On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

I think advertising has a role but it’s amplifying an existing cultural value rather than creating one. A culture which conceives of itself as capitalist naturally encourages thinking of wealth as your score and at least in the U.S. we lack much counter pressure pushing other values as equally important. Even things like religions which discourage this have been distorted to fit, as anyone who’s ever seen a prosperity gospel believer try to talk their way around the clear meaning of the needle’s eye parable can attest.

I think this comes back to basic primate social dynamics. We evolved tracking our social standing relative to others and wealth is pretty easy to compare. Advertising exacerbates that tendency but I don’t think there’s any way to get rid of it with standard issue humans.

> I’m not quite sure why it works this way.

It works this way because people are, rationally, more interested in their own physical safety than they are in the feelings of strangers.

Anecdote: I was in San Francisco a few years back. There were homeless folks everywhere. Some were nice, even chatty. We felt at ease even when walking through areas that were full of homeless folks. But a couple of days into our trip, a homeless dude accosted a coworker on the sidewalk. He shouted violent threats, shoved my coworker, and told him not to come back. When I asked my coworker what set the guy off, he said that he had absolutely no idea.

That experience changed how I interacted with homeless folks for the remainder of the trip. I made no eye contact. I avoided areas with groups of homeless folks. I did not respond when spoken to. Is that fair to the average homeless person, who is perfectly normal, just down on their luck? To be perfectly honest, I do not care. My physical safety comes before your feelings. Full stop.

Not to mention: an iphone (or any smartphone really) is a really efficient investment. I'm not sure, but for a few hundred dollars you have a very good device already.

Compare that to my own growing up, and we had separate costs for a TV, a radio, we would save up for a walkman or CD player, internet started off as dial-up at the library, then a PC. We'd buy CD's with games and things like Encarta, we'd record or rent films on a video recorder, etc etc etc. And all of those things had to be shared.

Now, with a smartphone, you have all of the above and then some - at a one time investment. Each of those individual devices back then cost the same as a single decent smartphone does nowadays.

I really don't see the issue. I mean I kinda get the objections, because for some reason smartphones are still considered luxury items (but only if you're poor), but it's such an empowering tool (and a source of distraction, which is something everyone needs).

> Nikes and playing on iphones.

This is the kind of statement you hear from conservatives that blame poor people for their poverty.

There’s a number of reasons. Because when you churn through a dozen pairs of cheap no-name shoes, it ends up being more than just buying a better set of shoes. Maybe a relative gave you some Christmas money. Or maybe you got overtime for working an extra 20 hours.

Being poor, you are constantly judged on your appearance, and it has a huge effect on how you are treated by retailers, government (police, social services, etc), teachers/school admins, and friends.

When you’re poor, everything you own is half broken, purchased used, worn thin. You most likely live in an area that has a high crime rate, is loud, has a long commute to your job, is dirty. You have access to terrible, low quality food. You skip doctors appointments (can’t afford the time off or co-pays) and dental work. (American) society constantly blames you for your situation.

Whatever the reason, poverty is a daily assault on your human dignity. It’s incredibly difficult to escape. Sometimes, you have to say, “Screw it” and buy your kid the expensive shoes. That money won’t get you out of poverty, but it may make you and your child happy for a bit.

The hardest part for me was convincing my partner that price is not equal to value. It took me a decade of arguments and constant proofs to even begin to convince my partner that you can almost always find much better value for much less money.

Marketing does such an incredible job at convincing people that price and value are the same thing that it takes tremendous mental effort for people to acknowledge that it's not like that at all. People refuse to acknowledge how powerful advertising is at distorting our own perceptions. People think things like "I'm not that kind of person to use product x or drive car y or live in country z, I'm better than that" - These people are misguided.

Usually you have to move to a different country to get better value. You don't want to buy a house in a neighborhood next to money launderers who get easy money (you don't want your hard-earned money competing on the same playing field as their big easy-earned money). You want to buy a house somewhere where people work hard for their money. Sometimes these places don't have a very good reputation but the reality often has nothing to do with the marketing.

People also get caught up in group think. I was saying for years that the best value real estate was outside of big cities including in the surrounding areas. Nobody agreed with me, I often heard arguments like "We don't want to live next to the kinds of people who live there." The great irony is that "these people" are probably the best kinds when you judge them based on their character and personal values. Again, this is due to people confusing price with value. They think that people who earn a lot of money are better people, smarter people but there is no correlation - They are just lucky people with huge egos; in many ways they are more primitive. Since the pandemic now all the rich suckers suddenly decided all at once that they want to live outside the cities... I'm thinking to move even further out.