Pay Day with demographer Liz Allen: 'Poverty grants perspective that can never be bought'
Pay Day with demographer Liz Allen: 'Poverty grants perspective that can never be bought'
For Pay Day, demographer and social researcher Dr Liz Allen shares the shame that comes with living in poverty, the secrets of survival, and how this experience "grants perspective that can never be bought".
This bit resonated.
It makes me so terribly sad that in a society such as ours the wealthy keep creating new means to harm the less lucky.
That aside, Alan Kholer has also opined in the past that our economics policy is based on disdain.
I know many will read my financial experiences and see failure. I haven't failed; I succeeded when the odds were totally stacked against me. I made good what life threw at me. I survived … with my values intact.
I can only agree.
Money is about luck, nothing else. I have seven children...
lol okay
Luck does have a part to play, but so do the choices you make.
If you are not already wealthy, every time to you choose to have a child you erode your financial standing to some degree, that's just a fact. Do this seven times and you are going to have some issues.
To compound matters, one or more of her kids have some kind of disability, and disabilities are not a cheap thing to manage in this country. I don't know if it's the first child or the last child, but unless it was the last I definitely would have stopped after that knowing the enormous amount of resources it would require to support the child.
To put her entire situation down to luck only really comes across as denying personal responsibility.
Whatever your starting point in life, every choice you make will move you closer to your goals or further away from them. The article no doubt is missing a lot of information, since the journalist failed to analyze the situation critically, but it really does seem a lot of choices were made that would have compounded financial problems.
... How is income related to the number of children?
Do you get paid for being unfuckable?
Wealth generation is partially tied to your expenditure. Having 7 children will massively increase this over the course of your life. Additionally, parents may be forced to make financial sacrifices in their careers to better raise their children.
When you choose to have children, you are accepting that you may be limiting your ability to generate wealh. This is particularly true when you make this choice 7 times In a row.
She seems to have a lot of negative stories she tells herself about money. Luck definitely plays a part in things, but it's not everything. I think with her attitude things are unlikely to change for her, unfortunately.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For Pay Day, Dr Allen shares the secrets of survival, the shame that comes with living in poverty, and how "having no money grants the privilege of seeing the world differently".
I was so ashamed that I didn't ask for help from anyone and was stuck at the library nearby the health centre for over eight hours until my pay came into my bank account, and I could afford the couple of dollars for a bus ride home.
This makes us vulnerable to financial shocks, like the car breaking down, but because of my experience with poverty, having kids early, and with HECS debt, I've never had the opportunity to save.
Poverty grants perspective that can never be bought … If a privileged person behaves like a jerk, trust your instincts and value yourself — they're not worth your time.
When the 2020 Canberra hailstorm resulted in thousands of cars destined for metal melting, I picked up a beautiful 2007 Tarago really cheap.
Dr Liz Allen is an award-winning demographer at the Australian National University's POLIS Centre for Social Policy Research.
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