The irony is that most positions to help the poor make you poor. Social work pays terribly. Nonprofit salaries are low. They entice young people into volunteer positions when theyāre drowning in student debt and have barely any personal savings. You really make a sacrifice.
This is basically the central concern of David Graeberās Bullshit Jobs theory, though he focused more on the other side of the issue, how the most meaningless jobs tend to be the most compensated.
Which is why I push back when people complain about employees at non-profits making a decent salary.
If you can make 10% more working at a for-profit company, then you are asking people working at non-profit companies to donate 10% of their salary. So unless the person complaining is donating 10% of their salary to charity, they donāt really have anything to complain aboutā¦. š
Itās also a thing in (parts of) Europe, too, unfortunately. Only college professors were paid decently. āWereā because I donāt have up-to-date info.
Youāre directing your hate on a group of people largely working overtime and underpaid to provide an essential service, and not the system that put both of you in a place to where you are contributing to society but not adequately rewarded for that hard work.
The US produces 100 cars about every four minutes. So Iād say this is a negligible impact long term.
Also, Macronās France is just Hillaryās America. It hasnāt done dick shit to curb poverty or resolve the social tension between French Capital and its Labor movement. A great deal of these protests are coming from French fascist pensioners, rioting over the countryās immigrant population. Just burning a few dozen cars once a month is not reshaping the French economy in any meaningful capacity.
I feel this. I help where I can and it feels like an infinitely deep abyss of need unfillable by what resources I can provide. In times past Iāve been able to come up with $1000 to help someone and before its been the difference between life success and failure. Now $1000 may only fix a single problem for the person and they have 3 to 4 other problems of equal weight with equal consequences. So fixing the one still causes their lives to go off the rails from the other remaining problems.
It makes me feel helpless to not be able to do anything meaningful.
you can still have a huge impact on people in poorer countries
You can pay someone else to presumably benefit from the strong dollar relative. But youāre still playing a trust game with a lot of unknowns.
The ānets for malariaā charity is a great instance of people trying to moneyball the short term pay-off without thinking about long term and second order consequences. Most notably, use of malaria nets for fishing. Counterintuitively, youād do better supplying a community with fishing nets. Because then they wonāt use the malaria nets improperly.
Thatās not even to say ādonāt send these charities moneyā. Please do. But chucking money down the āCharityā hole and hoping it lands where it needs to is an act of faith as profound as any religious belief. You are, at the end of the day, playing a game of telephone with everyone between you and the intended recipients.
You rarely, if ever, get to meet the people youāre supposed to benefit. You never get to see the long-term social returns on your investment, particularly when it is happening on the other side of the planet. You donāt build community with any of the people youāre aiding and youāre not anticipating any kind of reciprocal aid in your own time of need.
The impact you have is ultimately invisible to you. The broader social benefits are invisible. The returns are, at the absolute best, a momentary personal sense of good-vibes. There is no virtuous cycle youāre participating in, just an endless void youāre expected to bleed into.
Not everywhere does, unfortunately. My city has a food bank, yes, but if you need housing there are hoops to go through to even get a shelter bed. When I went there, they said I needed a referral (no idea from whom) or proof of eviction. I wasnāt evicted, my boyfriend just decided to move and drop me, so that was out of the question. Then the low income housing situation is literally a lottery, one that takes months if not years for a place to open up.
Then social programs vary from place to place. Some states may say Iām eligible for food stamps, while others tell me that Iād only be eligible if I had a kid. When I tried to sign up in Florida, I was straight up told that if I wanted benefits, I had to have a baby. Yeah, Iām struggling to feed and house myself, lemme bring a child into this situation, great idea.
Yeah itās a trap. My friend got stuck in a cycle of needing shelter before he finally was able to get his own place again. Then he died. So even that victory was short lived.
I pay the FNV (a sort of union of unions here in the Netherlands) because they kept taking the government to court because the government wasnāt following its own lawsā¦ and they kept winning. They donāt help my job because Iām in IT and class consciousness hasnāt reached there yet, but somedayā¦.
The Bolsheviks in 1917 were a dues paying organization! If youāre building a serious revolutionary party under capitalism, youāre going to need a place to meet, organizational infrastructure, a paper, etc, and all of these things need dues. Check out Leninās Where To Begin (1905) for a quick read that will help put the task into perspective!
We have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win! Workers of the world, unite!!
Not that I am in one, but Iām sure there must be a communist party somewhere in the world that is doing fine on a local level. I canāt imagine how those even could become dictatorships with the powers of a mayor alone, surely those count?
we donāt always have to use their exploitative slave making system. find small ways to benefit your local communities directly. better yet team up with others who are transparent about the efficient ways they try to accurately address the issues that are harming our people.
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The irony is that most positions to help the poor make you poor. Social work pays terribly. Nonprofit salaries are low. They entice young people into volunteer positions when theyāre drowning in student debt and have barely any personal savings. You really make a sacrifice.
Help the poor -> Help Iām poor
This is basically the central concern of David Graeberās Bullshit Jobs theory, though he focused more on the other side of the issue, how the most meaningless jobs tend to be the most compensated.
Working as intended
Which is why I push back when people complain about employees at non-profits making a decent salary.
If you can make 10% more working at a for-profit company, then you are asking people working at non-profit companies to donate 10% of their salary. So unless the person complaining is donating 10% of their salary to charity, they donāt really have anything to complain aboutā¦. š
The poorest are those who help. Teachers, nurses, care providers, child care, service workers, retail employees.
If you want to be helpful youāre gonna pay for it.
Almost all these people make more than I did in my career, they are not the poorest by a long shot
You had it even worse, by your standards they are rich, itās a lavish lifestyle you were very poor your career was so bad
Teachers make $40k-$60k a year depending on the region. They arenāt rich your job is bad.
Must be an American thing. Where I live, teachers make 65k-110k depending on experience and position.
Itās also a thing in (parts of) Europe, too, unfortunately. Only college professors were paid decently. āWereā because I donāt have up-to-date info.
*in the US
All I ever hear is āoh the poor teachersā when they get paid more than me, get way better benefits, and get away more time off. Fuck the teachers.
Resenting other workers because they happen to be better compensated than you is the opposite of class consciousness.
Someone out there is even worse off than you, and they might be saying āFuck agingelderly.ā
Unless they understand the actual problem, then they would be saying āFuck billionairesā or maybe āFuck Reganā.
Youāre directing your hate on a group of people largely working overtime and underpaid to provide an essential service, and not the system that put both of you in a place to where you are contributing to society but not adequately rewarded for that hard work.
What career did you do?
Iām not even poor. But by god, itās hard to find hours in the day or money in the bank to do anything that feels material and meaningful.
Thatās being poor
You can sustain yourself (very comfortably) without having the industrial scale resources to affect your community in the aggregate.
If you donāt have time for life, then youāre poor. The French would have burned down a hundred cars by now
The US produces 100 cars about every four minutes. So Iād say this is a negligible impact long term.
Also, Macronās France is just Hillaryās America. It hasnāt done dick shit to curb poverty or resolve the social tension between French Capital and its Labor movement. A great deal of these protests are coming from French fascist pensioners, rioting over the countryās immigrant population. Just burning a few dozen cars once a month is not reshaping the French economy in any meaningful capacity.
I feel this. I help where I can and it feels like an infinitely deep abyss of need unfillable by what resources I can provide. In times past Iāve been able to come up with $1000 to help someone and before its been the difference between life success and failure. Now $1000 may only fix a single problem for the person and they have 3 to 4 other problems of equal weight with equal consequences. So fixing the one still causes their lives to go off the rails from the other remaining problems.
It makes me feel helpless to not be able to do anything meaningful.
iām in a similar situation, not poor, but not making enough to get ahead or do anything.
thatās not poor. iāve been poor. this isnāt that
Iāve got great news for you! Even with little money (from a Western point of view) you can still have a huge impact on people in poorer countries
You can pay someone else to presumably benefit from the strong dollar relative. But youāre still playing a trust game with a lot of unknowns.
The ānets for malariaā charity is a great instance of people trying to moneyball the short term pay-off without thinking about long term and second order consequences. Most notably, use of malaria nets for fishing. Counterintuitively, youād do better supplying a community with fishing nets. Because then they wonāt use the malaria nets improperly.
Thatās not even to say ādonāt send these charities moneyā. Please do. But chucking money down the āCharityā hole and hoping it lands where it needs to is an act of faith as profound as any religious belief. You are, at the end of the day, playing a game of telephone with everyone between you and the intended recipients.
You rarely, if ever, get to meet the people youāre supposed to benefit. You never get to see the long-term social returns on your investment, particularly when it is happening on the other side of the planet. You donāt build community with any of the people youāre aiding and youāre not anticipating any kind of reciprocal aid in your own time of need.
The impact you have is ultimately invisible to you. The broader social benefits are invisible. The returns are, at the absolute best, a momentary personal sense of good-vibes. There is no virtuous cycle youāre participating in, just an endless void youāre expected to bleed into.
I suggest donating to MSF. They get the services where people need them and you canāt really āmisuseā health services.
Otherwise, I agree.
I still try you know. Organize, advise, sometimes join a cookout. We survive together you know.
āLord, I donāt even need a billion, I could do a lot of good work with just $100 million. Because itās not about the money for me.ā
Meanwhile, the bullies and jerks in school go on to become wealthy grifters.
I was poor in 99 already
Tell me about itā¦ in ā99 I could barely afford a snickers bar
I mean I was 5, but stillā¦ Iām sure I couldāve done better if Iād just grinded a little harder
Good so you have experience š
āthe poverty war will be over when I begin to fight, if it took a dime to go around the world I couldnāt get out of sightā
And I canāt even help myself as much as I need š„²
Help yourself then, itās not like only others deserve it
If thereās anything Iāve learned on my mental health work (on myself, therapy etc.):
To help others, you must first help yourself.
If you need help chances are good your city town whathaveyou has support systems you can take advantage of to get back on your feet.
Not everywhere does, unfortunately. My city has a food bank, yes, but if you need housing there are hoops to go through to even get a shelter bed. When I went there, they said I needed a referral (no idea from whom) or proof of eviction. I wasnāt evicted, my boyfriend just decided to move and drop me, so that was out of the question. Then the low income housing situation is literally a lottery, one that takes months if not years for a place to open up.
Then social programs vary from place to place. Some states may say Iām eligible for food stamps, while others tell me that Iād only be eligible if I had a kid. When I tried to sign up in Florida, I was straight up told that if I wanted benefits, I had to have a baby. Yeah, Iām struggling to feed and house myself, lemme bring a child into this situation, great idea.
The US truly hates the poor.
Yeah itās a trap. My friend got stuck in a cycle of needing shelter before he finally was able to get his own place again. Then he died. So even that victory was short lived.
Damn, Iām sorry about your friend.
Hey thanks, i appreciate that
Scottās Tots
Donāt let that stop you from helping the poor!
Help yourself and other poors: join a union and a communist party!
Our unions and parties over here want money to join.
I pay the FNV (a sort of union of unions here in the Netherlands) because they kept taking the government to court because the government wasnāt following its own lawsā¦ and they kept winning. They donāt help my job because Iām in IT and class consciousness hasnāt reached there yet, but somedayā¦.
To be fair, Unions require people working for them, kind of need that money to pay those people.
Make your own then
Oi for that Iād need the time I spend at work to get the money I need to live.
You could ask the people in your union to help you survive, oh waitā¦.
Damn, catch-22
The Bolsheviks in 1917 were a dues paying organization! If youāre building a serious revolutionary party under capitalism, youāre going to need a place to meet, organizational infrastructure, a paper, etc, and all of these things need dues. Check out Leninās Where To Begin (1905) for a quick read that will help put the task into perspective!
We have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win! Workers of the world, unite!!
Why would I want to replace the democracy I live in with an authoritarian dictatorship that led to Putin lol
Well you sure aint helping yourself
People ranting over a memeā¦ some dude said join a communist party lol
Tankies gonna tank. Unions are fine, but thereās never been a communist party that didnāt just turn into a dictatorship
Lemmy.world users being delusional as usual
Not that I am in one, but Iām sure there must be a communist party somewhere in the world that is doing fine on a local level. I canāt imagine how those even could become dictatorships with the powers of a mayor alone, surely those count?
There was one in a province of India doing amazing things, their people were highly educated but had to get good jobs elsewhere.
The secret ingredient is to make everyone suffer equally
why does no one ever mention mutual aid?
sharable
we donāt always have to use their exploitative slave making system. find small ways to benefit your local communities directly. better yet team up with others who are transparent about the efficient ways they try to accurately address the issues that are harming our people.
Damm really thought of donations and all but now I myself need donations
Big mood