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On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

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Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#81

Post by ajfjrbfbf »

bregma wrote: post #67

This is interesting. My wife is a case worker for the county welfare office. She deals with "those" people for a living and sees first-hand every day all the real and imagined shit spouted by righteous ideologues. She tells me that amongst those living in poverty, wealth is measured in terms of friends and family. Any money you come into is spent immediately, often on gifts to build status within your social network.…

> I had enough to keep a squalid roof over my head and three square meals a week.

Three meals a week sound pretty miserable. I assume that's a typo :)

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#82

Post by airhead969 »

austincheney wrote: post #70
airhead969 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever slept in a bus station? I have, in the US. I went for 3 years without any healthcare, and then it took another 7 years and a lawyer (who took $16k USD) to get more permanent help. One thing is for certain: with 99.99% of people, their friendliness (or meanness) is proportional to the size of your bank account. If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you wi…

> If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you will know their nature. You don’t need to be homeless to discover that some people lack sympathy. I lack sympathy. It doesn’t mean I’m an asshole. Sympathy isn’t empathy (huge distinction). Some people can’t tell the difference and everyone is just bad (cue the big tears). This is especially true if you’re a freeloa…

You may have missed the point, so I'll state it explicitly: almost all people lack empathy, it's just more than some have the self-control not to stab homeless people to death.

Sympathy, gratuity, and freeloading are somewhere off in the distance.

I hope you're not trying to slip in some duplicitous language to accuse me of being freeloader. What does it have to do with anything?

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#83

Post by wizzwizz4 »

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #52
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

• Barriers-to-entry – e.g., skills, ethical injunctions, psychological torment, qualifications… • Job security – some people are just too poor to go on the job market for a few weeks or months, meaning they don't have much leverage to get their employer to increase their pay… • Perverse incentives – some jobs are all about destroying value , e.g. loan sharks, most of the advertising industry… http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/…

> • Barriers-to-entry – e.g., skills, ethical injunctions, psychological torment, qualifications… If these reduce the value you provide then that's as designed. How can you provide value without skills? How can you provide value by _not_ doing things you find unethical? These aren't inefficiencies of the market for labor, they're facets of it working exactly as desired. > • Job security – some people are just too poo…

> How can you provide value without skills?

This means that you can't model it as a liquid market.

> Do you... quit your job before you look for a new one?

I don't, because I don't work such long hours that I don't have the capacity to do anything after work. Some people have multiple jobs just to cover rent and food; adding a third (looking for new jobs) isn't always possible.

> Loan sharks don't _destroy_ value from an economic perspective. Nor does advertising.

Then economics is wrong. Wasting people's lives and attention is destroying value. Keeping people in debt, causing suffering… you're not extracting as much value out of people as they're losing. They're net negative.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#84

Post by Aeolun »

airhead969 wrote: post #57
mudita wrote: post #29

I was poor for some time after deciding to quit my computer science phd for a career in art. I guess I still am compared to others, but it does not feel that way any more. When I was really poor, worrying about money and how to pay the next rent was a regular source of stress for me, which took quite a lot of emotional energy. Now I still have much lower income than people, who have regular well-paying jobs, but I do…

Ever slept in a bus station? I have, in the US. I went for 3 years without any healthcare, and then it took another 7 years and a lawyer (who took $16k USD) to get more permanent help. One thing is for certain: with 99.99% of people, their friendliness (or meanness) is proportional to the size of your bank account. If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you wi…

> If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you will know their nature.

I guess it’s just that so many poor, dirty people act mentally unhinged and (potentially) dangerous that you start to assume that about all of them.

I find that I try to avoid them right up until they force me to interact with them and I find out they’re one of the (relatively) normal ones. Then I’m perfectly happy to buy them a sandwich (or two, if I’m going to buy you breakfast might as well have a decent one).

I’m not quite sure why it works this way.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#85

Post by TulliusCicero »

bezout wrote: post #78

There’s also a difference in the way people handle money once they improve their financial situation. They tend to be cautious, and save money instead of spending it. There are exceptions, of course.

I've heard just as many people express the opposite. That because they were used to "having extra money to spend" being a fleeting thing, they threw caution to the wind and overspent after attaining a substantially higher income. That they had never learned about saving before (because they didn't consistently have extra to save), so it never became a habit.

It'd be interesting to see real data on which outcome is actually more common.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#86

Post by krageon »

ajfjrbfbf wrote: post #81
bregma wrote: post #67

This is interesting. My wife is a case worker for the county welfare office. She deals with "those" people for a living and sees first-hand every day all the real and imagined shit spouted by righteous ideologues. She tells me that amongst those living in poverty, wealth is measured in terms of friends and family. Any money you come into is spent immediately, often on gifts to build status within your social network.…

> I had enough to keep a squalid roof over my head and three square meals a week. Three meals a week sound pretty miserable. I assume that's a typo :)

It's a lot better than one meal a week. It's all relative :)

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#87

Post by irjustin »

skohan wrote: post #60
airhead969 wrote: post #55

They don't know the meaning of poor. And, who cares about some absolutely privileged, greedy, manipulative idiots who "can't live" on $200k/yr and take from people who make way less than them. Shame on them! --- If you can count your money, you're poor. If you can count your money and it fits in your pockets, you're very poor. If you can count your money and it fits in your left pocket with room to spare, you're extr…

I always thought of “broke” as the transitory status of not having money, while “poor” is a socioeconomic status. I.e. a university student could be too broke to buy beer before their next stipend comes in, but that doesn’t make them poor if they can still go home and drive mom & dad’s Tesla on the weekend.

Context changes the meaning as you rightfully point out.

Being a broke college student and being a broke adult are wildly different in almost every respect.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#88

Post by TulliusCicero »

Ensorceled wrote: post #27

This article should have been titled "On being Poor-ish in Phoenix" ... I don't think many of these issues apply to being poor in, say, a small town/a smaller city/a city with transit or in a country with a better social net.

There's definitely an American perspective there, where few cities have decent transit, let alone good transit. But you're not gonna escape the car problems in the states by moving to a smaller town. If anything, that usually makes things worse.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#89

Post by pessimizer »

yibg wrote: post #24

I grew up poor (first gen immigrant family, the poor kind), so I empathize with the points raised. At the same time I don't really understand how some / a family can be (outside of some circumstances like health issues, disabilities etc) repeatedly behind on water bills or other necessities. For the first few years my family had an income of ~$1000 / month (back in the 90s). My mother wasn't legally allowed to work a…

> the kids are wearing Nikes and playing on iphones.

This is investment. If your kids are socially rejected at school and can't get on the internet, are they going to be better off in the long term or worse off?

If you are poor, looking poor is not going to help you up, it's going to drive you farther into poverty. It's the same impulse that makes lower-middle class parents go into debt to put braces on their kids' perfectly functional teeth (in the US.) Your kids are going to have to impress fellow students, charm their teachers, get into colleges, and interview for jobs. A bunch of people who don't see class are going to see your crooked teeth.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#90

Post by devdas »

yibg wrote: post #24

I grew up poor (first gen immigrant family, the poor kind), so I empathize with the points raised. At the same time I don't really understand how some / a family can be (outside of some circumstances like health issues, disabilities etc) repeatedly behind on water bills or other necessities. For the first few years my family had an income of ~$1000 / month (back in the 90s). My mother wasn't legally allowed to work a…

All that you needed to break down was the car failing, or someone falling sick.

Minimum wage in the US hasn't kept pace with inflation for decades, and rents, school fees and the costs of medication have kept rising even faster. Banks charge even higher overdraft fees, so the small joys of a pair of branded shoes or a fancy phone are affordable, but the longer term gains aren't likely to be in reach.

Escaping poverty needs 20 years of everything going right. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economi...

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