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

#251

Post by throwaway846 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

Similar story I'm now late 30s; father left when i was 2 died of aids when I was 6

Mother washed dishes then was unemployed from age 12-now and we bounced around her boyfriends houses

My metric (edit: for myself) "have you been poor" is gathering extra condiments from a gas station and having mustard on bread for a meal. We had food stamps, and a small social security check. I always had a bed, and food, but barely and i was aware how close we were as we midnight moved at least once.

I got my college degrees through federal grants and employer sponsorship; now making north of 200k I reflect on how privileged I am to get here. My mother kept me in an upper middle class public school system using a po box, I'm a white man who loved computers in the 90s. I ended up with a social network and a background that looks upper middle class.

I don't subscribe to that "I made it and so can you" I see my story as a I had privilege, how can we make privilege into equity.

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

#252

Post by leetcrew » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #133

rrdharan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

yes, but only in a rough sense. the ratio of maintenance cost to purchase price is much higher for a yacht (or really any boat) than for a mass produced car like a corvette. if you can afford to buy/finance a corvette, you can usually afford to drive it too. the same is not true for any boat larger than a canoe. there is a reason for the old joke about a boat being merely "a hole in the water that you throw money into".

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

#253

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #91

dagw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A counterpoint - You then get jerry built high rises built to minimum standards and smaller rooms which leads to tragedy's like Grenfell tower. Also with covid and the rise of home working you know what people realy realy want? a second room for an office and a Garden (Yard).

> A counterpoint - You then get jerry built high rises built to minimum standards and smaller rooms which leads to tragedy's like Grenfell tower.

The old socialist buildings are made form reinforced (rebar) concrete... even the inside walls... and outside walls.. and sometimes even balcony ledges. Even occasional gas explosions usually just blow out some windows.

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

#254

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

walkedaway wrote: post #221

throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

Your general story of poor-to-doing-well is the majority story in the US (not sure of other countries). Income mobility is a huge thing in the US, a great feature that I see mentioned very little outside of academics. Something like 80% of people will be in the top 10% of earners at some point in their lifetime, and 98% of people will be in the top 50%. "poor" and "rich" are not static labels, and they vary greatly e…

Dynamics, like income mobility dynamics are a complicated thing. We tend to think in stories, and that is useful, but it makes it easy to reach overly general conclusions.

The old republics (US & France, mostly) tend to overlook class... to some extent intentionally. My country (ireland) has the opposite problem: too much class consciousness. To much telling of class-sentric stories.

But, class dynamics do exist in the US & France too.

Class mobility exists too, but it's nowhere near as mobile as income mobility. Class is stickier by definition. You can just as easily colour in a class stickiness story with statistics. The likelihood at birth of someone graduating high school, going to prison, being poor, rich etc. It is true that where you start is a pretty good predictor, statistically, of where you will end up.

It's important to keep both perspectives in mind, simultaneously. There are real opportunities to escape poverty. The ovarian lottery is also very important, so are other "lotteries." It's also a mistake to see yourself as a statistic.

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

#255

Post by blaser-waffle » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #180

burlesona wrote: post #167

This is a great write-up, and as someone who spent time being poor-ish, it really resonated. What I realized from my own life experience: the US sawed the bottom rungs off the ladder in the 1950s when it suburbanized. There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area, and virtually every societal problem we deal with either stems from this or is made worse by it. Then the healthc…

I sometimes wonder if that event horizon is encroaching higher and higher up the economic ladder over time. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially b…

That event horizon is shifting: "K-shaped recovery" -- you're either moving on up or moving on down.

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

#256

Post by objectivetruth » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #137

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 literall…

I'm willing to use my real account, not a throwaway, to say that the original article is correct and YOU are wrong.

For one thing, in a country the size of the US with tens of thousands of jurisdiction/utility-provider combos, there's no possible way you can authoritatively declare what happens "in practice," as you acknowledge in the next sentence.

Here's another: I have had this happen to me, 30 days after a missed payment. Multiple times. So has the author, apparently.

Just wanted to make sure the HN readership, which skews anti-poor and anti-empathy, doesn't use your post as more ammo without at least SOME counter.

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

#257

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

bregma wrote: post #67

This is interesting. My wife is a case worker for the county welfare office. She deals with "those" people for a living and sees first-hand every day all the real and imagined shit spouted by righteous ideologues. She tells me that amongst those living in poverty, wealth is measured in terms of friends and family. Any money you come into is spent immediately, often on gifts to build status within your social network.…

> Any money you come into is spent immediately, often on gifts to build status within your social network.

Rather, for immediate survival and whatever bill is the most urgent to make even a tiny partial payment to avoid cut-off and the occasional comfort food as a treat if you can afford it somehow.

Source: had a rough patch in my life a couple years ago (thankfully over now).

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

#258

Post by spicymaki » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #153

The thing that most people, including those in this thread, don't understand about poverty, is that the side-effects don't magically go away after you are an adult. Reading the replies here, I do get the typical sense of "well, they are people who made poor choices, sort of feel sorry for them, can't relate." In reality, many poor adults were poor children. The funny thing, is that in the glorious US of A, the main d…

> That aside - no one tells you to study for the SAT

This is so true. When you are truly poor, nobody is grooming you to succeed in a competitive environment. Actually the people in your life don't even know how to prepare you, even if they wanted to. When I see people on HN talk about IQ this and GPA that, superior this and inferior that, I can tell they are in a bubble.

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

#259

Post by adkadskhj » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

I think similarly. Add in a pinch of imposter syndrome and the anxiety hiding under my privileged life is.. interesting. Eg i am super, super fortunate. I definitely don't make 200k, but i had no experience, managed to work my way into some experience and now make a comfortable living.

My wife and I are DINKs, so while neither of us make amazing money in combination we make a solid wage. No retirement (yet), but a house, and an income that is starting to pay off life (house/retirement/etc) with lots of safety buffer.

With all that said, i'm still terrified of losing everything. I'm sure i've acquired some skills, but passing interviews is difficult so i always think losing it all is one job loss away.

I just have to focus on improving myself, to mitigate my fear of losing it all. I'd like to build software to help people. I'd like to make enough money to eventually help some individuals, too.

Maybe being poor gives you perspective, but i loathe the "bootstraps" mantra. The overwhelming hopelessness you can feel when you're poor and see no path upwards. Yea, you can get a job, but minimum wage barely pays for itself. You want some modest things in life like a house, a car.. but saving for those at $200/m takes a long, long time.

I got out. I hope to stay out. But i consider myself lucky.

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

#260

Post by skinkestek » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

> it seems like they hardly lie awake at night thinking about their iffy alternator much, if at all.

Sometimes someone can help someone and score big at the same time. Here's a story that I heard from someone who was there:

There was a small company that was in a position where they made money but not a lot so they saved on everything.

At one point the owner caught whiff that one of the employees, - a master craftsman in his traditional craft - was struggling extra because of the car.

So the ownwr told them to lease a brand new car to this particular employee.

Accounting said wait-a-bit, we are considering each and every expense twice and you want to lease a car for this guy to use off work.

Owner said yes.

Doing that gave him two things:

- his specialist stopped worrying about the car at work

- he stayed there for a long time

No, this time it is not a management-feel-good-story, I know the company and my friend was in the room arguing against the decision.

Of course this might backfire (jealousy from other employees, people who stop caring anyway etc) which is why it should be used with caution.