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

The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

seanmcclure.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 83 posts

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#61

Post by harrisonjackson »

wink wrote: post #12

> But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? The author has clearly not spent a lot of time in normal mode around people who have to wear their mask for their full shift. Yes, those people forget. Not us keyboard warriors who put it on twice a day for a few min…

And some people just aren't bothered by wearing it, so it isn't weird to just leave it in place when you're driving.

I also don't take off my shirt, pants, and shoes the second I get in the car.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#62

Post by motohagiography »

goodpoint wrote: post #52
motohagiography wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they wouldn't be as budget constrained if they were easier to invite places? I can't invite my teetotaling and vegetarian friends out to many of the casual things I enjoy, and their purity issues create a self-imposed artificial constraint on their life opportunities. Someone with an actual medical issue learns to adapt to life and live it, where someone with a purity constraint selects for oppotunities where t…

> Someone with an actual medical issue learns to adapt to life and live it That's quite harsh to all the people who cannot join you for dinner on a hike because of some illness or disability. Describing non-drinking as a "control ritual" and "self sabotaging substitute" is an equally harsh description of people's personal choices or medical needs. E.g. pregnancy. > I don't eat with anyone I'm not willing to pick up t…

I have numerous friends who don't drink or eat meat and for different reasons (religious, addiction, medical, health, caste, politics, personal), and they manage because they know how to navigate socially. I can think of more than a few invites I don't get for related reasons.

In the scenario you propose, the disabled person meets us at the bar, the recovering alcoholic drinks cranberry juice, and the pregnant woman buys because she's probably the only one with a job, some chirp back and forth, nobody complains, and we get to be together. It's not hard. The lifestyle vegan isn't there because we have other things to talk about, and we can always see him at crossfit.

If we have something to manage in a social situation, I think it's still on us to show we are capable of enjoying ourselves.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#63

Post by totony »

tshaddox wrote: post #47
wink wrote: post #12

> But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? The author has clearly not spent a lot of time in normal mode around people who have to wear their mask for their full shift. Yes, those people forget. Not us keyboard warriors who put it on twice a day for a few min…

It could also just be that someone deliberately wanted to wear a mask for literally any reason whatsoever. It’s just ludicrous to judge someone for that or to consider it “ridiculous.” You might as well say “have you ever seen someone wearing a hat in their car even though they’re inside a climate controlled car and don’t need sun protection on their head?”

I was raised to always remove my hat when getting inside something. Maybe OP did too and extrapolates that behavior to mask wearing when not with someone.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#64

Post by glitchc »

borski wrote: post #41
sumtechguy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting take. For a 'one off' I would not worry about it. But if they are doing it to you a few times, speak up. They are just taking advantage of you. It is not the 5 bucks. It is the fact that you are doing it to you...

If they can cover, and never do, they quickly stop getting hung out with. This is generally true, in my experience. If they can’t cover and never do, that’s fine - you simply take the L and call it an “investment” in the experience of sharing time with someone you care about.

Bingo! Not all friends are in the same strata, unless one prefers to travel in a narrow socioeconomic bubble. Some are above, and if they offer to cover my meal, I'm happy to accede. Others are below, and for them I always offer to cover their meal. It may not seem fair, but is ultimately just.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#65

Post by mankyd »

wink wrote: post #12

> But then you stop and think wait a second, this person is alone and wearing a mask. Isn't that odd? In fact it seems downright ridiculous. Why would anyone wear a mask in their car when they are alone? The author has clearly not spent a lot of time in normal mode around people who have to wear their mask for their full shift. Yes, those people forget. Not us keyboard warriors who put it on twice a day for a few min…

The author does not think it's ridiculous at all. The next paragraph exactly addresses your comment:

> If we are only taking into consideration the information that is immediately available then the situation does indeed seem pretty ridiculous. But if we stop and consider what might be the broader context we can imagine scenarios where wearing a mask alone makes a lot of sense.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#66

Post by tailius »

Pennywise, pound foolish.

--->

Pennywise, pound-wise.

If you want to read real, well-researched data about the demographics and behaviors of actual millionaires, Thomas J. Stanley compiled and analyzed the data, and wrote a number of books on the topic. Furthermore, Felix Dennis, the late but an actual billionaire, wrote a hilarious book with a tongue-in-cheek title.

Biggest correlations with wealth are the marshmallow test as a child and then not participating in low-/no-skill chance gambling as an adult.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#67

Post by pa7x1 »

alex_smart wrote: post #51
goodpoint wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking the mask on and off introduces risk of infection when touching it. And risk of forgetting to put it on when needed. If you just keep it on you avoid the risks - and you get to breath less pollution and allergens as an added benefit.

How many people have have gotten Covid from fomite transmission so far? Last I checked the number of such confirmed cases varied from zero to one. Meanwhile the entire globe has been anxiously sanitizing their hands and everything they touch for 18 months (a lot of people in my family were even washing the grocery produce with soap and setting them aside for one day before use). All this long, long after scientists h…

There is no scientific experiment in the canonical sense that could confirm it due to ethical concerns. Once it was accepted that aerosol transmission occurs, since it is a much easier form of transmission it's very easy to tag all infections as having occurred through aerosol.

Do all actually occur through aerosol? Some most likely happened like that, others may have been bigger droplets released talking or coughing, others may have been fomites from the droplets...

In my humble opinion, all of those forms occur. Viruses are passive things, they travel in respiratory secretions of any size big enough to contain them. They will lay there doing nothing until they get in contact with a target they can couple to and start replicating. It's better to think of contamination as a probabilistic event modulated by some factors, likely-hood of the event, resiliency of the virus outside of the body under the conditions that lead to the event, etc...

I highly doubt that the virus becomes incapable of infecting in a fomite in a doorknob, elevator button or keyboard. It may be unable to infect after a few hours but that should be plenty of time for an infection to occur.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#68

Post by sheepybloke »

gtfoutttt wrote: post #31

>What I want to talk about here is how the type of behavior that makes us look smart in the moment (i.e. penny pinching) ends up not being smart in the long run. Well said. I disagree with the article title, due to my experience with delivering pizza. We all certainly knew the non-tippers. And they almost always were in the wealthiest neighborhoods. So once you go to a house 3 or 4 times, and get stiffed (or hear abo…

Urg I completely agree. My college had a good mix of richer kids and middle class ones, and you could always tell their background because the richer ones would penny-pinch everything. They'd ask you to pay a couple dollars for gas if you went to the grocery store together, or one of my friends bought a couple of decorations for the our shared house and asked us to pitch in for it. If you went with one of the poorer people there would be a sort of understanding that you might split a pizza together later and so you don't have to pay for gas now, and felt much more charitable. It was interesting how stark the difference always was.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#69

Post by motohagiography »

leoedin wrote: post #38
motohagiography wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they wouldn't be as budget constrained if they were easier to invite places? I can't invite my teetotaling and vegetarian friends out to many of the casual things I enjoy, and their purity issues create a self-imposed artificial constraint on their life opportunities. Someone with an actual medical issue learns to adapt to life and live it, where someone with a purity constraint selects for oppotunities where t…

> I can't invite my teetotaling and vegetarian friends out to many of the casual things I enjoy I'm curious about this. Why not? I'm not vegetarian, but I go out for dinner with vegetarian friends all the time. They order a vegetarian dish, I order a meat one. It isn't an issue. Similarly with drinking. As long as they want to be there, why would I care if they drink? If they're judging you for drinking, that's a tan…

Dining out isn't about the food because you can make anything yourself with a little effort, and splitting the bill based how many calories you ingest misses the point of going out.

If you said to someone "we should get a coffee sometime" and they said, "thanks, but I don't drink coffee," they would have missed the point or were being bizzarely rude. I'm saying many dietary choices have the same effect. If I said, "we should get a burrito," and you said, "No thanks, I'm gluten intolerant," you're not going to get a second invitation, not because you have a medical issue, but because the person inviting you was expecting a, "yes lunch in principle, and we'll deal with details after."

Maybe you legit used your condition as an excuse to avoid socializing, which fine and your own business, but when you decline invitations, they dry up and nobody owes you another one. Being "lame," means too weak or injured to do something, and a lot of restrictions when you lead with them just make people think you are lame.

Re: The Rich Don't Penny Pinch

#70

Post by vineyardmike »

sheepybloke wrote: post #68
gtfoutttt wrote: post #31

>What I want to talk about here is how the type of behavior that makes us look smart in the moment (i.e. penny pinching) ends up not being smart in the long run. Well said. I disagree with the article title, due to my experience with delivering pizza. We all certainly knew the non-tippers. And they almost always were in the wealthiest neighborhoods. So once you go to a house 3 or 4 times, and get stiffed (or hear abo…

Urg I completely agree. My college had a good mix of richer kids and middle class ones, and you could always tell their background because the richer ones would penny-pinch everything. They'd ask you to pay a couple dollars for gas if you went to the grocery store together, or one of my friends bought a couple of decorations for the our shared house and asked us to pitch in for it. If you went with one of the poorer…

Weird - i had experienced the opposite, where most rich kids didn't care about the money (it was their parents anyways!) so they would buy you dinner today, and you'd buy it tomorrow while the middle-class ones had to work for their money, so they wanted it to be "fair" and split by person because they only had so much.

Not saying your experience can't also be true! I was fortunate to have my parents help with money and was fairly charitable, so maybe i didn't notice other behavior.

Post reply on HN