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How Poverty Taxes the Brain

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Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#131

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jacques_chester wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird statement: I ate at a ramen restaurant a couple of nights ago. It was quite healthy, I think I had pork, egg, spinach and seaweed in mine. There are plenty of good ramen restaurants branded from Japan. It is not the best food, but it is not the worst food either.

They're not thinking of ramen-at-the-noodle-house ramen. They're thinking of nothing-but-cheap-dry-noodles-and-salt ramen.

Ah, I forget hacker news has an American biased perspective, where ramen just means cheap crap you get in packets, not the fancy stuff we have in Asia.

And of course, ramen in Japanese just means "Chinese noodles", plenty of people in china eat them everyday in china and they are just fine. Imagine if some Chinese poster said "Yeah, careful with using that white bread as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's the kind of food that will mess up your health long-term".

Isn't that weird o first glance?

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#132

Post by ljf »

smtddr wrote: post #78

This makes perfect sense. If you're all stressed out trying to figure out if you'll have next month's rent or how you're gonna eat this week, you won't have the mindset to read a good book, consider how to improve your life in the long term or just relax your mind with some smooth jazz. A sorta near-topic question. How often do people check their bank account balance? I've been told I'm odd for not checking at least…

I am OK off these days, but have never really considered myself rich, but I go months without checking my bank account or even credit card bill. I don't need to as I simply know that I am spending less than I earn. Even at university when I had £5000 too live on in London, I rarely checked.

I come from a frugal family, so I always consider before I buy something. But even for larger purchases I just know what's in my savings roughly and go for it. It helps that while I've not been commanding very high wages, I have been employed consistently since I left university 14 years ago.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#133

Post by ljf »

morgante wrote: post #107

The experiment really doesn't match up with what they're saying. It's certainly well studied that making difficult decisions taxes you mentally, and it's not surprising that spending $1,500 is a more difficult decision for someone with a lower net worth. Where it falls apart is with the assumption that only the poor have to make difficult decisions. If anything, wealthier people spend a lot more time making decisions…

Mental bandwidth is not just purely down to the decisions you make for yourself, do you think working in McDonald's is not a stressful way to spend your day? These days I have a pretty high stress job, but I know which rile I'd rather be doing.

You also have to remember that for many people in a service role, that might be the only job they could find and they don't have the chances we do to pick and choose roles based on interesting projects.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#134

Post by pests »

ufmace wrote: post #89
3825 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you don't need to pay your programmers too much but you do need to pay them enough that they can focus more on their job and not on trivial items. In hindsight, nicely presented lunches, gym (and perhaps babysitting?) on campus apparently serve a very real purpose. It makes sense that they are minimizing distractions. (When you think of it this way, employees should not have to pay income tax for free lun…

I always thought that, at least for me, there's a level of cost below which I can just buy something on a whim without worrying about whether I can afford it at all, and above which I need to think about it for a minute. When I was in college, that level was about $10. It was a kinda weird transition when I got my first professional job out of college, and I had to get used to that threshold being closer to $1000 ins…

I'm currently at the $10 threshold and live with a slightly older roommate whose threshold is more in your current range.

Going out to restaurants, shopping, and general errands are so different for us. I help him out a lot so when we do things I listed he usually covers my meals and everything but I'm still in my lower threshold thinking.

Going to the grocery store and spending $300, to the hardware store and dropping $400, picking up some car part for $100 in a single day and he doesn't bat an eye. I would have exhausted an entire month or more of pay in one day if I did something like that.

Going to a restaurant and seeing a meal costs me, say, 2 hours of work requires me to think about it. If my roommate is covering it might only be 20 minutes of work.

The differences are amazing.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#135

Post by consz »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #131
jacques_chester wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not thinking of ramen-at-the-noodle-house ramen. They're thinking of nothing-but-cheap-dry-noodles-and-salt ramen.

Ah, I forget hacker news has an American biased perspective, where ramen just means cheap crap you get in packets, not the fancy stuff we have in Asia. And of course, ramen in Japanese just means "Chinese noodles", plenty of people in china eat them everyday in china and they are just fine. Imagine if some Chinese poster said "Yeah, careful with using that white bread as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's th…

If you only ate wonderbread for all 2k calories of the day, it would mess up your health -- just as eating $0.125 packets of ramen would mess up your health if that was all you ate.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#136

Post by seanmcdirmid »

consz wrote: post #135
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I forget hacker news has an American biased perspective, where ramen just means cheap crap you get in packets, not the fancy stuff we have in Asia. And of course, ramen in Japanese just means "Chinese noodles", plenty of people in china eat them everyday in china and they are just fine. Imagine if some Chinese poster said "Yeah, careful with using that white bread as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's th…

If you only ate wonderbread for all 2k calories of the day, it would mess up your health -- just as eating $0.125 packets of ramen would mess up your health if that was all you ate.

Not all ramen is $.125 a pack though, most of it in the world is actually not! It is just stupid and shallow that people think "ramen" would just mean the crap that they sell in American grocery stores.

Why not just use the real name of what you are talking about? "Instant noodles," "instant ramen," or "fangbian mian" would be much more accurate and much less bizarre.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#137

Post by desas »

ajslater wrote: post #127
ritchiea wrote: post #14

I can speak to this. For a while in 2010 I was completely broke after leaving my first job out of college, which I hated, and having some other employment opportunities fall through. Having that little money changes your decision making process about absolutely everything. Obviously every financial decision is effected, even the tiniest purchases weigh into bigger questions like "will I have enough money in my bank a…

There is a definition of "social class" I read in the last few years that separates income or wealth from social class. The definitive marker in this definition is the length of time you are able to plan for. Naturally wealth affects this, but is not the be all end all. This definition separates the spendy nouveau riche who blow millions on status markers as still being 'lower class', where thrifty thoughtful people…

This is how the class system in Britain works. As far as I can tell in the US, wealth is the only input into the social class equation. In Britain there are lots of inputs e.g. where you went to school, your accent, your vocabulary, your occupation, your friends and that of your parents. Wealth is a very small input (except so far in that you can afford to send your kids to the "right" schools where they will make the "right" friends and perhaps ascend a rung).

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#138

Post by tluyben2 »

unono wrote: post #110

Poverty is a great opportunity for startups. There's huge pent up demand for crowd sourcing of the Mechanical Turk variety. There's no real reason a person shouldn't be able to work anytime, using just a smartphone, and earn a middle class income. This is going to be huge next year, 2014 will be the year of the crowd-work.

What kind of work are you talking about? I live in a village/province/country with a very high unemployment rate for part of the year; I tried getting people (esp youth) here in the village to do the work you suggest; it's simply not possible. They cannot do it; not native English and the jobs which are out there are either trivial for a computer to do meaning they pay literally cents or too hard for them to do (correctly) even after training.

Yes, most US citizens with a smart phone (they were poor right, smartphone?) and a few neurons could get to a level of a few $100/month doing jobs which are or almost are doable by computers now. Check the HITs on mturk currently; there are exactly these 2 categories; most of them are already doable (and very easy as well) by computers and the rest is too hard for someone who is not native English speaking or who is just not smart enough.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#139

Post by Yetanfou »

scott_s wrote: post #26
ritchiea wrote: post #14

I can speak to this. For a while in 2010 I was completely broke after leaving my first job out of college, which I hated, and having some other employment opportunities fall through. Having that little money changes your decision making process about absolutely everything. Obviously every financial decision is effected, even the tiniest purchases weigh into bigger questions like "will I have enough money in my bank a…

I observe this at the grocery store. The ones I visit have people from a wide range of economic status. When I go in, I grab what I need and don't think about price - it's almost always just the staples like bread, milk, fruit and eggs, and I know with certainty that I can afford it. And that I don't think about price is literally true until I'm told how much it costs, then I pay it, then I promptly stop thinking abo…

Ah, but keeping track of cost/benefit is a solemn duty in a capitalist economy. The only power you as an individual consumer have against vendors and producers is the power of choice - the choice to buy which product at what price at which location. No matter whether you have plenty of money or have to turn each currency-unit twice before spending it, if you forget about this you will get pilfered. You will lose track of current market prices for commodities and end up paying through the nose because the vendor in your location has noticed he can increase prices without losing business, thus increasing profits. Others who have less to spend will take their business elsewhere and before you know it you'll have created yourself the groceries-equivalent of an Apple store.

So if you happen to see fewer and fewer people swapping products in their baskets because they are not on sale or using coupons or hands of small change or whatnot, take heed and do some comparison shopping.

Re: How Poverty Taxes the Brain

#140

Post by jacques_chester »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #131
jacques_chester wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not thinking of ramen-at-the-noodle-house ramen. They're thinking of nothing-but-cheap-dry-noodles-and-salt ramen.

Ah, I forget hacker news has an American biased perspective, where ramen just means cheap crap you get in packets, not the fancy stuff we have in Asia. And of course, ramen in Japanese just means "Chinese noodles", plenty of people in china eat them everyday in china and they are just fine. Imagine if some Chinese poster said "Yeah, careful with using that white bread as a currency unit. It sure is cheap, but it's th…

I'm Australian.

We have packet noodles too, we just call them "noodles".

Paul Graham has referred to ramen a lot in the past, I guess it's a west-coast-exposure-to-Japan thing.

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