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

Being poor changes your thinking about everything

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 196 posts

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#151

Post by vonmoltke »

pandaman wrote: post #122
wildwood wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only paying 35% in US federal taxes if you're making over 400K a year. Someone making $100K to $150K is in the 28% bracket. And you're probably only paying 10% in state tax if you live in California. Most other states' income tax are around 5 or 6 percent, and some are at zero.

35% = 28% income tax + 6.2% social security tax + 1.45% medicare tax

Social Security tax caps out at an income of $113,700[1]. Medicare tax actually goes up slightly at $200,000, though.

[1] http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240/~/so...

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#152

Post by pessimizer »

superuser2 wrote: post #98
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you make the similar protest if they complained about their tax dollars going to wars and spying?

The people you vote for when you want lower taxes (Republicans) are not going to cut budgets for wars and spying, they're going to cut "redistributive" programs for "welfare queens." Libertarians might get it done, but there's a serious bootstrapping problem in getting enough people to vote for them that they have a chance. For now, every vote for a libertarian is thrown away to idealism where it could at least be do…

I think his point is 'Some people like wars and spying, some people like welfare.'

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#153

Post by sophacles »

superuser2 wrote: post #98
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you make the similar protest if they complained about their tax dollars going to wars and spying?

The people you vote for when you want lower taxes (Republicans) are not going to cut budgets for wars and spying, they're going to cut "redistributive" programs for "welfare queens." Libertarians might get it done, but there's a serious bootstrapping problem in getting enough people to vote for them that they have a chance. For now, every vote for a libertarian is thrown away to idealism where it could at least be do…

I find it amusing that the cracked articles we were pointed to a few posts up talk about the mindset of "poor people think in terms of 'what do we need this instant' rather than 'what will we need in the future' due to scarcity of wiggle room in the budget". Basically one of the problems is people can't securely make smart long-term choices because the risk/reward calculation says if one unexpected thing comes up, the long-term payoff won't ever arrive because of getting hurt in the short term.

If you look at dollars as "lifestyle points", and votes as "societal points", the same reasoning is going on right here: the scarcity of "societal points" is causing the same reasoning about how to vote as poor people have to make for spending.

Not sure what that means - only noticing that there are parallels.

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#154

Post by s_kilk »

clarkm wrote: post #87
waps wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having kids is a human right. That should be the end of the discussion. Anyone, rich or poor, is * entitled to have children [1] * entitled to financial and other aid to raise those children safely and securely [2] [1] UDHR, Article 16, paragraph (1) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#a16 [2] UDHR, Article 25, paragraph (2) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#a25 Since the US has signed these treaties, and unless…

Why is calling something a "human right" and pointing to some UN declaration any different than calling something a "God-given right" and pointing to the Bible?

It's different in that the UN demonstrably exists.

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#155

Post by sanderjd »

jberryman wrote: post #145
goggles99 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? What about sales tax? that is 10% in California. Throw that on top. What about property tax? Car Tax?, Health care tax (yeah since the state forces all hospitals to treat anyone without insurance [every ER at midnight is a pediatricians office for illegals - almost every kid there is literally running around with emergency sniffles and an emergency low grade fever] I get to flip the bill so I conside…

>Are you serious? What about sales tax? that is 10% in California. Throw that on top. What about property tax? Car Tax?... Wtf? That's not how taxes work, guy.

Well...sure it is. Obviously you can't add up the numbers (like your parent may or may not be implying you can), but if you really want to, you can look at all the dollars you have coming in, and all the dollars you pay to taxes of any kind, and determine a percentage. I have no idea if it would be anywhere near 50%, but I suspect it would be more than 35%.

(Which seems fine to me...)

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#156

Post by [deleted] »

clarkm wrote: post #87
waps wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having kids is a human right. That should be the end of the discussion. Anyone, rich or poor, is * entitled to have children [1] * entitled to financial and other aid to raise those children safely and securely [2] [1] UDHR, Article 16, paragraph (1) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#a16 [2] UDHR, Article 25, paragraph (2) http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/#a25 Since the US has signed these treaties, and unless…

Why is calling something a "human right" and pointing to some UN declaration any different than calling something a "God-given right" and pointing to the Bible?

[deleted]

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#157

Post by devilsadvocate9 »

goggles99 wrote: post #129

Being poor in America is a state of mind. Do you think that the majority of people in the world today would consider themselves "poor" if they suddenly traded places with a "poor" American? Do you think that the majority of people would think that it was "too hard to bear" if they had to work, live in low rent apartment AND go to school? America's poor are the worlds wealthiest. The sad state of mind that people fall…

We live in a cognitively assorted economy and half of all people have an IQ below 100. 5% have an IQ below 70. If they have unusually pleasant personalities, they may find jobs in the service industry. But most won't.

We have a historically vestigial class of people that have nothing to offer a modern economy. And that class will grow as the economy gets more complex. An increase in complexity is indistinguishable from downward mobility.

Poor immigrants come from places where the cognitive sorting hasn't happened yet.

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#158

Post by eli_gottlieb »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #64
vacri wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were, without a doubt, the best articles that Cracked has put forth. I've never been in poverty, but I've seen it from a near distance. I've been poor, but if push came to shove, I always had a middle-class mother I could move back to. That's a 'safety net' that many in poverty simply do not have. And so it annoys the shit out of me that when a friend in finance got a $10k raise, all she could talk about was "b…

And so it annoys the shit out of me that when a friend in finance got a $10k raise, all she could talk about was "but I lose half of it to the government!". In some strange world where 30% equals half, she's more concerned about what she lost than the fact that her gain was almost equal to a poor person's annual income. She couldn't even frame her payrise as a positive. There's more to life than feeling lucky we aren…

If you value ambition more highly than contentment, at what point does your ambition stop? If you become a millionaire, won't this just lead to your looking to become a billionaire?

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#159

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tsotha wrote: post #108
poppysan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should let us know exactly who has the right to reproduce. Poor people don't?

Sure they do. But do they have a right to use the fact that they have kids to sponge off the rest of us?

They're not sponging off you. You're exploiting them.

Re: Being poor changes your thinking about everything

#160

Post by jpau »

daurnimator wrote: post #88
jpau wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oops! I hit the wrong reply 6ren is right, but it's not the whole story. In addition to to being able to have multiple people each entirely responsible for a single lease, we (Australia) have a very generous "student allowance" scheme for most students. This guarantees us students a fortnightly income that is almost certainly at least whatever we would be paying in rent + utilities. My situation is such an example. I…

This is very much the opposite to what I experienced in Melbourne. Youth Allowance with Rent didn't cover my rent in a share house, or even bills. When I didn't have more than one part time job I was relying on money from my Mother to pay the rent.

I receive ~$470 a fortnight in youth allowance and rent assistance. My utilities work out to around $20 a week. That leaves $430 a fortnight for rent. My wages pay my groceries.

Realestate.com.au affords some pretty nice share housing at that rate.. :) I admit it's not the standard of housing that I grew up in, but why would I be entitled to such? ;)

Post reply on HN