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On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

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Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#11

Post by domano »

Living in a country where there is a better social net in place, but coming from a refugee background, i regularly notice a disconnect with my peers.

I do understand their financial worries and sympathize, but only because i am aware of my perspective. Oftentimes i have to remind myself that for others it is actually stressful to think about not being able to comfortably buy a house vs renting it.

Meanwhile i worry about my mothers retirement, how i can get her out of this shady living situation and how i can pay back everything she has done to bring me up despite circumstances.

Actually i wish for others that were better off their whole life to have my perspective for some time, since i think that it would really make them less stressed about their future.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#12

Post by teddyh »

Related:

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, May 27, 2011: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about...)

The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, January 19, 2012: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-deve...)

4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People, February 21, 2013: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never...)

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#13

Post by brianmcc »

simonh wrote: post #2

A while ago I read about a study that surveyed people with inherited wealth. IIRC they ranged from having inherited tens to hundreds of millions. No matter how much they had inherited, when asked how much they would need to have inherited to feel financially secure and not have to worry about money, they said they would need something like half again to double. I may be misremembering the details, but that was the gi…

There's this in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/rich-peop...

“All the way up the income-wealth spectrum,” Norton told me, “basically everyone says [they’d need] two or three times as much” to be perfectly happy.

It references this study: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53540

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#14

Post by simiones »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #5

As another ex-poor person: some of this is OK and some of it doesn't really ring true. E.g. > That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”. I don't think this is true, and why would it be? Unless you're in an area where the housing market is cliffed for some legislative or regulatory reason. But mos…

> > a person’s pay is determined by how rare their skills are and how much demand there is for those skills. The value of their work doesn’t factor in as much

> What's the value of a person's work that isn't just determined by the first part? What does the author think drives demand, if not the prospective value you provide to the various companies in the labor market?

The value of your work is "how much money would the company lose if no one did the exact job I am doing". This generally has 0 correlation to your wage, because in general a company will think in terms of "how much money would the company lose if anyone else did the job this employee is doing", which is a very different question. This is how it happens that many absolutely essential jobs, without which society would simply stop functioning, are also among the lowest payed. Probably one of the best examples is nurses, but also warehouse workers, transport people, construction workers, farm hands.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#15

Post by blackshaw »

ImaCake wrote: post #7

>while it’s normal to put down a month or two worth of rent as a security deposit, it’s much less normal to get it back This looks insane to an Australian. I have moved house 4 times in the past 5 years and I have never not got all of my bond back. Some states here have a rule that the bond money is held by the state so that the landowner doesn't just take that money for themselves. How can the poor ever break the cy…

Yeah, a bunch of things in this article strike me as very American (I'm British). No-one in the UK worries about not being able to afford healthcare if they're poor, nor do they need a car to get to the grocery store in under an hour (unless they live in an isolated home out in the countryside, which probably means they're rich, not poor.) There are many, many places you can live in the UK without needing a car to get to work.

The deposit thing looks insane to me too. My rental deposit is held in escrow by some third party; I've never heard of anyone not getting their deposit back when they move (unless they did something to deserve it e.g. trashing the place). The only issue around deposits is that you usually have to pay a deposit for the new place before you've received the deposit back for the old place, which can cause cashflow issues.

I've always thought of the U.S. as a great place to be rich, but a terrible place to be poor.

On the other hand, I find it laughable that this author describes a 900sqft apartment as "very small". 900sqft would be considered a decent-sized, mid-range apartment in London, and if you're poor you'll live somewhere MUCH smaller. Americans have such ginormous houses, even the poor ones.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#16

Post by tonyedgecombe »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #9
deepstack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is never about how much money you have, rather what situation you are in, what you are expecting and what others around you have.

Yep! As someone from a former socialist country, I can confirm. Situation has got a lot better in the last ~30 years, people have alot more, but since a few people got even more than that, some complain a lot. Average worker family has gone from bicicyles and maybe one yugo (or a "fico" - even smaller/cheaper) to two, maybe three european-mid-range cars + all the modern extras, but are not happy, because their neighb…

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Theodore Roosevelt

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#17

Post by wizzwizz4 »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #5

As another ex-poor person: some of this is OK and some of it doesn't really ring true. E.g. > That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”. I don't think this is true, and why would it be? Unless you're in an area where the housing market is cliffed for some legislative or regulatory reason. But mos…

Value, not demand. A nurse who helps stop 50 people from dying each week is doing very valuable work, but a talented lawyer helping to defeat valid class-action lawsuits (negative value work) is probably paid more.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#18

Post by ivanbakel »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #5

As another ex-poor person: some of this is OK and some of it doesn't really ring true. E.g. > That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”. I don't think this is true, and why would it be? Unless you're in an area where the housing market is cliffed for some legislative or regulatory reason. But mos…

>What's the value of a person's work that isn't just determined by the first part?

The value of the work done, either in a physical sense (because it produces something of value) or in a societal sense (because it involves doing something of value).

If you're the best hole-digger in the world, and people are constantly trying to hire you to dig holes so that they can fill them in, then you would be highly paid - but would your work be "valuable"?

Probably very few people are true free-market believers when it comes to the idea of fair pay.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#20

Post by ajsnigrutin »

I have a possibly stupid question...

Parts of america have really really high housing costs... like really high... and a bunch of people want to live there, and a lot of people there are poor (atleast compared to housing prices).

Why the hell do you still build single family houses, or one/two floor buildings in areas where you need to fit a bunch of people (eg. both photos in the article)? I'm from a former socialist country, and housing for working families back then looked (still does) like this:

https://i.imgur.com/pmpcaOL.png https://i.imgur.com/YowiKVe.png

Modern buildings look a bit better, with ground floors for commercial use, and underground parking, but still:

https://i.imgur.com/AFpUiuX.jpg

I understand single or two floor buildings if you're building something in rural alabama... there's a lot of space there, and the land is cheap.... But places like san francisco? That, I don't get.

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