@Thucy

Interesting to find out I'm even on your radar. This a good thing or bad and in what way?

Lol, why do I need to spend $16 on a movie ticket, all I need to do is wander around the forum.
Fuck it, I love you guys :)

But seriously, buying a $500 car off your dad is great and all, but it's not exactly bringing yourself up from nothing. It presupposes that your parents had the ability to own a car, with which they either personally instructed you or paid for driver's training. And then had a car they could make available to you that was decent enough to take your road test in. To say nothing of the insurance...all cars must be insured to be on the road, and poorer neighborhoods have much higher auto insurance rates than wealthier neighborhoods. Even had you found the summer job doing manual labor, it is incredibly likely that it would not have gotten you the ability to drive and insure the car at the end of the summer. And that's assuming the insurance was under your name...it would be more expensive to start a new policy as a minor rather than load it in to your family's. So there's a lot of invisible advantages there.

I'm not saying that you didn't do hard work and get ahead, I congratulate you on getting to where you are in life. I just think that there were a lot of advantages you had that you're not considering.

@SD - Please reread what he wrote. He said he had to pay for the insurance and his own school plus room and board. Basically his parents did what mine did and sent into the world on his own when he graduated high school.

Some people are never satisfied. If Leif grew up in a cardboard box, he would have forgotten to account for the fact that he was lucky his parents let him sleep under one of the flaps at no cost. Leif probably wouldn't have gotten that manual labor job if he had miserable dental hygiene, so let's not forget the invisible advantage that he had parents who taught him how to brush his teeth, and provided him with a toothbrush (or maybe they shared it around between family members).

Please reread what I wrote, Draug. He was sent into the world with several advantages, including being able to list a middle class address for the car that he had the ability to learn to drive. That's far from nothing, and not as common as you'd think.

I'm not devaluing his accomplishments. I'm saying he had more than you or he is giving him credit for having.

"Some people are never satisfied."

Some people want to pretend they never got help with anything, for the sole purpose of justifying knocking down the ladder for everybody else. If Leif didn't rub his bullshit personal story in the face of people and say "amazing what happens when you actually work", I wouldn't have bothered to respond. But rightwingers always concoct these ridiculous anecdotes to provide an unaccountable shield for their lack of empathy.

@SD - I read what you wrote and you implied they paid the insurance. Read it again and you'll see that. I was just pointing out that they didn't pay the insurance. I don't deny the privilege that is there, but the test assumes additional privilege from parents who spoil their brats. Leif is one of those who wasn't a spoiled brat but only had the privilege odd parental obligation while in school. Oh and when i was in school the lessons were taught for free by the school's drivers ed instructor.

He might have paid for the insurance but it still be under his parents name, and he mentioned the point about insurance being higher in poorer neighborhoods. Why is it so difficult accepting the fact that you had privilege?

No, I was implying that he may have been able to trailer onto his parents' policy, and also could list their address one way or the other.

Ok. Gotcha. Although he could.only do the address if the car was parked there. Insurance companies rate based on where the car spends the night. I was involved in the rating engine for Ohio Casualty's personal.insurance line, so i am very familiar with car insurance and how it is rated even for policy riders.

It's pretty easy to lie about it, I have a friend who lives in Highland Park (gang central) and his cars have been "parked" at his father's place in Canton (much better area) for his whole life.

And the first time he has a claim and theybdetermine otherwise, can you say insurance fraud lawsuit? Lying on an insurance policy can cost you a fortune.

Free driver's education, by the way, is more or less a thing of the past. It was one of the first things to get cut from education budgets because most of the people who needed it could afford to pay for it. It still exists in some areas, but certainly not lower class ones where they have much better uses for their education dollars.

If he's in school, he could say his parents' place is his "permanent address", which often counts.

"Leif attacked people and then whined when anybody called him on it."

I have been reading this thread trying to figure out what has upset Putin so much. But I don't quite get it. Who did Leif attack? What did he say that was so offensive?

But your friend is committing insurance fraud unless he is still in school too.

Read my last post.

It's just Putin, spyman. You should know by now that he has anger management issues and can read hate into the phrase "you are my best friend".

I also want to reiterate: I'm not saying anything negative about you or Leif, I think you've done great with your lives and I'm happy for you. I'm just trying to say that there's a lot of invisible privilege that people take for granted in their "thrown out on the streets with nothing" stories. Because everyone's idea of what that nothing consists of is different.

What is your background Putin? Middle class, working class? Are you privilged? (you certainly are privilged genetically, because you are obviously of superior intellect)

"You should know by now that he has anger management issues"

Says the guy who melts down once a week on here and has "quit" webdip, how many times?

Oh, of course my friend is committing insurance fraud. But he also has ways out of it that I won't discuss because that's another can of worms.

@SD - agreed. But we can only correct so.much of it in our own lives. Leaf has done all in his power to be his own man and used only the privilege that is impossible to avoid.

I'll PM you, as I don't trust people on here.

But, and here's the problem, he uses his example of what nothing means to say more or less anyone can come up from nothing, but his starting point was in fact quite a bit better than nothing.

And most working and middle class kids I went to school with still had access to cars and the like. I grew up in a farming community because my dad loved really old homes and at that time the only old houses in a safe but affordable part of greater Cincinnati was in West Chester when it was still a farming community.

Living in a farming community requires personal transportation more than living in a city does.

But nobody truly has nothing. Those with nothing get a boost from the government and suddenly have something.