That's a pretty good point. "No willpower" is probably overstating things by a lot. If I was in that situation would I have enough willpower to overcome temptation and eat well? I really don't know. Back when I had little money I still had a lot of enjoyment in my life, because I wasn't stuck in a crappy apartment with a crappy job, but was going to school.
But I think the overall point still stands. If the poor are eating poorly it's not because they can't afford healthy food, it's because they choose not to. Maybe it's a difficult choice, I won't discount that, but it's still a choice. Junk food is more expensive than a lot of healthy staples.
There is an enormous difference between receiving a tax deduction and getting actual money from the government. The former just means you pay less, the latter means that money flows in the other direction.
It's possible she's paying taxes too, but I doubt she's paying much. I'm not sure what the requirements are to qualify for food stamps but by the time you get to the low end of the income scale, there are enough deductions that one's income tax burden should be minimal if not zero.
In any case, I'm not criticizing her for being poor. I'm criticizing her for buying gourmet specialty food that she certainly doesn't need (nobody needs that stuff) and cannot afford. If you have a lot of money and buy that stuff, well, whatever, it's your money. If you have little money and buy that stuff, you're stupid. If you have so little money that you need government assistance to live, then you're going beyond the merely stupid.
Ever loan money to a guy so he can pay his rent only to find out that he spent it on beer and is still behind on his rent? Same basic situation, except I can't choose not to give my money for this cause.
But the point is that people who make $25-50,000/year generally get by just fine and have a good amount of disposable income, simply because they tend to live in cheaper areas. Cost of living and salaries are usually related pretty closely. The people I know who make money in that range could certainly afford to pay for an iPhone if they wanted to, and they're paying 2-3x less, or even less than that, for their housing than I am.
If you live in a region where the cost of living is extremely low then you can live in an "expensive" neighborhood that's still substantially cheaper than most of the country.
You're guilty of extrapolating from one incident and assuming much about her lifestyle. Could have been a one time splurge you know. Would you want to eat beans and rice for every meal every day?
I would not, but I would never ever spend any money on anything made by Odwalla.
I make close to six figures and I would never even consider spending $15 on juice.
So I don't care if it's a one-time splurge or a regular thing. Either way it says nothing good about her. From the poor people I know, a lot of why they remain poor is because they frequently make "one-time" splurges. Years later they still have no money, and they wonder why....
Food stamps are paid for by tax money. That woman essentially spent fifteen dollars of my money on something I personally consider far too expensive to purchase even though I almost certainly make far more money than she does.
I had no problem eating well when I was a poor college student. For me it was easier to eat well when I was poor because all the pre-made frozen/boxed/canned meals were unaffordable. Now I have to work quite a bit harder to avoid the temptation to simply let Tombstone and friends do all my cooking for me.
The poor people I know who eat like crap don't do it because they can't afford better. They do it because they have no willpower. They not only eat junk food, they eat out for junk food. Nobody who can afford to eat regularly at McDonald's is going to have problems affording healthy food.
And really, I don't buy your argument at all. Eating healthy is harder if you're a lazy poor person. But potatoes, beans, and in-season vegetables are all cheaper than junk food.
Oh, and food stamps? I don't live in an area with a lot of food-stamp recipients. But the last time I saw someone use food stamps at my local grocery store, she was buying two large bottles of Odwalla juice, clocking in at something like $15 total for perhaps half a gallon of juice. Obviously she's having no trouble affording healthy food!
Quantitative analysis and quantitative modeling are 100% meaningless without the ability to run experiments or at the very least sample a large pool of data to test predictions the way the astrophysicists manage. Without running experiments or at least a really huge pool of varied countries to choose from (180-some does not count) then all that modeling and analysis is just so much masturbation.
Now, I'm wrong in that I forgot about people who run true economic experiments in a psychological setting, where they test various facets of game theory and such. But rarely does this fall under the heading of "economics", and when it comes to macroeconomics it's about as sciency as astrology.
That's kind of hilarious. How is any kind of economics not pseudo-science?
Economics is essentially what you get when you take psychology, already something that is somewhat shaky when it comes to science, and then remove all the actual experiments and data.
Don't know why you think this is "my" situation. I'm a programmer, not a salesman. I never see conference rooms or deal with IT anymore. In my past lives I've been the IT guy far more frequently than I've been on the receiving end IT policy.
For the record: Keeping the network healthy is what enables THE VAST MAJORITY of users to do their job.
Completely true. But at the same time, the vast majority of "abuses" actually don't harm anything. If a wacky request won't actually do any damage then it shouldn't be rejected just because the IT department is uncomfortable with it. Unfortunately this is often what happens.
Another post in this thread captured this attitude perfectly. It said that hooking up a switch was problematic because there was no way to control the individual computers. So if one of them started misbehaving, the only remedy would be to shut off that network drop, thereby disconnecting all of them.
Somehow this was considered to be worse than having them all start out disconnected.
If something will legitimately do damage to your network then certainly you shouldn't let it on (unless the company will go under without it or something of similar magnitude). But a lot of IT policies go far beyond this and impede business for no legitimate reason.
If the IT guys say "normally this would be fine, but our network is stretched to the limits and this could very well bring it down" then that's fine.
But 99% of the time they do not say this. They simply say "no" and give no reason. Generally it's because they have no reason.
Instances such as you cite are the exception, not the rule. If IT can't provide the requested service then fine, it can't be done. But so much if the time IT simply refuses to work with people because it's something out of their control or beyond whatever mindless policies they have in place.
Of course you don't get to dictate terms to the marketing guys. You're in IT! Why would you be the one dictating? However you'd better be damned sure that the people who actually make whatever product you sell get to dictate terms to the marketing guys. (That is, assuming your company is competent and is not some Dilbert-esque horror.)
The purpose of a company is to make money and it does this by selling products. Any part of the company that is not involved in creating and selling those products is involved in facilitating their creation or their sales.
This is the key point: your job is not to run the network. Your job is to facilitate the people in your company who actually bring in money. That you do this by running the network is secondary. So many IT people think that running the network is all they do and when presented with a choice between helping the rest of the company or protecting the network, they will always choose the latter. Wrong choice!
Yep, IT is a delicate balance. They have to keep the facilities working even though their users are continually doing things to destroy them.
The trouble is that those things which destroy IT facilities are also the things that make money for the company.
It's hard to do well! I'm not belittling the job of the IT department. The problem is that a lot of IT guys simply give up because it's too hard. They see that keeping the facilities working is on their job description while bringing in money is on other people's job descriptions, so they only worry about the first. If your goals are incompatible with their ideals for the network, that's your problem, they say.
More IT guys need to realize that a perfectly smooth-running network which is not used to generate revenue is just as bad as a network which is broken beyond all utility.
A switch plugged into a conference room network port for a few hours isn't going to destroy anything. These people need more ports, either accept their perfectly workable ad-hoc solution or come up with something better. "No" is not an option.
My answer to your New Jersey hypothetical is two fold:
First, people woefully underestimate the difficulty in effecting change abroad. It is no coincidence that the United States's greatest foreign triumph for good killed about half a million of our boys and many millions of the enemy. The main reason that a small number of troops or money is not made available to stop genocide in Africa is because it doesn't work.
Second, if New Jersey got to be so screwed up that it's that dangerous to fix them then we should probably let them secede and go their own way.
The problem is when the IT guys think that prohibiting a switch in a conference room to provide connectivity for a few hours falls under the heading of "reasonable".
Dilbert's concept of "preventer of information services" is more truth than farce. Most IT guys I've encountered are more interested in "keeping the network healthy" than actually letting people get work done. If you have a better way to let six people all connect to the network from that room, then fire away. But "sorry, you can't plug that in, and there's no other way to get what you want" is quite simply the wrong answer.
What scares me about McCain is not McCain but his age. If he gets elected, the chance of him dying in office has got to be quite high. If that happens, the leader of the free world with the biggest guns and bombs is another religious person with a proven tenuous grasp on reality. I'll have to spend another four years hoping she doesn't get a message from God telling her it's time for the Apocalypse.
Bingo! McCain I don't care too much about. He's more of the same, but we've survived 8 years of the same and can survive another 4. But I'll vote for Obama just to keep Palin away. The idea of her getting into the White House is frightening! It amazes me how Republicans can talk about Obama's lack of experience while simultaneously giving Palin a free pass when she clearly has neither experience nor brains. Obama at least has one out of two!
a future where US allies could be certain that the US would abandon them as soon as anything went wrong.
Actually this would just prove that we would be willing to abandon an enemy as soon as anything went wrong. Maybe just as bad, but not at all the same thing.
In practice, I have way more influence over the rights of that woman in New Jersey than the one in Iran.
If I go around trying to solve all of the world's ills, I will accomplish nothing. However if I concentrate my effort close to home, I may accomplish something. Therefore even if I believe that everyone is equal, it is still reasonable to think about locals first.
You should realize that this is vigilante justice, and that the law should not follow your "fine" example. Furthermore, you should realize that in the heat of the moment you may misinterpret the situation and end up beating or even killing an innocent man.
If you are fine with this, then so be it. But don't think that the justice system should imitate you. You have far more to fear from corrupt cops than child molesters, and any legal system should protect us foremost from the former.
I spend more than when I was "poor" too, but mainly on housing, transportation, and recreation. When it comes to food, I know people who make half as much as I do and spend a lot more, because I'm frugal and they buy into the Whole Foods marketing machine, or whatever.
A lot of people I know who don't make much money and have bad finances have those bad finances because they spend way too much money on eating out and fancy high-end food.
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That's a pretty good point. "No willpower" is probably overstating things by a lot. If I was in that situation would I have enough willpower to overcome temptation and eat well? I really don't know. Back when I had little money I still had a lot of enjoyment in my life, because I wasn't stuck in a crappy apartment with a crappy job, but was going to school.
But I think the overall point still stands. If the poor are eating poorly it's not because they can't afford healthy food, it's because they choose not to. Maybe it's a difficult choice, I won't discount that, but it's still a choice. Junk food is more expensive than a lot of healthy staples.
There is an enormous difference between receiving a tax deduction and getting actual money from the government. The former just means you pay less, the latter means that money flows in the other direction.
It's possible she's paying taxes too, but I doubt she's paying much. I'm not sure what the requirements are to qualify for food stamps but by the time you get to the low end of the income scale, there are enough deductions that one's income tax burden should be minimal if not zero.
In any case, I'm not criticizing her for being poor. I'm criticizing her for buying gourmet specialty food that she certainly doesn't need (nobody needs that stuff) and cannot afford. If you have a lot of money and buy that stuff, well, whatever, it's your money. If you have little money and buy that stuff, you're stupid. If you have so little money that you need government assistance to live, then you're going beyond the merely stupid.
Ever loan money to a guy so he can pay his rent only to find out that he spent it on beer and is still behind on his rent? Same basic situation, except I can't choose not to give my money for this cause.
Yeah, get bent. Anyone who spends their food stamps on gourmet fruit juice deserves every bit of scorn I can dish out.
These two properties, discounting the redefinition of impossible, are mutually exclusive.
Are you some kind of moron, or are you just being disingenuous?
But the point is that people who make $25-50,000/year generally get by just fine and have a good amount of disposable income, simply because they tend to live in cheaper areas. Cost of living and salaries are usually related pretty closely. The people I know who make money in that range could certainly afford to pay for an iPhone if they wanted to, and they're paying 2-3x less, or even less than that, for their housing than I am.
If you live in a region where the cost of living is extremely low then you can live in an "expensive" neighborhood that's still substantially cheaper than most of the country.
You're guilty of extrapolating from one incident and assuming much about her lifestyle. Could have been a one time splurge you know. Would you want to eat beans and rice for every meal every day?
I would not, but I would never ever spend any money on anything made by Odwalla.
I make close to six figures and I would never even consider spending $15 on juice.
So I don't care if it's a one-time splurge or a regular thing. Either way it says nothing good about her. From the poor people I know, a lot of why they remain poor is because they frequently make "one-time" splurges. Years later they still have no money, and they wonder why....
Food stamps are paid for by tax money. That woman essentially spent fifteen dollars of my money on something I personally consider far too expensive to purchase even though I almost certainly make far more money than she does.
It's simply terrible financial planning.
Newsflash! Different parts of the country have different costs of living!
Astounding the idiots you encounter on here.
I had no problem eating well when I was a poor college student. For me it was easier to eat well when I was poor because all the pre-made frozen/boxed/canned meals were unaffordable. Now I have to work quite a bit harder to avoid the temptation to simply let Tombstone and friends do all my cooking for me.
The poor people I know who eat like crap don't do it because they can't afford better. They do it because they have no willpower. They not only eat junk food, they eat out for junk food. Nobody who can afford to eat regularly at McDonald's is going to have problems affording healthy food.
And really, I don't buy your argument at all. Eating healthy is harder if you're a lazy poor person. But potatoes, beans, and in-season vegetables are all cheaper than junk food.
Oh, and food stamps? I don't live in an area with a lot of food-stamp recipients. But the last time I saw someone use food stamps at my local grocery store, she was buying two large bottles of Odwalla juice, clocking in at something like $15 total for perhaps half a gallon of juice. Obviously she's having no trouble affording healthy food!
Quantitative analysis and quantitative modeling are 100% meaningless without the ability to run experiments or at the very least sample a large pool of data to test predictions the way the astrophysicists manage. Without running experiments or at least a really huge pool of varied countries to choose from (180-some does not count) then all that modeling and analysis is just so much masturbation.
Now, I'm wrong in that I forgot about people who run true economic experiments in a psychological setting, where they test various facets of game theory and such. But rarely does this fall under the heading of "economics", and when it comes to macroeconomics it's about as sciency as astrology.
That's kind of hilarious. How is any kind of economics not pseudo-science?
Economics is essentially what you get when you take psychology, already something that is somewhat shaky when it comes to science, and then remove all the actual experiments and data.
I do so enjoy it when people just pull numbers out of thin air to make their point....
As I said, Obama at least has brains. Given the choice, he's far superior, even if in the end he's not all that great.
Don't know why you think this is "my" situation. I'm a programmer, not a salesman. I never see conference rooms or deal with IT anymore. In my past lives I've been the IT guy far more frequently than I've been on the receiving end IT policy.
For the record: Keeping the network healthy is what enables THE VAST MAJORITY of users to do their job.
Completely true. But at the same time, the vast majority of "abuses" actually don't harm anything. If a wacky request won't actually do any damage then it shouldn't be rejected just because the IT department is uncomfortable with it. Unfortunately this is often what happens.
Another post in this thread captured this attitude perfectly. It said that hooking up a switch was problematic because there was no way to control the individual computers. So if one of them started misbehaving, the only remedy would be to shut off that network drop, thereby disconnecting all of them.
Somehow this was considered to be worse than having them all start out disconnected.
If something will legitimately do damage to your network then certainly you shouldn't let it on (unless the company will go under without it or something of similar magnitude). But a lot of IT policies go far beyond this and impede business for no legitimate reason.
If the IT guys say "normally this would be fine, but our network is stretched to the limits and this could very well bring it down" then that's fine.
But 99% of the time they do not say this. They simply say "no" and give no reason. Generally it's because they have no reason.
Instances such as you cite are the exception, not the rule. If IT can't provide the requested service then fine, it can't be done. But so much if the time IT simply refuses to work with people because it's something out of their control or beyond whatever mindless policies they have in place.
Of course you don't get to dictate terms to the marketing guys. You're in IT! Why would you be the one dictating? However you'd better be damned sure that the people who actually make whatever product you sell get to dictate terms to the marketing guys. (That is, assuming your company is competent and is not some Dilbert-esque horror.)
The purpose of a company is to make money and it does this by selling products. Any part of the company that is not involved in creating and selling those products is involved in facilitating their creation or their sales.
This is the key point: your job is not to run the network. Your job is to facilitate the people in your company who actually bring in money. That you do this by running the network is secondary. So many IT people think that running the network is all they do and when presented with a choice between helping the rest of the company or protecting the network, they will always choose the latter. Wrong choice!
Yep, IT is a delicate balance. They have to keep the facilities working even though their users are continually doing things to destroy them.
The trouble is that those things which destroy IT facilities are also the things that make money for the company.
It's hard to do well! I'm not belittling the job of the IT department. The problem is that a lot of IT guys simply give up because it's too hard. They see that keeping the facilities working is on their job description while bringing in money is on other people's job descriptions, so they only worry about the first. If your goals are incompatible with their ideals for the network, that's your problem, they say.
More IT guys need to realize that a perfectly smooth-running network which is not used to generate revenue is just as bad as a network which is broken beyond all utility.
A switch plugged into a conference room network port for a few hours isn't going to destroy anything. These people need more ports, either accept their perfectly workable ad-hoc solution or come up with something better. "No" is not an option.
My answer to your New Jersey hypothetical is two fold:
First, people woefully underestimate the difficulty in effecting change abroad. It is no coincidence that the United States's greatest foreign triumph for good killed about half a million of our boys and many millions of the enemy. The main reason that a small number of troops or money is not made available to stop genocide in Africa is because it doesn't work.
Second, if New Jersey got to be so screwed up that it's that dangerous to fix them then we should probably let them secede and go their own way.
The problem is when the IT guys think that prohibiting a switch in a conference room to provide connectivity for a few hours falls under the heading of "reasonable".
Dilbert's concept of "preventer of information services" is more truth than farce. Most IT guys I've encountered are more interested in "keeping the network healthy" than actually letting people get work done. If you have a better way to let six people all connect to the network from that room, then fire away. But "sorry, you can't plug that in, and there's no other way to get what you want" is quite simply the wrong answer.
What scares me about McCain is not McCain but his age. If he gets elected, the chance of him dying in office has got to be quite high. If that happens, the leader of the free world with the biggest guns and bombs is another religious person with a proven tenuous grasp on reality. I'll have to spend another four years hoping she doesn't get a message from God telling her it's time for the Apocalypse.
Bingo! McCain I don't care too much about. He's more of the same, but we've survived 8 years of the same and can survive another 4. But I'll vote for Obama just to keep Palin away. The idea of her getting into the White House is frightening! It amazes me how Republicans can talk about Obama's lack of experience while simultaneously giving Palin a free pass when she clearly has neither experience nor brains. Obama at least has one out of two!
a future where US allies could be certain that the US would abandon them as soon as anything went wrong.
Actually this would just prove that we would be willing to abandon an enemy as soon as anything went wrong. Maybe just as bad, but not at all the same thing.
It's not a quagmire if you're a pragmatist.
In theory, every life is equally worthwhile.
In practice, I have way more influence over the rights of that woman in New Jersey than the one in Iran.
If I go around trying to solve all of the world's ills, I will accomplish nothing. However if I concentrate my effort close to home, I may accomplish something. Therefore even if I believe that everyone is equal, it is still reasonable to think about locals first.
You should realize that this is vigilante justice, and that the law should not follow your "fine" example. Furthermore, you should realize that in the heat of the moment you may misinterpret the situation and end up beating or even killing an innocent man.
If you are fine with this, then so be it. But don't think that the justice system should imitate you. You have far more to fear from corrupt cops than child molesters, and any legal system should protect us foremost from the former.
I spend more than when I was "poor" too, but mainly on housing, transportation, and recreation. When it comes to food, I know people who make half as much as I do and spend a lot more, because I'm frugal and they buy into the Whole Foods marketing machine, or whatever.
A lot of people I know who don't make much money and have bad finances have those bad finances because they spend way too much money on eating out and fancy high-end food.