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Lumifer comments on "NRx" vs. "Prog" Assumptions: Locating the Sources of Disagreement Between Neoreactionaries and Progressives (Part 1) - Less Wrong Discussion
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A full-time job is more or less 2,000 hours/year. The federal mininum wage is $7.25/hour and the state minimum wage is often a bit higher. 2000 * 7.25 = $14,500/year.
Someone who managed to get a master's degree can probably manage to get a job at higher that the federal minimum wage -- if only he'd be willing to ignore the status considerations and just get down into the blue-collar trenches.
At the time I was very poor I worked, basically, as a construction worker for cash. If you don't have any money, working as a "part-time adjunct" is silly.
Well, I don't know what he's tried, or what work is available where he is, or whether getting down into the blue-collar trenches would worsen his chance of getting a better job later.
Unless you have specific knowledge of Matthew's situation, asking "why don't you get a job?" and telling him that working at the job he actually has is "silly" has, to me, a definite whiff of Qu'ils mangent de la brioche about it.
Not quite -- been there, done it, didn't care about the T-shirt.
It is not necessarily safe to assume that because you could do it, Matthew can do it. His circumstances could be relevantly different in many ways.
(I apologize if this is insultingly obvious. I'm pointing it out only because your comments seem not to acknowledge its obviousness.)
Well, of course. But I don't claim certainty. All I offer is opinions and opinions about people over the internet are quite likely to be hilariously wrong. That's the well-known baseline and reciting it in every post will get tiring pretty quickly.
In any case, in my badly informed opinion Matthew lives in poverty because of status considerations which prevent him from taking on a lower-status but a better-paying job. Unless he has severe disabilities, earning more than $10K/year is not hard at all.