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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

#481

Post by aaroninsf »

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 won the lottery and you can too. Luck has no color.

Maybe the Wish will help, or Intentionality. Prayer also popular.

Against this never lose sight of the fact that since 1971 economic mobility in this country has eroded as comprehensively as has the social safety net as has access to high quality public education not to mention health care.

Since 1971 wealth inequality has increased and we are now over the event horizon. So much wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the ultrarich that they have successfully captured both discourse and polity. The possibility space is defined by those who own the means of not just literal communication but the fabrication of consensus opinion and the boundaries of the political spectrum.

What was possible, like this, a generation ago, is literally orders of magnitude more unlikely today.

The status quo cannot hold, and it isn't holding. We remain on the brink of literal violent fascist coup and permanent kleptocracy. Take a look at the headlines from CPAC...

These are dark days.

Most readers here are part of the precariate 10% or aspire to be, the buffer zone of the rich-enough who zealously angrily defend the prerogatives of the very wealthy with whom they identify though they are no more of that class than the utterly disenfranchised permanent Lower Class who have roil and rage in Nomadland, controlled by the surveillance capitalism systems so many of us are building...

It's not going to hold. It's not holding.

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

#482

Post by oblio »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #314
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…

>The US is a great place to live and work with tremendous upward mobility Always confused by this notion. People act as if the US is the only place this is possible but not only is it possible in most of the western world, there is in fact BETTER mobility in the much of the western world relative to the US. The US isn't even in the Top 10! https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

I guess most people just don't know the numbers and go by gut feeling, mass media and what they learned in (primary/secondary) school many years ago.

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

#483

Post by programmertote »

> Note: The hostess and her husband were both doctors. They had a combined income somewhere upwards of $200,000 a year

I find this a bit puzzling. If the couples are both doctors in the US, they certainly are making much more than $200K/year. The median salary of a generic doctor (internal medicine) in the US is ~$250K. I really wonder where this couple doctor is practicing at.

Other than that, I agree with the whole post. I came from a lower-middle class family (my dad died when I was 12; my widowed mom worked very hard and earned as much side income as possible--I remember having to send baked goods to nearby stores for my mom before going to school at 8am--to give me and my siblings as good an education as one can reasonably get in our third world country). Even to this day, I don't own a car. I live by $600/month budget for food, entertainment and other necessities. I am always saving and investing at least 50% of my income in case I become poor again.

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

#484

Post by birdyrooster »

sologoub wrote: post #344
syops wrote: post #214

Earlier 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…

As someone who has experienced pretty rough times (different from the OP), but doing just fine myself, of course luck has a lot to do with it, but why in the world so many people feel so compelled to belittle the accomplishment of OP climbing out and then encouraging others to at least hope for the same? I’m pretty sure things would be very different today if I didn’t have that hope. Don’t take the hope from people e…

He said poverty doesn’t have a color implying that black people aren’t impoverished because of systemic racism, but because they don’t work hard enough. It’s racist drivel.

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

#485

Post by mikem170 »

burntoutfire wrote: post #382
mikem170 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep, the US healthcare system basically means you have to be a multimillionaire when you've retired That's just not true. Everyone qualifies for Medicare when they are 65 years old. An extra $150/month gets you supplemental insurance, with a lower deductable than many work plans. Also, and this is significant, medical bills can't collect against retirement accounts. The law is that they can't touch it. Same with yo…

So how come I keep hearing that a significant portion of homeless in the US have lost their houses in a medical-event-realted bankruptcy?

I would guess the typical example of this might be a working age person who lived paycheck to paycheck then had a non-trivial medical issue to deal with. They may have already had other house/car/student/credit-card debt. The medical problem may have interfered with their ability to work. They may qualify for other free-care programs after they burn through all their savings.

(That's where putting those savings in retirement accounts would have helped, but with few exceptions you can't access that money before the age of about 60, and also remember that it's a borrow and spend culture here, not saving for a rainy day.)

The best one could say is that bankruptcy is a way to get a clean slate, wiping out prior debts, and to be sure that the homeless statistic you are looking at doesn't count those who moved back in with family as homeless (some do).

The worst one can say is that the system is optimized to extract as much money as possible form as many people as possible...

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

#486

Post by fellowniusmonk »

I started working full time right after I turned 15.

My family had always flirted with extreme poverty. At one point all 6 of us lived in a tiny gulfstream on the back property of a church for 6 months. We had to carry our waste out in buckets. We got kicked out of section 8 housing by the sheriffs department. This was while living in a combination of DC, or the VA side.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer (which took her life 7 years later) when we didn't have insurance and my dad stopped getting out of bed.

Because of pre-existing condition laws at the time she was unable to get insurance outside of state medicare.

My very religious parents best option was to divorce so my dad's income wouldn't effect her status, they declined.

The summer after I turned 15 I worked my first 40 hour week (over a weekend) running networking cable and doing admin for a local medical home equipment company. I transitioned from small business network admin to SEO and "New Media" and on to become a developer.

I paid for rent and food for my family, anything I didn't spend on work clothes or essentials was taken by them each month. I didn't have a car.

I spent 1 semester in college and couldn't afford it, I couldn't afford not to make money and I lived in an active construction site, just a mattress on subfloor in a gutted husk. I was born with a couple heart defects that cost me thousands each year at a minimum, until ACA I could not get personal insurance and had to get company insurance.

I have started companies and done well for myself but the lack of access to capital, the lack of network opportunities meant I have had to scrap far harder than people can understand.

I've had to fake coming from a position of security my whole life just to have more leverage in negotiating. I've had to learn to code switch in ways people don't understand. I learned this all after my first (illegal) W2 job took maximum value from me and payed me a third of what my role, responsibility and output would have earned as an adult.

People who make it don't appreciate how lucky they had to get, people that have parents that aren't a net financial burden can't understand what that weight around your neck is like, people are far luckier than they appreciate.

Lack of access to capital, having to constantly bootstrap without any kind of family or other safety net, having no home to go home to is something most people don't understand.

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

#487

Post by [deleted] »

bradleyjg wrote: post #416
nerdponx wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much the trend I saw over the 2000s-2010s. 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 born into it. I know many people who were born into a…

> Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. At first the suburban house as bottomless bank account was a result of “natural” forces like the baby boom and white flight. But people came to assume it, and then demand it. Politicians have obliged since homeowners are an extremely large and powerful demographic. Prior to 2008 we at least pretended to have a private mortgage industry.…

[deleted]

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

#488

Post by objektif »

seneca wrote: post #441
spaetzleesser wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just remember that your anxieties are child's play compared to the anxieties of people worrying every day about paying for their place to live, food or health care. These worries are tally different.

This kind of dismissive attitude toward peoples' problems is unhelpful. Following your line of reasoning, there are people with crippling diseases in the world. People worrying about a place to live etc should remember that their problems are child's play compared to theirs. And those people should remember their problems are child's play compared to someone being targeted by genocide. There are nearly 8 billion peop…

That is really a terrible argument. I am sorry but I am not going to feel sorry about you just because you are stressed about which crazy expensive private school your kids should go to. It is not really a worst-off competition it is just that at absolute level of suffering your issues are ignorable.

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

#489

Post by debo_ »

symlinkk wrote: post #233
debo_ wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've observed that brushes with mortality or ill-health can also quickly alter one's perspective. Once one gets the perception that there's a threat of being physically unable to work for much longer, I think the drive to have an increasingly large "safety net" can become very strong.

Or, you’ll realize that you could die at any moment, so you might as well enjoy your money while you have it.

Death is one thing; a long life of fragility is another. The latter costs more, and I think can cause some people to suddenly look much differently at their wealth.

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

#490

Post by jimmaswell »

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…

It's frustrating talking with my friend who needs a new car but has no money and bad credit. They have a small windfall to afford a $3000 or so car with but they think you can't get anything worth driving for less than $15000 and with 100k miles or less. Meanwhile I've been driving my $800 Jeep for years and it's still running strong nearing 200k miles. They also balk at used appliances, furniture etc. Some people get stuck in debt forever because of these bad mindsets.
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