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The most painfully 1990s thing in this whole essay is a man surviving on minimum wage, however modestly If you were to re-tell this story in 2020 it ends with

The most painfully 1990s thing in this whole essay is a man surviving on minimum wage, however modestly If you were to re-tell this story in 2020 it ends with the fellow living in the homeless encampment but still trying to stay clean and timely enough to make it to his data entry job -------- To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between declining wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and economic senses of the term) The "guy he almost was" is homeless in 2020, if he isn't dead. There's nothing to envy in that life.

spiderfarmer 6y ago
The American Dream has been replaced by perseverance porn: the only way to succeed is through hardship and the people who fail are losers.
- ishjoh 6y ago
  I'm a millennial, I have never been drafted to fight in any war, I did not spend my childhood or early teens working on a farm, I was educated by a public school system, I have enough disposable income to have a computer, iPhone, and internet connection through which I can learn anything, I live in a safe community, people of all colors and religious beliefs are willing to do business with me. In history there might be one maybe two generations that have had less hardship than mine, every other generation ever has had more hardship.
  - troupe 6y ago
    You sound like someone who is looking at your opportunity rather than trying to find reasons you can't succeed. :) It is easy to complain about how hard life is, but I really don't think most people would be willing to trade it for some other time in the past--no matter how bad they like to think things are today. It is surprisingly inexpensive to live like people lived in the 1950s when TV, air conditioning, and even indoor plumbing weren't things you'd assume you had to have.
- BrandonMarc 6y ago
  I'm wondering if success has ever not come through hardship. It certainly came through hardship in the past. Today seems little different. Note: 80% of millionaires are first-generation rich - they started off with little, and made their own fortune.
enriquec 6y ago
As someone that volunteers at homeless shelters across the country, I can tell you your description is nowhere near close to reality and it is very strange that people get off on pretending things are dramatically worse than they are. Do you even do anything to help?
- dkarl 6y ago
  I kinda can't blame him, because it's common for people to paint a picture of homelessness as something that can easily happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by middle class standards. I hate it, because it reminds me of how conditional empathy is. Empathy is a skill, and like any other skill, it's developed through practice, and we mostly practice on people just like us. So people advocating for support for the homeless have to make them sound like they'd fit right in with the people who have the money and power to help them.
  - bitwize 6y ago
    Homelessness is something that can easily happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by middle-class standards. Perhaps you weren't here when Doreen Traylor's article about being homeless for six years appeared? Nevertheless, thank you for showing your privilege. Judgement made.
    - dkarl 6y ago
      Doreen Traylor proves that a homeless person can write, have an online presence, and make a living as a freelancer. The fact that you think that's important is exactly my point, that you think homelessness is a different issue depending on whether or not homeless people are capable of living a certain kind of life we value. It shouldn't matter. It's sad that it does.
    - dang 6y ago
      Please omit personal swipes from your comments here. They just make things even worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
everdrive 6y ago
I'm not so sure. Could he have moved back in with his parents? Could he have gotten a second job (at McDonald's or something?) I'm not suggesting that these would be good, or easy options, only that homelessness was not a forgone conclusion. This comic is only one man's personal story, and it does not necessarily coincide with the general demographic and economic trends of the time. ie, it's not clear that his story speaks about the particular hardships of one age compared to the hardships of another.
keiferski 6y ago
It’s completely possible to live on a minimum wage job and not be a miser. The trick is to not live in a coastal megacity. Source: myself, after college, working at a bakery in a Midwestern city.
- api 6y ago
  Ahh, yes, but don't you know that if you don't live in San Francisco, LA, Seattle, or New York you can't do anything and nothing happens? You have to live in one of those four cities. /sarcasm
  - hapless 6y ago
    We are discussing a memoir of a man's life working in the Bay area and living just outside the same. This memoir was not about Topeka, Kansas. Not that struggling to make rent doesn't happen in Topeka. Not that Topeka isn't filled with people living vibrant lives. Just, this particular story occurred in the Bay area.
    - api 6y ago
      I know. I was speaking to the parent, and the 2000-2020 "you have to be in one of four cities" zeitgeist they are talking about.
- hapless 6y ago
  Yes, but, this particular guy was working in the suburbs of an expensive coastal city, while living in an exurb. That's obviously not universal. But it is certainly the story of THIS guy, as well as many tens of millions of other Americans.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    I’m certainly not arguing that rising inequality isn’t a bad thing, but your comment wasn’t about this guy, it was about Americans at large. Contrary to popular coastal belief, fly-over country actually has people, and culture, and life. The average American doesn’t live in NYC/LA/SF, they live in a small to medium size town. It is absolutely possible to live a frugal but reasonable lifestyle on a minimum wage job in most of the country.
spoonjim 6y ago
Most minimum wage workers are alive and not homeless. Sometimes they live 10 to a 2-bedroom, especially the illegal immigrants who often don’t even make minimum wage, but the world you describe is not the reality out there.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Minimum wages should apply to anyone, no matter their status no?
  - skulk 6y ago
    Yes; the problem is that for a worker being paid under the minimum wage to rectify this issue, they probably need to produce their work authorization documents at some point, and therefore risk deportation/worse.
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      Why not simply get work authorization documents then?
      - skulk 6y ago
        I'll assume you haven't lived in the US. It's not easy to get work authorization documents because there is a huge queue for legal immigration (for example, my friend's cousin just moved here from a country on the Indian subcontinent, after having waited more than 15 years for a visa), while people in Mexico/Central America/wherever need to improve their situation NOW; they simply cannot wait the decade or so it would take to obtain real documents, even if they had the money required to even start the process. Living and working in the US without authorization is a criminal offense, and if caught by someone who cares enough, illegal immigrants will be deported and permanently barred from obtaining legitimate work authorization. Of course, there's always the option of counterfeit...
mcguire 6y ago
State of Working America Wages 2019 (https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/)
will4274 6y ago
> To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between declining wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and economic senses of the term) Yeah... This isn't true. You can see the data here, among other places: https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-unite.... The average real hourly wage is higher today than any time since 68 (which was the peak) and is about a dollar higher than the 90s. Note that this is the real hourly wage, so it's already inflation adjusted.
- 93po 6y ago
  If this is true then why do I also see graphs showing that wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s? Is it possibly that this chart is using "average" rather than "median"? Housing is everyone's largest expensive and I feel like I've seen figures that show housing has a percentage of income is something like 2-3x higher than it was 50 years ago.
  - will4274 6y ago
    > wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s This was true until 2019. Wages dropped in the late 70s and in the 80s, then went up in the 90s, spent the 00s mostly flat, and rose a little in the 10s. It took 50 years (until 2019) for them to go back up to the 1968 high. So "we've made no progress since 1970" economic quotes are mostly true, but "we've made no progress since 199x" economic quotes are mostly false.
  - enriquec 6y ago
    post your charts, if you don't mind.
- blululu 6y ago
  Averages are not relevant for something as skewed as income distribution. As the Gino coefficient rises the average is increasingly dominated by a minority. The OP is most likely talking about wages for jobs that actually pay by the hour, which have gone down along with the minimum wage from its 1968 peak.
relscholar 6y ago
Ummmm I’m homeless. I love my life.

spiderfarmer 6y ago

The American Dream has been replaced by perseverance porn: the only way to succeed is through hardship and the people who fail are losers.

ishjoh 6y ago
I'm a millennial, I have never been drafted to fight in any war, I did not spend my childhood or early teens working on a farm, I was educated by a public school system, I have enough disposable income to have a computer, iPhone, and internet connection through which I can learn anything, I live in a safe community, people of all colors and religious beliefs are willing to do business with me. In history there might be one maybe two generations that have had less hardship than mine, every other generation ever has had more hardship.
- troupe 6y ago
  You sound like someone who is looking at your opportunity rather than trying to find reasons you can't succeed. :) It is easy to complain about how hard life is, but I really don't think most people would be willing to trade it for some other time in the past--no matter how bad they like to think things are today. It is surprisingly inexpensive to live like people lived in the 1950s when TV, air conditioning, and even indoor plumbing weren't things you'd assume you had to have.
BrandonMarc 6y ago
I'm wondering if success has ever not come through hardship. It certainly came through hardship in the past. Today seems little different. Note: 80% of millionaires are first-generation rich - they started off with little, and made their own fortune.

enriquec 6y ago

As someone that volunteers at homeless shelters across the country, I can tell you your description is nowhere near close to reality and it is very strange that people get off on pretending things are dramatically worse than they are. Do you even do anything to help?

dkarl 6y ago
I kinda can't blame him, because it's common for people to paint a picture of homelessness as something that can easily happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by middle class standards. I hate it, because it reminds me of how conditional empathy is. Empathy is a skill, and like any other skill, it's developed through practice, and we mostly practice on people just like us. So people advocating for support for the homeless have to make them sound like they'd fit right in with the people who have the money and power to help them.
- bitwize 6y ago
  Homelessness is something that can easily happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by middle-class standards. Perhaps you weren't here when Doreen Traylor's article about being homeless for six years appeared? Nevertheless, thank you for showing your privilege. Judgement made.
  - dkarl 6y ago
    Doreen Traylor proves that a homeless person can write, have an online presence, and make a living as a freelancer. The fact that you think that's important is exactly my point, that you think homelessness is a different issue depending on whether or not homeless people are capable of living a certain kind of life we value. It shouldn't matter. It's sad that it does.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please omit personal swipes from your comments here. They just make things even worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

everdrive 6y ago

I'm not so sure. Could he have moved back in with his parents? Could he have gotten a second job (at McDonald's or something?) I'm not suggesting that these would be good, or easy options, only that homelessness was not a forgone conclusion. This comic is only one man's personal story, and it does not necessarily coincide with the general demographic and economic trends of the time. ie, it's not clear that his story speaks about the particular hardships of one age compared to the hardships of another.

keiferski 6y ago

It’s completely possible to live on a minimum wage job and not be a miser. The trick is to not live in a coastal megacity. Source: myself, after college, working at a bakery in a Midwestern city.

api 6y ago
Ahh, yes, but don't you know that if you don't live in San Francisco, LA, Seattle, or New York you can't do anything and nothing happens? You have to live in one of those four cities. /sarcasm
- hapless 6y ago
  We are discussing a memoir of a man's life working in the Bay area and living just outside the same. This memoir was not about Topeka, Kansas. Not that struggling to make rent doesn't happen in Topeka. Not that Topeka isn't filled with people living vibrant lives. Just, this particular story occurred in the Bay area.
  - api 6y ago
    I know. I was speaking to the parent, and the 2000-2020 "you have to be in one of four cities" zeitgeist they are talking about.
hapless 6y ago
Yes, but, this particular guy was working in the suburbs of an expensive coastal city, while living in an exurb. That's obviously not universal. But it is certainly the story of THIS guy, as well as many tens of millions of other Americans.
- keiferski 6y ago
  I’m certainly not arguing that rising inequality isn’t a bad thing, but your comment wasn’t about this guy, it was about Americans at large. Contrary to popular coastal belief, fly-over country actually has people, and culture, and life. The average American doesn’t live in NYC/LA/SF, they live in a small to medium size town. It is absolutely possible to live a frugal but reasonable lifestyle on a minimum wage job in most of the country.

spoonjim 6y ago

Most minimum wage workers are alive and not homeless. Sometimes they live 10 to a 2-bedroom, especially the illegal immigrants who often don’t even make minimum wage, but the world you describe is not the reality out there.

908B64B197 6y ago
Minimum wages should apply to anyone, no matter their status no?
- skulk 6y ago
  Yes; the problem is that for a worker being paid under the minimum wage to rectify this issue, they probably need to produce their work authorization documents at some point, and therefore risk deportation/worse.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Why not simply get work authorization documents then?
    - skulk 6y ago
      I'll assume you haven't lived in the US. It's not easy to get work authorization documents because there is a huge queue for legal immigration (for example, my friend's cousin just moved here from a country on the Indian subcontinent, after having waited more than 15 years for a visa), while people in Mexico/Central America/wherever need to improve their situation NOW; they simply cannot wait the decade or so it would take to obtain real documents, even if they had the money required to even start the process. Living and working in the US without authorization is a criminal offense, and if caught by someone who cares enough, illegal immigrants will be deported and permanently barred from obtaining legitimate work authorization. Of course, there's always the option of counterfeit...

mcguire 6y ago

State of Working America Wages 2019 (https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/ https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/)

will4274 6y ago

> To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between declining wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and economic senses of the term) Yeah... This isn't true. You can see the data here, among other places: https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-unite.... The average real hourly wage is higher today than any time since 68 (which was the peak) and is about a dollar higher than the 90s. Note that this is the real hourly wage, so it's already inflation adjusted.

93po 6y ago
If this is true then why do I also see graphs showing that wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s? Is it possibly that this chart is using "average" rather than "median"? Housing is everyone's largest expensive and I feel like I've seen figures that show housing has a percentage of income is something like 2-3x higher than it was 50 years ago.
- will4274 6y ago
  > wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s This was true until 2019. Wages dropped in the late 70s and in the 80s, then went up in the 90s, spent the 00s mostly flat, and rose a little in the 10s. It took 50 years (until 2019) for them to go back up to the 1968 high. So "we've made no progress since 1970" economic quotes are mostly true, but "we've made no progress since 199x" economic quotes are mostly false.
- enriquec 6y ago
  post your charts, if you don't mind.
blululu 6y ago
Averages are not relevant for something as skewed as income distribution. As the Gino coefficient rises the average is increasingly dominated by a minority. The OP is most likely talking about wages for jobs that actually pay by the hour, which have gone down along with the minimum wage from its 1968 peak.

relscholar 6y ago

Ummmm I’m homeless. I love my life.