Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Being poor vs. being broke

blog.ctms.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 732 posts

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#651

Post by slaughtr »

phil21 wrote: post #595
slaughtr wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not at all need to be well off to take $250k in student debt. In fact, the worse off you are the easier it is to do so. It’s how the US federal student loan aide works, essentially. The less you have the more they’ll loan.

Totally different from my lived experience. Friends who grew up in middle class to upper middle class suburbs and parenting all took on college debt to varying degrees and varying outcomes 20 years later. Friends who grew up with me in the inner city around poverty and who grew up poor or worse didn’t even consider college as an option due to the costs. Almost no one growing up in actual poverty is going to be consid…

I mean maybe by being a poor person in college on federal student loans I ended up naturally around other poor people in college on federal student loans and it’s confirmation bias, but what you’re saying is a little too generalized for my lived experience. Lots and lots of people growing up in poverty take that FAFSA and run - it’s what everyone says is the only way out of poverty.

I’ll give you this, though: most of the poor college students I knew (myself included) never made it to the $250k line because we eventually had to drop out because things like having to work to afford food made it harder to do well enough to stay in school and graduate.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#652

Post by seec »

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…

Keeping stuff around and refusing to fix things are not necessarily correlated to being poor.

Both my parents have been in the top 15-10% income bracket, yet they pile up all kind of useless garbage, very often refuse to invest in proper stuff because "it's too expensive", always try to find ways to get things "cheaper" and will haggle artisans to get the cheapest job possible (and then complain when the work is done poorly).

They do not come from poor family and were never really in need. Their brothers and sisters do not show the same behaviors and have built more desirable lives/legacies on half the income. It all comes from mental issues.

I largely disagree on the narrative of poor people doom loop. If you are around those long enough you will understand that they really do make stupid decisions and cannot figure out things correctly. Giving them more money do not really fix the problem, they just get bigger money problem and rarely end up in a comfortable situation.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#653

Post by thePhytochemist »

magicalist wrote: post #142
JohnMakin wrote: post #55

I understand the sentiment. I grew up lower middle class but with financially illiterate and neglectful parents and had a great deal of food scarcity and other things that caused me to leave home at 17. It was really difficult. The first place I managed to get, was a room for $750 a month and I took home $900. I had no car and had to take the bus everywhere. It's true - everything just piles up when you are stretched…

Really great comment. > The first place I managed to get, was a room for $750 a month and I took home $900. I had no car and had to take the bus everywhere. It's true - everything just piles up when you are stretched thin. After I got my first job in tech that honestly felt at the time like it paid too much, it was crazy to find just how expensive and stressful it was just to exist before that point and how so much o…

That's a really good point about the free stuff people with wealth get.

Free objects are an easy to understand example. If you're in an expensive neighborhood you can walk down the street and really good get free stuff because people are throwing it out - like the nice 42" Samsung screen I'm using right now. In a poorer neighborhood that just doesn't happen.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#654

Post by thePhytochemist »

I see a lot of musing and wondering here about the cause of poverty.

One thing that's missing that I have seen a fair bit is crime and scams. People who are victims of crime can get dumped into the poverty trap through no fault of their own. For a while I was living in my car because my signature was forged by and an employer decided to simply opt out of payment. I took the employer to arbitration and won but that took 2.5 years - that's obviously a structural problem when eviction happens in 30 days.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#655

Post by dijit »

hippo22 wrote: post #626
shroobani wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have a vehicle you can't do anything, if this person was anywhere other than a large east coast city losing your vehicle is death. Have you ever tried to go somewhere in the south without a car? Pick two points even a couple miles away from each other around Kansas City, Kansas and genuinely think about how you would physically do it. You can't go anywhere so you can't work so you can't pay rent, you can…

This story clearly occurs in the UK.

The UK suffers from car dependence pretty much everywhere outside of London.

It’s very far from its european cousins in this regard.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#656

Post by nradov »

bccdee wrote: post #563
potato3732842 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum almost doesn't matter in a discussion of mobility. Nobody ever escaped poverty working minimum wage. They found a way to move up.

> They found a way to move up. Yeah, and they probably had to spend money to make that happen. Night courses at a community college aren't free. A higher minimum wage makes it easier to get your foot in the door for something better.

Most community colleges have some sort of tuition waiver or scholarship program for low income students.

https://www.westvalley.edu/admissions/free-tuition.html

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#657

Post by abustamam »

seec wrote: post #652
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…

Keeping stuff around and refusing to fix things are not necessarily correlated to being poor. Both my parents have been in the top 15-10% income bracket, yet they pile up all kind of useless garbage, very often refuse to invest in proper stuff because "it's too expensive", always try to find ways to get things "cheaper" and will haggle artisans to get the cheapest job possible (and then complain when the work is done…

> they really do make stupid decisions and cannot figure out things correctly

Is this not the doom loop? People are poor because they don't know how to manage their money, and that keeps them poor.

If it were common knowledge that payday loans were a scam / terrible financial decision then there wouldn't be a dozen in every poor neighborhood. Somewhat related is the newfound ability to finance absolutely everything, including your $20 doordash order. It's never been easier for someone to rocket deep into debt because of their lack of financial literacy.

And of course vendors make these terrible decisions look very attractive. In a nation where diabetes and high blood pressure is rampant because fast food ads look so good, it's no wonder that this same nation struggles with financial literacy, because advertisers make these deicions look very good.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#658

Post by [deleted] »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #544

with respect to food i wanted to ask HN here, what if a bunch of people came together. Let us say 10000 americans who are poor decide to pool in money and import groceries from a country with much cheaper prices (say India) would this cost less after shipping? What if there was a startup that groups people like this in a bunch and does weekly shipping of groceries from a low cost country? Would that help?

[deleted]

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#659

Post by abustamam »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #621
dwedge wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to avoid being unable to eat. As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up the paperwork. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor owed somewhere around £400…

Speaking with conservatively minded friends on this subject, they just shrug it off, smug in the knowledge that if they were in that situation they would immediately be able to pull themselves out of it. The fact that other people don't just do that is because they make poor decisions and therefore its all about 'personal responsibility'. There really is no convincing them otherwise.

I was chatting with a buddy about this. Older, libertarian fellow. He was in this situation, several times. And he was able to pull himself out of it.

That was all the "proof" he needed to be against helping the poor, because if he could do it, anyone could do it.

Re: Being poor vs. being broke

#660

Post by abustamam »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #523
dwedge wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to avoid being unable to eat. As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up the paperwork. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor owed somewhere around £400…

HN folks ought to watch Good Fortune ft. Keanu Reeves [0]. Still out in theaters. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWndx83RwQ

It looks like a good movie and in looking forward to its arrival on streaming but I'm curious the relevance of it to parent comment.
Post reply on HN