join us. Plenty of risk and no minimums, I guarantee it.

A clear example of the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer is found in predatory lending, which pretty much all banks are involved with, btw. With low-risk, someone with 10k to spare could get a high return. Low-income and desperate borrowers pay a ridiculously high-interest rate.

Where is this low risk high return for $10k?