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The cost of hand-to-mouth living

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Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#81

Post by vacri »

johnpowell wrote: post #75
w1ntermute wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's one big difference, though. To shop at Costco you have to buy twice as much (plus typically pay membership fees). That step could be too steep for the people most living hand-to-mouth, even though it would save them money within weeks. So there could be sample bias here too. See the article Why Can’t Walmart Be More Like Costco? [0] for more on this. 0: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/26/why-c…

I ran into this today when buying TP. I actually just wrote about it. http://stfudamnit.com/2013/05/04/poverty-toilet-paper-and-th...

It's hard for people to make the comparisons between brands, sizes, so on and so forth. Australia recently passed legislation requiring supermarkets to list the price-per-unit-weight/volume alongside the product price. So on a food item, you'll see the price for the product, and also the price per 100 grams.

It means things are directly comparable across brands and sizes ("how does this 117g portion compare to this 270g one?"). It's a fantastic bit of legislation.

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#82

Post by ck2 »

noonespecial wrote: post #14
ck2 wrote: post #3

My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".

"The poor are poor because all of their choices in life suck." There are about 3 ways to interpret that statement. How people interpret it at first reading basically describes their political philosophies.

Change the word "choices" to "options" and I think the meaning is far more clear.

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#83

Post by AlexeiSadeski »

You can eat quite well on $3/day. $1.50/day of food is comfortably above subsistence in the US.

A diet of strictly rice and beans will net 1500 calories for $.30 - $.50 per day. That's not an appetizing diet, but provides a base number for calibration.

Cheap eating discussion:

http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/topic.php?id=599

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#84

Post by AlexeiSadeski »

lifeguard wrote: post #48

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwAQwItEjUo If minimum wage was $22 an hour the price of dinner for two at Applebee's would increase around 80 cents. $22 an hour is what the wage should be in keeping pace with workers increased productivity. If the minimum wage was in fact a livable wage young adults could support themselves with an entry level job. I believe unemployment is the highest among males 18 - 22 years old.…

If it takes $22/hour to "live," what are the people in Mexico, earning $5/DAY, doing? Are they not living?

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#85

Post by raverbashing »

jmilloy wrote: post #49
raverbashing wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To digest an apple it takes calories. Yes, an apple has around 100 calories (depends on size) but the net value can be negative. Celery is the classical example of this.

Might want to check up on this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_calorie_food

That's very interesting

The thing is, the digestion calories are one small portion of the dietary effects of any food.

For example, some increase thermogenesis, so you could account for that

Yes, apart from cold water it seems hard to think any food can provide no calories. Evolution took care of our digestive tract extracting the most of food (unless you're eating paper)

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#86

Post by AlexeiSadeski »

danso wrote: post #4

I was hoping to see some data on how limited funds forced people to buy inefficiently...that is, buying cheaper quantities that are per-item more expensive than bulk buying because they can't afford the up front cost of buying bulk. My roommate will do this when buying dish soap for the household, always getting the smallest bottle than just paying for the large one at a 30% discount per ounce. Also, some cheap items…

Rice costs $.20 for 1300 calories.

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#87

Post by AlexeiSadeski »

scarmig wrote: post #21
alxp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory Vimes quote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Thos…

Health insurance is a similar situation. Once you've saved up a decent amount, it makes much more sense to go with a very high deductible plan. Sure, you might lose 10k in one year through some disaster, but on average you'll pay much less than that, such that it's cheaper to forgo insurance for everyday health expenses. If you're poor, though, having to spend 10k out of pocket will throw you into a spiral of debt, b…

It makes sense to go high deductible no matter what your income is. It costs less to pay interest and principle on your $10k disaster deductible than it does to pay $2k/year extra on low deductible health insurance.

Insurance is a tax on people who are bad at math.

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#88

Post by AlexeiSadeski »

alxp wrote: post #5
ck2 wrote: post #3

My personal saying is "It's very expensive to be poor".

Obligatory Vimes quote: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Thos…

Which boots do people in India wear? The ones making $1.50/day?

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#89

Post by johnpowell »

vacri wrote: post #81
johnpowell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran into this today when buying TP. I actually just wrote about it. http://stfudamnit.com/2013/05/04/poverty-toilet-paper-and-th...

It's hard for people to make the comparisons between brands, sizes, so on and so forth. Australia recently passed legislation requiring supermarkets to list the price-per-unit-weight/volume alongside the product price. So on a food item, you'll see the price for the product, and also the price per 100 grams. It means things are directly comparable across brands and sizes ("how does this 117g portion compare to this 2…

We have had this in the USA for as long as I have bought food. Next to the price on something like a pizza they note the price per ounce.

Re: The cost of hand-to-mouth living

#90

Post by nostrademons »

daeken wrote: post #12
danso wrote: post #4

I was hoping to see some data on how limited funds forced people to buy inefficiently...that is, buying cheaper quantities that are per-item more expensive than bulk buying because they can't afford the up front cost of buying bulk. My roommate will do this when buying dish soap for the household, always getting the smallest bottle than just paying for the large one at a 30% discount per ounce. Also, some cheap items…

When you don't have enough to cover all your bills and keep appliances up, your spending patterns change dramatically as well. If you don't have a functioning fridge, you're only buying a tiny (extremely overpriced) package of meat. If you don't have gas for your oven, you're only going to be making things in the microwave. This is discussed in numerous really interesting ways in "Makers" by Cory Doctorow: http://cra…

There're also some perverse incentives around happiness calculations too. When I was in college, I had a netfriend who lived in a poor rust-belt town, and her family never had enough to eat. One time she was talking about her brand new DVD player and home entertainment system, a couple days after talking about how there was no food in the house. I asked her why she'd just bought a brand new DVD player (something that, to my middle-class college existence, was an incredible luxury) when she was going hungry.

She replied that if she'd spent that money on food, she'd eat well this month but would just go hungry again next month. This way, she'd go hungry all the time, but at least she could lose herself in a movie and forget about it. There's a peculiar kind of logic to that which I can't really argue with, despite the common Internet refrain about how poor people are poor because of their own stupidity.

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