What do poor people want?

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Hi guys. Your old pal DMK is back. I just had another thread idea.

Here's one common criticism of socialism I keep hearing: "Socialists don't care about what poor people want. They only care about what they think poor people should want."

I will admit that this is a fairly valid criticism. What do poor people want? There's only one way to find out!

Poor people: What exactly do you want? My goal here is to create a new worker's movement that won't descend into Leninist elitism.

"The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement."
- The Communist Manifesto

"Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities."
- Benito Musslini

I want to win the Lottery!

Poor people want to be less poor.

poor people want to be seen as equal humans to those luckier ones who feel they were born under a greater god. we want richer people to stop looking down at us, and to give us a break, a hand-up, to not lecture us on our human failings, to take us under their wing to show us how to live easier lives like they do. fat luck that ever happening.

Food, shelter and medical care.

I think a guaranteed income for everyone would be a good idea. Not from employers but from the government, with incentives to earn more by working. Universal health care should be available. It works in Canada.

^^^^ TELL IT!

Poor people want money.

this poor person wants rich people to stop with their manifold methods of soaking us pofolk.

Poor people want More.

I know that poor people are not a homogeneous group, but there are some things that most poor people want.

poor people want to be seen as equal humans to those luckier ones who feel they were born under a greater god. we want richer people to stop looking down at us, and to give us a break, a hand-up, to not lecture us on our human failings, to take us under their wing to show us how to live easier lives like they do. fat luck that ever happening.

Poor people want representatives who don't send out subtle messages telling them why they should learn to love their poverty or drop dead. They want representatives who are not affiliated with the rich.

Poor people need better opportunities so they can break the poverty cycle. I think it's ridiculous how people expect the poor to lift themselves out of poverty by their bootstraps.

All this land of opportunity stuff is BS when you're working long hours just to stay alive. You don't have time to pursue other opportunities. You don't have time to study. You don't have time to start your own bussiness and if you did there's a chance your bussiness would go bust and you'd lose your shirt.

I agree that free post-secondary education would be very helpful but that alone is not enough. Poor people can be kept out of college for reasons that don't have to do with inability to afford college.

e.g. poor people get worse grades in high school. They might not get accepted into college due to poor grades, even if college was free. Poor people tend to have uneducated parents. The middle class have well educated parents who can help them with their homework and help them apply for college.

Even when poor people manage to get into college things can go wrong. Poor people need more support in college (not just financial support). In college first generation students often drop out. By first generation I mean students who's parents and grandparents didn't go to college. Whereas second and third generation students are better prepared for college life.

Poor people need better access to career councelling. It wouldn't do them much good if they graduated with the wrong degree.

Poor people need college to be more efficient. The "broad education" is fine for wealthy people but poor people may be more interested in learning employable skills. I've heard of engineering students being required to take units of humanities to get their degree (and pay for them). This was justified under the guise of "broad education". Broad education is an old idea from more than a hundred years ago. It was created by and for rich people. Back in the day rich people were expected to know all about Greek playwrites and renesance paintings. Poor people would benefit more from learning employable skills. I think requiring units of humanities is just a way to keep all the tenured art proffessors busy when they don't have enough students. College would be cheaper if they abolished tenure.

Another way college could be made more efficient (not only moneterally but timewise) would be by abolishing the requirement for certain career degrees to be postgrad. You want to study law? Study law. The requirement that you already have a bachelor degree before you study law just means you need to pay tens of thousands of dollars before you even start studying law and it also means you need to support yourself in college (food, rent, etc) for an additional four years before you're earning a full time income. Good way to keep the poor from becomming lawyers. Now why would they want to do that?

Even worse is people who get an undergrad degree just to help them decide which career they want to pursue. I spoke to someone in her third year of Russian literature. In addition to college fees she also spent a lot of money on living in Russia for a year. A country in which she wasn't allowed to work or recieve any welfare. I asked her if she wanted to be a Russian translator for her career. "No" she said. I haven't decided in my career. After I graduate I'll decide on a career and then do a degree in that field"  

There needs to be more support in high school. More career counselling. More help getting into college and they should teach more use classes so you don't have to spend time and money learning them in college. For example, some first year college students have to spend time and money learning high school level maths because their high school didn't teach it properly.

Another example, schools should teach things like basic programming and HTML. Why wait until college before learning that? Even a 12 year old can understand that stuff. They could teach it in middle school. Sometimes they do. There's a guy at my work who did HTML while he was at elementary school. This was at an expensive private school (another example of the poverty cycle). I went to school in a poor neighbourhood. They had low expectations of us. No programming or HTML classes available even in the last year of high school. Instead they had a class on data entry because that was the most they expected of us. No guidence at getting into college or uni, they didn't expect that of us either. 

To have a good career students need good support from an earlier age, when their brains are still pliable and capable of absorbing more information. When their thought neurological pathways have not yet set. To get more done quickly we should not make the smart students waste years on material that's too easy for them. Why not just let them skip a grade? Some teachers just don't pay attention.

Also high school should cover a broader range of subjects so students can try different things and choose a career field then. Choosing a career field while you're already in college could be a very expensive proposition.

I'm all for having free college but for the amount college now costs, society cannot afford to pay for it. If college is to be free it must become more efficient so it doesn't cost as much as much. You still end up learning a lot of your career after you start work anyway. If college is free then we can't afford to have students taking extra humanities classes or completing multiple degrees while they try and decide which career they actually want.