321–330 of 341 posts
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Why do you think payday loan shops exist?
Primarily to pay government fines and auto repair bills. Nobody is getting a payday loan to buy groceries. They're doing it to stave off things that if ignored will cause them to lose their income and slide further into poverty. They're poor, not stupid.
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So what are they doing with the extra US dollars now?
Belt and Road Initiative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative Basically, they're using it to buy American heavy equipment and build infrastructure in developing nations, principally in Africa and Central Asia. They lease the infrastructure back to the host country for cash (i.e. favorable terms of trade), and if the host country defaults, there's a clause that China can take over the infrastructure…
What do you mean when you say "petrodollar for military basis system"?
Before you answer, please remember that a petrodollar is the analogue of a eurodollar -- it refers to dollar assets owned by petroleum exporting states, namely OPEC.
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This is precisely why I avoided using adjectives such as savory or delicious. Taste is entirely subjective and varies widely from individual to individual. Nutrition on the other is based on scientific fact, hence why I chose to use terms such as: nutrients, fiber, protein. Btw, I find the term "souldcrushing" to be an insult to the millions of individuals who rely on such food staples for their daily nutritional int…
You seem to have a very utilitarian view of food that most people do not have: the average person does not quantify food purely in terms of their nutritional value, and enjoying the taste of it is a pretty big factor for if they want to eat it every day or not! And again, comparing subsisting on "$30 of rice and beans" is a completely different proposition to "nations which rely on plant based diets": people in these…
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Your first sentence sums up the majority of this site on any socioeconomic issue. At this point the term “financial literacy” is exclusively used by armchair poverty quarterbacks.
I'm very bad with money. I never look at my account balance when I spend money. Heck, often months pass without me looking at my account at all. When I end up seeing the balance it is always much higher than I expected. What am I missing? Oh right, I earn more than the average person in my country and I'm so busy I don't even have time to spend the money.
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And there are 2006 Chrysler 300s in the Bay Area for under $4 grand a piece on craigslist. As an asking price. The parts seem fairly affordable as well, judging from the parted out ones also on the bay area craiglist. It's entirely reasonable that poor people have older model luxury cars, either purchased 3rd hand or from when they were better off financially. After all, how much do you think you'd pocket selling you…
Yeah. If you want a V8 sedan on a budget Chrysler 300s are a great option (as were the used Ford panther family of cars that preceded them in that market niche). ....which is why they're so stigmatized by the white collar well to do crowd.
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> unless their employer is signaling to them that they value their contributions 6.2% less than last year Not getting a raise doesn't mean your employer necessarily values you less - it could just mean others value you less so your employer has less competition for you. Supply and demand. If nobody's buying hammers and the price of hammers goes down, that doesn't mean the value my hammer brings me has gone down, but…
Yeah, that sounds cool and all, but somehow I ended up with a job that pays over $100K a year, that makes me work for about 3 hours a week from home and has been paying me for years to do that. And I'm pretty sure my manager knows that. If I were to quit, I'd end up with another job that makes me work for 30+ hours a week, for the exact same salary. And that's just one example. I know many more like that. Your supply…
That seems entirely consistent with the supply and demand explanation? If your employer thinks they're getting 100k worth of value from you, and that there's nobody that can do your job for cheaper, the fact that you wfh for 3hr/week doesn't affect the analysis.
>If I were to quit, I'd end up with another job that makes me work for 30+ hours a week, for the exact same salary.
That can partially be explained by the fact that labor is an illiquid market, caused by switching costs and lack of information. On the flip side, you might be able to get 500K working for MANGA if you grind leetcode/whiteboard prep.
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How often do you need to buy dishes, cups and socks?
"Buy once cry once" only works when you have money. If all you can afford are dollar store socks, you're going to be buying a lot of dollar store socks. Being poor sucks.
1$ socks 4 times/year Not the case for bread! 1$ bread twice a week for a year starts to look bleak if it increases in price.
I don't think that people in this thread appreciate how prevalent grocery shopping in dollar stores is. In the US, half of shoppers buy groceries from a dollar store. They do it because it's literally all they can afford anything else. There are more dollar stores than Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. "Kyle Dishman can’t afford to shop at the local grocery store anymore. Instead he goes to Dollar General,…
If you want to save money on groceries you should be going to Aldi or Sav a Lot, not Dollar stores. Their products are terrible (mostly house brands) and prices aren't even good.
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> They do it because it’s literally all they can afford anything else. Dollar stores very often aren’t cheaper than other sources for similar products especially for grocery items (which they tend to have very limited selections of.) People that shop for groceries at dollar stores do it because: 1. They shop for other things at dollar stores (either for price, or for reason #2, or because its the only place close by…
Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt poor. It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay more money for less product at the dollar store than elsewhere. Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores and go "hey, wait a minute!" If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and str…
Because apparently all poor people all the same in your mind.
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Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon, a consequence of the destruction of local retail by various chains--first chain groceries, then Wal-Mart, etc. Dollar stores have slowly filled in the gaps left by the closure of local retailers and low-end chains like A&P. At first chains drove down prices, such as precipitous price declines brought by chain groceries, and then those Wal-Mart brought to everything el…
> Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon Kind of, but only because of the brief interregnum of the ~1970s-1990s height of suburban shopping malls. Dollar stores are a revival of the general variety discount stores — “five-and-dime” or “dime stores” — that largely either fell to suburbanization and shopping malls or morphed out of the model into mega-retailers (Walton’s Five-and-Dime, for instance, is now kn…