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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

#881

Post by endominus »

anemoiac wrote: post #858
s1artibartfast wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it another way: What advice would you offer a young poor student looking to get out of poverty A) The cards are stacked against you, but your best chance is to work hard, get good grades, keep a clean criminal record, go to college, and get a good job. B) You are the victim of a broken system and this system needs to be fixed. Both are true, but only one of these messages is actionable and relevant for the s…

I don't understand why you can't tell the hypothetical young, poor student both 'A' and 'B.' In fact, not doing so seems a bit manipulative (regardless of your intentions). A potential consequence of perpetually leaving 'B' out of the discussion is that, while some of these young, poor students will escape poverty and others will not, neither group may realize that the status quo reflects decisions made by human bein…

I would assume the opposite; tell someone that if they work hard, they have a chance is less likely to induce despair in my opinion and experience than telling them that their efforts are meaningless because every part of society is arrayed against them, the odds are laughable, and their failure is all but guaranteed. How could that not make someone feel hopeless? Opportunities and success are not and never will be evenly distributed, but effort still plays a part. Inculcating a victimhood complex in children seems extremely antithetical to the cause of bettering their prospects in life.

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

#882

Post by s1artibartfast »

ncmncm wrote: post #879
s1artibartfast wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally. If you think I'm just going to put this out there: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

You have displayed just the left-hand lobe of the bimodal US income distribution. The other bump is way off to the right. Middle-class, if there were one anymore, would be at the dip in the middle, where I said, just off-screen. The goal has been to develop and maintain a permanent underclass who are just barely well enough off that any change seems to threaten to knock them into homelessness, yet imagine they are do…

This is the entire distribution. The last bucket is everything greater than 200k. When you look at it plotted out, it is a long tail.

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

#883

Post by banannaise »

sorisos wrote: post #706
whimsicalism wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't want poor people living in sub-optimal housing, so instead they force them to sleep outside or live with abusive people. People don't want poor people to live near them. That is the root of most of the zoning issues, it's not because they are actually worried about the quality of the housing stock that the people would live in.

I've seen some research on "relative income happiness" that suggest having poor(er) people nearby should increase happiness. Perhaps it doesn't apply if the income cap is to large...

The reason is a fear of decreasing property values, not any inherent property of the people nearby.

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

#884

Post by criticaljudge »

whimsicalism wrote: post #674
criticaljudge wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that children don't deserve the spoils of their parents is really crazy to me. Parents work so that they can give their children a better life. Heck, they even choose their partners to maximize odds for a better life for their offspring (wealth, good genes, and so on - it does not even depend on capitalism). To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (de…

So you are only deserving of a life free of poverty (even if you're lazy) if your parents happened to be rich? Yeah, I disagree. We're talking about on the order of tens of millions of dollars or more being passed from one parent to one child.

Why don't parents who work hard to give their children a good live deserve to do so? It is not their fault if other people have children while they are poor.

Everybody should have a fair chance, but people who worked harder should also be allowed to benefit. Why should anybody be entitled to the fruits of their labor?

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

#885

Post by ncmncm »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #882
ncmncm wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have displayed just the left-hand lobe of the bimodal US income distribution. The other bump is way off to the right. Middle-class, if there were one anymore, would be at the dip in the middle, where I said, just off-screen. The goal has been to develop and maintain a permanent underclass who are just barely well enough off that any change seems to threaten to knock them into homelessness, yet imagine they are do…

This is the entire distribution. The last bucket is everything greater than 200k. When you look at it plotted out, it is a long tail.

I guess you don't know about family trusts.

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

#886

Post by banannaise »

nerdponx wrote: post #444
sct202 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my peer group people are focusing on the monthly payments, rather than the loan amount. And mortgage rates are like half what they were in the last housing bubble https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

My peer group is probably a bit younger, and they/I are all renting or are relatively new homeowners. The "sticker price" on houses matters to my group a lot, as does monthly rent. I'd love to find a FRED-like data source for median rental rates over time and/or an index thereof. I suspect that rents are generally correlated with sale prices on a multi-year time scale.

The market rent has a direct influence on the value of a home - it's one of the standard home appraisal methods.

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

#887

Post by criticaljudge »

overlords wrote: post #696
criticaljudge wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that children don't deserve the spoils of their parents is really crazy to me. Parents work so that they can give their children a better life. Heck, they even choose their partners to maximize odds for a better life for their offspring (wealth, good genes, and so on - it does not even depend on capitalism). To take that away from people is truly dehumanizing, but sounds like a typical socialist scheme (de…

1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. It's better the 1 rich person is forced to consume that in his lifetime. By doing so that money is redistributed back to the economy, and his 3 kids are also productive. In scenario 1 only 1 out 4 people work. In scenario 2, 4 out of 4 people work. Also - it's hypocritical for 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' for children bo…

You misunderstand the nature of money. Money means society owns something to the holder of the money. By not spending money, society is temporarily richer.

Also, sorry, but I don't care how productive other people's kids are, or "the economy". I care about the well-being of my kids. yes, I want everybody to be happy if possible, but my kids have priority to me.

And what exactly is "hypocritical"? What are you referring to? You assume everybody should have the same starting position in life, and I reject that notion.

Children of course are not at fault for the actions of their parents (like if they are drug addicts and have an unwanted child they can't afford, the child is not to blame - but neither are other people's children or parents). But that doesn't mean every child should automatically get the same "starting money". This is not a game of monopoly.

As I said - people compete to give their children the best odds. That is not even unique to humans, it is true for all of nature.

If you take that away, why bother with anything? Why should you bother to get a good job to be able to support your family? Just fuck and live the good life, and dump your children on society to be taken care of.

Already in the west everybody gets a pretty good deal in the form of an education.

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

#888

Post by criticaljudge »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #768
dahfizz wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its hard for me to imagine being so full of envy that you would like to see the children of rich people stripped of everything they have. Equality means nothing if you achieve it by pulling everyone down to the lowest level. > 1 rich person saving his money so his 3 children never have to work is bad for the economy. "Your rights are bad for the economy, we are taking everything from you. Back to work, pleb".

> Its hard for me to imagine being so full of envy that you would like to see the children of rich people stripped of everything they have. I think you misread the sentiment. What a lot of us would like to see is a more meritocratic system, where children start off on more equal footing and either earn their wealth or not. But inherited works against that. It is difficult to listen to arguments against taxing the wea…

Children already start of pretty well in most parts of the world. Every child gets an education, for example.

I think you would find that to make everything equal, you would have to take children away from their parents at an early age. Because having caring, loving parents is also an advantage. At least so far not all kids in a school turn out the same, even thought they all have the same teachers and lessons. Must be the parents that make the difference.

I don't think that would be desirable. I don't want my children to be raised in a government institution to make them exactly the same as everybody else, just for the sake of an arbitrary metric ("equality" measured in some arbitrarily chosen terms).

In fact why not get rid of parents altogether, and create children in labs? I bet that is the socialist dream fulfilled.

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

#889

Post by criticaljudge »

pmiller2 wrote: post #633
criticaljudge wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that exactly what banks are for - so that you can get a loan? I would expect that you would qualify for a loan if you show evidence of your upcoming employment. Many companies also pay for moves. Of course if you do all that, and then your employment is suddenly canceled, you are stuck with some debt. I guess that happens to some people.

A loan against what collateral? What does someone making $20k per year have to put up as security for a loan? You're also assuming this person has little to no debt to begin with, so their debt to income ratio can sustain another loan. Banks don't lend money out of the kindness of their own hearts; you have to qualify, and that's much easier with a higher income than a below median income.

They have their work power - don't banks actually love it when people can't pay off their debt?

If your odds of making your investment back are so bad that the bank won't give you a loan, maybe it is the wrong plan to begin with. The job of bankers in theory is to evaluate the risk of your plans and offer you credit accordingly. (Not that I claim they are all good at their job).

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

#890

Post by [deleted] »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #314
burlesona wrote: post #167

This is a great write-up, and as someone who spent time being poor-ish, it really resonated. What I realized from my own life experience: the US sawed the bottom rungs off the ladder in the 1950s when it suburbanized. There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area, and virtually every societal problem we deal with either stems from this or is made worse by it. Then the healthc…

>The US is a great place to live and work with tremendous upward mobility Always confused by this notion. People act as if the US is the only place this is possible but not only is it possible in most of the western world, there is in fact BETTER mobility in the much of the western world relative to the US. The US isn't even in the Top 10! https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

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