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Dating in Delhi when you're poor

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211–220 of 295 posts

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#211

India hosts 400% of humans of its healthy capacity; 150 people per sq km. What the world sees is the tip of the iceberg. Someone alien to India might have to spend decades to get all the idiosyncrasies that run here. For starters, good portion of sexual harassments/rapes are not reported. Even unnatural deaths go unnoticed or ignored.

> India hosts 400% of humans of its healthy capacity; 150 people per sq km. Urban areas in almost every part of the world have higher density. For example, New York City has 10,716 people per sq km, and Manhattan (a borough of NYC) has a density of 26,821.6 person per sq km. So I'm not sure what you're point here is.

Metro cities are not self sufficient, they rely on near/remote regions for resources to sustain.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#212

Dating never requires money. And no guy should be a free dinner dispenser or ATM for commercial activities for someone he doesn't even know. You can click, talk, walk, dance, and kiss for free... anywhere and everywhere. Besides, dinner and coffee interview dates are too formal and boring.. zzz.

If you can't have a fun conversation over coffee or dinner you probably arent compatible

> If you can't have a fun conversation over coffee or dinner you probably arent compatible

I don't agree with this. Most people aren't comfortable opening up right away on their first interaction with someone they don't know very well. A lot of people also suffer from anxiety issues which can make it difficult for them to open up right away. Coffee/Drinks help to alleviate that somewhat as they're stimulants/social lubricants. Dinner? not so much, it just makes you full and sleepy.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#213

The author is convinced that the couple’s life sucks. He/she is writing from a point of view of superiority - “look, this is what they’re lacking, they can’t afford a Rs.8000 dinner”. To a billionaire, my software engineer life will look miserable - “They have to go eat at Panera and Olive Garden. For their employer, a nice dineout costs $5000.” Can we stop looking down on people because they cannot afford what’s nor…

> The author is convinced that the couple’s life sucks.

Objectively, their life does kinda suck. The woman is living in a slum and cleaning houses for a living, earning very little for a lot of exhausting labor. The man is doing little better. They have to be creative in finding places to just hang out with each other, which is really the foundation for any relationship.

This isn't a judgement call on their relative economic status; life is just more difficult for them. I didn't feel the author was looking down on them as much as pointing out the obscene difference in ease of living between the upper and lower classes.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#214
post #184

> The 23-year-old earns 8,000 rupees a month ($125) for her work. That’s what her employers can expect to pay for a single “date night” out at one of the city’s finer restaurants. Even in 2021 (article is from 2017) this is an exaggeration. You can have dinner for 2 at a five-star hotel in Delhi for less than half that amount, unless you're splurging on the drinks.

I pay half that for dining out in Amsterdam.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#215
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two distinct experiences being discussed here: the experience of living in absolute poverty; and the experience of being down-and-out in a city you can't afford the cost-of-living of (i.e. "relative" poverty — the kind you could in theory get away from by "moving somewhere cheaper", but where for various reasons people don't tend to do that.) Both the poor person in Toronto and the poor person in Delhi are…

> But the homeless person in Delhi will still commisserate with the homeless person in Toronto Perhaps, but it's worth pointing out that these experiences are qualitatively different. In India, being poor (especially if you're a certain caste) is tantamount to being non-human. You can be jailed, raped, mistreated, killed without consequence. Even the middle class is afforded little human dignity, the underclass have…

Minorities in Toronto definitely risk being jailed and mistreated without consequence.

Killed or raped, probably not.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#216
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grew up in india, spent my twenties in the US, and now back in India. I can give you some potential explanation: Even though the poor and lower middle class make abjectly low amounts of money, the upper middle class and the rich actually make money comparable to most developed countries. This is reflected in the real estate prices (Chennai, the fourth largest city, has prices comparable to Brooklyn). I can make 200k…

Then, the only way you can convince yourself you’re not an evil person is by playing some Mental gymnastics. Does benefiting from severe inequality imply amorality? I don't see any inherent contradiction between personal financial success and supporting policies intended to uplift the poor (similarly to how some uber-wealthy in America publicly advocate for more progressive taxation).

I think that if someone is well-off and yet they see a lot of people around them that aren't, it's pretty natural to feel uncomfortable about that. Like "why do I live in a house and not in a tent?" Luck plays a role, but that's not a satisfying answer. One way people deal with it is to construct a narrative to explain their success -- maybe they're smarter, or worked harder, or avoided the personal vices they see among the poor.

Those narratives aren't necessarily entirely wrong, and I don't see those people as particularly evil, they just might have a few blind spots. For instance, they might not realize that even though they worked hard for their success, they also had a lot of second chances when they failed and they might not have had some of the roadblocks to success that others had, such as serious health problems, or a bad family situation, or prejudice, or violence, or lack of education, or lack of leisure time.

I've never been to Delhi, so this is just based on my own observation of people in the United States. I assume this is probably one of those aspects of human nature that are more-or-less the same everywhere.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stimulus checks aren't actually a test of UBI. A global pandemic isn't business as usual by any stretch of the imagination. I'm all for doing more for families with dependent children. You didn't ask me about that. You asked me why I think UBI doesn't work. I answered that. My reply is not argumentative at all. It's just a reply to a question I was asked. That's all it is.

Okay, I’m really trying to have a good-faith conversation about this, maybe my questions weren’t super clear. I am very interested in your opinion, as you seem to have experience and also have thought about this a lot (and I think many of us on HN appreciate the unique perspective you have to offer). I am just having a hard time seeing the difference between “reducing barriers to food stamps in the US”, as you said a…

The stimulus checks aren't a test of UBI in part because we were told they were one time relief for an emergency, not an entitlement you can count on forever. People spend money differently if they are told "it's a one-time gift" versus "you can expect this for the rest of your life."

Historically, when you inject money into a system without increasing availability of goods and services, the result is inflation. If you start giving people UBI as a regular thing, the value of those checks will promptly go down due to inflation.

All welfare programs have a long history of failing to keep up with inflation. Even food stamps tend to last only about three weeks out of the month. I see no reason to believe UBI would somehow magically escape this pattern.

Making college loans readily available didn't fix things. It didn't mean that everyone had equal access to a college degree and now ordinary people could readily pursue the career of their dreams. Instead, it resulted in tuition skyrocketing and students having trouble getting a professional job with which to pay off their student loans, so people are waiting tables, putting off marriage, putting off homeownership, putting of having kids, putting off their lives to try to pay their loans.

I see no reason to think UBI would somehow go differently. I read that they tried something somewhere and the result was the landlords just raised rent and it didn't provide real relief for poor people. It just enriched the landlords.

Two-thirds of lottery winners are bankrupt within five years and they are at dramatically increased risk of being murdered, among myriad other terrible fates. The money doesn't solve their problems. They trade poor people problems for rich people problems and they don't have rich people coping skills. It often has very ugly results.

If, instead, you give people access to food and medical care and you make smaller homes in walkable neighborhoods where it's possible to live cheaply, then people can manage their problems and make their choices and find a path forward. People aren't likely to eat ten times what they need just because you are willing to pay for it. People aren't likely to get ten times as many x-rays and surgeries as they need just because you won't bill them for it.

Covering basic needs and guaranteeing you can eat and see a doctor is fundamentally different from cutting a check and telling people to spend it any way they want. It's an important form of social safety net that helps when things go wrong and isn't as readily abusable as cash is whether through innocent mistake, ignorance or even willful irresponsibility.

If you go nuts and spend like crazy and can still eat, well you might survive long enough to learn better. If you piss away all your UBI and then people say "Nope. No food stamps. We ended that program to fund UBI. Go starve." you've got a serious problem and so does society.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#218

Seriously, a dinner for two costs $125 in India in a place with $400 average monthly income? This is what it would cost here in Cyprus, short of really nice places in Nicosia or Limassol, and the monthly income is 5x as much. Maybe $200 in the very nicest of places. I'm a developer and make in mid-six figures, and whenever i see a $125 bill including tips, i start to feel like "oh, this is pricey".

Dinner at an average restaurant doesnt cost that much. You can have a nice meal (for two) in a place with good ambience for 20 USD.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#219
post #213

The author is convinced that the couple’s life sucks. He/she is writing from a point of view of superiority - “look, this is what they’re lacking, they can’t afford a Rs.8000 dinner”. To a billionaire, my software engineer life will look miserable - “They have to go eat at Panera and Olive Garden. For their employer, a nice dineout costs $5000.” Can we stop looking down on people because they cannot afford what’s nor…

> The author is convinced that the couple’s life sucks. Objectively, their life does kinda suck. The woman is living in a slum and cleaning houses for a living, earning very little for a lot of exhausting labor. The man is doing little better. They have to be creative in finding places to just hang out with each other, which is really the foundation for any relationship. This isn't a judgement call on their relative…

Not kinda. It sucks.

Re: Dating in Delhi when you're poor

#220
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i expect spending here to mean cash you spend while enjoying your free time outside. from that 6000 you need to subtract rent/mortgage, and any other living expenses. if you then still have enough money that you can go out and spend $100 in an afternoon on average, then you are no longer middle class i would say. the "problem" here is the average. sure, a middle class income can afford to spend $100 in an afternoon o…

> then you are no longer middle class i would say Well what are they then? You can't seriously claim that having just $100 a day of disposable income makes you part of the upper class?

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