Author Topic: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it  (Read 20474 times)

mathlete

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #100 on: May 08, 2019, 10:47:24 AM »
A motive behind the message does not make it wrong. Environmentalists stand to profit from green technology, but it's probably still a good idea to heed their advice, just as it's a good idea to have life insurance.

Do numbers that look highly questionable when cross-referenced with BLS stats raise an eyebrow?

I'm going to agree that you've gone off the deep end into full anti-mustachianism in this thread.

That's fine. I don't care for the cult-like nature of this community anyway. I think we're at our best when we make fewer appeals to authority.

mathlete

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #101 on: May 08, 2019, 10:53:02 AM »
But why can't it be a part of discussions overall. Do you discuss policy with people? Why can personal responsibility never come up? Why can't we discuss how to big picture encourage fiscal responsibility or at least be up front in our policy discussions that, yes, there's a very big part of the issue that is people spend tons of money on crap that really hurts them? That never seems to come up when I talk with progressives. It's in the tone and focus. It's like even acknowledging that people make their own beds in many cases is a mean thing to say or means that I think everyone is in the situation they are in because of their own decisions. It's back to SwordGuy's post - if the I'm talking about policy and bring up fiscal responsibility it immediately goes to well, people have health emergencies that drain their finances. Sure, they do, but tons of people do not, and that default response has to point people to being like, woe as me, nothing I do matters, and that perspective I see all the time, and it drives me nuts.

Also, as I have mentioned before and won't belabor things by going into details again - conservatives suck too :).

I just don't know how effective discussion on personal responsibility is on a national level. When 10% of people own 84% of everything, telling people en masse that they need to accept less is kind of tough. That doesn't mean I wouldn't tell a friend or a family member if I thought irresponsibility was at the root of their problems. But I don't think it's effective as public policy.

Jimmy Carter asked people to layer up with sweaters instead of using heating oil to help fight back against the oil cartels and everyone hated him for it. He got trounced in 1980, and that ushered in 39 straight years and counting of Middle East destabilization at the hands of the USA (and low gas prices!)

The public ire is going to be directed at somebody. I'm good with directing it at the people who benefit the most from the system as it is. And in the meantime, I'll teach any children I have all about the miracle of delayed gratification. I promise.

Wolfpack Mustachian

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #102 on: May 08, 2019, 10:53:08 AM »
I'm one of those progressives* who doesn't talk about personal responsibility much, so perhaps I can give some insight as to why we do that: we don't see how it could be implemented as a solution to large-scale economic problems. Sure, it's self-evidently the #1 thing you need to be aware of for your individual situation, but how exactly do you instill financial responsibility in enough people to put a dent in the problem? You probably have an answer, which is great. The thing is, we don't commonly get an answer in those discussions, be it yours or mine or MMM's. "People should be more responsible" becomes the end of the conversation. When that happens enough times, Politics kicks in. We come to see any mention of personal responsibility as not an attempt at a solution, but a reason to write people off--to declare that nothing needs to be done about the problem because the people affected are Bad (irresponsible). Then we come to shy away from talking about personal responsibility even when the discussion isn't about fixing poverty, including the discussion surrounding a throwaway tweet from an intern running a bank's Twitter account.

*Further left than that, but close enough.


I can see and understand your point on this in terms of not being sure of what can be done and also it being used as deflection. For the what can be done, though, the fact that it's hard to know doesn't mean it shouldn't be talked about, and for the deflection part, argue against the deflection when it happens but don't ignore it when it's not. To me, it's like this. This thought process would make 100% sense if it was a true red herring. Only 500 Americans spread out across America actually sabotage themselves, so let's not derail the conversation for them when 99.999999% of Americans are fiscally responsible and their problems are totally not of their own making. That's not the case at all. A tremendous majority of people struggle with this to their detriment. Then, as has been mentioned, if the topic is brought up in policy conversations, it has been in my experience a big dog pile occurs on that guy who brought it up. I guess, in summary, if it was irrelevant, insignificant, or inconsequential, then sure, don't let others use it as a scapegoat. It's so, so not any of those things, and it can help people tremendously if they put in practice. Let's be mindful of that.

SwordGuy

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #103 on: May 08, 2019, 09:25:43 PM »
Let's do a thought experiment:

Someone is in a shitty situation.   I attach no blame to them for how or why they are.   They just are in that situation.

Further, let us say they have several options:

1) Follow Plan A and make their situation better.   It will be hard and take 1 to 6 years, but it's a proven plan that will work in their situation.

2) Piss and moan about it.  Blame someone for the situation they are in.   That someone might be someone else or it might be themselves.   Don't care which, results are the same, they stay in their shitty situation.

3) Wait until the frabjous day in which "the one true progressive policy" which will fix the systemic issues and therefore make their shitty situation go away.    That might be next year but it's equally likely it will be several generations, if ever.   The result is much like buying a lotto ticket.  They might win big but they're more likely to stay in their the shitty situation.   Even if it's put into effect right away, there's no telling whether it will actually work.  The War on Poverty, despite a whole lot of money and effort, has barely moved the needle.   (And that was before Trump and crew got to work.)  At pre-Trump levels of progress it might work in another couple hundred years.

My advice is always this:

Control what you can control and influence what you can influence.  You can control your own actions, so implement plan 1 and start to fix your situation on your own.   Add your influence to the political situation so that a progressive policy that solves the systemic problem has a better chance of being put into effect.   It might help you but it's more likely to help someone else, but that's ok.

I've routinely gotten a lot of blowback from liberal friends.   I've been called some very rude things for proposing things that someone can do and providing proof that it can work for a number of people.   And they object and fight back over it.

You can choose to do what ever you want with your time and effort. Just know that a vast majority of your prosperity is built on the efforts of people who complained for better treatment, regardless of whether it would positively impact their own life.

And your thought experiment continues to hammer on the silly idea that someone cannot both be more fiscally responsible, and petition for a more equitable society.

Thanks for making my point.   You saw a few words and then made up your own conclusions and assigned them to me.   At least you weren't rude about it, so thanks.

Either that or you get to explain what you didn't understand about this:

Control what you can control and influence what you can influence.  You can control your own actions, so implement plan 1 and start to fix your situation on your own.   Add your influence to the political situation so that a progressive policy that solves the systemic problem has a better chance of being put into effect.   It might help you but it's more likely to help someone else, but that's ok.

Because that seems pretty damn clear to me:

First, be personally responsible and fix what you can fix for yourself now.
Second, work to improve the system for the future, even if it's only others that you help.

Seriously, I don't understand why you are disagreeing with me because I already said to do just that.


mathlete

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #104 on: May 22, 2019, 08:55:18 AM »
Did you read the article? It talked about cutting back on frivolous spending to fund retirement accounts and life insurance policies and didn't do so in a facepunch manner. I don't see why that's a bad idea.

Insurance companies are financial institutions. Try to keep up sweetheart.

Your comments make it pretty obvious that you place zero emphasis on individual responsibility, much like those angry people commenting that they "deserve" a certain lifestyle.

I sure spend an awful lot of time on a personal finance forum for someone who doesn't place any emphasis on individual responsibility... weird.


MOD EDIT: Don't be rude, please.

lol. Just now seeing that this post got moderated. I'm glad we're concerned about rudeness in a forum about pointing and laughing at people who are beneath us.

jinga nation

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #105 on: May 22, 2019, 10:02:14 AM »
Did you read the article? It talked about cutting back on frivolous spending to fund retirement accounts and life insurance policies and didn't do so in a facepunch manner. I don't see why that's a bad idea.

Insurance companies are financial institutions. Try to keep up sweetheart.

Your comments make it pretty obvious that you place zero emphasis on individual responsibility, much like those angry people commenting that they "deserve" a certain lifestyle.

I sure spend an awful lot of time on a personal finance forum for someone who doesn't place any emphasis on individual responsibility... weird.


MOD EDIT: Don't be rude, please.

lol. Just now seeing that this post got moderated. I'm glad we're concerned about rudeness in a forum about pointing and laughing at people who are beneath us.

I always thought mustachians were beneath the anti's, due to our contrarian nature, going against the norm of spend, spend, spend.

Wolfpack Mustachian

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #106 on: May 22, 2019, 10:33:58 AM »
Fair enough, we are pretty far in for point by point :). Thank you as well for the good dialogue.

I understand and appreciate your point about a bad faith argument. I really do. I'm not a fan of big financial institutions either. Here's my perspective on it though. You have new people/lurkers on this forum all the time. You can tell because they post questions about investment order again and again even though it was discussed 8 hours ago :). This site and the MMM beliefs have at their core useless spending is bad and for good reason. Savings are extremely low right now. Fill in your survey that x% - huge majority of Americans - can't over a $x surprise bill. People frivolously spend regardless of their income even down into extreme situations. I know of one where a person was literally on the edge of homelessness with a cell phone plan that was probably 3 times my own in cost. The overwhelming nature of it throughout all income levels shows me that we cannot over emphasize fiscal responsibility. When we ignore it or aren't very careful with our explanations and statements even if the original argument is in bad faith, people will read that, and I have a hard time not believing it will reinforce in their minds, well, that might be true that we should evaluate our spending, but it's not important. The train of thought moves quickly on past what can I actually do to help myself and onto how someone else has screwed me over, and man that's an alluring place to linger because it doesn't require any self-evaluation.

Somehow, some way, a positive impact has to take into significant account seriously evaluating your life choices and not pushing the blame for your financial situations off on someone else. How do we do that? I really wish I knew. Truly, I do, because I want to instill the values of that in my kids. I've always been pretty frugal/cheap (not a humblebrag or whatever here, just trying to be self-aware), and I wasn't forced to work a job in high school or even pay for my college. I'm really not sure what the magic is to get people to be more frugal, but I have to believe that it involves reinforcing again and again the fact that a good 75-80 or whatever percentage of Americans (and it's not like 10%) can actually be fairly fiscally sound regardless of the bigger picture inequality issues or random life situations that happens to all of us. Even if progressive plans (free college, free healthcare, etc.) are implemented, people stuck in this mindset will still overspend and be in stressful financial situations. On the other hand, people who take these points to heart, even in the current situation with the tax cuts and all the big picture policy, tons of people can still actually become fiscally stable. This message has to get out to people, because it's most certainly needed.

Man, I feel your pain. I really do. Navigating both sides of this divide is so difficult. I think we're probably in a very similar spot with regards to how much we should be stressing personal responsibility vs. how much we should stress changing the system. I believe in both very strongly and so I often find myself trying to "thread the needle", which is extraordinarily difficult.

We're also similar in that we've both always naturally been frugal. I too, do not understand what magic makes my brain happy when I hoard resources. It's probably not anything I did or can control. Just how I'm wired. Which is why there's a limited amount of good that I expect to come from asking people to just "be more like me", to put it reductively.

One bit of empirical goodness that I want to lay down, is that in the past decade, we've seen the number of uninsureds in the USA cut nearly in half.  And the legislation that did that, while imperfect, also gave many of us the chance to retire early, now that our access to healthcare is untethered from our jobs. We only have this because enough people pushed back against the notion that our healthcare woes could be fixed by further belt-tightening at the individual level.

But why can't it be a part of discussions overall. Do you discuss policy with people? Why can personal responsibility never come up? Why can't we discuss how to big picture encourage fiscal responsibility or at least be up front in our policy discussions that, yes, there's a very big part of the issue that is people spend tons of money on crap that really hurts them? That never seems to come up when I talk with progressives. It's in the tone and focus. It's like even acknowledging that people make their own beds in many cases is a mean thing to say or means that I think everyone is in the situation they are in because of their own decisions. It's back to SwordGuy's post - if the I'm talking about policy and bring up fiscal responsibility it immediately goes to well, people have health emergencies that drain their finances. Sure, they do, but tons of people do not, and that default response has to point people to being like, woe as me, nothing I do matters, and that perspective I see all the time, and it drives me nuts.

Also, as I have mentioned before and won't belabor things by going into details again - conservatives suck too :).

I just don't know how effective discussion on personal responsibility is on a national level. When 10% of people own 84% of everything, telling people en masse that they need to accept less is kind of tough. That doesn't mean I wouldn't tell a friend or a family member if I thought irresponsibility was at the root of their problems. But I don't think it's effective as public policy.

Jimmy Carter asked people to layer up with sweaters instead of using heating oil to help fight back against the oil cartels and everyone hated him for it. He got trounced in 1980, and that ushered in 39 straight years and counting of Middle East destabilization at the hands of the USA (and low gas prices!)

The public ire is going to be directed at somebody. I'm good with directing it at the people who benefit the most from the system as it is. And in the meantime, I'll teach any children I have all about the miracle of delayed gratification. I promise.


I had lost track of this thread until your post. In summary of my thoughts, yea, I wish we could figure out some ways to generate improvements in fiscal responsibility on a national level, and I still really think it's worth the dialogue to try (and that that dialogue should be encouraged if done in good faith). You may be right though, it may be a lost cause :-/

clarkfan1979

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #107 on: June 04, 2019, 07:03:48 AM »
That type of comment is going to get a specific type of person upset. If you are eating all the food in your refrigerator, never going out and sometimes hungry, you might get upset when a giant corporation tells you that life isn't that hard, just eat the food in your refrigerator and there is currently nothing in your refrigerator besides condiments. You then decide to eat Ramen with a special combination of condiments to get it to taste different.

When I was in grad school, I was fully optimized. I had almost zero waste with my time. I had a long distance girlfriend and would only talk to her on my 25 minute commute to the college and back home.

Not my advisor, but I had a tenured professor that said grad school isn't that hard. She said, "You just need to get rid of your distractions. I sometimes find myself playing solitaire on the computer for 1-2 hours/day. That's not productive. You need to stop doing that."

I was super upset, but I didn't say anything.

jinga nation

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #108 on: June 04, 2019, 07:09:42 AM »
That type of comment is going to get a specific type of person upset. If you are eating all the food in your refrigerator, never going out and sometimes hungry, you might get upset when a giant corporation tells you that life isn't that hard, just eat the food in your refrigerator and there is currently nothing in your refrigerator besides condiments. You then decide to eat Ramen with a special combination of condiments to get it to taste different.

When I was in grad school, I was fully optimized. I had almost zero waste with my time. I had a long distance girlfriend and would only talk to her on my 25 minute commute to the college and back home.

Not my advisor, but I had a tenured professor that said grad school isn't that hard. She said, "You just need to get rid of your distractions. I sometimes find myself playing solitaire on the computer for 1-2 hours/day. That's not productive. You need to stop doing that."

I was super upset, but I didn't say anything.

Holy guacamole !!! I think I found my doppelganger. How did you read my mind over the etherwebs?

Davnasty

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #109 on: June 04, 2019, 07:33:57 AM »
That type of comment is going to get a specific type of person upset. If you are eating all the food in your refrigerator, never going out and sometimes hungry, you might get upset when a giant corporation tells you that life isn't that hard, just eat the food in your refrigerator and there is currently nothing in your refrigerator besides condiments. You then decide to eat Ramen with a special combination of condiments to get it to taste different.

When I was in grad school, I was fully optimized. I had almost zero waste with my time. I had a long distance girlfriend and would only talk to her on my 25 minute commute to the college and back home.

Not my advisor, but I had a tenured professor that said grad school isn't that hard. She said, "You just need to get rid of your distractions. I sometimes find myself playing solitaire on the computer for 1-2 hours/day. That's not productive. You need to stop doing that."

I was super upset, but I didn't say anything.

That's a fair complaint and that professor was an inconsiderate jerk :)

On the other hand I suspect that there is more than one type of person who gets upset by frugality advice. There are also the over spenders who don't make the mental connection between these small things and their financial situation. I think the antimustachian wall of shame along with personal anecdotes is enough to tell me that there are lots of people out there who think their situation is someone else's fault whether they blame the big banks, the government, their employer, or the "economy". And these are not people living in poverty, they're coworkers who I know make good money and friends who I know eat out and go to bars on the regular.

Also, I think the professor's advice directed at you without knowing your situation was rude whereas general advice on public platforms is not directed at anyone. I understand that each person who reads it feels as though it's directed at them, that's normal human behavior, but in reality if there's no food in your fridge to waste and you don't take taxi rides then it doesn't apply to you.

Davnasty

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #110 on: June 04, 2019, 07:49:40 AM »
When I was in grad school, I was fully optimized. I had almost zero waste with my time. I had a long distance girlfriend and would only talk to her on my 25 minute commute to the college and back home.

Not my advisor, but I had a tenured professor that said grad school isn't that hard. She said, "You just need to get rid of your distractions. I sometimes find myself playing solitaire on the computer for 1-2 hours/day. That's not productive. You need to stop doing that."

I also think this is interesting in a somewhat off topic way. It seems to me that everyone always thinks they're too busy to get things done and they just don't have enough time in the day. There are people in a situation like you were in grad school where there legitimately was no time to spare and you had to multitask to be able to talk to your girlfriend but there are also people who watch a couple hours of TV every night or do other time killing activities and just don't see that as potentially productive time. I'm not trying to only criticize others here, I've been in both situations before and I am as guilty as the next person.

The best example of this is when a couple has their first kid. I've seen many couples who were just so busy they couldn't possibly find time to do X. But then they have a kid who suddenly consumes 90% of their time and yet they still manage to survive...well, sort of.

Related, Parkinson's law: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

jinga nation

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #111 on: June 04, 2019, 07:51:48 AM »
That type of comment is going to get a specific type of person upset. If you are eating all the food in your refrigerator, never going out and sometimes hungry, you might get upset when a giant corporation tells you that life isn't that hard, just eat the food in your refrigerator and there is currently nothing in your refrigerator besides condiments. You then decide to eat Ramen with a special combination of condiments to get it to taste different.

When I was in grad school, I was fully optimized. I had almost zero waste with my time. I had a long distance girlfriend and would only talk to her on my 25 minute commute to the college and back home.

Not my advisor, but I had a tenured professor that said grad school isn't that hard. She said, "You just need to get rid of your distractions. I sometimes find myself playing solitaire on the computer for 1-2 hours/day. That's not productive. You need to stop doing that."

I was super upset, but I didn't say anything.

That's a fair complaint and that professor was an inconsiderate jerk :)

On the other hand I suspect that there is more than one type of person who gets upset by frugality advice. There are also the over spenders who don't make the mental connection between these small things and their financial situation. I think the antimustachian wall of shame along with personal anecdotes is enough to tell me that there are lots of people out there who think their situation is someone else's fault whether they blame the big banks, the government, their employer, or the "economy". And these are not people living in poverty, they're coworkers who I know make good money and friends who I know eat out and go to bars on the regular.

Also, I think the professor's advice directed at you without knowing your situation was rude whereas general advice on public platforms is not directed at anyone. I understand that each person who reads it feels as though it's directed at them, that's normal human behavior, but in reality if there's no food in your fridge to waste and you don't take taxi rides then it doesn't apply to you.

Professors, esp when one is in grad school, don't have the time bandwidth to learn of each student's personal situation unless it's a critical illness or something severe. They have a crap ton to deal with teaching, research, directing teaching assistants and research assistants, working on grant paperwork, industry collaborations, sponsored research. Most people think that a professors job is easy, they teach one or two classes per semester, but in reality they work over 40 hours doing a lot of stuff. There's a lot of pressure on them from the college/university to bring in funding for their projects. This was 100% every professor in my engineering college (for my BS + MS degrees).

ysette9

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #112 on: June 04, 2019, 04:25:33 PM »
When I was in grad school, I was fully optimized. I had almost zero waste with my time. I had a long distance girlfriend and would only talk to her on my 25 minute commute to the college and back home.

Not my advisor, but I had a tenured professor that said grad school isn't that hard. She said, "You just need to get rid of your distractions. I sometimes find myself playing solitaire on the computer for 1-2 hours/day. That's not productive. You need to stop doing that."

I also think this is interesting in a somewhat off topic way. It seems to me that everyone always thinks they're too busy to get things done and they just don't have enough time in the day. There are people in a situation like you were in grad school where there legitimately was no time to spare and you had to multitask to be able to talk to your girlfriend but there are also people who watch a couple hours of TV every night or do other time killing activities and just don't see that as potentially productive time. I'm not trying to only criticize others here, I've been in both situations before and I am as guilty as the next person.

The best example of this is when a couple has their first kid. I've seen many couples who were just so busy they couldn't possibly find time to do X. But then they have a kid who suddenly consumes 90% of their time and yet they still manage to survive...well, sort of.

Related, Parkinson's law: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
I struggle with this because I feel inefficient and un-optimized. I’m plagued with feelings that I should be able to get more done at work, for example.

But I’m realizing this is in part due to me not valuing my own down time. I am not a machine and leisure time is not wasted time. It is a critical part of what it takes to stay fresh and rejuvenated and do our best work. It is also the reason we are working hard and saving and delaying gratification: because ultimately we want all of our time to be leisure time, or at least our time to do whatever the hell we want.

talltexan

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #113 on: June 13, 2019, 08:22:51 AM »
I think when the professor said, "distractions", she actually meant, "long distance romantic relationship". Don't have time for that ish.

But--depending on your degree--getting a job is the signal that you are ready to graduate. But getting a job when you have a long-distance romantic partner is wayyy trickier because now you have to match up with that partner.

StarBright

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #114 on: June 14, 2019, 08:11:40 AM »
Read an interesting op-ed type piece and I thought about starting a new thread for it. But since this thread is still moderately active and I feel the article fits in here, I'm going to post it on this one.

I think this piece does a good job of contrasting the story of what can be accomplished by an individual but also how it is structurally problematic for wider society:

https://thinkprogress.org/do-the-impossible-never-complain-live-the-dream-the-dark-morals-of-todays-feel-good-stories-63b38b4a4953/?fbclid=IwAR38L5p9ybrH9DqH3md8cHZ8FYWj6vchHTGnPMTjuovVPO6OoXEK8DqWa4w

It is a quick read, but does a nice job summarizing.

Davnasty

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #115 on: June 14, 2019, 09:33:55 AM »
Read an interesting op-ed type piece and I thought about starting a new thread for it. But since this thread is still moderately active and I feel the article fits in here, I'm going to post it on this one.

I think this piece does a good job of contrasting the story of what can be accomplished by an individual but also how it is structurally problematic for wider society:

https://thinkprogress.org/do-the-impossible-never-complain-live-the-dream-the-dark-morals-of-todays-feel-good-stories-63b38b4a4953/?fbclid=IwAR38L5p9ybrH9DqH3md8cHZ8FYWj6vchHTGnPMTjuovVPO6OoXEK8DqWa4w

It is a quick read, but does a nice job summarizing.

I thought that article was extremely cynical. The author is claiming with certainty that these stories are presented as a distraction from the real problem and giving the people who report them insidious motives.

Or maybe it really is just a feel good story? The guy who ran to work for example, he sounds like a special kind of person with a drive that most people don't have. Maybe he deserved a little bit of praise in the paper. As for the system failing him, his car broke down. Sometimes shit happens.

I think the author has a clear motive and they've oversimplified these stories to back their narrative. Would this author also view food pantries as insidious evils because they put a band-aid on the problem of poverty and hunger or habitat for humanity for hiding the lack of affordable housing.

Now I'm also not saying that the "feel good, feel bad story" they're describing doesn't exist and yes, in some cases the motives to present such a story may be less than sincere, but this seems like an extreme take on it.

Davnasty

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #116 on: June 14, 2019, 01:55:05 PM »
Good points there, I'd never criticize someone for their random acts of kindness but it can create an uncomfortable situation, especially as the gifts get bigger.

How about the guy who committed to paying student loans for an entire 2019 class at Morehouse college?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/education/morehouse-college-robert-f-smith.html

There had to be at least a few kids in that group who worked their ass off at a part time job to pay their way through school who are cursing their classmates.

Montecarlo

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #117 on: June 16, 2019, 07:25:43 PM »
Read an interesting op-ed type piece and I thought about starting a new thread for it. But since this thread is still moderately active and I feel the article fits in here, I'm going to post it on this one.

I think this piece does a good job of contrasting the story of what can be accomplished by an individual but also how it is structurally problematic for wider society:

https://thinkprogress.org/do-the-impossible-never-complain-live-the-dream-the-dark-morals-of-todays-feel-good-stories-63b38b4a4953/?fbclid=IwAR38L5p9ybrH9DqH3md8cHZ8FYWj6vchHTGnPMTjuovVPO6OoXEK8DqWa4w

It is a quick read, but does a nice job summarizing.

Oh come on, this is the kind of shit that:
A) is making the western world weak
B) is holding us back from real progress

When the global ecological and economic systems collapse from climate change, no one is going to give a two hoots about paid maternity leave, mobility for low income families, or any of this shit that is nowadays considered “basic and vital.”

Basic and vital is food, water, a place to keep out of the elements, and weapons to defend against Viking raiders.  Everything else is not basic nor vital.


The rich control the world.  Money is power.  Everything on the progressive agenda - minimum wage, single payer healthcare, equal rights, maternity leave, yada yada yada - it’s all a sideshow.  It’s misdirection by the world’s greatest magicians.  The elite want you fighting for that.  And they’ll keep giving it to you, bit by bit, making you think the world is getting better.  Making you think that progress is happening.  Meanwhile they flood our streets with opium and erect barriers to employment and sell us on worthless college degrees.

I went to a pride rally the other week.  It was fun.  But you know who had a float parading down the street?  Fucking Lowes!  Every single major company in the city treated the parade as their personal billboard and the revelers as their captive audience to sell them their shit.  The great American capitalist machine has swallowed up what used to be a symbol of defiance and co-opted it for their profit machine.

You want to give workers more power?  Here’s an easy one.  Eliminate the payroll tax.  Get the revenue somewhere else.  Get it from corporate taxes.  Another easy one.  Eliminate the employer mandate.  There are other ways to ensure the less well off get health care if that’s what we want to do as a society.  How to pay for it?  Income tax increase, as progressive as you like it.  Capital gains tax increase.  Corporate profits.  Corporate revenues over 100 billion.  ANYTHING BUT A DIRECT FUCKING
DETERRENT TO HIRING SOMEONE.

Why in the world - why oh why oh why - why in the world would we ever endorse anything that makes it more costly to hire someone?  You make it easy for companies to say “yes” to robots.  You make it easy for them to say “yes” to shipping jobs from America to Bangladesh.

(For the record, I am okay with both robots and Bangladeshis.  Robots are cool and economic progress is driven by making processes simpler and more efficient.  But that should happen at the natural pace, not because government has disincentivized labor.  And I don’t think Americans deserve more or better jobs than Bangladeshis, but I find it abhorrent when our labor disincentives, which ostensibly is meant to help American workers, actually send jobs overseas where workers work in factories with no smoke detectors and inadequate fire exits)



The truly elite are happy to let us plebes have our higher minimum wage, our maternity leave, etc. etc.  We can have it, doled out bit by bit, as they find new ways to keep us debt riddled consumers.

DadJokes

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #118 on: June 17, 2019, 06:03:42 AM »
Read an interesting op-ed type piece and I thought about starting a new thread for it. But since this thread is still moderately active and I feel the article fits in here, I'm going to post it on this one.

I think this piece does a good job of contrasting the story of what can be accomplished by an individual but also how it is structurally problematic for wider society:

https://thinkprogress.org/do-the-impossible-never-complain-live-the-dream-the-dark-morals-of-todays-feel-good-stories-63b38b4a4953/?fbclid=IwAR38L5p9ybrH9DqH3md8cHZ8FYWj6vchHTGnPMTjuovVPO6OoXEK8DqWa4w

It is a quick read, but does a nice job summarizing.

Oh come on, this is the kind of shit that:
A) is making the western world weak
B) is holding us back from real progress

When the global ecological and economic systems collapse from climate change, no one is going to give a two hoots about paid maternity leave, mobility for low income families, or any of this shit that is nowadays considered “basic and vital.”

Basic and vital is food, water, a place to keep out of the elements, and weapons to defend against Viking raiders.  Everything else is not basic nor vital.


The rich control the world.  Money is power.  Everything on the progressive agenda - minimum wage, single payer healthcare, equal rights, maternity leave, yada yada yada - it’s all a sideshow.  It’s misdirection by the world’s greatest magicians.  The elite want you fighting for that.  And they’ll keep giving it to you, bit by bit, making you think the world is getting better.  Making you think that progress is happening.  Meanwhile they flood our streets with opium and erect barriers to employment and sell us on worthless college degrees.

I went to a pride rally the other week.  It was fun.  But you know who had a float parading down the street?  Fucking Lowes!  Every single major company in the city treated the parade as their personal billboard and the revelers as their captive audience to sell them their shit.  The great American capitalist machine has swallowed up what used to be a symbol of defiance and co-opted it for their profit machine.

You want to give workers more power?  Here’s an easy one.  Eliminate the payroll tax.  Get the revenue somewhere else.  Get it from corporate taxes.  Another easy one.  Eliminate the employer mandate.  There are other ways to ensure the less well off get health care if that’s what we want to do as a society.  How to pay for it?  Income tax increase, as progressive as you like it.  Capital gains tax increase.  Corporate profits.  Corporate revenues over 100 billion.  ANYTHING BUT A DIRECT FUCKING
DETERRENT TO HIRING SOMEONE.

Why in the world - why oh why oh why - why in the world would we ever endorse anything that makes it more costly to hire someone?  You make it easy for companies to say “yes” to robots.  You make it easy for them to say “yes” to shipping jobs from America to Bangladesh.

(For the record, I am okay with both robots and Bangladeshis.  Robots are cool and economic progress is driven by making processes simpler and more efficient.  But that should happen at the natural pace, not because government has disincentivized labor.  And I don’t think Americans deserve more or better jobs than Bangladeshis, but I find it abhorrent when our labor disincentives, which ostensibly is meant to help American workers, actually send jobs overseas where workers work in factories with no smoke detectors and inadequate fire exits)



The truly elite are happy to let us plebes have our higher minimum wage, our maternity leave, etc. etc.  We can have it, doled out bit by bit, as they find new ways to keep us debt riddled consumers.

You must be a blast at parties.

StarBright

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #119 on: June 17, 2019, 08:16:41 AM »
I am bothered by many of today's "feel good" stories as well. I'm less concerned about motives behind the publication of these stories than I'm troubled by the subtle shift in expectations they're causing in the consumers of these same stories. 

A police officer pays out of their own pocket to replace a bicycle that was stolen from a deserving kid.  Now other families in town wonder why the police aren't doing the same thing for them. 

Businesses in town pull together to fix up a house for someone who is injured in a freak accident. Now other neighbors wonder why they can't get work done for free.

The stories are heartwarming tales of do unto others, no argument here.  Good people do good things and it's wonderful to hear about it.  The shift comes when sharing or commenting on these stories morphs into a cross between Cinderella and Christmas. A small minority of people devour this type of news and dream about winning the luck lottery without having to buy a ticket.

Maybe the evolution in how I feel about these tales has to do with the ability for anyone and everyone to comment publicly directly on the story now-a-days.  Once upon a time you saw the good-news in a newspaper or on tv and felt the world was a wonderful place for a moment, then moved on.  Now you read the story, scroll down to the comments, and pretty quickly feel bad as what I can only hope are trolls trash the participants and beg for handouts.

I don't want this social shift to change anyone's willingness to help out a stranger, but it taught my local giving group to be very careful about who's names and faces were included in the press coverage.

I have a very similar take as you but I would say my concern isn't as much about the shift in expectations as it is to how these solutions can't work for more people.

If a second coworker gets pregnant, people may want to donate vacation time, but have none left to give. The nice boss only has one truck to give away, but what if he has several employees with transportation issues who regularly jump through hoops to get to work on time? I would say this is why some of us see these feel good stories and while we admire the people in them, we also say "this is a systemic problem!"

I also agree that I don't know that theses stories are purposely published as a "don't look behind the curtain" strategy, but some of us read them and definitely see the problematic situation that created the negative confluence of events that made the feel good part of the story possible.

And to relate this back to the original Chase tweet: that did feel like a "don't look behind the curtain" move, which is probably what tied these two things together in my mind :)

Also - Montecarlo, can't tell if you are joking?

Montecarlo

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #120 on: June 17, 2019, 09:44:51 PM »
I might have spiced up the rhetoric a bit for some effect, but my points in general were sincere.

If I were to sum it up on one sentence: if we reverse economic deterrents to employment instead of increasing it, one of the downstream effects will be to shift the balance of power slightly to labor from management.

And to tack on one more sentence: we can do that and still accomplish progressive goals and make big business pay for it. 

A Fella from Stella

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talltexan

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #122 on: July 02, 2019, 07:12:45 AM »
I've thought for a while about what to do about that second family (when you're the one who gets a house, gets student loans paid off by a kind stranger, etc.)

Pay it forward. Take what would have been the payments on that house, and find a way to give them to others who lack housing. Take the payments you would have been making toward your loans, and help that person in the class of 2020. Let the kindness strengthen you so that you can be kind.

And, when that person you're helping says thank you, kindly remind them that--when they have some margin--they should pay it forward again.

prudent_one

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Re: Chase gives financial advice, and people demand an apology for it
« Reply #123 on: July 03, 2019, 04:13:30 PM »
I went to a pride rally the other week.  It was fun.  But you know who had a float parading down the street?  Fucking Lowes!  Every single major company in the city treated the parade as their personal billboard and the revelers as their captive audience to sell them their shit.  The great American capitalist machine has swallowed up what used to be a symbol of defiance and co-opted it for their profit machine.

Here's how that works where I live.

Event Organizer: Hello, Lowe's store manager? I'm Joe Smith, chairperson of the <cause> parade we're organizing next June. We're contacting local businesses who we know support <cause> right here in Springfield.  We'd love for Lowe's to have a float to help demonstrate Lowe's support of <cause>.  As you know, <cause> parade will have about 20,000 spectators. Companies who do a float will be included in our <cause> program as well as on our website, our annual report, and newsletters all year.  The supporters of <cause> in Springfield are very loyal to our sponsors because we want to support those who support us. Since Lowe's took out an ad in last year's annual report, we wanted to reach out to you first before we contact any of your competitors. I realize that you will have to make some arrangements before deciding, so I'll be back in touch next week to see what Lowe's has decided.

Store manager thinks: Crap. Supporters of <cause> are fanatical. I know how they operate. If we don't do the float, they'll get the word out that we have "withdrawn" our support of <cause> since we bought that $50 ad last year as a goodwill gesture.  They'll bombard me with nasty emails, maybe even picket. Don't need that crap. Our own employees who support <cause> are going to bitch and moan. Maybe even quit. I have enough trouble staffing things as it is. We're going to have to do it.

...So in most cases, that's the deal.  Don't think Lowe's is calling the parade organizer non-stop begging for the chance to have a float in the parade.  The store wouldn't have even known about it early enough to do a float unless the parade people reached out first.