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Being poor vs. being broke

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Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#381

Post by xp84 »

phplovesong wrote: post #213

Im not rich, but i get by, and can say i live a decent life (in terms of what i can get "with fiat"). Im from a totally normal middle class-ish family. I always worked (since like 14-15) and got my own savings started when i was young. I really cant think of why you could not get out of beeing poor, IF you have the wits and willpower. If you grind some shithole job for 6 bucks/hour you should think really hard on you…

I don’t think you’re wrong, but considering how imperfect humans are, it’s easy to make a mistake or two (or to basically inherit mistakes from parents, in many cases), and I think one of the problems is, it’s very, very difficult to claw your way back after that. It would be ideal if a small screw-up could be more feasibly repaired, but tbh I don’t know a fair and good way to do that that didn’t generate dependence and a bailout cycle.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#383

Post by tavavex »

ge96 wrote: post #297

I'm "low-rich" (middle class?) poor eg. I have a six-fig job but I also have almost six-fig of debt, so I have after paying all my bills (mostly debt) almost nothing left. But I have an apt/cool cheap car, toys like 2nd hand computers/cameras. I've been in debt for the last 15 years since I went into college. I don't eat canned food often actually trying to fast as it's hard to not gain weight when I spend most of my…

To me it's still insane that education (the implied reason for your debt? correct me if I'm wrong) is so absurdly expensive in the US. Mind you, I'm saying that from another country where education isn't free, but most people will never be able to have anything remotely approaching six figure debt. You presumably work in a professional field, judging by your salary, yet you have an enormous anchor that's been dragging behind you for all your life. In some ways, the high-lower-class person that has a poor salary but isn't indebted might have it better than you.

I wonder how much society would change if that system of student loans was reformed to offload the burden from young people, how much more growth there could be if these people weren't stuck in debt.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#384

Post by dukeofdoom »

tome wrote: post #173
dukeofdoom wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember an interview with some billionaire talking about how people should grow their own food. He underpays his workers. One the surface great idea. Aside for the fact that it's hugely inefficient and why we have massive farms to take care of the inefficiency problem. Innovation was supposed to take care of this so poor people don't have to substance farm in cities. I mean by all means do that as a hobby. But kee…

> I remember an interview with some billionaire talking about how people should grow their own food. He underpays his workers. You don't happen to have link do you? I couldn't find any obvious hits on a search engine.

Sorry I don't. Guy looked kind of like Dan Gilbert but somewhat like a Bill O Riley personality. Maybe 2012 or 2013 interview. Possibly 60 minutes. It was in major network. I tried searching it too but couldn't find it. I remember watching an interview about an attractive female pilot that was flying to Epstain Island and can't find that interview now either. So I'm thinking maybe it got scrubbed

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#385

Post by corobo »

HPsquared wrote: post #374
corobo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a £50 fine might as well be £50,000- its unpayable, and leads to a sort of doom-spiral of lending to avoid worse consequences. Easily you can end up in unmanageable debt Yup! Bank gave me an overdraft when I was 16. At 37 I'm still in debt connected to that first bit of "free" money. I've never earned above £0, and at this point it's too late to care. They can write me off as a minor loss when I kick it haha

If it's any consolation that's how finances work for most governments.

No consolation needed - if I come across as woe is me it's not the intention. It is what it is and all that. I've got food, I've got shelter. It'll do.

You're born, you keep your head down, and you die - if you're lucky.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#386

Post by verteu »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #265
wahern wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that it is much more like the US, nowadays. IIRC, mobility indexes crossed quite a few years ago. IOW, UK is better than the US in this respect. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index , though it's a claim I've read based on other data and before that particular index was compiled.

Social mobility doesn't measure financial welfare and is only weakly correlated with the ability to improve your financial situation. It is largely a measure of wage compression in the economy. If everyone makes similar wages then the population will be highly socially mobile even if those wages are mediocre. Absolute economic mobility matters much more in terms of having an opportunity to get out of poverty. High ec…

> Absolute economic mobility matters much more

The US does poorly on this metric too: https://i.imgur.com/eYHUysQ.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/vLz5iUz.png [2]

(Note that the x-axis is "birth year.")

[1] https://equitablegrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/04282...

[2] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20200631

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#387

Post by 9rx »

simoncion wrote: post #377
9rx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially in rural (or really, anything that isn’t urban) areas What isn't urban but also not rural? I've seen disagreement over exactly where urban begins. A density of ~400 people per km², with a minimum of 1-2,000 people is a common definition, although the OECD targets a density of 1,500 people per km², with a minimum of 7,000 people, to capture all the variation throughout the nations it tracks. Regardless, i…

> What isn't urban but also not rural? The sub-urban regions. All the suburbs I've been in (and I'd wager nearly all of the US suburbs in existence) require you to have a vehicle to go about your day... unless you work from home and have everything delivered to you, I guess.

The particular urban subset that you speak of that is also literally named as such is still within the urban set, so that's clearly not it.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#388

Post by ge96 »

tavavex wrote: post #383
ge96 wrote: post #297

I'm "low-rich" (middle class?) poor eg. I have a six-fig job but I also have almost six-fig of debt, so I have after paying all my bills (mostly debt) almost nothing left. But I have an apt/cool cheap car, toys like 2nd hand computers/cameras. I've been in debt for the last 15 years since I went into college. I don't eat canned food often actually trying to fast as it's hard to not gain weight when I spend most of my…

To me it's still insane that education (the implied reason for your debt? correct me if I'm wrong) is so absurdly expensive in the US. Mind you, I'm saying that from another country where education isn't free, but most people will never be able to have anything remotely approaching six figure debt. You presumably work in a professional field, judging by your salary, yet you have an enormous anchor that's been draggin…

My student loans weren't as bad $30K, the rest is from other things eg. CC debt/car loan (28% APR). I also help out my own blood-related family eg. I have given away over $100K over the course of a few years.

But mostly I'm dumb, buying things I can't afford. The six-fig jobs come and go also but in general I've had at least $75-$83K jobs aside from the couple six-fig jobs I've had. I only started to have that kind of money in 2019 to now. I spent 2023 working in a warehouse/my own fault that time I went down to the $50K range or so with side gig work added in to warehouse work.

I did pay $3K for an MRI one time, well not yet it's on a defaulted card.

Oh and loneliness eg. I spent $1.2K at a strip club one time.

It's crazy how you go up in levels though like in 2016 I was living on $20K+ a year, now it's $100K+ a year

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#389

Post by vkou »

9rx wrote: post #251
dijit wrote: post #125

Even this does a poor job of explaining being poor. The constant open loop on everything you own, terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else; the constant churn of second-hand (and cheap/disposable) things that are already close to death before they come into your possession and- crucially: the crushing weight of knowing that any financial…

> terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money, more being able to deal with it immediately.…

> I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose something out of the junk pile

When you have money, you can just buy the thing you need, instead of hoarding five metric tonnes of crap that you'll never use.

If you haven't used something in the past 5 years, you can almost certainly toss it.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#390

Post by tstrimple »

barbazoo wrote: post #90
hexator wrote: post #37

Understanding poverty starts with empathy. People thinking that "poor is a mindset" are lacking in that. It's not that simple! You can't just mind your way out of poverty! This isn't a math problem.

> People thinking that "poor is a mindset" are lacking in that. I have never even considered people thinking like that. Is that real? Early in life I realized that the biggest factor of how you end up seems to be luck, where you're born, what's in your genes, how did parents raise you. Later in life I realized that most of the rest is mental health which you also don't have the greatest influence over the first 2 dec…

How have you managed to literally never meet a conservative?
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