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

#131

Post by cableshaft » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #116

brianmcc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 5…

Yep, the US healthcare system basically means you have to be a multimillionaire when you've retired if you want to have any semblance of a comfortable retirement, because any serious injury or health issue (which will happen at some point) will do a damn good job of sucking up most or all of that money away super fast.

If you're younger at least you might get lucky with GoFundMe "insurance", but that requires your story being sad or unusual enough to go viral, or you have a large family and friends network (starting a donation campaign on GoFundMe.com, what just about every American has to rely on for serious health expenses nowadays). If you're old you're probably not going to be pulling at enough heart strings to rely on this, though.

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

#132

Post by elhudy » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

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…

This varies on a state-by-state basis. In Chicago, rental protections allow for the rentee to sue for beyond the deposit, as well as their lawyer's wages, in the case of a security deposit being wrongly taken. I know because I won back a lot of money from bogus 'damage' claims. Other states have laws that lean towards favoring the renter.

Since we're throwing anecdotes out there, I've had my landlords attempt to wrongly and knowingly take money from my security deposit about 30% of the time. The lower-class the apartment is, the more likely the owner is a slumlord, and will try to scam you.

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

#133

Post by throwaway0a5e » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

rrdharan wrote: post #112

golergka wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Upper middle class know-it-alls sneer at the bad financial decisions of the guy living in the double wide with a brand new corvette in the driveway while the lower middle class looks up to his efficiency and prioritization.

A yacht is the same thing with the decimal moved a couple places. If your income is fat enough to give you 10m in the bank then you can definitely own a yacht so long as you don't mind living in the kind of neighborhood where your neighbors are plumbers instead of surgeons.

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

#134

Post by BunsanSpace » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #79

austincheney wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you will know their nature. You don’t need to be homeless to discover that some people lack sympathy. I lack sympathy. It doesn’t mean I’m an asshole. Sympathy isn’t empathy (huge distinction). Some people can’t tell the difference and everyone is just bad (cue the big tears). This is especially true if you’re a freeloa…

you know "free loaders" aren't why most people are homeless right?

Very location dependant.

In my city the majourity of panhandlers you see have homes, and choose not to work and beg on the street. You can tell who's homeless because they don't bother you, they sit in silence, or in front of a shelter. Or they ask for food rather than money.

People harassing you for money? Panhandlers.

I'm sure it's different in cities that have higher costs of living s.t. a min wage earner can't afford rent anywhere.

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

#135

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:05 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…

> 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"?

If people get transcendent joy out of filling in holes, or the filling-in of holes otherwise matters to them, then this is valuable. In a real-world scenario, it's a bullshit job: https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/

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

#136

Post by Havoc » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

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 some. Landlord pocketing the interest on it can happen, and if they're nasty they might argue re you can't get it all back cause of a scratch on the floor over there but just straight up refusal is insane

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

#137

Post by throwaway0a5e » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #128

TIL US actually turns off your water if you don't pay. More used to flow restrictions. i.e. You'll have water to keep you alive but good luck showering with 10% the normal pressure.

This is highly refined (I'm gonna stop just short of calling if "pure") FUD.

In practice nobody gets their utilities shut off except people who were intending to pay their bill and slip through the bureaucratic cracks (elderly with kids managing it is a common scenario) or the person paying the bill doesn't live there and stopped paying (e.g. landlord in foreclosure so they stopped paying). I can't speak for literally every municipality but there are defined timelines and it takes months to shut utilities off. By the time they get around to shutting off your water or electricity you've already missed god knows how many payments on your rent and been through the full eviction proceedings. I've also never seen a utility provider that won't accept minimum payments. Providing some sort of financial assistance services, payment plans and doing everything possible to not shut people's utilities off is generally a requirement of getting a government granted utility monopoly in the first place.

Anyone who has to choose between utilities and something else should choose the something else. Utilities tend to be incredibly forgiving and willing to work with you if your financial situation doesn't permit payment in full. In some jurisdictions the debt doesn't even get reported (they just keep trying to collect)

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

#138

Post by sethammons » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #128

TIL US actually turns off your water if you don't pay. More used to flow restrictions. i.e. You'll have water to keep you alive but good luck showering with 10% the normal pressure.

Fwiw, many water providers will continue services if any amount is paid in good faith. Also worth noting (at least in California): no water to the building means it is legally uninhabitable: you can be forced from the property.

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

#139

Post by Hard_Space » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

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…

I'm a British immigrant to Bucharest, nearly 4 years, and I live in a slightly smaller version of the housing in your images, a 4-floor 1986 block in the south of the city, adjacent to Vacaresti park.

In London, this type of housing might be depressing, but here it is normal -- and when you take away 'neighbor envy', it's hard to express the difference it makes to one's own sense that you've reached some equilibrium in your environment and your life.

The TV ads here might be full of people in detached houses, but that kind of residence is very rare in this country - at least in cities like Bucharest and Cluj.

In short, Bucharest folk are used to it, and practically no-one in the US is. For them, it's 'the projects'.

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

#140

Post by Havoc » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

Never been poor, but happened to have a car that was unreliable AF. It's anxiety inducing to say the least when every time you start it feels like a roll of the dice. Especially when others are with you.