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

This is Real, That's Not

streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 364 posts

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#51

Post by NothingIsReal »

voodootrucker wrote: post #43
jakeva wrote: post #7

What a great read. This resonates with me. At one point in my life I was desperately close to homelessness. At the time I was lucky to still be enrolled at a university and could therefore easily take out as many loans as I needed. It was a horribly risky gamble I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but without going into more details of my life story I barely managed to graduate and find a successful career. I was able to pay…

> Especially not in the most wealthy nation in the history of the world. Everyone keeps repeating this, but it's not true. Switzerland beats America by mean net worth. And look at median... whoa 22. By government deficit (and likely household, corporate, etc), I bet we're #1 in all categories. The truth is, America is great at spending money. That doesn't make it wealthy, quite the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Are you autistic?

"The most wealthy nation in the history of the world" is a cliche connoting "very advanced first world civilization that should not have this problem."

Just the same when someone says "I said hello to John," they don't mean they literally said "hello," and then nothing more.

Editors note: It's easy to attribute malice to others when you view the world through that lens. If you've never sincerely asked a question that could come off as rude or impolite, then you haven't lived at all.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#53

Post by nullc »

eigen wrote: post #35
vostok wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the threshold for the top 1% is around $10 million in net worth excluding primary residence. Being able to buy whatever you want at the super market is probably a top 25% of the US perspective if not more.

> The top 1% earned an average of $515,371 while the annual income for the average taxpayer was $41,740. > The minimum net worth of the top 1% was roughly $10.4 million, according to Forbes. The top 10%, on the other hand, has a net worth of about $1.2 million. [ https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net... ]

The discrepancy between $10.4 million net worth and $515k income (which I assume includes gains) confused me for a moment, until I realized that the $10.4 million figure likely includes at least one large non-income-producing piece of real-estate.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#55

Post by starpilot »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #32

Interesting writing and perspective, though something about it leaves me feeling a bit uneasy. I think it's the amount of mind reading that the author projects on everyone. The author writes as if she understands other people better than they understand themselves. Everyone gets taken down a notch with some mind reading from the author, such as the forum member who had "mommy issues" to the conclusion that the primar…

MeFi's apparent niceness/decorum is what makes its negativity so cutting and icy. I have never seen flamewars, however infrequent, as bitter and contemptuous as I have seen there.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#56

Post by vostok »

nullc wrote: post #53
eigen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The top 1% earned an average of $515,371 while the annual income for the average taxpayer was $41,740. > The minimum net worth of the top 1% was roughly $10.4 million, according to Forbes. The top 10%, on the other hand, has a net worth of about $1.2 million. [ https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net... ]

The discrepancy between $10.4 million net worth and $515k income (which I assume includes gains) confused me for a moment, until I realized that the $10.4 million figure likely includes at least one large non-income-producing piece of real-estate.

Most of these estimates exclude primary residence or the primary residence isn't a huge portion anyway.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#57

Post by bloaf »

colanderman wrote: post #18

> I eventually concluded that […] I scared the hell out of them. They didn't want to believe that someone "like them" could end up homeless. Do you think it could have also been some sort of perverse jealousy on their part? You were no longer playing their game – the only game they knew how to play – yet nonetheless there you were interacting with them as an equal.

https://www.npr.org/2009/07/27/111091624/homeless-man-leaves...

They are few, but some people do choose that lifestyle. I also wonder, when people bemoan the number of people with PhDs working as janitors, how many of them have simply decided to play a different game.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#58

Post by phaus »

In a different thread someone recommended charging a small fee for new accounts to prevent abuse. Dang responded that its important for everyone to be able to participate. Between his response and this article I reflected quite a bit about the nine years I have spent on this site, the various weird and mostly wonderful interactions I've had with the community, and the way it has shaped my career and therefore my life.

On this site I have received legitimately profound and sometimes life changing advice and insights from a wider variety of people than I have interacted with in any other format: schizophrenics, the homeless, people from a wide variety of cultures (wealthy and impoverished), and industry rock stars.

There have been disagreements and occasionally arguments. Some of them have made me a little more aware of my own bubble and allowed me to recognize aspects of my world view that were ignorant or that at least failed to consider different points of view.

Much of this was possible because its a place that values the participation of everyone. Articles like this excellent piece of writing shine a light on how important it is.

Edit: I figured some shadow banned people would respond. I was actually talking about at least one person that ended up getting permanently banned that happened to be an influential person to me. Part of what makes this community great is that while we can have heated disagreements we largely do it more civilly than many other online communities. While its an accurate assessment that Hacker News has a liberal bias there are lots of conservatives here that freely share their opinions civilly. They might feel outnumbered and they might sometimes be unjustly downvoted by people that don't understand what a downvote button should be used for, but they are largely able to participate because they keep it civil. I'm pretty politically moderate myself. By no stretch of the imagination could I be considered a "SJW" or a person with a typical San Francisco political outlook (only mentioning these phrases because that was what was alleged to be the only type of person that can exist here). Out of curiosity I took a look at jrcii's account and they were indeed needlessly toxic on a large number of occasions before being banned and yet was still told if they email the admin and promise to be civil they can be reinstated. Instead of taking them up they decided be even less civil. A community can be open to everyone and still ban people that are not acting in good faith.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#59

Post by brundolf »

voodootrucker wrote: post #49
brundolf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say "most wealthy nation" they mean GDP, not per-capita. America's wide discrepancy between those two is usually the point.

But GDP is most certainly not a measure of wealth, and not doing it per capita makes no sense. https://www.britannica.com/topic/gross-domestic-product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth Edit: GDP is more like income than wealth, and not per-capita makes no sense because the expense of welfare programs would be on a per-person basis.

All I'm saying is that's what people mean colloquially.

Re: This is Real, That's Not

#60

Post by voodootrucker »

brundolf wrote: post #59
voodootrucker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But GDP is most certainly not a measure of wealth, and not doing it per capita makes no sense. https://www.britannica.com/topic/gross-domestic-product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth Edit: GDP is more like income than wealth, and not per-capita makes no sense because the expense of welfare programs would be on a per-person basis.

All I'm saying is that's what people mean colloquially.

That's genuinely understandable. My worry is that it was true back in the days of the boomers, and it has been so ingrained in us that we didn't even notice it shifting, and now lack of awareness of this fact causes a kind of cognitive dissonance preventing us from fixing these issues, not least of which the OP.

We've squandered our wealth for ever-increasing cash flow, and by the time we're done I'm worried that the country will be a empty hulk.

Post reply on HN