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

#871

Post by polished85 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #546

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…

When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do. But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to m…

Thank you for this response. As a first generation immigrant from a third world country, I don't understand this phenomenon of lightly chastising anyone who doesn't attribute their success to privilege, as if afraid someone might be inspired and succeed in something. I suppose its all a matter of perspective. If you haven't experienced poverty in the third world, its easy to whine about privilege and inequality in the USA. If you have experienced it, then you already know life is not fair and there is always someone better off than you.

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

#872

Post by ncmncm » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #822

sorisos wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If every time someone shares their success, the response is instantly about how privileged or lucky they are, then our culture is sick. We should listen to and support those stories. I would argue that a culture which attributes success in life to personal effort or choices is sick. This makes people blame themselves for not trying hard enough etc, when in reality there are more decisive factors such as who your pa…

> a culture which attributes success in life to personal effort or choices is sick. Then what is the point of making better choices, such as staying in school, avoiding drugs and not committing crimes?

Meaning, why bother not just rotting in prison? Or, why stay in school when it will make no difference anyway? When you and I were kids, one hourly wage was enough raise a family on, and two (often enough the kid's) to send them to college. Now that is impossible. They graduate today with a lifetime of debt.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, both per capita and in absolute numbers (even counting, e.g., Chinese concentration camps). Cities have quotas now, where they are obliged to send a specific number to prison each year to maintain their contract. The prisons and police forces cost much more to operate than would be needed to lift every American out of poverty.

When you and I were young, no city police force had a billion dollar budget. Crime rates plummeted about 18 years after we stopped poisoning everyone with lead, so there is much less legitimate work for the police. They keep busy, though.

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

#873

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

anemoiac wrote: post #858

s1artibartfast wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it another way: What advice would you offer a young poor student looking to get out of poverty A) The cards are stacked against you, but your best chance is to work hard, get good grades, keep a clean criminal record, go to college, and get a good job. B) You are the victim of a broken system and this system needs to be fixed. Both are true, but only one of these messages is actionable and relevant for the s…

I don't understand why you can't tell the hypothetical young, poor student both 'A' and 'B.' In fact, not doing so seems a bit manipulative (regardless of your intentions). A potential consequence of perpetually leaving 'B' out of the discussion is that, while some of these young, poor students will escape poverty and others will not, neither group may realize that the status quo reflects decisions made by human bein…

My fundamental concerns are threefold:

First, is learned helpless. As the article you linked points out, learned helplessness is not the result of working hard and encountering challenges. It is the brain's default assumption in the absence of of encouragement. People's brains are already predisposed to inaction and helplessness by millions of years of evolutionary biology. Humans are already predisposed to fallacies and heuristics that overestimate the challenges and obstacles, and reinforcing them is actively damaging. Poor people already know how hard their life is, they don't need other people to reinforce this.

Second, discussion systemic problems is almost never accompanied by a quantification of the relative impact of hard work vs social policy. Is it 90% hard work and 10% luck, or the the inverse.

Last is relevance. A poor child cant wait 30 years for political solutions to improve social mobility by a few percentage points. They can't go back and be born to a richer household. Pursuing an education and clean record has vastly greater impact on outcomes today, and will continue to be more impactful in the future.

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

#874

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #866

s1artibartfast wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think our impressions are colored about by our different observations of those around us, and this conversation is probably colored by our definitions of success. This thread kicked off with someone who escaped poverty and made it to the middle class. I am not talking about the fetishization of the hyper-rich. I do think that with persistence, hard work, and an average allocation of luck most people are capable of…

Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally. None of this is accidental: it is the consequence of a specific program started about 1970, outlined in the Powell Memorandum, to grab control o…

>Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally.

If you think I'm just going to put this out there:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

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

#875

Post by Forgotmypass101 » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

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…

How do you keep believing "YOU CAN DO IT"? I have been looking for stable employment for three years, only finding temporary gigs or underemployment. The past year, I've pretty much given up. I know I'm doing something wrong, I just don't know what.

Today I am forcing myself to go through the motions of an application - and I am constantly asking myself why am I doing this, because they will just find fault with me and not respond.

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

#876

Post by mcguire » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #698

mcguire wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In your mind, does that description fit absolutely nobody who is short on rent?

Not enough to make it a serious problem. But then I'm neither a Puritanical moralist nor a "better 10 (or 100) good people starve than one bad person gets benefits", either.

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

#877

Post by alienthrowaway » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

polished85 wrote: post #871

chmod600 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do. But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to m…

Thank you for this response. As a first generation immigrant from a third world country, I don't understand this phenomenon of lightly chastising anyone who doesn't attribute their success to privilege, as if afraid someone might be inspired and succeed in something. I suppose its all a matter of perspective. If you haven't experienced poverty in the third world, its easy to whine about privilege and inequality in th…

I'm an immmigrant from a 3rd world country as well - I understand the phenomenon perfectly - it's not about "chastising anyone who doesn't attribute their success to privilege" - it's just pointing out the survivorship bias that's inherent in "If I made it through hard work, anyone can, if they just work hard". Implicit in that statement is that those who do not make it are lazy - this is just not true, but it also co-opts the "Just-world" fallacy.

I am doing better than the average American, in large part, because I'm not burdened by the things that hinder the average American (hyper-infation is one way of easily getting rid of your student loan, but the other aspects of your life will be terrible - I do not recommend it)

> If you haven't experienced poverty in the third world, its easy to whine about privilege and inequality in the USA. If you have experienced it, then you already know life is not fair and there is always someone better off than you.

Shouldn't it be a point of pride - that the USA has less inequality than third world countries. Americans should absolutely "whine" about it, and avoid moving closer to third-world standards. That should be taken as well as saying "If you haven't been detained for months without trial in the freezing gulags, it's easy to whine about mass surveillance and unlawful arrests in the USA".

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

#878

Post by jpetso » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 6:55 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #810

lasfter wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some of the money also goes to Sally who genuinely needs help. I don't understand how you can be okay with people starving or working themselves to death to survive and provide for their families, just because others do things you disapprove of. You're also ignoring the fact that someone who is eligible for this kind of social security and spends it all on booze is probably unwell and needs treatment for addi…

“ The government is taking a big chunk of your money anyways” I think the idea is that if the government took less money, there would be more money in the hands of people to help take care of local misery.

The government doesn't generally tax poor people much, so most tax savings benefit those that can better afford life already. The whole purpose of taxes is to take enough from the ones that are still doing okay and redistribute it to stuff that more wealthy people wouldn't necessarily choose to spend it on, but that are still a net benefit to society over other causes.

So, say government increases the income limit for one of the lower tax brackets by $5,000. That's great for people who make more than that, which btw isn't all poor people, but at the same time it also gives more money to everyone who was already doing okay. Meaning inflation will soon eat up the extra money and we're right back where we started.

In order to help the poor with upgrading to non-poor, the government has to explicitly avoid extending that benefit to the rest of society, has to continue taking from middle and upper income people. It needs to be targeted, and tax cuts are a great way to target middle/upper classes while helping poor people less.

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

#879

Post by ncmncm » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #874

ncmncm wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally. None of this is accidental: it is the consequence of a specific program started about 1970, outlined in the Powell Memorandum, to grab control o…

>Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally. If you think I'm just going to put this out there: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

You have displayed just the left-hand lobe of the bimodal US income distribution. The other bump is way off to the right. Middle-class, if there were one anymore, would be at the dip in the middle, where I said, just off-screen. The goal has been to develop and maintain a permanent underclass who are just barely well enough off that any change seems to threaten to knock them into homelessness, yet imagine they are doing lots better than people with brown skin.

The propaganda message is that any improvement for the people at far left (with brown skin, in particular) would be at the expense of people immediately to their right. The other lobe, off-screen, that could afford everything, is invisible. The program has been a fantastic success. Champagne corks are popping every year, but most especially in 2020, when the right lobe shifted quite a ways further right.

I have some relatives in the other lobe. Their lives are very different from ours. Their kids' lives are very different from our kids'.

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

#880

Post by fr2null » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #672

acdha wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the rest of their post after the part you quoted agrees with your point. So much of the US was designed or redesigned to only work for people who own cars but we still love to talk about them as if they were voluntary expenses ignoring the number of people who are one breakdown or accident away from unemployment & lack of access to healthcare.

What city has public transit that will get you safely and quickly to work at 3AM? What city design will still accomplish all that after your job relocates 15 miles further away?

Not with public transport, but in my (Dutch) city I can get everywhere, safely, within a reasonable amount of time, at all times of the day, by bike. From one end to the other wouldn't be exactly 15 minutes, but it would be under 30. With an electronic bike you can probably make that 20 minutes.