Why The Outrage About the iPhone/Healthcare Comments?

PCP319 said:
No, it's an attempt to have the poor take responsibility for their bad financial decisions. Every little thing adds up.
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You know, I'm the first to admit and lament that blanket statements like this hit a lot of poor people who are *wildly* irresponsible and I would love to see them held accountable, but you also have to admit that there are a lot of poor people in the circumstance they are not responsible for who are trying to make good decisions who really can't afford a bill that can be thousands of dollars a year for healthcare. People like this oftentimes also get stuck working in situations which puts them at higher risk of injury/illness. I had to work construction to get myself out of a hole and, frankly, there is a reasonable amount of risk involved in that and at the time I was at my most vulnerable financially I was also at my most vulnerable to injury. The pairing of the two made having healthcare all the more important and, at the time, all the more unattainable.

Add to this that making good financial decisions isn't as easy as it should be. We learn many of our financial habits from our parents and have them reinforced by the people around us and a lot of low income people who try and make it work are the ones who have the worst examples and role models and, frankly, this makes it an uphill battle. I sometimes go on about how cheap I live and it is true - but the reality is, my Papa grew up in post WWII Germany and developed habits to live *cheap* that he passed on to me. Breaking the mould of bad spending habits is tough when you're surrounded by people who are doing the opposite, when everyone around you is reinforcing bad spending habits.

If you're being honest, you have to admit that there are going to be more than a few working poor out there who are trying to be better, make better decisions, improve their lot for themselves and their children, and are facing an uphill battle. As a citizen I am willing to pay a higher tax rate to insure that when the person who was at where I was at ten or so years ago hurts themselves on the job they can go to a doctor and get the help they need. If there are deadbeats who get covered too, c'est la vie - though I do support ways to crack down on the deadbeat poor which is a very real thing. You have to admit though, not every poor person who can't afford healthcare, or who has to struggle to afford healthcare, is in a situation where if they had just hadn't bought that iPhone they'd be laughing...
 
Meh, if you're looking for cheap cel phones, get one of these:



Unlocked, cheap, functional. I'm using a 650 right now and it's virtually the same stats with just a few more bells and whistles (AMOLED display being the big one) but the 640 is a great, cheap, virtually disposable phone that will last you for years and cost you peanuts - while letting you get onto the cheaper plans that unlocked phones make available.

Also, as has been stated, there are plenty of Android options out there. The number of people I know who cannot afford it who have families in which everyone has an on contract iPhone that gets replaced every two years is nuts. In many cases, this is a microcosm of their spending habits at large and the utter waste that they could easily avoid is insane - but they're the first to scream bloody murder about how the system is keeping them down. Some people DO need a smack on the upside of the head when it comes to their spending habits. An iPhone is a status symbol more than anything else and guess what - when you're poor, you don't get to have that kind of status symbol. If you end up with such a thing, you are doing it wrong.
 
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A person shouldn't have to 'choose' between the fruit of his labor going towards satisfying his health needs or material comfort.
 
sabretruth said:
A person shouldn't have to 'choose' between the fruit of his labor going towards satisfying his health needs or material comfort.
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Well, technically, in a system of universal healthcare the only reason you don't make that choice is because that choice is already made for you - the fruits of your labor are going to satisfy your health needs whether you wanted them to or not. As I have stated many times I think this is a fair civic mandate for the state to impose - but framing this in terms of choice seems a bad route, since in the case of universal healthcare you don't have to choose only because the choice is made for you. If you deeply value a citizen's right to choose you probably find universal healthcare a bit of a burr in your ass.
 
@etheist Not going to quote just to save space on the page, and make it cleaner to read.

Yes, of course many poor people are facing a HUGE uphill battle. And, yes, I agree that poor spending habits are often the result of poor parenting. However, just because, for example, an iPhone bill isn't as much as healthcare, it doesn't mean that you can afford the bill if you're poor.

A more accurate statement would have been:

Choose a bigger apartment than you need, buy a new iPhone, buy a 4k TV, have DirecTV, waste your money on alcohol and cigarettes, etc. Or choose to get healthcare.

Sure, obviously you can argue that you shouldn't have to choose. To that, I say that you either need to spend less, or make more. Or both. People can't hold your hand forever.

Maybe I'm just not a charitable enough person. But, let's be honest for a second. The homeless guy that sits in the median in my neighborhood isn't going to use my $50 like he should. He's going to waste it, when he really should use it to get some decent clothes, get a cheap haircut, get a shower (Planet Fitness drop-in), and apply at the literally dozens of places hiring right now on my street alone.

Now, for people saying that you can't raise a family on minimum wage, well, minimum wage jobs aren't meant to raise families on. They're jobs for teenagers and out-of-work people.
 
PCP319 said:
@etheist Not going to quote just to save space on the page, and make it cleaner to read.

Yes, of course many poor people are facing a HUGE uphill battle. And, yes, I agree that poor spending habits are often the result of poor parenting. However, just because, for example, an iPhone bill isn't as much as healthcare, it doesn't mean that you can afford the bill if you're poor.

A more accurate statement would have been:

Choose a bigger apartment than you need, buy a new iPhone, buy a 4k TV, have DirecTV, waste your money on alcohol and cigarettes, etc. Or choose to get healthcare.

Sure, obviously you can argue that you shouldn't have to choose. To that, I say that you either need to spend less, or make more. Or both. People can't hold your hand forever.

Maybe I'm just not a charitable enough person. But, let's be honest for a second. The homeless guy that sits in the median in my neighborhood isn't going to use my $50 like he should. He's going to waste it, when he really should use it to get some decent clothes, get a cheap haircut, get a shower (Planet Fitness drop-in), and apply at the literally dozens of places hiring right now on my street alone.

Now, for people saying that you can't raise a family on minimum wage, well, minimum wage jobs aren't meant to raise families on. They're jobs for teenagers and out-of-work people.
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You can ignore everything but the bolded/underlined parts if you want. I'm not talking so much about the people doing this:

"Choose a bigger apartment than you need, buy a new iPhone, buy a 4k TV, have DirecTV, waste your money on alcohol and cigarettes, etc. Or choose to get healthcare."

Look at my other posts - I resent these people and I think there are far too many of them. What I'm talking about are the people who are trying to break this mould - the poor who aren't trying to be deadbeats. I am happy to give those people a helping hand with something as central as healthcare. When you get that kid trying to crawl out of the hood and all of the shit around him keeps dragging him down, when he doesn't even know about cheaper phones, better ways to eat/cook, when his social life options are all bad ones because he's surrounded by deadbeats, I don't mind giving that kid a helping hand when he hurts himself on the job or needs a doctor to check him out to see how bad some persistent illness is.

Now I realize that "giving a helping hand" in terms of universal healthcare is a bit complicated because it is forced helping and I understand that this isn't what a lot of people are signing up for. That being said, I'm giving a nod to the fact that I willingly pay these particular taxes because I know that healthcare will help some people who really deserve it.

If I were to pose a question to you, it would be this. We both know that there are deadbeats out there who will benefit from universal healthcare who do not deserve it given their spending habits, and there are probably a lot of people like this. That being said, do you consider it worth it to help those who are in need and deserving at the cost of helping some deadbeats as well? For me, the answer is yes - I'd rather help the deserving poor at the cost of helping the undeserving poor too, and that's why I willingly pay my taxes knowing they will go into universal healthcare.

Personally, I'd like to see the state put some resources into teaching people better spending/saving habits because right now those aren't being provided at home for a lot of people. That's another issue though...
 
@ehtheist Yes, I believe that those people should be helped, but it should be voluntary. If people want to give, they will. If they don't, they shouldn't be forced to.

And yes, I would love to see more financial education in schooling. Though, I don't think we need more funding to achieve that.
 
PCP319 said:
No, it's an attempt to have the poor take responsibility for their bad financial decisions. Every little thing adds up.
Click to expand...

That won't lower costs, though. Making it a discussion of poor people versus poorer people is a distraction. Everybody would have more money in their lifetimes if they didn't have to pay as much for health care.
 
PCP319 said:
@ehtheist Yes, I believe that those people should be helped, but it should be voluntary. If people want to give, they will. If they don't, they shouldn't be forced to.

And yes, I would love to see more financial education in schooling. Though, I don't think we need more funding to achieve that.
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Fair enough. This is a stance I can at least respect, if it's not one I endorse myself. I think that charitable and voluntary giving towards healthcare will prove to be woefully inadequate. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. There really isn't a frame of reference for this that I could easily apply though so I guess I'll agree to disagree and leave it at that.

I think the problem with the school system teaching financial planning is that many teachers are piss poor financial planners. Even practical things like home economics - cooking and sewing and stuff like that - if it's even still around didn't actually teach me much about saving money. Today me could, in an hour, teach a kid more about saving money on healthy food than two years of home economics classes did in highschool. Also, when many of the teachers out there are frequently eating out, going on trips, and getting a new iPhone every year on their modest salary, I just don't know if the school system has the raw material to teach financial planning as is. I have a lot of respect for teachers and their roles, but there is something about the brief stint in university, expectation of a two month break each year, and perception that they have a "fun" job that leads it to attract people who didn't grow up in every way they could. Teachers are oftentimes irresponsible as all hell and I believe it's wishful thinking for these people to teach financial planning to their students - hence my thought that we have to put some resources into effectively teaching kids to live within their means.
 
@ehtheist Yeah, the barrier to entry for teaching would certainly have to be higher. Or, instead of many useless classes, high schools could hire personal finance teachers, and pay them well.

I certainly would NOT trust the average teacher to teach my kids about finance. Hell, I had a teacher tell me that keeping a balance on your credit card was the best way to increase your score. How ridiculous.

I'd gladly teach kids at least a little about personal finance. Namely, NEVER have a car payment, pay tuition out-of-pocket (if you can't afford it, work until you can, or GET A TRADE APPRENTICESHIP), max your 401(k) and IRA, and passively invest in mutual funds and Vanguard ETFs. That's 90% of wealth building, with the other 10% having to do with career choice and limiting your expenses even further.
 
PCP319 said:
I don't get it. All I saw was the MSM and the left bashing him constantly. Saying he attacked the poor. What the hell...how? By giving them a dose or reality?

If you're poor, you can't afford to NOT make those tough financial decisions. He doesn't need to tell rich people to choose, because rich people can afford both. Poor people can't. They whine and whine about how they can't afford healthcare, but then they still have expensive cars and nice, new iPhones.

My best guess would just be that the left are being crybullies, and don't want the poor to be accountable for their own bad decisions.
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Of course its true, if you can't afford to feed your kids that you probably shouldn't be posting about it on Facebook with your iPhone 7.

Todays 20 somethings are spoiled brats. Plain and simple. What we're seeing is the same thing you see when you take a 3 year olds toy away to make him take a nap.
 
PCP319 said:
@ehtheist Yeah, the barrier to entry for teaching would certainly have to be higher. Or, instead of many useless classes, high schools could hire personal finance teachers, and pay them well.

I certainly would NOT trust the average teacher to teach my kids about finance. Hell, I had a teacher tell me that keeping a balance on your credit card was the best way to increase your score. How ridiculous.

I'd gladly teach kids at least a little about personal finance. Namely, NEVER have a car payment, pay tuition out-of-pocket (if you can't afford it, work until you can, or GET A TRADE APPRENTICESHIP), max your 401(k) and IRA, and passively invest in mutual funds and Vanguard ETFs. That's 90% of wealth building, with the other 10% having to do with career choice and limiting your expenses even further.
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Re-allocation of funding rather than more funding is a reasonable way to go about it, and one I'd vastly prefer, but I suspect you'd face tough opposition. Whether it's achievable or not I don't know and moving the collective minds of the public is difficult as you'd face hordes of people screaming bloody murder for every feminist basket weaving elective you axe. It's an easy campaign to make - "education under attack" etc etc.

All hypotheticals now though. Have a good one.
 
Two full time 15$ an hour households won't be rich but they can afford this. No, it's not a glamorous life but you have credit, decent cars, and iphones on a payment plan... not too crazy IMO.
 
well if you're poor, on government assistance, yet have name brand clothes, a smartphone, and a LED TV....

quite frankly you're a worthless moocher
 
Anyone working 40 hours a week should be able to afford healthcare, a phone and anything else, he/she and his family needs.
If he can't thats becuase he lives in a third world country like the USA.
People working 2/3 jobs and still needing foodstamps, that's the sorry state the USA is in and that's not a first world country.
 
ehtheist said:
Well, technically, in a system of universal healthcare the only reason you don't make that choice is because that choice is already made for you - the fruits of your labor are going to satisfy your health needs whether you wanted them to or not. As I have stated many times I think this is a fair civic mandate for the state to impose - but framing this in terms of choice seems a bad route, since in the case of universal healthcare you don't have to choose only because the choice is made for you. If you deeply value a citizen's right to choose you probably find universal healthcare a bit of a burr in your ass.
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What kind of dumb argument is this? The nature of the choice between healthcare and a luxury, and a luxury and another luxury is different.
 
sabretruth said:
What kind of dumb argument is this? The nature of the choice between healthcare and a luxury, and a luxury and another luxury is different.
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I think you're going to have to explain the bolded part to me because you really haven't contested my assertions concerning the choice being taken from you in the instance of universal healthcare. I could go off half cocked - that is my usual methodology - but I'll try it this way for a change and see what happens.
 
Anyone who's ever worked an er or with patients has seen this exAmple in person repeatedly

Smokes 2 packs a day can't afford meds
5 a pack times two times 30 days=300. Covers he meds they didn't buy comfortably
Has new iPhone and drove in with a new 30000 SUV

So if the price of a plan per month got as low as 150 a month it would be a lifestyle choice to not buy it and have say cable
 
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