A former coworker whose parents are rich told me once she didn't understand why young people in our country are not so eager to have kids anymore. I replied that most young people are unemployed and skint including most of my friends, which makes it difficult for obvious reasons. She replied that she did not even have €50000 (about $61000) in her bank account when she had her first kid.
Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
21–30 of 421 posts
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#22[deleted]
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#23I think that this is true.
This is also true that you can't understand what it is of being powerful or rich when you're not.
In a general way, it is very difficult to imagine living in other people's shoes, we live on the same planet, breathing the same air, we have 99.9% the same DNA, but our experience of life and our environment can be widely different.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#24Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
Opens perspectives, okay. Solves any of their problems?
No.
We aren’t talking about people in a wealth/income bracket who have to tighten things up and go from shopping at Whole Foods to Safeway. We’re talking about people who have no economic security. Every financial decision is a trade off about necessities. Living with the very real possibility of losing housing at any time.
So the Dalio quotes in your profile about harsh truths are fine but not helpful here except in that I hope you aren’t too sensitive to hear this truth.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#25there is a much more general thing here of 'simple theory of mind' where you assume too much similarity between self and others.
we even do this to ourselves when remembering our pasts.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#26I’d like to see the unpaywalled article. Unfortunately the abstract linked doesn’t go into any details about the methods.
Here you go: https://wormhole.app/wMor1#0qgFKqfKPovugqgwh0CxEg
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#27Poor Americans often don't understand what it's like to be poor. Spending extended time in a severely damaged third world country absent all security opens all kinds of perspectives.
agreed, although its not a helpful perspective i'd rather be homeless here in the UK where its nearly impossible to die without making much effort than pretty much anywhere else in the world.
the opportunities available for things like water and food are enormous compared to where i started
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.
It depends on your liabilities and other aspects like age. 6,000 EUR per month is $7,300 USD per month is tough if you’re a new pharmacist in the US and need to repay $300k of student loans and make up for 4 to 6 years of lost income and catch up retirement savings, as an example.
Even this shows a basic lack of understanding of what "tough" means for someone who is actually poor.
As soon as you put "saving for retirement" as something that's even possible, you're no longer in the realm of what's genuinely "tough".
"Oh, those people making three times what I do a month have it so tough! After paying way more than the minimum on their student loans and putting aside a large chunk of money for retirement, they might only have a thousand dollars or so of truly disposable income!"
"Tough" is when "disposable income" is a fantasy, and you're regularly having to choose between whether to pay your heating bill or buy enough food for the rest of the week.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.
It depends on your liabilities and other aspects like age. 6,000 EUR per month is $7,300 USD per month is tough if you’re a new pharmacist in the US and need to repay $300k of student loans and make up for 4 to 6 years of lost income and catch up retirement savings, as an example.
I'll grant you the loan repayment, but the other things aren't expenses. "Lost income" is a psychological artefact, not anything concrete. It's a result of comparing against some hypothetical ideal financial situation. The same for "catching up" on retirement savings.
The concrete part is that people with that level of income (large, but not so large as to make all problems disappear) know that to be comfortable in the future they need to save a big chunk of their income. The people living with much lower incomes just don't have that luxury at all. Which is kind of the point - it's totally different worlds.
Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor
#30A more distant but very wealthy family member once said that people wouldn't be so poor if they just saved up money. That perfectly illustrated the difficulty rich people have understanding poor people to me. I was really young, but that really stuck with me.
I thought this for the longest time. An embarrassingly long time. Then I volunteered with a program that helps people who qualify for EITC to prepare their taxes and budget how they’ll use their tax return to “get them out of their situation”. Person after person came in, we did their taxes, and then we went over their expenses and each case was a frustrating puzzle that was impossible to solve. There just wasn’t eno…
The ability to save money relies on the ability to "reduce your lifestyle costs" by cutting certain expenses (raising income is oftentimes not realistic. Poor People in general are not lazy)
Below a certain limit there is no way to do that without loosing more money like getting rid of your car.
And it's not only the obvious things. An acquaintance of mine was a single mother (ex-husband in prison) and had to decide whether she could afford to allow her children to take a bath in the bathtub.
People underestimate how much such forced decisions can damage mental health and the ability to work.
Many wealthy-but-broke people still have assets (like significant equity in a house) that give them runway (sometimes years) to sort things out and make life impacting decisions (such as moving far away to reduce expenses or contacting a friend from before to find you job).