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40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

money.cnn.com

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Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#181

Post by Maybestring »

dragonwriter wrote: post #166
jadedhacker wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a concept I haven't yet seen a good definition for though I know it is rigorously defined. What is the difference between the bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie ?

In discussion of capitalist economies, a rough definition (loosely following Marx) of the major classes is: haut bourgeoisie (capitalists): those who own capital and rent labor to apply to it. petit bourgeoisie (middle class): those who live by a combination of labor and capital, particularly those who apply their own labor (perhaps alongside a small amount of rented labor) to their own capital. proletariat (working…

Do I understand correctly that an Uber driver with a 30k capital investment in a car is part of the petite bourgeoise, and a surgeon working for a hospital who has put 400k toward education is part of the proletariat? Or do you count education as capital?

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#182

Post by grgwsngton2 »

bcohen5055 wrote: post #158
georgrwasington wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually not going to do this. If you want to have this conversation go read up on it. Not trying to be rude but your question makes it sound like you've never heard the idea before. Given that, I feel like you're not ready to have this conversation. ...I'm trying not to sound rude but it isn't working. I am not expressing malice towards you.

Any links to good articles about this? I for one have not heard of this before.

I just googled this https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/nasa-is-a-jobs-program?u...

Again, I have to say I really hate how my previous comment sounded. There's just a lot to this and I didn't want to try and defend the very idea while arguing about government reform because it would have been an uphill battle. Sorry for how rude that sounded.

The basic idea, though, is that NASA (while awesome) has been building a heavy lift but also disposable and expensive new rocket. There are a lot of traditional contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, ATK) across the country helping to build the rocket. This means jobs. So congress supports the program, despite its cost, because it means jobs. This stifles innovation as evidenced by what SpaceX has been able to do on a fraction of the budget. This branches and goes deeper with organizations like the ULA which charges several times that of SpaceX but has failed, completely, to innovate. Anyways by the time NASA's new rocket will be ready SpaceX will be have been launching Falcon Heavy for years and possibly even launching the BFR. This means SpaceX will have more powerful, more reliable, reusable, cheaper rockets. All this time NASA has been unable to innovate because ??? and now the entire SLS is nothing more than a jobs program.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#183

Post by leetcrew »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #141
integration wrote: post #48

40% of America’s lowest-income families’ consumption goes to luxuries. The bigger problem is American’s terrible spending habits not lack of real income. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/g...

Where luxuries and necessities are defined as > For its part, the Deutsche Bank report explicitly defined luxuries as goods or services consumed in greater proportions as a person’s income increases and necessities as those goods or services that make up a smaller proportion of spending as a person’s income increases. In other words, the whole study is complete nonsense because those definitions are ridiculous and co…

they're not useful for the discussion we are trying to have in this thread, but it seems a bit presumptuous to say that the entire study is complete nonsense because they use certain terms of art in the way they are normally understood within their field. a paper talking about the "power" of turing machines is not hogwash simply because other people mean something different when they talk about compute power.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#184

Post by aarongray »

skookum wrote: post #159
aarongray wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17130287

Quoting a factoid about the distribution of actual medical _spending_ doesn't change the incorrectness of projecting CPI onto medical _costs_. There are indices - the BLS maintains one and a number of actuarial firms publish others - that track the costs of various medical services and they all outpace CPI.

You're right, there are a lot of factors at play here, its not a simple issue, and both myself and OP were somewhat oversimplifying things on opposing ends of the spectrum. My point though is that simply looking at the increase in the cost of medical services across the board is different than looking at how much the average American family is actually spending on medical costs year over year, and that is a key differentiation.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#185

Post by aninhumer »

scarface74 wrote: post #178
jadedhacker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't despair comrade, the revolution is coming (we must hope). Trump and Sanders both showed that the citizenry are restless and are ready to demand (some kind of) change.

Yes and when they demand change and start "taxing the rich". You're going to find that a lot of doctors, lawyers, and people in IT who are making low six figures are going to be classified as "the rich".

Yes of course?

If you're trying to suggest that higher income socialists won't like it if they're the ones being taxed, then I don't think you understand socialists.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#186

Post by zeth___ »

monocasa wrote: post #112
zeth___ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism mostly.

Not sure why you're getting down voted. An otherwise identical resume with the first name changed from Tyrone to Brad receives 3x callbacks for interviews. http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf

Techbros.

People who have had a golden spoon in their mouth since birth and can't imagine a life where they didn't have their hands held to success the whole time.

They think that because they are not billionaires they aren't privileged and anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, just like their great-great-grand pappy who came from Ireland and was treated pretty badly by the English in 1864.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#187

Post by maxsilver »

scarface74 wrote: post #178
jadedhacker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't despair comrade, the revolution is coming (we must hope). Trump and Sanders both showed that the citizenry are restless and are ready to demand (some kind of) change.

Yes and when they demand change and start "taxing the rich". You're going to find that a lot of doctors, lawyers, and people in IT who are making low six figures are going to be classified as "the rich".

> "According to statistical data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the top 1% had an adjusted gross income of $465,626 or higher for the 2014 tax year."

"Doctors, lawyers, and IT people making low six figures" have absolutely nothing to fear. And for the extremely few fortunate people who actually make more than half a million dollars each year, they will easily be able to afford the new taxes.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#188

Post by sigstoat »

dpark wrote: post #157
sigstoat wrote: post #86

https://www.thestreet.com/story/14296470/1/americans-spend-b... so the average american doesn't have $400 saved up, _and_ spends $206 per year on lotto tickets. if we're in society collapsing danger, maybe we could look at the organizations running the lottos?

The average American spends about twice that on just beer (not all alcohol) every year. I share your concern for poor people dumping money into the lottery, but that’s actually a pretty small vice.

easier to get rid of lotteries; no constitutional amendment required. some of the beer spending also comes from people more able to tolerate the wasted funds; those with the least are the most likely to play lotteries.

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-f...

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#189

Post by aninhumer »

pishpash wrote: post #139
jadedhacker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piece you're missing is that none of this is a mistake, the entire economy is designed to do this. Apathy and hoping it'll get better will if anything make it worse (not that I'm implying that's your position). The only thing that will make it better is demanding that things change. This means mass unionization, strikes, worker owned businesses, protests, leftist politicians like Sanders and Corbyn, and a whole p…

All you're going to do with that is to piss off the upper middle class, not the people who actually got fat on the backs of the poor and who are so far ahead of the situation that you're never getting that money back. It's gone. The only equalizer left is massive inflation, which may happen for other reasons.

Inflation doesn't make much difference to inequality, because the wealth of the rich is primarily assets not cash.

Re: 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense

#190

Post by ryanx435 »

master-litty wrote: post #101
rndmize wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is optimistic to the point I choked on my coffee. Our economy is predicated on consumer spending; we have a whole set of industries built on the backs of poor financial decision making and being near-broke (payday loans, credit cards, overdraft charge reordering, debt collectors, etc.) all of which pull power away from desperate people and give it to others (now your landlord/phone company/ISP/etc have lega…

It's so childish putting optimistic people down. Our economy, habits, and mindset can change with a great deal of work and energy. People are becoming more connected than ever before, and with that we can build a new kind of social momentum. Hey, you're right, things suck now, but it doesn't have to be like this.

This is an even more childish comment. You think you can change how human nature fundamentally works? How naive.

People are selfish and greedy. They always have been. They always will be.

Any solution to a problem that relies on building "a new kind of social momentum" are ignorant at best and actively harmful at worst.

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