13 ms·

Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else

125 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

ars 11y ago
This reminds me of getting ahead of a leveling curve in a game. If you can do that, you can level in better areas (relative to your present level), giving you better rewards (relative to your present level) which then helps you get to even better areas. The only way to get ahead of the leveling curve is to work really hard at first, and it's painful (or boring), and then reap the rewards after. Or in the context of this story live extremely poorly (in the "badly" sense of the word, not the economic one), forgoing every single possible thing not absolutely necessary, and then reap the rewards later. It's hard to forgo every single luxury, or even to forgo simple inexpensive entertainments. But it's worth it later.
- saalweachter 11y ago
  My god, you've solved poverty!
  - ars 11y ago
    Much (most? all?) poverty is caused by human behavior, not adverse circumstance. Just because we know it's caused by human behavior doesn't mean we can fix it.
    - tomlock 11y ago
      Citation please.
      - parenthephobia 11y ago
        To be fair, I think most people probably agree about this. Where the disagreement occurs is the question of whose behaviour is chiefly responsible: people in poverty, or people very much not in poverty.
        tomlock 11y ago
        To be fair, I don't think most people agree on this.
        parenthephobia 11y ago
        Really? Most people don't think that "much poverty" is caused by human behaviour? I'll grant that some temporary localized poverty may exist due to circumstances beyond human control, but I'm absolutely certain that most poverty exists because humans collectively permit it, not because we are - as a whole - powerless to prevent it.
        tomlock 11y ago
        Pure environmental factors for poverty won't necessarily be temporary, since land might just be infertile for thousands of years. I think that poverty is within human control in the same way that cancer is. Cancer has always been around, and nobody has ever been able to solve it. While most can agree that we have more control over cancer now, sometimes we take a backwards step and introduce something that encourages it. I'd argue that cancer, like poverty, is a circumstance we find ourselves in. Something that has been there forever, and which we are trying to get under control. And like cancer, the circumstances of poverty inordinately impact people from different backgrounds, even though with a little help from the experts, it could be better. But I'd argue that we don't actively permit cancer to exist like we don't actively permit poverty.
    - cmdrfred 11y ago
      If blaming the little African kid with the distended belly helps you sleep at right... well.. you're an asshole.
- parenthephobia 11y ago
  It's easy to imagine that being poor just means you have to forgo luxury. If you have $100/month after rent, saving up doesn't mean forgoing luxury, it means forgoing food. If you provide for a family, it means forgoing food for your children. And then what are you saving for? Not to rent a car or buy one with a loan, because you can't afford the payments. So you save up until you have enough to buy a car outright. Maybe the cost of fuel won't outweigh the savings you can now make in getting to cheaper out-of-town stores[1]. And how long does that take? A $1k second-hand car will require 10 months without food, and something that cheap is probably expensive to run. Maybe you're saving to move house. Of course you could move somewhere out-of-town. Now you have cheap shopping. But can you find work there? Or, if you keep your old job, how are you getting there? And, again, how long do you survive on air before you've saved enough to move house? [1] Cheaper because out-of-town stores have to compete for middle-class shoppers who can afford to travel further to shop.
dangerlibrary 11y ago
Terry Pratchett said it very well: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. 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 the 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. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
- jimktrains2 11y ago
  I was just about to post this because it said there was no comments and when I opened it you had just beaten me to it! I would like to note that it was from the book "Men at Arms". The older I get the more I see this. Paying upfront to get a lower rate on your mortgage. Having money to begin with to manage well to get a good rate on a mortgage to start with. Having the flexibility in general to try something that may lead to less money overall if it pans out, but is a waste if it doesn't.
  - Naritai 11y ago
    To continue your point: Having the credit score to get a good mortgage. Living in a good zip code, and so your car/home insurance is cheaper. Living in a good zip code, so you can send your kids to public school. Living in a good zip code, so you don't need an expensive security system. Working for a company that provides high-quality health care plans with low deductibles. Owning a newish car, that is much less likely to break down.
    - tostitos1979 11y ago
      I generally agree with what has been said. Except for the car part. I thought it was best to drive a car to the ground. I buy reasonably priced sedans for around 20K (but brand new). Full coverage car warranties seem to end after 3 years. I sold my last car at that point (it had started to give me headaches). I got about half the money back .. so 10K loss or 3333 per year. Our current car is also at 3 years and starting to act up. I'm deciding whether to buy a new one (and take a 10K loss) or keep going for 2 years. Or is my mistake not buying the 50K BMW or 100K Tesla? :-p
ars 11y ago
"One possible solution is that retailers could consider pushing their deals to the beginning of the month." I wonder is she realized what she was saying/implying by writing that. She's basically saying "the poor can't be trusted to save their money, so help them spend it well, before they waste it [later in the month]".
- setra 11y ago
  They basically can't. Time preference is linked in many many studies with all kinds of properties we deem good.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- parenthephobia 11y ago
  No. She's saying that the poor can't save their money, because they don't have the luxury of not having to spend it to stay fed, clothed, and housed.
  - ars 11y ago
    No, she did not say that. Otherwise why would the timing of the sale (start of month vs end) make any difference?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - auggierose 11y ago
      I didn't even read the article. But obviously, if there is an offer at the beginning of the month, you can buy cheaply and save. If it is at the end of the month, you already had to buy it at the beginning expensively, and you cannot save anything. That's really simple. I am wondering where your karma points come from.
Eric_WVGG 11y ago
Some destitute-college-student friends were telling me that they lived on a $20/week of rice + beans + canned tomatoes; I suggested that I take them out to Costco and for $100 stuff their pantries with ~3 months of supplies. They patiently explained to idiot me that the reason they ate so poorly was because finding $100 was effectively impossible.
- gohrt 11y ago
  You could lend them $100 at 20% APR, and they could pay you back with costco savings.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    I was a college student within the last decade and I wouldn't trust college students with $5. I'd much rather give that money to someone who says he wants money for drugs. Or I'd give them money but I'd not have any expectation of getting it back. A loan that is not. Also if they're friends, loaning money to friends is one of the easiest way to lose friends. Unrelated, but I seriously doubt you could eat for three months for $100 at Costco unless you subsist on bulk oatmeal and other dry food.
    - MBCook 11y ago
      > Unrelated, but I seriously doubt you could eat for three months for $100 at Costco unless you subsist on bulk oatmeal and other dry food. That's supposedly what they're doing now. You could just buy the rice/beans in much larger bulk than normal grocery stores so the money lasts longer. 'Normal' meals with fresh veggies and some meat/etc? You're right.
- bcheung 11y ago
  Credit or loans would allow them to take advantage of that scenario... if they could get access to credit.
- ars 11y ago
  This is why immigrants with strong community support rapidly get out of poverty while the exact same people (ie. same skill, environment, ability) without a strong community don't. With community support you can pool your money, then split the goods and the savings. But you have to be able to implicitly trust your community. Do your friends have other friends in similar situations? Do they trust them enough to make pooled purchases? (Also, you start with pooled purchases simply to help your community. Eventually that transitions into making a bit extra, and before you know it you opened a store. If you are a good person, then you continue to quietly help people in your community with discounts or credit.)
bcheung 11y ago
The points in the article are all true but there's a case when the poor would pay less that isn't discussed. For something like toilet paper people who aren't poor probably don't even check the price. In that regard they would be paying more than someone who did comparisons to find the most economical option.
- mikeash 11y ago
  That's just a matter of habits and motivation. A well-off person who can't be bothered to price-compare toilet paper still could pay less if they wanted to, they just don't care to because they don't need to. The poor person stuck paying more doesn't have the option to pay less if they want to.
cubano 11y ago
The poor get financially hosed in so many different ways in the US that singling out toilet paper, of all things, seems almost laughable. How about real killers, like payday loans, bank fees, and paying more for milk, eggs, and everything else at the corner store because you don't have transportation to get to Costco? And if you want next level hosedom, how about the opportunity cost of having limited or no transportation? Many of the poor have felony criminal records, as I do, so how about the political cost of being denied the right to vote? The list goes on and on. [edit] The title does say "..and almost everything else" so I guess I missed that.
- city41 11y ago
  The article also explained why toilet paper was chosen. It's something people stock up on when they can, but having a stock pile doesn't change usage habits. It turns out to be a good product for investigating what the article is interested in.
- stvswn 11y ago
  Why are payday loans a real killer? Is it because you think short-term, high-interest loans to people with poor credit is bad for the people with poor credit, or are you OK with it in principle but think they should be more upfront about some of the shady things like hidden fees, deceptive tactics, etc.?
  - tim333 11y ago
    Slightly off topic but from my experience in the UK the problem tends more to be 35% credit card interest. Payday loan people like Wonga generally won't lend to the seriously poor - they make their money from generally solvent people who've had something like a boiler pack up needing replacement.
    - MBCook 11y ago
      Bingo. I used to have a job he payday loan industry in the US. The truest poor would be terrible clients because they'll never pay you back. And since you only lent $300 you'd lose more than that trying to collect with a lawyer (ignoring the fact they can't pay in the first place). People who can manage their money up have a sudden need aren't good either. They'll take the loan, pay it back, and that's it. You made $60 and nothing else. The customers they want are on the edge. They have enough money to be able to 'rollover' the loan (extend another 2 weeks for a fee) but not actually pay it off. Over time the fees add up and they're paying you more, but you don't want them to totally default. At $60 + fees every two weeks it doesn't take long to make back the original $300 and then you're printing money. Yes these can be people right on the edge of total poverty. It can be people who have enough money but are irresponsible and use payday loans to fill gaps but aren't in serious trouble. Sometimes it's people who make a ton of money but are up to their eyeballs in debt and can't fill the credit cards up kore.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Every so often I read one of these articles. Thing is, this isn't new information. I've been reading about it since at least the 80's (and I'm quite certain it's been happening since forever). Sadly, nothing every gets done about it. The price of a half gallon of milk will never be half the price of a whole gallon.
- stvswn 11y ago
  Do you think it should be?
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    No, I don't. I think that would be trying to put a bandaid on a larger problem.
withdavidli 11y ago
This exact example was given in a Reddit post. It was sad thread since the question was to the poor of Reddit and what do they buy/how/why. One person was buying tampons for his wife out of a quarter machine. It's easy to not empathize with the poor when you can just ignore it, close yourself off in gated communities.
lotharbot 11y ago
What the quoted study showed was a lot of "did" and "didn't" behavior, but the article phrased it as "can't". There are some poor of whom it is literally true that they can't spend $24 on toilet paper. My local food bank gives out rolls of TP, and keeps nearly-empty rolls in the public bathrooms because rolls that are above half get stolen. Some of the clientele literally have every dollar for the month already spoken for, and $24 of TP is not in the budget. But for a lot of the poor, it's more accurate to say that spending $24 on toilet paper would interfere with other things they've chosen to spend on instead. It's not impossible to come up with $24, but they'd rather spend it in other ways when they do. Now, it's not my place to say that a poor family should or shouldn't use a small surplus to become more efficient and generate bigger surplus later, when they could spend it on something with a more immediate psychological benefit (like a nicer-than-their-average meal). This isn't a judgment, it's just an observation. But I think it's an important observation to make, because the hidden implication is that an extra $20 a month would allow for a new efficiency (like buying TP in bulk/on sale) which would then snowball. But the reality is that an extra $20 a month rarely has anything close to its full potential effect on efficiency, for psychological reasons. Attempts to ease the inefficiencies of poverty need to account for this.
- developer2 11y ago
  I grew up on welfare, in a single parent home. Parent chainsmoked 2 packs a day, which barely left enough money for decent food let alone toilet paper. And yet, somehow, we stocked up on toilet paper when it was on sale.
  - lotharbot 11y ago
    I have three people I point to for how different the experience can be. One friend was living on disability (about $570/month) and food stamps (about $140/month), in a group home. His one "luxury" was he'd buy GI-Joe figurines every month, for about $20. At one point he asked me to take him to the store because he wasn't going to be able to walk the 10+ blocks that day. As he was shopping, I realized he had something like 30 pounds of meat in his cart and almost nothing else. I told him to put half of it back and add a bag of potatoes, and that whenever he wanted to cook meat, cook half as much as he normally would and replace the rest with potatoes. It was life-changing for him -- he was able to eat every day, and had enough money left over to start buying things like toilet paper in bulk. I've since lost track of him, and I'm sure he's still poor, but he's a more secure grade of poor than he had been. Another friend was a divorced mom, recently remarried to a disabled man. She's unable to handle a full-time job, but works a few days a week as a substitute teacher. Between disability, child support, and work she makes maybe $1500 a month. She's always bought in bulk, usually splitting orders with her parents and siblings who live in the same complex. The only real escape from poverty she has is to recover from psychological trauma to the point that she can work full time. Third is a young couple, both just turned 20, and their son is 3 years old. He's had adequate work for a while, but hides financial information from her, they both have expensive phones they use for things my old prepaid Moto X can do for a lot lower price, and they both have a tendency to eat fast food even though he works at a grocery store that has a good selection and good prices. The two things that have kept them from disaster for the past year: I let them live in my basement for a token amount of rent that I stopped collecting after a few months, and his grandparents have helped them pay off a couple of surprise expenses. She recently found work, and with two incomes they're able to afford their own place fairly comfortably, but for a while there it looked like they were going to get into a bad cycle like the one detailed in the article.
strathmeyer 11y ago
"You've read your limit of free articles for this month." So.... how to the poor read the Washington Post? I was talking to a recruiter today. He asked me if I could start a job immediately instead of the usual two week notice. I wondered how I was going to buy gasoline to get to work. Guess I better start saving up.
wprapido 11y ago
being destitute indeed is expensive and low income + high costs let you down the spiral
mikekchar 11y ago
I've never been able to articulate my own feeling about wealth and poverty. I've been objectively poor at some points in my life. I became vegetarian in my early 20s when I was travelling because I couldn't afford meat. Even then there were some weeks where I didn't eat for a few days because I had spent all my money for the week. It sounds bad, but being hungry taught me how to prioritise and I don't regret it. In other times of my life, I have quit my job and spent half a year writing free software, or training karate -- without any income. I also spent 5 years living in a run down shack spending less than $10K a year, when I was teaching English in Japan. By many measures, I was living in poverty because I had almost no income, or I was spending almost no money. But at no time in my life have I ever thought of myself as poor. I have always had money in the bank and I have never really been in debt. When I went hungry it was because I stupidly spent my food budget on beer (or something similar). I didn't have money for food, but I did have money. Money is an option to buy things and for me the feeling of being rich is the feeling of always having that option. You can be happy with less things, I think. Nobody actually needs a yacht to be happy, or a big house, or a collection of vintage wine. But I think it is really hard to be happy when you have no options. It is even harder to be happy when you spend your options in the future and have to suffer with crushing debt -- possibly enslaved forever. I could choose to be hungry. I could choose to give up my job and do something that paid no money. I could choose to move half way around the world and live in a shack teaching English. That's incredible wealth for me. That kind of wealth is available to many people, but I think that most people can't see it, unfortunately.
- startDaemons 11y ago
  Hello, I created an account to let you know how much I enjoyed your comment!
- jethro_tell 11y ago
  It would be fair to say that you have some technical skill not afforded to the truly poor. Most English teaching positions in Japan require a college education, which is the epitome of this study carried to an extreme. Anyone can learn to code or do Linux ops work, a skill that you have that keeps true poverty at bay. Most can go to school on grants if they are truly poor but there's a learning curve to being able to fill the paperwork out, a time and transportation cost to getting the paperwork done and to the right place. In these situations, you have chosen to live as poor, but the opportunity to not be poor is always there because you had an education, you had a skill, and those things gave you an opportunity to save up enough to work for free for a while. There are a lot of places in the world where people don't even know you could work on computers for a very high wage. And even when they do, they lack the know-how to find a geographically diverse community that can mentor them.
fleitz 11y ago
Oh fuck this shit, I was poor and I saved by buying rice in bulk and toilet paper in bulk, and everything as cheap as possible. Seriously, you have to be really fucked up to not be able to put away $25 for rice. If you're poor and not taking advantage of every savings you can I really don't know how one expects to become not poor. If you're so poor as to not be able to afford a large pack of toilet paper, sacrifice one of your dish rags, I assure you they can be washed for long enough for you to save the extra cash to afford a large pack of toilet paper. Want to know what my 'rich' neighbors who have a BMW in their drive way do on weekends? Collect cans from their neighbors trash. I can only assume at one point that they were exceedingly poor. Also, almost everyone I know who was/is poor also smokes. Poor people are mostly poor because they make really bad financial decisions, yes its fucking hard and it seriously takes its toll on you but eventually you get so tired of it you stop making the decisions that keep you poor. I have never eaten so well, or been so healthy as when I was poor. I walked everywhere, never ate out, spent time with friends, meat was like dessert, and you'd buy the cheapest cuts and marinate and cook them until they were delicious and dropping off the bone. The only thing I really had a problem with was saving $200 for a decent pair of shoes that would last. Instead I just bought cheap shoes from the thrift store, the nice thing about being poor is you generally don't have anything else to do, so you check veevies every other day. Again if I wanted to solve this problem I know full well I could have stopped smoking and in two months I'd have cash for shoes.
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  Wow. Not everything is clear black and white you know. Your single experience does not cover everyone else's. Let's ignore any depression or anything else stemming from long term poverty that makes things worse, or at least less clear cut. > they make really bad financial decisions A lot of the time they KNOW they are making poor financial decisions. Imagine there is barely enough money coming in each month, the kids need to eat, the cooker just broke, the mortgage/rent is due, and you don't have money to solve all of those. So, make a sensible financial decision please, one that is not going to worsen your lot. A second hand cooker is only £50 Sorry kids, no more hot food? Just instant noodles for all for a week, so we can buy the old cooker? Sometimes the choice is between a poor decision, a bad decision and a really stupid one. The thing about poverty, especially long term poverty, is it completely takes away your ability to survive an emergency. That could be as simple as an appliance or transport failure. It's the crisis that generally fucks people up. The first three months, whilst the budgets remain credible and intact, is something any fool can cope with. Most parents I've known would put themselves into penury and risk malnutrition to keep half decent food in their kids' bellies daily. Oftentimes knowing full well, and with due consideration, that they are making their future a little (perhaps a lot) harder. And just in case you are thinking, but why have kids if so poor? Maybe there was a good job when the kids arrived. Before the recession, accident, or before dad died or whatever. Yeah, it's easy man.
bidetsprayerman 11y ago
Save money on Toilet Paper everyday forever with the Hand Held Bidet Sprayer. Washing with water is 10X cleaner than wiping with wads of paper and it's healthier too. Plus you'll never run out! See bathroomsprayers.com.
bidetsprayerman 11y ago
Save money on Toilet Paper everyday forever with the Hand Held Bidet Sprayer. Washing with water is 10X cleaner than wiping with wads of paper and it's healthier too. Plus you'll never run out! See bathroomsprayers.com.
e15ctr0n 11y ago
> spending patterns in developing countries, where cigarettes are sold in singles and shampoo can come in tiny, pricey sachets. I wouldn't call the sachets pricey. They are single-use and come at an extremely affordable price (mostly just one rupee = 2 cents). Sachets allow the poor to try out products that they could not afford before, or products that they don't use daily. Sachet sales created a whole new business paradigm.[0] They form the basis of C.K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's article Serving the World’s Poor, Profitably (HBR September 2002) [1] and C. K. Prahalad's book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Wharton School Publishing, 2004). [0] http://repository.umac.mo/bitstream/10692/1300/1/7444_0_Sy-Changco%20et%20al.%20APJML%202011.pdf http://repository.umac.mo/bitstream/10692/1300/1/7444_0_Sy-C... [1] https://hbr.org/2002/09/serving-the-worlds-poor-profitably https://hbr.org/2002/09/serving-the-worlds-poor-profitably [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_t...
re_todd 11y ago
I went to a little store in a poor neighbourhood a few weeks ago and was surprised to see a tiny container of Tide for 7.99, and there were no other sizes or brands of detergent.
stvswn 11y ago
This analysis ignores inventory costs. Those who can afford to buy in bulk accrue a cost to holding inventory in their dwelling. This can manifest in two ways: 1) the storage space physically necessary to hold the TP and 2) the capital tied up in owning this before you need it. To put it another way, maybe poorer people can afford to buy in bulk, but in their apartments they have no place to put a gigantic package of toilet paper. Or, maybe they choose not to tie up $25 in securing future TP when they need that liquidity to ensure they can make a car payment this month. In either way, they get something of value by not holding inventory in their house. That's why it costs more. It's not completely clear that they'd be better off if they could lock in low TP prices, even if they did have the cash on hand.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  The space issue seems to be a non-issue until you scale up to multiple bulk products. Unless you are talking about people living in either a shelter or the housing units that are basically a bed and everything else is communal.
  - redblacktree 11y ago
    It's nonsense even with multiple products. At scale, yes, inventory costs make a huge difference. Practically, for most Americans anyway, there is storage room in your place for bulk products. We have what I like to call a "general store" in our basement that takes up two shelves full of several bulk products. (perhaps 10-15 different products, some small, some not) We're talking about a space that might be 2.5 ft on a side, 1 ft deep. Hardly a ton of space that will require additional capital "tied up in owning this before you need it." In Tokyo? Sure. In the US? Not so much.
    - stvswn 11y ago
      There's not room in my two-bedroom house in Silicon Valley for bulk versions of normal staples. I do not have a basement or attic. I have two closets; one has my clothes in it, the other is full of my daughter's baby stuff. Toilet paper gets stored under the sink in the bathroom. Does it seem insane to you that I don't have space for bulk toilet paper buys? That I'd actually consider storage space during these types of purchases? Congrats on your basement, do you think apartment dwellers have basements?
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
My wife has taught me so much about living frugally. We both grew up relatively poor and I consider myself frugal, but she knows the power of coupons and sales. She combines coupons with sales to get very good prices, and budgets strictly for what we need. She'll also game the heck out of store policies ("you are out of stock on item Y so I'm wondering if I can buy item X for the same price"). Also buy a bidet. They cost less than $40, are better for the environment, and will save on your TP costs!
- ars 11y ago
  Seconded about a bidet. They sell kinds that install under the toilet seat of any toilet (i.e. you don't need a special toilet). You need just a bit of paper after to dry yourself and that's it. No wiping.
  - chanux 11y ago
    I just looked up portable bidet. Yes it's a thing. The first product came up has this in it's Amazon page. Wiping is barbaric! Your bottom begs for salvation LOL
    - matt_wulfeck 11y ago
      > Wiping is barbaric! Your bottom begs for salvation It's funny but I really do fee this way when I use regular toilet paper. You're just smearing poop all around! It's sick!
      - droidist2 11y ago
        So true! http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAeV-8Ay5Go http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAeV-8Ay5Go
        randomgyatwork 11y ago
        I bought one of those in Japan, unfortunately it doesn't fit my current toilet.
NiftyFifty 11y ago
My OE is a bitch to buy, when I my bitch on the rag man.
unclebucknasty 11y ago
Seriously, how much more of this analysis do we really need? The poor have it bad. Now, what are we going to do about it?
ryanmarsh 11y ago
One day I needed to pick up a few things on the way to a party. Was passing through a bad part of town and figured I'd stop at the only grocery store. Surely they have the basics, beer, snacks, etc... To make a long story short, I left without buying anything because the prices were more than I was willing to pay. I ended up wandering around the store comparing the prices to what I pay in my neighborhood. Almost everything was more expensive. I have no idea how the lower class folks in that neighborhood eat.
- ryanmarsh 11y ago
  For the record, it was a Fiesta (that's the name of the grocery chain) in Houston.
- Retric 11y ago
  What people miss is those prices are high in large part due to theft and low volume. A Safeway really can't operate in such places without jacking up prices. And the same is true of most other retail, poor customers are both low volume and expencive.
- protomyth 11y ago
  That is why you don't see poor people protesting a Walmart, but you hear claims from local businesses. Heck, Walmart pays better wages than the local grocery store did.
bane 11y ago
There's some really insightful comments here that I don't want to take anything away from. I think one important observation is that it's very hard to distinguish poor because they can't from poor because they make bad choices and don't have the tools to make better ones. Some comments here point out that while toilet paper at Costco might be cheaper than at the corner store, lack of transport options means the corner store is the only option. Other comments point out that somebody who is poor might spend what little money they have on bad and/or frivolous choices with that money. Having been pretty darn poor a couple times in my life, I can say that both are true. I've personally been in situations where the only available options were several times more expensive than the cheapest possible one. I've also (and have known many other poor folks) made fabulously stupid decisions on what to spend our limited money on. An anecdote, I had a poor friend who was constantly struggling to make his rent and car payments and was in a state of near constant financial emergency. He knew, down to the penny, how much money was in his bank account on a daily basis, when pay day was and all his bill paying days. "Don't cash that check until next Thursday" was a normal phrase from him. And yet when a local fair would come around, he'd take a day off work, gather his family in their beat up used car, buy expensive custom made costumes for everyone and spend the day walking around and spending yet more money. At one point when he ended up on the wrong side of collection for non-payment of a medical bill I showed him with pretty basic arithmetic that his 2 WoW accounts would cover that bill easily if he cancelled his WoW service -- but there were all kinds of emotional reasons why he couldn't and he didn't and he ended up in very serious financial trouble. But he also packed his lunch every day, would skip meals, knew the prices of all the local gas stations so he could save on fuel, and wore clothes that were literally falling apart. Then spend $50 one Friday night at a movie premier, or spending $500 on a tattoo or whatever. It turns out humans are complicated, and poverty/being poor is complicated. There are probably a pretty large number of people who are currently very poor who would be in a far better situation with decent financial management -- but have never had the luxury of learning how to do that. And who would probably be better off with training on how to make better life choices. For example, when I was putting myself through college, I remember coming to the realization that I shouldn't buy any more entertainment of any sort because a) I didn't have enough time for it anyway b) It turns out there's plenty of free and legal ways of killing time Now I'm not poor (thankfully) and have carried this forward with me. I almost never go to movies or concerts, I don't buy lots of bullshit or useless electronics. I'm selective in clothes and other necessities. I don't pay for cable TV or a land-line phone (neither of which I'd use) And when I feel like blowing off some steam I simply fire up Hulu or a freeware game or youtube or I paint, read a book or watch a DVD from the library etc. I turned not spending money on stupid stuff into a habit, but it was definitely something I had to come to a personal realization about and consciously train myself for. I still get that sweaty palm feeling when I see a Steam sale or a Humble Bundle. But paradoxically, I have the disposable income to buy that stuff because I trained myself not to have disposable income. This is very hard to get across to many poor-but-could-be-ok folks because they have strong emotional and irrational reasons for what they do and it's those reasons that are very hard to break. I'm almost convinced that there's a kind of poverty in otherwise high functioning people that could be "fixed" with a certain mental health and training regime, without any other changes to their financial status.
Sven7 11y ago
Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, the real question is how many poor people do we need to produce one Zuckerberg. If we want more Zuckerbergs we need more poor people, just as if we want more whales in the ocean we need more ocean. Pretty sure Trump can work out a nice formula to export the poor into the developing world, in return for an expansion of H1B visas or something. Given the clamor I still see in China and India for people coming in, shouldn't be too hard to work out. Also they don't use toilet paper there. And yes I am that cynical of the crowd around here and the effect the tech industry has had on increasing poverty.
- mistermann 11y ago
  This comment is absolutely baffling to me - I can't even disagree because I don't understand what you are saying.
  - d0mine 11y ago
    There was a recent discussion about startups and an increase in income inequality. It seems some people think that there is no such thing as too much income inequality.
  - reqctomaniac 11y ago
    I believe the op is referring to the debate about wealth creation and distribution, where one could have a view that people in IT-startups like Zuckerberg are not creating wealth, just distributing it. And to distribute, you need to have someone to distribute FROM and someone to distribute TO. Now the comment should be more legible, I believe.
    - mistermann 11y ago
      Ok, and yes that makes sense. The wealth creators don't have to be low paid drones though.
- eru 11y ago
  > Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, [...] How does that work?
aaron695 11y ago
The true reality is, most poor people don't have the mental capacity to spend money appropriately. While we live in the fantasy land that they are quite smart, but happen to be poor we really can't move ahead and improve the situation, the two issues are linked. Someone well off might also may not have the mental capacity, but it will affect them less, I get that but that's an aside until the far future when everyone is well off. IE Using disposable diapers rather than reusable ones? It is kinda scary the article has this as a given. I get as a single parent time is hard to find, but it also means less shopping. True you have to have a washing machine, but surely responsible use of a credit card allows would make this cheaper and easier then going to a laundromat. Responsible use of a credit card is hard and this is more the issue, not a strict lack of money problem.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  You typically need to own your residence if you want to install a washing machine. If your residence was not designed for a washing machine, you may need significant changes to the plumbing to put one in. In one case, I owned my residence and still wasn't allowed to put in a washing machine; it was a condominium, and the common drain lines were insufficient for every unit to have a washing machine, so no unit was allowed to install one. There are some non-permanent washers available, but the reviews on them appear to be very mixed, so I never took the risk to buy one, and that's as someone with significant disposable income.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
BurningFrog 11y ago
This article presents one theory of why the poor pay more. Alternate theories are that (some) poor people have weak impulse control, are bad at delayed gratification, and/or have low intelligence. In reality the causes are very likely a mix of all these factors, but the article makes no attempt to even consider other explanations.
fiatmoney 11y ago
The poor buy toilet paper? When I was a dirt poor student, it was assumed that one would simply take two or three or etc doses extra, whenever one was in a public bathroom.
Overtonwindow 11y ago
I feel like this article focused exclusively on the African-American community. I would really love to see the same type of article for Hispanic, Asian, and white communities. I would love to just see the cultural differences.

125 points by e15ctr0n 11y ago

ars 11y ago

This reminds me of getting ahead of a leveling curve in a game. If you can do that, you can level in better areas (relative to your present level), giving you better rewards (relative to your present level) which then helps you get to even better areas. The only way to get ahead of the leveling curve is to work really hard at first, and it's painful (or boring), and then reap the rewards after. Or in the context of this story live extremely poorly (in the "badly" sense of the word, not the economic one), forgoing every single possible thing not absolutely necessary, and then reap the rewards later. It's hard to forgo every single luxury, or even to forgo simple inexpensive entertainments. But it's worth it later.

saalweachter 11y ago
My god, you've solved poverty!
- ars 11y ago
  Much (most? all?) poverty is caused by human behavior, not adverse circumstance. Just because we know it's caused by human behavior doesn't mean we can fix it.
  - tomlock 11y ago
    Citation please.
    - parenthephobia 11y ago
      To be fair, I think most people probably agree about this. Where the disagreement occurs is the question of whose behaviour is chiefly responsible: people in poverty, or people very much not in poverty.
      - tomlock 11y ago
        To be fair, I don't think most people agree on this.
        parenthephobia 11y ago
        Really? Most people don't think that "much poverty" is caused by human behaviour? I'll grant that some temporary localized poverty may exist due to circumstances beyond human control, but I'm absolutely certain that most poverty exists because humans collectively permit it, not because we are - as a whole - powerless to prevent it.
        tomlock 11y ago
        Pure environmental factors for poverty won't necessarily be temporary, since land might just be infertile for thousands of years. I think that poverty is within human control in the same way that cancer is. Cancer has always been around, and nobody has ever been able to solve it. While most can agree that we have more control over cancer now, sometimes we take a backwards step and introduce something that encourages it. I'd argue that cancer, like poverty, is a circumstance we find ourselves in. Something that has been there forever, and which we are trying to get under control. And like cancer, the circumstances of poverty inordinately impact people from different backgrounds, even though with a little help from the experts, it could be better. But I'd argue that we don't actively permit cancer to exist like we don't actively permit poverty.
  - cmdrfred 11y ago
    If blaming the little African kid with the distended belly helps you sleep at right... well.. you're an asshole.
parenthephobia 11y ago
It's easy to imagine that being poor just means you have to forgo luxury. If you have $100/month after rent, saving up doesn't mean forgoing luxury, it means forgoing food. If you provide for a family, it means forgoing food for your children. And then what are you saving for? Not to rent a car or buy one with a loan, because you can't afford the payments. So you save up until you have enough to buy a car outright. Maybe the cost of fuel won't outweigh the savings you can now make in getting to cheaper out-of-town stores[1]. And how long does that take? A $1k second-hand car will require 10 months without food, and something that cheap is probably expensive to run. Maybe you're saving to move house. Of course you could move somewhere out-of-town. Now you have cheap shopping. But can you find work there? Or, if you keep your old job, how are you getting there? And, again, how long do you survive on air before you've saved enough to move house? [1] Cheaper because out-of-town stores have to compete for middle-class shoppers who can afford to travel further to shop.

dangerlibrary 11y ago

Terry Pratchett said it very well: “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. 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 the 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. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

jimktrains2 11y ago
I was just about to post this because it said there was no comments and when I opened it you had just beaten me to it! I would like to note that it was from the book "Men at Arms". The older I get the more I see this. Paying upfront to get a lower rate on your mortgage. Having money to begin with to manage well to get a good rate on a mortgage to start with. Having the flexibility in general to try something that may lead to less money overall if it pans out, but is a waste if it doesn't.
- Naritai 11y ago
  To continue your point: Having the credit score to get a good mortgage. Living in a good zip code, and so your car/home insurance is cheaper. Living in a good zip code, so you can send your kids to public school. Living in a good zip code, so you don't need an expensive security system. Working for a company that provides high-quality health care plans with low deductibles. Owning a newish car, that is much less likely to break down.
  - tostitos1979 11y ago
    I generally agree with what has been said. Except for the car part. I thought it was best to drive a car to the ground. I buy reasonably priced sedans for around 20K (but brand new). Full coverage car warranties seem to end after 3 years. I sold my last car at that point (it had started to give me headaches). I got about half the money back .. so 10K loss or 3333 per year. Our current car is also at 3 years and starting to act up. I'm deciding whether to buy a new one (and take a 10K loss) or keep going for 2 years. Or is my mistake not buying the 50K BMW or 100K Tesla? :-p

ars 11y ago

"One possible solution is that retailers could consider pushing their deals to the beginning of the month." I wonder is she realized what she was saying/implying by writing that. She's basically saying "the poor can't be trusted to save their money, so help them spend it well, before they waste it [later in the month]".

setra 11y ago
They basically can't. Time preference is linked in many many studies with all kinds of properties we deem good.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
parenthephobia 11y ago
No. She's saying that the poor can't save their money, because they don't have the luxury of not having to spend it to stay fed, clothed, and housed.
- ars 11y ago
  No, she did not say that. Otherwise why would the timing of the sale (start of month vs end) make any difference?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - auggierose 11y ago
    I didn't even read the article. But obviously, if there is an offer at the beginning of the month, you can buy cheaply and save. If it is at the end of the month, you already had to buy it at the beginning expensively, and you cannot save anything. That's really simple. I am wondering where your karma points come from.

Eric_WVGG 11y ago

Some destitute-college-student friends were telling me that they lived on a $20/week of rice + beans + canned tomatoes; I suggested that I take them out to Costco and for $100 stuff their pantries with ~3 months of supplies. They patiently explained to idiot me that the reason they ate so poorly was because finding $100 was effectively impossible.

gohrt 11y ago
You could lend them $100 at 20% APR, and they could pay you back with costco savings.
- newjersey 11y ago
  I was a college student within the last decade and I wouldn't trust college students with $5. I'd much rather give that money to someone who says he wants money for drugs. Or I'd give them money but I'd not have any expectation of getting it back. A loan that is not. Also if they're friends, loaning money to friends is one of the easiest way to lose friends. Unrelated, but I seriously doubt you could eat for three months for $100 at Costco unless you subsist on bulk oatmeal and other dry food.
  - MBCook 11y ago
    > Unrelated, but I seriously doubt you could eat for three months for $100 at Costco unless you subsist on bulk oatmeal and other dry food. That's supposedly what they're doing now. You could just buy the rice/beans in much larger bulk than normal grocery stores so the money lasts longer. 'Normal' meals with fresh veggies and some meat/etc? You're right.
bcheung 11y ago
Credit or loans would allow them to take advantage of that scenario... if they could get access to credit.
ars 11y ago
This is why immigrants with strong community support rapidly get out of poverty while the exact same people (ie. same skill, environment, ability) without a strong community don't. With community support you can pool your money, then split the goods and the savings. But you have to be able to implicitly trust your community. Do your friends have other friends in similar situations? Do they trust them enough to make pooled purchases? (Also, you start with pooled purchases simply to help your community. Eventually that transitions into making a bit extra, and before you know it you opened a store. If you are a good person, then you continue to quietly help people in your community with discounts or credit.)

bcheung 11y ago

The points in the article are all true but there's a case when the poor would pay less that isn't discussed. For something like toilet paper people who aren't poor probably don't even check the price. In that regard they would be paying more than someone who did comparisons to find the most economical option.

mikeash 11y ago
That's just a matter of habits and motivation. A well-off person who can't be bothered to price-compare toilet paper still could pay less if they wanted to, they just don't care to because they don't need to. The poor person stuck paying more doesn't have the option to pay less if they want to.

cubano 11y ago

The poor get financially hosed in so many different ways in the US that singling out toilet paper, of all things, seems almost laughable. How about real killers, like payday loans, bank fees, and paying more for milk, eggs, and everything else at the corner store because you don't have transportation to get to Costco? And if you want next level hosedom, how about the opportunity cost of having limited or no transportation? Many of the poor have felony criminal records, as I do, so how about the political cost of being denied the right to vote? The list goes on and on. [edit] The title does say "..and almost everything else" so I guess I missed that.

city41 11y ago
The article also explained why toilet paper was chosen. It's something people stock up on when they can, but having a stock pile doesn't change usage habits. It turns out to be a good product for investigating what the article is interested in.
stvswn 11y ago
Why are payday loans a real killer? Is it because you think short-term, high-interest loans to people with poor credit is bad for the people with poor credit, or are you OK with it in principle but think they should be more upfront about some of the shady things like hidden fees, deceptive tactics, etc.?
- tim333 11y ago
  Slightly off topic but from my experience in the UK the problem tends more to be 35% credit card interest. Payday loan people like Wonga generally won't lend to the seriously poor - they make their money from generally solvent people who've had something like a boiler pack up needing replacement.
  - MBCook 11y ago
    Bingo. I used to have a job he payday loan industry in the US. The truest poor would be terrible clients because they'll never pay you back. And since you only lent $300 you'd lose more than that trying to collect with a lawyer (ignoring the fact they can't pay in the first place). People who can manage their money up have a sudden need aren't good either. They'll take the loan, pay it back, and that's it. You made $60 and nothing else. The customers they want are on the edge. They have enough money to be able to 'rollover' the loan (extend another 2 weeks for a fee) but not actually pay it off. Over time the fees add up and they're paying you more, but you don't want them to totally default. At $60 + fees every two weeks it doesn't take long to make back the original $300 and then you're printing money. Yes these can be people right on the edge of total poverty. It can be people who have enough money but are irresponsible and use payday loans to fill gaps but aren't in serious trouble. Sometimes it's people who make a ton of money but are up to their eyeballs in debt and can't fill the credit cards up kore.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Every so often I read one of these articles. Thing is, this isn't new information. I've been reading about it since at least the 80's (and I'm quite certain it's been happening since forever). Sadly, nothing every gets done about it. The price of a half gallon of milk will never be half the price of a whole gallon.

stvswn 11y ago
Do you think it should be?
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  No, I don't. I think that would be trying to put a bandaid on a larger problem.

withdavidli 11y ago

This exact example was given in a Reddit post. It was sad thread since the question was to the poor of Reddit and what do they buy/how/why. One person was buying tampons for his wife out of a quarter machine. It's easy to not empathize with the poor when you can just ignore it, close yourself off in gated communities.

lotharbot 11y ago

What the quoted study showed was a lot of "did" and "didn't" behavior, but the article phrased it as "can't". There are some poor of whom it is literally true that they can't spend $24 on toilet paper. My local food bank gives out rolls of TP, and keeps nearly-empty rolls in the public bathrooms because rolls that are above half get stolen. Some of the clientele literally have every dollar for the month already spoken for, and $24 of TP is not in the budget. But for a lot of the poor, it's more accurate to say that spending $24 on toilet paper would interfere with other things they've chosen to spend on instead. It's not impossible to come up with $24, but they'd rather spend it in other ways when they do. Now, it's not my place to say that a poor family should or shouldn't use a small surplus to become more efficient and generate bigger surplus later, when they could spend it on something with a more immediate psychological benefit (like a nicer-than-their-average meal). This isn't a judgment, it's just an observation. But I think it's an important observation to make, because the hidden implication is that an extra $20 a month would allow for a new efficiency (like buying TP in bulk/on sale) which would then snowball. But the reality is that an extra $20 a month rarely has anything close to its full potential effect on efficiency, for psychological reasons. Attempts to ease the inefficiencies of poverty need to account for this.

developer2 11y ago
I grew up on welfare, in a single parent home. Parent chainsmoked 2 packs a day, which barely left enough money for decent food let alone toilet paper. And yet, somehow, we stocked up on toilet paper when it was on sale.
- lotharbot 11y ago
  I have three people I point to for how different the experience can be. One friend was living on disability (about $570/month) and food stamps (about $140/month), in a group home. His one "luxury" was he'd buy GI-Joe figurines every month, for about $20. At one point he asked me to take him to the store because he wasn't going to be able to walk the 10+ blocks that day. As he was shopping, I realized he had something like 30 pounds of meat in his cart and almost nothing else. I told him to put half of it back and add a bag of potatoes, and that whenever he wanted to cook meat, cook half as much as he normally would and replace the rest with potatoes. It was life-changing for him -- he was able to eat every day, and had enough money left over to start buying things like toilet paper in bulk. I've since lost track of him, and I'm sure he's still poor, but he's a more secure grade of poor than he had been. Another friend was a divorced mom, recently remarried to a disabled man. She's unable to handle a full-time job, but works a few days a week as a substitute teacher. Between disability, child support, and work she makes maybe $1500 a month. She's always bought in bulk, usually splitting orders with her parents and siblings who live in the same complex. The only real escape from poverty she has is to recover from psychological trauma to the point that she can work full time. Third is a young couple, both just turned 20, and their son is 3 years old. He's had adequate work for a while, but hides financial information from her, they both have expensive phones they use for things my old prepaid Moto X can do for a lot lower price, and they both have a tendency to eat fast food even though he works at a grocery store that has a good selection and good prices. The two things that have kept them from disaster for the past year: I let them live in my basement for a token amount of rent that I stopped collecting after a few months, and his grandparents have helped them pay off a couple of surprise expenses. She recently found work, and with two incomes they're able to afford their own place fairly comfortably, but for a while there it looked like they were going to get into a bad cycle like the one detailed in the article.

strathmeyer 11y ago

"You've read your limit of free articles for this month." So.... how to the poor read the Washington Post? I was talking to a recruiter today. He asked me if I could start a job immediately instead of the usual two week notice. I wondered how I was going to buy gasoline to get to work. Guess I better start saving up.

wprapido 11y ago

being destitute indeed is expensive and low income + high costs let you down the spiral

mikekchar 11y ago

I've never been able to articulate my own feeling about wealth and poverty. I've been objectively poor at some points in my life. I became vegetarian in my early 20s when I was travelling because I couldn't afford meat. Even then there were some weeks where I didn't eat for a few days because I had spent all my money for the week. It sounds bad, but being hungry taught me how to prioritise and I don't regret it. In other times of my life, I have quit my job and spent half a year writing free software, or training karate -- without any income. I also spent 5 years living in a run down shack spending less than $10K a year, when I was teaching English in Japan. By many measures, I was living in poverty because I had almost no income, or I was spending almost no money. But at no time in my life have I ever thought of myself as poor. I have always had money in the bank and I have never really been in debt. When I went hungry it was because I stupidly spent my food budget on beer (or something similar). I didn't have money for food, but I did have money. Money is an option to buy things and for me the feeling of being rich is the feeling of always having that option. You can be happy with less things, I think. Nobody actually needs a yacht to be happy, or a big house, or a collection of vintage wine. But I think it is really hard to be happy when you have no options. It is even harder to be happy when you spend your options in the future and have to suffer with crushing debt -- possibly enslaved forever. I could choose to be hungry. I could choose to give up my job and do something that paid no money. I could choose to move half way around the world and live in a shack teaching English. That's incredible wealth for me. That kind of wealth is available to many people, but I think that most people can't see it, unfortunately.

startDaemons 11y ago
Hello, I created an account to let you know how much I enjoyed your comment!
jethro_tell 11y ago
It would be fair to say that you have some technical skill not afforded to the truly poor. Most English teaching positions in Japan require a college education, which is the epitome of this study carried to an extreme. Anyone can learn to code or do Linux ops work, a skill that you have that keeps true poverty at bay. Most can go to school on grants if they are truly poor but there's a learning curve to being able to fill the paperwork out, a time and transportation cost to getting the paperwork done and to the right place. In these situations, you have chosen to live as poor, but the opportunity to not be poor is always there because you had an education, you had a skill, and those things gave you an opportunity to save up enough to work for free for a while. There are a lot of places in the world where people don't even know you could work on computers for a very high wage. And even when they do, they lack the know-how to find a geographically diverse community that can mentor them.

fleitz 11y ago

Oh fuck this shit, I was poor and I saved by buying rice in bulk and toilet paper in bulk, and everything as cheap as possible. Seriously, you have to be really fucked up to not be able to put away $25 for rice. If you're poor and not taking advantage of every savings you can I really don't know how one expects to become not poor. If you're so poor as to not be able to afford a large pack of toilet paper, sacrifice one of your dish rags, I assure you they can be washed for long enough for you to save the extra cash to afford a large pack of toilet paper. Want to know what my 'rich' neighbors who have a BMW in their drive way do on weekends? Collect cans from their neighbors trash. I can only assume at one point that they were exceedingly poor. Also, almost everyone I know who was/is poor also smokes. Poor people are mostly poor because they make really bad financial decisions, yes its fucking hard and it seriously takes its toll on you but eventually you get so tired of it you stop making the decisions that keep you poor. I have never eaten so well, or been so healthy as when I was poor. I walked everywhere, never ate out, spent time with friends, meat was like dessert, and you'd buy the cheapest cuts and marinate and cook them until they were delicious and dropping off the bone. The only thing I really had a problem with was saving $200 for a decent pair of shoes that would last. Instead I just bought cheap shoes from the thrift store, the nice thing about being poor is you generally don't have anything else to do, so you check veevies every other day. Again if I wanted to solve this problem I know full well I could have stopped smoking and in two months I'd have cash for shoes.

anexprogrammer 11y ago
Wow. Not everything is clear black and white you know. Your single experience does not cover everyone else's. Let's ignore any depression or anything else stemming from long term poverty that makes things worse, or at least less clear cut. > they make really bad financial decisions A lot of the time they KNOW they are making poor financial decisions. Imagine there is barely enough money coming in each month, the kids need to eat, the cooker just broke, the mortgage/rent is due, and you don't have money to solve all of those. So, make a sensible financial decision please, one that is not going to worsen your lot. A second hand cooker is only £50 Sorry kids, no more hot food? Just instant noodles for all for a week, so we can buy the old cooker? Sometimes the choice is between a poor decision, a bad decision and a really stupid one. The thing about poverty, especially long term poverty, is it completely takes away your ability to survive an emergency. That could be as simple as an appliance or transport failure. It's the crisis that generally fucks people up. The first three months, whilst the budgets remain credible and intact, is something any fool can cope with. Most parents I've known would put themselves into penury and risk malnutrition to keep half decent food in their kids' bellies daily. Oftentimes knowing full well, and with due consideration, that they are making their future a little (perhaps a lot) harder. And just in case you are thinking, but why have kids if so poor? Maybe there was a good job when the kids arrived. Before the recession, accident, or before dad died or whatever. Yeah, it's easy man.

bidetsprayerman 11y ago

Save money on Toilet Paper everyday forever with the Hand Held Bidet Sprayer. Washing with water is 10X cleaner than wiping with wads of paper and it's healthier too. Plus you'll never run out! See bathroomsprayers.com.

bidetsprayerman 11y ago

e15ctr0n 11y ago

> spending patterns in developing countries, where cigarettes are sold in singles and shampoo can come in tiny, pricey sachets. I wouldn't call the sachets pricey. They are single-use and come at an extremely affordable price (mostly just one rupee = 2 cents). Sachets allow the poor to try out products that they could not afford before, or products that they don't use daily. Sachet sales created a whole new business paradigm.[0] They form the basis of C.K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's article Serving the World’s Poor, Profitably (HBR September 2002) [1] and C. K. Prahalad's book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Wharton School Publishing, 2004). [0] http://repository.umac.mo/bitstream/10692/1300/1/7444_0_Sy-Changco%20et%20al.%20APJML%202011.pdf http://repository.umac.mo/bitstream/10692/1300/1/7444_0_Sy-C... [1] https://hbr.org/2002/09/serving-the-worlds-poor-profitably https://hbr.org/2002/09/serving-the-worlds-poor-profitably [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_t...

re_todd 11y ago

I went to a little store in a poor neighbourhood a few weeks ago and was surprised to see a tiny container of Tide for 7.99, and there were no other sizes or brands of detergent.

stvswn 11y ago

This analysis ignores inventory costs. Those who can afford to buy in bulk accrue a cost to holding inventory in their dwelling. This can manifest in two ways: 1) the storage space physically necessary to hold the TP and 2) the capital tied up in owning this before you need it. To put it another way, maybe poorer people can afford to buy in bulk, but in their apartments they have no place to put a gigantic package of toilet paper. Or, maybe they choose not to tie up $25 in securing future TP when they need that liquidity to ensure they can make a car payment this month. In either way, they get something of value by not holding inventory in their house. That's why it costs more. It's not completely clear that they'd be better off if they could lock in low TP prices, even if they did have the cash on hand.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
The space issue seems to be a non-issue until you scale up to multiple bulk products. Unless you are talking about people living in either a shelter or the housing units that are basically a bed and everything else is communal.
- redblacktree 11y ago
  It's nonsense even with multiple products. At scale, yes, inventory costs make a huge difference. Practically, for most Americans anyway, there is storage room in your place for bulk products. We have what I like to call a "general store" in our basement that takes up two shelves full of several bulk products. (perhaps 10-15 different products, some small, some not) We're talking about a space that might be 2.5 ft on a side, 1 ft deep. Hardly a ton of space that will require additional capital "tied up in owning this before you need it." In Tokyo? Sure. In the US? Not so much.
  - stvswn 11y ago
    There's not room in my two-bedroom house in Silicon Valley for bulk versions of normal staples. I do not have a basement or attic. I have two closets; one has my clothes in it, the other is full of my daughter's baby stuff. Toilet paper gets stored under the sink in the bathroom. Does it seem insane to you that I don't have space for bulk toilet paper buys? That I'd actually consider storage space during these types of purchases? Congrats on your basement, do you think apartment dwellers have basements?

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

My wife has taught me so much about living frugally. We both grew up relatively poor and I consider myself frugal, but she knows the power of coupons and sales. She combines coupons with sales to get very good prices, and budgets strictly for what we need. She'll also game the heck out of store policies ("you are out of stock on item Y so I'm wondering if I can buy item X for the same price"). Also buy a bidet. They cost less than $40, are better for the environment, and will save on your TP costs!

ars 11y ago
Seconded about a bidet. They sell kinds that install under the toilet seat of any toilet (i.e. you don't need a special toilet). You need just a bit of paper after to dry yourself and that's it. No wiping.
- chanux 11y ago
  I just looked up portable bidet. Yes it's a thing. The first product came up has this in it's Amazon page. Wiping is barbaric! Your bottom begs for salvation LOL
  - matt_wulfeck 11y ago
    > Wiping is barbaric! Your bottom begs for salvation It's funny but I really do fee this way when I use regular toilet paper. You're just smearing poop all around! It's sick!
    - droidist2 11y ago
      So true! http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAeV-8Ay5Go http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZAeV-8Ay5Go
      - randomgyatwork 11y ago
        I bought one of those in Japan, unfortunately it doesn't fit my current toilet.

NiftyFifty 11y ago

My OE is a bitch to buy, when I my bitch on the rag man.

unclebucknasty 11y ago

Seriously, how much more of this analysis do we really need? The poor have it bad. Now, what are we going to do about it?

ryanmarsh 11y ago

One day I needed to pick up a few things on the way to a party. Was passing through a bad part of town and figured I'd stop at the only grocery store. Surely they have the basics, beer, snacks, etc... To make a long story short, I left without buying anything because the prices were more than I was willing to pay. I ended up wandering around the store comparing the prices to what I pay in my neighborhood. Almost everything was more expensive. I have no idea how the lower class folks in that neighborhood eat.

ryanmarsh 11y ago
For the record, it was a Fiesta (that's the name of the grocery chain) in Houston.
Retric 11y ago
What people miss is those prices are high in large part due to theft and low volume. A Safeway really can't operate in such places without jacking up prices. And the same is true of most other retail, poor customers are both low volume and expencive.
protomyth 11y ago
That is why you don't see poor people protesting a Walmart, but you hear claims from local businesses. Heck, Walmart pays better wages than the local grocery store did.

bane 11y ago

There's some really insightful comments here that I don't want to take anything away from. I think one important observation is that it's very hard to distinguish poor because they can't from poor because they make bad choices and don't have the tools to make better ones. Some comments here point out that while toilet paper at Costco might be cheaper than at the corner store, lack of transport options means the corner store is the only option. Other comments point out that somebody who is poor might spend what little money they have on bad and/or frivolous choices with that money. Having been pretty darn poor a couple times in my life, I can say that both are true. I've personally been in situations where the only available options were several times more expensive than the cheapest possible one. I've also (and have known many other poor folks) made fabulously stupid decisions on what to spend our limited money on. An anecdote, I had a poor friend who was constantly struggling to make his rent and car payments and was in a state of near constant financial emergency. He knew, down to the penny, how much money was in his bank account on a daily basis, when pay day was and all his bill paying days. "Don't cash that check until next Thursday" was a normal phrase from him. And yet when a local fair would come around, he'd take a day off work, gather his family in their beat up used car, buy expensive custom made costumes for everyone and spend the day walking around and spending yet more money. At one point when he ended up on the wrong side of collection for non-payment of a medical bill I showed him with pretty basic arithmetic that his 2 WoW accounts would cover that bill easily if he cancelled his WoW service -- but there were all kinds of emotional reasons why he couldn't and he didn't and he ended up in very serious financial trouble. But he also packed his lunch every day, would skip meals, knew the prices of all the local gas stations so he could save on fuel, and wore clothes that were literally falling apart. Then spend $50 one Friday night at a movie premier, or spending $500 on a tattoo or whatever. It turns out humans are complicated, and poverty/being poor is complicated. There are probably a pretty large number of people who are currently very poor who would be in a far better situation with decent financial management -- but have never had the luxury of learning how to do that. And who would probably be better off with training on how to make better life choices. For example, when I was putting myself through college, I remember coming to the realization that I shouldn't buy any more entertainment of any sort because a) I didn't have enough time for it anyway b) It turns out there's plenty of free and legal ways of killing time Now I'm not poor (thankfully) and have carried this forward with me. I almost never go to movies or concerts, I don't buy lots of bullshit or useless electronics. I'm selective in clothes and other necessities. I don't pay for cable TV or a land-line phone (neither of which I'd use) And when I feel like blowing off some steam I simply fire up Hulu or a freeware game or youtube or I paint, read a book or watch a DVD from the library etc. I turned not spending money on stupid stuff into a habit, but it was definitely something I had to come to a personal realization about and consciously train myself for. I still get that sweaty palm feeling when I see a Steam sale or a Humble Bundle. But paradoxically, I have the disposable income to buy that stuff because I trained myself not to have disposable income. This is very hard to get across to many poor-but-could-be-ok folks because they have strong emotional and irrational reasons for what they do and it's those reasons that are very hard to break. I'm almost convinced that there's a kind of poverty in otherwise high functioning people that could be "fixed" with a certain mental health and training regime, without any other changes to their financial status.

Sven7 11y ago

Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, the real question is how many poor people do we need to produce one Zuckerberg. If we want more Zuckerbergs we need more poor people, just as if we want more whales in the ocean we need more ocean. Pretty sure Trump can work out a nice formula to export the poor into the developing world, in return for an expansion of H1B visas or something. Given the clamor I still see in China and India for people coming in, shouldn't be too hard to work out. Also they don't use toilet paper there. And yes I am that cynical of the crowd around here and the effect the tech industry has had on increasing poverty.

mistermann 11y ago
This comment is absolutely baffling to me - I can't even disagree because I don't understand what you are saying.
- d0mine 11y ago
  There was a recent discussion about startups and an increase in income inequality. It seems some people think that there is no such thing as too much income inequality.
- reqctomaniac 11y ago
  I believe the op is referring to the debate about wealth creation and distribution, where one could have a view that people in IT-startups like Zuckerberg are not creating wealth, just distributing it. And to distribute, you need to have someone to distribute FROM and someone to distribute TO. Now the comment should be more legible, I believe.
  - mistermann 11y ago
    Ok, and yes that makes sense. The wealth creators don't have to be low paid drones though.
eru 11y ago
> Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, [...] How does that work?

aaron695 11y ago

The true reality is, most poor people don't have the mental capacity to spend money appropriately. While we live in the fantasy land that they are quite smart, but happen to be poor we really can't move ahead and improve the situation, the two issues are linked. Someone well off might also may not have the mental capacity, but it will affect them less, I get that but that's an aside until the far future when everyone is well off. IE Using disposable diapers rather than reusable ones? It is kinda scary the article has this as a given. I get as a single parent time is hard to find, but it also means less shopping. True you have to have a washing machine, but surely responsible use of a credit card allows would make this cheaper and easier then going to a laundromat. Responsible use of a credit card is hard and this is more the issue, not a strict lack of money problem.

aidenn0 11y ago
You typically need to own your residence if you want to install a washing machine. If your residence was not designed for a washing machine, you may need significant changes to the plumbing to put one in. In one case, I owned my residence and still wasn't allowed to put in a washing machine; it was a condominium, and the common drain lines were insufficient for every unit to have a washing machine, so no unit was allowed to install one. There are some non-permanent washers available, but the reviews on them appear to be very mixed, so I never took the risk to buy one, and that's as someone with significant disposable income.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

BurningFrog 11y ago

This article presents one theory of why the poor pay more. Alternate theories are that (some) poor people have weak impulse control, are bad at delayed gratification, and/or have low intelligence. In reality the causes are very likely a mix of all these factors, but the article makes no attempt to even consider other explanations.

fiatmoney 11y ago

The poor buy toilet paper? When I was a dirt poor student, it was assumed that one would simply take two or three or etc doses extra, whenever one was in a public bathroom.

Overtonwindow 11y ago

I feel like this article focused exclusively on the African-American community. I would really love to see the same type of article for Hispanic, Asian, and white communities. I would love to just see the cultural differences.