[HN Gopher] Being poor vs. being broke
___________________________________________________________________
Being poor vs. being broke
Author : speckx
Score : 361 points
Date : 2025-11-14 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.ctms.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.ctms.me)
| rsyring wrote:
| https://blog.ctms.me/about/
|
| It would appear from the about page and the article that he has
| the requisite skills to earn an income that should move him out
| of the "poor" category:
|
| - auto mechanic
|
| - digital tech
|
| - landscaping
|
| I'm not trying to dismiss the difficult realities associated with
| being poor. But if you have the skills to make more money and
| bring your family out of the "poor" category, why wouldn't you do
| that? IMO, basic financial security for your family should trump
| "I like to work outside."
|
| He obviously has different priorities, which is fine. But I'm not
| sure the search for sympathy/empathy in the blog post is
| warranted.
| cluckindan wrote:
| You did not read the article.
| rsyring wrote:
| I read every word of the article and the about page.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Then why did you present fallacious arguments which were
| already discussed over several paragraphs?
| tome wrote:
| Perhaps you could elaborate, because I read the article
| and the About page too, and I don't understand what
| you're getting at.
| cluckindan wrote:
| "It would appear from the about page and the article that
| he has the requisite skills to earn an income that should
| move him out of the "poor" category: - auto mechanic -
| digital tech - landscaping"
|
| cf.
|
| "The other mindset is poor people are lazy. Quit
| complaining and do it yourself! Just get a better job!
| Get a second job! There's money out there, you just have
| to go get it."
| tome wrote:
| So is it your belief that the author currently considers
| himself poor? (FWIW, I don't think he does.)
| dugidugout wrote:
| Why is anyone assuming this? It was the GP of this chain
| who was providing this assumption. The OP was commenting
| on the condition of being poor and the meaningful
| difference between the commonly experienced condition of
| being "broke". This entire digression is likely a
| reflection of what motivated OP to put this post
| together.
| tome wrote:
| I don't know, but it seems that rsyring and cluckindan
| are both assuming it, and at odds about a counterfactual.
| cluckindan wrote:
| I'm just pointing out the other is assuming it.
| rsyring wrote:
| > The other mindset is poor people are lazy. Quit
| complaining and do it yourself! Just get a better job!
| Get a second job! There's money out there, you just have
| to go get it."
|
| There are more options than the "mindsets" given in the
| article. It is legitimate to ask someone who believes
| they are poor why they are poor. Maybe they truly are.
| But maybe they aren't and they just don't know it.
|
| Questioning whether or not someone has a higher earning
| potential does not imply they are currently lazy.
| rsyring wrote:
| What was fallacious about my OP?
|
| He asserts that being poor is different from being broke.
| The former being tied to a permanent state.
|
| But, if you have the skills and opportunity to make
| better-than-poor money, then in most cases, I presume,
| you aren't really poor. It's only a matter of time until
| you can make additional money. And if you need to charge
| the $300 of parts to your credit card, on the presumption
| that if you have a running vehicle you can go to an
| interview of do the next landscaping job, you have a
| reasonable expectation of being able to pay it off. It's
| an investment in that case.
|
| There are all kinds of reasons why you might find
| yourself poor anyway for reasons outside your control.
| Health issues, weird economic situations, whatever. I'm
| not discounting them. And maybe they apply here.
|
| I just feel like there is a disconnect between the
| earning potential of the skills he has and being truly
| "permanently" poor. I'm not arguing there isn't a
| legitimate reason, just that it wasn't clear to me what
| that reason would be.
|
| You may not like the reasoning or think I'm being too
| critical, but it's hardly fallacious.
| alaxhn wrote:
| The article directly mentions that the author has done
| complete engine rebuilds. Mechanics who can do things like
| engine rebuilds (efficiently) can crack six figures in a MCOL
| area although this industry does tend to expect quite a bit
| of work (e.g. 50 hours a week probably and not just M-F).
| Similarly the about page of the author mentions that they
| didn't like working in tech and left. The author seems to
| have all of the tools to make well above the median national
| salary and afford the proverbial white picket fence house
| with a wife and two kids. Therefore it seems that the author
| is making a choice to be poor and many of us would find this
| choice questionable. Coupled with the author stating things
| like "Should I kill myself for capitalism" this reads like a
| fairly typical far-left rant against the inhumanity of
| actually having to work for a living. The author should check
| their privilege. There are many rungs below what the author
| describes and people in this environment would kill for the
| job of doing engine rebuilds 50 hours per week to earn a six
| figure salary and support their family.
|
| Hey Dom we all find work tough a good chunk of the time and
| none of us would do it without the paycheck so we aren't
| exactly feeling sympathy that you don't like it and are
| choosing to force your family to live in miserable conditions
| because you don't want to embrace the grind.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have six kids and a wife _and don 't work_ I'm
| pretty sure most states in the USA will pay you quite
| nicely.
|
| Probably not a good life, but a great life by any
| historical standard.
|
| But you'd have to write blogs convincing yourself that
| you're doing the right thing.
| nyeah wrote:
| It's an obvious conclusion to draw when folks seem to be
| unaware of the content of the article. But you're not
| supposed to say it.
| cluckindan wrote:
| I don't want to live in a world where anything resembling
| wilful ignorance of systemic inequality is propagated
| uncontested. Chalk it up to wilful ignorance if you must.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| I was unconvinced he was writing about his current state, but a
| prior state / maybe his family background.
| rsyring wrote:
| I hadn't considered that until reading comments like this.
| It's possible...probable even.
|
| In that case, was he really poor? His whole argument is that
| being poor is a permanent state. If he's not poor now, was he
| ever?
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| His comment that you can get out- two people did- may
| either be a claim that his own escape doesn't prove that
| escape is possible for all, or a batman reference. I lack
| the media literacy to be sure which.
| dugidugout wrote:
| It fits the Batman reference, somewhat.
|
| Bruce Wayne (Batman's public-facing identity) was
| imprisoned in a pit where he was the second person to
| ever escape.
|
| What I find a bit ironic, is this allegory can be used to
| reach the opposite perspective OP is trying to dispel.
| The bit about the "hopefulness" doesn't only refer to the
| light at the opening of the pit, but also in that the
| "escape" mechanism was actually being facilitated by the
| prison. This "escape" was supposedly designed to enact
| the "true despair" the OP was highlighting. The element
| they left out, was the fact this was done by extending a
| "support" rope from the opening which was deliberately
| too short to be useful. This causes Bruce to muster his
| own raw physical and mental strength to make the climb
| without the rope and ultimately prevail through personal
| will-power.
|
| I guess OP would say Bruce is actually only "broke" here
| and not "poor".
| erikerikson wrote:
| And people they work with and know
| wat10000 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the author's membership in the "poor" category
| is in the past tense.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I poked around their blog some more out of curiosity and I
| can't figure out what his situation is. In a year-old article
| about burnout and vacation, he mentions burning out from a
| job in marketing, and ends by saying therapy isn't an option
| because he lives under the poverty line and can't even afford
| to get vital blood work done. Maybe this hit so hard that it
| actually made him unable to do more remunerative work. But it
| sure feels like he's poor by choice. Which is odd because
| this article seems like a pretty good description of what
| it's like to be poor _not_ by choice. There is an almost
| throwaway line that stands out at me now:
|
| "Should I work a second job and never see my wife? My kids?
| Should I never have any personal time? Should my entire life
| revolve around money? Should I kill myself for capitalism?"
|
| The rest of the article is about how you _can 't_ just choose
| to stop being poor. And in the middle of all this is
| something that boils down to, "I could stop being poor, I
| just don't like the tradeoff." Which is certainly his right,
| but it makes this whole thing feel like poverty cosplay.
| msandford wrote:
| "I could stop being poor, I just don't like the tradeoff."
|
| I feel like this is an ugly truth, but still a truth. It's
| also very ugly.
|
| For some people there's no tradeoff on how much they have
| to suffer to get some financial security because they
| already have it. Some people have to suffer a bit but
| quickly hit escape velocity. Some people never stop
| suffering. It's terrible.
|
| I think Dave Ramsey has many annoying qualities but his
| "sometimes you have to act crazy to get out of it" is
| basically correct even if it's very, very uncomfortable
| IMO.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It's one of those difficult topics that people like to
| take to extremes.
|
| Many poor people are in difficult situations with no
| clear way out. They're already working the best paying
| job they can find, as much as they can, and doing as much
| as they can to advance. Learning new skills requires time
| and energy they don't have.
|
| Some are poor by choice. They could put in more hours,
| get a second job, or learn new skills, and escape the
| trap. But they don't want to. This might be "lazy," or it
| might be "prioritizes family time," or whatever.
|
| But as soon as you say that some people are really stuck
| no matter how hard they try to get out, it's taken as
| saying nobody can ever get out of it. And if you say that
| some people can get out of it and don't, it's taken as
| saying every poor person is just lazy.
|
| What's curious about this post is that it seems like a
| pretty good insider description of being completely
| stuck, except the author isn't.
| switchbak wrote:
| Not just that, they appear to have 6 kids.
|
| I have a lot of empathy for people that are struggling
| financially, especially with how hard things are now. I grew up
| in a way that most would consider to be "poor", though I mostly
| never felt that way.
|
| I do well for myself now, better than I ever thought I could,
| and yet still I had to think very hard about the financial
| implications and compromises that come with choosing to have
| kids. Making 6 babies then complaining that you're poor, come
| on man, wtf? If you're going to do that, you have to do
| absolutely whatever you can to bring resources in for your
| family. That means working the "boring desk job" if it pays
| more, even if you prefer to be outside wiring up sprinklers.
|
| Where is the accountability, the locus of self control? Sorry,
| but I don't buy any of this.
| strix_varius wrote:
| This gets me too. I generally agree that success is basically
| luck * effort, so I don't judge people who haven't been able
| to "make it." Similarly, I don't really admire people for
| having "made it"... If I don't know them personally, there's
| no way for me to gauge the ratio of luck and effort.
|
| However, I _do_ judge adults who aren 't in good
| circumstances who also decide to bring children into their
| hardship. I have two kids, which is the most I felt I could
| provide for (time, money, attention, energy, etc).
| bombcar wrote:
| I don't see how you can be "dirt poor" of the way explained
| if you live in the USA and have 6 kids.
|
| Even the "worst" state in the USA will give tons of
| assistance quite high with 6 kids.
| billfor wrote:
| - Cancel Netflix - Make food at home - Stop
| going to Starbucks - Fix it yourself - Don't
| upgrade your phone
|
| I have money and I do all of these things. It's got nothing to
| do with being poor. More of just a best practice imho.
| nyeah wrote:
| In the article he says those things are not really relevant,
| because he's already been doing them at 100% for a long time.
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| Poor people should have Amazon prime because it doubles as
| fast delivery, and zero other streaming services. Staying in
| is always going to be cheaper than going out so some
| entertainment at home is a good idea.
| bombcar wrote:
| Poor people shouldn't be buying shit on Amazon, nor should
| they be spending money on Prime.
|
| They'd be better off with DVDs from the library.
|
| The problem is the same as with dieting; we do _know_ what
| we need to do but the willpower required is quite high.
|
| And the world is engineered to make it hard, because they
| want to separate us from what money we _do_ have.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >landscaping
|
| You're not going to make any money in this unless you have a
| ton of tools. Working for someone else with the tools generally
| doesn't pay crap. Also in the US it is/was common to use
| undeclared immigrant labor for these kinds of jobs.
| kmoser wrote:
| Also, I imagine if you live in the middle of nowhere,
| landscaping skills would be all but useless. You need to be
| within reasonable distance of enough people willing to pay
| you a living wage.
| rwmj wrote:
| I feel like this is an AI summary of
| https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-the-experience-...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139)
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Not an summary, I think.
|
| TFA said something cancel Netflix as "advice for getting
| through being broke". This is not in the "original" article you
| linked.
|
| Could be AI (I honestly don't know), but it is not a "summary".
| rwmj wrote:
| Well the other article is 10 times better, so everyone should
| go read that one instead :-)
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| If it is then his AI policy lies..
| andunie wrote:
| I don't understand what am I supposed to do with this
| information.
|
| Now that I know what it means to be poor what should I do?
| aduwah wrote:
| You are now educated about being poor. Enjoy!
| smcg wrote:
| This information should inform your political and personal
| decisions relating to poverty going forward.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Go back to reading man pages for fun - your venture into non-
| technical writing was a failed experiment.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Remember it before considering giving advice to the poor and...
| just don't.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| It's also owning lower quality goods, that plague you by breaking
| all the time. So the maintenance cost (time and energy) is quite
| high. It's almost better not to have things when you're poor,
| because the things you have are just a big headache. I think it's
| also that increasingly working people are living in old houses
| that were never built properly, and now have lots of problems.
| And even new things you buy, are just kind of annoying. I have an
| LG electric stove. Instead of modulating heat, it pulses the
| burner top. So you can't effectively lower the heat, just extend
| the time it takes to cook. The oven timer doesn't turn off, it
| tries to keep the food warm, and plays chime every minute.
| Exactly opposite of what I want, since I cook food for my dog and
| want the food to cool off. And it's stuff like that, the constant
| annoyance of dealing with badly designed products, and things
| breaking. I had 2 driers break (all plastic parts), and a washing
| machine that started leaking oil inside that damaged the clothes
| in the last year. It's the cumulative effect of dealign with
| lower quality things.
| energy123 wrote:
| I've heard it described that being poor is expensive. The
| poorer you are the more expensive it is. Being poor in a poor
| country is the most expensive. You can't just buy coffee, you
| can only afford a sachet of coffee. So per gram you're paying
| double. You can't afford medical care, so the condition gets
| worse and thus more expensive to do something about. You're in
| debt most of the time, which is expensive. You have to travel
| for work, again expensive. You rent, expensive. It must be
| awful.
| gdulli wrote:
| When I think of so many people who can least afford to do so
| buying everyday items at dollar stores, CVS, gas stations,
| and other convenience stores with such high unit prices it
| bums me out.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > You can't just buy coffee, you can only afford a sachet of
| coffee.
|
| Imagine if they tried to do without coffee until they saved a
| few dollars for a can. It could take years!
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I think its some sort of decline thats happening Some of is
| dumb environmental policy. Showerheads that don't spray
| enough water. Dishwashers that don't wash properly so you
| need to wash dishes before you put them in and after you take
| them out. Time of use pricing that means you need to cook at
| inconvenient times, and even still most of the bill is fixed
| charges. It's just going on. The decline in Canada seems like
| its mostly targeted towards poor people. I know a family
| friend that has a broken bone leg is waiting months for a
| specialist when anytime he could get an infection and die
| from infection. Totally preventable even in a third world
| country, yet it is what it is. My mom also know somone thats
| waiting for a proecdure too, and they asked hime multiple
| times if he wants to do Maid. It's almost cynical.
| mc32 wrote:
| Poor people also can use a washboard and line dry their
| clothing. Not as convenient as having machines but just about
| everyone did it like this till the '40s & '50s.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I remember an interview with some billionaire talking about
| how people should grow their own food. He underpays his
| workers. One the surface great idea. Aside for the fact that
| it's hugely inefficient and why we have massive farms to take
| care of the inefficiency problem. Innovation was supposed to
| take care of this so poor people don't have to substance farm
| in cities. I mean by all means do that as a hobby. But keep
| im mind many cities have contaminated soil. People doing
| their own laundry also had a stay at home parent back than yo
| do these chores. Now 2 people need to work jobs to pay a
| mortgage. So don't feel its really a viable alternative
| tome wrote:
| > I remember an interview with some billionaire talking
| about how people should grow their own food. He underpays
| his workers.
|
| You don't happen to have link do you? I couldn't find any
| obvious hits on a search engine.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Sorry I don't. Guy looked kind of like Dan Gilbert but
| somewhat like a Bill O Riley personality. Maybe 2012 or
| 2013 interview. Possibly 60 minutes. It was in major
| network. I tried searching it too but couldn't find it. I
| remember watching an interview about an attractive female
| pilot that was flying to Epstain Island and can't find
| that interview now either. So I'm thinking maybe it got
| scrubbed
| mc32 wrote:
| When I was a broke college student I don't have access to a
| washer and dryer, so I either went to a laundromat or on
| occasion just washed clothing in a tub and put them up to
| dry. Wear jeans; they don't need frequent washing -some
| manufacturers indeed recommend very infrequent washing.
|
| It's totally doable. Growing your own fruits and veggies is
| out of the question. It's stupid -the only ones that make
| sense are herbs and only because when fresh they are
| better.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Sure, the point is that doing all of that is _more
| expensive_ , in terms of time, money, flexibility and
| stress, than owning a washing machine.
|
| The difference is that you need $x00 to invest into the
| washing machine to then benefit fromt over the next
| decade+
| mc32 wrote:
| The Amish have no problem doing these things at all. It's
| a mental block. People can do it.
| wredcoll wrote:
| The amish have a crappy life heavily subsidized by their
| surrounding neighbors. We can't all do that.
| ztetranz wrote:
| Most HOAs don't allow clotheslines because it makes it look
| as if poor people live there.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not a lot of poor people live under onerous HOAs. HOAs are
| typically for middle class motgageholders.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Have you ever in your life washed a load of laundry by hand?
| mc32 wrote:
| I have in fact when I was a student. Granted they were only
| my clothes and I tried not to dirty them but also used a
| laundromat in most instances. Sometimes would ask a friend
| for access to a machine.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| I have had to do actual loads of laundry (for a
| household, and not just clothes - towels, beddings, and
| more), entirely by hand, no laundromat or friend with
| access to a machine, which is why I ask.
|
| It is both back-breaking and time-intensive especially if
| you are trying to get _clean_ laundry not just "smells
| of detergent" laundry. And especially if there's someone
| who does manual labour in the household - getting heavy
| stains out effectively doubles your workload. There are
| many people who cannot just "try not to dirty" their
| clothes.
|
| I am not trying to downplay your experience. But student
| poverty and poverty in the adult world without all the
| cushioning of a campus are very different kettles of
| fish.
| CallMeJim wrote:
| How much would you save yearly if you didn't have a dog?
|
| A few accumulated years of those savings would let you buy a
| better-quality drier or washing machine - saving you from
| replacing them regularly, or replacing your damaged clothes.
|
| Pets are a choice that's fairly high up the Maslow hierarchy.
| Get rid of them, get into a better position, build up some
| reserves, and leave your family in a better place than you
| started.
|
| Also raise your family so they have the same mindset - they
| need to leave their children in a better place than they
| started.
| Ccecil wrote:
| It's been posted here before...Vime's boots.
|
| https://terrypratchett.com/explore-discworld/sam-vimes-boots...
| _vaporwave_ wrote:
| This is basically the "Boots theory":
|
| > A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But
| an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season
| or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out,
| cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots
| lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty
| dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet
| dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford
| cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the
| same time and would still have wet feet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Very true but I also think that being poor is a mindset to
| change. I've known of people that would couch surf but they were
| never poor. We knew, they knew, that at anytime they could turn
| it around, and they did. They wanted to do things that were not
| the norm so they chose not to follow society's norms so they
| lacked money and they lived day to day. Once they changed their
| mind set they were able to work their way to an American middle
| class. It was not easy but they did it. They had little money but
| they were never poor.
|
| Then there's the other side. Families that can never get out.
| Families that have been poor for generations. Sure there are
| valid reason but I also think it's a mindset that needs to
| change. The multi-million dollar question is: how?
| aduwah wrote:
| I can give you an example. Single divorced mother with two
| kids. Working in social care for minimal wage, often earning
| lower amounts than the people she cares for. There are no
| savings, no relatives to help. Job change is an uncertainty
| that could introduce homelessness for the whole family if it
| doesn't work out. Not many options there. Now if you move this
| scenario out of rich countries it will get even worse
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| My mental poster child for "poor" is exactly this person. She
| had three kids (all in public school), lived in section 8 and
| worked part-time bagging groceries. The kids had nothing
| nice, clothes were all hand-me-down or donations with holes
| in them from being so old. No car, no health care, horrible
| dentistry to the point of becoming an emergency.
|
| They had a bigger TV than my middle class family, a premium
| channel package, and ordered pizza not infrequently. I get
| all the arguments, but when you're working 20 hours a week
| and living off food stamps and subsidized housing you don't
| get to have luxuries AND complain about being poor. The
| person described in TFA as being poor is rare at best.
| merth wrote:
| I have poor friends, they spend more on Netflix, Gym, Starbucks,
| IPhones, steam games etc then me, and they are poor for atleast
| last 10-20 years. I almost never have any of these and I have
| given them that classic suggestions like the cancelling the gym
| membership that he/she rarely or never uses, and it doesnt work,
| they keep spending money on garbage with money they don't have.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Ah all you had to do was mention avocados and we had boomer
| bingo.
| moralestapia wrote:
| This argument is baseless.
|
| All those things add up to a couple hundred a month, let's be
| extreme and say it's $1,000 USD/month. That amount will never
| move you up in the socioeconomic ladder. You're two-three
| orders of magnitude away(!).
|
| "But it adds up" could argue the midwit, "why don't you just
| get a job that pays you more", "just invest", "why didn't you
| buy bitcoin in 2010", "why don't you just buy the winning
| lottery ticket". I wrote all those in order of increasing
| stupidity. Not aimed at you @merth, it's just stuff that I've
| actually heard.
|
| Nobody who is wealthy these days got there by skipping
| Starbucks and instead throwing that dollar in a jar. Nobody.
|
| You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to
| be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely
| difficult these days because the denominator there is almost
| zero.
|
| As TFA states, people who have not experienced poverty have
| ZERO idea of what it is like.
| merth wrote:
| > You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power)
| to be able to start building things that matter. It's
| extremely difficult these days because the denominator there
| is almost zero.
|
| I agree, but you should do both I think, increase your income
| and decrease your expenses.
| abbablack wrote:
| Your argument holds even less ground. Yeah let's not save
| ~$12,000 a year since it'll never help. Instead say woe and
| stay in the same bucket and beg for handouts since there's no
| 12k in safeguards. If you're living from paycheck to paycheck
| due to your own spending habits it's a personal issue as
| well. As someone previously commented, it's about reducing
| expenses while making money. It isn't going to immediately
| lift you out. But it will eventually.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > Yeah let's not save ~$12,000 a year since it'll never
| help.
|
| It's true that it may not help a lot if you're "missing
| $40,000 a year, every year, forever" which apparently is
| the article's definition of poor. Unfortunately we're not
| told what they would need such an amount of additional
| money for exactly.
|
| On the other hand, maybe going from "missing $40,000 a
| year" to "missing $28,000 a year" is enough to not be poor
| anymore? It's difficult to understand the author's idea of
| the boundary between being poor and not being poor.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Being able to save money for an emergency fund is the first
| step towards financial and life stability if you're poor. So,
| yes, cutting out extraneous expenditures _does_ add up, even
| if it doesn 't directly make you move up the socioeconomic
| ladder.
|
| Saving that $1000 or even $100/month means you might be able
| to get your car fixed when you need it, which might be the
| difference between keeping your job and getting fired/forced
| to quit. It can mean eating dinner every night, giving you
| better mental clarity and better sleep quality which can
| improve every part of your next day.
|
| I think, "poor" is bigger than what the author wrote(ie that
| poor people have already cut out every extraneous
| expenditure). For every class, there are people with good
| financial hygiene and people with poor financial hygiene.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Just curious. What is your experience with poverty in your
| own life?
| J_McQuade wrote:
| In the terminology of the article - which I enjoyed and
| recommend that you read when you get time - these friends of
| yours are not 'poor', they are 'broke'.
| merth wrote:
| article says broke for temporary, these people poor 10-20
| years. that doesnt sounds like temporary. they get government
| or familiy support, and rarely work short term here and
| there.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I see this all the time in developed countries. The "poor" in a
| place like America are different from the poor elsewhere. Often
| times, the poor in America are just people making bad
| decisions, living beyond their means. You see it in the places
| they choose to live in, the cars they own, the number of
| children they have, etc.
| smithkl42 wrote:
| The post does a good job of describing a phenomenological
| difference between being broke and being poor, and its account
| seems plausible to me. But what I'm curious about is the _causal_
| difference between the two. I 've known working class folks who
| seem like they're getting by fine, even if they're occasionally
| "broke", and I've known working class folks who are constantly in
| financial crisis, and definitely fit in the category of "poor". I
| wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills,
| intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can
| nevertheless end up in very different places?
| nathias wrote:
| think of this way, the less capital you have the more you
| depend on luck
| doubled112 wrote:
| > I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills,
| intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can
| nevertheless end up in very different places?
|
| I don't want to sound dismissive but sometimes it's just luck.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Luck really can't be overstated imo. I was genuinely just
| lucky to be interested in computer programming as a teenager.
| I wasn't thinking about careers, I just wanted to make games.
| If my interest was basketball my life would have been very
| different.
| antisthenes wrote:
| You were lucky to have the genetics that allowed you to
| have cognitive capabilities to understand computers and
| programming.
|
| Many people don't and never will.
|
| There is always a bottom % of people who are under the
| cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society.
| That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will always
| be poor/broke.
|
| Ranting about this is just ranting about human nature. Life
| isn't fair, some of us will be short, have bad looks, be
| unappealing to women, etc. And some of us will not have the
| cognitive capacity to have a job that keeps you above
| water, forever.
|
| The only thing we can do is be compassionate and help out.
| Maybe eventually we will have enough mastery over genetics
| where we can make people truly equal in ability.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >There is always a bottom % of people who are under the
| cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society.
| That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will
| always be poor/broke.
|
| There's a lot of dumb rich people, too. Sometimes the
| wield a lot of power and are indeed bad people.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Yes, inheritance is a thing, and having smart kids from
| smart parents is not a guarantee.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > There is always a bottom % of people who are under the
| cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society.
| That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will
| always be poor/broke.
|
| The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a
| useful job is staggeringly low.
|
| Unless in your mind anybody of average or below average
| intelligence "can't contribute to society" in which case
| I suggest you step off your tech pedestal and look around
| you.
| simoncion wrote:
| > The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a
| useful job is staggeringly low.
|
| Sure. OP didn't say otherwise.
|
| OP _did_ say that some folks "will always be poor"
| because they are "under the cognitive capacity to
| meaningfully contribute to society" and that "[t]hat
| doesn't mean that they are bad people, but they will
| always be poor/broke" and that "Maybe eventually we will
| have enough mastery over genetics where we can make
| people truly equal in ability." but until then "The only
| thing we can do is be compassionate and help out.".
|
| Perhaps you've been so lucky as to never encounter folks
| who hold the bone-deep belief that being unable to work
| [0] makes you worse than worthless. If so, celebrate your
| good fortune, I guess?
|
| [0] Typically, these sorts of folks have carveouts for
| retirement, pregnancy, childbearing, and _maybe_ a
| begrudging carveout for short-term injury. Anything else
| and you 're a filthy drain on society.
| tavavex wrote:
| Don't forget the luck of living in a country where
| programming was a viable career path that could lead to a
| decent job, the luck of having the opportunity (and/or
| money) to attain the higher education that's usually
| required for it and the luck of living in a time when the
| tech industry was in an upswing that would allow a person
| to find a job in this industry. Really, having any of these
| puts most of us well above the amount of luck an average
| person gets (at least on a worldwide scale).
| dangoor wrote:
| > I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills,
| intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can
| nevertheless end up in very different places?
|
| External factors (aka luck), perhaps? Someone gets their resume
| into a job just after they made the last hire for that
| position. Or the car they can't afford to fix breaks down on
| the way to the interview.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _But what I 'm curious about is the causal difference between
| the two_
|
| A majority of personal bankruptcies in the US being caused by
| medical expenses might be a good place to start looking. You
| can be "broke" living paycheck to paycheck and "making it", but
| you're on even more of a razors edge than most. One medical
| emergency, one car accident, one removal of work hours etc and
| you start to fall behind, and that's when late fees and
| compounding interest work to make sure you never get out of the
| hole.
| webdood90 wrote:
| > I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills,
| intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can
| nevertheless end up in very different places?
|
| I actually think a lot of it comes down to self control.
|
| Can you resist the allure of consumerism and keeping up with
| the Joneses? Are you buying liabilities that actually make your
| life harder? Are you living outside of your means?
|
| IMO it matters little how much you earn if you don't know how
| to spend it.
| rectang wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > _Being poor is you already did all those things. You
| cancelled all your streaming services years ago. You make all
| your food from scratch all the time. You never go to fucking
| Starbucks. You fix everything yourself. You already stretch
| everything to the limit. That is how you have to live every
| day of your life, for eternity, with no relief in sight._
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yes, the article says that, but I have direct experience
| which says the article is not telling the whole story. Some
| people are making all the right decisions and are still
| poor due to bad luck trapping them in a cycle of financial
| ruin. But also, some people _really are_ poor due to their
| own crappy decisions. I 've known them! They exist and must
| be accounted for in any productive discussion about
| poverty.
|
| Many, many people try to act like only one of these two
| groups of poor people exists. For some people, that means
| they claim that if you're poor it's only because of your
| own bad decisions. For some people (including, to be frank,
| most of the commenters in this thread), it means they claim
| that if you're poor it's only because of systemic issues.
| Both claims are wrong, however, and both hamper us from
| finding effective solutions.
|
| Whether one is poor due to external causes or their own bad
| decisions, they deserve to be treated with compassion and
| for us to try to help them. But the solutions for those two
| failure modes look _very different_ and helping one group
| isn 't going to do anything to help the other. Thus, trying
| to effectively solve problems of poverty in our society
| _must_ include a balanced view, recognizing that both
| causes of poverty (systemic issues and bad personal
| decision making) are quite real.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Being poor is you already did all those things. ... You
| make all your food from scratch all the time.
|
| If poor americans did this they wouldn't be so fat, so that
| is wrong. Food stamps lets the poor eat unhealthily even
| though they are poor, while most of the world poor means
| you have to make your own and not get all the industrial
| crap.
|
| The other interpretation is that people who don't make
| their own food aren't really poor, which would mean there
| are barely any poor Americans. But I doubt that is what
| they mean.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| You can definitely be fat making food from scratch.
| Making it from scratch doesn't mean it is low calorie.
| See also: southern home cooking.
| Jensson wrote:
| Yes, there were always fat people around in history, but
| not at the same rates and severity as modern Americans.
|
| Cooking your own food reduces how fat you are on average,
| American poors wouldn't be one of the fattest groups in
| the world if they made their own food.
| 9rx wrote:
| I suppose that depends on what you mean by "from
| scratch". If first you must invent the universe,
| starvation is certain. If you have to produce the food
| from the ground by yourself, you will struggle to scrape
| enough calories out of it to survive. There is no hope of
| excessive weight gain here.
|
| If "from scratch" means going to the grocery store to buy
| a bunch of prepared ingredients that you go home with to
| mix up in a bowl, sure. Then it starts to become much
| easier. Where does the line get drawn?
| simoncion wrote:
| > There is no hope of excessive weight gain here.
|
| Uh. We can pretty confidently say that ancient
| civilizations had fat folks, too.
|
| Also, butter, processed animal fats (such as lard), fatty
| meats... none of these are recent inventions, and they're
| all good at helping you to grow fat. I feel very
| confident in claiming that they (or things functionally
| just like them) have been around for a thousand years,
| and I expect that they've been around for several
| thousand.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> We can pretty confidently say that ancient
| civilizations had fat folks, too._
|
| Not without a lot of extra help. That is why I said by
| yourself. If you include the input of many other people
| building things like a tractor you could also grow enough
| of your own food from the ground to exceed your normal
| caloric requirements without much trouble, but you're a
| long way from doing it from scratch at that point.
|
| Unless, like before, you consider throwing some prepared
| ingredients into a bowl to be "from scratch", at which
| point anything goes. Perhaps opening a bag of chips is
| also "from scratch"? You did have to exert the effort to
| open it, after all.
| simoncion wrote:
| > Not without a lot of extra help. That is why I said by
| yourself.
|
| One guy can totally make butter, lard, and harvest fatty
| meat by themselves. While it's far easier with help, it's
| not as if you're asking the fellow to -say- change the
| orbit of the sun. Fat people and high-calorie foods
| _substantially_ predate modern industry.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> One guy can totally make butter, lard, and harvest
| fatty meat by themselves._
|
| Theoretically it is possible that one person could, on
| their own, produce enough calories with cattle to feed
| around two people. So in a vacuum it is true that you
| could gain excessive weight.
|
| But it still isn't actually possible in reality. The time
| commitment to produce that much is expansive. There isn't
| enough time in the day for you and you alone to both
| produce it and also eat it to excess. If you cut down on
| your time commitment to the animals so that you can focus
| on eating, then your caloric production plummets.
|
| That is, of course, much easier to pull off with the
| modern tools we have, but then you're back to requiring
| the help of many people. Those tools don't magically
| appear out of nowhere.
| simoncion wrote:
| > Theoretically it is possible that one person could, on
| their own, produce enough calories with cattle to feed
| around two people.
|
| Right. This is the same species as the "birthing in olden
| times was fatal 50% of the time" assertion.
|
| Anyway, I see what you're driving at.
|
| Yes. I agree that a lone, naked, unarmed human surrounded
| by a couple dozen wolves looking to eat him _right now_
| is almost certainly going to be eaten by those wolves.
|
| Though, what that has to do with a lone farmer getting
| fat off his own produce, I have no idea.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> You make all your food from scratch all the time. [...]
| You fix everything yourself._
|
| What stands out here is that if someone finds out that you
| can cook or fix things in my circles, they'll be knocking
| at your door trying to throw money at you. These are hotly
| desired skills. Of course, it is conceivable that if your
| circle is other poor people that can't offer you a good
| job, you'll never find those opportunities. Does this
| suggest that the company you keep is most signifiant? That
| is certainly not a new idea.
|
| Being able to hobnob with the world's richest billionaires
| is probably a function of luck more than anything. But what
| about the moms and pops that are found everywhere? Is
| getting into their good graces also limited by sheer luck,
| or does self-control start to dominate?
| sgarland wrote:
| I don't think you understand how little some people have.
| Especially in rural (or really, anything that isn't urban)
| areas, where you _have_ to have a car for transportation,
| because public transit doesn't exist.
|
| Keeping an old car running and insured isn't cheap.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Especially in rural (or really, anything that isn't
| urban) areas_
|
| What isn't urban but also not rural?
|
| I've seen disagreement over exactly where urban begins. A
| density of ~400 people per km2, with a minimum of 1-2,000
| people is a common definition, although the OECD targets a
| density of 1,500 people per km2, with a minimum of 7,000
| people, to capture all the variation throughout the nations
| it tracks. Regardless, in all those cases "rural" always
| encompasses that which falls short of what constitutes
| urban.
|
| I've never heard of this alternate state you speak of.
| simoncion wrote:
| > What isn't urban but also not rural?
|
| The sub-urban regions. All the suburbs I've been in (and
| I'd wager nearly all of the US suburbs in existence)
| require you to have a vehicle to go about your day...
| unless you work from home and have everything delivered
| to you, I guess.
| 9rx wrote:
| The particular urban subset that you speak of that is
| also literally named as such is still within the urban
| set, so that's clearly not it.
| simoncion wrote:
| It's true that the word 'urban' is a substring match for
| the word 'suburban'. You're right about that.
| 9rx wrote:
| Correct, but irrelevant. Suburban is a subset of urban,
| not the other way around -- originally referring to the
| portion of an urban area found outside of the wall.
|
| The physical walls aren't often found anymore, but the
| term still refers to an urban area that surrounds where a
| wall might have been placed historically.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| What consumerism? Someone falling into the "poor" category
| the OP describes has already forgone all of that out of
| necessity. There is no money for consumerism.
|
| Has nothing to do with self control and "maybe don't go buy a
| coffee." They weren't doing that in the first place.
|
| There are places in this country where the minimum wage is
| still a paltry $10/hour or less and rent for a family is
| $2800+. The math doesn't work. There's a systemic
| affordability problem
| webdood90 wrote:
| Is the discussion about only one particular kind of poor
| person?
|
| The system is a trap to keep people poor. A lot of people
| make the wrong decisions that keep them there. Can we not
| talk about that? It doesn't belittle the subset of folks
| that it doesn't apply to.
|
| I grew up this way and saw it first-hand. A dead-beat step
| dad who didn't work for literally _years_. A mother with
| the only income of less than $40k/year for 3.
|
| Cigarettes and beer every night. Fancy, financed cars with
| ridiculous interest rates because their credit scores were
| shit. Rent-a-center furniture payments. The newest phones
| and other bullshit that they couldn't truly afford.
|
| So many people in our circles lived this way or worse. And
| I'm not trying to come forward and say "I got out of it so
| everyone can!" - just that people have a small amount of
| control and they regularly make the wrong decisions.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Is the discussion about only one particular kind of
| poor person?
|
| Yes, according to the OP. The article already describes
| the people you are talking about as "broke," not "poor."
| We already know that those in the broke category can, in
| most cases, make better decisions and reduce their
| spending and possibly get ahead.
|
| The ones not in that category can't, which is who the
| article is about. The discussion is how do we address and
| help eliminate poverty, not how do we help educate people
| who are broke because they make bad choices.
| webdood90 wrote:
| I think that's a fair point.
| etchalon wrote:
| Growing up with a single mother we've vacillated between being
| poor, broke and "getting by".
|
| It was always a reverse slide down.
|
| First, we'd go broke. The meager savings she'd put together
| would get wiped out. It was generally an impossible crisis that
| would do it. Something that shouldn't have broken, did.
| Something that shouldn't have happened, did. Something that
| should have only cost X cost Y.
|
| If the crisis was a single instance event that year, we'd
| slowly return to "getting buy". Small savings would get
| restored. Some debt written off. A windfall from something or
| other that put our heads above water.
|
| But sometimes, it was too many things at once. We'd go from
| being broke, to being poor. Every dollar was a trade-off. There
| was no "even" or "reduced". There was just "no". The water bill
| couldn't get paid. The mortgage had to be late. The credit card
| was going to default. There were no options to shave or save.
| The bare minimum was still too expensive.
|
| The answer is just ... luck.
|
| When you're broke, you're on borrowed time. For some people, at
| some point, that debt comes due and can never be repaid. For
| some people, the debt comes due but something balances it. For
| others, the debt just never gets called in.
| cowpig wrote:
| Things that are pretty much out of those peoples' control can
| include health problems, dependents such as kids or needy older
| relatives, accidents, a long tail of other kinds of bad luck
| (fires, victim of fraud, etc)
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I'm wealthy but I wasnt always. When I was 22 through 30 I
| didn't take a single vacation that wasn't driving to a long
| weekend. My wife and I both pulled 60 to 70 hour weeks for our
| entire 20s (I still do).
|
| No one "deserves" free time. If you don't want to work 70 hours
| a week and want to watch Netflix instead, go for it, but don't
| bitch to me
| dbspin wrote:
| I'm not sure what this contributes? Not being rich and
| experiencing absolute poverty are radically different things.
| Of course, in America as everywhere else, there are millions
| who work sixty hour weeks and remain in poverty, often
| extreme poverty. Especially those undocumented, incarcerated
| or working in circumstances where minimum wages do not apply.
|
| I wonder if you've examined your own evident anger and
| defensiveness and why you've responded in that way?
| tome wrote:
| I'm confused because the comment you're replying to didn't
| mention free time or Netflix.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Such bullshit. Don't continue to glamorize the mentally and
| physically harmful hustle culture that invades this country,
| and ignores the very real factor of both luck and privilege
| that not everyone is blessed with.
|
| What's the point of society if everyone needs to bust their
| ass 70+ hours a week to get by? Might as well go homestead in
| the woods and be a subsistence farmer and do it on your own
| at that point.
|
| Just fuck having time for creative pursuits and hobbies
| outside of working and making someone else rich?
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| What was your job at the time?
| mayoff wrote:
| Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this and I
| hope no one else does."
|
| Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this so
| everyone else should too."
| rfrey wrote:
| If you had actually been impoverished, you'd have worked 60
| hour weeks, and still be working 60 hour weeks with nothing
| to show for it. If you think "didn't take a vacation that
| wasn't a long weekend" is poverty, you're delusional.
|
| The "prosperity bible" turn that America has taken is truly
| saddening.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _No one "deserves" free time_
|
| Careful. It sounds an awful lot like you feel you "deserve"
| to be wealthy from your hard work, but in reality it was the
| _type_ of work you were doing that got you there, because
| there are a whole lot of people working 60 to 70 hour weeks
| decades out of their 20s and will never be secure monetarily.
|
| (leaving aside the pricklier philosophical aspect that a
| particular type of work being valued so much more than
| another type of work is also fairly arbitrary in a very
| similar way to whether or not a human "deserves" free time)
| brenainn wrote:
| >No one "deserves" free time.
|
| I do! So does everyone I like.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills,
| intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can
| nevertheless end up in very different places?
|
| They don't have the same skills. One is far more skilled at
| existing while poor.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I like this guy's backstory[0].
|
| I grew up in Africa. The poverty I saw, as a child, was
| foundational in my own personal development.
|
| There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty,
| but I have not seen them, with my own eyes.
|
| I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting
| poverty (with very limited success). They believe that poverty is
| probably the single biggest problem in the world, today. Almost
| every major issue we face, can be traced back to poverty.
|
| Income inequality is one thing, but hardcore poverty, as
| described by the author, is a different beast, and creates a
| level of desperation that is _incredibly_ dangerous.
|
| [0] https://blog.ctms.me/about/
| reaperducer wrote:
| _There are some places in the US, that have that kind of
| poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes._
|
| Americans are very often blind to the poverty in their own
| backyards.
|
| There are _hundreds of thousands_ (millions?) of people in
| America who do not have electricity or even running water in
| their homes.
|
| I'm always reminded of a photograph from a few years ago in the
| Navajo Times showing a handful of children sitting in a little
| clearing bordered by rocks at the top of a hill, surrounded by
| endless desert. That was their classroom.
|
| No desks or chairs. Not even walls, a roof, or a floor. Just
| out in the open, sitting in the dirt. According to the photo
| caption, they had to have their classes there because it was
| the only place where they could get a cellular signal to do
| their lessons.
|
| Edit: I can't believe I found it - October, 2020. (I took a
| picture of it, and it was still in iPhoto.)
|
| Caption: _Milton T. Carroll, left, and Wylean Burbank, center,
| help their daughter Eziellia H. Carroll, a kindergartener at
| Cottonwood Day School, with her school work on Monday in Fish
| Point, Ariz. Carroll said he built the circular rock wall to
| protect his children from the elements._
|
| I was wrong about no desk. The three of them share something
| that looks like it was nailed together from a discarded wooden
| palette. There's also a plastic milk crate nearby.
|
| These are American citizens. In America. It's hard not to go
| off about the gilded ballrooms and trillion-dollar bonus
| packages.
| dmd wrote:
| Is this the photo? https://navajotimes.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/10/dq-no-wif...
| reaperducer wrote:
| Not the exact photo, but it looks like it's another angle
| from the same photo shoot.
|
| Thanks for finding that.
| mlmonkey wrote:
| The other crime in that photo is the lack of cell service,
| despite billions of dollars that the USG has given
| ATT/Verizon/T-Mo over the years.
|
| But these phone companies just give unfettered access to
| their networks to the various TLAs and everybody ignores
| the fact that they are not providing the cell service they
| are contractually obligated to.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Why would you expect there to be cell service there?
| Large parts of that area of the Mountain West are
| virtually uninhabited and have no telecom infrastructure
| to connect the cellular service to. There is literally
| nothing out in much of it except the occasional building
| every 10-20 miles which isn't enough to sustain a
| cellular network.
|
| These days satellite would be cheaper in any case.
| sgarland wrote:
| There are Americans who have open sewage in their yards [0],
| because their counties are predominantly Black or Latino, and
| their state deprioritizes any infrastructure work. It's
| structural racism.
|
| Even better, the Trump administration canceled [1] an attempt
| to right that wrong, citing that it was "DEI."
|
| 0: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sanitation-open-sewers-
| black-...
|
| 1: https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-
| environmental-...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| What the Trump administration canceled didn't right that
| wrong. What the Trump administration canceled was an
| agreement for the local county to stop issuing fines, which
| had already been in effect for over two years. And within
| those two years, the local county built zero sewers, zero
| hookups. They literally built nothing in two years.
|
| The original agreement under the Biden admin, which to be
| clear, the President doesn't personally oversee these kinds
| of agreements, this is sort of all within the DOJ, but the
| original agreement doesn't even require them to build the
| sewers. It literally just requires them to run a public
| health campaign and not issue fines.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I guess the DOJ saying not to fine these people is a nice
| gesture but in practice local fines don't mean anything
| in a situation like this unless the poors on the property
| are unlucky enough to be on a property that the
| municipality wants to lien and take for whatever reason.
|
| Whatever the dollar number is, it's likely some insane
| punitive number (hundreds to thousands per day) that
| nobody could ever pay and never will actually be
| enforced, it's basically just a threat and you wind up
| going to court over it in the end or you fix it and they
| drop it or fine you a reasonable amount (thank the 8th
| amendment).
|
| This sounds like a standoff situation. Municipality wants
| trailer park to pay for its own sewer. Trailer park can't
| afford it. Municipality fines them. Trailer park gives
| them the bird because they're so poor they're basically
| judgement proof. Municipality doesn't push the issue
| because if they take it and kick them all out then they
| will pick up the tab for remediating, etc, etc.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're called sewage "lagoons" and work basically the same
| as septic systems from a environmental impact perspective.
| They only really work well in certain climates and even
| then you need to have enough spare land to just locate a
| sewage pond somewhere. Even in richer areas it was dirt
| common for schools and prisons (which aren't likely to be
| located in the center of town like other government stuff
| is) to have them way deeper into the 20th century than
| you'd expect since it's not like they were short on land
| (just use more taxpayer money).
|
| Normally the plumbing runs underground but those people
| have a trench solution likely because they added a bunch of
| trailers to the property and more lines were out. There's
| probably some weird government rules at play here. Like
| they don't want to dig pipes into the ground because
| screwing with their grandfathered in lagoon would be "state
| problems" level illegal whereas right now it's
| "municipality problems" level illegal and the latter
| doesn't wanna stomp them with the jackboot for obvious
| political reasons.
|
| The clean water act and it's knock on rules really act as a
| huge impediment to "it won't make it compliant, but it will
| make it a hell of a lot better" fixes in cases like this.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Why is cellular signal required for lessons? I went through
| 12 years of school in Eastern Europe without anyone in the
| entire country having cellular signal, or cellular phones.
| (Well mostly, towards the end they appeared, but had no
| effect in school). Granted, perhaps the lessons were less
| than perfect, but they were _way_ better than nothing.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It was during the pandemic, the family did not have good
| phone service at their home...
|
| https://navajotimes.com/edu/hill-becomes-makeshift-
| classroom...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Why is cellular signal required for lessons?_
|
| Look at the photo (linked to elsewhere in this thread).
|
| If it's anything like some of the parts of the big rez I've
| been to, the nearest school is probably three hours away
| over sand/dirt roads. The teacher teaches remotely to
| children spread over a thousand square miles.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's to have something better than just the bare minimum. I
| remember seeing similar reports about higher education in
| remote villages in India, with cellular networks and
| internet access allowing people to learn without being able
| to move to somewhere close to sufficiently qualified
| teachers.
| baq wrote:
| > Americans are very often blind to the poverty in their own
| backyards.
|
| it doesn't help that it's in practice illegal to be in such
| poverty.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Legality only matters insofar as people use it as a mental
| shortcut to turn off their brains.
|
| Which TBH I think is way less than it used to be, but feels
| like it's more because so much more stuff involves law and
| government than it did 50yr ago.
| ModernMech wrote:
| If anyone is wondering why solving homelessness and poverty
| is so hard, this sibling reply is dead but I think people
| need to see that this opinion exists, and we need to
| contemplate the richest and most powerful people in this
| country share this sentiment:
|
| "we're not blind to it, half of us are sick of paying for
| it for multiple generations, accruing interest. we're
| paying for poor people from 20 years ago still. let them
| sink, let them go away. its a test, they failed it."
|
| Here, "go away" is a euphemism for "die from exposure".
|
| 20 years ago we had a worldwide financial crises caused by
| the capricious whims of the richest people in this country,
| they caused massive amounts of damage, destroyed people's
| lives and livelihoods, kicked them out on the street, and
| it's framed as "paying for poor people".
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's nobody's fault for becoming poor. But if you're
| staying poor (dirt poor) for decades, then there is
| something you're doing wrong. The other commenter puts it
| in a rude way, but there's something to it. If you
| evidently can't take care of yourself, then you shouldn't
| be given more money. You should be in some kind of
| institution which takes care of your basic needs.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > It's nobody's fault
|
| Sure, but it's the system's fault, and we can point at
| the people who are keeping the system the way it is. The
| system is what it does, and what it does is syphon money
| from everyone else and pumps it upward to a few
| individuals. That's not an accident, people are
| responsible for that, they like the way it works, and
| they're intent on keeping it that way.
|
| Remember, in this system you get paid money for having
| money and you get charged a fee if you don't have enough.
| You get taxed more for working with capital than for
| owning capital. You pay more the less you buy. People
| always say "The hardest million was the first million".
| This is by design!
|
| > You should be in some kind of institution which takes
| care of your basic needs.
|
| Maybe, but we refuse to fund those because they're too
| expensive to operate.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| If it only pumped the money to a few individuals someone
| would've pushed those individuals off a cliff and seized
| power by now.
|
| The magic of the system is that there's enough trickle
| down to motivate the petite-bourgeois (I hate Marx, but
| I'll be darned if he didn't enumerate some good economic
| tiers) to make them keep the system running.
|
| Your media talking heads peddling division, your 200k+/yr
| software engineers implementing extractive algorithms to
| make the gig economy tick, etc, etc, etc.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It looks like the times are changing thanks to AI, so
| we'll see what happens when the petite-bourgeoisie stop
| being quite so bougie.
| ModernMech wrote:
| If that were true, the Vice President wouldn't be trying
| to convince us that housing costs are high because of
| illegal immigration.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Have you seen "the system" sleeping on the streets,
| starving, or not having enough clothes?
|
| No matter who or what is to blame, the individual is who
| is paying the price and who should have the strongest
| interest to get out of that situation. Which means, if
| you're staying in that situation for years on end you
| have to admit to yourself you are doing something which
| isn't working.
|
| Thats why people have more sympathy for somebody who is
| poor because they are temporarily down on their luck or
| born into poverty, and less sympathy for somebody who has
| been poor as an adult for decades.
| ModernMech wrote:
| In 2024 over 700k people were homeless in the USA. That's
| a system failure. If you want to talk about personal
| failings you have to consider individual circumstances.
| But 700k being homeless is abjectly just not how a civil
| society should operate.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes the argument that being poor is some sort of
| character flaw, while realistically it's just a lack of
| money, usually inherited from the parents. I would bet
| that most people who make these arguments (like everyone
| else) would end up permanently poor if one was to take
| away their money and networks.
|
| All research (e.g. UBI trials, mirco loan experiments...)
| have shown that giving someone poor access to money
| allows them to dramatically improve their situation.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Yes, because human mind is famously known for being
| extraordinarily good at getting out of self-destructive
| spiraling without external help, and that help is
| famously known for being provided to everyone who needs
| it regardless of their economic status. Also, chronic
| lack of money has absolutely no way to contribute to that
| occurring in the first place. /s
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I get it. Everybody gets it. For some months, even years.
| But after a decade or so in such a situation, you must
| arrive at some sort of epiphany, look at your life and
| say "what the fuck?".
|
| And I don't think anybody is arguing that people
| shouldn't get help to get back on their feet. Rather that
| some people refuse to get back on their feet.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| No.
|
| So far as I know, every single UBI trial has had
| consistently positive outcomes. People get jobs, get
| training, get a roof over their heads.
|
| Giving people money does in fact give people more
| choices, and helps make the poor less poor.
| d_silin wrote:
| You are one major sickness and one layoff away from
| getting into the same situation, often to the point of no
| return.
| xp84 wrote:
| No, I doubt they are. Most people who are on the streets
| chronically are there because they've burned every
| bridge. Most people have a dozen friends or family who
| would gladly give them the guest room for a few weeks if
| they had a job loss that put them at risk of hard times
| -- on the other hand those who mysteriously have zero
| friends or family usually got that way by the same
| antisocial behaviors that contributed to their problems
| in the first place, until every last person that once
| cared said "don't come around here anymore."
|
| Not saying anyone's a Bad Person for this, but treating
| everyone like zero-agency victims or helpless children
| has never fixed anything. You can't fix people without at
| least their partnership, and generally it's substances
| and severe mental illness that gets in the way of the
| cooperation. "Bitter pills to swallow" as the meme goes
| but anyone who doesn't admit this is kidding themself.
| d_silin wrote:
| I can tell your income bracket from this phrase alone:
|
| > Most people have a dozen friends or family who would
| gladly give them the guest room for a few weeks.
|
| No, most people do not.
|
| I am aware of classic triad of "malignantly antisocial
| personality + substance abuse + criminal record" that
| makes people _stay_ on the streets.
|
| But a lot of people end up on the streets simply because
| they were already only one notch above financial
| destitution and so all of their friends and family.
|
| Lose a job + get sick in body or mind, even temporarily =
| game over. "Friends and family" who are also financially
| vulnerable would ruthlessly shed the load of extra mouth
| to feed, much less to house.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The friends and family route works the first time around.
| You couch surf until you find a job, as you go through
| your contact list people are happy to host at first, but
| there comes the awkward "so... it's been a couple
| weeks... how's that job search going?". Then you have to
| put your job search on pause until you find a new place
| to live.
|
| Eventually your job search keeps turning up "no" because
| they don't like the answers to "can you explain this gap
| on your resume?" and they really don't like the answer to
| "do you have a permanent residence" or "do you have any
| drug-related convictions?"
|
| Hopefully you find a job before you've exhausted the good
| will of all your friends. And pray to GOD it doesn't
| happen again because the next time around, each one will
| have an excuse as to why they can't host you. "Oh sorry,
| we've got our inlaws, try X, Y, Z"... who are also
| "unable" to host.
|
| So then your car is your home. If you're lucky enough to
| have one. But the point is "just have friends" isn't a
| solution.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I wouldn't say so. A large percentage of the population -
| double digits - have never had any job security in their
| lives, or any guarantees whatsoever. We've learnt to
| adapt and know we can do it again. People aren't
| allocated 1 job per person for life and if we loose that
| job we're in the shit for life. Most people know they can
| get another job.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > You should be in some kind of institution which takes
| care of your basic needs.
|
| You're right of course. The problem is that such
| institution no longer exist in North America.
| bluGill wrote:
| > If you evidently can't take care of yourself, then you
| shouldn't be given more money. You should be in some kind
| of institution which takes care of your basic needs.
|
| We used to have those in the US. Things are better for
| the poor now without them - a few do freeze to death in
| the streets today, most do not, while the abuse of those
| old institutions did hit most. The people who need
| institutions are also those least able to advocate for
| themselves if they are abused.
|
| I don't like the current answer, but it could be worse
| and if you want something better you need to explain how
| it won't descend into worse. I don't have any ideas
| myself.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I often find the loudest voices with this mentality
| either come from well off families, or were poor enough
| themselves in childhood to have benefited from the
| government programs they wish to destroy. The first is
| ignorance and the second is some sort of self hatred /
| shame.
|
| I rarely hear people that grew up fairly middle class and
| "made it" looking back at the poor as someone holding
| them back in this same manner.
| piva00 wrote:
| It's always sickening to hear more educated people
| (compared to the average) repeating this inhumane
| bullshit.
|
| Wanting people to die because they are poor, losing
| complete touch of why we humans even develop what we do:
| to the betterment of us all, to enrich all of our lives,
| to make the lives of future humans better. There's no
| other point to it, the absurd individualism is a disease,
| I'd much rather eradicate those from our lineage than the
| less fortunate, for a better future for humanity.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| I grew up in Kentucky and spent a lot of time in the areas
| around the Red River Gorge in the southeastern part of the
| state. Some of the poverty there is shocking. The movie
| Winters Bone actually seemed to do a decent job of showcasing
| similar areas.
| diet_mtn_dew wrote:
| >There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in
| America who do not have electricity
|
| I cannot find a citation for a number that large of people
| who do not have access to electricity in the USA, would you
| happen to have one?
| zarl wrote:
| > There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in
| America who do not have electricity or even running water in
| their homes.
|
| This is just not true. America has many problems but access
| to electricity/running water simply is not one of them.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is just not true. America has many problems but
| access to electricity /running water simply is not one of
| them._
|
| You are disconnected from reality.
|
| I can take you to places in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico,
| West Virginia, and even California where people have to
| live without electricity, running water, or both.
|
| I'll take the word of what I've personally seen with my own
| eyes over someone who created an HN account three minutes
| ago.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > I'll take the word of what I've personally seen with my
| own eyes over someone who created an HN account three
| minutes ago.
|
| > I can take you to places in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico,
| West Virginia, and even California where people have to
| live without electricity, running water, or both.
|
| But can you provide us with a source other than your own
| eyes for the "millions of people" you claim to be living
| in such conditions?
| zarl wrote:
| No one in this thread has any evidence of these "hundreds
| of thousands (millions?) of people" and just falls back
| to "well I met a guy".
|
| The claim is not that literally 100% of Americans have
| electricity/running water. It's that there are not
| "millions" of Americans without them.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| And when it is a problem, it's usually a problem with the
| system denying people access rather than literal inability
| to afford.
|
| Municipality would rather some house be vacated (perhaps
| based on a "poor people drain services, kick-em out" policy
| posture) so when a storm takes out your utility pole guess
| who isn't getting a new meter drop until they bring their
| shit up to current code at a non-starter price... and oh
| look here it's illegal to live in a house without
| electricity. I guess that means someone's getting evicted,
| what a shame...
| closetohome wrote:
| It's less an issue of access than affordability. The term
| is "energy insecurity" -
| https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/energy-
| in...
| metalforever wrote:
| I know people without running water in their house right
| now in America . In fact I know multiple families in this
| situation .
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I know some people living in their car. It doesn't have
| running water or electricity.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The US still has some really remote backwaters. Not too
| many but you can find them if you know where to look.
| zarl wrote:
| I'm not saying literally everyone in America has
| electricity/running water. I'm saying it's a rare
| exception, not "hundreds of thousands (millions?) of
| people".
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's difficult to find trustworthy statistics quickly, but
| the penetration of electricity and running water in US
| households is only about 99%. At the scale of the US (~130
| million households), 1% of households lacking electricity
| equates to over a million households and somewhat more in
| terms of number of people. So yeah, there's probably about
| 1-2 million people in the US without running water and/or
| electricity.
|
| Where are these people? Probably the largest concentration
| of such people are on the various Native American
| reservations (I believe ~15% of the Navajo Reservation
| lacks running water). The hinterlands of Alaska also likely
| has a high number of these houses.
| jibe wrote:
| This is what Cottonwood Day School on the Navajo reservation
| actually looks like.
|
| https://cds.bie.edu/
|
| Clean modern buildings, desks, air conditioning, running
| water, very nice. You were fooled by that photo into making a
| bigger assumption about the full school and situation.
| Den_VR wrote:
| I can't imagine why anyone would be deliberately misled to
| believe Cottonwood Day School on the Navajo reservation is
| not very nice. Oh wait
| renewiltord wrote:
| Not American born so there is some obvious thing here
| that's not so obvious to me. What's the ref? Is it a race
| thing
| pkkim wrote:
| Not sure exactly how obvious it is to most Americans, but
| the Navajo reservation is extremely poor by American
| standards. When I went there, the local roads were all
| dirt and the houses seemed to have no electricity.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I used to have Hopi and Navajo friends and I have no idea
| what they are referring to.
|
| One thing I can tell you that the whole situation up
| there is contentious and complicated between the tribes,
| the states and the feds where one could support any
| argument as there isn't some standard "Rez Life" one can
| point at.
|
| I mean, I used to have this one friend who grew up (and
| still had family) on a part of the reservation which was
| completely surrounded by the other tribe and her and my
| other friends (from the other tribe, don't quite remember
| which was which here) would get into some serious
| arguments at the bar over the issue where we'd have to
| separate them before it came to fisticuffs.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I can't imagine why anyone would be deliberately misled
| to believe Cottonwood Day School on the Navajo
| reservation is not very nice. Oh wait_
|
| The real world isn't TV. Not everything is a grand
| conspiracy.
| nightpool wrote:
| The story that photograph is from is about distance
| learning enforced by the COVID pandemic.
| https://navajotimes.com/edu/hill-becomes-makeshift-
| classroom.... The family does not have internet access, and
| while they were issued a laptop and mobile hotspot, it only
| gets signal from the top of that hill.
|
| OP may have misunderstood the context but I think it's a
| stretch to say they were intentionally fooled.
| jibe wrote:
| What I meant was they fooled themselves. They had
| negative assumptions about how Native Americans live and
| are treated, then they see a photo of a dirt pit, and
| even though it is completely implausible, assume it is a
| school. It is so far off reality it is notable.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The US desperately needs another version of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Other_Half_Lives to
| become virally popular.
|
| I went to school with kids who didn't have winter jackets. In
| Northern Maine. I studied with kids who didn't have any food
| to eat, almost ever. My mother taught kids that were kicked
| out and homeless at like 16. One child was named after a
| beer. Entire classrooms worth of kids being "raised" only by
| an impoverished grandparent who wasn't able to leave the
| house and couldn't really do anything and had only minimal
| social security checks for income.
|
| There was a family that lived in a 10ft by 10ft shack and had
| 6 kids and basically nothing else to their name. One daughter
| was hit by a dump truck getting off the school bus and died.
|
| My own family was impoverished for a long time. Sometimes the
| only food left in the house was old flour with bugs in it.
| The mental toll it took on my mother is still clear and
| evident, and I myself still have deep "scarcity mindset"
| behavior, and our situation _wasn 't even that bad_. We
| technically were above the poverty line. We had a home that
| was clean and well built and very cheap ($400 a month
| mortgage). My mother had an education and a career, and my
| dad's employer was in control of making his child support
| payments, so they were always on time. My mom was really
| smart and extremely good at stretching money and playing the
| games required to cover your bills when you literally make
| less money than it takes every month to be legally alive,
| like making friends with the telecom neighbor who will set
| you up with free cable for a bit out of pity. Her job in
| government ensured we had good health insurance and visits to
| doctors. We had much wealthier family who kept us clothed
| with truckfulls of handmedown clothes from the previous
| decade. She had great credit and could manage credit cards
| very well.
|
| It almost killed her a bunch of times though. Once when I was
| 12, she called my dad to come get me because she couldn't get
| herself out of bed and was bawling and openly talking about
| suicide. She couldn't really afford therapy and the local
| therapists in bumbfuck nowhere aren't good at their job
| anyway. Turns out there's a medically important distinction
| between "Therapist" and "Psychologist" and in the 90s neither
| was equipped to handle "Undiagnosed neurodivergent driven to
| the very end of their wits and surviving exclusively on
| adrenaline".
|
| Yet there are people on this very board insistent that people
| do not starve in America (before Trump decided we didn't need
| to report on it and thus killed the program tracking it, it
| regularly reported millions and millions of American children
| literally go hungry. Free lunch and breakfast programs
| reliably improve grades and education outcomes still because
| _children are hungry_ )
|
| There are people who insist it is cultural or based on making
| bad choices.
|
| These people are gross.
| bwhiting2356 wrote:
| > But, I absolutely hated working in an office. I also hated
| what digital marketing has done to people's privacy. I had to
| get out. So, after 10 years I left and went back to my roots. I
| founded a sprinkler contracting business with my brother and
| work outside all day, every day. And I love it.
|
| I don't think this person should be putting themselves in the
| same category as people who are stuck in poverty with no
| options.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't think he is. That's sort of his point.
| bwhiting2356 wrote:
| am i misreading the article?
|
| > I have a van that is falling apart. It needs a lot of
| work that we cannot afford to do. In the mindset that poor
| people are unskilled, it appears that I should watch some
| YouTube videos, get the parts, and do it myself
|
| I'm not saying running a small business is easy. But they
| previously worked a corporate job and chose to start a
| landscaping business partly for lifestyle reasons.
| wagwang wrote:
| My parents grew up poor in manner that is more extreme than
| anything OP described in the post and they always remind me
| that its just hard work and grit.
| tekla wrote:
| Both my parents came to America with less than $20 and
| nothing else but what they wore. I constantly think of how
| hard they worked to let me live such a leisurely life.
| bombcar wrote:
| Sadly many kids (college graduates) start out with -250k$
| and the clothes they're wearing.
|
| Of course, they often have family they can fall back on,
| and education, but debt creates an entirely new class of
| 'less than dirt' poor.
| phil21 wrote:
| You have to be pretty well off to begin with in order to
| be in a position to take out $250k of student debt.
|
| It's the kids who can't even imagine going to college due
| to living in poverty growing up that are actually "less
| than dirt poor". Someone who went to a fancy college
| enough to get that far into debt is going to be extremely
| privileged on average.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >its just hard work and grit
|
| Which country, though?
|
| Because that's like 90% of the solution.
|
| The other 9% is good health.
|
| The remaining 1% is a mix of your community/family/friends
| and, sure, hard work and grit and whatnot.
| wagwang wrote:
| china 1962
| magicalist wrote:
| > _china 1962_
|
| that seems like a perfect historical period for a lesson
| on "just hard work and grit" being necessary but not
| nearly sufficient.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Credit where credit is due.
|
| I could say "yeah, but that was your whole country", but
| that was definitely your parents and everybody else doing
| unpleasant things for a while to improve the well-being
| of everyone after them. Amazing.
|
| Edit: answer to @kragen. I have to do it like this as I'm
| (partially) censored on HN.
|
| xe doesn't mention xir parents leaving China, from the
| context of this conversation I would assume they are
| still in China since we are talking about the environment
| where people thrived.
| kragen wrote:
| Well, the thing wagwang's parents did that improved the
| well-being of the people after them was _to leave China_.
|
| What the Chinese society had been collectively doing for
| the previous ten years, however, was creating "the
| deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made
| disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll
| due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions (15
| to 55 million)." And the _following_ ten years included
| the first six years of the Cultural Revolution:
|
| > _Estimates of the death toll vary widely, typically
| ranging from 1-2 million, including a massacre in Guangxi
| that included acts of cannibalism, as well as massacres
| in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Guangdong, Yunnan, and Hunan.
| Red Guards sought to destroy the Four Olds (old ideas,
| old culture, old customs, and old habits), which often
| took the form of destroying historical artifacts and
| cultural and religious sites. Tens of millions were
| persecuted, including senior officials such as Liu
| Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and Peng Dehuai; millions were
| persecuted for being members of the Five Black
| Categories, with intellectuals and scientists labelled as
| the Stinking Old Ninth. The country 's schools and
| universities were closed, and the National College
| Entrance Examinations were cancelled._
|
| I don't think any of that can be accurately described as
| "everybody else doing unpleasant things for a while to
| improve the well-being of everyone after them."
|
| Chinese history, including in the 20th century, includes
| many of the brightest stars that have ever illuminated
| human history, and _after_ the Cultural Revolution, a
| meteoric rise out of poverty, led by the same Deng
| Xiaoping whose son was tortured and crippled by Red
| Guards in the Cultural Revolution. But specifically in
| 01962 "everybody" was _creating_ that poverty and
| _worsening_ the well-being of everyone after them.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That, and an environmnet that allows folks "from the wrong
| side of the tracks," to get ahead.
|
| For all its faults, the US is just such a place. I suspect
| that many other nations are starting to improve.
|
| At one time, the UK was a nation that you couldn't get ahead,
| unless you were of a certain class. I think that it is much
| more like the US, nowadays. You can hear lots of cockney
| accents in Harrods.
| wahern wrote:
| > I think that it is much more like the US, nowadays.
|
| IIRC, mobility indexes crossed quite a few years ago. IOW,
| UK is better than the US in this respect. See, e.g.,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index,
| though it's a claim I've read based on other data and
| before that particular index was compiled.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Social mobility doesn't measure financial welfare and is
| only weakly correlated with the ability to improve your
| financial situation. It is largely a measure of wage
| compression in the economy. If everyone makes similar
| wages then the population will be highly socially mobile
| even if those wages are mediocre.
|
| Absolute economic mobility matters much more in terms of
| having an opportunity to get out of poverty. High
| economic mobility increases wage variance and therefore
| naturally reduces social mobility scores since the latter
| is a relative rank measure.
|
| There are countries where increasing your income $10k
| makes you "socially mobile" and other countries where
| increasing your income $50k does not.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Your statement doesn't really make sense and contradicts
| what research [1] is saying so you really back that up
| with a good argument and evidence.
|
| [1] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications
| /report...
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It is a maths problem, not one of economic theory, and a
| well-understood limitation of "social mobility" as a
| measure in this context. Social mobility between two
| countries is only meaningfully comparable if their income
| distributions also have a similar degree of compression
| since it is a rank statistic. The large differences in
| wage compression between e.g. Scandinavia and the US are
| well documented, such as this[0] recent NBER paper, and
| not controversial.
|
| Increasing rank is much easier than increasing income on
| a compressed distribution. Being able to easily increase
| income is much more important than being able to easily
| increasing rank if you are optimizing for economic
| opportunity.
|
| [0] https://www.nber.org/digest/202505/wage-compression-
| drives-n...
| wahern wrote:
| Yeah, median income in the UK is about at the level of
| Mississippi, as is much of Western Europe (Western, not
| Eastern!). The US is just ridiculously wealthy, and our
| income inequality is largely a matter of the absurd
| heights reached at the top, with wide distributions.
| OTOH, wealth disparity (or even just the perception of
| wealth disparity) can be politically destabilizing and
| lead to some pathological social issues. Greater relative
| social mobility and greater (perceived?) wealth equality
| seems to result in a better sense of fairness, a sense of
| fairness is key to social cohesion and trust, and social
| trust is key to producing wealth. Though, social trust is
| necessary but hardly sufficient. Likewise, perceived
| mobility and equality seems necessary but not sufficient
| for healthy political and civic culture.
| verteu wrote:
| > Absolute economic mobility matters much more
|
| The US does poorly on this metric too:
| https://i.imgur.com/eYHUysQ.png [1]
| https://i.imgur.com/vLz5iUz.png [2]
|
| (Note that the x-axis is "birth year.")
|
| [1] https://equitablegrowth.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/04/04282...
|
| [2]
| https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20200631
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > That, and an environmnet that allows folks "from the
| wrong side of the tracks," to get ahead.
|
| Vast swathes of this country look no better than the
| developing nations Sarah McLaughlin would go to to sing sad
| music and hold little kids to beg people for money in
| television ads.
|
| Like I don't think you're _wrong_ necessarily but at the
| same time, it _really, really matters which tracks you 're
| on the wrong side of._
| tstrimple wrote:
| You're not wrong. We routinely ignore things like this:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-
| low...
|
| > The average income is just $18,046 (PS13,850) a year,
| and almost a third of the population live below the
| official US poverty line. The most elementary waste
| disposal infrastructure is often non-existent.
|
| > Some 73% of residents included in the Baylor survey
| reported that they had been exposed to raw sewage washing
| back into their homes as a result of faulty septic tanks
| or waste pipes becoming overwhelmed in torrential rains.
|
| ...
|
| > An eight-year-old child was sitting on the stoop of one
| of the trailers. Below him a white pipe ran from his
| house, across the yard just a few feet away from a
| basketball hoop, and into a copse of pine and sweet gum
| trees.
|
| > The pipe was cracked in several places and stopped just
| inside the copse, barely 30ft from the house, dripping
| ooze into a viscous pool the color of oil. Directly above
| the sewage pool, a separate narrow-gauge pipe ran up to
| the house, which turned out to be the main channel
| carrying drinking water to the residents.
|
| > The open sewer was festooned with mosquitoes, and a
| long cordon of ants could be seen trailing along the
| waste pipe from the house. At the end of the pool nearest
| the house the treacly fluid was glistening in the dappled
| sunlight - a closer look revealed that it was actually
| moving, its human effluence heaving and churning with
| thousands of worms.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Yup. Also: everyone reading this, celebrate that Flint,
| Michigan finally has water that's clean by Federal
| standards after just over ELEVEN. FUCKING. YEARS. That's
| right, America, land of opportunity, the wealthiest
| country on the face of the Earth (at time of comment),
| needed just over eleven years to get one city's
| inhabitants water that wasn't full to the tits with lead.
|
| That's not NO lead, mind you, it's just now below the
| levels where the feds were willing to say it was a
| legitimate crisis. With a nod to who the feds are right
| now, and with a second nod to that's just at the supply
| line level, fuck knows how many homes still have lead
| pipes leeching into the taps.
|
| Shocking absolutely no one who pays one damn bit of
| attention to this sort of thing: yes, Flint, Michigan is
| majority black.
| more_corn wrote:
| "Used to be" such a place. Stagnating minimum wage while
| inflation proceeds unchecked, the rise of marginal
| employment and contract work. Skyrocketing housing costs. I
| don't think the us is such a place anymore. It fast
| becoming a place that is not.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The US was never a place like that. Even in the mostly
| imagined "golden age" of the fifties, if you were the
| wrong family or color you would not be able to reliably
| get out of poverty _no matter how much effort or guile
| you could afford_
|
| The bank did not care that you would be a profitable
| customer, they still weren't going to lend to you.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You're projecting the current onto the past. It was a
| problem, but it wasn't the show stopper it would be
| today. Not having access to credit wasn't as big a deal
| when there weren't subsidized credit products and you
| therefore weren't competing with people who had
| artificial access to cheap money.
|
| The reason minority communities exist is because those
| people were wealthy enough to own land, have businesses,
| etc. And this was before the modern idea of a home or
| business as a leverage investments so when they bought
| homes or started businesses they mostly did it where
| people like them were, not where a bunch of snobbish
| white people who hated them were (because that's where
| the best investment growth potential is).
|
| Pretty much every discernible ethnic group in the history
| of the US has made an upward march from generally poor to
| more or less the same as average. There are two
| exceptions, native americans and blacks. And the latter
| was poised to do so in the 1960s. Much has been written
| about both so I don't feel the need to opine here.
|
| Yeah, society was racist AF back then and imparted a lot
| of glass ceilings and certainly kept certain groups a
| little more down, but the past wasn't simply like the
| present but with more racism.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Minimum almost doesn't matter in a discussion of
| mobility. Nobody ever escaped poverty working minimum
| wage. They found a way to move up.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Minimum wage provides breathing room for other
| opportunities including self-advancement. Just
| survivorship bias nonsense.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >For all its faults, the US is just such a place.
|
| Trying hard not to be and using some flimsy pretext to
| justify it probably accounts for 3/4 of state laws that
| don't pertain to a) a procedural matter b) a matter with an
| identifiable victim, or at least that's how it looks by my
| unscientific observation.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I think there is an element of "right country, right time"
| when it comes to being able to escape poverty with hard work
| and grit, though hard work and grit always helps.
|
| I am extremely fortunate to have been born in the US. My
| outcome would have been vastly harder to achieve almost
| anywhere else. Even in the US it was far from certain.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| I'm immigrant that come to the us and always that the
| Americans complain is hardd to understand, like for example
| inflation they complain about being 3% in my country there
| was hyperinflation 1000%, also I didn't use to have running
| water(water would come every 3 days) and electricity would
| stop working every few days and it would take several hours
| or days to get fixed. then working here there is so many
| jobs and you can gain skills and double your income. Most
| Americans have a car (in my country this is a luxury)
| latest !phone (also a luxury) and most don't cook by
| themselves also a luxury. I have a year here and I quickly
| got a comfortable living and I just don't understand it
| when they complain.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Some things are fake issues created by the media to give
| people a reasonable sounding cover to vote for
| politicians that have reactionary politics that they
| wouldn't cop to in public.
|
| This is why you hear people say they vote for Trump
| because of "the economy", even though when he and his
| party were in power the first time, the economy was on
| the downturn after he implemented policy (even before
| COVID) and every economist said Trump's proposed policies
| in 2024 would be bad for the economy. They were proven
| correct.
|
| People would rather seem like single issue voters who
| don't understand that issue than be thought of as racist,
| supportive of pedophilia, misogynistic, etc. See also:
| "but her emails"
| pigpag wrote:
| In a democratic society, complaining is very important.
| It is probably why, by people complaining about a 5%
| inflation, the government had to take drastic moves to
| suppress it.
|
| If you don't complain, you eventually won't be able to
| complain. If you can't complain, you take anything
| shoveled to you by the government, poverty being the
| foremost.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Immigrants show up in America having been knocked down by
| life here zero times and then compare themselves to people
| who've been knocked down _generationally_.
| igor47 wrote:
| Is "by life here" doing the heavy lifting in your comment?
| Because obviously immigrants haven't been knocked down by
| life _here_.
|
| I agree that folks have a pretty tough life generationally
| in America's rust belt. I disagree that this is unique or
| uniquely bad compared to many other places in the world.
| Although there is something pretty unique about the way
| American culture processes or encodes the hardship.
| Individualism can really make things worse...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I don't know how to tell you that some people have war in
| their country.
| bashmelek wrote:
| I live comfortably in the United States. I consider myself
| middle class. I worry about my job and increasing costs. But
| I'm okay.
|
| I do feel like that we really could end global poverty if we
| tried, and that people like me ought to contribute.
| badpun wrote:
| Poverty is usually (always?) result of politics. I.e. in poor
| countries you have a highly dysfunctional system and elites
| which profiting off it. So the only way to to help is to
| instigate some kind of coup, eliminate warlords etc. But then
| how do you guarantee that whoever replaces them would be
| better?
| pigpag wrote:
| Not all poverty is created equal.
|
| Some people had good financial discipline and still fell into
| poverty due to business catastrophes, accidents or health
| problems. We need better systems to provide shields for those
| people, be it bankruptcy laws, universal insurance or
| healthcare.
|
| Others live in unhabitable environments that can never
| sustain a viable economy. Until humanity finds technologies
| to address those environmental issues, they can never get out
| of poverty.
|
| Then there are always people who are reckless and
| irresponsible. They are black holes of resources. Some can be
| educated while others do deserve to be poor. It's based their
| own decisions and I don't see a moral issue to leave them
| alone.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Everyone worries about losing their job I think. Nowadays
| employment is a lot more unstable. Hell a large percentage of
| the workforce doesn't even have permanent employment.
| Flexibility is great for companies but humans need stability.
|
| There is nothing worse than the economy going South,
| corporations starting to cut jobs en masse and you finding
| out that there are 50 other people who show up for that job
| interview.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| >and creates a level of desperation that is incredibly
| dangerous.
|
| I came into the comments looking for this sentiment.
|
| We have a fairly good safety net here in my country, I've lived
| on study and unemployment benefits when I was young.
|
| But when the author mentions they can't just make $300 appear
| out of nowhere, I can't help thinking that it _is_ possible,
| its just dangerous.
|
| update: That's why we have good safety nets. Its dangerous for
| everybody.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I live in New Orleans. I see this sort of thing around me every
| single day.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting
| poverty (with very limited success).
|
| Yes, it's very difficult to defeat poverty. But it has been
| happening world-wide. Poverty has been going down world-wide
| for 200 years. It's not so much through the efforts of
| individuals or even governments, just a network effect of
| technological advancements and opportunity creation (made
| possible by those advancements), and perhaps (almost certainly)
| by credit that makes those advancements go faster.
| torlok wrote:
| Sounds like the optimism rhetoric of Steven Pinker. I suggest
| you read up on the numerous criticisms of his work. Most of
| the optimism is based on a ridiculously low global poverty
| line conjured out of thin air, and other nonsense like GDP.
| tome wrote:
| I'm confused whether the author is poor, has been poor, has never
| been poor but has deep understanding of what it's like for other
| reasons (friends, family, etc.). He writes
|
| > I have a van that is falling apart. It needs a lot of work that
| we cannot afford to do.
|
| but I think that should be read as "Imagine that I have ...",
| because, from his About page, he seems to have an irrigation and
| landscaping business and plays around with technology on the
| weekend.
|
| I think the article would have been more effective it had been
| clearer exactly on what basis the author is writing about the
| experience of poor people.
| rectang wrote:
| I think the ambiguity is leading to a better discussion. Many
| commenters are struggling mightily with the urge to dismiss the
| author as a lazy moral failure, which would allow them to
| ignore his arguments as originating from an unreliable source.
| Since there's not enough information to do that, we're getting
| a certain amount of discussion of the actual ideas.
| tome wrote:
| Hmm, possibly, but from my point of view the fact that he
| might not be speaking from experience, or at the very least
| from the experience of someone he has been close to, makes me
| disinclined to put a lot of weight on his opinions.
| lbrito wrote:
| The geographic variation on the semantics of poverty always amaze
| me.
|
| Poverty and having a credit card, a van, and a house to live in.
| No matter how maxed out or broken all of those are, having them
| automatically means you are not poor in most of the world's point
| of view.
|
| Not to say that the struggles aren't real or that we shouldn't
| empathize, of course. Just that what strikes me most about these
| kinds of posts is how the semantics simply implode if you expand
| your context window just a bit, looking at a broader perspective
| country-wise.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| There are countries where you can have none of those, but still
| visit a doctor and not worry about violent crime. The dynamics
| vary.
| lbrito wrote:
| That is a great point and probably the most valuable take out
| of this discussion.
|
| We often use wealth as a proxy to well-being, but these kinds
| of posts shatter that concept. The author is, objectively,
| _not_ unwealthy. He has a credit card, a large car and a
| house. But still he struggles and is not well. Well-being is
| not just wealth, it is also (and more importantly) social
| safety.
| renewiltord wrote:
| On Reddit, I once saw someone saying something like "You never
| hear about the Chinese having to live out of their cars." with
| respect to a pro-communist take. Forgetting the politics, it
| really brought home to me how mind-blowingly wealthy Americans
| are. The poor man this guy conceives of has a motor vehicle.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Sure. That's the theory. Then I read the book _Evicted_ and I
| understood. One of the people gets a small windfall. Enough to
| stop the treadmill. What she does is buy something nice for
| herself because she "deserves a treat".
|
| Also the sums of money here are humongous. Someone is net -$40k?
| They need $40k more per year to not be poor? That is the British
| median income. So this shortfall in money a person needs to be
| not poor in the US is what half of the people in the UK live
| under, total.
|
| Heck even in Germany that's the 40th percentile or so.
|
| This shows how poor Europeans are compared to Americans. Some
| half of them are in this comparative state of misery.
| solveit wrote:
| Even the US median household income is "only" $83k. Looking at
| stuff like this + the rest of the blog I'm not convinced the
| author is any less out of touch than the people this post is
| criticizing.
| trinix912 wrote:
| > This shows how poor Europeans are compared to Americans. Some
| half of them are in this comparative state of misery.
|
| If you completely ignore cost of living and public services,
| then maaaybe, but still quite a stretch ;)
| lubujackson wrote:
| "Poor" is why razor blades are behind a glass case at Walgreens.
| Because people steal razor blades, not (just) to use, but to sell
| at a discount to other poor people.
|
| There is also the interesting situation of "newly poor" people
| getting crushed much faster than people who have been poor a long
| time. There are community safety nets that bubble up from
| everyone being cornered all the time. You don't go to the
| mechanic, but ask that guy who charges $100 and can hack
| something together so you can get to work this week. You know an
| old lady around the corner who will take your kids in for the
| night if you don't make it home for some reason. These aren't
| solutions, they are patches and stopgaps. But this is also the
| strength of community that to be more common in the U.S. before
| suburbs made every family an island.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I know it makes a nice clean narrative that's especially
| appealing to the kind of people who would be in these comments
| but it probably wasn't suburbs that did this. That sort of
| community existed and probably still exits the most in places
| where the population is the least dense.
|
| I'm not gonna speculate on what other things could have been
| more responsible but I have my suspicions.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >That sort of community existed and probably still exits the
| most in places where the population is the least dense.
|
| I think you misunderstand suburbanism... In those places
| where the population is not dense the number of people that
| move commonly is not that high. Again, neighborhoods tend to
| have longer and deeper roots.
|
| Suburbia has little to no community these days.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You're getting at what I was hinting at. It's not the
| literal distance between houses (or lack thereof) that
| cause this. It's the people and what they think and how
| they act.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It also exists where the population is very dense; poor
| people live in cities, too, and form these kinds of
| relationships and networks as well.
|
| I'm not poor, but I had more of this sort of network in the
| city than I do now in the burbs.
| arjie wrote:
| Yes, same. Online I hear people bemoan how things are these
| days and stuff like that and then my SOMA high rise works
| well in the form that I want civil interactions to be.
|
| https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-09/Community
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > "Poor" is why razor blades are behind a glass case at
| Walgreens. Because people steal razor blades, not (just) to
| use, but to sell at a discount to other poor people.
|
| They're selling the stolen merchandise to a fence who then
| resells it to stores with looser procurement requirements at a
| discount or they box it and ship it to an Amazon fulfillment
| center and flip the stolen merch on Amazon.
|
| Poor people don't have enough cash liquidity to make stealing
| and selling toiletries worth it, it's loosely organized crime.
|
| The same sort of marker exists for diabetic test strips, people
| on Medicare get them for free, sell them for a discount for
| cash to someone who resells them for a profit.
| umvi wrote:
| It's way more nuanced than this. Ultimately poverty comes down to
| an individual's ability to be self-sustaining.
|
| Take a software engineer, take away their house, job, and all of
| their money so they are homeless and have literally nothing
| ("broke"): how quickly can they reach a stable self-sustaining
| state again?
|
| Probably pretty quickly:
|
| - Ask family for help (they are anchored in a higher place to
| help bootstrap you up again - borrow some money, temporarily move
| back in with parents, etc)
|
| - Get a new programming job
|
| - Build a small nest egg
|
| - Done, back to a self-sustaining state in a short time frame
|
| Now take a kid from Baltimore who dropped out of high school and
| who has no skills. Repeat the scenario
|
| - Ask family for help (they probably aren't in much of a position
| to help - they can't pull you up when they aren't anchored in a
| higher place)
|
| - Get a new job (good luck when you have few marketable skills.
| The high(er) paying jobs for people with no marketable skills
| usually involve selling drugs/sex)
|
| - Can't build a nest egg easily
|
| Poverty (in the USA at least) is mainly a product of your family
| situation and your knowledge/marketable skills. If you have an
| unstable family and no marketable skills, escaping poverty is
| extremely difficult without an external actor helping to pull
| people up.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I see the steps. What if they have no family members or they do
| not give a damn?
|
| Start again please from the state of being homeless but assume
| this person has no family members, or has relatives, but they
| do not give a damn.
|
| It crumbles, IMO.
| tome wrote:
| Maybe you didn't read the whole comment?
| johnisgood wrote:
| I dunno if that last sentence was there when I made the
| comment...
| kgwgk wrote:
| > The high(er) paying jobs
|
| What about low paying jobs? I'm sure some people on minimum
| wage have netflix - which automatically makes them non-poor
| according to TFA.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| What stopped the baltimore kid from getting any
| valuable/marketable skills? Why did he drop school? In the end,
| it's a sum of all their little personal decisions. Sure, family
| and environment play their important role, but it's still
| personal fault.
| hexator wrote:
| Understanding poverty starts with empathy. People thinking that
| "poor is a mindset" are lacking in that. It's not that simple!
| You can't just mind your way out of poverty! This isn't a math
| problem.
| netsharc wrote:
| Too many people buy the American dream of "If you just work
| hard enough, you'll be successful.". If you believe this, then
| you'd have to believe the opposite: "If you're poor and
| unsucessful, that means you didn't work hard enough, you must
| be lazy.".
|
| And too many trust-fund kids or kids from rich parents who
| could afford to send them to expensive schools (or rich enough
| to live in a district with a well-funded school) dismiss their
| luck and believe "I'm successful, that must mean I've been a
| diligent and smart worker.".
|
| Also, beware of survival bias, most of people in here will have
| similar paths (born with smarts, good education, high-paying IT
| job, great success) and probably have similar beliefs about
| hard work and luck...
|
| This 2+ hour documentary partly talks about it, in particular
| from ~28m: https://youtu.be/t1MqJPHxy6g?t=1584
| pixl97 wrote:
| >If you're poor and unsucessful, that means you didn't work
| hard enough, you must be lazy.".
|
| Calvinism. Your poor because you're bad. Interestingly enough
| Calvinism serves as a lot of the basis for what became
| Capitalism.
| netsharc wrote:
| Yeah... and the basis of how to Make America Great Again:
| make the poor's lives miserable and they'll be forced to
| work hard. They'll be successful, problem solved! If they
| stay poor, that must mean they're still lazy, let them rot!
| peterspath wrote:
| where can I read more about it? I don't see the connection,
| but I could be wrong, so interested in some reading on this
| topic.
| pixl97 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Christianity
|
| and
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Calvinism
| raldu wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_th
| e_S...
|
| It's one of the classic subjects in sociology,
|
| https://oyc.yale.edu/sociology/socy-151/lecture-16
| peterspath wrote:
| I knew what Calvinism was... this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic is an
| interesting read, will explore the topic more. Thank you
| :)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I assume they're talking about this, which was mentioned
| elsewhere on HN yesterday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
| raffael_de wrote:
| Homeless people are famously just temporarily
| inconvenienced millionaires.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I dunno. People put too much stock in Max Weber, who
| cherry-picked his evidence: he literally used Benjamin
| Franklin, a deist who'd abandoned Christian doctrine, as
| his model "Protestant." He created a compelling just-so
| story that is now picked up by people who never check the
| actual sources.
|
| I mean, here are _actual_ Calvin quotes:
|
| > Nothing is more dangerous, than to be blinded by
| prosperity.
|
| > Men are undoubtedly more in danger from prosperity than
| from adversity. for when matters go smoothly, they flatter
| themselves, and are intoxicated by their success.
|
| > A man will be justified by faith when, excluded from
| righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the
| righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it, appears in the
| sight of God not as a sinner--but as righteous.
|
| > Hence the Prophet reminds us, that though God would
| bountifully feed his Church, supply his people with food,
| and testify by external tokens his paternal love, and
| though also he would pour out his Spirit, (a token far more
| remarkable,) yet the faithful would continue to be
| distressed with many troubles; for God designs not to deal
| too delicately with his Church on earth; but when he gives
| tokens of his kindness he at the same time mingles some
| exercises for patience, lest the faithful should become
| self-indulgent or sleep on earthly blessings, but that they
| may ever seek higher things."
|
| Anyways, it's probably good to let Actual Calvinists weigh
| on the matter:
|
| https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-real-protestant-
| eth...
|
| If you want to argue that this work ethic is a real
| phenomenon...sure. But I think you have to start with
| recognizing that the supposed exemplar was a person who
| generally unmoored from orthodox Protestantism, so
| "Protestant work ethic" is really a misnomer.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The most sinister part of it is that today many Americans are
| not doing well, but because they believe that meritocracy
| exists, they believe they must have no merit. Cue the graph
| of deaths of despair.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think an aspect of a lot of those luckier kids is that they
| think being told they were lucky invalidates the hard work
| they feel they did, turning it into a nonsensical contest of
| comparing apples to oranges.
|
| My siblings have a similar complaint when my Dad essentially
| implies that they were lucky in having the successes they
| have had. They do still somewhat understand what he means,
| but they dislike it because they think he's dismissing the
| hard work they put in. Of course, they don't see that he
| applies the same to those experiencing extreme poverty.
| wredcoll wrote:
| This definitely comes up a lot and I've never found a
| satisfactory way to get through to these people that you
| can both work hard and be lucky.
|
| The ultimate point is to get people to empathize with
| others, it's easy, especially in the general american
| culture, to treat being poor as a moral failure.
| antonymoose wrote:
| The problem is the world isn't clean, statistics aren't
| clean, it's all mosaic. You can have noble, moral poors
| and rich. You can have absolute dirt bags both rich and
| poor.
|
| I grew up in a take of two households, with parents
| divorced at a young age. Father grows up in a picture
| perfect well-to-do family and ends up a classic party-
| hard drug addled dirt bag. He died last year living
| alone, homeless in a tent off an interstate motel town.
| Mother grows up in a stereotypical "dad went out for
| milk" family that descended into (and rose above)
| poverty.
|
| While my father just kind of floated around and lived
| life, my mother remembered the poverty she experienced
| growing up, worked her ass off in university, and worked
| two jobs (one professional, one as a weekend cahsier)
| until she retired.
|
| Nothing any of us can write here on a forum from on high
| will counter lived reality.
|
| All this is to say, I agree about empathy being needed on
| society, poverty can still be moral failure. Pretending
| it can't is just as in constructive as any other moral
| argument in this topic.
| bluGill wrote:
| Having seen the above I would be cautious about believing
| it.
|
| In divorce courts will often emotionally and monetarily
| abuse men. (divorce itself if you love the other party is
| emotional abuse, though I don't know what to do about
| this. Abusive men do love their wives despite the abuse).
| As such die of a drug overdose while living in a homeless
| tent is probably the only option seen left.
|
| I'm not saying there are not lazy losers in the real
| world. However the picture is often more complex and few
| people will admit that.
| netsharc wrote:
| This makes me wonder if being told I was a smart kid
| (instead of "Good job kid!") wasn't such a bad thing after
| all. (Educators say tell kids "Good job!" instead of
| "You're so smart!", because the kids will fear losing that
| status and then not dare try hard problems).
|
| I always think I'm lucky I was born with a pretty good
| brain.
| qaq wrote:
| Well if you work hard enough silently lives out the important
| part: in a high demand area like say construction. But this
| applies to even high paying fields like IT. If you work
| really hard on things none cares about in IT you are not
| gonna make much ...
| barbazoo wrote:
| > People thinking that "poor is a mindset" are lacking in that.
|
| I have never even considered people thinking like that. Is that
| real? Early in life I realized that the biggest factor of how
| you end up seems to be luck, where you're born, what's in your
| genes, how did parents raise you. Later in life I realized that
| most of the rest is mental health which you also don't have the
| greatest influence over the first 2 decades of your life or so.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I'd say a large percentage of americans do. It's burned into
| the cultural mindset at a very young age.
| matt_kantor wrote:
| Right. At least when I was growing up we were all
| constantly told stuff like "you can accomplish anything if
| you set your mind to it". The corollary is that if you
| aren't able to accomplish something, it's because you
| didn't set your mind to it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Culture is important, but it's widespread enough that
| there's probably a biological basis. Humans are wired to
| hate the idea of "good/bad things just happen", we're
| always creating stories about causation even when they
| might not be very accurate stories.
|
| Consider how a game of flipping a coin seems to draw
| everyone--even people who took probability and statistics
| classes--into imagining "hot streaks" or "now I'm overdue
| for the other one."
| fullshark wrote:
| There's a comment here making exactly that claim.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| You can see it elsewhere in the comments on this post!
| dugidugout wrote:
| I was also of the naive impression we had collectively
| moved from this thinking and it was more so just a
| difficult problem to attack inherently. The comments here
| are very sobering.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| _Never_ underestimate stupidity or ignorance. Especially
| when that ignorance directly benefits someone rich.
| tstrimple wrote:
| How have you managed to literally never meet a conservative?
| moralestapia wrote:
| 1,000%
| Terr_ wrote:
| > starts with empathy
|
| I imagine there's an even "earlier" starting point most people
| don't have to begin at, which goes:
|
| "My own circumstances are too different to truly empathize and
| understand, and I'm not too proud/delusional to admit it. The
| presence of that gap in comprehension is _itself_ a reason for
| action. "
| charcircuit wrote:
| >This isn't a math problem.
|
| It's an optimization problem, which I would consider a category
| of math problems. Not wanting to perform a solution or not
| being able to figure out a solution, or know how to find
| someone to solve it for them is a mind problem.
| pvankessel wrote:
| This view of the world puts everything on the individual. It
| might be worth reading up on structuralism to balance that
| perspective out a bit. I'm somewhere in the middle of the two
| extremes myself, but surely one must acknowledge that there
| are larger systems at play that can constrain an individual's
| ability to "optimize".
| zahlman wrote:
| Saying that something "is a mindset" does not imply that one
| could just "mind oneself" out of it, _anyway_. Brains don 't
| work that way.
| fullshark wrote:
| It's interesting how many comments here are knee jerk annoyance
| at this blogpost, which in my mind does a good job outlining two
| different financial situations and how flippant suggested
| solutions for escaping poverty don't make sense.
|
| The fact that many of us here have so much compared to others in
| our community however you define it is disturbing and not helpful
| information for our day to day lives so we do what we can to
| ignore it.
| neuralkoi wrote:
| "How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's
| cold?" - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan
| Denisovich
|
| I feel like we generally compare ourselves relative to those
| around us. The US enjoys incredible amounts of comforts (for
| which I'm grateful for), but one need not travel far to
| understand how much potable water, breathable air, and
| electricity are very much not a ready given in other countries.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I guess because the ratio of people complaining about poverty
| is 10 000 to 1 compared to people who give solutions to
| poverty.
|
| There are solutions to poverty, which the individual person can
| follow, but nobody wants to talk about those. It has always
| amazed me, because poverty is hell. Who wouldn't want to get
| out of that, and who wouldn't want his fellow brother to get
| out of that?
|
| I could talk about it here, but I would just get down voted
| [dead], [flagged] and so on.
| dugidugout wrote:
| While I understand the sentiment, you stated it yourself, "It
| has always amazed me, because poverty is hell. Who wouldn't
| want to get out of that, and who wouldn't want his fellow
| brother to get out of that?". This is a puzzling question to
| ask and it shouldn't stop there. The post is very much trying
| to add some depth here, however it isn't targeting solutions
| for "poor" people, it is hoping to provoke those who are not
| to take the problem more seriously.
|
| > I could talk about it here, but I would just get down voted
| [dead], [flagged] and so on.
|
| Go ahead and just talk about it, I want to hear it. This
| isn't so easy a problem, even on an individual level as you
| put it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| My solution is boring, but it works for the individual who
| is in that situation: Go and work somewhere where you are
| provided food and board and a salary. Not only do you
| physically get yourself out of the environment which has
| dragged you down, you can also cut out expenses such as
| rent and even transportation. Which is huge.
|
| Yes, it's not a fun solution. It won't make you rich. But
| it will take you out of being dirt poor, which the article
| is about. One example of those kind of places is the
| merchant navy. You're on a ship, so you don't have to spend
| any money and you can't even spend it. Instead of going on
| shore leave like the other people, just get extra days, or
| work on another ship on your leave days. I'm not going to
| mention the military, because people might have objections
| against killing and being killed, but it works in the same
| way.
|
| While you're at it, you have the opportunity for a career
| or education. And entry level jobs are available for those
| who have the work ethic.
|
| Monastic life is another such example, where you are at
| least provided for. And traditionally the monasteries have
| swallowed up millions of people who would have been dirt
| poor, and given them an alternative. Just like the merchant
| navy and the military has done the same for millions. You
| can arrive to these places with nothing but the clothes on
| your back, and start putting together your life again.
| decimalenough wrote:
| The vast majority of mariners these days are third world
| nationals getting paid third world wages.
|
| Becoming a full-time monk is a slow and demanding process
| that takes years, you can't just rock up at a monastery
| and become one.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > The vast majority of mariners these days are third
| world nationals getting paid third world wages.
|
| So? Is the third world not included in the original
| article? And also, that's like saying that you can't
| become a farmer or a teacher, because the vast majority
| of farmers or teachers in the world are third world
| nationals getting third world wages. The merchant navy
| also has many ships which only hire nationally.
|
| As per the article, we are talking about being dirt poor.
| In that case, in the merchant navy you get food, board,
| medical attention and on top of that a salary. Which may
| be good or very small. If you have better options, please
| feel free to ignore my advice. It is for those who don't
| have any better option, but it is always impossible among
| hackers to get this through. Maybe we should discuss a
| few hundred miles of text more about how to change the
| system, rather than talk about real and actionable
| advice?
|
| > Becoming a full-time monk is a slow and demanding
| process that takes years, you can't just rock up at a
| monastery and become one.
|
| Have you tried?
| relaxing wrote:
| I think implicit in the anti-poverty argument is
| individuals shouldn't have to take a vow of poverty. So
| the monastery is out.
|
| Not everyone is physically cut out for the merchant
| marines. This is also inconveniently ignores OP's family.
|
| Not everyone wants to join the military, but that feels
| like it's getting somewhere... What if the government had
| other jobs that paid food and shelter?
| quesera wrote:
| > _What if the government had other jobs that paid food
| and shelter?_
|
| They do, various and sundry, e.g. making license plates.
|
| I'm being glib, which is probably unforgivable under the
| circumstances, but _people do this_. Sometimes
| intentionally -- and, granted, there are often other
| issues in play -- but it 's heartbreaking.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| My suggestions can help some people, but not everybody.
| Because everybody is different. Let's continue
| complaining instead then?
|
| But I've worked in places like this with people who were
| deaf and people who had limps, and people with a ton of
| other problems. And hundreds of thousands of people who
| have families work in the merchant navy to support them,
| or in other similar work places.
|
| Sometimes (almost all the time) trying to talk about
| things on HN feels like having to argue that it is indeed
| possible to fry an egg or boil a cup of coffee...
| dugidugout wrote:
| These are not boring solutions, they are incredibly
| difficult, and unfair solutions for a poor individual to
| take. You may find this all very annoying and we hear
| you, thank you for expanding upon your earlier vague
| notions.
| msm_ wrote:
| Occam's razor. Either:
|
| * There are solutions to poverty, which the individual person
| can follow, but (even though poverty is hell) people ignore
| them and prefer to stay poor
|
| * The solutions to poverty you think about actually aren't.
| The money-deprived people already know about them and (having
| much more knowledge about poor people's world) know they
| don't work.
|
| Since you - like almost everyone here - are a smart person
| with a scientific mind, I'm sure you can see that the first
| explanation is more likely.
|
| If you get downvoted (as a matter of fact, I didn't) it's
| only because you declare that there is a miraculous solution
| to poverty, that would help people, that nobody talks about,
| and then you well, don't talk about it.
| projektfu wrote:
| Either:
|
| 1. There are solutions to organization and staying on task,
| that person can use, to successfully manage their lives, or
|
| 2. Those solutions actually aren't. They only work for
| people who would have been organized anyway.
|
| Casting this dichotomy into a different area that I
| understand better helps me to see what you are saying. I
| think that it also gives me an idea that this is not a
| dichotomy. There are solutions to poverty for the
| individual. The individual must be aware of them, use them,
| and keep using them, until they are no longer poor. Then,
| they have to have a system to avoid returning to poverty.
| The sum total of this is much harder than it seems, so to
| many people it seems like those solutions cannot work.
| Sure, to a person for whom these approaches work, who has
| become broke and homeless, they can do it, but that is cold
| comfort for those who cannot escape poverty.
|
| Thanks for the insight.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You forgot with your razor the third option:
|
| * People who have successfully clawed and scratched
| themselves out of poverty are almost never taken into
| consideration in discussions about poverty.
|
| At most modern culture appreciates a rags-to-riches story.
| But rags-to-normal stories are unheard of. When was the
| last time you heard about people going from poverty to
| having just decent lives? Doesn't really pique the interest
| of people, perhaps.
|
| But that's what countless people have done, they're just
| not considered in the perspective of poverty. At most you
| just see them as some everyday guy in the supermarket or on
| the bus.
|
| Getting out of poverty and back on your feet again is very
| close to a miracle. That's how it feels for those who
| experience it. But hackers spit on it with contempt,
| because that was not the solution they would have
| preferred. Or that was not a solution which was applicable
| to every single person on earth. And in that case, I guess
| we should file a formal complaint also against all the
| saints who cured the blind but didn't cure the deaf.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are solutions to poverty and the majority of people
| do follow them successfully. However there are always
| people getting into poverty and so there is always poverty.
| Worse there are people who cannot follow the solutions we
| have to poverty - this is a small minority, but it is the
| ones that are hardest to deal with.
|
| There are also a tiny number (less than 1 in 1000) who have
| a lot of wealth but choose to live in poverty because that
| is freedom. If you look close you see they are the ones who
| have a warm coat and working heat in their tent. This is
| not poverty, but they try to be counted in your poverty
| numbers because it helps them. When you have wealth living
| in poverty is not that bad. (the above is a story a
| homeless man told me this week while I was helping out at
| our local food shelf. The homeless man is in poverty and I
| get the impression his divorce settlement is the problem
| and as soon as his kids are out of school he plans on
| getting a real job)
| treis wrote:
| There's a clear 3rd option where the poor are self
| destructive shit heads.
|
| IMHO this is one of those areas where lots of things can be
| true. If you're sick or catch bad breaks then yep poverty
| is a grinding cycle. If you're not then the American Dream
| is still alive. But the "American Dream" always kinda
| sucked. In that you never got a ton of luxuries and it was
| all somewhat precarious.
| Aunche wrote:
| Gee. I wonder why people find a blogpost telling them to fuck
| off and acting like they don't know that quitting Starbucks is
| only relevant to those who go to Starbucks annoying?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Related: "You can't tell people anything"[1]
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23617188
| rustystump wrote:
| I am normally a knee jerker but i grew up in a big family with
| very little. Between broke and poor. Almost going to food banks
| but not quite. This is pretty spot on to what it is like.
|
| Even broke, something as simple as a parking ticket is
| borderline life threatening. Id buy the McDonald's 1$ drink
| with free refills and calorie load on that all day reusing the
| cup. He doesnt touch on the shame of it you feel esp in todays
| us culture.
|
| I am lucky to get out of the cycle.
| someone7x wrote:
| > something as simple as a parking ticket is borderline life
| threatening
|
| I always lived in fear of being pulled over and getting
| busted for not having the insurance I couldn't afford.
|
| Eventually get pulled over and ticketed, cough up $1000 for
| proof of insurance to bring to court then get a payment
| program to pay off $1000 fine.
|
| Once the proof of insurance expired, begin the cycle again.
|
| Until I finally got enough earnings to always pay my bills
| every month on time, my entire financial existence hinged on
| how often the police stopped me.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| There are definitely people in Louisiana who just dispense
| with having a driver's license and tell the police to
| arrest them and they will bail themselves out with cash
| (and keep the cash around!)
| popcorncowboy wrote:
| > He doesnt touch on the shame of it you feel
|
| This is the part people who have never experienced it most
| overlook. The profound, lived-in shame that comes with being
| poor, and the damage that does over time.
| rustystump wrote:
| This. It is hard to not have that chip on your shoulder.
| empiricus wrote:
| I "like" when ppl talk about UBI and say "but ppl on UBI are not
| happy and lack purpose". Compare with being poor.
| tavavex wrote:
| It's even more annoying when you consider that most proposals
| that gain any type of traction can't even ever approach the "I
| have everything now so I'm not going to work because I'm so
| lazy"-type abundance that the fear-mongers try to sell you. If
| we just were able to use some of all this wealth to create an
| absolute baseline of "enough money to not starve, have any kind
| of roof over your head and not be trapped in your current
| situation", I wonder what society could've looked like.
| etchalon wrote:
| "All of the general guidance to escape being poor is actually
| advice for getting through being broke."
|
| Paragraph level upvoting needs to be a thing.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I understand the sentiment. I grew up lower middle class but with
| financially illiterate and neglectful parents and had a great
| deal of food scarcity and other things that caused me to leave
| home at 17. It was really difficult. The first place I managed to
| get, was a room for $750 a month and I took home $900. I had no
| car and had to take the bus everywhere. It's true - everything
| just piles up when you are stretched thin.
|
| What I ended up doing was finding a cheap place to live in a
| crappy area with a buttload of roommates, started searching for
| promotion at my job, got one, which gave me more financial leeway
| and time (more flexible schedule) to pursue a degree at a
| community college, which was free because of my income. From
| there I went to a good state school which was also free due to my
| income and did well and got a degree in CS and was hired by a
| professor's startup. This whole process took like 15 years of
| brutally difficult grinding.
|
| A lot of people in my spot, that have "made it" (although I still
| bear the scars all over the place, and I am handicapped in
| habitual ways, especially financially, that I may never get over
| without hundreds of thousands of $ of therapy), will look down on
| people like this author for "not trying hard enough."
|
| I think it's bullshit. I got extraordinarily lucky and had a
| streak of nothing too "bad" happening (didnt get a crippling
| illness, car mostly stayed good, grades stayed stable, didnt get
| laid off), plus innate talents not everyone has. I think it's a
| myth a lot of people tell themselves that they "made it" because
| they just worked hard enough. The truth a huge amount of the time
| is you got lucky. Hard work + luck yields opportunity, but not
| all opportunities pan out. My career may dead end because of AI
| and I may end up in the same spot again for all I know. All I can
| do is keep trying.
| magicalist wrote:
| Really great comment.
|
| > _The first place I managed to get, was a room for $750 a
| month and I took home $900. I had no car and had to take the
| bus everywhere. It 's true - everything just piles up when you
| are stretched thin._
|
| After I got my first job in tech that honestly felt at the time
| like it paid too much, it was _crazy_ to find just how
| expensive and stressful it was just to exist before that point
| and how so much of that just evaporated the second I had even
| just enough money.
|
| And then on top of that, so often I'd get access to free things
| or services just from shopping somewhere, or being a subscriber
| to something, things I often didn't need at all, but sure I'll
| take it.
|
| Besides the other scars like you mention, I feel like the
| experience burned the idea of diminishing marginal utility of
| money into my soul, and unless you've been on that side of the
| curve, it may just be really hard to understand how much it
| falls off. So it may be easy for someone to think they
| understand because they didn't have much money for going out
| all the time after they got out of college or whatever, and so
| it makes sense to suggest that other people can just better
| budget their money and they can be successful too.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| This is talking about philosophical liberalism.
|
| It's the official ideology of capitalist countries, to think that
| were all equal in the eyes of the govt and if youre not on the
| same economic level it must be cause you're fundamentally
| different/flawed.
|
| It's a type of thinking that does not take into consideration
| peoples material reality (even their own) and manifests as
| narcissism and egotism in those who employ this thought.
|
| It seeks to detach material reality from peoples life and simply
| judge based on merit, or a sort of spiritual value or other
| attributes. It is an idealist ideology.
|
| To counter this idealist thought: I assure you, if you were me
| you'd be doing exactly what I'm doing. The real explanation for
| life is to look at the material basis of said life. Poverty is a
| hole full of material and psychological ills. Stress, coping
| mechanisms and just straight up lack of knowledge, lack of
| opportunities, lack of someone to teach you, lack of a proper
| learning environment, the psychological effects alone could kill
| a rich kid, let a lone the material ones.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| > It's the official ideology of capitalist countries, to think
| that were all equal in the eyes of the govt and if youre not on
| the same economic level it must be cause you're fundamentally
| different/flawed.
|
| IMO good government (i.e. the government that I would want to
| live under) treats all citizens equally under the law, not
| because everyone is equally lucky or everyone who is poor is a
| terrible person or something but because it's not the
| government's business to do anything but enforce the law. Good
| government is not a caretaker and is not a bank. Communities
| should look after their needy members and give them a lift up,
| not the government. If our communities aren't tightly knit
| enough for that, then that's a different and IMO deeper
| problem.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy.
|
| The problem isn't that there is equality in the eyes of the
| law. The problem is what that means in practice.
|
| A poor citizen has the right to use their money as they see
| fit. <spoiler>A poor citizen has the right to: lobby, to fund
| think tanks, to advertise their interests, to sway research
| through funding, to fund the careers of politicians, to gift
| resources to local police departments, to fund ballot
| initiatives and referendums, to acquire media outlets, to
| fund documentary films, to buy bots online, to fund lawsuits
| against the corporations, to host fundraisers with high net-
| worth individuals.</spoiler>
|
| How many poor people are able to do this? Very very very tiny
| amounts. These rights are nearly exclusively actionable by a
| certain class of people.
|
| And you may argue about the philosophical implications of
| 'equality of opportunity' vs 'equality of outcome'. But the
| thing is this so called "neutral legal framework" leads to a
| monopoly of power by the rich, because the law pretends both
| of these kinds of people are the same.
|
| The very framework is in negation of itself because it leads
| power in the hands of a few.
|
| That is the true problem of this framework. And to suggest
| that the alternative must be "equality of outcome" is a false
| dichotomy. The "neutrality of the government" is more like "a
| broken clock is right twice a day" kind of thing.
|
| The founding fathers were already aware of this, in fact I
| think they made the state in their own interests seeing as
| during the founding of the US the vast majority of Americans
| at the time were illiterate farmers/workers and/or slaves. In
| a very real sense the state was made for the rich by the
| rich, but with lingo that pretended it was for everyone.
|
| This is why class politics is the most important aspect of
| politics in our lives. We live in class society where there
| are fundamental differences between classes of people. This
| difference is not strictly and categorically based on the
| amount of money they have, but on HOW they fund their lives
| which allows them to have extra rights. Effectively we can't
| afford all the rights. This is the classic "All animals are
| equals, but some animals are more equal than others".
| zahlman wrote:
| > to think that were all equal in the eyes of the govt
|
| This is a goal, not a claim.
|
| > and if youre not on the same economic level it must be cause
| you're fundamentally different/flawed.
|
| This is a complete non sequitur, and is nothing like classical
| liberal thought.
| jiehong wrote:
| I once saw people start their month with 0 on their bank account,
| and live in the negative monthly credit their bank allows.
|
| Them having a job (luckily), means they just about manage to fill
| that debt back at the end of the month, covering the debt and the
| small bank interest.
|
| They end up paying the bank money bit by bit every month, yet
| they stay locked in that negative money pit.
|
| It's like being permanently broke, and it all started with one a
| bad month of extra payments...
| jorts wrote:
| I had a roommate who was taking payday loans to support his
| brother for a while. I saw how ridiculous the interest was,
| paid it off for him, then had him pay me back. It got him out
| of the constant cycle of debt.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I climbed out of extreme adolescent poverty (for the U.S.)
| brought on by my mother's cancer diagnosis pre-ACA to become a
| top 1% earner in my cohort.
|
| Practically speaking as a 15 year old teenager I started 30k
| (56k) in today's dollars in the hole per year or my family went
| homeless and hungry.
|
| The complete stupidity of people who think poverty and
| homelessness are in any way indicative of moral fiber, work
| ethic, discipline, etc. is undeniable.
|
| Having now spent many years with the intelligencia, cocaine, DMT
| and crypto gambling class I must say.
|
| The working poor are morally better than all of them and the
| majority of the homeless are too.
|
| The moral value of the way any of these groups spend their first
| available 50k chunk in comparison to their wealthy counterparts
| is just vastly superior.
|
| Maker geeks of all stripes are the only group I've seen that I
| can distinguish as interacting in a more meaningful ways.
|
| Poverty is a multi factorial societal issue, no amount of mindset
| is enough to get you out alone but a vastly superior mindset IS
| required to get out and that's a failure of society because the
| wealthy are immoral and _don't want the competition and often
| times do want the cheaper labor._
|
| It's a constant effort to widen the leverage gap.
|
| The poor shouldn't have to have a vastly better mindset, grind,
| cognitive powers just to get to the baseline in a dead end job,
| we are crushing the best among us instead of ensuring that their
| above average capabilities are contributing to society at large,
| instead they are being used to get out of the hole we made for
| them.
| tracker1 wrote:
| While I get it, I disagree with some of the premise... especially
| the idea of working two jobs. My dad has worked multiple jobs at
| a time when I was growing up... I've worked multiple jobs at a
| time as recently as this year. Now, I'm getting old (50yo) and
| really couldn't handle it as well as I could in my 20s, but I
| still did it.
|
| It's not a permanent solution, but it's not a bad thing to do
| when you need to in order to pull ahead. For that matter, self
| study and personal advancement. It's hard to get into some jobs
| as an autodidact... I've been a software developer for going on
| three decades without a formal education. There are plenty of
| times I can't get through the HR screening alone. That doesn't
| mean you don't try, or don't put in effort to improve your
| position in life or yourself.
|
| I get being broke and poor... I grew up relatively poor. It
| sucks. I also worked very hard to get where I am. It's not always
| where I want to be, but that's life to an extent. My opinions
| don't always align with everyone else though... I just don't like
| the idea of giving up, or not putting in extra effort when it's
| an option to pull you ahead.
|
| I say this having spent about a year out of the past 3 years
| without regular income and massively in debt with medical issues
| I cannot cover, and cannot currently afford insurance (due to
| debt payments). It sucks, and I can't change the past... I can
| only put in the effort I need to improve the future.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Lots of low skill jobs have constantly shifting schedules given
| at the last possible minute (day by day sometimes) that don't
| necessarily allow the time luxury of juggling multiple jobs.
| Fast food is a great example.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Not sure about that even.. in my late teens I worked fast
| food and as a clerical temp worker (I could type fast) for
| data entry/processing. The fast food job didn't have an issue
| scheduling me just in the evenings/weekends.
|
| A lot of employers are pretty understanding if you have
| multiple jobs and will work around your needs as much as
| possible.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I mean, you can not be sure all you want, but I promise you
| it's this way - know from personal experience.
|
| it's even been written about:
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/economy/retail-fast-food-
| work...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >in my late teens I worked fast food and as a clerical temp
| worker
|
| Yes and the world you experienced decades ago doesn't exist
| anymore.
|
| >a clerical temp worker (I could type fast) for data
| entry/processing
|
| Rarely available as a job anymore in the US. People in
| other countries can do it for cheaper, or local people who
| are so thoroughly disabled that it's legal to pay them
| almost nothing just to give them something to do as the
| government pays them to survive.
|
| "Just walk in with a firm handshake" hasn't been a thing in
| forever.
|
| >A lot of employers are pretty understanding if you have
| multiple jobs and will work around your needs as much as
| possible.
|
| No they wont, because they can just tell you to deal with
| it or find someone else.
|
| If you aren't willing to take exactly the hours they give
| you, exactly the shifts they give you, or figure out how to
| cover those shifts yourself, they'll just stop giving you
| hours and pay someone else.
|
| Even if you have a friendly manager, corporate will fire
| him if he isn't pushing you hard enough. First level
| "managers" don't even get to manage anymore, they just
| follow whatever policy or some algorithms tell them they
| have to do.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I know the above may not be a popular opinion... maybe it comes
| from me being older than a lot of people here (50yo) and having
| grandparents that lived through the Great Depression. I just
| don't see the point in being defeatist.
| qwertox wrote:
| > You can't afford to go to the movies, but will stay home and
| watch what's new on Netflix.
|
| I never had Netflix nor Spotify and I am not poor. I always
| thought that having Netflix and Spotify is some kind of luxury.
| Not a big one, but those services are not cheap, if you're on a
| tight budget.
| barbazoo wrote:
| If you're a family it's much cheaper to have Netflix, spread
| these $20 over 4 people a month than going to the movie theater
| for $100+ every time. These $20/month are already out of reach
| for many, I realize that.
| qwertox wrote:
| I see. Makes sense.
| bluGill wrote:
| Or you can do without both - as a large number of people do.
| Taking that family to the movie theater once per year is a
| lot cheaper than a monthly netflix subscription, which is
| another option.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you're a _poor_ family you 're better off with not having
| Netflix or go to the movies; you just watch DVDs and stay
| home.
|
| The underlying problem not talked about in all this is how
| our entire financial system is built around charging you a
| bit more than you can bear, but not actually driving you into
| bankruptcy.
|
| Then a huge percentage of your income goes to interest
| payments.
| uzidil wrote:
| In the book "Starling House", being poor is defined as: you make
| a list for what you need, another for what you want, and then you
| throw away the second list.
| bpt3 wrote:
| The author of this post goes even further than that: He says to
| make a list of only what you need, and then flounder while you
| fail to acquire the items on that list.
| mehulashah wrote:
| He right. I've seen poverty in India, but I misunderstood it.
|
| There was a 12 year old kid who guided our boat down the Narmada
| after we spread my Dads ashes. He was not in school because he
| wanted money.
|
| I told him I'd pay him double and continue to pay him for his
| days work, if he'd go back to school during the day and only row
| boats at night.
|
| He said no. Just give me what you owe me.
|
| He had no hope that education in the government schools would
| meaningfully change anything for him. Poverty is not a single
| static state. It's a negative feedback loop that requires
| systemic change to get out of.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Sometimes, a visible example does that. I know of numerous
| people in Mumbai who do servant jobs, whose kids have gone to
| engineering schools and gotten corporate jobs. This sort of
| story - 1st in my family to go college - needs to be prominent
| for a parent to want to aspire to that for their kids.
|
| Doesn't work for the absolutely destitute of course.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > He had no hope that education in the government schools would
| meaningfully change anything for him.
|
| I have over 14 years of education in developed countries, and
| out of those, maybe 1 year combined meaningfully helped me in
| my jobs/career in terms of skills.
|
| Everything else was self-taught/learned.
|
| There's an enormous disconnect in educational systems between
| what skills will get people out of poverty, what skills are
| great for wealthy navel-gazing students and what skills some
| bureaucrat decided "everyone" should have (but no one does,
| because no one pays attention in those classes).
|
| And when people lose faith in the public educational system is
| when you get dysfunctional societies for the majority of your
| citizens.
| nomadpenguin wrote:
| > I have over 14 years of education in developed countries,
| and out of those, maybe 1 year combined meaningfully helped
| me in my jobs/career in terms of skills.
|
| I think you're underestimating the effect of 14 years of
| daily training in literacy and numeracy.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Not all poor people are poor in the same way, that is, there are
| different reasons you might be poor. This is explained pretty
| well in this classic book:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_America
| wslh wrote:
| Sorry, but poverty is also a spectrum. Many people who have never
| been poor cannot understand that, but even if you have been poor,
| you still cannot fully understand someone else's poverty.
| d_silin wrote:
| Poverty is a funnel with slippery sides and no bottom. You can
| struggle your entire life just not to slide downwards even
| further. The post's author understands this and so do I.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Half of the poor voted for Trump who has been doing everything in
| his power to make them poorer. Speaking of the people as a whole,
| you get what you vote for.
| rckt wrote:
| This is kind of a good way to understand that people who never
| really struggled in life aren't able to understand, step into
| struggling's person's shoes. It's simply an unknown concept for
| them. Everyone's values, perspective, actions are dictated by the
| past experience. I made my way from a poor country to a western-
| European wealthy one. And the question that amuses me is "So, how
| do you like here?". I fucking LOVE it here. People don't even
| understand that I can compare these nice streets to an absolute
| shithole. And they either have never lived abroad or just been to
| some neighboring countries. And they talk about food, views, sea,
| whatever. Oh man, they don't understand that just going outside
| is already a nice experience for me. Going to a doctor, using
| public transport, taking my kid to a nice school. Ha! I just tell
| them that yeah, it's nice, I like it. But there's a huge gap
| between our concepts of nice places.
| sgarland wrote:
| As a child, I went from firmly middle-class (dad was a
| firefighter in San Diego, CA) to pretty damn poor (we moved to
| the middle of nowhere in Nebraska). I joined the U.S. Navy, and
| got a B.S. while I was in, then an M.S. in SWE afterwards on the
| government's dime thanks to the GI Bill. I did the latter while
| working nights. I now make more money than I ever thought would
| be possible.
|
| I said all of that to say, I am a poster child for "I crawled my
| way out of poverty, so you can too," and _I hate that sentiment._
| Even though I know that I did in fact work hard to get to where I
| am, I know plenty of people who work way harder than I ever have,
| and who have very little. It's not that they're blowing their
| money, it's that their skill sets don't pay nearly as lucratively
| as tech. Very little comes close.
|
| If you have never been poor (or at least were raised poor)
| yourself, you cannot possibly understand what it's like, and you
| should probably not be giving advice to those who are.
| silvestrov wrote:
| > _I crawled my way out of poverty, so you can too_
|
| Sounds for me like "I could do it on my own, so nobody should
| have to help you".
|
| I really hate this mentality of not helping others. Everybody
| gets better when everybody gets help.
| sgarland wrote:
| I absolutely agree, and if my words didn't convey that
| sentiment, I apologize.
| dijit wrote:
| Even this does a poor job of explaining being poor.
|
| The constant open loop on everything you own, terrified to
| discard anything even if its broken because there are components
| that might be useful to fix something else; the constant churn of
| second-hand (and cheap/disposable) things that are already close
| to death before they come into your possession and- crucially:
| the crushing weight of knowing that any financial roadbump is
| existential.
|
| As the author mentions, a PS50 fine might as well be PS50,000-
| its unpayable, and leads to a sort of doom-spiral of lending to
| avoid worse consequences. Easily you can end up in unmanageable
| debt, in rare cases prison, its not uncommon to have the few
| worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts,
| treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little
| monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of
| canned goods to avoid being unable to eat.
|
| It's hard to convey this, and what it does to your mentality- I
| am now built mentally to think quite fiscally conservative and do
| not take debts or put savings into investments like my peers. I
| am well off but a fraction of what I could have been had I not
| has this mentality.
|
| You have to live it to understand it, but I wouldn't wish it on
| anyone, its a tarpit and getting out of it without someone
| handing you a branch (and if you no longer have the strength to
| pull yourself out) then you'll be stuck in it forever.
| roxolotl wrote:
| Yea my partner grew up genuinely poor and it's interesting
| seeing how it impacts their mentality. The simplest but clear
| example is they never finish low-perishable food they like
| until they have more of it. There is always a few potato chips
| left in the bag. One cookie left waiting till it's necessary to
| get through a rough day or more are purchased. They are the
| best saver I've ever met. But it wasn't until they got lucky
| and got a break that it mattered because they never had
| anything to save but cookies.
| ztetranz wrote:
| I find myself doing that. I'm not sure if it's just a silly
| habit I have because I don't like to run out of anything even
| if it is not important or if I picked it up from my dad who
| lived through the "great" depression as a child.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Conversely, I had an acquaintance that grew poor, and would
| finish 95% of the cookies in a bag, but always leave the
| almost empty bag to the next person to find out, even if it
| had to stay that way for months.
|
| Strangely, she did that only with comfort foods.
| roxolotl wrote:
| Yea this is exactly what I'm describing
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| The 'blank in the firing squad' technique of snacking is
| a pretty typical girl thing.
|
| Eating cookies? Perfectly fine. Eating an entire bag of
| cookies? Gross. Unthinkable.
|
| But how many cookies is really fine to eat? The safest
| best is not to know, either by breaking them into
| uncountable pieces or leaving some in the bag for someone
| else to finish (meaning, you ate less than a bag of
| cookies and are safe).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Gotta maintain that figure if you ever wanna escape
| poverty. Reba McEntire wrote a whole song about it.
|
| (joking, but not nearly as much as I wish I was)
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I do it to avoid being blamed, I don't know what you're
| on about. I've never cared that much about the semantics
| of how many cookies I ate (then again, I'm on hacker news
| so I might not be the best representation of the female
| populace)
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I tend to do the cookie baking, so it'd be a little silly
| for me to be mad over someone eating them.
|
| And for what it's worth, no one deserves blame for their
| cookie habits.
| telesilla wrote:
| A close friend grew up in first-world poverty (meaning, warm
| house, state-supported education, health care) but
| experienced no luxuries. To this day, they will buy
| themselves a tub of ice-cream or chocolate and eat it all
| completely alone, almost hoarding it, because growing up they
| had to share everything with the many siblings. It's crazy
| how weird pathologies we humans have.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> terrified to discard anything even if its broken because
| there are components that might be useful to fix something
| else_
|
| I've fortunately never been poor, or even temporary broke, but
| I'm not sure how you'd get through life with without this. I've
| gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to repurpose
| something out of the junk pile. It is not even about the money,
| more being able to deal with it immediately. Once you need to
| involve other people the burden grows substantially.
| mrsvanwinkle wrote:
| Poverty-sculpted packrat brain here. I believe this specific
| behavior became a nuanced social issue starting with the
| Marie Kondo "Cleanliness" movement from years ago to present,
| at least my experience of this is through the Tumblr
| commentaries about how tone-deaf the movement was to people
| in or who grew up in poverty. so for "never-poor" people like
| you, the specific nuance would be whether you had space to
| keep these backup parts like an attic or garage or even extra
| closet space where this behavior becomes a
| "tidiness/organization" issue otherwise. hope this
| perspective gives a better picture
| vkou wrote:
| > I've gotten myself out of so many binds by being able to
| repurpose something out of the junk pile
|
| When you have money, you can just _buy_ the thing you need,
| instead of hoarding five metric tonnes of crap that you 'll
| never use.
|
| If you haven't used something in the past 5 years, you can
| almost certainly toss it.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I spent years getting over the idea of saving some half broken
| thing because "I might need a part from that later"
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Specially because occasionally the usefulness of such saved
| junk appeared to prove the thought right, the rest of the
| unused pile of junk notwithstanding.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| And the more skilled and richer and better tooled up you get
| over time the more potentially useful everything is so the
| more you feel like you have to save it.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| As an electronic tech I find myself hoarding discarded
| devices because sometimes I need some part and ordering means
| paying shipping and 4 day (if I am lucky) waiting to get a
| part that costs cents just to probably find out that I need
| more parts.
| pbalau wrote:
| When I was younger, I've spent an entire summer working
| here and there, with the explicit goal to buy an 8MB stick
| of ram, so I can play Quake. Got the biggest ballacking
| from my dad about "wasting" all that moneis. Since then,
| storage and memory, the only things I'm actively trying to
| save.
| corobo wrote:
| > a PS50 fine might as well be PS50,000- its unpayable, and
| leads to a sort of doom-spiral of lending to avoid worse
| consequences. Easily you can end up in unmanageable debt
|
| Yup! Bank gave me an overdraft when I was 16. At 37 I'm still
| in debt connected to that first bit of "free" money.
|
| I've never earned above PS0, and at this point it's too late to
| care. They can write me off as a minor loss when I kick it haha
| HPsquared wrote:
| If it's any consolation that's how finances work for most
| governments.
| corobo wrote:
| No consolation needed - if I come across as woe is me it's
| not the intention. It is what it is and all that. I've got
| food, I've got shelter. It'll do.
|
| You're born, you keep your head down, and you die - if
| you're lucky.
| danans wrote:
| > I've never earned above PS0, and at this point it's too
| late to care
|
| If you have never earned above 0 at age 37, that suggests
| that you have a personal situation that actually prevents you
| from working, not so different from a disabled person might
| face. Just as tragic is the fact that people who do work full
| time and earn very little also end up in similar debt
| spirals.
|
| In benevolent societies such people might end up being helped
| by the social safety net, but in less benevolent societies,
| they often end up on the streets. There are active
| experiments in decreasing benevolence right now across many
| societies.
| dijit wrote:
| it's not terribly uncommon even in the UK to be
| generationally unemployable.
|
| Homelife being bad = bad grades
|
| bad grades = no support for further education
|
| no basic (or further) education = disadvantage in entry
| jobs
|
| no experience in entry jobs = red flag for employers (even
| for other entry level jobs in future where better educated
| folks fresh from school are also applying).
|
| The larger the gap, the bigger the red flag.
|
| I was in this trap, I just struck a particular lottery that
| the thing I love most (computers) was a booming industry
| which had no formal education requirements.
| dwedge wrote:
| > its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own
| being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms
| that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they
| do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to
| avoid being unable to eat.
|
| As a teenager I worked at a bailiffs in the office typing up
| the paperwork. One case that stuck was me was where the debtor
| owed somewhere around PS400. The bailiff took a motorbike (or
| scooter) that could easily have covered the debt. It was sold
| at auction for PS50. PS35 bailiff fees for taking it there and
| PS15 auctioneer fees, PS0 off the debt. It was so unfair it
| should have been criminal.
| physicsguy wrote:
| I remember watching something on BBC about minimalism years ago
| when I was doing my PhD and earning PS13k a year and thinking
| that I just couldn't do it because it relies on you having the
| money to repurchase something you need that you threw away
| qaq wrote:
| This sounds more than legit for many places outside of US and
| maybe some places in US, but in general US does give you an
| opportunity to move up. So unless it's health issue or family
| issue it really is in one's own hands here. I know a ton of
| people who came here with no $/legal status/english and are doing
| really well. If you are a US citizen you already have a huge
| asset.
| fredgrott wrote:
| One of the common myths is...
|
| If repairing auto at shop costs $1000 one should op out to spend
| $300 in parts and own labor.....
|
| Paying for the wrong utility makes you remain poor as the down
| car repair has a very low utility to you earning that higher wage
| while the shop repairs your car.
|
| It would only make high value utility sense if you did that
| several times and then open your own car repair shop as business
| owner.
|
| Warren Buffet implies this obliquely in his writing about the
| choices he has made.
| hartator wrote:
| > never see my wife? My kids?
|
| It seems you have what matters man.
| vaidhy wrote:
| I do not remember where I read this, but it has struck with me
| for the last 35+ years - "Poverty is a crime, but the poor are
| not guilty of it".
|
| I have seen abject poverty growing up in India.. It is right in
| your face most of the times. I have friends from the other side
| of the street and pretty much, you live in very different
| realities.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > A lot of poor folks are having to stand in line for hours and
| hours to get food at a food bank due to [government] ineptitude
|
| This is an element of the argument for dismantling the nanny
| bureaucracy and instead going to UBI / cash payments.
|
| 1. It doesn't waste time, both of the gov't employee, but also of
| the recipient.
|
| 2. The author could buy better food, or car parts, or a bus pass,
| or ... with what otherwise might have been a more or less forced
| purchase in a single category. The flexibility returns agency and
| self-help behavior into the hands of the recipient.
|
| All this needs to be tempered against the progress[1] we are
| making against poverty. I know it's a lot to ask the poor to be
| patient, but I do think there's an element of knowing that a lot
| of good people are trying really hard to alleviate the situation
| can help with the mostly mental elements of the article
|
| > No matter how fast you run or how high you jump you can never
| see the finish line. No matter how tired you are the ground keeps
| moving.
|
| eg: this statement is not actually a fact, it's a mindset
|
| Overall, this is a big big testament to the overall worldview
| that I think is missing, just how impactful choices actually are.
| Some of these kinds of stories start generations ago, some of
| them start with the individual themselves having spent excess in
| the past that could have taken them through the low times (kind
| of "a waste not, want not" scenario). Some folks had opportunity
| and squandered it. Some flipped tails (failing scenario) 20 times
| in a row... People don't really want to help the former, but
| definitely the latter.
|
| [1] - https://x.com/BillGates/status/1086662632587907072/photo/1
| yunwal wrote:
| Now do homelessness and make it over the past 20 years.
|
| Now do chances a child makes it to their 20s over the past 20
| years.
|
| Now do suicides.
|
| No, we are not making progress on poverty, at least not in the
| United States. We are simply trading one problem for another.
| Progress has entirely stopped since essentially the 1990s, and
| things have gotten much much worse in the past 5 years.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| > There is this mindset from folks that poor people must not be
| smart.
|
| Ever since I was a child, that idea has been shoved down my
| throat. "The American Dream", "they're lazy", "they should work
| harder".
|
| Spending some serious time in developing countries fixed that
| mentality up real quick. Being able to escape the circumstances
| you're born into is a rare privilege in any culture. And that
| aspect of life in USA seemed to end in the late 90s/early 2000s.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Another point the author doesn't make but probably should is the
| home economics of DIY: A solo person gets 24h a day, just like
| everybody else. Ideally 8 are spent asleep. Another 8 (minimum)
| are probably spent working. That leaves a person 8 hours to do
| their whole life. It eats away at personal time, it bleeds into
| work and sleep, often by interrupting or occluding the ability to
| do either.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > It eats away at personal time, it bleeds into work and sleep
|
| And, most significantly, eats away at time which could be
| allocated for retraining/career-advancement.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| One way to imagine being poor: imagine lots of slow leaks. Your
| bank account leaks, your car's engine leaks, your mental health
| leaks. Everything is slowly getting worse, and you know it. Every
| time you try to fix one leak, the other leaks start leaking more.
|
| You might think, hooray, I fixed the engine leak! And then
| suddenly your wife is leaving you and taking the kids. So you
| rush to court to deal with that, and park in the wrong place, and
| your car gets impounded; getting it out costs money you don't
| have. In trying to deal with all that, your mental health
| suffers, so you're rude at work, and now your job is at risk. So
| then you work on being more positive at work, you finally get
| dual custody of the kids, and pay for the car to be returned...
| and then the transmission dies.
|
| It's that, but your entire life.
| eulgro wrote:
| I have trouble understanding how someone really can be poor.
|
| I spend about 30% of what one makes earning minimum wage full
| time. I live a frugal lifestyle, but I still feel like most
| people would consider my lifestyle normal and comfortable enough.
|
| If I really needed to, I could probably get by on 10-15% of the
| minimum wage. In other words, earning the minimum wage, I could
| make 6-10 persons live on my salary.
|
| This is possible because we live in an era of abundance. This
| wasn't possible for most of history.
|
| So to me, being poor, for those without major health issues and
| with the ability to work full time, is either a skills issue, or
| a mindset issue.
|
| This guy has a car. I don't think we need to look further than
| that.
| hexator wrote:
| Telling poor people we're living in an era of abundance is not
| a little bit tone deaf. Also, having a car doesn't make one not
| poor-- A car in America is not a luxury, it's a requirement to
| have a job in most places.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Exactly. There are many ways to make things work even if you're
| earning very little. People don't think about giving up the
| nice things they feel they're entitled to. But you have to be
| willing to change where you live, what kind of food you eat,
| who you share a roof with, what you drive (if at all), and all
| of that. If you haven't done those things, you can't claim
| you're poor in my opinion, because you haven't made the life
| changes you could make to make ends meet.
| quesera wrote:
| > _I could probably get by on 10-15% of the minimum wage_
|
| Your math might be wrong here.
|
| Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr, so if you have a FT job,
| that's $14.5K/yr, or $1200/mo.
|
| 10% of that is $1450/yr, or $120/mo.
| bradlys wrote:
| The semantics here really suck.
|
| I grew up lower middle class because for most of my life my
| parents both had full-time jobs. (By the definition, you are not
| "poor" in the US if you have a full-time job) However, we grew up
| what I would call educationally poor. My parents struggled with
| financial woes constantly. In my mind, we were broke due to their
| ineptness but they were poor as far as this writer is concerned.
| That said, I grew up around much more poverty than most in the US
| can imagine. I went to (public) school four days a week because
| the local district couldn't afford the fifth day. My parents had
| no thoughts about college or me getting ahead. There was no
| planning for my future. I had to entirely self-drive everything.
| There's obviously a lot more dark parts of this that come with
| being educationally poor as well but no need to elaborate.
|
| Anyway, my point about all that is that I think it's really a
| mindset more than anything else. I don't think _everyone_ can do
| what I did but I came from such a bad background with no hope at
| all and I still managed to be early eng for an IPO, FAANG,
| competitive university, etc.
| wredcoll wrote:
| I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that what you did is
| impossible, merely unlikely.
|
| You, presumably, worked extremely hard at things you thought
| would help you long term. You also, presumably, got lucky at
| some points. One does not diminish the other.
|
| And more to the point, now that you're "successful", do you
| think society should pay for more/better systems to help people
| like you achieve what you did?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Most Americans don't understand real poverty. It exists outside
| their reality. They've never seen it, let alone experienced it.
|
| To the article's point, it is about being in a situation where
| there is no viable path to not being broke. You are stuck in an
| intrinsic local minima financially due to a total lack of
| capital, leverage, and optionality that a merely broke person has
| and takes for granted. If you end up not being broke it is
| because you worked very hard and/or were very lucky. Climbing the
| hill to get out of that minima can be extremely difficult.
|
| It is pretty rare in the US for an otherwise functional person to
| end up there, most people are born into it. You usually have to
| make a lot of bad choices and/or have serious behavioral issues
| to find yourself in this situation if you weren't born into it,
| which isn't the same thing. People who are homeless drug addicts
| aren't "poor" in the sense of the article; if they weren't drug
| addicts they'd merely be broke in most cases.
|
| You don't see many of the cases of the truly economically poor
| who get out of poverty ending back there again. These cases are
| routinely conflated with people who aren't poor for structural
| economic reasons.
| rapfaria wrote:
| I worked at a media company that used to track time the users
| spent watching TV, so they could charge advertisers accordingly.
| "Hundred million watched the Super Bowl", things like that.
|
| The way they measured that was by having devices installed on
| peoples homes, that tracked TV usage, and all of it was planned
| around demographics as well. People would get a few bucks for
| having the device installed. But hey, if you wanted to measure
| the top 1% of income, what would you do? A few bucks meanth
| nothing, so it was always in terms of 'favors' and 'gifts'. A
| nice champagne here and there.
|
| What about the bottom 5, 10%? Well, you can't give them any
| money, because that could _effectively move them from one social
| class to another_ (not the US, but locally this would be moving
| them from Class E to Class D). So you took them to lunch.
|
| I thought it was wild once I learned that.
| phplovesong wrote:
| Im not rich, but i get by, and can say i live a decent life (in
| terms of what i can get "with fiat"). Im from a totally normal
| middle class-ish family. I always worked (since like 14-15) and
| got my own savings started when i was young.
|
| I really cant think of why you could not get out of beeing poor,
| IF you have the wits and willpower. If you grind some shithole
| job for 6 bucks/hour you should think really hard on your
| choices. Where did you spend your check? Do you live in a too
| expensive appartment? Did you have kids without being absolutely
| fucking sure you can support them? Did you fuck up something like
| foolish debts? Do you drive a car when you can take the bus?
|
| Im not really sure what to say, but i know what I would do if
| things webt south.
| atomicthumbs wrote:
| "Im from a totally normal middle class-ish family."
|
| Maybe that's why you can't comprehend the idea of being poor in
| a fashion that doesn't let you escape, even working as hard as
| you possibly can and making all the right choices.
| xp84 wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong, but considering how imperfect
| humans are, it's easy to make a mistake or two (or to basically
| inherit mistakes from parents, in many cases), and I think one
| of the problems is, it's very, very difficult to claw your way
| back after that. It would be ideal if a small screw-up could be
| more feasibly repaired, but tbh I don't know a fair and good
| way to do that that didn't generate dependence and a bailout
| cycle.
| owyongsk wrote:
| One of the best charities that is fighting extreme poverty is
| GiveDirectly (https://www.givedirectly.org/). Their cash
| transfers program
| (https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/gi...)
| have been evaluated by GiveWell who is probably the best at
| charity evaluation.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I've ridden the spectrum, as it were. I grew up upper middle
| class, with a sprawling McMansion, a car for each sibling, a
| country club membership, the works. I've been broke, squandering
| money and racking up debt, but finding enough escape hatches to
| avoid irreparable harm. I've been homeless, getting by through
| the good graces of friends and family until I got back on my feet
| through the help of a good friend and wildly risky move to a
| place I'd never been, sight unseen. I've spent years being poor
| in a food desert, stretching pizza deliveries across a week of
| meals because the nearest store was a ten mile walk down an
| interstate highway. And now, through luck, work, and the help of
| friends (but mostly luck, statistically speaking), I'm eking out
| a good life in a good apartment with extortionate rent and a
| toxic job.
|
| This author lays out the experience of being "poor" perfectly.
| It's a case of doing all the right things, and still failing.
| It's being constantly stuck in survival mode no matter how hard
| you work, because there's always a new expense, a new hurdle, a
| new obstacle to reset your progress - because being poor means
| you can't even afford the "save point" of insurance or
| redundancies or savings to fall back on.
|
| It's why even when I was scraping above the $200k mark at PriorCo
| in TC, I was championing more social services. More healthcare
| support, more housing assistance, more compensation. We could
| afford it, but shareholder returns came first. It was sickening
| knowing colleagues who lived in vans because despite pulling down
| six figure salaries, it simply wasn't enough for rent when
| expenses continued to pile up for injuries or illnesses.
|
| Those of means and privilege simply do not grasp how hard it is
| to exist in America without large sums of cash behind you. I was
| struggling on less when rent was still considered reasonable, in
| one of the cheapest states to live in. In the fifteen-odd years
| since, it's just gotten exponentially worse, even as the stock
| market has exploded in value.
|
| It's why I never stop arguing for better, because I know how bad
| it can get.
|
| I was just lucky enough to escape.
| wredcoll wrote:
| > "What happened to society? I go into business, I don't make
| it, I go bankrupt. I've been on food stamps and welfare, did
| anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, they gave me
| encouragement, and they gave me a vision. That came from my
| education".
| posix86 wrote:
| Travelling to a 3rd world country with genuinely poor people can
| help, a bit. When you see the houses genuinely poor people live
| in, it purs things into perspective. Being in appartment where
| the roof... is broken. And you have no way to fix it. No way.
| There's cold coming inside, mold on the walls, no real kitchen,
| no real bed, "living room"?? Lol. You grow up not getting a
| proper education, your parents have worked tirelessly for years,
| as you probably will. Having a dream - during the entire life!! -
| of just travelling to a first world country, just ONCE, just to
| see it. And never even approachikg savings to be able to do that.
| And you, the 1st world country, walk past, and complain about the
| hotel staff being rude.
|
| You work work work, no break ever, hardly an improvement. You
| come home, no food, no money. No food, no money. And nobody to
| ask for food, or money. Nobody. You're hungry, and there's that.
| Tomorrow maybe.
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| > Travelling to a 3rd world country with genuinely poor people
| can help, a bit.
|
| I agree with this. For anyone who's young and can afford, I
| wholeheartedly recommend travelling to a poor country. It will
| truly give you a lot perspective on the world and appreciate
| your life more.
|
| Having said that, I often see people grossly misunderstanding
| that just because you visited a poor country you understand the
| lives of the people you saw (e.g. their cultures, opinions and
| lifestyle). It really does not. You only get a very superficial
| glimpse, but it takes years to embody their experience in your
| mind.
| projektfu wrote:
| I feel that this experience can cause us to have less patience
| for the poor in the developed world. Something like, "How poor
| can you be in the USA? In Mexico, just outside a major city,
| there is a town without electricity, where people eat corn and
| raise cows, and they send their children to the city at night
| to beg because they don't have any cash and no way to make it."
| How many people live in that level of poverty in the US?
|
| But, still, perhaps the poverty in the US is worse, and more
| insidious, because it is often a poverty of spirit as well as
| money. It is hard to grow your own food here, as you don't have
| land, and you cannot buy it, because you don't have money.
| amazing_stories wrote:
| Poverty is a spectrum. Naturally, abject poverty is worse than
| regular poverty. I see too many people say "you're not poor,
| you have a phone" or "you're not homeless, you aren't sleeping
| on the sidewalk" (both of these have been said to me). There is
| a mismatch between what people imagine as poor and what poverty
| is, and of course, things could always be worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| If I was in poverty a phone would be early on my list of
| things to get. First is enough food to eat, followed closely
| be enough shelter to live (sleeping outside in the snow is
| fine so long as you have a warm bed in the tend). There might
| be a few other things as well (I'm not in this condition),
| but a phone would be high on my list if I could afford it
| (including the monthly bill) just because of all the things
| you can do once you have one. For the price they are a great
| investment.
|
| I can tell you the homeless man I met this week didn't have a
| phone, but he didn't go anywhere without the kitten he
| rescued from a fire. I'm not sure what I'd do in his place,
| but that is an important data point.
| periodjet wrote:
| The point of disagreement here seems to be about poverty itself.
| The author (and many in these comments) seem aghast at the very
| idea of poverty: how can this state be allowed to exist?!
|
| The truth is that humanity's default state is one of "poverty".
| It should evoke no surprise or confusion whatsoever, and yet it
| does.
|
| Poverty is an entirely valid and normal state for a person to be
| in. There isn't a vast shadowy conspiracy trying to keep you
| down; you're just at the default state of humanity.
|
| Humans improving their situation, now THAT is surprising and
| interesting, and it's the thing we should be focusing our
| curiosity on. If you're poor, emulate those who aren't. Maybe
| they're onto something.
|
| The alternative is to blame the vast shadowy conspiracy,
| "capitalism", etc, and remain poor. That's an entirely valid mode
| of being. Nobody owes you anything.
| ge96 wrote:
| I'm "low-rich" (middle class?) poor eg. I have a six-fig job but
| I also have almost six-fig of debt, so I have after paying all my
| bills (mostly debt) almost nothing left. But I have an apt/cool
| cheap car, toys like 2nd hand computers/cameras. I've been in
| debt for the last 15 years since I went into college. I don't eat
| canned food often actually trying to fast as it's hard to not
| gain weight when I spend most of my time sitting in a chair in
| front of a computer. I do recreational drinking so it's not like
| I'm absolutely poor.
| tavavex wrote:
| To me it's still insane that education (the implied reason for
| your debt? correct me if I'm wrong) is so absurdly expensive in
| the US. Mind you, I'm saying that from another country where
| education isn't free, but most people will never be able to
| have anything remotely approaching six figure debt. You
| presumably work in a professional field, judging by your
| salary, yet you have an enormous anchor that's been dragging
| behind you for all your life. In some ways, the high-lower-
| class person that has a poor salary but isn't indebted might
| have it better than you.
|
| I wonder how much society would change if that system of
| student loans was reformed to offload the burden from young
| people, how much more growth there could be if these people
| weren't stuck in debt.
| ge96 wrote:
| My student loans weren't as bad $30K, the rest is from other
| things eg. CC debt/car loan (28% APR). I also help out my own
| blood-related family eg. I have given away over $100K over
| the course of a few years.
|
| But mostly I'm dumb, buying things I can't afford. The six-
| fig jobs come and go also but in general I've had at least
| $75-$83K jobs aside from the couple six-fig jobs I've had. I
| only started to have that kind of money in 2019 to now. I
| spent 2023 working in a warehouse/my own fault that time I
| went down to the $50K range or so with side gig work added in
| to warehouse work.
|
| I did pay $3K for an MRI one time, well not yet it's on a
| defaulted card.
|
| Oh and loneliness eg. I spent $1.2K at a strip club one time.
|
| It's crazy how you go up in levels though like in 2016 I was
| living on $20K+ a year, now it's $100K+ a year
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the way it should be. Well more or less, you didn't
| state what your debt is from, some are better than others.
| College debt can be a good investment long term (depends on the
| degree). Buying a house is a good long term investment if you
| live there for a long time.
|
| You should save for retirement and a "rainy day". However
| remember you can't take it with you. If you have the above
| savings, an extra penny, and something to spend a penny on
| spend it. You can't take it with you, so you should be at 0 at
| the end of every month (again ignoring retirement and rainy day
| savings)
| ge96 wrote:
| I didn't finish my degree but I got lucky I picked up
| programming/built up a good work history
|
| yeah once I get to $0 net worth I'll start saving/investing
| haritha-j wrote:
| The author complains about the cost of fixing their car. I come
| from a country where vehicle ownership puts you in the top 20% in
| terms of wealth. A motorbike is often the farthest most get.
| 1v1id wrote:
| I can appreciate the totally different perspective that must
| bring. I would also add that living in a car-centered society
| where you are expected to have a car presents its own set of
| challenges, namely that you can't afford to live near food
| sources (grocery stores, etc.) or jobs because it's expected
| that people drive to those things. For people in those
| situations struggling to make ends meet, I think they view
| their car more as a required liability they struggle to
| maintain rather than a privilege.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Past discussions on the topic about articles that explore the
| mindset:
|
| 1) John Scalzi's "Being Poor"
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041758
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712493
|
| 2) Meg Elison's "Poor in Tech"
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899
| LennyHenrysNuts wrote:
| I've been there as a young man. It wasn't very nice.
|
| I always seemed to find the money for beer and smokes somehow
| though.
| cmnzs wrote:
| I actually thought this was going to make the point that just
| because you are poor, doesn't mean that you have the skills to
| fix things on your own. It's great that the author is able to
| work on their own cars (but doesn't have the money). I think
| probably more common is that you don't have the money AND you
| don't have the skills.
|
| And I don't think that's the fault of the individual. The world
| is more complicated than ever. Even cars that may have been
| possible to work on yourself 20 years ago, it's becoming less
| easy to do this.
| mattio wrote:
| I grew up poor as dirt. My mom has four kids with three dads.
| Eventually we were a family of six. I think we had about 100
| euros a month for food, clothing and recreation. My mom and
| stepdad did not work one day in their lives (welfare in NL).
|
| Right now I'm still recovering. It's my fifth year making over
| 150K and I have zero to show for it because I did a poor job
| managing my finances. To help me (in general, but also
| productivity wise) I have a coach and coincidentally today
| exerpeinced a breakthrough. I am still afraid of being poor. Of
| being made fun of. And not being enough.
|
| I'm operating out of a 'it's not enough' mentality, because I
| don't feel enough. It feels like a life sentence, but some hope
| shimmers at the end of the tunnel.
|
| What it's like being poor: even buying a simple football in a
| supermarket felt leagues out of reach. Being sent back home
| because a teacher told me my clothes did not cut it. And my
| parents just sent me back. I never thought there was a path for
| me to become a doctor. Or any other noble job. Growing up or
| being poor is not being able to see a way out. Recognising
| opportunity.
|
| Forgive me my language. Super tired and on my phone.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| There's a tension between descriptive and prescriptive claims
| here.
|
| Descriptively, the author is (worthily!) conveying the real,
| lived experience of resource scarcity so complete that standard
| budgeting advice is useless, tone-deaf, etc.
|
| But prescriptively, he goes much further than "useless": advice
| "doesn't work". The endless runner, The Pit, eternal poverty with
| "no relief in sight."
|
| This language of inescapability creates a framework where "poor"
| is effectively defined as "people for whom interventions don't
| work." This is unfalsifiable! If someone escapes, they were never
| really "poor".
|
| And if that's true, then what? We can't identify what
| interventions help, we can't learn from success stories, we can't
| reason about different causes needing different solutions. The
| framework meant to defend the poor actually makes it impossible
| to help them effectively.
|
| The author almost certainly wants to avoid victim-blaming, which
| is respectable. But defining poverty as this inescapable, almost
| metaphysical state removes all agency from both people in poverty
| and those who'd want to help them.
| poplarsol wrote:
| This Dickensian pastiche ignores the difference between being
| "poor" and being part of a client population, which covers a
| substantial part of the same nominal income bracket.
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| I feel like the target audience is this is people who have zero
| sympathy for the poor, but the thing is that's generally not an
| opinion they reasoned themselves into. They don't want to spend
| the money helping anybody so they rationalize that a decide
| nobody deserves help. So don't expect any minds to change based
| on facts and logic.
|
| (For the record I give no money to charity because I'm completely
| selfish; I make no assumptions about the people I don't help)
| losvedir wrote:
| I'm privileged to have never had to worry about this, growing up
| comfortably middle to upper middle class.
|
| With that said, I have a perpetual point of confusion here,
| likely due to my own blindspots and something I don't want to ask
| in person because it's not nice: is it an issue of budgeting?
|
| Take someone who makes $15/hr and someone who makes $16/hr. Both
| are poor. Both live paycheck to paycheck, have no savings, etc.
| But theoretically, couldn't the latter person live exactly like
| the first one, and save $2000/yr?
|
| Or, consider the same person from one year to the next. Expenses
| are lumpy. They begin the year at $0 and they end the next year
| at $0. It seems... unbelievably coincidental, I guess?... that
| they happened to earn the _exact_ amount of money they needed.
|
| The second part is that I've heard it's expensive to be poor. You
| get crappy stuff that breaks and needs replacement more often.
| You can't afford the larger, cheaper-per-ounce item at the
| grocery store, so you're paying more for the smaller things. The
| flip side is that if that's true, it provides kind of a ramp out,
| since as you're able to save, you can use your money more
| efficiently and save more.
|
| Where am I going wrong in my thinking here?
| mg41 wrote:
| They didn't earn the exact amount of money they needed--they
| didn't have enough money to meet their expenses more likely.
| And likewise one therefore can't save and buy better stuff. And
| thus the cycle of poverty continues.
| losvedir wrote:
| > they didn't have enough money to meet their expenses more
| likely
|
| What does this mean, exactly? I think that's the core of my
| question, and something I don't understand since I lack the
| experience. If someone can live like this for, say, 10 years
| then in some sense it is meeting their expenses exactly.
|
| I understand a situation of accumulating debt - that's a
| state that's not in equilibrium. But a lot of poor people
| can't really obtain credit, I believe.
| anthomtb wrote:
| The article resonated but I disagree with his terminology. To me,
| broke and poor are exactly the same thing. He can define them
| differently if he wants, of course, but what he calls "broke" I
| would call "feeling poor" and what he calls "poor" I would call
| "being poor".
|
| I grew up in circumstances that were very much "broke"/"feeling
| poor" and it took a long time to learn that we really weren't
| poor. Some of the simple actions that are mis-directed towards
| the truly poor (second job, DIY car/home maintenance, better
| financial planning) would have elevated our circumstances quite a
| bit. Not to the point of being rich, but definitely to less
| precarious circumstances. And, selfishly, I would likely not have
| spent my childhood feeling like an impoverished outcast from my
| peers.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-14 23:01 UTC)