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Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

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Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#61

Post by Gratsby »

SilasX wrote: post #33
dangerlibrary wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett said it very well: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten d…

Sorry, the quote irritates me to no end (doubly so how people trip over each other to copypaste it). In practice, most opportunities are not a pure savings like this where you will end up ahead in every way if only you could borrow the money; usually, you'll end up with more painful feet but more money to spend, as the cheaper shoes aren't completely useless and in need of replacement. If the quote were as true as cl…

Actually, Kiva does exactly that. https://www.kiva.org/

> poor can often already get loans of such size and not trigger the upward spiral

I don't know about that. Almost all loan-based businesses that target the destitute are predatory. I've seen exactly two that were not. Kiva and my college that gave loans of up to $200 to students for short terms.

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#62

Post by tim333 »

stvswn wrote: post #47
cubano wrote: post #14

The poor get financially hosed in so many different ways in the US that singling out toilet paper , of all things, seems almost laughable. How about real killers, like payday loans, bank fees, and paying more for milk, eggs, and everything else at the corner store because you don't have transportation to get to Costco? And if you want next level hosedom, how about the opportunity cost of having limited or no transpor…

Why are payday loans a real killer? Is it because you think short-term, high-interest loans to people with poor credit is bad for the people with poor credit, or are you OK with it in principle but think they should be more upfront about some of the shady things like hidden fees, deceptive tactics, etc.?

Slightly off topic but from my experience in the UK the problem tends more to be 35% credit card interest. Payday loan people like Wonga generally won't lend to the seriously poor - they make their money from generally solvent people who've had something like a boiler pack up needing replacement.

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#63

Post by chanux »

ars wrote: post #58
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #54

My wife has taught me so much about living frugally. We both grew up relatively poor and I consider myself frugal, but she knows the power of coupons and sales. She combines coupons with sales to get very good prices, and budgets strictly for what we need. She'll also game the heck out of store policies ("you are out of stock on item Y so I'm wondering if I can buy item X for the same price"). Also buy a bidet. They…

Seconded about a bidet. They sell kinds that install under the toilet seat of any toilet (i.e. you don't need a special toilet). You need just a bit of paper after to dry yourself and that's it. No wiping.

I just looked up portable bidet. Yes it's a thing. The first product came up has this in it's Amazon page.

Wiping is barbaric! Your bottom begs for salvation

LOL

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#64

Post by jethro_tell »

mikekchar wrote: post #31

I've never been able to articulate my own feeling about wealth and poverty. I've been objectively poor at some points in my life. I became vegetarian in my early 20s when I was travelling because I couldn't afford meat. Even then there were some weeks where I didn't eat for a few days because I had spent all my money for the week. It sounds bad, but being hungry taught me how to prioritise and I don't regret it. In o…

It would be fair to say that you have some technical skill not afforded to the truly poor. Most English teaching positions in Japan require a college education, which is the epitome of this study carried to an extreme.

Anyone can learn to code or do Linux ops work, a skill that you have that keeps true poverty at bay. Most can go to school on grants if they are truly poor but there's a learning curve to being able to fill the paperwork out, a time and transportation cost to getting the paperwork done and to the right place.

In these situations, you have chosen to live as poor, but the opportunity to not be poor is always there because you had an education, you had a skill, and those things gave you an opportunity to save up enough to work for free for a while.

There are a lot of places in the world where people don't even know you could work on computers for a very high wage. And even when they do, they lack the know-how to find a geographically diverse community that can mentor them.

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#65

Post by parenthephobia »

tomlock wrote: post #57
parenthephobia wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I think most people probably agree about this. Where the disagreement occurs is the question of whose behaviour is chiefly responsible: people in poverty, or people very much not in poverty.

To be fair, I don't think most people agree on this.

Really? Most people don't think that "much poverty" is caused by human behaviour?

I'll grant that some temporary localized poverty may exist due to circumstances beyond human control, but I'm absolutely certain that most poverty exists because humans collectively permit it, not because we are - as a whole - powerless to prevent it.

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#66

Post by dangerlibrary »

SilasX wrote: post #33
dangerlibrary wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett said it very well: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten d…

Sorry, the quote irritates me to no end (doubly so how people trip over each other to copypaste it). In practice, most opportunities are not a pure savings like this where you will end up ahead in every way if only you could borrow the money; usually, you'll end up with more painful feet but more money to spend, as the cheaper shoes aren't completely useless and in need of replacement. If the quote were as true as cl…

Except that such institutions do exist, and in many cases they do trigger upwards spirals [1]. The high fixed costs of collection relative to the actual loan amounts drive up the incentive to be a bad actor (on both sides of the transaction) and that makes small amounts of debt much more expensive than large amounts. But the existence of bad actors doesn't invalidate the positive impact access to low-cost loans can create. Also, to your question below about poor people's unwillingness to borrow money: this is absolutely a psychological barrier that can be difficult to overcome, and it's a known problem [2]. It's also not irrational: the increasing instability of wages at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder (last week you got scheduled for 29 hours, this week you got 5 hours) further increases the risk of taking on debt [3][4].

Nothing in the real world is as simple as that quote. People like it because it so clearly captures a very real situation - nobody is going to give you a zero interest loan to stock up on toilet paper, and the poorer you are the less liquid capital you have.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance [2] http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/pubs/fa... [3] http://www.res.org.uk/details/mediabrief/4410321/Americans-F... [4] http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/shift-change-j...

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#67

Post by InclinedPlane »

SilasX wrote: post #33
dangerlibrary wrote: post #2

Terry Pratchett said it very well: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten d…

Sorry, the quote irritates me to no end (doubly so how people trip over each other to copypaste it). In practice, most opportunities are not a pure savings like this where you will end up ahead in every way if only you could borrow the money; usually, you'll end up with more painful feet but more money to spend, as the cheaper shoes aren't completely useless and in need of replacement. If the quote were as true as cl…

It looks exactly like it.

I've seen exactly that same dynamic play out with other items of clothing, and even with shoes. And the thing is, when you're poor it's not that you can't afford expensive jeans if you really tried, it's that of necessity if you have that much money to spend on something you have other higher priority needs (things that you've just gone without, or things that you've stretched beyond their useful lifetimes but haven't replaced because you didn't have the money), and not on clothes or shoes.

But you see exactly this dynamic play out in housing, transportation, and so many other places. A poor person with bad credit is going to end up being forced into having to take a high interest loan in order to buy even a low quality car. And they're going to have to dump a lot more into maintenance and refurbishment costs than someone who can afford a nicer car. Over several years they may end up having dumped more money into that crappy car and the financing of the loan than it would have cost to buy a much more reliable car if they had the money. I bought my car almost 10 years ago, and had it paid off in less than a year, I've put 100k miles on an incredibly reliable vehicle with almost no spending on maintenance. That saved me a ton of money on financing costs and in maintenance costs. I've seen tons of other people who couldn't do that and ended up buying less reliable vehicles for a lower initial cost but have much more maintenance and end up having to buy yet other cars more frequently. And if you take public transit, you instead spend a ton of money on that without having anything to show for it.

Housing is even more extreme. Being able to afford to live near where you work can save a ton of money on travel costs over the long term. And being able to invest in purchasing property puts you way farther ahead than being forced to constantly rent.

The point of that little quote is that the difference between rich and poor is very much non-linear, and not merely a factor of the rich having more money. Having more money means being able to spend money in ways that produce solid returns. Buying goods of high quality and high longevity which result in a net savings down the road. And buying things of lasting market value which serve as investments.

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#69

Post by lxe »

mikekchar wrote: post #31

I've never been able to articulate my own feeling about wealth and poverty. I've been objectively poor at some points in my life. I became vegetarian in my early 20s when I was travelling because I couldn't afford meat. Even then there were some weeks where I didn't eat for a few days because I had spent all my money for the week. It sounds bad, but being hungry taught me how to prioritise and I don't regret it. In o…

You are "quit writing software and went to Japan" poor.

There is also the "working 2 jobs to feed 3 kids" sort of poor.

These are completely different kinds of "poor".

Re: Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

#70

Post by parenthephobia »

ars wrote: post #49
auggierose wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even read the article. But obviously, if there is an offer at the beginning of the month, you can buy cheaply and save. If it is at the end of the month, you already had to buy it at the beginning expensively, and you cannot save anything. That's really simple. I am wondering where your karma points come from.

Like you said, you didn't read the article. It's usually better not to comment if you have not. But I'll help you out: Implied was that they had enough money to buy in bulk for multiple months, but had wasted it on other things by the time the end of the month came. There was another class of people who could not do even that, and could only buy for that one month, they could not buy in bulk at any time. (Which is wh…

The article didn't imply anything like that to me.

Where it mentioned buying in bulk it mentioned two classes of people: people who could not buy in bulk at all, and people who did buy in bulk at the beginning of the month, if the option was available, but could not do so at the end.

If you could point at the paragraph which led you to believe it implied the poor were unable to afford bulk purchases due to "wasting" their money, that'd be great.

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