40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by eli_gottlieb » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #189

pishpash wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Insofar as those assets are actually debt instruments, they become worthless under high inflation.

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

#282

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

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".

So? I'm down to pay more taxes.

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

#283

Post by dv_dt » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

pwg wrote: post #232

dv_dt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overhead margin of basic life costs are much higher when one is poor then one is wealthy. It's an even higher overhead when trying to access our ever shrinking safety net with its perverse incentives and a high time and hassle factor. Blaming the victim for being poor is both ridiculous and counterproductive. You should wonder instead why basic personal finance skills aren't on any National education curriculum i…

Are you referring to the Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...

That as well as the Welfare Trap

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap

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

#284

Post by 49531 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

prewett wrote: post #156

Wow, everything in this thread is "those evil rich people, fleecing the poor." Quite aside from the fact that the target audience of this site can expect to make around 2X the median income of the US--meaning that we are those evil rich people--surely the problem isn't this one-sided. The poverty rate in the US is about 13% [1]; we would expect those people to not have any savings. That leaves about 33% unaccounted f…

The problem is one-sided, it's a trope to blame poor people for not being frugal enough when lower income wages have stagnated over the last 40 years. The wealthy in America are relieved of guilt if it's not their fault poor people are poor.

We've systematically gutted social services for the poor while giving tax breaks and subsidies to the rich, then we blame the poor for buying consumer goods (which we market to them and need them to buy) instead of saving their income.

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

#285

Post by dv_dt » Wed, May 23, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

taysic wrote: post #108

roenxi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with personal responsibility, which I am very much in favour of and wish we promoted a bit more, is that the deck is so stacked against people who don't have assets that I'm not sure average person can keep up. I keep saying it; the amount of money in the system has increased +50% since 2008 [1], and worker compensation has gone up +25% (the BLS publishes a lot of series, I use [2]; hope it is right). So…

Is this due to QE? edit: I am wondering about why the money supply has increased 50%. Wouldn't that require a massive printing of money?

QE, Fractional reserve banking is basically printing money on every loan, us gov't budget deficit prints money. In terms of inflation, it does seem the supply needed to keep expanding to prevent a liquidity collapse of the economy - though my suspicion is it needed to keep expanding because the finanicialized sections of the economy basically keep sucking it up, somehow locking it up from liquidity in the economy.

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

#286

Post by m0rose » Wed, May 23, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

49531 wrote: post #284

prewett wrote: post #156

Wow, everything in this thread is "those evil rich people, fleecing the poor." Quite aside from the fact that the target audience of this site can expect to make around 2X the median income of the US--meaning that we are those evil rich people--surely the problem isn't this one-sided. The poverty rate in the US is about 13% [1]; we would expect those people to not have any savings. That leaves about 33% unaccounted f…

The problem is one-sided, it's a trope to blame poor people for not being frugal enough when lower income wages have stagnated over the last 40 years. The wealthy in America are relieved of guilt if it's not their fault poor people are poor. We've systematically gutted social services for the poor while giving tax breaks and subsidies to the rich, then we blame the poor for buying consumer goods (which we market to t…

So it's better for the poor to blame the rich and be relieved of the guilt of being poor? It's not one-sided, and to say it is allows for a victim mentality that is harmful to anyone reading this and not thinking critically. I acknowledge that there are myriad reasons for becoming poor. Some people have one horrible tragedy after another heaped upon them to the point where they are destitute, and to those people we need to lend our aid and sincerest sympathy. There are others, however, who are poor because they spend their money foolishly, often times in a unconscious attempt to assuage feelings of depression, anxiety, or lack of agency. These people also deserve our sympathy, but they will never escape their issues without actually realizing they have a problem and seeking help. I fear that comments like this enable those people by re-enforcing their belief that it's a one-sided issue that they have no control over, and to them you're doing a grave disservice.

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

#287

Post by 49531 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:26 PM UTC

m0rose wrote: post #286

49531 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is one-sided, it's a trope to blame poor people for not being frugal enough when lower income wages have stagnated over the last 40 years. The wealthy in America are relieved of guilt if it's not their fault poor people are poor. We've systematically gutted social services for the poor while giving tax breaks and subsidies to the rich, then we blame the poor for buying consumer goods (which we market to t…

So it's better for the poor to blame the rich and be relieved of the guilt of being poor? It's not one-sided, and to say it is allows for a victim mentality that is harmful to anyone reading this and not thinking critically. I acknowledge that there are myriad reasons for becoming poor. Some people have one horrible tragedy after another heaped upon them to the point where they are destitute, and to those people we n…

> relieved of the guilt of being poor

That kind of sums it up right there. Most wealthy people in this country didn't become wealthy because they were able to save money while working for $15/hr.

You can't save your way out of poverty, the poor don't want your sympathy, they want dignity. They want a living wage, a pension, and healthcare. We can afford to give it to them, we're just too focused on making more billionaires.

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

#288

Post by AstralStorm » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

jadedhacker wrote: post #136

dragonwriter wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do I have the feeling that most posters on HN who consider themselves the "middle class", actually fall well above of the middle quintile of household income and most are in the 5th quintile. Because middle class in a capitalist society is an economic relationship between the captialist and working class (characterized by mixed dependence on capital and labor, most archetypically the independent operator who su…

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 ?

The difference is owning major assets. Be it a company, many housing investments, office spaces, factories, big farms, major amounts of stocks, financial institutions etc. Secondary, amount of political and medial power and pressure wielded.

Finally, a condition wether your own labour is not technically required for survival.

Most petit bourgeoisie still has to work, does not wield direct (individual) political power nor has big enough assets to survive despite major downturns.

The difference from proletariat is that they can rent and hire labour. Sometimes they get to manage it too.

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

#289

Post by AstralStorm » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

jadedhacker wrote: post #234

ryanx435 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of that is renting

The outlay for infrastructure. Previously you had to own your own hardware, get a business class line, maintain it, etc. Now you just rent servers from AWS or another provider. I like to think of it like a ski rental. They build a few extra services on top to make it even more convenient, but the critical part is the hardware.

The owner of ski rental, unless or is massively profitable, if it is the sole critical income source, is textbook petit bourgeois.

The main difference is in influence wielded...

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

#290

Post by AstralStorm » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

dorgo wrote: post #262

mayniac wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The wealthy only care when the pitchforks come out. I can't find the link right now, but there was a TedX talk by a multi-millionaire arguing that he wants to be taxed more. And it's a growing trend, a lot of very wealthy people are starting to plead for higher taxes. The reasoning being if wealth inequality continues to widen, eventually it won't be a case of shaking the rich to empty their pockets a bit, it will b…

Why do rich people want to pay more taxes? Why not directly invest in improving the situation of the poor? This way they remain in control of how money is spent. Tax money will just be spent for more wars.

It is labour intensive to directly infest into poor. It involves setting a good programme and/or charity and managing it...

Technically government is already equipped to do everything a charity can and more eith superior information so should be more efficient at it. Although it depends on the country/state in question.