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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

#891

Post by criticaljudge »

danaris wrote: post #793
criticaljudge wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well arguably they are not really poor, compared to those cases of poverty in the 19th century.

They're days to weeks away from starvation, in some cases begging in the streets to survive, in others working themselves literally to death to avoid that fate for themselves and their families, while suffering from a variety of physical and mental ailments that they are unable to afford treatment for and struggling to keep the heat, power, and on. If that's not the face of "really poor" in the modern age, nothing is…

Well you have read the description of the poor in the 19th century, so I'd say it still doesn't compare. Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness. But then the comparison would also be silly, as their problem would not primarily "being poor", but having a mental illness. Of course you can always find somebody who is worse off than somebody else. Those starving people begging in the streets have it really well compared to somebody who is about to die from a terminal disease within the next 24 hours.

And if there is such a huge amount of people with mental illness, as I said elsewhere, I suspect the real problem is drug addiction and not "the economy" or "rich people".

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

#892

Post by criticaljudge »

zaccusl wrote: post #713
criticaljudge wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't arbitrarily set rent prices. You can only ask what people are also willing to pay. People are willing to pay because they have high paying jobs and want to live near to where they work. And that is ultimately also a good thing. Think about a brain surgeon, who under socialism would have to commute for two hours to his jobs, and under evil capitalism can live 20 minutes from the hospital. Under capitalism he…

Not that I disagree with the notion that "you can't arbitrarily set rent prices", but this is an incredibly simplistic example and does nothing to address literal rent seeking. If the pandemic has shown us anything, it is that grocery store workers, meat packers, and the supply chain workers that get food (and toilet paper) to our tables are far more important to society than most high paid white collar and knowledge…

Groceries salespeople are cheap because there are many people with the skills to do that job. The same does not go for brain surgery. And you can also sell groceries just fine when you are tired - a little slower perhaps, but nobody goes hungry.

The example may be extreme, but in general people pay other people in relation to how much the value or need their services. So it seems the brain surgeon is higher valued than the groceries person, simply because of supply and demand (many groceries people, few brain surgeons).

As for "deserving to live 20 minutes away from ones job", that is where it gets interesting.

Who, indeed, deserves to live in a good location? Good locations are not in unlimited supply. Who determines who gets the best spots?

What would be fair, according to the ubiquitous socialist crowd? First come, first serve? Poor people first? Lottery? Rich people first? Socialist who worked the hardest to bring about the socialist utopia first (that is usually what it ends up with, but I think not what the poor supporters of socialism envision)?

Personally I think by and large the market does get good results in that regard - the brain surgeons get to live in nice places, because of their merit. I prefer brain surgeons living in nice places to socialist activists living in nice places. Just my personal preference.

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

#893

Post by banannaise »

bzbarsky wrote: post #661
therealdrag0 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 externa…

From what I have seen, allowing worse conditions for a renter doesn't significantly change the price floor, it just changes what they are given at that price floor.

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

#894

Post by criticaljudge »

gizmondo wrote: post #748
overlords wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive. In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work. Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children bo…

When rich person pays others to, let's say, build a luxurious castle, the money is both redistributed back to the economy AND the castle is there to use, for a few centuries at least. That's how investing* makes the society wealthier over time, and promoting consumption instead is nuts. * There is a caveat that it should be a new investment rather than a purchase of the existing one, the latter is zero-sum.

In the latter case, the person who sold the castle can use the money to build a new castle.

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

#895

Post by WalterBright »

ncmncm wrote: post #872
WalterBright wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> one hourly wage was enough raise a family on

Having worked at minimum wage as a teen, I can guarantee you could not support a family on it.

> They graduate today with a lifetime of debt

The ones that did not google "starting salaries for major X" and compare that against the expected debt they'd incur, yes.

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

#896

Post by tqi »

skohan wrote: post #63
brianmcc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/rich-peop... “All the way up the income-wealth spectrum,” Norton told me, “basically everyone says [they’d need] two or three times as much” to be perfectly happy. It references this study: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53540

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a frugal household, but I have basically never felt like I needed more money since properly starting my career. I mean it helps that I have tended to live in lower COL cities, but I have always saved a sufficient portion of my income, and I have never had the feeling that I want to buy something or travel somewhere and I can’t because I can’t afford it. I don’t fly first class, and I r…

For me the feeling of needing more money does not come from wanting to spend more now, but rather a foreboding feeling that any moment jobs could dry up and I'll need to support myself and others via savings in an extended recession.

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

#897

Post by danaris »

criticaljudge wrote: post #891
danaris wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're days to weeks away from starvation, in some cases begging in the streets to survive, in others working themselves literally to death to avoid that fate for themselves and their families, while suffering from a variety of physical and mental ailments that they are unable to afford treatment for and struggling to keep the heat, power, and on. If that's not the face of "really poor" in the modern age, nothing is…

Well you have read the description of the poor in the 19th century, so I'd say it still doesn't compare. Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness. But then the comparison would also be silly, as their problem would not primarily "being poor", but having a mental illness. Of course you can always find somebody who is worse off than somebody else. Those starving people begging in the street…

> Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness.

I'm sorry, but that's just flat-out not true.

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

#898

Post by Aeolun »

Aeolun wrote: post #361
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I pretty much ignore my bank balance and autopay my bills and mortgage and never have to think much about money. By the apparent standards of SV techs I'm well below the poverty line. I find it difficult to empathize with them.

Never having to think about money is an incredibly privileged position though. That’s true regardless of your standard of living.

This comment seems to fairly controversial for some reason. If someone reads this still and disagrees, can you let me know why?

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

#899

Post by Zanneth »

danaris wrote: post #897
criticaljudge wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you have read the description of the poor in the 19th century, so I'd say it still doesn't compare. Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness. But then the comparison would also be silly, as their problem would not primarily "being poor", but having a mental illness. Of course you can always find somebody who is worse off than somebody else. Those starving people begging in the street…

> Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness. I'm sorry, but that's just flat-out not true.

Families from my home state would use EBT/food stamps while struggling during the last recession. Under these social programs they always had enough money to buy basic needs from the grocery store. There is a cultural issue in the U.S. where a lot of people refuse to accept any help from those kinds of programs but never to the point where they would actually starve to death.

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

#900

Post by ncmncm »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #882
ncmncm wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

This is the entire distribution. The last bucket is everything greater than 200k. When you look at it plotted out, it is a long tail.

To track where the money is going, you have to multiply the count in each bucket by the value on the bucket.

And, get the income not reported as "household income". Income of most millionaires does not show up on there. Jeff Bezos's and Trump's incomes are not on there.

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