Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor • Hacker News Board

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#121

Post by JKCalhoun » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

zpeti wrote: post #75

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an excellent comment. What makes me very sad is that during the past 14 months the divide between those who own assets and those who don't has reached gargantuan proportions. I mean, in my raging inferno of a housing market, over the past couple of years home prices have easily doubled. So a 400k house from 2018 now sells for 800k. Yes, if I want to move to another house in my area I'll pay similarly…

I would love to see a parallel universe where in 2008 no one is bailed out and bankers are either on the hook for the risks they took or actually are sent to prison. Taking it further back, what if the tech bubble of the 90s is allowed to collapse, interests aren't set at almost 0, and a housing bubble isn't blown by exploiting minorities. And last year airlines, and other corporations who didn't account for black sw…

I agree with your sentiment, injustice-outrage, but suspect that had things gone that way we'd be in Japan's real estate quagmire still, unemployment at 50%.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#122

Post by NikolaNovak » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

nanis wrote: post #36

Wealth is a stock measure, income is flow. You accumulate wealth out of what you can set aside out of the flow. Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation. Then, when we sort of "make it" here, people who…

I understand what you mean; my parents, my sister & I came to Canada in late 90's. We went through normal "new immigrant" jobs - newspaper delivery, cleaning, etc; but eventually my dad got an IT job again.

5-7 years after arriving, our income was nominal. But having arrived to Canada with literally a suitcase of clothes each, the prospects, in particularly retirement, were substantially different.

It works both ways sometimes though - not only is it difficult for those born here to understand the difference, we too have to mentally remind ourselves - just because I make as much money as my best friends, I should not indulge in quite the same lifestyle; when it comes to "wealth", they are WAY ahead (some got an apartment as gift from parents, others had their university education paid for, trusts and RESP/RRSPs, etc etc).

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#123

Post by bachmeier » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

There are a couple things to understand about being poor.

It's not about lack of money (though obviously having lots of money means you're not poor). It's about insecurity. I grew up in farm country in the 1980s. Nobody had money, but I didn't feel poor. When I moved to other parts of the country, that's when I encountered poor people. They had to worry about crime, schools for their kids, and being homeless.

When you skip meals because you have to put two gallons of gas in the car so you can get to work the rest of the week, that's when you're poor. Or when you're under constant stress because you're worried about what's going to go wrong next, and when you spend all your time on stuff like where you'll spend your last $12 because that's all you've got. It's hard to understand what it's like to be poor because you don't even realize that's part of the deal.

The other thing is that there's a saying along the lines of getting wealthy being mostly the same for everyone, but every poor person is poor for different reasons. One example is a guy I knew in the 1990s that worked hard at a low-wage job. He got hit by a car while walking across the street. The driver got away and left him laying there. He couldn't work for months. The non-poor person's solution is to move in with their parents or to have their parents send them money. Maybe put things on the credit card. Maybe take money out of savings. He didn't have those options. How do you financially recover from something like this if once you go back to work, you're making the same low wage?

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#124

Post by NikolaNovak » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

throwaway6734 wrote: post #102

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is an excellent comment. What makes me very sad is that during the past 14 months the divide between those who own assets and those who don't has reached gargantuan proportions. I mean, in my raging inferno of a housing market, over the past couple of years home prices have easily doubled. So a 400k house from 2018 now sells for 800k. Yes, if I want to move to another house in my area I'll pay similarly…

The solution is to move to an area with cheaper housing. Moving to opportunity is the American way

That worked for early movers at beginning of Covid. In Canada, 12 months later, previously "cheap" provinces have doubled in prices too.

Still cheaper than Vancouver or Toronto of course; but given lower income in those areas, and the growing pains they're about to have in catching up their infrastructure etc, it's no longer a straightforward gain anymore.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#125

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #62

elliekelly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this for the longest time. An embarrassingly long time. Then I volunteered with a program that helps people who qualify for EITC to prepare their taxes and budget how they’ll use their tax return to “get them out of their situation”. Person after person came in, we did their taxes, and then we went over their expenses and each case was a frustrating puzzle that was impossible to solve. There just wasn’t eno…

Okay...but on /r/personalfinance, people show up all the time with a litany of complaints and a litany of awful, awful budget mistakes they have no interest in fixing. 120/month cellphone, 400/month doordash, Dodge Charger with a 600/month note. And so on. each case was a frustrating puzzle What puzzled you? The necessities should never be a puzzle. If the rent, the food, the utilities, the insurance, and the day car…

[deleted]

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#126

Post by c22 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #62

elliekelly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this for the longest time. An embarrassingly long time. Then I volunteered with a program that helps people who qualify for EITC to prepare their taxes and budget how they’ll use their tax return to “get them out of their situation”. Person after person came in, we did their taxes, and then we went over their expenses and each case was a frustrating puzzle that was impossible to solve. There just wasn’t eno…

Okay...but on /r/personalfinance, people show up all the time with a litany of complaints and a litany of awful, awful budget mistakes they have no interest in fixing. 120/month cellphone, 400/month doordash, Dodge Charger with a 600/month note. And so on. each case was a frustrating puzzle What puzzled you? The necessities should never be a puzzle. If the rent, the food, the utilities, the insurance, and the day car…

My cell phone bill (for my family of 4) would be around $120/month, but it's discounted down to around $80 because of my employer. There's no note on our car cause we could afford to just buy it with cash. We never spend money on doordash because we have plenty of time to go shopping and make our own meals.

For the most part we have rent (mortgage), food, utilities, insurance, and day care (have you looked into the cost of this?) all locked up and well-budgeted, but sometimes someone leaves the door open or the hose on too long and we have an unexpectedly high utility bill. One time my wife left an entire bag of groceries behind the car and accidentally backed over it. When COVID hit and my dad was simultaneously suffering from a suppressed immune system we had to stop leaving the kids with my parents and up our daycare expenditures quite a bit. These sorts of problems aren't really problems for us, we can just cover the added expense out of our "emergency savings" bucket, but if two emergencies happen back-to-back sometimes that bucket gets depleted and we have to draw from "vacation savings" instead. Fortunately we're able to fill these buckets with hundreds of excess dollars a month, so they are usually adequate. I could see it being problematic if the buckets filled at a much slower rate.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#127

Post by ta988 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

phone8675309 wrote: post #14

aspaviento wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

I had a coworker at my first programming job complaining how hard it was to make it on a $175,000 a year salary in the Midwest. It was nearly three times what I was making and I thought "I can manage with so much less, wtf is this person’s problem?"

Same thing I was on a job at $30k (for a familly of two, in a big city) and one of the bosses came and started to complain to a few of us with the same salary (some with kids) how hard it is to live with only his salary of $180k and his wife salary of $100k. Many wealthy people have absolutely no clue. Another person in that same job was complaining he was not able to make it with a $70k salary. Turns out after talking, he was taking Uber to go to work (1mile away directly on a line of public transport), always ordered food on stuff like grubhub amd was maxing out credit card all the time... I kept seeing people with >$70k salaries that were absolutely unable to save. Another one worked there for 20 years, with his $180k salary (started above $100k) he told me that he had 0 saving, no health expenses besides tiny stuff and no home ownership. Some people are just really bad at managing their money. Or maybe they are good at managing their immediate comfort and don't plan ahead... not sure.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#128

Post by NikolaNovak » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #110

zpeti wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see a parallel universe where in 2008 no one is bailed out and bankers are either on the hook for the risks they took or actually are sent to prison. Taking it further back, what if the tech bubble of the 90s is allowed to collapse, interests aren't set at almost 0, and a housing bubble isn't blown by exploiting minorities. And last year airlines, and other corporations who didn't account for black sw…

[flagged]

I see what you are saying; coming from Europe, I'm frequently astonished how much "Socialist", "Leftie" or even "Liberal" in USA is a dirty word of political death.

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#129

Post by detritus » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #118

detritus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O/T - How many side mirror rims were in each cycle? If it were just one, then your shifts must have been over a day long, which doesn't make much sense.

Good question! It was 4. While waiting for the press I'd deflash [1] the set that were cool enough to put to the grinder and stack them for transport to the next station. Those doing the math will note that in theory 67 seconds would allow for 1716 rims per 8-hour shift. But it took time to open it, get them out, and close it again. The machine never stopped; breaks were handled by somebody coming along and taking ov…

Crikey! Thanks. That's still a heck of a lot of work in those hours, with very little downtime.

I do a lot of 'proceduralised' jobs, but I'm 'lucky' in that I get to define and hone the procedure and then it tends only to be necessary for a few hours or a day or three, before I move onto something else entirely. I get a wee quick out of making things more efficient, then get to move on before my brain calcifies.

The thought of acting a mere part of a machine for 8 hours a day, weeks, months and years on end is ... well, it makes me appreciate my job, even at its worst!

Re: Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

#130

Post by pedrosorio » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

TomSwirly wrote: post #86

aspaviento wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

> I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. It depends on where you live. I lived in New York City for years. If you had a family, it would be hard to live there as on 6000€/mo, unless you had been living in the same apartment for decades. The median cost of a 2-bedroom apartment there is 3000€ a month, taxation is high (federal, city and state taxes), food is wildly exp…

It’s reasonable to assume the politician earning 6000 euro a month was not living in NYC, London or Tokyo