On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by t0mas88 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:22 PM UTC

blackshaw wrote: post #15

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 ge…

In central London just 600sqft can easily cost you a million pounds... The place I rented when I lived there was a bit smaller and was for sale at 950k asking price.

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

#112

Post by rrdharan » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #50

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…

> I suppose expectations scale up with means. Isn't that social pressure? No matter how much you start with, if you end up with less than that, people see you as a failure. A person who inherits 10 million dollars and is afraid of going down to 1 million isn't as much afraid of selling his yacht as he's afraid of what his peers would think of him.

I know it doesn’t matter much but just to ground these numbers a bit - anyone owning or trying to own a yacht with “only” $10M is indeed heading towards $1M very quick.

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

#113

Post by rob74 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

And what boggles the mind even more than this sorry state of affairs in the USA is that a significant part of these "working poor" are voting for a party that angrily rejects any notion of a European-style welfare system that would help improve this situation as "socialism"...

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

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Post by jonathanstrange » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

IMHO the problem is deeper than that. Economists often wrongly and silently presume that free market equilibria lead to desirable states of society but there is nothing in their theories that would warrant this. It works for simple trades (bargaining) but once you're at the level of institutions there is no need for a match between institutional needs and the preferences and desires of individuals in a society. For instance, to build a certain product a company needs a certain distribution of different types of work. These needs of the larger institution need not match individuals' life choices at all. Some jobs can even be so desirable that workers are willing to lose money in the long run (that's e.g. how Amazon benefits from selling the works of self-publishers who often overall lose money). Consequently, since people need to make a living, even in a fully functioning free job market there can be a substantially large number of people who are pressed into choices that make their lives miserable.

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

#115

Post by notsureaboutpg » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

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…

I grew up like you but you and I weren't poor.

If your parents immigrated like mine (wife legally not allowed to work, dad on stipend) then your father (and possibly mother) was very well educated in your home country, then immigrated to the US, finished his studies or did a temporary training and then took a well paying job.

When having a $1000 a month income is known to everyone to be temporary and you know a well paying job is on the other side, that's not the kind of poor the author is talking about. When you know you will have money soon you can make all sorts of wise choices to handle a period of low liquidity. When you don't know that, you can't make any of those choices.

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

#116

Post by alistairSH » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

brianmcc wrote: post #13

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

Interesting. I'm solidly upper-middle-class (typical income for this forum, I imagine). I don't think doubling my net worth would make me much happier or financially more secure. It would allow a new Tesla instead of a used BMW. And flying business class for vacation. With the state of health care/insurance in the US, despite being a ridiculous amount of money by most measures, it wouldn't allow me to retire in the 50s or remove the concern that I'm one bad car accident or cancer scare away from financial ruin.

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

#117

Post by mc32 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

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…

Some poor families handle it better than others. A lot has to do with the parents and how they manage the situation psychologically.

There is peer pressure on the kids (and even parents), so they upend Maslow’s pyramid to their detriment.

Some of it may be educational —home ec is not taught in many schools. Some of it is cultural (advertising) and some of it is propaganda (we’re Americans, we must have a TV and consume brand names!)

I recall in Japan if you went on the dole you first had to sell your ‘luxury’ items before getting government support. It indicated you had to be in need and not supplementing or aiding poor economic decisions.

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

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Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

sql_monkey wrote: post #41

mudita wrote: post #29

I was poor for some time after deciding to quit my computer science phd for a career in art. I guess I still am compared to others, but it does not feel that way any more. When I was really poor, worrying about money and how to pay the next rent was a regular source of stress for me, which took quite a lot of emotional energy. Now I still have much lower income than people, who have regular well-paying jobs, but I do…

Thank you for sharing. Your comment highlights something important I believe when talking about poverty. One common argument against any type of government help is that poor people should just work harder and pull themselves by the bootstrap. However the situation you describe above shows the many side-effects of being poor which impede life in general: lack of proper sleep (because you live in a noisy area with no o…

I’d go further—-why do all narratives around poverty have to revolve around the middle class? Either someone used to be middle class and is now poor, grew up poor and is now middle class or at very least is moving towards that end.

Where are the stories about people born into poverty, still in poverty, and not likely to be anything but poor for the rest of their lives? There are lots of people like this and cutting out their stories distorts our perceptions.

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

#119

Post by cafard » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

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…

One thing I learned as a parent is that kids always compare up the wealth scale, never down. I'm sure my parents noticed that, too.

I've never heard about the negative effect on levels of empathy. I suspect that it is unusual for people to have friends far poorer or richer, and it is easy to be dismissive of the problems of those one does not know.

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

#120

Post by bluGill » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #59

choeger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That came to my mind as well. If I don't expect the deposit back and cannot afford to claim it, let's just turn the tables and make them claim something from me .

Here in the UK that would destroy any chances of renting anything decent in the future. Any agency/landlord will always ask for references from your current landlord, if you dick them over like this you can forget ever renting something that isn't a slum where people don't care about references. Also deposits are always(by law) held by a third party in escrow, and it's actually a bit of a pain to claim any money from…

In the US you can sue for anything. Smart landlords only confirm that someone lived there, and other easily verifiable information, since if they sometimes give a good reference and sometimes neutral that means neutral references are bad and they can be sued for that. If you get a anything more as reference from a landlord it is because you were bad enough that the landlord sued and won (it is safe to assume this never happens, though there are exceptions)

Don't confuse suing with winning. You can sue someone and lose, but the lawyers will still cost both sides a lot of money.