Nitpicks and writing style aside (who posts charts without context?), the napkin math checks out to me as legit.
Here’s the thing all the detractors keep missing by nitpicking one data point or another: this author is talking systems, not products. Sure, the technologically inclined could get their phone cost down to that of an MVNO and a refurbished Android handset for $30/month, but most people aren’t that capable. Most people pay AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile - it’s why they’re the “big three”, after all. Same with home broadband, which nitpickers ignore in that $200 estimate the author makes; even if you qualify for subsidized internet, the waffling of the FCC combined with the hostility of carriers means most folks won’t even be able to get it or keep it.
And this is why I’m ultimately disappointed that the article is flagged, because for all the specific nitpicking done here in the comments, the author pre-empts those nitpicks in the piece. When you talk about systems at scale, you abandon precision for ranges, specifics for patterns, details for trends. Any idiot can point out that ahkshually, rent is only $R amount in this specific town that overbuilt two-bedroom units, and ahkshually, you can save on phone costs by using an MVNO, and ahkshually the government uses figure $P to measure poverty now.
The author lays out the most compelling argument yet of the brokenness of America as an economy. It drags the fiscal cliffs of poverty out into the daylight for all to see, with hard numbers of income versus expense to drive home how fucking impossible it is to survive and thrive in America today. It makes a compelling argument out of data and systems analysis that not just corroborates my own math, but also my lived experiences with poverty. He rightly calls out how the present system points to fancier phones, nicer cars, bigger homes, and bigger paychecks while yanking the rug out from under the working class in the form of crippled social services and non-existent price controls, leading over time to the modern era where the survival essentials are too expensive even on six figure salaries in most cities and towns. He doesn’t even pitch a solution, knowing that would detract from the argument (“SHIT IS BROKEN BY DESIGN”), leaving that to readers to figure out.
Look, most of HN think themselves as armchair savants, but we’re emphatically not. We’re also not particularly special, either, just lucky. The present system does not reward hard work, it punishes it. It is absolutely infuriating to see others receive aid and assistance for working less than I do, until I realize they’re also simply surviving by avoiding the cliffs that would tilt them to ruin. I wasn’t mad because they got help, I was mad because I didn’t.
That, I think, is what the author was trying to shift perspective on. Even if you make the big bucks, unless you’re a single income pulling down $200k+ outside a major metro area (which, let’s face it, HN readers represent a disproportionately large amount of said individuals), you’re still struggling. We’ve built a system around erroneous benchmarks that have gone unchecked and unaddressed for so long that everyone has optimized against them to keep more for themselves at the expense of others, and there is no pretty way out of it.