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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

#31

Post by carmen_sandiego »

simiones wrote: post #14
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…

I assume that when he talks about 'rarity' of skills he's talking about supply. Almost anyone can be a farm hand; supply is huge and individual workers are fungible. So wages are low.

"how much money would the company lose if no one did the exact job I am doing" seems a bit of a moot point when it's not even close to being the case that no-one would do the job in question. _Expected_ value then approaches price paid as you weight in the probability involved.

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

#32

Post by ajsnigrutin »

chii wrote: post #26
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it makes some evolutionary sense tho - because objective wellbeing is only part of the competition. Relative wellbeing is what "counts" for real, esp. when competing for scarce resources.

Well, this is ok when you work more, to get more for yourself...

...out here, people want their neighbours to have less.

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

#33

Post by wizzwizz4 »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #23
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Healthcare is kind of a special case though, in that it's not really a free market (whether you think it should be or not). So the value of what medical professionals do isn't really signalled through. The lawyer has high value to the company that pays them, so they probably meet the first part exactly: rare skills in high demand.

Okay, but now consider other monopsonies. There are plenty. What most people get paid is almost entirely decoupled from the net value they create, and oftentimes it's only tangentially related to the value they give to their employer.

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

#34

Post by chii »

ivanbakel wrote: post #18
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…

> but would your work be "valuable"?

yes, if somebody else would be willing to swap their hard earned "value" for it.

The problem is when people making decisions to swap is not swapping their own personal "value" they accumulated themselves, but someone else's (usually the tax payers').

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

#35

Post by em500 »

deepstack wrote: post #4
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…

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.

Yes, according to one of my old economics teachers, above the subsistence level, happiness is approximately how much better off you are than your neighbors.

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

#36

Post by notauser »

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…

There is definitely non-linear pricing in the London housing market as one example.

When I was last looking -

Studio apartments and one bed room apartments rented for similar amounts, and so did two beds and three beds.

But the price jump from one bed to two bed was much larger than any of the other jumps.

You can speculate on many reasons why this might be the case (smallest size apartment for a family in the city, smallest size you can split with a friend, smallest size with space for an office).

There are exceptions and I'm sure that more research time could help you find them.

But one of the points made convincingly in the artle is that if you are poor you don't have a lot of energy, time or gas-money to do that kind of research.

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

#38

Post by yibg »

telesilla wrote: post #30
yibg wrote: post #24

I grew up poor (first gen immigrant family, the poor kind), so I empathize with the points raised. At the same time I don't really understand how some / a family can be (outside of some circumstances like health issues, disabilities etc) repeatedly behind on water bills or other necessities. For the first few years my family had an income of ~$1000 / month (back in the 90s). My mother wasn't legally allowed to work a…

Being poor is doable as long as there are no disasters or gross unfairness. Every student who gets buy without parental help will attest.

I think it's also about trade offs that are made. For example, TV dinners (from an article in another thread here) for us was not a staple, it was a luxury. They kept for a long time, but they were also high cost to calorie ratio. We got the cheapest cut of meat we can in bulk and frozen it.

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

#39

Post by carmen_sandiego »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #33
carmen_sandiego wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare is kind of a special case though, in that it's not really a free market (whether you think it should be or not). So the value of what medical professionals do isn't really signalled through. The lawyer has high value to the company that pays them, so they probably meet the first part exactly: rare skills in high demand.

Okay, but now consider other monopsonies. There are plenty. What most people get paid is almost entirely decoupled from the net value they create, and oftentimes it's only tangentially related to the value they give to their employer.

The labor market isn't fully efficient but I don't believe it's "almost entirely decoupled" from the value employees provide. If you provide with certainty $100k/y of value and your employer pays you $30k/y, there'd be no shortage of entities willing to bid up that price. Who wouldn't take profit within their risk tolerance? What mechanism do you think would prevent this from happening?

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

#40

Post by dagw »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #20

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 socialis…

But places like san francisco? That, I don't get.

Short answer. The people who already live there don't want to be neighbors with those sorts of buildings and any politician that suggests it will be voted out of office.

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