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

Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 273 posts

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#251

Post by 3minus1 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #167
3minus1 wrote: post #5

I heard this on NPR recently and was really moved by it [1]. Recommend reading the whole thing. > You know me. I'm in your friendship circle, hidden in plain sight. My clothes are still impeccable, bought in the good years when I was still making money. To look at me, you would not know that my electricity was cut off last week for non-payment or that I meet the eligibility requirements for food stamps. But if you pa…

I always find myself surprised that people respond to this kind of writing. What part resonates with you? When I read this, I just roll my eyes at an author unabashedly looking to tug at heartstrings. I would be moved by a real person's story, but this not only is pure fantasy, it even creates a stereotype that all poor people are timid and frail. And again, I know some people do become broken by poverty, so why not…

I wouldn't like it nearly as much if I thought it was fantasy, but I believe it is based on the author's real experience. I like it because people generally like to present themselves in the best possible light; sharing one's very personal struggles and suffering takes a lot of courage. It always gets me when people open up like this.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#252

Post by jahaja »

xyzzyz wrote: post #250
jahaja wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a bit strange to complain about how widespread the use is of a newly coined term. I assume that much of this "outrage" is some kind of a "culture war" thing. Instead of focusing on important stuff people get all distracted with "old man angry at minor change" and bike shed things like this ad infinitum. > yes, that’s exactly the issue What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need. In some l…

> What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need But that’s the point: it’s not needed in Spanish either. Spanish speakers are totally fine without new inventions like “latinx”. They see those strange American people, who usually don’t even speak Spanish, try to impose their own new norms on what the Latinos should be called, and they don’t like this kind of cultural imperialism. The whole problem stems to…

You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things.

In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons.

In Swedish for example there are the pronouns "han" (he) and "hon" (she), and now there's a gender neutral "hen". The latter being very handy when you don't know the gender of the person that's being talked about. But of course this addition has made culture warring people (a.k.a right-wing folks) very upset in Sweden too.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#253

Post by xyzzyz »

jahaja wrote: post #252
xyzzyz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need But that’s the point: it’s not needed in Spanish either. Spanish speakers are totally fine without new inventions like “latinx”. They see those strange American people, who usually don’t even speak Spanish, try to impose their own new norms on what the Latinos should be called, and they don’t like this kind of cultural imperialism. The whole problem stems to…

You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons. In Swedi…

> You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things.

No, because when you refer to actual people, you still need to use a gendered noun. The issue is which gendered nouns to use, and different language have different rules about it.

In German, for example, one just like in Spanish needs to match the gender of the adjective to the gender of the noun. However, unlike in Spanish, German doesn't really have gender distinction in plural, and you generally use the same form to refer to group of people regardless of whether it comprises of only males, only females, or whether it's mixed.

Spanish, however, has gendered plural, and it also has a rule that whenever one refers to a group of people, one uses female gender noun only if the group comprises of only females. Whenever the group is fully male or mixed, one uses masculine form of the noun. So, a group of Latino men is "latinos", a group of Latino women is "latinas", but the mixed group of Latino men and women is actually "latinos" again. To add to that, the masculine plural version of the word "latinoamericano" is "latinoamericani", but the feminine version is "latinoamericanas", and not "latinaamericanas" (this is a compound word, and not an adjective-noun pair, hence the "latino" doesn't get declensed to "latina")

In short, any time you refer to group of Latin Americans in Spanish that doesn't happen to be all female, you'll always be saying "latino", and never "latina". Hence, the word "latinx" is solving a nonexistent problem, same as the word "Americanxs" would in English.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#254

Post by jahaja »

xyzzyz wrote: post #253
jahaja wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons. In Swedi…

> You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. No, because when you refer to actual people, you still need to use a gendered noun. The issue is which gendered nouns to use, and different language have different rules about it. In German, for example, one just like in Spanish needs to match the gender of the adjective to the gender of the noun. H…

Why did you skip the Swedish example? That's the most similar to this. It's just a shortcut.

This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. We would have a major linguistical crises on our hands if that was so.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#255

Post by xyzzyz »

jahaja wrote: post #254
xyzzyz wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. No, because when you refer to actual people, you still need to use a gendered noun. The issue is which gendered nouns to use, and different language have different rules about it. In German, for example, one just like in Spanish needs to match the gender of the adjective to the gender of the noun. H…

Why did you skip the Swedish example? That's the most similar to this. It's just a shortcut. This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. We would have a major linguistical crises on our hands if that was so.

> Why did you skip the Swedish example?

Because I don't know anything about Swedish language :)

> This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter.

Which is silly, because "Latinos" is already gender neutral in its actual use, both in Spanish and in English. It declenses in Spanish using masculine form, but as the above example of chair and desk, grammatical gender of a noun doesn't have to say anything about gender of whatever it refers to. It does in the case of the word "latinos", but it only says that the group is not all-female: this is the gender neutral form.

> They are under no obligation to keep following the the original language's grammar.

Sure, there is no obligation. They could also decide to just call all groups of people from Latin America "Latinas", or just do away with that stem altogether, and just use "Hispanic" instead. Of course, in the former case, the Spanish speakers would be very confused that Americans keep insisting on only referring to females, and in the latter, the Brazilians might get confused why they are now called Hispanic. But, they'd be wrong to have any concerns about this, because languages are completely arbitrary, and Americans are under no obligation to have their language make any sense or be consistent with anything else.

The above is, of course, absurd, just like the word "Latinxs". Just use the word Latinos, which is already gender neutral, if you happen to care about it.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#256

Post by maxerickson »

ryathal wrote: post #245
maxerickson wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financing part of a $10,000 vehicle is incredibly cheap right now. A few hundred dollars total to borrow for several years.

Financing a 10k car is "cheap" if you have decent credit and aren't rolling negative equity from another car into that. Using average rates it represents a 10-15% additional cost over the principal, and you end up with a car worth about half that. With a 60 month loan you "spent" $6-7k to have a car for those 5 years, if you keep it another 5 years the numbers look better.

aren't rolling negative equity from another car into that.

Yes, that would not anymore fit into the description of financing part of a 10k car.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#257

Post by rayiner »

jahaja wrote: post #252
xyzzyz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need But that’s the point: it’s not needed in Spanish either. Spanish speakers are totally fine without new inventions like “latinx”. They see those strange American people, who usually don’t even speak Spanish, try to impose their own new norms on what the Latinos should be called, and they don’t like this kind of cultural imperialism. The whole problem stems to…

You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons. In Swedi…

This isn’t about using a gender neutral pronoun with respect to a specific person. It’s about English-speaking people trying to change the label used for an entire group of mostly immigrant people by slicing and dicing a Spanish word and adding an English ending to it.

It’s like if I started calling you “Swedix.”

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#258

Post by rayiner »

jahaja wrote: post #254
xyzzyz wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. No, because when you refer to actual people, you still need to use a gendered noun. The issue is which gendered nouns to use, and different language have different rules about it. In German, for example, one just like in Spanish needs to match the gender of the adjective to the gender of the noun. H…

Why did you skip the Swedish example? That's the most similar to this. It's just a shortcut. This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar. We would have a major linguistical crises on our hands if that was so.

> This is English speaking folks that have adopted a Spanish word and are now making it gender neutral by skipping the last letter. They are under no obligation to continue to follow the the original language's grammar.

Don’t you see how that makes it worse? The English word-Latin—is already gender neutral! Americans adopted “Latino” as gesture to the large number of Spanish speakers living in America. It’s not just a borrowed word Americans happen to use, it’s a word used to refer to a large Spanish-speaking minority group living in the country.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#259

Post by NicoJuicy »

ardy42 wrote: post #194
TheBlight wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the only choice. Focusing protection on the vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function could've spared us both from the worst of the pandemic's destruction and the economic destruction -- "economic" is a bit of a misnomer too. There is a greater cost to lockdowns than just economics. Mental and physical health also suffer. Those that can't get preventative care they need suffer. Depressed pe…

> That's not the only choice. Focusing protection on the vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function could've spared us both from the worst of the pandemic's destruction and the economic destruction -- That's an unrealistic idea. You can't have unchecked community spread and "focus protection on the vulnerable," without literally imprisoning them in an isolation bubble for a year or more , which is far…

> There are places in the world that have already opened up, virus free.

And every place that qualifies for your description is an island on its own.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#260

Post by sershe »

jeromegv wrote: post #106
ceilingcorner wrote: post #68

Meanwhile, some of the strongest voices calling for near-permanent lockdowns came from the well-paid professional classes, who could afford to order Uber Eats twice a day and had zero chance of losing their over-inflated incomes. The continuing erosion of the middle class isn’t a good thing. Expect populist political rhetoric to continue growing.

Whatever the US did was not near permanent lockdowns, what is allowed to continue and be opened is more lenient than almost every country. The only countries with less restrictions than the US are opened exactly because they did a lockdown and kept the virus at bay. What kills the US economy is the virus being out there and making people afraid to get together into public settings.

People are demonstrably not afraid to get together in public places... whatever public places I've been to (mostly in deep blue states, and also Nevada) are as crowded as they can be. Actually, outdoor spaces were overcrowded, more than usual, during complete lockdown in WA where they were literally telling people to not leave the house except for critical tasks.

This argument always seems completely untenable for me. It's highly improbable that the level of fear hits the sweet spot where without lockdowns it's not enough to prevent the spread, but enough to ruin the economy.

Post reply on HN