8 ms·

This is a great write-up, and as someone who spent time being poor-ish, it really resonated. What I realized from my own life experience: the US sawed the bott

This is a great write-up, and as someone who spent time being poor-ish, it really resonated. What I realized from my own life experience: the US sawed the bottom rungs off the ladder in the 1950s when it suburbanized. There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area, and virtually every societal problem we deal with either stems from this or is made worse by it. Then the healthcare disaster is the cherry on top. The US is a great place to live and work with tremendous upward mobility —— but only if you can stay above the event horizon which is reliable car ownership and insurance coverage (health, home/renters, auto). If you fall under that, you will need help or a lot of good luck to get back out.

skohan 6y ago
I sometimes wonder if that event horizon is encroaching higher and higher up the economic ladder over time. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I think increased stratification in terms of lifestyle and opportunity is not good long term for social cohesion or political stability.
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  It is called cost disease. Staying above is getting harder and harder.
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  Politicians all of a sudden care a lot when problems start to hit the second quintile.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  That event horizon is shifting: "K-shaped recovery" -- you're either moving on up or moving on down.
- hardwaregeek 6y ago
  Definitely. At least in my generation it feels like the boat is sinking and everybody's scrambling to be above deck. The majority of my high school class is going into tech or tech-adjacent industries for that reason.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  This is very much the trend I saw over the 2000s-2010s. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I know many people who were born into a middle-class or upper-middle-class lifestyle, pursued career paths that didn't involve the tech industry (because they were specifically encouraged to "do whatever you want"), and are now living below their parents' standards of living and will probably always be poorer than their parents. They aren't bum artists either; they work in offices 8-6, and have 5+ years of experience and sophisticated professional skills. But they are being paid 2011 wages in a 2021 housing market, and it all strikes me as tremendously unfair. Median house prices in the USA are now above their pre-crash peak, and have been increasing much much faster than the CPI[0]. Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. [0]: chart https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png and data https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv
  - bradleyjg 6y ago
    > Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. At first the suburban house as bottomless bank account was a result of “natural” forces like the baby boom and white flight. But people came to assume it, and then demand it. Politicians have obliged since homeowners are an extremely large and powerful demographic. Prior to 2008 we at least pretended to have a private mortgage industry. Now we don’t even bother with a fig leaf.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      After the 2008 crash, it became politically impossible to let house prices drop, so the government will basically do anything to prop them up. Too many elderly voters who depend on their home equity to fund their lifestyles. I think we'll look back at 2020 as the moment the same political pressure happened to stock market prices.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
>The US is a great place to live and work with tremendous upward mobility Always confused by this notion. People act as if the US is the only place this is possible but not only is it possible in most of the western world, there is in fact BETTER mobility in the much of the western world relative to the US. The US isn't even in the Top 10! https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerational-income-mobility-is-better-than-us-2020-2#1-denmark-it-is-estimated-that-it-would-take-two-generations-for-a-child-in-a-low-income-family-to-earn-the-average-income-in-their-country-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...
- oblio 6y ago
  I guess most people just don't know the numbers and go by gut feeling, mass media and what they learned in (primary/secondary) school many years ago.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  Pretty confused by the downvotes. People don't like data? I mean in fact it's worse than people think and you are no longer likely to make more than your parents when a few decades ago you had a 90% chance of doing so. https://www.nber.org/papers/w22910 https://www.nber.org/papers/w22910 Never expected such a ra-ra USA #1 vibe on HN. Especially in the face of data that says otherwise.
- jawzz 6y ago
  You’re blatantly misquoting the person you’re replying to.
  - deeeeplearning 6y ago
    In what way. You would call being 18th in income mobility "tremendous?" I wouldn't.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      Why not? For you, it seems that "tremendous" means best in class. Where is the cutoff, 1st, 3rd, top 10? For others, being in the top 10 percent of 195+ countries is quite significant. For the average person in the rest of the world, being in the US would provide a significant and meaningful increase in their economic mobility.
cwp 6y ago
I noticed this after spending time in developing countries. They are set up much better for being poor. Trivial example: you can go into a pharmacy and buy two aspirin. Some people can't afford 100 at a time, and don't need that many anyway. Or rent: you can get a place to live for only $60/month. There's no running water, but it's clean and dry and it has a lock on the door. The cheapest place you can find in the US is a lot nicer, but also much more expensive. Buses have no route maps, no shelters and no doors. They might not come to a complete stop when they pick you up. But you can ride for 25¢. The US has a kind of minimum standard of living, but it comes with a minimum cost of living. If you can't afford that, you end up with nothing.
- swiley 6y ago
  This is what's ridiculous about much of the zoning and building codes here. People don't want poor people living in sub-optimal housing, so instead they force them to sleep outside or live with abusive people.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    The liberal approach is to subsidize to maintain that base level, because of an awareness that the social outcomes tend to pay dividends in higher social unity, better health, etc. Some people would rather pay for private security than for policy that makes muggings less likely, I suppose.
    - JamesBarney 6y ago
      Is this what California, San Francisco, or New York do?
      - vmception 6y ago
        <State>, <City within the same state> <city within the same state with the same name as the state || state with the same name as the city within the same state> .... yesn't???
treis 6y ago
>There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area This just isn't true. The majority of the US has cheap housing. The person who wrote the article lives in Pheonix where you can get houses for 200k or under. Like this perfectly good 3 bed 2 br for 200k: https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/8520-W-Palm-Ln-85037/unit-1025/home/28142497 https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/8520-W-Palm-Ln-85037/unit-... Housing costs are out of control in a handful of places in the US. In the rest of them it's as cheap as ever. Or even cheaper given the very low interest rates. It can be stupid cheap to live in the US. Rent a room for $4-500, buy a late model Toyota for $5k, and eat like a poor person. It's pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty. The big pitfall is health. If you're sick then yeah you're pretty screwed. But outside of that as long as you avoid unplanned kids, jail, and drugs it's pretty smooth sailing
- Barracoon 6y ago
  The author of the submitted article spent multiple paragraphs describing how it is not pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty, so if you want to maybe write a long form explaining how to effectively and realistically do so for people in this situation, that’d be great.
  - treis 6y ago
    The author spent multiple paragraphs giving excuses why it's hard. The way out doesn't take that long to explain. Say we have someone netting 2k a month or 24k a year: For a month: Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100 So we have $1,000 left over and have to deal with transportation. Our target is something like this 2009 Toyota Matrix with 100k miles for $3,900: https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/cto/d/peoria-2009-toyota-matrix/7283387737.html https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/cto/d/peoria-2009-toyota-... If we have $3,900 in the bank great. If not, life is going to suck for the next ~6 months while we save every penny and rely on the bus until we have the cash to afford it. Once we have it then we will have reliable transportation and can budget about $500 a month for car expenses including replacing this one when it breaks down. Leaving us: Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100 Car- $500 For a total of $1,500. $500 left over to accumulate some savings and/or pay for stuff we missed. Next goal would be to use one of the many down payment assistance programs (https://www.arizonadownpaymentassistance.com/down-payment-programs https://www.arizonadownpaymentassistance.com/down-payment-pr...) to buy a home like the one I linked to. Then we rent out a room or two for ~$500 reducing our housing expenses while building equity. As long as we don't get sick, don't have a kid, and don't start doing drugs we're going to be sitting pretty nice after a few years.

skohan 6y ago

I sometimes wonder if that event horizon is encroaching higher and higher up the economic ladder over time. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I think increased stratification in terms of lifestyle and opportunity is not good long term for social cohesion or political stability.

ReptileMan 6y ago
It is called cost disease. Staying above is getting harder and harder.
bradleyjg 6y ago
Politicians all of a sudden care a lot when problems start to hit the second quintile.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
That event horizon is shifting: "K-shaped recovery" -- you're either moving on up or moving on down.
hardwaregeek 6y ago
Definitely. At least in my generation it feels like the boat is sinking and everybody's scrambling to be above deck. The majority of my high school class is going into tech or tech-adjacent industries for that reason.
nerdponx 6y ago
This is very much the trend I saw over the 2000s-2010s. Most of the people in my personal cohort - with university degrees and good careers - have no problem living a good life in the US. But with the rapid inflation of the cost of healthcare, higher education and housing, I wonder how that lifestyle can possibly become accessible to people who weren't essentially born into it. I know many people who were born into a middle-class or upper-middle-class lifestyle, pursued career paths that didn't involve the tech industry (because they were specifically encouraged to "do whatever you want"), and are now living below their parents' standards of living and will probably always be poorer than their parents. They aren't bum artists either; they work in offices 8-6, and have 5+ years of experience and sophisticated professional skills. But they are being paid 2011 wages in a 2021 housing market, and it all strikes me as tremendously unfair. Median house prices in the USA are now above their pre-crash peak, and have been increasing much much faster than the CPI[0]. Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. [0]: chart https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png https://files.catbox.moe/kvppyj.png and data https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv https://files.catbox.moe/tqj9vb.csv
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  > Something fucky is going on, and I doubt it's all because of the "free" market. At first the suburban house as bottomless bank account was a result of “natural” forces like the baby boom and white flight. But people came to assume it, and then demand it. Politicians have obliged since homeowners are an extremely large and powerful demographic. Prior to 2008 we at least pretended to have a private mortgage industry. Now we don’t even bother with a fig leaf.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    After the 2008 crash, it became politically impossible to let house prices drop, so the government will basically do anything to prop them up. Too many elderly voters who depend on their home equity to fund their lifestyles. I think we'll look back at 2020 as the moment the same political pressure happened to stock market prices.

deeeeplearning 6y ago

>The US is a great place to live and work with tremendous upward mobility Always confused by this notion. People act as if the US is the only place this is possible but not only is it possible in most of the western world, there is in fact BETTER mobility in the much of the western world relative to the US. The US isn't even in the Top 10! https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerational-income-mobility-is-better-than-us-2020-2#1-denmark-it-is-estimated-that-it-would-take-two-generations-for-a-child-in-a-low-income-family-to-earn-the-average-income-in-their-country-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-where-intergenerat...

oblio 6y ago
I guess most people just don't know the numbers and go by gut feeling, mass media and what they learned in (primary/secondary) school many years ago.
deeeeplearning 6y ago
Pretty confused by the downvotes. People don't like data? I mean in fact it's worse than people think and you are no longer likely to make more than your parents when a few decades ago you had a 90% chance of doing so. https://www.nber.org/papers/w22910 https://www.nber.org/papers/w22910 Never expected such a ra-ra USA #1 vibe on HN. Especially in the face of data that says otherwise.
jawzz 6y ago
You’re blatantly misquoting the person you’re replying to.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  In what way. You would call being 18th in income mobility "tremendous?" I wouldn't.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    Why not? For you, it seems that "tremendous" means best in class. Where is the cutoff, 1st, 3rd, top 10? For others, being in the top 10 percent of 195+ countries is quite significant. For the average person in the rest of the world, being in the US would provide a significant and meaningful increase in their economic mobility.

cwp 6y ago

I noticed this after spending time in developing countries. They are set up much better for being poor. Trivial example: you can go into a pharmacy and buy two aspirin. Some people can't afford 100 at a time, and don't need that many anyway. Or rent: you can get a place to live for only $60/month. There's no running water, but it's clean and dry and it has a lock on the door. The cheapest place you can find in the US is a lot nicer, but also much more expensive. Buses have no route maps, no shelters and no doors. They might not come to a complete stop when they pick you up. But you can ride for 25¢. The US has a kind of minimum standard of living, but it comes with a minimum cost of living. If you can't afford that, you end up with nothing.

swiley 6y ago
This is what's ridiculous about much of the zoning and building codes here. People don't want poor people living in sub-optimal housing, so instead they force them to sleep outside or live with abusive people.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  The liberal approach is to subsidize to maintain that base level, because of an awareness that the social outcomes tend to pay dividends in higher social unity, better health, etc. Some people would rather pay for private security than for policy that makes muggings less likely, I suppose.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    Is this what California, San Francisco, or New York do?
    - vmception 6y ago
      <State>, <City within the same state> <city within the same state with the same name as the state || state with the same name as the city within the same state> .... yesn't???

treis 6y ago

>There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area This just isn't true. The majority of the US has cheap housing. The person who wrote the article lives in Pheonix where you can get houses for 200k or under. Like this perfectly good 3 bed 2 br for 200k: https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/8520-W-Palm-Ln-85037/unit-1025/home/28142497 https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/8520-W-Palm-Ln-85037/unit-... Housing costs are out of control in a handful of places in the US. In the rest of them it's as cheap as ever. Or even cheaper given the very low interest rates. It can be stupid cheap to live in the US. Rent a room for $4-500, buy a late model Toyota for $5k, and eat like a poor person. It's pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty. The big pitfall is health. If you're sick then yeah you're pretty screwed. But outside of that as long as you avoid unplanned kids, jail, and drugs it's pretty smooth sailing

Barracoon 6y ago
The author of the submitted article spent multiple paragraphs describing how it is not pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty, so if you want to maybe write a long form explaining how to effectively and realistically do so for people in this situation, that’d be great.
- treis 6y ago
  The author spent multiple paragraphs giving excuses why it's hard. The way out doesn't take that long to explain. Say we have someone netting 2k a month or 24k a year: For a month: Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100 So we have $1,000 left over and have to deal with transportation. Our target is something like this 2009 Toyota Matrix with 100k miles for $3,900: https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/cto/d/peoria-2009-toyota-matrix/7283387737.html https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/cto/d/peoria-2009-toyota-... If we have $3,900 in the bank great. If not, life is going to suck for the next ~6 months while we save every penny and rely on the bus until we have the cash to afford it. Once we have it then we will have reliable transportation and can budget about $500 a month for car expenses including replacing this one when it breaks down. Leaving us: Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100 Car- $500 For a total of $1,500. $500 left over to accumulate some savings and/or pay for stuff we missed. Next goal would be to use one of the many down payment assistance programs (https://www.arizonadownpaymentassistance.com/down-payment-programs https://www.arizonadownpaymentassistance.com/down-payment-pr...) to buy a home like the one I linked to. Then we rent out a room or two for ~$500 reducing our housing expenses while building equity. As long as we don't get sick, don't have a kid, and don't start doing drugs we're going to be sitting pretty nice after a few years.