Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How poverty changes your mindset

review.chicagobooth.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 559 posts

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#31

Post by jdietrich »

jeffmould wrote: post #13
dijit wrote: post #3

This is not the first time this article has come up, and as usual I'll give my 2c. What qualifies me to talk about this issue? I was raised in the UK on income support, single mother, social housing, low income city etc; Now the situation has changed somewhat in the UK; back then in the UK it was possible to get by without going into debt if you were smart about things and I believe this no longer to be the case, but…

she will treat her time as unlimited in finding similar quality goods for less money It is interesting you say this. I have a friend who struggles to get by. Single mom, two kids, a father who does the absolute bare minimum to provide support to his kids, and she is unemployed. She does get support from the state (rent assistance, energy assistance, SNAP), but it is barely enough to squeak by and what little money is…

>I try to convey to her that at some point time is money. Meaning that she needs to evaluate the opportunity cost of saving a dollar versus spending 2-3 hours to save that dollar.

If you don't have realistic prospects of finding a good full-time job and taking on part-time or casual work would result in a loss of welfare benefits, the value of your time is essentially nil. "Working" for 33 cents an hour to find good deals may be the best option available.

Your friend isn't necessarily acting rationally, but she isn't necessarily acting irrationally either. If you've never been poor, it's difficult to understand just how many practical obstacles poor people face on a daily basis.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#33

Post by sparkie »

gscott wrote: post #20
protomyth wrote: post #5

If you are poor you cannot shop sales the same what you can if you have money. Stocking up on items is not really an option.

I think you mean buying in bulk. Buying in bulk is great but often not because if it is food it might go bad before you eat it and if you are poor your limited on space... so huge packs of items don't fit well in your tiny space. Plus the up front cost is a real killer since the money is saved over time. And if you have more of something you might end up using more because it's convenient. And finally if you are spli…

There's a subtle difference between "buying in bulk" and "keeping a reasonable stock".

I grew up in a quite poor family and my parents are terrible with money. One thing that frustrated me to no end is that they would almost never buy something ahead of time. An item would literally have to run out before they'd consider buying its replacement, which meant I'd regularly get in the shower in the morning to find there is no soap, no toothpaste, no toilet paper.

You'd end up going to a local convenience store and paying 2x the price for the item because you need it now. Your grocery budget becomes hugely inflated, and you still end up buying the same necessities. Also when you work on a system of buying one item only to replace the previous, you really miss out on bargains because you have to pay the full price it is at the time you need it, instead of a week or two earlier when the same product was BOGOF.

At the same time, they throw away tonnes of food which has gone off because they can't plan meals and shopping consists of "we might eat that." Food which has a long expiry date (canned foods, etc) always runs out.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#34

Post by haberman »

bojackstorkman wrote: post #30

I love how when this comes up, it's people either saying "Here was my experience when I was poor in the past." or "Here is what I think about economics or the wording of this article." Don't get me wrong, I know what website I'm on. But in all seriousness, is there room for currently poor people in this discussion?

How does non-poor people commenting prevent poor people from commenting?

The author of the original article is probably not currently poor, and yet she is writing about it. Do you see this as a problem too?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#35

Post by louprado »

bojackstorkman wrote: post #30

I love how when this comes up, it's people either saying "Here was my experience when I was poor in the past." or "Here is what I think about economics or the wording of this article." Don't get me wrong, I know what website I'm on. But in all seriousness, is there room for currently poor people in this discussion?

While there may be HN readers who have little income and possessions and are therefore living in "poverty", true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve.

If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#36

Post by ridgeguy »

jeffmould wrote: post #13
dijit wrote: post #3

This is not the first time this article has come up, and as usual I'll give my 2c. What qualifies me to talk about this issue? I was raised in the UK on income support, single mother, social housing, low income city etc; Now the situation has changed somewhat in the UK; back then in the UK it was possible to get by without going into debt if you were smart about things and I believe this no longer to be the case, but…

she will treat her time as unlimited in finding similar quality goods for less money It is interesting you say this. I have a friend who struggles to get by. Single mom, two kids, a father who does the absolute bare minimum to provide support to his kids, and she is unemployed. She does get support from the state (rent assistance, energy assistance, SNAP), but it is barely enough to squeak by and what little money is…

I think cash cliff effects are harder on the poor.

If your friend comes up a dollar short, she'll miss paying for something. She'll have to choose among food, gas, electricity, rent, meds - all the things & basic services with nonnegotiable prices.

The stress of missing a payment for something critical is enormous. Your friend may be spending 2-3 hours saving a dollar in part to avoid that hard cash cliff and its stress.

Years of that sort of stress will likely degrade one's cognition in ways described in the posted article.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#37

Post by tachyoff »

haberman wrote: post #34
bojackstorkman wrote: post #30

I love how when this comes up, it's people either saying "Here was my experience when I was poor in the past." or "Here is what I think about economics or the wording of this article." Don't get me wrong, I know what website I'm on. But in all seriousness, is there room for currently poor people in this discussion?

How does non-poor people commenting prevent poor people from commenting? The author of the original article is probably not currently poor, and yet she is writing about it. Do you see this as a problem too?

Poor people can’t comment because they’re poor. It’s the survivorship bias problem. People who are currently poor probably can’t comment on HN (or have no idea what it is), so what you see, overwhelmingly, is people who were able to escape poverty. This can lead some people to believe that it’s easier than it is to get out of poverty. And since this is an article about true, abject poverty, “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps with my tech skills” doesn’t really help anyone learn anything.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#38

Post by blfr »

Frankly, a couple of rounds of Angry Birds doesn't seem like a great way to decide important policy. How many of the studies cited in the article were at least replicated a few times?

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#39

Post by protomyth »

gscott wrote: post #20
protomyth wrote: post #5

If you are poor you cannot shop sales the same what you can if you have money. Stocking up on items is not really an option.

I think you mean buying in bulk. Buying in bulk is great but often not because if it is food it might go bad before you eat it and if you are poor your limited on space... so huge packs of items don't fit well in your tiny space. Plus the up front cost is a real killer since the money is saved over time. And if you have more of something you might end up using more because it's convenient. And finally if you are spli…

No, I meant stocking up. If there is a sale on toilet paper, poor folks can save some money this week but cannot buy a couple of extra packages because they don’t have those discretionary funds available. It’s not space, it’s budget.

Re: How poverty changes your mindset

#40

Post by MrLeap »

dijit wrote: post #28
MrLeap wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar situation. Lived with my mother, constantly stressed about survival until she kicked me out at 14. Moved in with my upper middle class father (who should have had full custody from the beginning, courts don't always do it right eh?) For a while (my mind says 'for now'), I'm able to make about 100k in 6 months in the midwest. My formative memory combined with the local prices make this a nearly unimaginable su…

The "not enough lines of credit" thing bit me too, if you don't take debt you can't have debt, it's so bizarre. Regarding your AWS lambda aversion, I am also guilty of aggressively avoiding lock-in with cloud vendors... Now I wonder if that is related to my upbringing.

Nah you can have debt, you just have to pay a penalty (higher rates) to bring your profitability up. It's just not a game I want to play.
Post reply on HN