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IMO this is a good opportunity for them to learn how a scam works before they go out in the real world with real money and really get taken for a ride. Everyon
by matte_black 9y ago
IMO this is a good opportunity for them to learn how a scam works before they go out in the real world with real money and really get taken for a ride.
Everyone falls for a scam at some point in their life, better to learn early with minimal loss of money.
- ISL 9y ago$150 is real money.
- matte_black 9y agoIt represents what, two days of work at minimum wage? Sounds like a cheap price to pay for falling for a scam. You could lose a lot more in this world. A lot more.
- crapitalism9 9y agoDo... do you live in the US? Because federal minimum wage is $7.25, and 16 hours at that rate is $116... before taxes. And don’t forget that if you’re working for minimum wage, $150 is a LOT of money. If you make minimum wage, you make $15,080 annually gross. $150 is 1% is your annual salary. Hardly paltry. God, Silicon Valley is hilariously out of touch.
- rm_-rf_slash 9y agoActually, factoring in payroll taxes, it’s closer to 4 8-hour shifts on minimum wage. A more expensive price to pay for falling for a scam, but a very cheap lesson in the long run.
- throwawaydjc8 9y agoFederal minimum wage: $7.25 $7.25 * 16 hours = $116 gross Annually: $15,080 Percentage of annual salary ($150): 1% $150 is not “a cheap price to pay” if you are below the poverty line.
- tomc1985 9y agoThere are few things that appear more crass than this. Have you ever been poor?
- matte_black 9y agoWhen I was poor I couldn’t afford to go dumping 2 or 4 days worth of work into weird schemes. Once I did have more money though, I did get swindled, and for probably 10x as much. But I learned. Maybe the people taking part in these pyramids aren’t as poor as you think, but probably still poor by some standard.
- tomc1985 9y agoSadly there is not very much overlap between that kind of logic and poverty. Remember all the people that blew their FEMA debit cards on strippers and shoes? $150 was a huge amount of money when I was poor. It represented several-days to a week's worth of earnings. You've got to be doing alright for yourself for $150 to only be a day or two's worth of pay, after taxes and expenses.
- 1337biz 9y agoIn the bigger context of how much money people lose in more sophisticated schemes, $150 is really cheap for such an important life lesson to learn.
- mrguyorama 9y agoSounds to me like you've never experienced poverty
- 55555 9y agoDo a lot of people in poverty have $150 in venmo? They know it is zero sum and they are investing with the expectation of profit, yet the only way they can profit is if someone else loses, so how much empathy should we exercise here? An amount equal to the amount they exercised sounds fair to me. Had they lost money in a _deceptive_ ponzi I would have pity.
- dsl 9y agoYes, according to the FDIC 9% of US households have no relationship with a bank. An additional 19.9% are "underbanked" in that they have a checking or savings account, but rely heavily on non-banks for financial services (pay day loan lines of credit, paypal/venmo accounts, primary cash users, etc). This is _households_. The number of teen to twenties in these categories is probably much higher. I know kids who have all their money (hundreds of dollars) in venmo and transfer money to friends to get cash.
- mrguyorama 9y agoWhy do you assume everyone involved in a pyramid scheme understands the math and concepts of pyramid schemes?