Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate • Hacker News Board

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#191

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:21 AM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #173

post_break wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's referring to imessage vs sms. People put weight into if you have an iPhone or not. If you're not a blue bubble, you're a lesser class in america (TO SOME PEOPLE).

That sounds like a great way to avoid people I won't like. If someone will judge me because of the things I own or don't own, I don't want to associate with them either. In fact, I think this is a fantastic reason to avoid iPhones. I'm super excited about the Librem 5[1], and I'll be extra happy to be even that less desirable to these types of people. - [1] https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

It’s a very crude method. But it’s also very effective. We just bought a house and have been doing a lot of work on it. So I post a lot of stuff on Craigslist for free. Lots of green bubbles (Android users) respond. They are the flakiest fucking people I have ever dealt with. We’re talking comical levels of flakiness. Shit that belongs in a sitcom. Blue bubble people, on the other hand, respond quickly and show up when they say they will.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#192

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:27 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #93

savanaly wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A phone of that cost is a luxury item. Now I'm in the category of people who can afford that and I want to make sure I'm not just living in a bubble when I dismiss what you said, so I opened up a tab and typed in "cheap phone" to google. The first result is a $20 phone from best buy. It appears to do calls, take pictures and video, do web browsing and have some library of available apps. So I don't think "People cann…

You're not wrong, people that can't pay cash for a phone shouldn't be buying one. But there are a lot of expenses in that range that are more of a necessity, car tyres that OP mentioned, other car expenses, removalists fees and bond payments, a fridge breaking down. There's some even bigger ones you can't put off like funeral expenses or missing work for medical reasons. A $500 phone gets used as an example because i…

FWIW, you can buy a used car for the price of a set of new tires. And you can buy a used fridge for $50-100.

A common thing that I notice with poor people is that they buy bad cars. 15 year old American sedans. That kind of crap. When you can buy a Japanese sedan, use it for 5 years, spend almost nothing on maintenance, and then sell it for most of what you paid for it.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#193

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:29 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #177

post_break wrote: post #62

People cannot buy a phone outright. It's that bad. We're literally financing a $500-1000 device because they can't take the hit up front. Now I'm sure most people here could swing a phone tomorrow if they needed to say theirs was stolen, but you gotta think about how many people just can't. How about tires, there are places to rent tires. Financing a car? Common. 8 payments to put two front tires on your car? Seems i…

Why would you not “finance” the phone? All the carriers basically have payment plans where they just take the cost of the phone and divide payments by 24-36 months. You don’t pay interest and there is no markup.

Because then you’re paying a ridiculous amount of money for your monthly plan. You should be paying for your device outright and then using it on a prepaid carrier. The reason the large carriers finance at 0% interest is because it ties you to their exhorbitant plans for 2 years.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#194

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:31 AM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #148

post_break wrote: post #62

People cannot buy a phone outright. It's that bad. We're literally financing a $500-1000 device because they can't take the hit up front. Now I'm sure most people here could swing a phone tomorrow if they needed to say theirs was stolen, but you gotta think about how many people just can't. How about tires, there are places to rent tires. Financing a car? Common. 8 payments to put two front tires on your car? Seems i…

Except the thing about all of the items you've mentioned is that you can get stupidly low rates, and in some cases no interest loans, my savings account interest rate is higher than that of my car loan. You're better off taking out the loan to build credit at this point than just paying for something outright.

> my savings account interest rate is higher than that of my car loan

Then you overpaid for your car.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#195

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:35 AM UTC

mback00 wrote: post #160

It is not useful to define a demographic of the destitute at a standard relative to the median. (Note: Advancement of inequality of outcome beyond poverty is a _virtue_ of free society.) It is more virtuous to define an absolute poverty value and seek to ensure that the societal wealth distribution minimum never reaches the minimum - then allow maximal opportunity for all individuals to achieve any outcome they desir…

Humans aren’t logical. We’re apes who evolved in the context of groups of 100 or so individuals. We pay attention to how others are doing. If there is too much of an imbalance, mob justice and violence are the means by which the scales are re-balanced. All sides of the political spectrum (and especially the rich) should acknowledge and accept this.

And I say this as somebody on the right.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#196

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:35 AM UTC

skh wrote: post #15

sovietmudkipz wrote: post #3

This comment post is going to be pure speculation. I think the numbers in this article are right. Over the past 75 years, relative poverty has grown at a dramatic pace. Sure, everyone's quality of life has improved across the board but relative poverty is the important metric. In the past 15 years more and more of a household income is tied up in basic needs; bills and rent/mortgages are consuming higher percentages…

What is interesting to me is that it is a Biblical principle to have jubilee years and in my experience some of the most ardent opponents of debt forgiveness are right wing Christians. The fact is that we all subsidize each other. Poor people in major cities tend to use public transportation more than others and thus their taxes subsidize road building. I don't have children and subsidize k-12 education for those tha…

> ...it is a Biblical principle to have jubilee years...

That part of the Bible also establishes a government funded priesthood consisting of only men that routinely perform ritual animal sacrifice. Point being, the jubilee year stuff was specific instructions on how to govern a particular people in a particular place at a particular time in history.

Now, I would consider guaranteed loan forgiveness after, say, seven years, but that would probably just reconfigure how loans are structured. I figure people would get smaller mortgages, having to buy smaller houses with larger down payments. I'm not sure that's better for the poor than what we have now. Maybe it would be? The adjustment would certainly strain the economy while the housing sector sorted itself out.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#197

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #9

The reasons that poverty measures are the way they are is political. That other measures could be more useful for targeting suffering is irrelevant to how useful they are political. Also, you don't have to bring the neighbors into it, or income inequality to find it an inadequate measure. Just ask: why not housing? Simple - administrations want housing prices to rise, because housing is an investment. At least it's t…

> why not housing?

There are non-cynical reasons. It's not clear that optimizing for housing will work consistently. If many instances of poverty are caused by addiction, mental illness, corruption, or exploitation, it's not clear just throwing free apartments into the mix would address what we mean by "poverty".

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#198

Post by Riseed » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

michaelchisari wrote: post #117

umvi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a well off software developer. I've been using a $50 Nokia Lumia 520 for the past 3 years or so. When this one dies I'll likely "splurge" and buy a Nokia 2 ($100). That our I'll buy a Blu phone ($50). I would consider my neighbors poor. They have state-subsidized rent, for example. They use food stamps. They also smoke a pack a day each. All they need to do to buy a new phone is not smoke for 5 days. Not that it…

Having an iPhone isn't inexplicable. You can finance or lease a phone for $30-$40 a month. And given the extraordinary advantages having a smartphone provides, it would be inexplicable if they did not do so. Also, cigarettes are an appetite suppressant and in many places are cheaper than food. Food stamps are hardly comprehensive. Cheaper, that is, until it all catches up to you medically. One thing I've learned in m…

> Having an iPhone isn't inexplicable. You can finance or lease a phone for $30-$40 a month.

You can also be given an iPhone as a gift or hand-me-down. Or decide to keep it instead of selling it when you lose your job or get really sick the rest of your life goes off the rails.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#199

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 4:55 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #156

refurb wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republican Party is morally bankrupt. I would argue creating special voting opportunities (i.e. Sunday voting) that directly appeal to the people who vote for you is morally bankrupt.

Except that's not how it happened. The original 2000 bill permitted localities to provide 17 days of early voting and it turned out (not something that was known beforehand) that Blacks disproportionately voted during the first week, and especially the first weekend: "The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day…

The question is, what's the alternative?

Suppose you roll out a new voting schedule expanding voting hours. The purpose is to make things more convenient, not affect election outcomes -- someone who might have had to miss an hour of work to vote can now do it during off hours instead etc. But without having any way to know this ahead of time, the new schedule turns out to change who votes in a way that disproportionately benefits one party over the other. What should be done?

There is no logical reason for one schedule to be more fair than another, assuming that everyone has a reasonable opportunity to vote in both cases and the difference is only a matter of convenience. The problem is that convenience can affect election outcomes -- and there are arbitrarily many possible schedules.

Suppose that increasing voting hours at certain other times (e.g. opening polls earlier in the morning) would benefit Republicans more than Democrats. If they did that instead of removing the hours that disproportionately benefited Democrats, you could accuse them of the same thing -- changing the schedule to affect the outcome. But they're also just restoring the original balance that existed before a change was made that wasn't expected to alter it but did. On the other hand, who is to say that the original status quo is more fair than some other thing?

And that's the problem. Nobody has any more right to slightly more convenient voting hours than anyone else, but who gets them can determine the election. The incumbents are the ones who get to make the decision, so what would you expect them to do? More importantly, what principled thing do you propose to do instead?

In theory they could allow voting 24 hours a day for a month, but the expense of that likely exceeds the marginal benefit. Meanwhile as soon as you start deciding which hours to cut, you're potentially choosing who wins the election again.

Re: Poverty in America: Greater Than Statistics Indicate

#200

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Dec 01, 2018, 5:01 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #199

wahern wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not how it happened. The original 2000 bill permitted localities to provide 17 days of early voting and it turned out (not something that was known beforehand) that Blacks disproportionately voted during the first week, and especially the first weekend: "The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day…

The question is, what's the alternative? Suppose you roll out a new voting schedule expanding voting hours. The purpose is to make things more convenient, not affect election outcomes -- someone who might have had to miss an hour of work to vote can now do it during off hours instead etc. But without having any way to know this ahead of time, the new schedule turns out to change who votes in a way that disproportiona…

> In theory they could allow voting 24 hours a day for a month

That's exactly (well, perhaps not exactly a month) what places that adopt all mail-in (or just permanent, no-special-qualification mail-in) voting do, so it's not just “in theory”.