I think I’m making likely assumptions. Obviously, individual experiences will vary, but when trying to estimate and model cost of living, assuming that everyone was sexually assaulted or traumatized so badly that they can never live with another is not useful. It also denigrates sexual assault victims by assuming that they are alone, without family, friendless, or without a spouse. It is possible for one to recover from sexual assault and find non-assaulter roommates and this is extremely common. Both based on personal experience and housing data (extrapolating from percent of population sexually assaulted with percent of population living in households with greater than two adults).
I’m talking about my lived experience here and find it odd how you’re finding rare, negative edge cases that don’t disprove my point.
I’m not saying that every single person can get internet for less than $100. I’m saying it’s unreasonable to assume $100 for budgeting purposes. In the rare situation where the only option for internet is $100 and one must have internet the systemic solution isn’t to pay the person an extra $100, the solution is to reduce the cost of internet. Rewarding the exploitative company charging $100/month only makes things worse within the system.
Similarly with phones. $100/month or $1200/year is a poor assumption for someone who needs their salary to go towards more important things. In 2019 I bought a new iPhone6 from Walmart for $100 with a no contract prepaid mobile plan for $20/month. Annualized costs of only $340. I cracked and scratched the screen but if I had had to replace it I would have spent an additional $100.
For “normal” society and to understand people’s experiences I think it’s valuable to model what is typical and then use that as a baseline to plan protection for edge cases. In my head I’m thinking “What should we plan to fix this?” Planning and modeling with assumptions that edge cases are most common means that our mean values will be way off and we’ll have wasted resources.
I’ve seen too many families that waste $180 on phone plans every month because they don’t know there’s a better way, corporations market expensive plans more heavily, and conventional wisdom reinforces that this is routine and acceptable.
If I’m only netting $2k/month and I’m spending $100/month on a phone, that is a problem with me that I can easily fix. If society is trying to get me to buy a new phone every year and have an expensive plan, that’s hard to struggle against and overcome. The solution isn’t to reinforce bad decisions, but to help.