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

All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 288 posts

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#181

Post by inanutshellus »

jurassic wrote: post #94

This level of inequality makes me sad. Really sad. I know I can't be the only working stiff in the valley whose poor siblings and family think they are rich for earning in the $100-150k range. Nevermind that I can't afford to buy a house here. I can't enjoy my success because of the near-desperate financial situations I see my relatives enduring. My sister gave me a $50 gift for christmas, and it brought tears to my…

RE: Christmas - I'm sort of on the opposite end of that problem, but the way we solved that is to do a Dirty Santa party instead of giving individual gifts to everyone. That way the affluent relatives don't feel guilty for providing cool gifts to everyone and the less affluent don't feel ashamed for providing what they can.

("Dirty Santa" is where everyone brings one gift -- we do $10 -- and then you play a game where you either open a random gift from the pile or steal someone's opened gift. It's pretty fun. To me it's more fun than "real" christmas gifting...)

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#183

Post by trendroid »

bane wrote: post #153
746F7475 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely off-topic, but whenever I see these amounts I feel like either I don't understand how U.S. economy works or I've been living in poverty my whole life. I'm recently graduated B.Sc in compsci and I'm doing software testing and to me 30k/year is plenty. Like I have money to buy all kind of unnecessary stuff for my hobbies. Is 30k/year really low salary in U.S.? Or am I just being under paid? I always though m…

The U.S. economy is geographically spread out and enormous . However, due to various historic reasons, the population is mostly focused at the coasts, and for other historic reasons, the north-west and north-eastern coastal areas are the wealthiest and densest. More people and more money means more demand and higher prices. In the rest of the country, which is fairly sparse, you can find high standards of living, min…

>On the other hand, in Omaha, Nebraska, I found some comparable apartments at $500/mo.

This is true for Wisconsin also. I think OP is hitting the right point that many states easily allow you to live comfortably at around 30k p.a. (after taxes). It depends a lot on whether you have a family or not, party a lot or not, materialistic in general or not.

>cheap housing in the U.S. implies almost no public transport options

I am not a citizen but this isn't true for Milwaukee where I have been living for almost 2 years now. I have not needed a car because bus service is awesome and Uber (or Lyft) help me out other times. It also helps if bike tracks are good in your city, so that's another factor to lookout for.

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#184

Post by a3n »

alvern wrote: post #2

My biggest takeaway is that in 2013 two-thirds of the North American workforce did not have a 4 year degree. [1] http://victortanchen.com/educational-attainment-united-state...

That didn't used to be a problem. You could earn a living, support a family, retire, get a broken bone set, etc.

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#185

Post by oldmanjay »

Nutmog wrote: post #136
yummyfajitas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just agreed that a situation which increases inequality (rich person gaining 3x, poor person 2x) helps the poorer person more . How do you reconcile this with the claim that inequality is the problem?

Isn't inequality just a polite word for jealousy? We're all peasants compared to some possible future generations 100 years in the future with all their cancer cures and Mars holidays.

Most of the problems with inequality come down to envy but because people are taught to be ashamed of envy, they work hard to both overintellectualize the emotions and cast things as a moral issue in a massive societal campaign of self-deception.

It's a real shame, because it is literally impossible to solve a problem you deliberately misunderstand. That's humans for you though.

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#186

Post by jfoutz »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #114
philsnow wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of relative buying power, going from $7.50/h to $15/h is a much bigger jump than going from $70/h to $210/h. This is sort of a sick twist on the idea that "the house always wins" or "the market can remain illogical longer than you can remain solvent": at lower incomes, it sometimes only takes one car maintenance, one unexpected trip to the dentist, before you have to start picking and choosing what bills to…

You just agreed that a situation which increases inequality (rich person gaining 3x, poor person 2x) helps the poorer person more . How do you reconcile this with the claim that inequality is the problem?

According to that liberal bastion, the Wall Street Journal, in it's most favorable light, median worker compensation has only gone up about 40% since 1979 [1]. On the other hand CEO compensation over that period has gone up about 1000%. [2] We can quibble about sources if you like, but according to this [3] it's taken about 50 years to double income.

If you take a long look at that same graph [3], productivity has climbed, dramatically. Perhaps the depression of wages was caused by almost doubling the workforce, adding women.

Eh, it's probably not that big of a deal. that wsj article pointed out it's really just young men without much education that are taking the hit. I really doubt having millions of young, broke, easily persuaded males will cause much of a problem. Historically, that's always worked out just fine

Less snarkily, economists from Greenspan to Krugman have said this is something that needs to be looked at. It's an indicator of something being not right. It's clear you have an economic model in mind. It's the job of the market to push that pay edge as hard as possible, get as much productivity for as little pay as possible. Have you considered that the market might push so hard that your economic model doesn't apply?

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/07/06/just-how-stagnant-...

[2] http://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/

[3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Producti...

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#187

Post by janesvilleseo »

brightball wrote: post #173
randycupertino wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you. My brother is a restaurant manager in the middle of Kansas making 30k a year. And he is a smart guy who was a MATH MAJOR at a state school! He could come out here and get a job at a startup and make 80k easily. But he won't leave his inlaws family, so he's stuck in Kansas. There is some strain and resentment in our relationship over our income differential, sure... especially when I want to complain that…

Yea, cost of living is a big deal. I live just outside of Greenville, SC in a little town called Easley. When graduated from college I had an 1100 square foot, 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment with a washer and dryer for $500 / month that was 10 minutes from downtown Greenville (beautiful, booming area - http://www.visitgreenvillesc.com/ ). Also have some of the cleanest water in the country, which I never really appr…

It is slowly happening. I work remote for a large Corp. Not one based in the valley. Remote work is becoming more and more excepted, but it takes time to implement and change current mindsets.

Over the last 2 years at my company the percentage of remote workers have increased dramatically. They all used to sit in cubes, but now they sit at home on the couch.

I live in a city of about 60k with a median household income of 47k. My cost of living is low too and I tell everyone I love where I live. I couldn't imagine having an income of 100k-150k and not being able to live a nice life and not being able to afford "the American Dream".

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#188

Post by eli_gottlieb »

taurath wrote: post #106
vinceguidry wrote: post #77

I will never miss an opportunity to trot out my favorite quote: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - Ronald Wright Americans are just going to have to get over themselves and figure out how to cooperate with their peers. We will take any opportunity to lash out at the ones we love. Dude's wife left him aft…

I hope when all the software and entrepreneurial people on this forum are going through hard times instead of good as we are now we are not judged as harshly as you judge those going through harder times now.

I think software types deserve harsher judgement: everyone in the software industry seems to be incredibly proud of their go-it-alone, I'm-a-rational-actor-in-a-global-market, I'm-too-skilled-to-become-unemployed delusions.

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#189

Post by Spooky23 »

colechristensen wrote: post #80
Spooky23 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people yearn for purpose, family, and community. I think of my grandparents and how they lived their lives. My mom's dad was a NYC Sanitation worker, among other things. They lived frugally and eventually had a small summer cottage in the country. He had an 8th grade education, because his family in Ireland couldn't afford more. Yet he taught himself calculus up to the calc 2 level. That whole cohort of grandpar…

We lost religion because the morals and beliefs it was pushing seemed ridiculous. In that we threw the baby out with the bathwater. The community and purpose went out and didn't get replaced. Some people didn't lose religion, but replaced it with something with equal devotion. You can see many of the same behaviors (including the negative ones) with people and their zealous appreciation for political parties, sports…

It is more than that. Religion is the canary in the coal mine -- it's an example of a broad-based activity with longitudinal appeal.

Now it's easy to fill every minute with niche activity, like futzing around on HN. Our ability to communicate globally with friends and strangers has kneecapped our local communications (who knows a neighbor anymore). So we're suspicious of neighbors and are intimate with strangers. It's cool and amazing, but it has significant implications.

Re: All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class

#190

Post by eli_gottlieb »

JanezStupar wrote: post #161
spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you have a >1,000,000 mortgage debt that sucks up a lot of your salary doesn't make you a millionaire. Its if you have > 1 mill in liquid assets that you are a millionaire.

Poor people don't consider 1MM$ mortgages.

That's because in most of the world, poor people aren't complete idiots. Luckily, in America's rich urban and suburban areas, a thing called "credit" has been advanced, which performs the nigh-magical function of turning financially capable adults into complete idiots.
Post reply on HN