This is really touching. My impression was that in the US government is not going to step out to help the poor, but there is a lot of private charity that helps people. Isn't that the case? I guess I might have idealized picture of American society, but I always though that giving back to the others was consider to be some kind of duty?
On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
261–270 of 920 posts
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that luck plays a huge role The concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/ Those who accrue and leverage a variety of skills tend to get 'lucky'. This is why you could strip most entrepreneurs of all their money and assets, and not be surprised to see them enjoying success in 5 years. You put into place a system that makes making the right decisions inevitable, and lea…
Remove them from their network and see what happens.
Sure, but social capital is an asset you build like anything else. Remove a big chunk of anyone’s wealth - liquid, paper, social, health - and it’s gonna be painful and disruptive.
The point isn’t that they’d be poor if you took away what they built... it’s that they succeed in building it in the first place! That process of building wealth in all its forms is the key.
It’s not easy. It’s definitely not fair. Some people start out way ahead. Some people start out way behind and don’t even have role models to show how it’s done. It always takes time. My view is that you just have to accept people where they are, respect their efforts, politely look past their structural (dis)advantages, and deal with them as human beings who deserve love and support for their own sake.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#263The car. As he says, the car. The goddamned car. Every time you get into it, hoping that it will start. And not just when it's been sat outside your house for a while. When you stop for petrol (gas), or in the car park after buying food, sitting behind the wheel and hoping it starts again. The restrictions that get placed on you when you just can't rely on the car always starting. For your life, a mostly-starts car i…
I'm really curious to see how electric cars work for the poor (maybe 25 years from now, not presently). One of the big selling points of electric cars is simplicity - with far fewer moving parts, less can go wrong and you can hopefully expect a car to last longer. That's the hope anyways, but the big maintenance item in an electric car is the battery, and of course that's an expensive thing to replace. Will folks be…
As much as I think the solution is "get rid of cars" (or get rid of personal vehicle ownership), I do think reliable cars would make a huge difference for people struggling financially. Not having to worry about the most important tool in your life — the thing that allows you to get to work, to the store, and to appointments — would be a massive stress-reduction for so many people, and stabilize their finances. No more "I can't make it to work, so I lost my job" and no more unexpected $2000 repairs?
Honestly, more reliable transportation might do more to reduce poverty even more than food stamps. (Also, allows you to make your food stamp appointments.)
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'm upper middle class and I've been able to save so much money by getting rid of my car. Because you probably have job at a desk with a computer. You don't physically do much and so your per-minute presence at work isn't mandatory. If you are a few minutes late the world is not going to end and your workday rarely starts before 5am. You can handle the ins and outs of public transportation and/or you can afford to…
What about a motorcycle? Cheaper and insurance not required.
Motorcycle can't carry kids (in the US) safely, or other needs like groceries. And yes, insurance is still required.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
i don't think it's smartphones that are considered luxury items, it's the $1000 iphones when a $50 android will provide all those benefits just fine.
But then you can't even browse the web properly with these, though. Not with all those fat Javascript-heavy pages and the whole "RAM is cheap" prevailing development mentality nowadays.
the 80/20 rule still applies. $50 is probably too low of a price point, but the example works if you compare a $250-400 android phone to a $1000 apple/samsung flagship. I could buy those phones if I wanted to, but I'm getting by just fine with my pixel 4a. hell, my pixel 2 was still perfectly serviceable but for the lack of security updates.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’m not quite sure why it works this way. It works this way because people are, rationally, more interested in their own physical safety than they are in the feelings of strangers. Anecdote: I was in San Francisco a few years back. There were homeless folks everywhere. Some were nice, even chatty. We felt at ease even when walking through areas that were full of homeless folks. But a couple of days into our trip, a…
"Rationally"? You mentioned you had all sorts of nice experiences with homeless people and then one bad actor caused you to choose out of all of the attributes of this person, their lack of a home, to be the one for you to blanket-label all people like this as dangerous enough to place them outside of your treat-like-a-human-being sphere. Nah, there is not a rational way to blanket label groups like this from a sampl…
All it takes is one to seriously physically hurt you. You wouldn’t leave your doors unlocked while away just because 99% of passerbys won’t check whether it is.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I very much enjoyed reading your post. You made a statement that, taken literally, I disagree with and wonder if you care to elaborate more on it. I made it and you can too. It seems to me that luck plays a huge role in each success story like yours. My wife had a similar trajectory and makes quite a bit of money. However, along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way. She's…
Of course luck plays a factor in everything everybody does. The question isn't whether luck plays a role; it's how much salience it deserves. This person made hundreds of good choices across decades to achieve the success they have, so it seems a bit perverse to focus instead on the hundreds of things outside their control.
luck is just another word for other people.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'm upper middle class and I've been able to save so much money by getting rid of my car. Because you probably have job at a desk with a computer. You don't physically do much and so your per-minute presence at work isn't mandatory. If you are a few minutes late the world is not going to end and your workday rarely starts before 5am. You can handle the ins and outs of public transportation and/or you can afford to…
What about a motorcycle? Cheaper and insurance not required.
Also, you can use special lanes and in California lane split. If you're willing to take on the risk, and live in a sunny place, motorcycles can compete with public transport in cost.
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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, Yep, we actually bought a 3-bed house(not apartment) in UK, and the total space is 950sqft(about 90square metres). And that's not a small house around here by any measure. American houses are like their cars - absurdly large.
American here that grew up in a 3 bedroom house with around 900sqft of space and 4 people, and now live in a 2500sqft house with just my wife and 1 dog..I don't know how we did it. Thinking back it was so insanely cramped, my parents bedroom was the 'big' bedroom and it was just large enough to fit a queen sized bed, a chest of drawers, a gun case, and then a night stand on one side of the bed. The kids bedrooms bare…
I mean, it isn't some weird flex with me going yeah it's cramped BUT WE LOVE IT THIS WAY. Like, yeah, this house would be too small for 4 people. But right now, with just me, wife, and a baby on the way - no problem.
>>my parents bedroom was the 'big' bedroom and it was just large enough to fit a queen sized bed, a chest of drawers, a gun case, and then a night stand on one side of the bed
That's exactly what ours is, minus the gun case ;-)
Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't
#270Throwaway 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…
Interested to hear your thoughts about the thread about living in a van which hit the front page the other day.