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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

#811

Post by chmod600 »

sorisos wrote: post #786
chmod600 wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, thank you. An important element of my argument is to focus on what's in your control. It's not exclusively about immigrants. In fact, immigrants are less likely to be caught up in notions of fairness because they probably thought to themselves before they came something like "this is going to suck and be unfair, but it will be worth it for my children and grandchildren". So they just make the best of it and comp…

> If every time someone shares their success, the response is instantly about how privileged or lucky they are, then our culture is sick. We should listen to and support those stories. I would argue that a culture which attributes success in life to personal effort or choices is sick. This makes people blame themselves for not trying hard enough etc, when in reality there are more decisive factors such as who your pa…

It's not about attribution. It's about learning from success, because we can't learn from luck.

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

#812

Post by mariojv »

DataWorker wrote: post #754
dahfizz wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By growing inequality and pushing people into poverty I am sick of hearing about poverty as a growing problem. It simply isn't. Median income, and the lowest income quintile, have grown steadily. The percent of Americans living in poverty has been declining. Median wealth is still lower than it was before the 2008 crisis, but it was growing strongly before and has grown strongly since the Great Recession. All trend…

Homelessness is obviously increasing though it’s difficult to measure with precision. Homelessness is worse than poverty and homeless aren’t even counted in official poverty calculations. The census can’t sample them.

If you are in the US, you may be observing a local trend rather than one representative of the whole country. It's very difficult to measure, but this site has an estimate: https://www.statista.com/statistics/555795/estimated-number-...

It shows about a 12% drop in homeless people 2007-2019. The US population overall grew just under 10%, too, so the drop on a per capita basis is higher than that. I imagine 2020 led to a large increase again, though. I also can't vet their sources without registering so take it with a grain of salt.

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

#813

Post by kf6nux »

> How many times have they turned off your water?

Like anything else, this isn't a perfect metric. I know folks who have kept their water on all the way to eviction for non-payment.

That said, the author nails it when noting the dichotomy of "feeling broke" vs "being broke." I knew a lawyer that complained about "being broke" (feeling broke) because he "had to" sell two of his Porsches and couldn't make as many real estate investments as he would have liked to make that year.

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

#814

Post by II2II »

old_fart_dev wrote: post #380
II2II wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luck was not mentioned to diminish what the person has accomplished. It was intended to point out that their story may be difficult to replicate.

Re-read the objected to line: "I made it and you can too." Note that I emphasized "can" in that quote. "Can", not "will". This isn't a guarantee by throwaway-0987, it's words of encouragement to try. On a forum that celebrates startup moonshots, I find it odd that anyone would piss on the idea that trying is worth while.

Personally, I doubt that luck plays a major role. The bothersome part is that some people seem to assume that success is replicable if you follow some sort of recipe.

The thing is, socioeconomic status affects our outlook. It doesn't matter if you're poor, rich, or somewhere inbetween. A simple example is taking advantage of opportunities. You may be unaware that they exist, view them as being out of reach, or simply see the risk as being too high. Only one of those even imply that chance plays a role. It is also worth noting that values may play a role. Some people like to blame being poor on bad decisions. While it may be true that some decisions are bad in the sense of generating wealth, they may be good decisions in other respects. Many jobs serve have social value or serve the public good, yet are woefully under compensated. Some people will choose that path simply because they are more intersted in serving others and simply don't have the will to be selfseving.

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

#815

Post by z3t4 »

YinglingLight wrote: post #232
syops wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much enjoyed reading your post. You made a statement that, taken literally, I disagree with and wonder if you care to elaborate more on it. I made it and you can too. It seems to me that luck plays a huge role in each success story like yours. My wife had a similar trajectory and makes quite a bit of money. However, along the way, there were hundreds of decisions made that could have gone the wrong way. She's…

It seems to me that luck plays a huge role The concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/ Those who accrue and leverage a variety of skills tend to get 'lucky'. This is why you could strip most entrepreneurs of all their money and assets, and not be surprised to see them enjoying success in 5 years. You put into place a system that makes making the right decisions inevitable, and lea…

I think its about seizing the opportunity once luck strikes. According to sociology its very rare to switch class. If you start out upper class and make some bad decisions you will still likely be upper class. Same with poor, you can make the right choice every time and still end up poor.

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

#816

Post by thaumasiotes »

exolymph wrote: post #694
thaumasiotes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that fair to the average homeless person, who is perfectly normal, just down on their luck? This is not an accurate description of the average homeless person.

The point is, that doesn't matter. It only takes one unhinged person to fuck up your day.

It matters quite a bit. The view that "it only takes one unhinged person" tells you to treat homeless people the same way you treat everyone else. The view that homeless people are much more likely to assault you than normal people tells you to be more cautious around them than you are around normal people.

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

#817

Post by nerdponx »

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #724
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving them with no room to refinance in future, since rates practically cannot drop further for mortgage lending to be viable. People taking loans in 2021 sure better hope for the continued devaluation of the dollar. It's the only way to keep the debt burden manageable.

Serious question: why would they care about refinancing if their rate is low? Regarding dollar devaluation: I don't there there has been a single year since we abandoned the gold standard where the dollar didn't devalue. And the Fed has explicitly okayed higher inflation going forward.

If they didn't care about refinancing they wouldn't care about mortgage rates.

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

#818

Post by huevosabio »

pmiller2 wrote: post #525
huevosabio wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have an eternally appreciating housing market and affordable housing [0], one has to give. Our current housing market appreciation comes from systematic housing shortage. Rognlie finds out that the increase in return to capital (vs return to labor) observed by Piketty comes largely from the residential real estate sector [1]. It turns out, Henry George was right. We need to tax the value of land such that w…

There is no "systematic housing shortage." There are 59 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the US. [0] Even California has more than 9 empty housing units per homeless person. [ ibid ] --- [0]: https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/

That's a bad indicator for whether there is a "shortage" or not.

You need a sufficiently high vacancy rate to be able to have a dynamic marketplace: if all houses were occupied then moving then moving houses would involve swapping houses with someone (or having a short-term stay... which means not all houses were occupied).

We live in a spectrum, the higher a vacancy rate the easier it is to find a house that meets your needs.

It really is not surprising that as vacancy rates go up prices go down [0]

[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-renters-gain...

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

#819

Post by refurb »

Havoc wrote: post #128

TIL US actually turns off your water if you don't pay. More used to flow restrictions. i.e. You'll have water to keep you alive but good luck showering with 10% the normal pressure.

Hmmm... not always and it would take a long time and if it puts the tenants at risk (kids in the house) it likely wouldn’t happen.

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

#820

Post by fastball »

irjustin wrote: post #803
fastball wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. You could be pulling down $500k a year but have such a high spend rate that you frequently run out of money before your next paycheck.

Do you sincerely believe those situations are similar? Exercise - you could pick Broke College Student, Broke Adult, Broke doctor/engineer/lawyer pulling 500k/yr. Which one do you choose, repeatedly? To me, there is almost no scenario where 500k/yr makes you actually broke where you do not have a level of control to rapidly change that situation. Cut your spending, if you have huge debts - get them refinanced, sell s…

A broke doctor is a broke adult, so not exactly sure what distinction you're making.

Broke = no money at the moment.

Poor = chronically broke.

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