6 ms·

> The total comes to just over $300/yr. That's... really not that much, is it? I'd imagine for minimum mage workers, that's obscene.

dleslie 9y ago
I agree, but this is HN; isn't it safe to assume a certain income among most commentators?
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  I know of at least two homeless HN commentors, and more than that who are unemployed.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I'm quite poor and was homeless until a few months ago. I am quite open about that and I get told bluntly to stop talking about myself here at times. I have seen evidence that suggests other poor people here are reluctant to stick their neck out as much as I do. So the number of poor people here is probably more than it seems.
  - dleslie 9y ago
    That's a shame; but perhaps I can understand why? The get-rich-quick, or how-I-got-rich stories that bubble up to the top nigh daily are intimidating as hell, as is the discussion similar to such that abounds around here. I'm not a fan, and I apologize for contributing to it. I'll try to be more thoughtful in the future.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Thank you. I suspect most poor people hide it in part because the stigma can impede their ability to escape poverty. Classism is alive and well. Ideally, I would like to see a culture where "rich" people help poor people figure out how to solve their problems. That's all I have ever asked and it doesn't really get taken seriously. I get a lot of flak about just being a charity case, not worth real money, and that I should get a real job instead of trying to figure out how to make money online. Meanwhile, almost everyone else on HN is trying to figure out how to make money online in some sense.
  - Trundle 9y ago
    Most people don't "stick their neck out" as much as you do. I'm a casual browser and I feel like I've seen you discussing your life situation enough to the point where I know your circumstances better than that of some people I consider friends.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - delhanty 9y ago
    It's good to have you here! HN benefits from the perspective that you bring. Plenty of other people must value your comments too, because you've accumulated a karma of over 5000 points in about 4 months - say 15,000 points a year, which is definitely a lot - cf HN leaders. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
    - mendelk 9y ago
      Just to add to this, DoreenMichele herself was on the leaderboard with her previous handle and would certainly still be there if she hadn't moved to her current one, so clearly folks here appreciate the perspective she brings to conversations!
- Mononokay 9y ago
  Four person home, annual shared income is ~20k in the rural Midwest. Not exactly rich, but semi-affordable given they have a house already. The line gets a bit blurry when you consider that there are a few high school-aged people on HN who can't legally get a full time job.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Not really. A couple of years back I was so poor I was sleeping on my brother's couch. Not to mention that there are people on HN who are from developing countries, where even relatively well paid jobs don't pay a lot by Western standards.
- pdkl95 9y ago
  I currently live on SSDI due to unfortunate medical problems that made driving impossible. Three doctors independently looked at a particular lab result and said, "How are you still alive?". (Previously I had a decent engineering salary writing embedded firmware) SSDI pays very close to the federal poverty level. Even with the benefit of receiving Medicare, the monthly cost of very-necessary medication plus very frugal living expenses usually leaves me with up to ~$(40 +/- 40) each month in "discretionary spending" that I can use to buy anything beyond rent/medication/food. (e.g. clothes, household cleaning/repair/etc, very rarely travel expenses) I'm lucky that my interest has always involved computers, which I can use for free for many different purposes. Well, as long as nothing happens to my old desktop (Core 2 Quad Q9650, nForce 790i, RAID-1 of ancient SATA disks). An extra $300/yr would would mean buying new boots and some new shirts. Paying that would mean dropping on of my medications (maybe fatal in the short term, defiantly fatal within a year or two), or skipping a few months of food. For the record, I'm fine living frugally. I simply suggest that it's important to avoid falling victim to a filter bubble or survivor bias[1], because there are a lot of people - even engineers in Silicon Valley - that have an even worse[2] situation that mine. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w [2] I'm fortunate to have the privilege of being male and white. My friends without those privileges have only recently been able to start leaning math/software/etc. They are hackers at heart, but a math/CS/engineering education and SV startup opportunities were not available to black women in the 80s/90s.
  - hycaria 9y ago
    Is it not possible to work without driving ?
    - pdkl95 9y ago
      That's not the only problem, unfortunately. The results that prompted that comment from 3 different doctors was the results from two sleep studies at different locations that indicated an AHI[1] of 152 an 148. Hypoxia and no stage 3/4/REM sleep for >10 years does bad things too your heart, endocrine system, memory (and other conative functions), etc. (Don't sit at desk ~100% of the time for multiple decades, and get minor problems checked out before they accumulate damage and become major problems) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea%E2%80%93hypopnea_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea%E2%80%93hypopnea_index ( >30 is usually "severe" apnea. 150 is "how did you survive the severe drops in blood O2 every night?!". The hospital delivered emergency O2 to my house within hours of reading the results of that sleep study)
brandmeyer 9y ago
50 USD/month for a bundled infotainment package (cable+internet) comes to 600 USD/yr. I think most urban Americans are going to spend at least that much.
- friedman23 9y ago
  well great you just added $300 to that which was previously $0
- projektir 9y ago
  I'm concerned about this wording. Internet is very important to pretty much everyone in the modern developed world. Cable is often bundled into internet whether you want it or not - when people can get rid of cable for a cheaper plan, they often do. "Infotainment" sounds like a disparaging term here, it's inappropriate. The internet is effectively a need, on the level of electricity, so it's closer to being an assumed cost. Nonetheless, some people probably can't afford it, and for those that do but struggle financially, adding more on top of it doesn't at all help. The idea that these people should be concerned about a diffuse danger of privacy violations compared to the very real danger of not being able to afford important things is completely preposterous. Stop passing the cost to the consumer. Companies that abuse privacy should be regulated. If you're expecting this task to be done by people of low socioeconomic status, whom your own system has deemed as people deserving of less power, you're looking at the whole thing completely backwards.

dleslie 9y ago

I agree, but this is HN; isn't it safe to assume a certain income among most commentators?

lazyasciiart 9y ago
I know of at least two homeless HN commentors, and more than that who are unemployed.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
I'm quite poor and was homeless until a few months ago. I am quite open about that and I get told bluntly to stop talking about myself here at times. I have seen evidence that suggests other poor people here are reluctant to stick their neck out as much as I do. So the number of poor people here is probably more than it seems.
- dleslie 9y ago
  That's a shame; but perhaps I can understand why? The get-rich-quick, or how-I-got-rich stories that bubble up to the top nigh daily are intimidating as hell, as is the discussion similar to such that abounds around here. I'm not a fan, and I apologize for contributing to it. I'll try to be more thoughtful in the future.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Thank you. I suspect most poor people hide it in part because the stigma can impede their ability to escape poverty. Classism is alive and well. Ideally, I would like to see a culture where "rich" people help poor people figure out how to solve their problems. That's all I have ever asked and it doesn't really get taken seriously. I get a lot of flak about just being a charity case, not worth real money, and that I should get a real job instead of trying to figure out how to make money online. Meanwhile, almost everyone else on HN is trying to figure out how to make money online in some sense.
- Trundle 9y ago
  Most people don't "stick their neck out" as much as you do. I'm a casual browser and I feel like I've seen you discussing your life situation enough to the point where I know your circumstances better than that of some people I consider friends.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- delhanty 9y ago
  It's good to have you here! HN benefits from the perspective that you bring. Plenty of other people must value your comments too, because you've accumulated a karma of over 5000 points in about 4 months - say 15,000 points a year, which is definitely a lot - cf HN leaders. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
  - mendelk 9y ago
    Just to add to this, DoreenMichele herself was on the leaderboard with her previous handle and would certainly still be there if she hadn't moved to her current one, so clearly folks here appreciate the perspective she brings to conversations!
Mononokay 9y ago
Four person home, annual shared income is ~20k in the rural Midwest. Not exactly rich, but semi-affordable given they have a house already. The line gets a bit blurry when you consider that there are a few high school-aged people on HN who can't legally get a full time job.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Not really. A couple of years back I was so poor I was sleeping on my brother's couch. Not to mention that there are people on HN who are from developing countries, where even relatively well paid jobs don't pay a lot by Western standards.
pdkl95 9y ago
I currently live on SSDI due to unfortunate medical problems that made driving impossible. Three doctors independently looked at a particular lab result and said, "How are you still alive?". (Previously I had a decent engineering salary writing embedded firmware) SSDI pays very close to the federal poverty level. Even with the benefit of receiving Medicare, the monthly cost of very-necessary medication plus very frugal living expenses usually leaves me with up to ~$(40 +/- 40) each month in "discretionary spending" that I can use to buy anything beyond rent/medication/food. (e.g. clothes, household cleaning/repair/etc, very rarely travel expenses) I'm lucky that my interest has always involved computers, which I can use for free for many different purposes. Well, as long as nothing happens to my old desktop (Core 2 Quad Q9650, nForce 790i, RAID-1 of ancient SATA disks). An extra $300/yr would would mean buying new boots and some new shirts. Paying that would mean dropping on of my medications (maybe fatal in the short term, defiantly fatal within a year or two), or skipping a few months of food. For the record, I'm fine living frugally. I simply suggest that it's important to avoid falling victim to a filter bubble or survivor bias[1], because there are a lot of people - even engineers in Silicon Valley - that have an even worse[2] situation that mine. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qd3erAPI9w [2] I'm fortunate to have the privilege of being male and white. My friends without those privileges have only recently been able to start leaning math/software/etc. They are hackers at heart, but a math/CS/engineering education and SV startup opportunities were not available to black women in the 80s/90s.
- hycaria 9y ago
  Is it not possible to work without driving ?
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    That's not the only problem, unfortunately. The results that prompted that comment from 3 different doctors was the results from two sleep studies at different locations that indicated an AHI[1] of 152 an 148. Hypoxia and no stage 3/4/REM sleep for >10 years does bad things too your heart, endocrine system, memory (and other conative functions), etc. (Don't sit at desk ~100% of the time for multiple decades, and get minor problems checked out before they accumulate damage and become major problems) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea%E2%80%93hypopnea_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea%E2%80%93hypopnea_index ( >30 is usually "severe" apnea. 150 is "how did you survive the severe drops in blood O2 every night?!". The hospital delivered emergency O2 to my house within hours of reading the results of that sleep study)

brandmeyer 9y ago

50 USD/month for a bundled infotainment package (cable+internet) comes to 600 USD/yr. I think most urban Americans are going to spend at least that much.

friedman23 9y ago
well great you just added $300 to that which was previously $0
projektir 9y ago
I'm concerned about this wording. Internet is very important to pretty much everyone in the modern developed world. Cable is often bundled into internet whether you want it or not - when people can get rid of cable for a cheaper plan, they often do. "Infotainment" sounds like a disparaging term here, it's inappropriate. The internet is effectively a need, on the level of electricity, so it's closer to being an assumed cost. Nonetheless, some people probably can't afford it, and for those that do but struggle financially, adding more on top of it doesn't at all help. The idea that these people should be concerned about a diffuse danger of privacy violations compared to the very real danger of not being able to afford important things is completely preposterous. Stop passing the cost to the consumer. Companies that abuse privacy should be regulated. If you're expecting this task to be done by people of low socioeconomic status, whom your own system has deemed as people deserving of less power, you're looking at the whole thing completely backwards.