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

#641

Post by ska » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #459

whack wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone. I love your story. There's also a ton of people who will delight in cherry-picking your story, as justification for not expanding the social safety net. "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy" A few factors to consider: - You had an aunt you could live with - As a yo…

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…

> of hard work and good judgement.

The common mistake here, which I think you mostly avoided but didn't make explicit, is to believe that if someone didn't make it they didn't work hard or have good judgment.

It's also problematic how little good judgment we require of young people coming from most backgrounds, compared to underprivileged ones. There is also a common and mostly false trope that many/most poor people are lazy and that is why they are poor. The truth is at minimum more nuanced than that.

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

#642

Post by opportune » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

asoneth wrote: post #547

whack wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone. I love your story. There's also a ton of people who will delight in cherry-picking your story, as justification for not expanding the social safety net. "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy" A few factors to consider: - You had an aunt you could live with - As a yo…

In my experience, an individual who believes that success is the result of hard work will end up being more successful than a similar individual who believes that success is primarily due to starting conditions or luck. At the same time, government policies that acknowledge that success is hugely dependent on starting conditions and luck seem to result in more equitable societies. (i.e. higher Gini coefficient or Sho…

Fully agreed. At an individual level, there are often decisions you can make regarding career choices, saving, when to have children, etc. that can greatly impact your financial situation down the line.

At a societal level, not every single person can be a software engineer, UI designer, realtor, etc. And additionally some fraction of people simply will make mistakes or not-strictly-optimal decisions. It’s a balancing act recognizing that individual decisions can have an impact on outcomes, that some portion of people will still suffer anyway, and alleviating that suffering as much as possible without creating a cycle of dependence/socializing the costs of easily fixed issues.

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

#643

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

criticaljudge wrote: post #614

whimsicalism wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably also a fallacy that it would take infinite amounts of money to alleviate poverty (:

Since people can multiply, infinite amounts is a possible scenario. Also scarcity - think of "a kingdom for a horse". If there are 1000 apples and 1001 people, and everybody who doesn't get an apple starves to death, the 1001th apple would be worth an infinite amount of money to the 1001th person at least, or to the person who wants to save them by all means.

> Since people can multiply, infinite amounts is a possible scenario

Unless my physics course misled me, no, it isn't.

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

#644

Post by retrac » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

hellbannedguy wrote: post #589

criticaljudge wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t think they are lazy. Many have emotional problems. Most people complain about their jobs, or multiple jobs, but know it provides so much more than money. Half the people I know would have 0 friends, O social life, if not for those lousy jobs. It’s ironic you say the government doesn’t have infinite money to spend. We are about to throw close to two trillion out of a helicopter. There is not a person, well one…

Most of the people I know who don't work who are sometimes dismissed as lazy have mental issues. In the family of ADHD, or anxiety. Unable to focus on pursuing a particular path long enough for it to pay off. Easily frustrated and prone to giving up when frustrated. And often a crippling doubt that they're capable of doing anything worth being paid for in the first place.

I suspect clever lazy people without barriers to social or economic participation usually seek out, and often obtain, jobs where they're paid to do approximately nothing. Lazy people, assuming that category is even meaningful, aren't masochists who want to live in poverty. There's more going on there.

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

#645

Post by jawzz » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

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...

You’re blatantly misquoting the person you’re replying to.

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

#646

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #638

varjag wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, some responses here are mildly bewildering in the extent people can't relate their life experience to actual poverty.

What's jarring to me is the author's characterization of car repair as "poor-people skills". Knowing how to use tools can be part of being poor, or it can be part of being an engineer who designs things that can actually be manufactured and assembled. Either that or I'm a lot poorer than I think I am!

> What's jarring to me is the author's characterization of car repair as "poor-people skills".

Car repair is a skill of economic importance of you are poor or employed in auto repair. Otherwise, it's obviously a skill someone might have, but far less critical.

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

#647

Post by mattlondon » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #626

Barracoon wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the submitted article spent multiple paragraphs describing how it is not pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty, so if you want to maybe write a long form explaining how to effectively and realistically do so for people in this situation, that’d be great.

The author spent multiple paragraphs giving excuses why it's hard. The way out doesn't take that long to explain. Say we have someone netting 2k a month or 24k a year: For a month: Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100 So we have $1,000 left over and have to deal with transportation. Our target is something like this 2009 Toyota Matrix with…

500 for car expenses a month? Seems crazy to put away 6k a year to maintain a car that is under 4k. If you need to spend 500 a month to keep the car on the road you need to get a different car.

A good used Toyota or Mazda or Honda will run for YEARS and huge mileages with only basic maintenance - like one oil change and new windscreen wipers every year levels of maintenance. Nothing breaks. These sorts of used civics or corollas etc that are maybe 5 -8 years old can be had for £3-6k or less (in UK at least). I've owned several over the past decade or two and they never have anything major wrong with them in terms of mechanical breakdowns. I have only got rid of them when I have "upgraded".

Running costs are negligible beyond the cost of fuel. Insurance is usually low as they are cheap to repair with plentiful parts etc. I pay about £300/year for my 2011 Toyota a(nd that was a year after a claim to replacing the catalytic converter that someone stole). Beyond that I estimate about another £250 a year for basic servicing, MOT (UK annual roadworthiness checks) and replacing consumables like bulbs or the odd tyre.

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

#648

Post by bzbarsky » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #360

StrictDabbler wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walkedaway is exaggerating a claim made by the conservative American Enterprise Institute: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/some-amazing-findings-on-inco... This is how they counter all the talk about the 1%. They suggest that 56% of people will be in the top 10% for one year or more. In their entire working lives. Distortions include: -income is not wealth -some kinds of income are very uneven year-over-year -jumping…

You left out one of the biggest causes of this. For many people in that 56%, the year they end up in the top 10% is the year their last surviving parent passes away. Inheritance is a big one-time windfall for many people. The other misleading thing is it looks at 44 years of longitudinal data, and doesn't make corrections for differences between the early years and later years. Income has become more polar in the las…

Inheritances are not taxable (for the recipient), but IRS data shows similar patterns.

What it really comes down to is that the upper tail of the "reliable income" distributions is thin enough that a large fraction of the people who end up in various "top N%" buckets are there due to various windfalls, lumpiness of income (e.g. a writer getting an advance that they live on for a few years while writing the book), etc, etc.

Which is, by the way, why the way we do progressive taxation is a bit weird. Progressive taxation with tax brackets based on lifetime earnings, as opposed to current-year income, would make a lot more sense in some ways...

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

#649

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #377

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 made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone. I love your story. There's also a ton of people who will delight in cherry-picking your story, as justification for not expanding the social safety net. "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy" A few factors to consider: - You had an aunt you could live with - As a yo…

[deleted]

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

#650

Post by sologoub » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #411

sologoub wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you read "you can do it" as encouragement to others in the same situation, it's a good thing. When you read it as a justification for why we shouldn't expand the social net, it's pretty terrible. No one is trying to belittle OP's accomplishments, but "I did it and you can too" sounds like a line from an anti-welfare politician so it shouldn't be surprising that many people take issue with it.

OPs context does not touch on safety nets at all, so where are you getting this from?

Seems like such thinking is a symptom of our current political BS. Having experienced some pretty crappy times, would you honestly think I’d oppose NOT subjecting others to the same misery?! Of course not, no one should experience these and everyone deserves basic dignity.