Why do you want to live a long life if you are going to be financially poor?

[Deleted member 41774]

Nah man. I want this life to end too.

Admittedly, I lowkey do wanna live a bit longer too. I guess it really is just survival instinct kicking in sometimes.

 

[owotrucked]

to illustrate my point about anchoring bias:

I think those debt slaves just were already used to a situation close to slavery, so they still have the mental to struggle even when caught

 

[Wanderrae]

I'm not in the greatest position right now. Financially, and mentally.

I could give into despair, and succumb to intrusive thoughts, but I won't end it. Simply because there is so much I haven't touched, felt or seen in my life. That I've craved since I was a kid. For me, the greatest thing that drives me to keep living is spite and the reward factor. If I play my cards right, the rewards of winning a better life, will outweigh the relief that comes with ending myself.

Ending myself is an alluring proposition, instant relief, no worries, no thoughts, no fear of judgments.

However, If I tied the noose or ate the bullet. All my suffering will have been for nought. And every other bastard that had contributed to my suffering will continue living on. In the ideal world, the post-scarcity society, there is no pain and only joys, people become machines and eventually the machines won't have a need for people. That world has no meaning. There is no meaning without pain. In suffering, I find meaning.

The Stoics keep me going: "He suffers more than necessary who suffers before it is necessary."

 

[RepresentingWrath]

And therefore I shall find my own meaning in life.

At this point it is binge eat chips on couch.

To me, this leads to, everyone have their own reasons to live. Doesn't matter if they are poor or rich. Maybe it is religion, maybe it is love, maybe it is being afraid of death. Like, you can't take the money with you to the other side, but rich people instead of blowing it all in a year keep working. They don't buy a country, live like a king for a year and commit suicide. They keep living rather modestly compared to what they can actaully do.

Everyone have their own reasons. Same reasons why people who have enough and don't live in poverty commit suicides. Because they can get into a cult. They can suffer from severe depression, and so on. Fixating on money and completely ignoring those reasons won't lead you to anywhere. Ok, it will lead you towards self-affirmation of your own idea and echo chambers.

 

[minacia]

I don't know what country you live in, but "poor" is a relative statement. People mean different things when they say they are poor, and they react to that situation differently with a different frame of reference. I've seen many poor refugees/immigrants who are happy and many poor university graduates with computer science degrees who are deeply unhappy. The former is happy to take a very labor-intensive job, the latter doesn't want to touch that kind of job with a six-foot pole. Some of it is a geographic matter -- a lot of young people want to live in big cities where the cost of living is skyrocketing high, and they don't want to live in less urban states with better job markets or lower costs.

As for why the poor university graduate is unhappy, I wonder how much of it has to do with regret/depression/mental health rather than their immediate financial status.

In either case, regardless I think health is actually the biggest discriminating factor as you age. Chronic pain, difficulty breathing (COPD), constantly ending up in the hospital... I would rather be financially poor than have poor health.

 

[Ruti]

Why do you want to live a long life if you are going to be financially poor?"

For context, assume you are financially poor and will be poor all the way to your death. Your entire life will be filled with debts and you are never able to overcome any struggle or even achieve any material goals.

Why would you want to live a long life?

Why not?

 

[ArtBusterBeeze]

My simple answer is time. Time despite your situation has the chance to make things happen. Even if you can't get out of your debt, you can focus on the things that you can do. It all comes down to accepting your situation. IF you don't accept the facts, then you have to work harder and work on a miracle that may never come. It's stupid I know, but even if you don't have the tools, you still cling onto hope that in time, things will be better even without having any clear cut answers for the problem. If you can accept your situation, that is when you come to realize that nothing you do can change your problem. If you are in that situation, then of course everyday your mind will run on it until eventually you move on and don't think about your situation in the same way. You try to do what you can rather than what you can't, and instead of trying to have a poor life with your situation, you try to have 'a ' life without pain. It might be fooling yourself, but hey, if you can try to live long and prosper without being loaded in cash, then you are one rare gem.

I prefer to never give up though. The odds seem stacked against you majorly, but what does a hero do? They Fight. You may not win every battle, even lose major ones but the ones you win, that's your motivation to keep going.

 

[l8rose]

Interesting question.

So, I'll start this with a little background about myself. I grew up below the poverty line in rural Canada. My clothes were hand-me-downs or purchased at flea markets. Occasionally, my parents would skip meals to ensure us kids had a full supper. There were cracks in the floorboards where we could see the ground and we spent a good chunk of fall chopping trees for fuel (hilariously on crown land).

But the thing is, kids dont realize they grow up poor. Never once did I clue in that it was weird we didn't have a working oven or a car or house phone or any of the other assorted things familys are supposed to have. It wasn't until I was graduating high school that I clued in to just how poor we had actually been.

While I'm not in that level of poverty any more, I fully understand that my life is never going to be upper middle class. Its only through community programs that I have managed to go to college but I have perhaps 20 years of working left to build a decent retirement fund. Sure, I hope I win the lottery or that my con-artist father-in-law is actually worth the millions he claims.

I continue going because the alternative is to not. Which goes against the point of life in general. We exist simply to exist. Whether we're dirt poor or Saudi Princes.

 

[expentio]

Let's be honest, economical success is nothing but an arbitrary concept stemming from the fact that we believe some people have more than others, based on the rules of society.
Now if I were to make an educated guess, this whole concept may at most work for another fifty years.
We got robots, AI, and general automatization. Those things are going to replace like 90-95% of the working force. Now the question remains, what is going to happen to those people? Even if most of the power lies with the rich, I doubt it's not going to be all that easy to kill off that many people. Therefore, society either finds a solution (which I currently worry won't be happening), or we'll eventually get a severe societal inequality crisis, followed by a rather bloody rebellion. As of now, the concept of general manipulation, to set the poor up against the poorer still works, but once even the dumbest idiot notices that jobs to make a living no longer exist, then maybe at this point things will change. Either that or the majority just accepts it's going to get wiped out, which I doubt will happen so easily.
So yeah, without a societal solution, one day the hashtag "kill the rich" is going to become popular.
As for me, I hope I'll live through this.

 

[RepresentingSilence]

Wealth isn't the goal
Wealth is merely a means to an end

 

[Leti]

But what I am truly referring to is those who are perpetually poor. Those that cannot get themselves out of the quagmire. Those that are stuck forever wealthless and yet will choose to extend their lifespans.

What is the rationale in that?

Perhaps they lived in a place that don't punish being wealthless and is very poor-people friendly.

It's never nice to be poor. But if you live in a place with more comprehensive social service and lower cost of living like East Europe instead of South Canada (America) with higher cost for even basic services like healthcare, you will understand why some people choose not to die.

Or maybe they just fear death and what happens after that. Who knows?

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Peer pressure.

 

[Woolen_Monkey]

Because if you die you have no chance of not being financially poor. It's the looking at a better future that drives people to live longer.

 

[Racosharko]

How poor are we talking here?

Some level of poor you will not live long anyway.

 

[Alski]

How poor are we talking here?

Some level of poor you will not live long anyway.

Poor in a first world sense.

 

[NotaNuffian]

How poor are we talking here?

Some level of poor you will not live long anyway.

That depends on your definition.

Because mine had been stated to be in constant debt and forever slogging for the next dough with no hope to climb up a societal level.

Poor in a first world sense.

Or what Alski puts it I guess.

 

[JayMark]

Wealth comes in more forms than money.

 

[NotaNuffian]

Wealth comes in more forms than money.

... the hell with that Vaporeon

 

[JayMark]

... the hell with that Vaporeon

Hey guys, did you know in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic wealth creation, Vaporeons are the most economically feasible pokemon? They are in the field egg group comprised mostly of mammals, which are known for their tendency to produce a return of initial investment.

 

[Alski]

Hey guys, did you know in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic wealth creation, Vaporeons are the most economically feasible pokemon? They are in the field egg group comprised mostly of mammals, which are known for their tendency to produce a return of initial investment.

In a world where you can sell water they are great.