fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2789 ]

[ SECRET POST #2789 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2789 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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03.

[Captain America]

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04.

[The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Beyond Belief]

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05. [SPOILERS for Walking Dead]

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06. [SPOILERS for Fangirl]

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07. [SPOILERS for Orange is the New Black]

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08. [SPOILERS for TWDG]

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09. [WARNING for suicide]

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10. [WARNING for abuse, (possibly?) rape]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #398.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - stock photo ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/upshot/definition-of-rich-changes-with-income.html?abt=0002&abg=1

tl;dr "it depends on how rich you yourself are"

Someone told me that if you have a roof over your head and food in the pantry then you are richer than 98% of the world. If you have all of that and no debt, then you are the 1% of the world.

I considered that an interesting way of defining wealth.

I call bullshit on that, mostly because not even half the global population is starving and homeless (close to half, sure, but still not actually half).

I mean, I get the sentiment that even a shitty house and crappy food in an industrialized society is much better than a comparatively nice house and good food in an underdeveloped nation - they're not wrong. But that exact state is very wrong.

/pedantic

I actually heard it from a (really, really bad) date and never goggled it until now. From a quick google search, it seems he got it from CNN.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/04/news/economy/world_richest/

Here are some other sources.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/10/28/attention-protestors-youre-probably-part-of-the-1-.aspx

They are basically saying my point. Being in an industrialized nation, even the poor are financially wealthier than most of the world, but that's different from the implication that having a home and food makes you rich. Most people in the world do have a home and food, so saying "a roof over your head and food in the pantry makes you in the top 1 or 2 %" really spits on the rest of the world, because it implies the assumption that everyone but "you" is starving, homeless, or both - that just flat out ignores reality.

And the average American may have more money than people of every other nation, but given how many of those nations have a means by which people could go to school or a doctor's office without nearly as much financial stress as the average American, going right back to thread OP's question: even lower-class or middle-class people of other countries seem rich because they can go to a doctor or to college without having to seriously consider bankruptcy.

When a savings fund my family has been putting money into for over a decade may not even cover a year of my university education, I can't help but see even the poorest college students in other countries as "rich" then they talk about getting state stipends to go to school.

The original quote was from a date. I never bothered to fact-check it because it just didn't seem that important. That said, I'm not sure why you think it 'spits' on the rest of the world. If someone has food and shelter then they're in a better position than a sizeable chunk of the world's population.

Different countries have different definitions for homelessness/poverty. However, google is telling me that 100 million people in the world are homeless, and 842 million do not have enough to eat. That's not counting the people who live in shanty towns or eat ramen noodles every day. Hell, people on this forum are saying that not having to chose between paying the rent and buying food is a sign of wealth.

If you want to go to one of the BRIC nations (or any other second or third world nation), live on that nation's average salary for a year, then go to the doctor for a major health issue or go to college on that, let me know. I would be genuinely interested in hearing about that experience.

Here's a Forbes article about whether it's better to be rich in a poor country or poor in a rich country. http://www.forbes.com/sites/anaswanson/2014/08/13/would-you-rather-be-rich-in-a-poor-country-or-poor-in-a-rich-country/

If you're an American then public schools receive funding from the state. Have you considered a community college? They're much cheaper than 4 year colleges and you can transfer after getting an Associates.

I just finished up community college, completing as much of my post-secondary education there as possible. I'm only doing two years at a public, state-funded university, and I'm still going to graduate with at least $30,000 in debt/loans.

My father grew up in India. When he went to school, he worked multiple jobs and still often went hungry, but he never had to worry about paying for school. Today, he eats regularly and has a nice house and is funding my college education, and he says he felt richer back then than he does right now because of the nature of the financial stress. I've regularly heard similar comments from teachers from other countries, saying how glad they are that they didn't go to college/do all of their college education in America (and this coming from teachers who are old enough to have gone to school decades ago, not the way it is today), as well as friends born in other countries talking about how glad they were that they got their medical problems fixed there before fleeing the nation for political reasons and coming to America. (Or as my Russian friend once put it only semi-jokingly, "We probably would have had to go back to Russia and risk political imprisonment if my heart problem developed after we came here.")

I'm sorry if I seem unusually bitchy over a stupid quote, but the whole sentiment smacks of racism and classism, perpetuating the idea that "oh, third world/underdeveloped nations are all soo pooor that they just need to be rescued by us (often white) rich folk" and that usually has additional unhealthy attitudes and results with it - along with people doing things to "help" that don't really do a goddamn thing to address real problems that people in underdeveloped nations are actually facing.

I think probably one of the best examples I can think of was from years ago, when someone was going on about an entire African tribal community (I don't even remember which one, anymore) being homeless and often not having enough money for food, and trying to start a charity to help them. I was in a Human Rights Watch group at the time, and my school chapter was thinking about joining until our advisors said that said tribal community probably didn't want or need that help - they were 'homeless' because they were a nomadic community, and while they rarely had enough money for food, they still were a hunter-gatherer society who, well, hunted and gathered their own food. They had legitimate problems related to poverty at a community and national level, but trying to feed and shelter them wasn't going to help. But because of the prevailing attitude, people were too busy trying to do that to bother actually helping them with issues like child marriage or access to clean water.

And that's just when the "feed and shelter" attitude only doesn't help - in many countries, the long-standing African textile industries have suffered or even basically shut down because people from wealthy nations keep donating so many clothes, thinking "oh, these people don't even have food or homes, of course they need help with clothes". These nations never had problems clothing themselves and often had long-standing and thriving clothing industries before Western clothing donations became so prevalent as to shut them down. Meanwhile, communities that face problems with access to clean water often can't get charitable funding to build, say, a new well or plumbing system because people who actually donate money often earmark for food or shelter that said communities don't need.

I mean for fuck's sake, after the earthquake in Haiti, the nation was flooded with volunteers to '(re)build homes' because everyone seemed convinced that even before the earthquake, Haitians were homeless and this was some kind of opportunity to shelter them. This completely ignored that Haitians had their own homes built by their own construction workers who now struggled to find a job, because who was going to pay someone to build a house when here were a few dozen college kids from America or Europe offering to do it for free? Nevermind that they're amateurs who barely know what they're doing and often don't do a good job of building said home, anyway.

So I know it's just a stupid statistic and a stupid quote that I know is just meant to make people think twice about their situation and consider it against the rest of the world. But it's one that really pisses me off because of the unintended affect it has people's perceptions of global poverty, perceptions that have real consequences on their actions which affect said global poverty, so I make it a point to call it out and fight the sentiment and the statistical statement every time I see it.

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[ SECRET POST #2789 ]

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?

Re: What is the sign of someone being rich to you?