Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer • Hacker News Board

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#221

Post by pen2l » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #217

rayiner wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to Elizabeth Warren in 2019 (who I respected tremendously as someone who previously announced she was a "capitalist to her bones") put an intersectionality spin on every policy item did it for me. At first, the whole "person of color" thing was just weird, and now I find it incredibly grating and alienating. Like I can't listen to one of her speeches without feeling "othered."

It's a real problem with her, the language stuff; I cringed every time I saw her say "Latinx" during the campaign, which is a term Latinos overwhelmingly reject, and was originally intended to refer to LGBT Latinos. Obama landed some glancing hits on her presentation style in his most recent book, too.

I've been really curious about where the "Latinx" actually originates from -- I'd suspected in academia, and indeed the first usage seems to have been in a paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx#Origins

Why does it seem cringey? Is it cringey when Fauci uses it? He uses it every time he's referring to Latinos. This Vice video, where Dee asks people on the street about the term, gives the impression that Latino (or, ahem, Latinx :)) folks are mostly fine with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zx4m2ok6D0

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#222

Post by tptacek » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 2:36 AM UTC

pen2l wrote: post #221

tptacek wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a real problem with her, the language stuff; I cringed every time I saw her say "Latinx" during the campaign, which is a term Latinos overwhelmingly reject, and was originally intended to refer to LGBT Latinos. Obama landed some glancing hits on her presentation style in his most recent book, too.

I've been really curious about where the "Latinx" actually originates from -- I'd suspected in academia, and indeed the first usage seems to have been in a paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx#Origins Why does it seem cringey? Is it cringey when Fauci uses it? He uses it every time he's referring to Latinos. This Vice video, where Dee asks people on the street about the term, gives the impression that Latino (…

Here's Pew, which I trust more than a Vice person-on-the-street interview: just 1/4 of Latinos have even head of the term, and only 3% use it. They're mostly just wondering what the hell Very Online People are on about.

https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...

Again: zero objection to people using the term "Latinx" for themselves! If you tell me you identify "Latinx", that's the term I'll use for you. I understand that it's a serious and important term, for instance, for LGBT people. But that just makes Warren's use of it all the goofier. When she talks about helping Latinx people, are we meant to infer that she's specifically talking about LGBT people of Latin descent?

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#223

Post by umvi » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

southeastern wrote: post #218

umvi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the virus itself isn't making people afraid, it's media/government fear-mongering. In reality your average person has little to fear (besides the fear of spreading it to a vulnerable loved one).

And sickness, long term side effects, in addition to the threat to vulnerable loved ones. They have to keep talking about dangerous it is, because people keep insisting it isn't. It's not about just you, it's about the community-wide effect. But to be clear 30 year olds have been killed by covid 19 and people of all ages report long term after effects like shortness of breath, tiredness, and pain. And some people jus…

> And sickness

Your average person doesn't fear flu-like sicknesses. It's an inconvenience, yes, but that's about it.

> long term side effects

Again... according to CDC/WHO the average person completely recovers in 2 weeks. Yes, there are cases where permanent lung scarring was observed, but AFAIK that's super rare and has to do with the type of pneumonia synergizing with covid, not covid itself. I'm sure you can dig up other cases where long term negative effects are observed... but it seems rare compared to the normal recovery scenario. Do you have a source showing that the average person should fear developing long term side effects?

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#224

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 4:51 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #159

lumost wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cars made in the last 15 years don’t look that different from each other. You can purchase a 7-8 yo mass market vehicle for 2-6k that will run alright. Having used cars older than that as a daily driver, the cost of repairs/downtime outstrip the cost of replacing the vehicle more often than not. Not driving isn’t really an option in the US, and driving a clunker will raise some flags to coworkers/other parents in the…

Glancing at craigslist here, the first 3 vehicles under $6000 are a 2010, a 2008 and a 2006. The low mileage of the group is 133,000. They are dealer listings also, so probably not the best deals, but there aren't many others at the price.

Not sure what is wrong with a 200x car that has 133K miles. With diligent routine maintenance, most cars from that era should last another 133K miles easily. I remember the days when it was good advice to avoid cars with over 100K miles on them, but that time is in the distant past. I would buy a 200K mile 2006 Toyota Camry today without any hesitation.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#225

Post by nobody9999 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #202

nobody9999 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... I referenced very specifically which part to me is Randian. The sentiment that if we give people free money they will be lazy and sink into a life of dependence. I'm not GGP who argued against UBI. Nor did I make any argument for or against UBI. And I didn't make any argument even approaching "if we give people free money they will be lazy and sink into a life of dependence." In fact, my argument was that if we…

Well that wasn't made clear. I was reacting to: > We'd just see people with no incentives continue down the road of poverty. Why would you reply to my comment defending your stance as if I had challenged it? Why are you injecting yourself into that conversation if you're not supporting the claim that I explicitly referenced, and making it look like you're replying to the things I'm saying by quoting me directly?

I guess one (or both) of us need to go back and re-read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, because IIRC the changes I suggest are completely antithetical to those expressed in Rand's writings.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#226

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 5:02 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #224

maxerickson wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glancing at craigslist here, the first 3 vehicles under $6000 are a 2010, a 2008 and a 2006. The low mileage of the group is 133,000. They are dealer listings also, so probably not the best deals, but there aren't many others at the price.

Not sure what is wrong with a 200x car that has 133K miles. With diligent routine maintenance, most cars from that era should last another 133K miles easily. I remember the days when it was good advice to avoid cars with over 100K miles on them, but that time is in the distant past. I would buy a 200K mile 2006 Toyota Camry today without any hesitation.

Nothing particularly wrong with them, they just (completely) fail the 8 year old, $6,000 bar set by the poster I replied to. Looking, I see 2006 Camry's with 100,000+ miles pricing out at $6,000.

I was questioning their characterization of the used vehicle market.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#227

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

ssully wrote: post #143

ceilingcorner wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t think many people are afraid to go into public settings. Maybe not into a crowd, sure, but a restaurant? The holdup there is from the government, not the public.

I think it's safe to say there is a large portion of the population that will continue not eating indoors until they are vaccinated, or the infection numbers in their area go down significantly. I can't find articles to back it up, but I have read from restaurant owners saying that even when they were allowed to expand their indoor capacity, they were never hitting that limit. With that said, this is going to vary by…

I may never go back to eating at restaurants. I never really liked them to begin with, they seem like pretty much the least efficient and most expensive way to eat food. I never really understood the allure. Now I look at a crowded restaurant and all I can see is all those mouths and noses in close proximity to each other spraying and snorting god-knows-what into each other. Yuck! I may never look at crowds the same way either. The pandemic has given me a boosted appreciation of personal space and hygiene.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#228

Post by ryathal » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

powersnail wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another aspect is that selling used stuff doesn’t bring much money in, especially clothing. I don’t even know whether it’s sellable. Apart from my car, if I sell all my belongings, I might get one month worth of rent. Hardly seems worth it, unless there is a way to use that money to earn more money.

Also can’t sell or trade your car to downgrade if you need a car, as if you need financing to get the next car, you’re not going to qualify for the loan if you’re without employment. Your car is a trailing indicator of your financial situation, not necessarily present state.

Financing cars is a poverty trap. There are cars in the 1-2k range that work perfectly fine and will reliably work with minimal maintenance, and there are sub 1k cars that run ok enough that you can use as a bridge to save enough for a slightly better car.

Financing a car is a double whammy because you pay interest and have a deprecating asset. At the low end cars really don't deprecate much. The act of not having a car payment is a great first step to building wealth.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#229

Post by ryathal » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #45

OminousWeapons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the governors and mayors always had to weigh the economic damage they were doing to people whenever they made a shutdown decision, which resulted in erratic, complicated, and somewhat nonsensical shutdown orders. If the federal government had backstopped the economy properly and compensated any business or person directly affected by a shutdown, then the governors / mayors would have been able to tak…

Most governors and mayors didn't perform a rigorous cost benefit analysis before making shutdown decisions. Many of the lockdown orders were arbitrary and capricious, full of exemptions for politically favored groups. These were largely faith based policies without proper scientific backing from an evidence-based medicine perspective. Free money from the federal government wouldn't have improved that situation. If st…

A lot of free money went to governments, my state largely squandered that money, and hoped more would come to actually help people. They used it to avoid any sort of budget cuts for the current and previous years, and even set up a tuition grant that helps our governor look better at achieving campaign promises.

Re: Nearly 8M Americans have fallen into poverty since summer

#230

Post by nobody9999 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #206

nobody9999 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well that wasn't made clear. >I was reacting to: >> We'd just see people with no incentives continue down the road of poverty. >Why would you reply to my comment defending your stance as if I had challenged it? I can't reply to comment that contains the above, so I'll do so here. Where did I say anything even remotely approaching "We'd just see people with no incentives continue down the road of poverty."? I wasn't…

I mean, kind of, but the style of quoting at the head of your comments is typically used on this site to address specific points as part of a back-and-forth, not just "I'm introducing my own thoughts to this discussion, divorced from the course of conversation this has followed so far." You don't need to quote the comment you're replying to because your reply hangs off my comment already. If you had posted your comme…

You asked:

>What do you think about the concept of "trickle-up economics"?

And so I answered your question.

If that was confusing to you, that's unfortunate and I'm sorry that the way I quoted you made you unable to comprehend the next twelve paragraphs of my post.