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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

#341

Post by jjav »

bradleyjg wrote: post #107
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an excellent comment. What makes me very sad is that during the past 14 months the divide between those who own assets and those who don't has reached gargantuan proportions. I mean, in my raging inferno of a housing market, over the past couple of years home prices have easily doubled. So a 400k house from 2018 now sells for 800k. Yes, if I want to move to another house in my area I'll pay similarly…

People made vastly more money just sitting around in their houses in the past couple years than I made in my job as an "essential" worker over the past decade. This is not an accident. It’s a result of deliberate policy choices. The incumbent homeowners voted themselves massive returns. And they felt self righteous while they were doing it to boot.

> The incumbent homeowners voted themselves massive returns.

This is a popular meme in these threads, but could you be more specific to back that up?

In >20 years owning a home, it has never come up that I've been asked to vote on anything related to giving me any returns. Where are these votes happening?

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

#342

Post by bradleyjg »

jjav wrote: post #340
sombremesa wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in as someone who has a few million in liquidity and a few more in real estate: some people buy a house to...you know, actually live in it and stuff. If you sell your primary home out of greed, assuming you otherwise like living there, you are attempting to time the market. That never ends well. Another thing that never works is trying to talk sense on the internet.

> Chiming in as someone who has a few million in liquidity and a few more in real estate: some people buy a house to...you know, actually live in it and stuff. > If you sell your primary home out of greed, assuming you otherwise like living there, you are attempting to time the market. Very well said. A home is not a stock to trade, trying to time the market. The point of a home is to live in it. Maybe sell in retire…

That’s the theory but in practice it’s been a rigged casino for 40 years. Of course people have changed their behaviors in response to that longstanding a trend.

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

#343

Post by mschuster91 »

xupybd wrote: post #330
mschuster91 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will watch the market fall The market won't fall, that is the entire point. It reasonably cannot fall, since the only politics that could make it fall (buildout of rural infrastructure, overriding NIMBY shit) won't ever pass. Inertia is massive.

The debt in the current world economy is unheard of, and the cost of housing is getting out of reach of first home buyers. Something has to give at some point. If interest rates rise in the next 10 years then I suspect many will be left with mortgage payments they can't afford.

> If interest rates rise in the next 10 years then I suspect many will be left with mortgage payments they can't afford.

Sure, but there will always be a bigger (Chinese) fish to eat you(r investment). If there is one thing this world does not lack, it's a bunch of individuals and investment funds looking to make money on rent.

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

#344

Post by phobosanomaly »

proc0 wrote: post #208

Poor people in the U.S. are not really poor. This is the irony in the article and a lot of comments I see. You are acting out the same headline, but in perspective of real poverty. Did you grow up in a town with dirt roads? Did your neighbors live in cardboard and aluminum self-made housing? Did your family struggle to eat and everyone around you is so skinny that fat people are a rare sight? These are some markers o…

There are actually many, many communities in the United States where people live on dirt roads. That's super common. I grew up on a dirt road, and my parents still live on one. Much of the rural US lives off of paved roads.

With food and stuff, the thing is that in the US, you can very quickly go from having not much to having nothing. Many people do suffer from hunger and live on the edge because the cost of living in the United States relative to incomes can be very high. It's much more difficult to set up a small stall selling goods or food or something, and if you don't have proper permitting the police will shut you down. Therefore, once you get to a certain point you are really trapped. There's much less of an informal economy in the US than in Latin America, so people's ability to earn money is much more restricted and regulated.

The correlate to the people you are describing in the United States are referred to as the 'homeless.' They live in small structures made of cardboard and wood and tarps. Some have tents. The police will occasionally come by and throw all of their possessions in a garbage truck. Homelessness is pretty widespread, and the degree to which it exists here is often shocking to people from other countries.

Here's a photo essay that gives you some idea of what is going on in the United States in terms of the homeless. These living conditions are pretty darn comparable to international poverty. I assure you none of these people have stocks.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-08/homeless...

Obviously the scale of the whole thing is different between the US and Latin America, but there's lots of pretty shocking poverty in the US.

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

#345

Post by jjav »

zpeti wrote: post #75
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an excellent comment. What makes me very sad is that during the past 14 months the divide between those who own assets and those who don't has reached gargantuan proportions. I mean, in my raging inferno of a housing market, over the past couple of years home prices have easily doubled. So a 400k house from 2018 now sells for 800k. Yes, if I want to move to another house in my area I'll pay similarly…

I would love to see a parallel universe where in 2008 no one is bailed out and bankers are either on the hook for the risks they took or actually are sent to prison. Taking it further back, what if the tech bubble of the 90s is allowed to collapse, interests aren't set at almost 0, and a housing bubble isn't blown by exploiting minorities. And last year airlines, and other corporations who didn't account for black sw…

> what if the tech bubble of the 90s is allowed to collapse

It collapsed in the dot.com crash (remember pets.com).

> I am convinced the USA is in the place it is because since about 99, no rich person has been allowed to fail or lose money, not really.

Well, I was a tech bubble paper millionaire in '99, and had nothing by 2002. It all evaporated.

Then the smaller bubble of the 2000s crashed in 2008.

The huge bubble of the 2010s.. hasn't crashed. I sure can't predict when, but cycles suggest it'll crash at some point.

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

#346

Post by phobosanomaly »

refurb wrote: post #169
pattusk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in the third world, I would say that the American poors are probably the closest you're going to get to "third world poor" anywhere in the developed world. Life expectancy, crime rates, housing quality and disease in poor American communities are on level incomparable to any other developed country I can think of.

This is a pretty ridiculous statement as someone that has lived in multiple countries including the US. I would put forth the First Nations in Canada where many reservations yet have a source of clean drinking water despite gov’ts promises for the last couple of decades to help them with it. And to compare being poor in the US with the Third World is also shows a lack of knowledge. When you’ve lived in places where t…

There are plenty of First-Nations people in the United States without access to clean drinking water.

In your time in the US, did you get a chance to visit the Navajo reservation?

"Tribes without clean water demand an end to decades of US government neglect

US has broken promises as Indigenous Americans lack access to safe water, a crisis worsened by Covid-19"

"An estimated one in 10 Indigenous Americans lack access to safe tap water or basic sanitation..."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/28/indigenous-a....

Please check out this photo-essay on the homeless in Los Angeles.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-08/homeless...

What do these folks have that the poor in other countries don't? Food insecurity, outbreaks of disease, living in improvised structures, threat of violence, lack of access to health care are all present in the United States.

Did you get a chance to visit anywhere like the Imperial Valley?

"Two weeks ago, federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit intended to clean up or shut down Duroville, which they said was lacking in necessary permits but plentiful in horrid conditions: defective construction, faulty electrical wiring, unhealthful distribution of drinking water and a deeply flawed septic system. Those ponds of gray.

“The system itself leaks sewage under and around trailers and in common areas,” the government charged in court papers, leading to raw sewage being “tracked into trailers and elsewhere on the feet of residents and their pets.”

But everything about Duroville is hard, just as its name suggests.

It sits on the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation, where Mr. Duro is a prominent member. Weary of the news media, he has hired a spokesman, Alan Singer, who stops short of equating Duroville with nirvana, but calls the tales of squalor overblown and racist.

Mr. Singer asks one question, though, that pricks like a cactus: If Duroville is shut down, where will these thousands live?

So far, no answer."

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/21land.html

The order of magnitude in numbers may differ, but there is plenty of grinding poverty in the United States.

The more you travel in the United States, the more you realize that it isn't the magical shining city on the hill people think it is.

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

#348

Post by jjav »

serf wrote: post #103
IggleSniggle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were struggling to make it on $175000, maybe they had a $200000 a year in medical bills! This is America we’re talking about after all.

I get that it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but most coding positions i've ran into in the United States offer pretty comprehensive health and dental plans. If someone years ago making 175k a year coding doesn't have healthcare insurance then it's likely of their own doing either through contract renegotiation or taking a pretty damn bad benefits package for the sake of a fairly high salary for such a position.

> I get that it's a tongue-in-cheek comment, but most coding positions i've ran into in the United States offer pretty comprehensive health and dental plans.

It's not that simple, given the health care mess in the US. I have a friend with top-shelf insurance and salary at bay area FAANG company who still has >$50K out of pocket medical costs every year.

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

#349

Post by jjav »

missedthecue wrote: post #214
IggleSniggle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were struggling to make it on $175000, maybe they had a $200000 a year in medical bills! This is America we’re talking about after all.

Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that.

> Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that.

In the US, medical insurance out of pocket maximums don't mean it's the most you can pay.

I've had years where according to the insurance company accounting my out of pocket has been less than $1000, but according to bills I actually had to pay my out of pocket was close to $10K.

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

#350

Post by screye »

jjav wrote: post #341
bradleyjg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People made vastly more money just sitting around in their houses in the past couple years than I made in my job as an "essential" worker over the past decade. This is not an accident. It’s a result of deliberate policy choices. The incumbent homeowners voted themselves massive returns. And they felt self righteous while they were doing it to boot.

> The incumbent homeowners voted themselves massive returns. This is a popular meme in these threads, but could you be more specific to back that up? In >20 years owning a home, it has never come up that I've been asked to vote on anything related to giving me any returns. Where are these votes happening?

house owners vote in large numbers against up zoning, against densificatjon and against public transportation funding. (2 sides of the same coin)
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