I worked several years for an employer with a few convenience stores; all hourly employees were paid within twenty cents of minimum wage, and the entrenched middle-aged manager wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon (hence, no foreseeable advancement opportunities).

The stores were sufficiently profitable that they netted approx $3 million per year, and allowed the owner to spend nearly half the year globetrotting.

The numbers suggest that the employees provided huge value to the employer, but the employees were not paid commensurate wages since they could be easily replaced.

However, I don’t entirely think that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is a myth. I DO however think that the reason most people believe this to be true (specifically, “the man” keeping them down) IS a myth.

I think the rich get richer because they know how to manage money. All the poor know how to do is spend money, and in many case more than than earn. Of course, I’m generalizing but there is a certain truth in this.

Once people realize this, they too can become rich. This is the information age and if properly informed, the poor CAN lift themselves to ever greater heights of wealth. Knowledge is power, thanks for sharing the power.

When is your episode of Dr. Phil airing? Or is it Jerry Springer? Thanks for every worst case scenario possible.

My hypothetical person is not necessarily the most intelligent person on the block, and she doesn’t necessarily have such a support group as “friends” or “family”. This is probably because she burned all of her bridges (not to mention brain cells) while she was still in “killing the pain” mode. This is typical of people who find themselves in such a situation. Honestly, it’s not that easy to get a credit card in the US. I don’t have one because no one will approve me due to a medical bill that should have been covered by my parents insurance while I was still a teenager. Since no one will approve me, I can’t build credit, and since I haven’t built credit, no one will approve me. And if my hypothetical person had access to a bank account (at least one in the positive), wouldn’t she have direct deposit anyway?

It is not rational to give up a raise to preserve welfare benefits unless losing your welfare benefits will cause you to lose your job. Decent child care costs upwards of $600 every month per child. With a welfare program called Title XX, you can pay a percentage of your income. I am paying $90 every month for my two children. If I made enough that I was not eligible for Title XX, I would only be making enough to pay the (at least) $1200/month in daycare (at the moment I am only making $1000/month), which means that my income would not cover gas to get to work, work clothes, food, rent, utilities, or anything else. Just daycare. In this case, would it make sense for me to even go to work? My net income would be negative. If you have to work because you don’t have a spouse, you have to have a positive net income or you will be on the streets. If the only way to have a positive net income is to stay on welfare, then it does make sense to decline a raise that will take away your welfare benefits. Sure, she may get another raise later, but I doubt it if she wears the same dirty clothes every day and doesn’t bathe for weeks at a time because she doesn’t have anywhere to live.

You have to bring the safety factor into account as well. Sure, a single mother could move in with her parents. What if her parents are abusive? What if her father molested her? Is she going to put her children in danger? Nothing is worth that. I would rather be homeless, and was for about a year. Sure, she could get married. Who is going to take in someone else’s kids? If this person isn’t marrying her for love, he must be getting something out of the deal. Is he a pervert or does he have a need to have someone weaker to abuse, looking to prey on her children? You have to consider these things as a mother. Children get hurt every day, some even die, as a result of their mothers making poor decisions about who they let into their lives. The world is not as safe for everyone as it may be for you.

same goes for if i was to build a house. If i had the same choice of two people, in this case i would choose th brick layer.

So i guess what I’m trying to say that you need to go to the right people for advice.

In terms of financial planners. Well i wouldn’t use them unless they had an assest base and wealth which proved how good they are.

Let me ask you this. Why would you go to a sick person and ask them how to be healthy?

It makes sense right? But there are so many people out there who are taking advice from the wrong people.

Life is about accountability. Accountability for your own actions and your own success. So take accountability for where you get your advice and who you choose to listen to.

If you just do this one thing and start listening to the right people who have the results that you are looking for .. you are going to be on a truer path to success i think

Young investor

http://www.investmentrealty.blogspot.com

Here are two suggestions for you:

First, try selling items on eBay or Craig’s List. Research dropshipping. Basically, you place items for sale or auction on-line. After someone buys the item, you then place an order with the dropshipper to deliver the item to the customer. It requires no inventory and all transactions are handled on-line.

Second, start a blog and add AdSense. You seem to have a lot of time to post comments, so why not start earning money on your commentary by starting a blog? (And Trent has the Building a Better Blog series available for free.)

These two things can be done with the resources you already have available to you. You will not be discriminated against because of your age, your marital status, your weight, your color, your lack of teeth, your religion, your prior work history, your odor, or whatever reason.

You strike me as very intelligent, but very pessimistic (glass mostly empty). It seems to me that you would rather grumble and complain than do something about your situation. Use your intelligence and use your experience.

In some societies people have lots of children even when they’re poor for two reasons: A) high child mortality rate and B) the children are (hoped to be) financially productive (usually in non-industrial agricultural societies). Neither of those apply in the USA at the present time.

I know everybody has a “right” to have kids whenever they want, but for poor people it’s often a very, very bad decision.

Why have kids while living paycheck to paycheck? Why take a taxi day after day instead of renting a car for a week, or even better carpooling with a friend? When the car ran out of gas why didn’t she pull into a place where parking wasn’t illegal, or get someone to push her car to such a place? Why doesn’t she have a credit card? Why couldn’t she “float” a check for the gas, especially since she’s getting paid that same day?

With respect to the single mother on welfare, how rational is it to give up a raise or promotion just to preserve welfare benefits? What kind of life is that? Why didn’t she think “At first I’ll make less money, but when I get *another* raise I’ll be making more, and it’s only up from there?”

I know they’re just examples and maybe I’m nitpicking but I think there are similar nitpicks for any hypothetical example except the most awful examples based on pure bad luck. But nobody said there’s a guarantee for upward mobility, just that on average there is.

As for the single mothers making $9/hour, why don’t they get married? Not for some moral reason, but it would greatly help their finances. If not, why not move back in with their parents? I know it’s hard (my sister was a single mom) but it can be done and can have great results.

The poor are not getting poorer, and the fact is, all income groups are getting richer – except those in the top 5% of all income earners, who actually saw a decrease in real median income from 1996 to 2005.

Here’s the study (not some “spun” opinion piece):

http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/reports/incomemobilitystudyfinal.pdf

Life is what you make it. Your motivation to succeed (or lack thereof) will determine if you are financially successful in life.

I’ve noticed that many of the people who say that they worked so hard and went to school and worked for 80 or more hours a week and they got ahead so why can’t everyone else don’t seem to have had a family to take care of at the same time. That’s not to say that you can’t do that as long as you have a partner to take care of the kids, but how about single moms? They can’t work or go to school unless the little ones are in daycare, and that costs at least $150 every week. Since most young mothers haven’t finished their education yet, they’re probably not making much more than minimum wage. If they were lucky enough to find a full time job that pays $9/hour, fully half of their income is going to taxes and child care. That leaves $700/month for rent, utilities, food, gas, clothes, and all of those little emergencies that come with having kids. I’ve never seen a one-bedroom or more apartment for under $500/month in my area. The only way these people can survive is because of the welfare agencies. If they happen to get a raise and start making $10/hour, they just added $160 income per month, before taxes. Not much. But now they aren’t eligible for government insurance or food stamps, which increases their expenses by $400/month. Is it any wonder that single mothers on welfare try to keep their income below that cut off point?

I noticed one person say that there are no jobs that pay minimum wage in their area. I find that incredibly hard to believe. Are you saying that there is no service industry where you live? No fast food? No restaurants? No taxis? No hotels? No gas stations? How do people live without these things?

I wouldn’t say that I entirely disagree with Trent here. I don’t think that there is a “man” keeping anyone down, and I do believe that an education and diligence can get you anywhere as long as you don’t have other commitments and priorities in life (such as family). However, the poor are penalized for being poor on a regular basis. This is a side effect of capitalism, a result of businesses wanting to make money in any way they can, even if it means capitalizing on the misfortunes of others.

It IS very hard for the ‘poor’ to get ahead, and yes, the system is designed to keep them there – to keep them voting for the politicians that keep the programs running.

And it is unfortunate that our media culture celebrates the successes of one-in-a-million types (American Idol’s Fantasia) rather than the Marcus Murphys of the world.
But none of it is an EXCUSE for people to blame others for their own situation. A lot of what I see here is complaining about a lack of ‘equality of opportunity’ when they are describing a lack of ‘equality of outcome’.

So what if the gap between rich and poor is increasing? So what if the system is set up to help rich people keep their money? That sounds like a good system to me. Who the heck wants to live in a place where the system is designed to take your money away so everyone is poor? Does anyone remember the Soviet Union? Some folks used to think that was a pretty good idea.

I would submit that folks making comments about ‘the poor’ need a bit of a reality check. There are no shanty-towns in the US.
No one has to carry water in a jug from a well.
People from all over the world sacrifice everything to come here.

The poor are not getting poorer in any real sense, and anyone who wants out and cares to improve themselves can do it.

I made the comment because of the posters have made it perfectly clear how they feel about poor people who are “too lazy to get a job” and un-wed mothers. Although I share many views of conservatives, I think I am in the minority when I say that the capitalist society should also take into account that some people, for VARIOUS reasons, are left out of the system. It is our job to make ABSOLUTELY certain, that we have done all we can to educate and inform and HELP without JUDGING those who need it most.

It is hilarious that some think that we do not need to put more effort into helping poor Americans because they all have “cell phones and fur coats” with a welfare check tucked inside.

My grades and test scores were in the top 5 percent but I didn’t get any grants and scholarships except $100 for books (state scholarship).

I didn’t qualify for grants because of my dysfunctional family; I was claimed as a dependent by a relative with a lower middle class income in NYC; he made “too much” money although I didn’t get any of it.

What programs are there for childless adults working full time for minimum wage?

I am overweight and missing a front tooth; I doubt anyone would hire me as a werver. Nobody cares what the hamburger flippers look like.

A high proportion of them have unreported or exempt income. For example, some will have off-the-books employment, unreported support from family, an underground business (child care, cutting hair, dealing drugs).

That’s why welfare reform didn’t really move a lot of people into the workforce. A lot of the people who went to work on the books were already working off the books, and those not working today weren’t working in the first place.

I’m guessing that the families where you live are considerably better off financially than the childless adults.

For some of the poor – especially families – yes. But childless adults are at the bottom of the politiczal food chain, so there are few programs to help them.

If you work full time for minimum wage and don’t have kids, there really isn’t any help out there.

That’s because government “poverty” statistics are pretty useless for measuring poverty.

According to the government, a retired homeowner with a modest Social Security check, a property tax deferral and no mortgage in a $500K home can be “poor” while a hamburger flipper working full time at minimum wage and paying half his income to rent a 10 x 10 room is “not poor”. Does that make sense to you?

p.s. I don’t have a cell phone or cable/satellite tv or a vcr or dvd or high speed internet. All I have is an old tired PC with a dialup connection – I don’t even have sound.

The poor don’t necessarily get poorer, but they often do. In general, poor people pay more than other Americans for the same modest market basket of goods and services. Higher prices and inferior credit terms guarantee that the poor have inferior credit histories. Or, as I like to say, life is regressive (George Will earlier said this, in an entirely different context), and life redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. (e.g. subprime homeowners with delinquent mortgages are losing their equity to scavengers who are already wealthy and getting wealthier)

As someone with no hope of owning a home, I have devised a “solution” for poor people like me: How about tiny houses that people could buy without paying more than they’re already opaying for rent? All I really “need” is 400 sq ft of space and maybe 2,000 sq ft of land. This certainly would be “low carbon footprint” and environmentally friendly. But this is rarely allowed under zoning laws which are designed to protect middle class homeowners. These policies keep poor people in rent slavery and constitute a huge obstacle to wealth-building for the poor.