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Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

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Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#121

Post by StanislavPetrov »

xzel wrote: post #103
gozur88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper to buy fresh food than junk food. If you're buying junk food it's because you don't have a place to cook or you're too lazy to cook.

I'm not sure why you're being down voted here but you're pretty close to correct. There have been many recent studies showing fast food really isn't cheaper than buying other types of healthier food. It is pretty close because there are an incredible amount of low cost high calorie foods like beans, nuts, rice, cheap cuts of meat, the list goes on. Here is one from the UK Economic Affairs: https://iea.org.uk/wp-conte…

>We conclude that the real question is not why unhealthy food is so cheap but why people consume unhealthy food despite it being more expensive. The answer, we suggest, is that taste and convenience often play a larger role in people’s food choices than price or nutritional quality.

I suggest you consider the fact that many people in the US, especially in poor, urban areas live in "food deserts" where there are no supermarkets close by that sell healthy food at reasonable costs.

http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi...

If you are poor and have no vehicle you depend on mass transit. This costs both money and time. If you are poor and lucky enough to have a job, its likely to be a low-paying job with a lengthy commute (in terms of time, bus and train transfers, if not in distance). This leaves you very little free time to spend half of a day for a lengthy trip outside of your food desert to get some fresh food. There is also the issue of bringing your groceries home. Have you ever tried to ride the bus or the train while carrying a bunch of packages, especially when it is crowded? How about transferring buses and trains while trying to carrying several packages? Do you have a proper kitchen? Many poor people don't. Proper storage facilities and equipment? Most poor people have roaches.

These are just some of the collective obstacles faced by many poor people in terms of their access to fresh food.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#122

Post by peterburkimsher »

I was an exchange student at UCSB for 1 year. The US government caused me a lot of visa issues because I didn't have $25,000 cash, which meant that I couldn't get a job and had to pay $900 in fees for a visa application that was eventually denied.

Due to family issues, I also wasn't getting support from my parents that year.

AS CAB (the Associated Students Community Affairs Board) gave out free hot dogs on Tuesday nights to people who attended a lecture. The Engineering department had companies coming to give careers talks, where they gave out free pizza. There were free concerts by Storke Tower on Thursday lunchtime where free ice cream was provided. CAB also organised a breakfast for homeless people (including the legendary Pirate) in the park on Wednesday mornings. KGCC is a Korean Christian group that has food at every event. The ISA International Student Association has cookies on Friday afternoon every week, and ISI (International Students Inc, a Christian group) has a proper meal once a month.

Two other people (one from Europe, one from Asia) were attending all these activities, so we soon became friends.

One of them heard about free pizza being given away at the store at Buchanan when it's closing time. So we went down there, and sure enough, there was food. Every day!

This went on for weeks. But one time, we came too late. All the pizza and daily sandwiches, each wrapped in plastic, were already put inside a black trash bag.

That was my introduction to dumpster diving, which continued for the rest of that year.

The weird thing was that because my rent was pre-paid, I wasn't homeless - just completely broke. Transport wasn't too much issue because hitchhiking up and down the coast was quite easy.

I slept outside in LA during one of those travels, but after that, my dumpster diving friend told me about CouchSurfing. I now host the weekly CouchSurfing meetup, and have a guest staying today. So short-term accommodation was free too.

Meeting people at the homeless breakfast made me realise how was to their situation, though. There's nothing like praying "Give us today our daily pizza" and "Thank you for this food", when God is really the only one taking care of you.

America is a land of extremes. There are some incredibly wealthy people, but there's also poverty right next door. I think that situation breeds crime. My situation now is much more comfortable - I earn much less, but I feel totally safe not locking my bike when I go into a convenience store.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#123

Post by Thlom »

johnnyb9 wrote: post #99
grecy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, though in the replies you are seeing the difference between how OECD countries define "poor" and how Americans defines "poor". The vast majority of people in Canada, Australia, Western Europe, etc. would be disgusted by how much "middle class" Americans work, how little vacation they get and how much they get for their tax dollars. In the eyes of virtually every Developed Country, "middle class" Ame…

You seem to have left out the fact that Americans make much more than their Canadian, Western European, or Australian counterparts?

Just checked. Scandinavian countries, Australia and Luxembourg have higher median household income than the U.S.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#124

Post by gozur88 »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #121
xzel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're being down voted here but you're pretty close to correct. There have been many recent studies showing fast food really isn't cheaper than buying other types of healthier food. It is pretty close because there are an incredible amount of low cost high calorie foods like beans, nuts, rice, cheap cuts of meat, the list goes on. Here is one from the UK Economic Affairs: https://iea.org.uk/wp-conte…

>We conclude that the real question is not why unhealthy food is so cheap but why people consume unhealthy food despite it being more expensive. The answer, we suggest, is that taste and convenience often play a larger role in people’s food choices than price or nutritional quality. I suggest you consider the fact that many people in the US, especially in poor, urban areas live in "food deserts" where there are no su…

>Lee also notes in her study that, on closer inspection, food deserts don’t actually exist in the U.S., at least not as a national problem—on average, poor neighborhoods have more grocery stores than wealthier neighborhoods.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2014/02/food_deserts...

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#125

Post by Thlom »

martinp wrote: post #119
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 Days of vacation a year? That's insane.

Norwegian here. 20 days a year is the legal minimum, while 25 days is the norm. I get 30 days a year while working for an American company, which is a bit ironic.

Don’t forget all the inneklemt days. May next year is a inneklemt bonanza. I doubt there will be much done at all in the country in May.

(It’s common in Norway to take any day that is between two off days off. So May 1st is a national holiday, next year it falls on a Tuesday, so that means many will take the Monday off, a so called innneklemt day. There’s a lot of holidays in May, and next year all of them creates inneklemt days.)

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#126

Post by joshuamorton »

drdeadringer wrote: post #100
joshuamorton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean 30 days total vacation, or 30 days of elective pto in addition to company wide vacation days?

I don't know how this matters.

Relatively few companies I'm aware of offer 6 weeks pto. That requirement would put a senior engineer at google or Facebook not in the middle class, despite being in the top 1% of incomes.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#127

Post by scythe »

Thlom wrote: post #123
johnnyb9 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have left out the fact that Americans make much more than their Canadian, Western European, or Australian counterparts?

Just checked. Scandinavian countries, Australia and Luxembourg have higher median household income than the U.S.

Those countries are small; the total population between them is less than any of UK, France, Japan or Germany, which indeed have a lower PPP per capita than the US. The nations you mentioned also have the advantage of being the "best" countries in their respective regions attracting lots of high skilled immigrants and FDI etc.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#128

Post by notyourwork »

aphextron wrote: post #34

I'll be facing this soon as well, at least they've got RV's. After getting back from my third open house for the week, with double digit atendees, I think the bay area just isn't for me. A perfect credit score and a job making double the median wage is not enough to land a 1 bedroom apartment apparently. I'll probably end up sleeping on someones couch for a few months to finish my work contract, and get out of this h…

I’m confused - what trouble are you having? I moved here 5 months ago and had no problem getting an apartment.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#129

Post by p1esk »

Thlom wrote: post #123
johnnyb9 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have left out the fact that Americans make much more than their Canadian, Western European, or Australian counterparts?

Just checked. Scandinavian countries, Australia and Luxembourg have higher median household income than the U.S.

This summer I worked at a startup in Luxembourg. I overheard a job interview my boss conducted, where an Australian with a PhD in machine learning asked for EUR60k as a salary. My boss decided to offer him EUR50k.

Costs of living in Luxembourg are about the same as in Santa Barbara (where I currently live).

I think median salaries in Luxembourg might be skewed by the presence of a large financial market (it's kind of a Wall St of Europe).

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#130

Post by tmnvix »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #101
tempz wrote: post #12

There is a linguistic problem here - extending the term 'middle class' to hide prevailing poverty in the US. You are not middle class if: - you will lose home, car if you are out of job for 6-10 months; - you don't take 30 days vacation a year; - you cannot afford health services without going to debt; - you cannot send your kids to university; - your diet is mostly junk food because you can't afford fresh stuff. If…

30 Days of vacation a year? That's insane.

NZ has a minimum 4 weeks annual leave (20 days not counting weekends) plus 11 statutory public holidays. Australia is basically the same.
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