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

#661

Post by bzbarsky » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

therealdrag0 wrote: post #565

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 peopl…

The thing is, in the US the "sectioned off area of a bigger room" model of housing has been legislated and regulated out of existence. Similar for the other option the very poor (read: serfs) had in the Russia of the period Crime and Punishment is set in: just build something yourself to the best of your ability. The result was not always great, and there are all sorts of reasons (starting with fire-spreading externalities) for modern building codes, so I'm not suggesting it's necessaily desirable or viable to go back to where we were in the 19th century regarding housing. But the upshot is that building and health codes enforce a minimum quality on housing that surely feels unexceptionable to the people writing them while at the same time serving to price people out of housing.

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

#662

Post by covidthrow » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:39 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #634

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 most people here are guily of double-think. Either you believe in capital punishment, or you believe in universal income, the third option is hypocracy. If you don't believe in state sanctioned murder, then we have to clothe and feed and house people that commited horrible crimes. Surely if a rapist deserves to be fed, so does an innocent person who can't find a job? Being useless is not a crime. Also i dispu…

> Surely if a rapist deserves to be fed, so does an innocent person who can't find a job?

The State actively deprived the rapist of their ability to act autonomously to care for themselves, so they are obligated to do so on their behalf. The State (typically) does not actively deprive an innocent person who can't find a job of their autonomy. (There are some arguable scenarios in which they do, however, such as excessive fines, but obligation to pay those are dependent on ability, and feeding ones-self supercedes that in most jurisdictions.)

> some people are disorganised, not very clever, etc. You can only claim laziness if we had like a right to a job no matter what.

It is ethical to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. It's not as clearly ethical to force someone else to care for those who are unable to care for themselves.

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

#663

Post by mcguire » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #570

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.

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…

In your mind, is blowing the "last of his cash on hookers and booze" the median behavior of people who are short on rent?

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

#664

Post by inglor_cz » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

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.

"We've chose to build a system that does not."

The kind of poverty where you starve and have to wear rags is becoming rare even in Africa. From this point of view, the system has clearly worked and the pendulum even went too far, with obesity becoming a serious problem in places that aren't typically considered rich (Mexico, Brazil).

Housing is a different problem. We have a housing crisis because many people want to live in a few select urban hotspots of the world.

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

#665

Post by Aunche » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #609

Aunche wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The latter is good for individual decision-making, but it isn't very good for accurately compensating value contributed Why not? How could an economy function if it were based on real value as opposed to relative value? Farmers and water treatment engineers would all be billionaires and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers and learning about water treatment. If you drive a truck of medica…

> and everyone would waste a lot of resources trying to become farmers • There's only so much arable land, so people couldn't do this. ⋄ Thus, people who wanted to become farmers but didn't have land would either give up, or innovate things like hydroponics. • There's only so much food people need to eat. Producing more than that isn't contributing value; in this case , markets approximate that reasonably well (thoug…

I'm not entirely sure what you're suggesting. There isn't a middle ground between a market economy and planned economy. In a market economy, a corporation's tax-reduction lawyer is always going to make more money than a nurse. You can reduce this disparity by reforming the tax system. However, the problem is that it's not politically advantageous to do so, so nobody does it.

> There's only so much arable land, so people couldn't do this.

Rather than invest in stocks, people would buy a small patch of land to grow their own food. This would not be an efficient allocation of capital.

> There's only so much food people need to eat. Producing more than that isn't contributing value; in this case, markets approximate that reasonably well

What makes nursing any different in this regard? There certainly is a healthcare distribution problem in the US, but it's not because nurses are being paid too little. Nurses in America make the same, if not more, than nurses in the rest of the world.

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

#666

Post by avenger123 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

flumpcakes wrote: post #297

I share this sentiment from the author. I speak "normally", as in to say I don't have a regional accent, and have "white collar" jobs working in IT. Many people assume I am a good middle class person. I often get told I am naive, or stupid for saying things like "rent prices are too expensive" and that when the median income people cannot afford the median priced house we're just growing another bubble. I had a plays…

Thank you for sharing this.

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

#667

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

covidthrow wrote: post #662

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people here are guily of double-think. Either you believe in capital punishment, or you believe in universal income, the third option is hypocracy. If you don't believe in state sanctioned murder, then we have to clothe and feed and house people that commited horrible crimes. Surely if a rapist deserves to be fed, so does an innocent person who can't find a job? Being useless is not a crime. Also i dispu…

> Surely if a rapist deserves to be fed, so does an innocent person who can't find a job? The State actively deprived the rapist of their ability to act autonomously to care for themselves, so they are obligated to do so on their behalf. The State (typically) does not actively deprive an innocent person who can't find a job of their autonomy. (There are some arguable scenarios in which they do, however, such as exces…

The state could put the same deal to the rapist as it does to everyone else: work if you want to eat. It does not.

Calling the unemployed lazy is a lie untill you offered them a job and they refused.

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

#668

Post by nemothekid » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

playingchanges wrote: post #653

nemothekid wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "OP made good decisions and worked hard" On a national or even global scale I try to avoid generalizations like this because trivially they don't lead to good policy outcomes. It's almost a little like stock picking. If 5/100 hedge funds make a positive return over the year, my first thought isn't "the other 95 refused to work to better themselves". It's easy to understand this with hedge funds, but people commonly…

I like your analogy but I’m not sure it’s perfect. In the finance world I don’t think anyone would presume to say more work === more success. There is a talent component that is not perfectly replicable across hedge funds. BUT in real life more work very often does equal more success because so many careers really do not require a high level of ‘talent’.

Your counter argument seems to imply that people who work in finance don't share the same reality as the rest of us. I think that plays into a fundamental human error; for some reason when looking at individual industries we can see that the people can put in more or less the same amount of effort and get different results, but on a national scale we attribute effort much more highly, to the point we call losers lazy.

To be clear I'm not saying there isn't a level of difference in talent or work ethic; what I'm arguing is that viewing the world that way makes for terrible government policy. When someone says something like "welfare makes people lazy", they are making the mistake you are. Somehow the imaginary "real life work" is directly correlated with effort, but actual finance jobs are not.

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

#669

Post by lostcolony » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

playingchanges wrote: post #653

nemothekid wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "OP made good decisions and worked hard" On a national or even global scale I try to avoid generalizations like this because trivially they don't lead to good policy outcomes. It's almost a little like stock picking. If 5/100 hedge funds make a positive return over the year, my first thought isn't "the other 95 refused to work to better themselves". It's easy to understand this with hedge funds, but people commonly…

I like your analogy but I’m not sure it’s perfect. In the finance world I don’t think anyone would presume to say more work === more success. There is a talent component that is not perfectly replicable across hedge funds. BUT in real life more work very often does equal more success because so many careers really do not require a high level of ‘talent’.

Certainly, ingredients such as hard work and talent help make success more likely.

There are successful companies and products that don't seem to have a lot of either behind them beyond the initial work to find a successful niche, that they've leveraged to great success. And companies and projects have failed despite having both of those because of circumstances outside of their control.

Just like people, companies are products of their environment. Why -doesn't- someone work hard? Or make the right choices? Because either of their environment, what they've learned, or because of who they were born as. Neither of those is under their control. And even if they do, and it doesn't pan out, why didn't it pan out? Again, factors outside of their control.

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

#670

Post by xyzzyz » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #663

xyzzyz wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In your mind, is blowing the "last of his cash on hookers and booze" the median behavior of people who are short on rent?

No, but the point is that when my friends ask me for help, I can use the circumstances under which they got themselves into needing help in my decision of whether I help them, and whether there is any moral obligation on me to help them. With government, there is no such option: they will take my money by force, use it for anything at all that they might possibly want, and all I can say is something on the order of one or two bits of feedback every 4-5 years.