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I wouldn't be surprised if this could actually work. "Being poor is expensive" as it is said and it is a vicious cycle as well. Because not being able to pay t
by _Microft 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if this could actually work.
"Being poor is expensive" as it is said and it is a vicious cycle as well. Because not being able to pay the total upfront cost of - in the long run - cheaper solutions, they can be stuck paying smaller amounts but more in total over time. People with cashflow problems might not be able to pay in time, leading to dunning costs cutting into their budgets. Cashflow problems might make them pick single tickets for the bus while a monthly pass would be cheaper on the long run. Not being able to pay for maintenance of the car now? Pay for a more expensive repair later instead. Same goes for health issues.
Once they are able to avoid these costs for a while, they might save enough that they are no longer actually poor (albeit still at risk of becoming trapped in this cycle again when unexpected expenses appear).
- csunbird 6y agoMy parents actually taught me an important life lesson, by buying expensive and quality stuff instead of cheap ones to save money. When I asked them why we were buying only expensive stuff, they said: "We are not rich enough to buy cheap stuff."
- sosuke 6y agoThere is a lot to this. I have a unfortunately close relation to someone who would just continually buy new undershirts and other clothes instead of washing what they had already. Closet full of still tagged clothing. An adult, married with children. They made enough money to waste it.
- csunbird 6y agoDo they donate the clothes in the end or just throw them into the trash?
- sosuke 6y agoHonestly I have no idea, sorry. I would love to think they were donated but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be. All guessing.
- pnutjam 6y agonobody wants donated clothes anymore.
- csunbird 6y agoCan COVID survive a washing machine? It should be fine, as long as you wash them in my opinion.
- Viliam1234 6y agoIf you wash them and then leave them to dry for a few days, that should be safe. The virus dies when exposed to fresh air; how quickly, that depends on temperature (a few days in winter, a few hours in summer), but err on the side of safety and give it a week. The high temperature of the washing machine, the soap, and drying for a few days, all of them combined should kill the virus almost certainly. Also, you don't need to literally kill all virus particles. Reducing their number already reduces the probability of getting sick. A certain amount is needed to attack you successfully; a lonely virus particle is mostly harmless. Also, the virus cannot enter your body by being in the clothes your wear, only if you touch the clothes and then your mouth/nose/eyes. tl;dr - yes, if you wash the clothes and leave them dry for a few days, it is safe
- pnutjam 6y agoI'm not talking about cleanliness. I'm talking about the fact that most items fall apart and new items are so cheap that used items are getting less and less desirable. There's been articles on here about the way the used clothing industry has imploded over the last decade. There might still be some thrift shop usage, but the longer tail that allowed retailers to offload the majority of donations is disappearing.
- bcrosby95 6y agoThe trick is identifying expensive and quality stuff. Nowadays there's lots of stuff that is expensive and crap.
- csunbird 6y agoExactly. I can say that we were a low-middle class family, so whenever we wanted to buy something, we would just go and buy the best one that will last for a while, even if it meant that it is twice as expensive. Nowadays, it is really getting hard to find something that fits this criteria.
- antisthenes 6y agoIt's still possible, but it'll take you 6 hours of research, wading through garbage links on Google Search and instead of twice as expensive, it'll be 5x as expensive.
- vsareto 6y agoA big problem of this was positioning of customer reviews over things like Consumer Reports or other publications that have to maintain a long-running reputation (the random reviewer who gives 5 stars doesn't). Reviews became what people trusted, then those were manipulated or paid for, but nothing has filled the trustworthy vacuum because of that just yet. (Consumer Reports is still there of course, just not as popular of a source as reviews for some reason)
- MikeTheGreat 6y agoJust as a plug / FYI for Consumer Reports - it's worth checking your local public library to see if they've got a subscription to C.R. that you can use for free. Nowadays, with everything being online, you might even be able to use the Consumer Reports website for free, through your local public library.
- jedmeyers 6y ago> Consumer Reports that have to maintain a long-running reputation Tell me more about the "long-running" reputation of Consumer Reports. I will then tell you why Suzuki Samurai is no longer sold in the US.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoI find the cheapest thing and go up a few percentage points (5-10%) and buy that instead... you have to remember a corner or two were cut on the way to the cheapest thing. Buying the most expensive stuff is often not worth it.
- fuzxi 6y agoPretty similar to my strategy. I buy 4 star items because compared to 5 star items, they're typically 80+% of the quality at 50% of the price.
- restalis 6y ago"We are not rich enough to buy cheap stuff." - I'll promote this too, whenever I can, as long as I'll have expensive stuff to sell. As for friends and family, it's just "lean to quality" (not necessarily the expensive type).
- csunbird 6y agoI think that was the point my parents were trying to make, since, usually, cheap means bad quality stuff in my native language :)
- _Microft 6y agoGerman has the two words "günstig" and "billig". Both can mean inexpensive but "billig" also has the negative connotation of something being of bad quality.
- 737maxtw 6y agoI usually use this logic nowadays whenever someone asks me about buying a 300$ laptop, UNLESS the use case is, in fact, literally email, static html, and word processing (which I've only seen once). Spending that extra 150-200 can make a huge difference in longevity.
- pnutjam 6y agoI always tell people to buy a used business class (latitude, probook, etc). Electronics that last 2 or 3 years and are in a repairable form factor will last way longer then the cheap consumer stuff. You can get parts for them for close to a decade.
- Quarrelsome 6y agoIt will definitely help separate those that are eager and able to escape poverty from those that aren't. For example; It can be stated that fixing a homeless issue by giving people homes isn't addressing all of the root causes of homelessness. In slice of the homelessness concerning mental health issues, some people will have sold their homes and have nothing, others will be in a similar sort of position (perhaps even somehow kicked out of their own home) as others have just taken advantage of them.
- Mvhsz 6y agoI think everyone is eager to escape poverty. But to your point, poverty and homelessness are the visible symptoms of a whole web of problems. There are those who were temporarily nudged into poverty by misfortune, and those that are bound to it by addiction and mental illness and much more. All that to say, I think we as a society should offer the most compassionate programs that we can to anyone experiencing homelessness or poverty. I started supporting my local chapter of pathways to housing, which provides condition-free housing, stipend, and medical care to homeless people. That large upfront investment - giving people space to sort out their underlying issues - leads to 85% of participants having homes 5 years after entry. It's a cool program that I'm still learning a lot about.
- packetlost 6y agoI'd be very surprised if this would actually work. There are many contributing factors to poverty, not just a lack of resources.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- diob 6y agoThis is so true. I'm happy to have finally escaped the poverty trap, but I worry one day I'll lose it all over medical issues since I'm in the USA.
- kingbirdy 6y agoSir Terry sums this problem up quite nicely in Men at Arms: "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."
- 737maxtw 6y agoThis in spades. As a very real example, my family was not very well off growing up. My parents could typically only afford used Chrysler cars. The result was invariably getting stuck with vehicles that quite frankly were at least as expensive as the competition after repair costs and extra insurance. And, speaking as someone who thankfully doesn't have to worry nearly as much about such things thanks to the sacrifices my parents made... The DIFFERENCE in quality of life changes too. Its not just the cost of buying the cheap stuff every time, it is also that frustration of watching it break over and over. Also, dare I say. One of the biggest silent accelerators of our class divide (financially) is this dilemma. In the 40s-60s stuff was built to last. Lower income families could save and buy an expensive appliance but know it would last or at least be repairable. A fridge was a real investment. A set of silverware had the extra couple mm of thickness or even a square handle so it wouldn't bend at the first sign of trouble. Now? Its all disposable, so those who have money to keep up with planned obsolescence will pull ahead. Consumers save 5-10$ on a 100$ tool, but now it lasts 3-5 years instead of 30-50
- jxramos 6y agoThis makes me think about some of the reviews I read for a book that came up in an article I read back in the end of May https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/dp/B0006CUBPG#customerReviews https://www.amazon.com/Unheavenly-City-Nature-Future-Crisis/... Search them for future and time and you'll hit upon the main thesis quickly, eg: Banfield carefully defined class membership, not in terms of income status, such as government statistical poverty levels, but in terms of orientation toward the future, or time preference. I can't say I ever heard such an idea so clearly stated before. I still haven't dug into the argument too much to know one way or another or be able to offer much in way of a critique, but it's caught my eye and attention enough to make it a reading TODO.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoMost economists probably would be surprised if it could actually work in general. Cash handouts do not cause the behavioral changes necessary for individuals to develop sustainable habits. Most poor people are not poor because they don’t have access to the market, but because they either don’t know what to do, or they don’t have the discipline to do what they know they should. Cash handouts can make this even worse as people become complacent and dependent on them, and the impetus to work out a sustainable solution dissolves. The implementation of welfare programs in the US during the 60s has a strong negative correlation with progress in lower income (and often minority) communities. An ideal solution might involve temporary relief for catastrophic events that can help an otherwise mostly sustainable lifestyle, but avoid misaligning incentives in a way that makes the problem even worse.
- antisthenes 6y ago> Cash handouts do not cause the behavioral changes necessary for individuals to develop sustainable habits. That's because cash handouts given are usually not even close to being enough to develop sustainable habits. #1 help in developing a sustainable habit is receiving an education that allows an individual to pursue a better job. Education is very expensive in the US. It is doubly expensive if the adult in question has to take care of dependents. AFAIK, there's not a single program that would come close to let an adult improve their education, while also helping them take care of kids.
- stainforth 6y agoPossibly true, but I'd like to see this thinking applied to the welfare and misaligned incentives we grant big business FIRST before we apply it to the already disenfranchised.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoThere are no poor businesses that get free cash handouts on a recurring monthly basis.
- hnracer 6y agoThis is a very interesting perspective. I'd never considered this before but it makes total sense.