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Comment by ravivooda | Hacker News Reader

On this post,

- the first level commenter: Empathetically describes the problems of a person/family in poverty.

  - the second level commenter: No I disagree with what you are saying. Here is how they should have approached the problem.

This reminds me of how much divided our society is, the have's vs have-nots

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It's important to approach it from both POVs.

We need to reiterate that, as humans, we are all the same in that our struggles emit terrible emotions that either deprive us of our liberties or freedoms (freedom to spend time doing what you want when you want to do it). And doing this might turn people to different political parties, causes, and charities that will help achieve this.

But going straight to "everyone gets free rent" isn't exactly likely, so throwing out ideas that might only requires maybe 10 years of political shenanigans to move the needle is better than going far into the unrealistic category.

We haven’t really moved the needle on anything in regards to lowering the COL (except, maybe and in only some circumstances, healthcare, but look at how far we have to go and how bad the political backlash was) in… at least two decades? Maybe three?

Federal minimum wage hasn’t even increased from $7.25 since 2009. In 1997 it was $5.15 (or $9.55 in 2022 dollars, so even 25 years ago we paid workers more than we do today)

Maybe it’s time to start putting those crazy ideas out there, because the status quo is proving more and more unsustainable

Thank you for pointing this out. I am disappointed by how ignorant so many commenters are when it comes to socio-economic issues.

That's because many of them from the Elon Musk school of problem solving.

"You're poor? Work harder. Get a better job. First principles."

"You're unhealthy? Exercise more. Eat better food. First principles."

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