On Sun, 28 Mar 2021 02:55:31 -0400, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 28 Mar 2021 02:47:26 -0400, micky
wrote:


Even if you are not convinced of all these, they are certainly something
to think about.

Five myths about poverty
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...05a_story.html


I see flaws: "And what about rising from rags to riches? In the United
States, 1 in 25 children raised in the bottom quintile of the income
distribution are able to climb to the top quintile, while the figure in
Denmark is nearly 1 out of 6. In our popular rhetoric, we celebrate the
success of that single individual to the exclusion of the other 24."

I don't think that's the best measure. I pay attention to this and I
observe many cases where someone goes from the bottom quintile to the
4th or 5th but it takes two generations. One generation to get to the
3rd, and another to go higher. I think most people who start off in the
bottom 5th and make it to the middle one are satisified, that is, until
something goes wrong and they're back down in the second or first again,
and there are many things that can and do go wrong. The pandemic has
ruined lots of businesses, and caused many people to be laid off even
from businesses that aren't bankrupt. That's just one example.
....

Another personal comment. I accepted at least one applicable myth when
I was in college, and when I took a break and drove a cab for a year, I
would see this drivers at a cab stand, outside a downtown hotel, or a
longgg cab line at the airport, while I was cruising and finding fares.
And I wondered why they didn't do what I did. Did they like to relax in
sitting in their cabs. One I finally noticed that for most of these
guys, driving a cab was their second job. They can't work as hard as I
did, when it was my only job.

And of course the tips from someone at a v. good hotel are on average
higher than what I got, and the fares and corresponding tips from the
airport are high and much of the travel is on expressways, so they pay
better.
And they were not burning a tank of gas cruising around looking for
fares so they likely ended up MAKING more money than you did chasing
all over town.