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Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

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Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#191

Post by nitrogen »

chasebank wrote: post #120
hn8788 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be that as it may, he wouldn't get sick when he didn't think he was eating fast food. We'd go to a diner for breakfast sometimes, and since he perceived it as a nice family-run place, he wouldn't get sick, even though their food was still processed garbage that showed up frozen in a truck every morning.

There's a stark difference between frozen food off of the Sysco truck and McDonalds.

Is there? I used to have a prejudice against McDonalds never having tried it, but if you get the same things you would be getting from a diner, there's not much difference.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#192

Post by throwaway3699 »

baq wrote: post #152
pjc50 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper housing => longer and more expensive commute. Or worse job opportunities. Then people tell you to move where the jobs are. Which has really expensive housing. The free market tends to flatten this stuff out

The free market caused this situation in the first place.

Free market would mean no zoning regulations. Housing is not a free market whatsoever (for a good reason, in some cases).

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#193

Post by throwaway1777 »

mechagodzilla wrote: post #155
e40 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about?

There are a lot of 'deliberate' policy decisions which both depress low-skilled workers' wages, and lead to higher property prices. On the wage side, good examples are that: 1) the minimum wage doesn't get increased with inflation 2) many jobs require a higher degree (which takes capital to pay for), or effectively require working for free via internships (which requires capital or someone else subsidizing you) 3) ma…

It’s not only a supply issue these days. Even areas that have basically unlimited land and building in Texas have prices going up massively. How do you explain that?

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#194

Post by globular-toast »

GuB-42 wrote: post #45
FriedrichN wrote: post #3

A 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.

The worst part is that your wealthy family member is right. It is well illustrated by a quote from Terry Pratchett > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a se…

To put it another way: low-end goods are consumables, high-end goods are assets.

Houses and land have, traditionally, been great equalisers because even the lowest-end house/land is still an asset. Now the poor are unable to buy houses/land again they are forced to be pretty much 100% consumers. That's how you stay poor.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#195

Post by Viliam1234 »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #71
mynameishere wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay...but on /r/personalfinance, people show up all the time with a litany of complaints and a litany of awful, awful budget mistakes they have no interest in fixing. 120/month cellphone, 400/month doordash, Dodge Charger with a 600/month note. And so on. each case was a frustrating puzzle What puzzled you? The necessities should never be a puzzle. If the rent, the food, the utilities, the insurance, and the day car…

Have you looked at the psychology of decision making when poor and struggling? It might open your eyes as to why people don't make the optimal choices (financially or others). And a lot of people literally do not know any better. They've never had someone teach them how to manage money and potentially had bad role models growing up. So its easy for you to say, with the knowledge it seems like you have, this is what y…

> They've never had someone teach them how to manage money

This. If you don't know how money works, most people who offer advice are just trying to scam you. But not taking any advice is also not helpful.

If I knew how to invest in index funds 20 years ago, who knows, I might have already been halfway to retirement. Before I had kids, I was able to save a large part of my salary. But everything I did with the money -- following the advice of people pretending to be experts -- only made the money disappear.

If someone has a friendly person who spends a day or two helping them set up the system, so that all they need to do later is send extra money to a specific account once in a while, it can change their future dramatically. But many people do not have such friend.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#196

Post by School-Cotton »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #189
NikolaNovak wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you are saying; coming from Europe, I'm frequently astonished how much "Socialist", "Leftie" or even "Liberal" in USA is a dirty word of political death.

You have to understand that the American definition for socialism completely different than Europeans. Those words evoke memories of communism and Cold War rhetoric.

On the other hand, the European definition seems to be “social democracy” at most. Marx would have thought the name of today’s French “Socialist” Party was ridiculous.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#197

Post by baq »

ixacto wrote: post #188
baq wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. There are people who chose to not have kids and don’t deny that. They chose to give up this part of humanity on their own. Other people probably rationalize this differently because they can’t admit to themselves they’ve given up anything.

This is a relative statement. I never wanted kids they are annoying and I’d probably end up a terrible parent and get divorced and then be paying child support. In fact this would have been what happened if I stayed with my last gf. Much better to be able to FIRE by 35 instead haha.

I agree that it's relative, it was the point. The parent asserted that not having children is somehow a better or smarter thing to do. It isn't, in the long run we're all dead, but children make grownups feel human and not just like a cog in some pointless machine.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#198

Post by calibas »

zepto wrote: post #158
calibas wrote: post #142

It's kind of the "American dream" that if you're responsible and work hard, then anybody can achieve a reasonable level of success. There's an appeal to believing being wealthy is a choice, then you can believe the people at the "top tiers" of society earned their positions and deserve all that power and influence. If that's not true, then it implies that live in a class-based system. Wealthy people are the ones maki…

> If that's not true, then it implies that live in a class-based system. It really doesn’t. It does absolutely imply that the system is broken, but it most certainly doesn’t imply that it is ‘class based’ in some essential way.

It's odd, because when I suggest that money and power stays within a handful of wealthy families, nobody seems to disagree. When I call that a "class-based system" or use words like aristocracy, then people disagree...

There's a ruling class that people are born into, same as how the old Indian caste system works, at best it's a "democratic aristocracy" because you get your choice of elite. Of course, that's just semantics...

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#199

Post by frankbreetz »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #193
mechagodzilla wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of 'deliberate' policy decisions which both depress low-skilled workers' wages, and lead to higher property prices. On the wage side, good examples are that: 1) the minimum wage doesn't get increased with inflation 2) many jobs require a higher degree (which takes capital to pay for), or effectively require working for free via internships (which requires capital or someone else subsidizing you) 3) ma…

It’s not only a supply issue these days. Even areas that have basically unlimited land and building in Texas have prices going up massively. How do you explain that?

Building supplies have grown at an insane rate. A lot of builders went out of business because of 2008. It is still a supply issue, just not a land supply issue.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#200

Post by Miner49er »

ffggvv wrote: post #153

a lot of immigrants have both the experience of starting their life poor in their home country. starting poor in america and then ending their life rich. so we do understand what it’s like to be poor. and in a way i think sometimes we have less sympathy because we can see how good decisions can lead to wealth. there’s countless stories of jewish or asian immigrants in new york working insane hours for little pay as t…

Is that actually common? Is it just anecdotal evidence or is there actually some data on this showing that it is common?
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