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This is Real, That's Not

• Swizec 6y ago
  Fantastic read! Always remember that "money doesn't buy happiness" is the shibboleth for people who always had money. Bring that up next time someone says it. Fun reaction guaranteed. I like to follow it up with my favorite slavic saying: "Sure money won't make you happy, but crying in a Ferrari is much nicer than on the bus"
  • aplummer 6y ago
    I agree It's such a crazy statement. If going to the supermarket and buying whatever you want doesn't seem like a crazy luxury, you've got a 1% station only perspective.
    • vostok 6y ago
      I believe the threshold for the top 1% is around $10 million in net worth excluding primary residence. Being able to buy whatever you want at the super market is probably a top 25% of the US perspective if not more.
      • eigen 6y ago
        > The top 1% earned an average of $515,371 while the annual income for the average taxpayer was $41,740. > The minimum net worth of the top 1% was roughly $10.4 million, according to Forbes. The top 10%, on the other hand, has a net worth of about $1.2 million. [https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net-worth-of-the-1.aspx https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...]
        • nullc 6y ago
          The discrepancy between $10.4 million net worth and $515k income (which I assume includes gains) confused me for a moment, until I realized that the $10.4 million figure likely includes at least one large non-income-producing piece of real-estate.
          • vostok 6y ago
            Most of these estimates exclude primary residence or the primary residence isn't a huge portion anyway.
          • AmericanChopper 6y ago
            The top 1% net worth and the top 1% income are different things, and I’m pretty sure the linked source is only talking about the net worth group (though it’s not exactly clear). Net worth is not necessarily linked to your income in any given year, so I don’t think it’s especially surprising that the income for that group averages out to around 5% of their net worth.
            • nullc 6y ago
              > The top 1% net worth and the top 1% income are different things, Obviously. But if the figure is exclusive of their primary residence their return on investments isn't especially impressive-- e.g. it's sub index fund rates even assuming they have no other income than gains. :)
              • AmericanChopper 6y ago
                I would presume this is taxable income, which would be different from gross return on investment in any given year (depending on how you plan your taxable events). The other thing to consider is that index funds are essentially the best performing strategy over any significant period of time. For people who derive a significant portion of their income from investment returns, you’d expect some of them would have their income to trending closer towards the risk free rate than average market returns. Index fund returns would be the upper bound for a lot of people in this group.
                • nullc 6y ago
                  For example, I think it contradicts the narrative implied by many complaints about the rules around accredited investors and eligible contract participants and such that "the rich" benefit from important investment opportunities that are denied to less wealthy. It makes a case that joe-everyman can toss money into an index fund and out perform the wealthy. I wouldn't expect 'given' year effects to be relevant, as it's averaging over a large number of people. Taxable is a better argument, since as you reach the highest marginal tax rates there is a lot of reasons to find ways to indefinitely defer paying taxes (e.g. die with it and pass it with stepped up cost basis).
      • hansvm 6y ago
        Maybe. As a rough estimate I'd place it closer to the top 10% of the US. The 1% threshold is around $500k, whereas the 10% threshold is around $100k, which is pretty luxurious most places in the US (confounded by the fact that higher CoL areas have higher incomes). On the other end of the spectrum, 50-70% of US families were living paycheck to paycheck even before covid, so I'd be moderately surprised if the top 25% could afford whatever they wanted at the supermarket.
      • aplummer 6y ago
        I don’t mean in the US
  • offtop5 6y ago
    Easily the worst time of my life was during a 1 year eviction. I even dated a girl for a brief period who told me the ' you can always have a good attitude' thing. Years later when a met someone else struggling to find safe housing, I told them 'always stay positive, attitude' is bullshit. Allow yourself to be upset. Money buys security. Security means one less thing to worry about. I'm very grateful for the career I have now. Started with trying to copy Unity scripts from youtube videos and I'm a senior level dev now. Paying my rent early gives me an endorphin rush
    • jschwartzi 6y ago
      The “good attitude” line is a form of toxic positivity, actually. Getting evicted sucks and it’s perfectly rational to be upset about it. What matters is how you move on from it, and you did and it sounds like your life is much better now.
      • offtop5 6y ago
        If I recall correctly she started her speech with ' I've probably never been though what you have'. I make sure to never repeat this crap to other people. In hindsight the eviction did get me out of a very bad home life, still was a solid year of hell
  • libraryofbabel 6y ago
    Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is also a good teaching tool in these situations. Yes, money won’t buy you all the way up the hierarchy to self-actualization (which is probably what these folks vaguely mean by “happiness”). But it will surely get you up the lower levels and perhaps some way further than that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_need...
  • Aeolun 6y ago
    Not sure about that ferrari. Crying while someone else is driving you is much more comfortable.
  • cleansingfire 6y ago
    When I hear "Money doesn't buy happiness" my internal response is always "but poverty can ensure misery"
    • akeck 6y ago
      Another one: "Money doesn't buy happiness - but it solves 99% of the problems that make you unhappy." - GSElevator on Twitter
      • grangerg 6y ago
        Another one: "If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it." - Weird Al.
    • galaxyLogic 6y ago
      That is so true. And money does bring happiness for people who just got some of it when they previously had none. Rich people I believe are not very happy. But they would be very unhappy if they lost their money. Money is desperately needed by people who don't have it.
    • tomcam 6y ago
      Poverty does not in fact ensure misery. Victor Frankel wrote about surviving the most hideous depredations imaginable in World War II concentration camps. It was obvious from the first that a defeatist attitude killed you, and that determination to survive was essential. Knowing this helped me through many years of misery.
      • pjsnow 6y ago
        I recall a study that indicated the perceived disparity in wealth has a greater effect on how poverty is experienced than the absolute condition, therefore (the study argued) somebody living in poverty in a very wealthy society is likely to be more miserable than if they were living in a society where the majority were also in poverty. I'm not saying this applies to your example, I just thought it was an interesting factor to consider.
  • throwaway645674 6y ago
    Money doesn’t buy happiness, but lack of money is catastrophe. I think the focus should be on that. That’s the problem that we should and could actually fix with money. Going from no money to some money is everything. From some money to a lot of money does not help anyone. I always thought people who take issue with this saying never had a lot of money.
  • galfarragem 6y ago
    Today I learnt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth While I agree that "money doesn't buy happiness" is over simplistic. The opposite - "money buys happiness" - also is. An expat in Angola recently told me that what surprised him the most was how happy poor people were. People without nothing (material) not even the certainty of having a dinner everyday. A less simplistic (but still simplistic) take on this is: "Comparison is the thief of joy".
• eyelidlessness 6y ago
  This was a great deal better read and for my mind than I anticipated going in. It’s also worth noting since I’m commenting that I have the inverse class experience (I grew up literally eating garbage at times because we couldn’t afford food, I still present as trash even after years in the upper middle), but that inverse has always carried with it an understanding that what comfort I have might be gone in an instant. The author is partly right that reconciling what ought to be and what is... is a powerful part of navigating the way out. But part of that reconciliation for me is also recognizing that what is doesn’t reflect what should be. And that the people most at the whims of what is are not often equipped to do more than escape, “rescue” or not.
• omeysalvi 6y ago
  Great read. The movie quote really resonated with me. I am well to do now but have had the anxiety and fear of someday losing it all.
• frutiger 6y ago
  As I read the post, especially the references to Metafilter in combination with a lesson about homelessness, I thought to myself, “This sounds like DoreenMichele.” I press the back button and, see it is submitted by them. I press the forward button and scroll to the top and it was written by them. It’s a small world.
  • bittercynic 6y ago
    I had the same experience, and this isn't the first time. She has a singular style, and a unique ability to stand up to bullies.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • rsync 6y ago
    "As I read the post, especially the references to Metafilter in combination with a lesson about homelessness, I thought to myself, “This sounds like DoreenMichele.”" I have been impressed recently by the posts by DoreenMichele and have expressed appreciation for those posts here. I am a little confused by this description of metafilter, however - I am not an active member of that community but I have been reading it regularly for about 20 years. It is very politically correct and "woke" - almost distractingly, or annoyingly so - and I was disappointed to learn that it hasn't been a hospitable place for the DoreenMichele whose posts I see on HN ... I'm sorry to hear it.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • NothingIsReal 6y ago
      In matters of "being good vs. bad," those who seek to swing exceptionally one way, are most times fighting an inner war against accepting the other in themselves. Call it overcompensation; perhaps even a convenient indulgence, to wash away one's real face.
    • tomhoward 6y ago
• jakeva 6y ago
  What a great read. This resonates with me. At one point in my life I was desperately close to homelessness. At the time I was lucky to still be enrolled at a university and could therefore easily take out as many loans as I needed. It was a horribly risky gamble I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but without going into more details of my life story I barely managed to graduate and find a successful career. I was able to pay off all that debt (nearly 150k) in 4 years. I recognize soberly that my story is the exception and far from the rule. I had a lot of luck. But from that experience I can say nobody should have to experience this. Especially not in the most wealthy nation in the history of the world. - edit: I just want to add the experience nearly broke me, to the point friends and family barely recognized me and the looks I remember in their faces still haunt me. That transition after graduating and starting to make money to being a person who could interact with others who never got so close to total disaster was just as hard. Please be kind. You just don’t know what someone has been through.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • voodootrucker 6y ago
    > Especially not in the most wealthy nation in the history of the world. Everyone keeps repeating this, but it's not true. Switzerland beats America by mean net worth. And look at median... whoa 22. By government deficit (and likely household, corporate, etc), I bet we're #1 in all categories. The truth is, America is great at spending money. That doesn't make it wealthy, quite the opposite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_financial_assets_per_capita#List_of_countries_by_mean_net_financial_assets_per_capita_by_Allianz_A.G._(2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_financial... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... re: be kind. Sorry, I don't mean to be mean or pick on you personally. That experience must have been terrible. Normally I'd let the data speak for itself, but I will reveal my reason for posting it is because I don't think we give a fair shake to people like yourself.
• derekbreden 6y ago
  I imagine it’s easier to go from middle/upper class to homeless and then bounce back, than it is to bounce back to a place you’ve never been. For my own homeless experiences (~5 years), I was able to jump back because of work history and experience that would not have existed if my life had started out otherwise. More cross-the-tracks experiences would undoubtedly make the world a more tolerant, understanding, and uplifting place to live. Though I can’t say I’d wish my personal trauma on any specific person. I’m thankful for the perspective gained, but it would be easier to prescribe if there were less long-term-costly means of gaining it.
  • will_pseudonym 6y ago
    For those who haven't experienced homelessness personally, doing volunteer (or paid) work for homeless shelters/outreach centers etc, or in mental health treatment centers, is one of the best ways to gain a fairly deep perspective, and get close to feeling what that perspective feels like, without actually walking a mile in those painful, broken shoes. My homeless experience was incredibly brief (4-5 months) compared to the struggles of so many people I met during that time, but it had profound, permanent effects on my level of empathy I feel towards people still going through it. If you are struggling in your own life, dealing with depression or anxiety despite your white collar and comfortable financial situation, it can be a humbling and powerful experience to meet people who have no money, no friends, no family, and no support, not even from their own minds. Helping serve food at a shelter or something in that ballpark can be incredible for learning more about yourself as well as those folks, and you both gain from that relationship.
    • lisper 6y ago
      If actually interacting with with homeless people takes you too far outside your comfort zone, I spent two years trying to get a homeless person off the street and made a movie about it: http://graceofgodmovie.com/ http://graceofgodmovie.com/ So you can just watch that.
      • DoreenMichele 6y ago
• jewel 6y ago
  Since it's not spelled out in the article, what is a better mental model for how the world works?
  • eyelidlessness 6y ago
    My internal version that felt at least consistent with the article is: if you have a mental model of how things are or should be, and the way things turn out doesn’t match it, adjust your expectations to account for what does happen. My own adjustment to that is: keep an eye on what can be if it’s demonstrated, and how it was accomplished, for predictive and proactive purposes.
  • DoreenMichele 6y ago
    The answer to that depends on what is wrong with the mental models of the individual in question. But I will suggest these two ideas as a rebuttal for some things I see as common errors in thinking: A college degree doesn't guarantee a real career with a good income and financial security. Being "good with money" can help a whole lot, but only if you first have some money. It fixes nothing if there is no money to work with or if the money you have is wholly inadequate.
    • EarthLaunch 6y ago
      > Being "good with money" [...] fixes nothing if there is no money to work with To expand upon that accurate point: Having little to no money can hone your money skills to a razor's edge, because staying on that edge is how you eat.
      • OkayPhysicist 6y ago
        Money skills for survival and money skills for wealth accruement are completely and utterly different skill sets. If you grow up with money and half decent parents, you learn the latter. Slowly, perhaps even imperceptively so: it probably starts young, opening a bank account, learning how to navigate the basics of the financial world. If you're middle class, you learn about investing and dealing with brokerage accounts. If you're rich, you learn how to deal with the people that handle that for you. On the other hand, if you grow up without money, you don't learn those things. If your household is living paycheck to paycheck, you probably experience the basics of banking, but your exposure to the world of capital is greatly limited. If your family's struggling to put food on the table, then there's a solid chance you don't even get that. 22% of households in the US are unbanked. There's a reason why check-cashing services exist. Beyond the simple knowledge gap, there's habits and thought-processes that get ingrained. It all culminates into a system that very effectively stifles class mobility.
• gfxgirl 6y ago
  > Growing up, I kind of thought "Most people are just nice." I had no means to figure out how much was natural charm, how much was me dressing well... > Being homeless taught me that, no, most people absolutely are not just nice. I know this will get downvoted but AFAIK most people see homeless people themselves as "not nice" as in "it's not nice to foist your problems on the rest of us", "it's not nice not to take responsibility for yourself", "it's not nice for your to stink up places", "it's not nice for you to foist your crazy on us", etc... In other words, most people are not nice to people they perceive as being not nice to others and so homeless are first perceived as the originator of being "not nice" and so get treated reciprocally. I'm all for helping people who are down and out and help give them a 2nd chance but, for lack of a better way to state this, the homeless person needs to take responsibility and go take advantage of whatever programs are offered vs putting their problems on everyone else. It's a very western thing to think society owes you just for existing.
  • guntars 6y ago
    You will most certainly get donwvoted for it. That said, for people who might think of homeless as "not nice", consider the fraction that are truly problematic and the ones that you might see around, but not really doing anything wrong. The latter group is a lot less memorable, but I'd wager much larger than the former.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • alisonkisk 6y ago
      Many people see thr presence of homeless person in public as a personal attack, as though that person has somewhere else to go.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • erikerikson 6y ago
    Perhaps a bit more that the homeless pose complex considerations. Are they someone who had bad luck or someone who actively destroyed everything around themselves? If you help them will you waste your energy and in the end hurt them or will it actual assist? Will they be angry with you or even attack because it would be so easy for you to help a lot but you don't? Self judgement over not immediately helping, self limitations in our faces (many of us are closer to homelessness than stability), guilt over not donating more, sadness over our judgments of the homeless, fear over becoming homeless, discomfort with smells or ideas of correlated behaviors, pity, incomplete information... the list of sincere challenges goes on and on. I've got a sister who I love but deeply deserved to be homeless after hurting and spreading ruin on everyone around herself for decades. Anything you did to help she would use to hurt herself and others more. Most down and out people are not her. For those who had a bad circumstance, a leg up has additive economic benefit and benefits us all. Most safety net services are about being ready to support those who are ready to do exactly what you suggest. Many of the rest are there to help them survive to getting to that place. Your final statement seems so zero sum. Our society exists because we find ways to make each other's efforts more productive and effective than they otherwise would be. We're all better off if being better off is scaled. There are defectors but also controls in place.
• jbaber 6y ago
  This is the first negative thing I've ever seen about metafilter.
• colanderman 6y ago
  > I eventually concluded that […] I scared the hell out of them. They didn't want to believe that someone "like them" could end up homeless. Do you think it could have also been some sort of perverse jealousy on their part? You were no longer playing their game – the only game they knew how to play – yet nonetheless there you were interacting with them as an equal.
  • bloaf 6y ago
    https://www.npr.org/2009/07/27/111091624/homeless-man-leaves-behind-surprise-4-million https://www.npr.org/2009/07/27/111091624/homeless-man-leaves... They are few, but some people do choose that lifestyle. I also wonder, when people bemoan the number of people with PhDs working as janitors, how many of them have simply decided to play a different game.
• RobRivera 6y ago
  I never understood why some peoplr could be so entitled and harsh to the people trying tl provide guidance and help. Its disgusting.
• nathanvanfleet 6y ago
  This guy really considers himself exceptional
  • jakeva 6y ago
    How do you figure?
    • fastball 6y ago
      Not GC, but I'll try to answer constructively. I don't know Doreen personally, but the thing that always strikes me about her writing is how much of it is spent calling other people names (exactly as the GC did to her) or talking about how other people mistreat her. In this article: "classist", "toxic", "asshole", "mommy issues", "bullying me", "warped", "unhealthy", "harassing me", "insulting me" are all used. And yet not once did Doreen apparently do anything wrong. She comes across as entirely blameless, which to me is a sign of a suspect narrative. It's like my friend that hasn't had much luck romantically who always blames such issues on the women he dates – failing to realize that the common denominator is not them, it's him.
      • HolidSRDCB 6y ago
        Pretty much. Reading these phrases made my skin crawl and really put me off the article. I did not even know beforehand that this was written by DoreenMichelle. Maybe it is out of personal experience dealing with people that warp reality to fit their narrative but I tend to become overly sceptical when I see this style. This comment also has a nice observation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25311796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25311796
  • dang 6y ago
    Can you please not post unsubstantive comments or personal attacks to HN? We're trying for something different here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. DoreenMichele is a woman btw.
    • deleted 6y ago
• PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Interesting writing and perspective, though something about it leaves me feeling a bit uneasy. I think it's the amount of mind reading that the author projects on everyone. The author writes as if she understands other people better than they understand themselves. Everyone gets taken down a notch with some mind reading from the author, such as the forum member who had "mommy issues" to the conclusion that the primary reason MetaFilter users disliked her was that she "scared the hell out of them" and the assumption that others read her as upper class because she wore a t-shirt and sweatpants. The mind reading extends all the way to the reader, with a veiled suggestion that the author's own mental models are superior to the reader's "broken" mental models: > I encourage you to see this as a heavy dose of reality concerning where your mental models are broken. The only cure for what ails you is to start getting over your delusions and start adjusting your mental models to come up with a more accurate understanding of reality. There are some interesting points in this writing, along with some thought-provoking perspectives on the nature of homelessness in America.
  • starpilot 6y ago
    MeFi's apparent niceness/decorum is what makes its negativity so cutting and icy. I have never seen flamewars, however infrequent, as bitter and contemptuous as I have seen there.
    • kome 6y ago
      yeah, MeFi is the Babylon of internet American liberalism, and by "American liberals" I mean people that think to be left wing and progressive, while in fact they are right-wing and classist, but with good education and decorum.
    • uniqueid 6y ago
      I have never seen flamewars, however infrequent, as bitter and contemptuous as I have seen there. Could you link us to an example?
• NothingIsReal 6y ago
  DoreenMichele, one of the few people I can call a true realist in this world. Barring the sexually-violent upbringing, our journeys have been very similar -- yet, the models ingrained into our psyches, different. I feel it's a matter of temperament, how we look at these things. Some are predisposed to be "glass half full" or "glass half empty," on an infinitesimally-parted scale. I believe the most influential of these is: "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong" vs. "I'm wrong, and everyone else is right." Or "I must learn how to make others see my way" vs. "I must become as others see me." It's difficult to par it down to an intuitive phrase, but it's essentially whether or not you give in to the "pressures" of the world, or continue to rebel against them. Whether or not you want to drink the Kool-Aid or sell your own. At the end of the day, everything around us -- all its meaning, and the way our neurophysiology has categorized it -- is an illusion; it's completely made up. You can believe whatever you wish to believe, so long as it's been registered before, in some way, shape, or form. The comments in this thread, and the prevailing zeitgeist that being homeless is some great tragedy is one prime example. I believe it's not. Suffering or the lack thereof, is pointless. At its core, it's simply a heuristic your genetics have supplied you with, to make better certain you will survive and reproduce. Like any other heuristic (hunger, thirst, perhaps even suffocation), it can be overriden with enough conviction; whether you should or should not, is another matter. I'm reminded of Pavlov's dogs. The more you resist against being broken, the harder it will be to bounce back when you do. So, in a Zen Buddhist sort of way, let go -- it's unimaginably freeing. For those of more stable temperaments, let the local fire department burn down your house for training, along with all of your belongings inside. I assure you, the results will be splendid; and all that baggage you've carried around -- material, and otherwise -- simply vanishes. Poof; gone! You have no past any more. There is nothing left to tie your sense of self down, and you're free to decide to be whatever you wish -- with the aforementioned caveat in mind. Surviving great suffering makes the less trivial in comparison; so too does facing the fear of death make all others disappear.
• deleted 6y ago
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• phaus 6y ago
  In a different thread someone recommended charging a small fee for new accounts to prevent abuse. Dang responded that its important for everyone to be able to participate. Between his response and this article I reflected quite a bit about the nine years I have spent on this site, the various weird and mostly wonderful interactions I've had with the community, and the way it has shaped my career and therefore my life. On this site I have received legitimately profound and sometimes life changing advice and insights from a wider variety of people than I have interacted with in any other format: schizophrenics, the homeless, people from a wide variety of cultures (wealthy and impoverished), and industry rock stars. There have been disagreements and occasionally arguments. Some of them have made me a little more aware of my own bubble and allowed me to recognize aspects of my world view that were ignorant or that at least failed to consider different points of view. Much of this was possible because its a place that values the participation of everyone. Articles like this excellent piece of writing shine a light on how important it is. Edit: I figured some shadow banned people would respond. I was actually talking about at least one person that ended up getting permanently banned that happened to be an influential person to me. Part of what makes this community great is that while we can have heated disagreements we largely do it more civilly than many other online communities. While its an accurate assessment that Hacker News has a liberal bias there are lots of conservatives here that freely share their opinions civilly. They might feel outnumbered and they might sometimes be unjustly downvoted by people that don't understand what a downvote button should be used for, but they are largely able to participate because they keep it civil. I'm pretty politically moderate myself. By no stretch of the imagination could I be considered a "SJW" or a person with a typical San Francisco political outlook (only mentioning these phrases because that was what was alleged to be the only type of person that can exist here). Out of curiosity I took a look at jrcii's account and they were indeed needlessly toxic on a large number of occasions before being banned and yet was still told if they email the admin and promise to be civil they can be reinstated. Instead of taking them up they decided be even less civil. A community can be open to everyone and still ban people that are not acting in good faith.
  • jrcii 6y ago
    “Values the participation of everyone” that’s why I’ve been shadowbanned for YEARS because I once said “oriental isn’t an offensive term” even though there’s an entire NYT article BY AN ASIAN PERSON making the same point. The participation of everyone who wholly embraces far-left San Francisco work politics. If not, you’re silenced. Fuck dang and this website.
• galaxyLogic 6y ago
  I was shocked to read this. Must be very hard to study if you are homeless https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/12/04/nyc-is-home-to-more-than-111000-homeless-students-new-data-shows/ https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/12/04/nyc-is-home-to...
• AirMax98 6y ago
  Great read, thanks for sharing. A couple years back I was admitted into a government rehab. At the time I was a fresh college grad, and I couldn’t help but feel that I was somehow smarter/better/more “upper class” than all of the other patients on the unit because of my upbringing. That is, even completely broke, strung out and institutionalized, I still felt as if I was somehow more “chosen” than anybody else. It took a lot of learning to realize that this attitude was a major part in what lead my drug addiction being unaddressed for so long that I wound up in such a gnarly place. That said, I am doing fine now, but I often think how the others I was with could possibly be doing.
• sulam 6y ago
  I don't think you're truly economically "upper class" if you have to worry about student loans. I was paying off loans into my 30's, but my children will never have to pay a dime for school unless they make an active decision to ignore the money my wife and I have set aside for that.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I don't think you're truly economically "upper class" if you have to worry about student loans. If you have to worry about student loans, you probably aren't even middle class (petit bourgeois) even if you are middle or substantially higher income; people with student loan concerns are, almost by definition, members of the proletarian intelligentsia—knowledge-workers, often relatively well paid compared to the rest of the working class, whose primary source of support is selling labor for wages. The petit bourgeois have a balance between labor and capital contributions to income (most classically applying primarily their own labor to their own capital, but a common modern variation is having nontrivial capital investments but also a significant contribution from selling labor for wages.) And the upper class, the haut bourgeois, derive gains primarily from capital to which other people’s labor is applied.
    • kaitai 6y ago
      Most people in the US do not think this way, though. Most people in the US feel that if they have 2-3 nice cars and a big house in the suburbs they are upper middle class. (2-3 not-nice cars then lower middle class.) American define class by possessions, often, and then see those possessions as providing security -- which is the false equivalence that your comment starts to get at.
    • michaelt 6y ago
      Under this definition, presumably a house flipper doing all their own decorating would be petit bourgeois (applying their own labor to their own capital), while a senior manager earning $500,000/year at Google would be proleteriat (selling their labor for wages)?
      • 6y ago
• Iv 6y ago
  > She tried to insist that my offer to point her in the direction of gig work was unhelpful as she had some minimum income requirements to pay her student loans etc. Someone who is homeless and has no possession is poor. Someone who has nothing and debts is poorer than that. Don't get into debts as an individual. Just don't. Debt can be a tool for businesses, countries, can be part of an investment plan, you take insurances against unforeseen circumstances, etc... But that whole "I'll get a loan to get a degree" is a tool for servitude. US really needs to get out of that.
  • twblalock 6y ago
    > But that whole "I'll get a loan to get a degree" is a tool for servitude. US really needs to get out of that. You might be surprised to learn that the average student loan balance on graduation in the US is about $30k. That is actually a bit less than the average price of a new car sold last year, which is about $37k. That is not a life-crushing amount of debt. It represents 4 years of college education for the price of a Toyota Camry. Why is it that we think that it's OK to spend that much money on a car, but unconscionable to pay that much for four years of college? Keep in mind that unlike car loans, college loans have public service loan forgiveness, can be postponed when one is unemployed, and have income-based repayment programs. If you don't pay for the Camry it's gonna get towed.
    • mapgrep 6y ago
      You have argued that the average student loan debt is not “life crushing”. This is a bit absurd. No one would argue that buying a brand new car for $30k fresh out of school is wise financially for the typical college graduate. Whether it crushes your life or not, it is very ill advised. You have also not addressed the half of debtors who owe more than the average. If the average is so high just think of the figures in the most indebted quarter which is necessarily one million persons per year approximately in the U.S. There is a reason student debt cannot be discharged through normal bankruptcy. It is for many a horrific and crushing burden.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• vecinu 6y ago
  I hope my comment doesn't sound tone-deaf or ignorant but this is something I have thought about for a while. As I was watching @lisper's movie "grace of god"[1] and heard the phrase "convince myself that it could never happen to me" (becoming homeless), I started thinking, is this a more American-centric problem? What I mean by that is, can the lack of a social safety net in the US cause a much higher rate of homelessness than in other countries? Or at least, it seems the experience of homelessness in the US is worse than in other countries. I wonder how much culture also plays a part in that. In Romania for example, the idea of becoming homeless in the same way as in the US seems so remote and unlikely that most people don't ever think about it and I'm sure you would have a hard time finding people who ever think they would get into that situation. Is the government just doing a great job at hiding these people or exporting them? Is the culture of having a close family saving people from ever hitting rock bottom? I have a lot of questions with few answers and I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on the culture/US-centric view on this type of homeless. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25312081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25312081
  • baby 6y ago
    I personally have never witnessed homelessness like the US anywhere else in the world. I’m not sure what’s the cause but lack of social safety net must be up there.
  • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    >can the lack of a social safety net in the US cause a much higher rate of homelessness than in other countries? I thought that was widely understood as a contributing factor, yes. other contributing factors: poor minimum wage laws, at will employment, lack of regulation around housing. health system problems I put in the social safety net category. These things mean that there is more of a chance that something goes wrong, and you need the social safety net, which isn't there.
    • vecinu 6y ago
      I recently read Anu Partanen's book "The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life" that discusses a number of these factors and how they're different in her native country of Finland. My thoughts on the matter, after living in the SF Bay Area for a decade, conclude that for the average person and those that have limited earning potential, Western European or Scandinavian countries can offer a better life to those people, on average. If you have a high earning potential, then the US is a great place to grow your wealth, pay for your children's expensive education and purchase all the consumerist-centric things your family desires, at a fairly low price.
• dnt404-1 6y ago
  What does homelessness mean in an US context? Is it a state where you cannot even afford rent and actually sleep on the streets? I have read quite a few posts in HN referring to homelessness. For someone from a much much poorer nation, posts/comments from here suggest it is so so easy to be homeless in US than ours which brings disbelief to me. And secondly, the author points she is "upper class"? How can upper class family or individual ever need to borrow loans and also not have assets? I only ask to gain some social context. For example, our social context, a middle class family wouldn't take education loans and would have assets, in general (even the many thousands of students who immigrate to US to study, the middle class student do not take loans to fund their education in US university - This is what always surprises me when I see posts/comments similar to this)
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > And secondly, the author points she is "upper class"? How can upper class family or individual ever need to borrow loans and also not have assets? Because student loans, at most points, have has extremely favorable rates at initiation (substantially below, e.g., long-run average S&P 500 returns), an upper or middle class family might well choose to take them to maximize net expected returns. If that family then experienced financial ruin for some reason, they might be left with the debt without any longer being upper/middle class (or, an individual who becomes cutoff from the family and it's assets might be in similar straits to what would happen has the family bien ruined.) It's also possible that the author has confused a relatively high income (or high value of non-productive assets) working or middle class existence with “upper class”; it's worth noting that the “upper class” understanding of the previous cicumstance was an epiphany reached through homelessness.
  • henrikschroder 6y ago
    > And secondly, the author points she is "upper class"? How can upper class family or individual ever need to borrow loans and also not have assets? In the US, economic class and social class are often used interchangeably, which is wrong. Social classes are cultures, and while ever-increasing amounts of money are needed to perform the rites and shibboleths of the classes, you can still be upper class while being dirt poor. It's a set of values, not a figure in your bank account. > For example, our social context, a middle class family wouldn't take education loans and would have assets, in general With the way tuition costs have snowballed in the US, I would imagine that even upper-middle class families are starting to struggle to put together college funds for their kids.
• known 6y ago
  "You don't have to be famous; You just have to make your Mother proud of you" --Unknown
• a4444f 6y ago
  The author has experienced switching perspectives, therefore concludes that what has remained unchanged is reality. But it is possible to switch realities (timelines) as well, though writing about that kind of experiences is kind of pointless, because the new "reality" may not include old writings, and if switching realities is possible, than humans beings are not what they are commonly considered to be. (and one may as well write something on the surface of a lake, and expect permanency). How many downvotes for this comment?
• ggm 6y ago
  Under the medically justified urgency of covid, Victoria took a significant number of homeless rough sleeping people (as they are called here in australia) into some kind of housing. Queensland did the same using surplus student purpose built dense housing. I'm not going to pretend this "solved the problems" but I am told a number of the less intractable cases got put into a better situation,simply having secure shelter helped get them off drug dependency, or back into medication for treatable problems, or away from self harm situations. Now covid is closing out, the "experiment" is partially unwinding again and this makes me very sad. People will be put back into considerably less suitable housing. People will return to a life led off the rails. Sure, some want something rough sleeping provides (I really suspect few do but let's not pretend everyone can handle housing up front) and some will continue to be drug affected and crazy will break out. But for nine months we reduced homelessness and structural health problems to single digit or less and it almost certainly saved money. That's the truly amazing thing: the net budget effect on federal and state funded interventions was probably better, and they STILL unwound the programmes. Collective failure of imagination. Homelessness exists because we let it.
  • DubiousPusher 6y ago
    We have it over and over and over again that housing first is the approach that works. Yet it is very hard for society to stomach the idea of giving someone a handout "no matter what they have done or will do". I don't know why but this seems to be the primary psychic barrier to doing this thing we know works and which can in some cases even be cheaper than services first aid.
    • turbinerneiter 6y ago
      You can't give free housing to the unfortunate and at the same time increase rent on the workers. Workers need to see homeless people every day so they can feel better off and scared to end up like them. Everything else is bad for real estate investors.
      • DubiousPusher 6y ago
• michaelchisari 6y ago
  > Growing up, I kind of thought "Most people are just nice." “Money is an iron. It smooths out all the creases.”
• gcc_programmer 6y ago
  I tried to read this article, I really did. I tried to read the comments and to be emphatic. I really tried. I just do not feel pitty or any empathy towards anyone in the comments, or the author. I think I am emphatic towards the people I love because I actually deeply love my partner of many years, and my parents. But somehow the idea of homelessness disgusts me: I do not feel any positive emotion towards people who have experienced it, or are experiencing it. Maybe it is my upbringing: I did not grow up in a developed Western country (although I live in one one) but a developing country, where everyone is struggling to some degree, so the homeless there to me always seemed like they are homeless due to their own bad choices. The ones that beg are truly repulsive and I have my own experience of why I will never give them money: when I was a little kid I saw a drug addict begging and I stopped to give him cash out of pity. When I took out my wallet he became aggressive and wanted not only to take what I gave him but all my money. I was very scared, it was dark and late, and people around pretended nothing was happening and would have let him do it if I didnt board a randomly arriving bus! This lesson taught me that no one will help you in bad situations, bad people want to hurt you, and people who stop you for money want to scam you and exploit your naive pity. I was also mugged, twice, arround the same time by teenage boys who threatened my life both times. So I really cannot understand how people can feel empathy towards the not-well-off, especially as I myself was poor as my parents were struggling at the time and yet they didnt steal or beg or do dodgy things while the drug addict and those teenagers did. So either I am a psychopath, or everyone here truly is a Western naive person who has no idea how the world works even if they were homeless (to me being homeless in a Western country is something my brain cannot understand given that most such countries in Europe have wellfare states). Can someone help me understand? I am not trying to start a flamewar, I just want to know how can my opinion be so vastly different? Am I missing something here?
  • tegiddrone 6y ago
    I appreciate your inquiry and articulation of your position. I agree that the homeless people you describe are in the direction of repulsive. I can give my answer to your question. > "so the homeless there to me always seemed like they are homeless due to their own bad choices." Contrary to your perspective, when I see a homeless person (or anyone) who is being unreasonable, hostile or indecent to me: I try to reflect that they did not have the resources and upbringing that allows them to be decent. I did not choose my upbringing therefore I did not choose my capacity to be a decent human being. It doesn't change them from being repulsive, but I begin to see how I could have been them if I didn't have the resources I had during my upbringing. Resources does not just imply financial capital, but also includes social capital (good relationships, family life), environmental capital (health, nutrition, safety.) So yes you can grow up "poor" (financially/materially) but become a decent human being. Your parents had good virtues instilled in them to not steal or do dodgy things.. I wonder who instilled those virtues in them? I'd like to thank them and make their practices ubiquitous. Some rhetorical questions I ponder about: Why am I a decent human being? Am I a decent human being? How much of my inherent decency is from underlying cultural fabric that I may be unaware of and take for granted? What I am doing do insure that I continue to be a decent human being? .. do I have "blinders" on as the actor in the video suggests. What am I taking for granted that could be taken away? For all I know I could have a future medical condition that breaks me psychologically, or fall to some financial scam that puts me into ruin and I could become an indecent person. How do we create a society that makes it very difficult to become an indecent person? How do we create a society that protects everyone? When I see an indecent homeless person: I see that society has failed them. Society might fail me too.
• dmje 6y ago
  Homelessness breaks my heart. If there's a more poignant indicator of how bad inequality has got, I don't know what it is. In London as in any big city you see homelessness existing next to massive, opulent, hugely flaunted wealth. It's an appalling indicator of how capitalism doesn't "trickle down" but sticks exactly where it is.
• codeulike 6y ago
  I haven't seen Metafilter get described as 'toxic' before. Although I guess toxic things can happen anywhere if moderation systems fail or don't engage in time.
  • scottlocklin 6y ago
    There's probably a relationship between worrying that much about utterly unimportant online beefs, apparently not worrying about living in your sweatpants in a park (in fact, humble-bragging about it), and, you know, living in your sweatpants in a park.
• sethammons 6y ago
  This was a good post. I particularly like: > I will suggest that repeating all the things you believe about how life is supposed to work will not magically make them true and thereby fix your problems. I recently realized I would frame some of my wants/desires as “I just want $x.” There is no natural order of fairness and by shifting my internal phrasing to “I want $x,” it helped shift my mental model to what concrete actions I need to take instead of a complaint. And back to the main content of the post. Yes, most people are living on an edge they can’t see that could upturn their whole apple cart of world views and expectations. Growing up poor and now being well off, I have an expectation in the back of my head that this is all temporary and can be lost at anytime. It affects how you approach many, many things.
  • fastball 6y ago
    If you're well off and living on a knife's edge, I don't think you're doing a very good job of managing your finances.
    • Tade0 6y ago
      It's not about finances. I also grew up relatively poor (we had food, but couldn't afford e.g. school books) and am currently pretty well off (saving more than half of my salary while enjoying a decent quality of life). Such an upbringing leaves a mark. The other day I was thinking how it's been going too well for too long and I probably have, I don't know, ball cancer which is going to bring my situation to a more familiar level of misery. I've lived my life having a plan B, C and often also D for every situation. When you're not used to the good stuff, you become suspicious to the good stuff once it comes along.
      • fastball 6y ago
        Ok, but I feeling that you're on a knife edge is not the same as actually being on a knife edge, which is what GC claimed.
    • sethammons 6y ago
      The existing reply captured it well. To add to that, this is not “an unexpected expense”sinking your finances. Imagine instead that you suddenly can’t do the job you do nor can you get equivalent pay. How long could a you float on say minimum wage? Maybe it gets worse and you have trouble getting any regular job. How long could you go with no pay? Many people would say, “can’t happen to me.” And that is what the article is about. That is the invisible knife edge. Get a divorce, get sick, and have student debts, and you could be just like the author and living in a tent and taking years to claw your way out of the situation. When that is a reality that you expect could happen, you think differently. And for most people, it could happen.
• tpoacher 6y ago
  Dear Doreen (hopefully you spot this), thank you for an amazing article -- and also congrats on your recent first pull request, no small feat! :) I have a question for you; I've been hoping for an opportunity to ask a person who could answer this genuinely (something that I could not guarantee by asking just anyone off the street). What is the best way for someone like me (a non-homeless person who wants to help), to actually help either a particular homeless person or the homeless community in general, in a way that makes an actual positive difference in their lives? I am completely disenfranchised with the various charities out there purporting to help homeless people; I think most are shameless money-grabbing schemes. E.g., one of the most popular charities in the UK rakes in a boatload of money due to their catchy name, but once you get to the gist of what they actually do, it's basically "advice over the phone", which could have been done much more effectively as a free subreddit frequented by actual homeless users. My suspicions that they are largely worthless were confirmed by my wife, who said she once called them (before we met) at a time of need, and they were full of generalities and not of much practical use with regard to the actual problem she was facing. I have now spotted a charity that sounds legit (shelterfromthestorm) and now happily donate to that ... but even then I'm not sure, and it feels odd to be helping out a London-specific charity when I'm not a Londoner and there's homeless people right outside my doorstep. On the other hand, while I generally try to help out people in the street, that too typically doesn't feel like the best thing I could be doing. I know that at a certain level it's none of my business what people do with the money I give them, and that everyone's got their own demons to fight, but realistically I'd like to have some control in knowing my money was put to good use and actually made a positive difference to someone, rather than what I fear is more likely to happen many times, which is reinforcing negative behaviours/circumstances, and learned helplessness in people who could be helped in more substantial ways. It also doesn't help that (understandably) there are a lot of scammers embedded in this community -- I've lost count of the number of times someone attempted to shake my hand first, and while still shaking would say they missed their London-Glasgow bus, and could I give them money for another ticket, or some equally frustrating story like that. The most disillusioned I've seen my wife was when she fell for a similar story and gave money for a very expensive ticket to a person -- I made her wait outside the train station for the next five minutes to prove this person would intentionally miss their train, and come out asking for ticket money again (I was right). I find myself that I volunteer to buy food for people a lot - especially when they're stationed next to supermarkets. Which is nice in terms of ensuring some of the above "guarantees", and the people who want food are generally very grateful for it ... but I have a feeling that food is probably not necessarily the most pressing problem for most homeless people. And now with this pandemic, I haven't been out of my house for a while, so this face-to-face interaction has also gone. Once in a while one entertains the romanticised thought of befriending a particular local homeless person they see often, or even offering a room, or a place to shower or shave, etc, but realistically this is feel-good fantasy land; as soon as you get even within an inch of a person, both their survival instincts and yours start ringing loud alarm bells, and you realise very quickly that it's not a good idea. So, (and sorry for the long rant), as someone who's lived all this from the other side, and knows what kind of help they could have used most at the time, and realistically what form this could take in order to work at a practical level ... what would you advise?
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I am grateful to have read this. As a result of some “extracurricular” activities that I have pursued all my life, and by dint of having grown up in Africa, I have seen (and continue to see, to this day) things that make me feel profoundly uncomfortable, and nervous about my personal security and comfort. I’m quite grateful for that. And I miss Roddy McDowell.
• chaostheory 6y ago
  The majority of the homeless do recover from homelessness within several months with a combination of help from both public and private programs. However, approximately 20% remain chronically homeless. The reason people fail to realize that they could be chronically homeless is because no one expects to suddenly suffer from either mental illness or drug addiction problems. Until we regain a national mental health program again, this will always be an issue
• devaler 6y ago
  I have to agree with the author’s experience with Metafilter.
• draw_down 6y ago
  Well, I’m not sure I agree with the emphasis on mental models. It’s 100% possible to understand exactly how the world works and be poor/homeless. In fact if you start out that way in life I’d wager your mental models are likely to be bang on, the world forces you to look at it. Certainly the other upper class person who became homeless had bad mental models (“I understand finance so it’s wrong that I’m homeless”), but that seems more like a psychological defense than anything. Being poor is traumatic, being homeless is traumatic; you’d expect defense mechanisms. The bit about MeFi is darkly funny, but I never spent much time there to say more than that. It certainly isn’t surprising that a bunch of liberal techie types think the world of themselves but actually treat those in need like shit.
• mistermann 6y ago
  Wow, what a great essay Doreen. I would very much like to read something similarly themed, except where you expand the scope from homelessness, up to the entirety of humanity. So many quotable parts, but this seems like the best one to me: > I encourage you to see this as a heavy dose of reality concerning where your mental models are broken. The only cure for what ails you is to start getting over your delusions and start adjusting your mental models to come up with a more accurate understanding of reality. This, taken more generally, seems like good advice for humanity itself. Our model(s) of reality, at the global, national/cultural, all the way down to the individual, are not just wrong, but hilariously wrong. And even more hilarious is that it seems impossible to get humans to acknowledge that reality ("the world", whatever) is a system, that can be modelled (and conceptualized) in extremely high dimensionality, and then examined skilfully. When presented with this perspective, the typical (unconscious, intuitive) response is typically something like accusations of "gaslighting", or "gish-galloping". How to manage a group of billions of people who seem absolutely determined to ensure that chaos and delusion continue to be the status quo?
• b0rsuk 6y ago
  I absolutely believe this person because I had periods of unemployment in my life. Many people around here treat you like shit if you don't have a job. And that was just a job.
• jamesmehaffey 6y ago
  I couldn’t help thinking about a lot of the kids I knew at University while reading that. Some of them were enrolled in classes, and some of them were only tangentially associated with the school. Many of them were poor or occasionally homeless or just had very low paying jobs, and substance abuse was not at all uncommon. But the thing is they were all very smart and creative and tough. I would much rather have spent my time with them then the mindless frat boys and the so-called honors students... I think those are the types of privileged people discussed in the post that simply cannot function outside of that bubble. I am not suggesting that anyone should want to be poor or unprivileged but rather that it is a possibility, and this sort of humble approach helps to give a better perspective when things are not going so well.
• igammarays 6y ago
  None of the top comments here address the most obvious reason for homelessness (for those without addiction/mental issues): the ridiculous of cost of housing in the West. I moved from Toronto, Canada to Kiev, Ukraine last year. There's far less homelessness here, despite the lack of social safety nets, and it's obvious and palpable (much safer streets - I feel completely safe walking around at night). Simple reason? If you speak the local language (Russian/Ukrainian), you can find a basic apartment for $200 / month, or a room-sharing agreement for much less. A university dorm room sharing with 3 people costs about $30/month. Yep, $30. It's not subsidized. Although salaries are much lower here too (average $500/month), rent is still so affordable that any basic wage labourer or taxi driver can afford to put a roof over their heads for themselves and a partner (even 1 kid). No wonder there's so little homelessness, and even my taxi driver is happily married with kids. There's something wrong with Western society when you need to work multiple minimum-wage jobs just to pay rent.