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Being frugal is for the rich

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Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#101

Post by nickthemagicman »

vorpalhex wrote: post #32
qntty wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is the real motive behind the article: But here’s the thing. Regardless of intent, these Millennials are telling an older generation of elite Americans — the very people whose policies and financial decisions kneecapped the economy — what they want to hear: that everything is more or less okay, and young people just need to be more thoughtful about their money. And that’s a shitty idea to perpetuate. Bec…

> continuing to build a world where they are more and more necessary My grandmother can still, to this day, recount living in an apartment with no furniture except a mattress, with my grandfather who was employed as an engineer in New York. It took, by her estimate, about two years to have enough furniture before she was willing to invite over any sorts of company. Today you can furnish an apartment reasonably with a…

That's a patently false statement.

Inflation has been 3% a year for decades and wages have stayed flat.

Your example of home furnishings has been improved by industrialization.

Property value have skyrocketed, vehicle prices have skyrocketed, college, healthcare...

Things you NEED have become way more expensive. Luxury goods have gotten cheaper.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#102

Post by KingMob »

T2_t2 wrote: post #93
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #54

The word missing from this discussion is "structural" - there are deep structural changes to how the job market and economy now works that limit the economic prospects of millennials (as a group) in ways that can't readily be overcome with thriftiness and hard work. Here's an excerpt of the article that really clarified this for me: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in…

Except they also had less. This is the ... I'm not sure of the right word, paradox? duality? ... anyway, the problem/benefit of globalisation, that it leads to cheaper stuff. We all have more today, even on less money. Thought experiment: ask yourself when it was better to be poor: 1950, or 2018. In 1950 you could... go to the library? In 2018, even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games cons…

The plummeting costs of technology over time make it a poor barometer for measuring wealth.

Instead of mobile phones and TVs, look at bigger items like health care, housing, and education, all of which have gotten more expensive (in the case of education, astoundingly so) even as inflation-adjusted wages have decreased.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#103

Post by T2_t2 »

joefourier wrote: post #11

American salaries are difficult to make sense of from a European perspective. The referenced average salary of $36,000/year for millennials with only a high-school diploma would be a normal entry-level salary for a software engineer in most of Western Europe, and a very good salary for experienced engineers in Eastern Europe. Tax burden is higher here as well, and while the cost of housing is exorbitant many parts of…

As a fellow non-American, it took me years the realise there is no America. It is the Unites STATES of America, where the states are all very, very different.

As an example, last I looked the GDP per capita in San Francisco is $48K, whereas in Miami it is $24K. That is a pretty massive difference, and leads to very different outcomes in a lot of areas.

The best way to think of the USA - and China BTW, which has an even worse demographic spread - is to compare it not to one country like England, or Croatia or the Czech Republic, but to the EU as a whole. Luxembourg is Washington DC, Switzerland is Connecticut, London is New York, Seattle is Berlin, Croatia is Alabama and New Orleans is Barcelona. Those are not exact comparisons, but just a framework for understanding how aggregate US results are so weird.

Because even healthcare, if you combine the population Conneticut and Massachusetts, it is the same as Sweden's with very similar outcomes. Alabama and Mississippi, on the other hand, aren't doing quite as well.

TL;DR, The average for the USA is really misleading, as the spread is much larger than it is in smaller (area and population) countries.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#104

Post by notfromhere »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #43

I'm glad the wouldn't let something as Patently Right Wing as "being thrifty" to escape their journalistic gaze. it's super important to make sure that no stone goes unturned in the constant battle to find out who's keeping them down over there on "The Great Left". /s

There's nothing wrong with being thifty, but there is a lot of wrong in using "you're not thrifty" to explain systemic income inequality

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#105

Post by notfromhere »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #8

So some people in a particular generational cohort write books and blogs about their financial independence, but this is bad because it trivializes the actual struggles of other people in their cohort who aren't financially independent? Oh, the horrors!

they're usually bullshit because they fail to emphasize outside income and support.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#106

Post by KingMob »

sgt101 wrote: post #92
vorpalhex wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> continuing to build a world where they are more and more necessary My grandmother can still, to this day, recount living in an apartment with no furniture except a mattress, with my grandfather who was employed as an engineer in New York. It took, by her estimate, about two years to have enough furniture before she was willing to invite over any sorts of company. Today you can furnish an apartment reasonably with a…

Ok, I earned approximately $18k when I was a research assistant, 20 years ago, and my possessions when I graduated were : 2 pairs levis, 4 t-shirts, 2 sweaters, 1 coat, 2 pairs shoes (trainers, boots), 1 formal shirt, bag of socks and underwear (I can't remember). I had a watch also. My dad gave it to me - I guess I had privilege. Ok, ok - I also had a car! Sort of - a citroen BX (look it up and marvel). I had gone o…

OK, props for quoting Pulp.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#107

Post by peacetreefrog »

T2_t2 wrote: post #93
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #54

The word missing from this discussion is "structural" - there are deep structural changes to how the job market and economy now works that limit the economic prospects of millennials (as a group) in ways that can't readily be overcome with thriftiness and hard work. Here's an excerpt of the article that really clarified this for me: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in…

Except they also had less. This is the ... I'm not sure of the right word, paradox? duality? ... anyway, the problem/benefit of globalisation, that it leads to cheaper stuff. We all have more today, even on less money. Thought experiment: ask yourself when it was better to be poor: 1950, or 2018. In 1950 you could... go to the library? In 2018, even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games cons…

Yeah, and part of the reason we have cheaper stuff is because of outsourcing/specialized firms like this.

Take the hotel example, it's probably much more costly to hire (and interview and vet etc) all your own bartenders and cleaning crews and all that piecemeal. Then you also have to train them and figure out a replacement when someone calls in sick or something. I'd imagine a company that's specialized in hiring and training bartenders could do it much more efficiently than a single independent hotel owner.

Those efficiencies (you specialize in bartenders and so are able to train them with less resources than other places) result in lower room rates and more money customers can use on other things.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#108

Post by bhandziuk »

azernik wrote: post #63
gowld wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> City-based salary adjustments are really something only educated professionals get, That's not entirely true. In many cities, minimum wage is substantially higher ($12-$15/hr) than the Federal minimum ($7.25/hr) > in big cities > So you have to have a car and car insurance Not in big cities.

> Not in big cities. Name five big cities where a average-wage worker can get by without a car and car insurance.

5 can probably be done. (assuming "average" is average for that city, not national average). NYC, DC, Seattle, SF, Boston, Chicago... Naming 10 is probably way harder.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#109

Post by autokad »

T2_t2 wrote: post #93
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #54

The word missing from this discussion is "structural" - there are deep structural changes to how the job market and economy now works that limit the economic prospects of millennials (as a group) in ways that can't readily be overcome with thriftiness and hard work. Here's an excerpt of the article that really clarified this for me: "Thirty years ago, she says, you could walk into any hotel in America and everyone in…

Except they also had less. This is the ... I'm not sure of the right word, paradox? duality? ... anyway, the problem/benefit of globalisation, that it leads to cheaper stuff. We all have more today, even on less money. Thought experiment: ask yourself when it was better to be poor: 1950, or 2018. In 1950 you could... go to the library? In 2018, even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games cons…

when you account for taxes in everything (not just income taxes), I think taxes are pretty much everyone's biggest expense. then housing

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#110

Post by Frondo »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #87
danudey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy is the best its ever been, but wealth inequality is the worst its ever been. The cost of living has gone up far, far faster than income has, while wages have stagnated or dropped, meaning people these days are earning less money and have more expenses than before. To hear someone who was making $10/hour out of college and bought a home for $40,000 say that the reason millennials can't buy a home today is…

Do you actually care about the well-being of the poor, or do you just hate the rich? Because you seem much more concerned about the relative difference between the rich and the poor than you do about the nominal well-being of anyone. Population densities have increased and it's more expensive to live in cities. That's for sure. We opened up free trade which gave the American middle class a minor kick in the pants at…

No one's talking about hating the rich here but you.

We can all care about societal inequality, and how it probably suggests that the levers of civilization need to be jiggered a bit, without hating anyone.

I think housing in the PNW is way unaffordable but that doesn't mean I hate either the developers, the planners, or the numerous other social and geographical factors that have led to this situation.

In short, please don't bring up things like "hate the rich" when no one else is.

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