Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

residentcontrarian.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 920 posts

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

#561

Post by technofiend »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #408
technofiend wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go read The Millionaire Next Door. You'll see that there are plenty of people like yourself who remain frugal after managing to pull themselves out of poverty. I'm suggesting the book to both validate your behavior but also give you some examples so you can perhaps moderate it if you still feel that's needed. I can give a single example from my life: my uncle managed to snag a liquor distributorship after WW II. It w…

I really didn't like that book, for me it missed the point entirely. For the entire length it discusses how you accumulate more wealth by not spending it, but it never discussed why you would be accumulating all that wealth. People want to be millionaires, not to stare at 7 digits on a webpage, but for the lifestyle it affords. This book just assumes the end goal is the number on a bank account.

>For the entire length it discusses how you accumulate more wealth by not spending it, but it never discussed why you would be accumulating all that wealth.

To be fair, I believe that motivation comes from the reader, not the author.

>People want to be millionaires, not to stare at 7 digits on a webpage, but for the lifestyle it affords.

Again to be fair I believe you're projecting: you may want to be a millionaire for the lifestyle it affords, whatever that means to you. The book is a recipe on ways to retain wealth and anecdotes on how people accumulated their own. It's not a self-help guide to motivate people to become millionaires. I think it's assumed if they're reading they book they're already motivated and need to know how, not why.

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

#562

Post by aidenn0 »

dalbasal wrote: post #303

His point on housing is so important, and its adjacent to a lot of other poverty-related issues. It's one of the reasons advocates for the poor often seem to speak a different language to their opposition. If you live in median-and-above-land, you think of all costs existing on a spectrum. Fancy dinners for $100 on one end. Rice and beans for pennies at the other. This is true for clothes, smartphones, furniture... l…

Healthcare and housing are two things that seem to crush those in poverty (with transportation being a distant, but important, third. On one hand you can keep a job with no house, but can't with no transportation; on the other hand, cars have gotten cheaper and more reliable pretty steadily over my lifetime).

A lot of families are a single injury to a non earner away from being bankrupt. Obviously an injury to an earner can be even worse. As TFA points out you can live in terrible conditions and maybe be a bit more financially stable, or you can live in passable conditions and be constantly short on money. Either way you are just trading one type of stress for another.

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

#563

Post by dahfizz »

lc9er wrote: post #508
dahfizz wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 of the 5 factors you list boil down to "OP made good decisions and worked hard". I'm not sure how that is a counter argument to "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy". From their description, it doesn't sound like living with his Aunt was a tremendous boon either. I don't mean to argue against a social safety net (free college in this example was certainly a good thing). I jus…

> The government can not and should not lift people out of poverty if those people refuse to work to better themselves Who do you think wakes up and thinks, "I love poverty. This life is so easy"?

Lots of people wake up and never evaluate their life at all. People win the lottery and end up homeless with a drug addiction. If millions of dollars can't help them, do you think the government should keep writing those people checks?

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

#564

Post by throwaway284239 »

Boy, does the stuff about cars hit home. When I was poor I had to drive on tires so old that the steel was exposed.

The worst was when my insurance got canceled because I couldn't afford it. This led to a chain reaction of absolute dumpster-fire awfulness:

- Can't afford insurance

- Insurance gets canceled

- This automatically triggers registration getting canceled

- I can't stop going to work, and there's no public transit where I lived, so what choice do I have but to keep driving?

- Highway patrol scans my plate, notices I'm not registered, pulls me over

- Car gets impounded for not being insured, which is actually the more lenient punishment, because (as I learned that day) not having insurance is a criminal offense

- Can't afford the ticket I got for not being registered, so my license gets suspended for non-payment

So because I couldn't make an insurance payment, my registration got canceled ($), my car got impounded ($$$), and my license got suspended ($). And is any of this money going to fund public transportation? Of course not.

I did eventually get my car back, got new insurance, re-registered, and reinstated my license, at great personal expense including the time it took to go to the DMV (the nearest one of which is in the next town).

But it was another year before I could afford to replace my tires.

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

#565

Post by therealdrag0 »

dalbasal wrote: post #303

His point on housing is so important, and its adjacent to a lot of other poverty-related issues. It's one of the reasons advocates for the poor often seem to speak a different language to their opposition. If you live in median-and-above-land, you think of all costs existing on a spectrum. Fancy dinners for $100 on one end. Rice and beans for pennies at the other. This is true for clothes, smartphones, furniture... l…

I thought about this too when I was reading Crime and Punishment recently. The protagonist is described as very poor, but they still have a room in a house, and their room even includes house meals. Similarly with other poor characters; sometimes their space was just a sectioned off area of a bigger room (maybe like a floor-ceiling cubical). But hey, that's gotta be better than sleeping under a freeway for most people.

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

#566

Post by selimthegrim »

robotmay wrote: post #217
a2tech wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 once looked at a flat/apartment in a converted house here in the UK where the oven door got stuck on the wall opposite when you tried to open it.

Sounds like a feature if you don't want people sticking their head in.

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

#567

Post by woofcat »

nchelluri wrote: post #186

I read about half of this post and I've paused there. It screams to me "Let's have a Universal Basic Income" already. > And one day your wife calls you and tells you the water is off, and there’s nothing you can do; maybe some family member can help you out, or maybe you live without utilities for a week or so until you get paid and start the next pay cycle that much more behind. These are people with children we are…

>It screams to me "Let's have a Universal Basic Income" already.

I don't think people want poor people to exist. However no-one has solved the supply side of "Give everyone free money". Every time I ask if someone has actually figured out how to do this that isn't 3-4 times the current Federal Budget you get a bunch of hand waving.

Handing everyone $10,000/year (not even UBI levels) requires gathering $10,000/year in either service cuts, or increased taxation.

Even if we presume everyone over the poverty line gets $10,000 added to their taxes to cancel the benefit out. That still leaves us with a $10,000 hole for every person under the poverty line.

12.5% of American's live below the poverty line. That's 41,025,000 people. Which is an insane number. The $10,000 a year would be around $410 billion per year.

So if America eliminated the Military budget, they could pay for $10,000 to each person below the poverty line... however odds are laying off 70% of the Military would result in more people living below the poverty line.

It's possible, however no-one wants to highlight what 410 billion dollars a year can be cut from a budget, or who wants to pay 410 billion dollars a year in extra taxes.. additionally that number is based on a _very_ low amount of $10,000. If you wanted to hand out top ups to the poverty line in America it would cost even more money.

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

#568

Post by leetcrew »

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #515
dahfizz wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some definition of "deserving", I would agree. Certainly, everyone should have the tools and opportunities they need to build the life they want. Society has limited resources. Until we manage the post-scarcity utopia, I would prefer my tax dollars go to someone who will use them to build a better life.

This is a lie. The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. We've chose to build a system that does not. Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.

> The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone.

this is kind of reductive claim. in one sense, it's trivially true that the earth has more raw resources than humans can consume even over the course of centuries. AFAIK it's also true that, under the current system of organization, the global economy produces enough finished goods to feed, clothe, and house everyone (though people often bring up logistical caveats here, eg, distributing stuff in places where there are no paved roads or airfields).

the real question here is whether we would still have that quantity of finished goods under a different system of organization with different incentives. to be clear, I don't discount the possibility that we might have even more! but it seems more likely to me that people would simply produce less stuff if they didn't get to keep the surplus by default.

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

#569

Post by ljm »

birdyrooster wrote: post #478
alephu5 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the conclusion again.

The conclusion is that poverty from systemic racism doesn’t exist. I don’t know how he ended up there but now I understand the need for a throwaway.

The conclusion is that it is a class problem, and there are many mechanisms at play that keep the rich rich and the poor poor.

That's the compassionate read on it.

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

#570

Post by xyzzyz »

criticaljudge wrote: post #512
whimsicalism wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government can not and should not lift people out of poverty if those people refuse to work to better themselves. I think everyone is deserving of not living in poverty. Even "lazy" people.

I think people quickly tire of it when they have to take care of those lazy people directly. I'm not saying nothing should be done. Just that it is a fallacy to think the government simply has infinite money to spend.

When your friend Steve comes to you to "borrow" $100 (that he'll never return), because he's short on rent, and he blew last of his cash on hookers and booze, it seems pretty reasonable and perfectly morally justified to either refuse outright, or condition your help on requirement that Steve gets a job, and quits his hookers and booze habit. Certainly, nobody would ever suggest that you have any obligation to enable Steve to live his desired lifestyle of leisure, hookers and booze.

However, when it's the government that comes and asks you to give them $100, so that they could in turn give it to Joe, an acquaintance of Steve living the same lifestyle that you have never even met, somehow now it is your moral obligation to pay up, as Joe clearly deserves your money. How does that work?

Post reply on HN