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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

#81

Post by strken »

iiqof wrote: post #44
stephc_int13 wrote: post #23

I think that this is true. This is also true that you can't understand what it is of being powerful or rich when you're not. In a general way, it is very difficult to imagine living in other people's shoes, we live on the same planet, breathing the same air, we have 99.9% the same DNA, but our experience of life and our environment can be widely different.

I agree what you say, although I might add that the harm potential by a "not-understanding rich of the poor" is much greater than a "not-understanding poor of the rich"

A lot of the opportunities to escape poverty involve the kind of mindset the wealthy have - calculated risk taking, the entitled confidence to turn up to an interview for a job you suspect you can't do, looking on money as an abstract and rational thing, post-scarcity thinking, the knowledge that it could be possible and socially acceptable to ask wealth people for business loans, and so on.

This is in no way blaming those in poverty for not magically knowing how to ace job interviews or detect which risks are worth it, but pointing out that in both cases, X not understanding Y hurts the poor more than the rich.

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

#82

Post by BlameKaneda »

jonnylynchy wrote: post #47

I agree that there are rich people who know little about what it's like to be poor or even middle class. But not all rich people were always rich. I grew up poor, and was poor as a young adult. After working 2 jobs, going to school and trying to keep my family together on next to nothing, I was able to climb my way up and get to "middle class". Despite being poor for a while, my kids were happy and they didn't know a…

> I also met some wealthy people who didn't talk like that...I learned that some actually earned their way there. They grew up poor, worked hard, went to school, worked harder, had some luck by being in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills, and eventually became wealthy.

I have to ask, but how many of these people have had the mindset that "X is poor because they're not working hard enough" or "I worked hard which is why I'm not poor, why can't Y be that way?"

If I had to guess, a good number of them have had those thoughts in the past, but whether or not they still think like that or they've moved on (and have admitted---to themselves or to others---that it's a negative viewpoint) is hard to say.

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

#83

Post by IggleSniggle »

phone8675309 wrote: post #14
aspaviento wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

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.

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

#84

Post by gruez »

LocalPCGuy wrote: post #71
mynameishere wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay...but on /r/personalfinance, people show up all the time with a litany of complaints and a litany of awful, awful budget mistakes they have no interest in fixing. 120/month cellphone, 400/month doordash, Dodge Charger with a 600/month note. And so on. each case was a frustrating puzzle What puzzled you? The necessities should never be a puzzle. If the rent, the food, the utilities, the insurance, and the day car…

Have you looked at the psychology of decision making when poor and struggling? It might open your eyes as to why people don't make the optimal choices (financially or others). And a lot of people literally do not know any better. They've never had someone teach them how to manage money and potentially had bad role models growing up. So its easy for you to say, with the knowledge it seems like you have, this is what y…

> Have you looked at the psychology of decision making when poor and struggling? It might open your eyes as to why people don't make the optimal choices (financially or others).

Where does "psychology of decision making when poor and struggling" stop and personal responsibility begin? Can every suboptimal decision be excused because of "psychology of decision making when poor and struggling"?

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

#85

Post by gruez »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #61
atatatat wrote: post #33

The financial planning bit is meant to come before one has a list of expenses to "figure out" (like home+leased car+children).

Children are not a luxury product like a sports car or yacht. They are a basic function of human life.

All the kid free couples out there beg to differ.

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

#86

Post by TomSwirly »

aspaviento wrote: post #5
FriedrichN wrote: post #3

A more distant but very wealthy family member once said that people wouldn't be so poor if they just saved up money. That perfectly illustrated the difficulty rich people have understanding poor people to me. I was really young, but that really stuck with me.

I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo. Some people live in a bubble so far from the real world that almost seems fantasy.

> I remember a politician complaining about having difficulties with a salary of 6000€/mo.

It depends on where you live.

I lived in New York City for years. If you had a family, it would be hard to live there as on 6000€/mo, unless you had been living in the same apartment for decades. The median cost of a 2-bedroom apartment there is 3000€ a month, taxation is high (federal, city and state taxes), food is wildly expensive, etc.

I hear London and Tokyo are even worse.

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

#87

Post by mardifoufs »

gonzo41 wrote: post #60
austincheney wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If poverty were an easily solved problem then it wouldn't be a problem at all and we wouldn't be having this discussion. That is the gap between sympathy versus empathy and differences in economic opportunity versus disadvantages of social pressures/reinforcement.

Poverty is a choice. Its not unsolvable. In Australia we had economic support that was pretty generous during COVID. Poverty pretty much vanished. Then it got expensive, the support ended and it's back. Poverty is a choice.

But maybe it ended because Australia couldn't just keep paying forever, thus again proving that poverty isn't just solved. The entire reason why Australia was able to do it in the first place was because it was understood it would be a temporary measure caused by an emergency.

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

#88

Post by eplanit »

nanis wrote: post #36

Wealth is a stock measure, income is flow. You accumulate wealth out of what you can set aside out of the flow. Some of us immigrants do not come to this country with an existing stock of wealth either back home or here. We are also not in the favored group of immigrants. We have human capital which we are trying to convert to financial capital for the next generation. Then, when we sort of "make it" here, people who…

I'm genuinely curious why you chose the USA to migrate to. Would you have been better off in the EU or Asia?

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

#89

Post by ta988 »

fortran77 wrote: post #68
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #65

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…

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.

They don't because houses don't produce income (unless you rent them). So if you had your house when you could afford it but cannot anymore you get made even less wealthy with the property taxes. Taxes should be proportional to income. There should be a more fair way to do that: to not tax main house when in use, tax only at the time of sale on benefit only (corrected by inflation).

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

#90

Post by ddingus »

gonzo41 wrote: post #60
austincheney wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If poverty were an easily solved problem then it wouldn't be a problem at all and we wouldn't be having this discussion. That is the gap between sympathy versus empathy and differences in economic opportunity versus disadvantages of social pressures/reinforcement.

Poverty is a choice. Its not unsolvable. In Australia we had economic support that was pretty generous during COVID. Poverty pretty much vanished. Then it got expensive, the support ended and it's back. Poverty is a choice.

Sometime during the last decade, I centered on all this being a priority problem.

It is indeed a choice, and the current poverty and struggle that goes with it is unnecessary.

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