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Being frugal is for the rich

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Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#151

Post by ahtu123 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #140
ahtu123 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really shows how some people in HN have never experienced poverty. If a households main income earner is making minimum wage they will not be making shopping trips to IKEA to furnish their whole apartment lol. IKEA is cheap but the $50 you have left over after bills won't get you much. Many months you will have a negative balance after you've paid for essentials.

>If a households main income earner is making minimum wage Maybe you shouldn't start a family when you are making minimum wage, in a city with a high cost of living.

I don't see what that has to do with what I said but sure, the poor shouldn't start families.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#152

Post by zokier »

logfromblammo wrote: post #30

I would also make the economic argument that a rich person that is still frugal is actively exacerbating income inequality. If Warren Buffett is indeed still paying only $3 for breakfast every day, that's giving a big middle finger to the economy. Money is half of the circulatory system of the economy. When it pools too long in one spot, it clots, and then a thrombosed clot can cause damage somewhere else. He really…

What do you think Buffett is doing with his wealth, keeping it in a money bin like Scrooge McDuck?

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#153

Post by manigandham »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #150
T2_t2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they also had less. This is the ... I'm not sure of the right word, paradox? duality? ... anyway, the problem/benefit of globalisation, that it leads to cheaper stuff. We all have more today, even on less money. Thought experiment: ask yourself when it was better to be poor: 1950, or 2018. In 1950 you could... go to the library? In 2018, even the very poor likely have a mobile phone, the internet, a games cons…

More entertainment, maybe, but "more" overall? Would you rather live in a world with no smartphones where you afford a house/apartment, or one with smartphones where you can't?

EDIT: Poor decisions are poor decisions and it's much easier to be productive today than ever before, if that's what you choose to be. There's no reason you can't "afford" a house, everything is relative.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#154

Post by Consultant32452 »

Frondo wrote: post #110
Consultant32452 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually care about the well-being of the poor, or do you just hate the rich? Because you seem much more concerned about the relative difference between the rich and the poor than you do about the nominal well-being of anyone. Population densities have increased and it's more expensive to live in cities. That's for sure. We opened up free trade which gave the American middle class a minor kick in the pants at…

No one's talking about hating the rich here but you. We can all care about societal inequality, and how it probably suggests that the levers of civilization need to be jiggered a bit, without hating anyone. I think housing in the PNW is way unaffordable but that doesn't mean I hate either the developers, the planners, or the numerous other social and geographical factors that have led to this situation. In short, ple…

Your primary complaint could have all the wind taken out of its sails if we just magically took all the money away from wealthy people and burned it. Because wealth inequality would go down. It wouldn't actually help anyone, but wealth inequality would go down.

Affordable housing is a problem best addressed by the people who live in the areas that have a lack of affordable housing. It's not something that needs addressing on the national scale.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#155

Post by sokoloff »

mod wrote: post #144
gnicholas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with much of this, but where is 2 mbps internet $80?

I pay $75/month for 10mbps upstream, 1mbps downstream DSL. That's the advertised speeds, I get lower speeds in practice. I'm not complaining. I'm happy to have those speeds as I live in a very rural area (South/Midwest). I can stream netflix or youtube without hitches, almost all the time.

Your plan is the first I've seen with a higher upstream than downstream rate.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#156

Post by manigandham »

ikeyany wrote: post #121
sametmax wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open a company. Try to avoid it. Understand why others do it. Then look for solutions.

Others do it because it's cheaper than providing full-time salary+benefits. Average people don't really have the resources or connections to open a company.

What resources or "connections" do you need? Thinking you need all these things before you can start is the biggest obstacle to actually starting.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#157

Post by mikeash »

nunez wrote: post #141
mikeash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American salaries are listed as pre-tax figures. Lower end jobs often don’t include health insurance at all, and those that do will usually require the employee to pay for a substantial portion of it.

net income is pretty close to gross income in income-tax-free states. everyone everywhere pays some form of property taxes, so that's moot.

State income tax is not generally the important part. From a quick search, the highest rate in the nation is 13.3% in California. The Federal income tax rate tops out at 37%, and there's also 7.65% Federal payroll tax.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#158

Post by mcguire »

sokoloff wrote: post #116
nickthemagicman wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a patently false statement. Inflation has been 3% a year for decades and wages have stayed flat. Your example of home furnishings has been improved by industrialization. Property value have skyrocketed, vehicle prices have skyrocketed, college, healthcare... Things you NEED have become way more expensive. Luxury goods have gotten cheaper.

>Inflation has been 3% a year for decades and wages have stayed flat. Every time I read this claim and go looking for data, I find data that says that real wages are roughly flat, which means that they have kept pace with inflation. (That's the definition of real wages: that they are in inflation-adjusted terms.) It seems a common journalistic (and often political) talking point to say exactly what you said, which ma…

Figure 3: "When it comes to the pace of annual [real wage] increases, the top 1% wage grew 138% since 1979, while [real] wages for the bottom 90% grew 15%"

Figure 4: "Middle-class wages are stagnant—Middle-wage workers’ hourly [real] wage is up 6% since 1979, low-wage workers’ [real] wages are down 5%, while those with very high wages saw a 41% increase"

I wouldn't exactly describe those figures as "misleading". In fact, they're pretty clear: one group is benefiting much more than the others.

As for the second one, is it really saying that real new-car prices have declined by ~50%?

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#159

Post by MaybiusStrip »

gowld wrote: post #23
anigbrowl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. The 'frugal culture' is selling the idea that this is the road to economic self-sufficiency while omitting or glossing over other significant information, like having a very healthy income stream to begin with. If you're poor, being frugal is very unlikely to lift you out of poverty. That doesn't mean frugality is bad, but that marketing is as the key to financial stability is deceptive.

If you're near poor, being frugal will prevent you from falling into poverty. There are many people who have good jobs, earning $50k-$100k per year, saving nothing (or negative!), and then losing those jobs, and then collapsing into the downward spiral of poverty and homelessness.

"Collapsing into the downward spiral of poverty and homelessness" is not an appropriate outcome for not being frugal, and a system where this is the case is probably not very good. Again, circling back to the idea that focusing on frugality as a solution to poverty ignores the larger systemic problems actually keeping poor people poor.

Re: Being frugal is for the rich

#160

Post by itomato »

azernik wrote: post #63
gowld wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> City-based salary adjustments are really something only educated professionals get, That's not entirely true. In many cities, minimum wage is substantially higher ($12-$15/hr) than the Federal minimum ($7.25/hr) > in big cities > So you have to have a car and car insurance Not in big cities.

> Not in big cities. Name five big cities where a average-wage worker can get by without a car and car insurance.

It's probably any of the five big cities with a public transit program.

No demand, no program. Ride a bus in a large city, and you'll see a majority of bus pass users.

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