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

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

#211

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

House prices have gone up everywhere, your suggestion is uh, silly.

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

#212
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cheaper housing => longer and more expensive commute. Or worse job opportunities. Then people tell you to move where the jobs are. Which has really expensive housing. The free market tends to flatten this stuff out

Some people pretend the Midwest doesn't exist.

Plenty of jobs and cheap housing. You don't get FAANG salaries, but if you're setting FAANG to be the standard, you are on of the "rich people who have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor".

Before the pandemic, someone on a typical engineer salary in the Midwest would afford a 2000 sqft home with a nonworking spouse and a few kids. 2000 sq ft is not big over there.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes even that out a bit. The person with an 800k house pays twice as much in property taxes. In many states, the amount that the state can raise taxes on someone whose house may have "increased" in value is limited.

Not in California. Prop 13 keeps property taxes at the value when you purchased your home. IMO this is a massive contributor to inflated property values, now leaking into other state economies.

I remember Prop 13 from a case study in a government class. I had totally forgotten about it until you mentioned it.

Prop 13 was pushed by rental property owners---primarily apartment complexes, because they don't change hands very often. It's one thing to enjoy the value increase on a house you own for 5-10 years and another the increase on an apartment complex that you own for 20-30.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

If they were struggling to make it on $175000, maybe they had a $200000 a year in medical bills! This is America we’re talking about after all.

Their out of pocket maximum was likely no more than $10k, if that.

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

#215
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that your wealthy family member is right. It is well illustrated by a quote from Terry Pratchett > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a se…

I see this everyday at a local bodega. I watched a poor family essentially grocery shop at the corner store. Toilet paper, chips, soda, canned food, etc. Their bill was over $100. I could get 3x the items, at higher quality with a trip to Costco for the same amount of money.

But that first trip to Costco would cost them $160 and they can't go without $60 worth of food for a week in order to save up. Being poor is incredibly expensive.

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

#216
I grew up working poor, then struck it rich in the software biz and became a millionaire, then got sick and became homeless. My take on it is the rich and poor both struggle with money anxieties. A significant difference between being rich and being poor is the way other people treat you. When I was rich everyone wanted to be my friend and help me out. When I was poor I suffered judgements of all types from people; scorn, contempt, pity, avoidance and generally being considered a person no one wanted to associate with. I thought it was interesting and said more about my fellow Americans than myself, but it did hurt all the same.

Edit: Scrapper Blackwell - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=626pNZB8xXE

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

#217
post #75

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…

Trickle down economics. The only problem was that it was and still is a lie. Corporate welfare doesn’t translate to the general public. Cutting corporate taxes didn’t massively increase jobs. During the Trump Administration several companies made public statements that the tax cuts proposed and the enacted would allow them to keep their manufacturing in the US. Then after they were made law what did they do? Harley Davidson decided that actually they were going to offshore anyways and close their factory.

Not all rich people are bad. There are very wealthy people advocating for increased taxes on themselves. But many have a vested interest in maintaining and accumulating more wealth. The government allowed these things to happen, specifically because people with wealth and in power colluded to change and create policy. This is the point of lobbying, not to mention literal regulatory capture (FCC, Ajit Pai).

Republicans/conservatives howl and scream about social welfare programs but are all too happy and eager to provide corporate welfare. The result is plain to see.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not only a supply issue these days. Even areas that have basically unlimited land and building in Texas have prices going up massively. How do you explain that?

Building supplies have grown at an insane rate. A lot of builders went out of business because of 2008. It is still a supply issue, just not a land supply issue.

Single family homes cannot meet demand, period.

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

#219

I have both my father and my uncle who became dirt poor just by making terribly poor life choices so I've got a very different take on this. They had good jobs but couldn't help screwing it up by: gambling, buying sportcars, overall trying to bite more than they could swallow (houses too big, with monthly mortgage too expensive), etc. In both cases it ended up with foreclosures / lawyers etc. My brother and I are now…

> When you don't have enough money you don't have a ghetto dog, you don't buy cheap gadgets on Amazon, you don't drink your daily bottle of vodka/whiskey/packs of beer, you don't smoke a pack a day. You don't take a mortgage on a car from a category you can't afford just to keep up with the Joneses when a smaller car would do.

Not saying you're wrong, but I think the article is talking about you.

> found that people from higher income backgrounds tend to struggle more at certain types of empathy. In particular, it found that people with more money found it increasingly difficult to identify with the emotional or visual point of view of other people.

For the record, I mostly agree with you except for the ghetto dog and a pack a day.

Edit: I should add that, of course, this isn't a random person but your father and you likely have a lot more information than I have.

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

#220

I have both my father and my uncle who became dirt poor just by making terribly poor life choices so I've got a very different take on this. They had good jobs but couldn't help screwing it up by: gambling, buying sportcars, overall trying to bite more than they could swallow (houses too big, with monthly mortgage too expensive), etc. In both cases it ended up with foreclosures / lawyers etc. My brother and I are now…

I don't think anything you actually said is actually wrong, but it's adjacent to what many rich people do say - that the poor shouldn't have or do anything that just makes them happier until they're not poor. No treats, no recreation, just work at the best-paying job available as many hours as possible and save every penny. And I do have a problem with that. It's a deeply punitive and judgmental attitude, as though being poor is a moral failing that any decent person would seek to resolve as soon as possible. As I said, you didn't quite get there but you kind of brushed against it.

These negative attitudes about "bad decisions" are particularly problematic when children are involved. I grew up poor, in large part because my (single) mother made some of those choices. On two separate occasions, a friend begged her to be the managing editor of a very profitable publication, with stock that would have made us actually rich. Both times, and in other cases as well, she declined in favor of running her own "boutique" business which barely paid the rent. As a result, I do know what it's like to be hungry and scared. But if she had made other choices, my brother and I might have grown up to be very different people. Less "street smart" certainly. Also less exposed to true diversity, less empathetic, less appreciative of what we do have, etc. It's entirely likely that we are better off both financially and emotionally because she made those choices instead of rushing to join the middle class as soon as possible.

I've met enough other "once poor now rich" people to believe this is not an uncommon pattern. The ones whose parents did make the more socially-acceptable choice don't seem better off materially or emotionally than the ones who had to pull themselves up later. In fact, I see some seriously troublesome patterns there. I've seen people who were insulated from hardship and striving all their lives make their own bad decisions that sent them (and their families if they'd gotten that far) right back down the ladder. I've seen people who grew up in "no fun allowed" homes do worse. Those are bad patterns to encourage.

Even as I write my own checks to support my "foolish" parent, I find it's better for my own mental health (and therefore that of my family) to focus on forgiveness and gratitude for what was rather than resentment over what might have been. One lesson that being poor did teach me is that everyone makes some bad choices, and some people are broken by them. Making the world even harsher doesn't seem like the solution.

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