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 they’re drowning in student debt and have barely any personal savings. You really make a sacrifice.
Help the poor -> Help I'm poor
This is basically the central concern of David Graeber's 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 don't really have anything to complain about.... 😅
The poorest are those who help. Teachers, nurses, care providers, child care, service workers, retail employees.
If you want to be helpful you're gonna pay for it.
I'm not even poor. But by god, it's hard to find hours in the day or money in the bank to do anything that feels material and meaningful.
That's being poor
You can sustain yourself (very comfortably) without having the industrial scale resources to affect your community in the aggregate.
If you don't have time for life, then you're poor. The French would have burned down a hundred cars by now
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 I've 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.
I've 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 still have a huge impact on people in poorer countries
You can pay someone else to presumably benefit from the strong dollar relative. But you're still playing a trust game with a lot of unknowns.
The "nets for malaria" 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, you'd do better supplying a community with fishing nets. Because then they won't use the malaria nets improperly.
That's not even to say "don't send these charities money". Please do. But chucking money down the "Charity" 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 you're 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 don't build community with any of the people you're aiding and you're 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 you're participating in, just an endless void you're expected to bleed into.
I still try you know. Organize, advise, sometimes join a cookout. We survive together you know.
Help yourself then, it's not like only others deserve it
If there's anything I've learned on my mental health work (on myself, therapy etc.):
To help others, you must first help yourself.
Meanwhile, the bullies and jerks in school go on to become wealthy grifters.
"Lord, I don't even need a billion, I could do a lot of good work with just $100 million. Because it's not about the money for me."
I was poor in 99 already
Tell me about it... in '99 I could barely afford a snickers bar
I mean I was 5, but still... I'm sure I could've done better if I'd just grinded a little harder
Good so you have experience 😁
People ranting over a meme… some dude said join a communist party lol
And I can't even help myself as much as I need 🥲
"the poverty war will be over when I begin to fight, if it took a dime to go around the world I couldn't get out of sight"
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 wasn't 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 I'm eligible for food stamps, while others tell me that I'd 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, I'm struggling to feed and house myself, lemme bring a child into this situation, great idea.
The US truly hates the poor.
Yeah it's 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, I'm sorry about your friend.
Well you sure aint helping yourself
Scott's Tots
Don't let that stop you from helping the poor!
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
