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The ability to save money relies on the ability to "reduce your lifestyle costs" by cutting certain expenses (raising income is oftentimes not realistic. Poor P

The ability to save money relies on the ability to "reduce your lifestyle costs" by cutting certain expenses (raising income is oftentimes not realistic. Poor People in general are not lazy) Below a certain limit there is no way to do that without loosing more money like getting rid of your car. And it's not only the obvious things. An acquaintance of mine was a single mother (ex-husband in prison) and had to decide whether she could afford to allow her children to take a bath in the bathtub. People underestimate how much such forced decisions can damage mental health and the ability to work. Many wealthy-but-broke people still have assets (like significant equity in a house) that give them runway (sometimes years) to sort things out and make life impacting decisions (such as moving far away to reduce expenses or contacting a friend from before to find you job).

wpietri 5y ago
> Poor People in general are not lazy Exactly. I grew up poor and my teen employment was bust-your-ass jobs like factory and restaurant work. I was once on a contract for a large company, and throughout the day I'd watch the office employees enjoy quiet, pleasant days with plenty of chatting with coworkers. The most strenuous thing they'd do was occasionally rush from one meeting to another. They'd all be gone by 5 and I'd stay working. Then I'd see the cleaning contractors come in and zoom through the office, working hard and never taking breaks. It always made me a little mad that most people there never even saw the hardest workers in the building, let alone appreciated them.
- prepend 5y ago
  > hardest workers in the building It took me a while to understand that work is not paid based on difficulty, but on labor supply and demand. The reason why many very hard jobs pay so low is because there’s lots of people who will do them. There’s an axiom about smart work > hard work but I think that oversimplifies too much. I did manual labor for a few summers and it didn’t pay very well. I just didn’t understand why my work was so hard and paid so little and it frustrated me. But understanding how wages work at the macro level gave me some mental peace.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    "The reason why many very hard jobs pay so low is because there’s lots of people who will do them." There's a hell of a lot more to it than that. From hiring bias, to school bias, to class bias, to name bias, to area bias - from sheer propaganda to straight up coercion. From lobbying, to perverse subsidies, to externalization of costs, etc, etc, ad nauseaum. "Understanding how wages work at the macro level gave me some mental peace." Are you quite sure that said mental peace isn't blissful ignorance... Because ignorance is only blisfful to the ignorant. America's wages at the macro level are deeply, catastrophically, even systematically unjust, in horrifically short-sighted ways.
    - prepend 5y ago
      Macro factors in all those things you mentioned. Of course there are micro instances with particulars to a situation, but the main driver for wages is supply and demand. The reason the janitorial service only gets $12/hour is not a result of all the biases you mentioned, even though it’s hard work- unpleasant, time constrained, shift work hours. The wage is low because many, many people are capable of doing the job. I’m not sure why you would think America’s wages are unjust. But that can exist at the same time as supply and demand issues. Perhaps it is unjust that people make too little, but the reason isn’t that the universe is an asshole. The reason is that lots of people are capable of doing jobs that are hard, so it’s easy to pay less. So the injustice is because people need more skills and are only capable of taking jobs that lots of other people can do, and few demand. But again, wages aren’t set based on difficulty, or value, or the intrinsic need for human dignity of the people performing them. Wages are set by supply and demand.
mlac 5y ago
There’s also the fact that people making decisions about whether their kids can afford baths are spending energy and time on that decision, and not using that energy for recreation or other work. Tons of these decisions are non-factors for those who have enough to just have their kid take a bath without worrying about it. Another example are those who can fill up a gas tank when they stop, because they’d rather minimize the number of stops at gas stations and don’t need to worry about whether they will over draw or be able to eat if they fill up their tank).

wpietri 5y ago

> Poor People in general are not lazy Exactly. I grew up poor and my teen employment was bust-your-ass jobs like factory and restaurant work. I was once on a contract for a large company, and throughout the day I'd watch the office employees enjoy quiet, pleasant days with plenty of chatting with coworkers. The most strenuous thing they'd do was occasionally rush from one meeting to another. They'd all be gone by 5 and I'd stay working. Then I'd see the cleaning contractors come in and zoom through the office, working hard and never taking breaks. It always made me a little mad that most people there never even saw the hardest workers in the building, let alone appreciated them.

prepend 5y ago
> hardest workers in the building It took me a while to understand that work is not paid based on difficulty, but on labor supply and demand. The reason why many very hard jobs pay so low is because there’s lots of people who will do them. There’s an axiom about smart work > hard work but I think that oversimplifies too much. I did manual labor for a few summers and it didn’t pay very well. I just didn’t understand why my work was so hard and paid so little and it frustrated me. But understanding how wages work at the macro level gave me some mental peace.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  "The reason why many very hard jobs pay so low is because there’s lots of people who will do them." There's a hell of a lot more to it than that. From hiring bias, to school bias, to class bias, to name bias, to area bias - from sheer propaganda to straight up coercion. From lobbying, to perverse subsidies, to externalization of costs, etc, etc, ad nauseaum. "Understanding how wages work at the macro level gave me some mental peace." Are you quite sure that said mental peace isn't blissful ignorance... Because ignorance is only blisfful to the ignorant. America's wages at the macro level are deeply, catastrophically, even systematically unjust, in horrifically short-sighted ways.
  - prepend 5y ago
    Macro factors in all those things you mentioned. Of course there are micro instances with particulars to a situation, but the main driver for wages is supply and demand. The reason the janitorial service only gets $12/hour is not a result of all the biases you mentioned, even though it’s hard work- unpleasant, time constrained, shift work hours. The wage is low because many, many people are capable of doing the job. I’m not sure why you would think America’s wages are unjust. But that can exist at the same time as supply and demand issues. Perhaps it is unjust that people make too little, but the reason isn’t that the universe is an asshole. The reason is that lots of people are capable of doing jobs that are hard, so it’s easy to pay less. So the injustice is because people need more skills and are only capable of taking jobs that lots of other people can do, and few demand. But again, wages aren’t set based on difficulty, or value, or the intrinsic need for human dignity of the people performing them. Wages are set by supply and demand.

mlac 5y ago

There’s also the fact that people making decisions about whether their kids can afford baths are spending energy and time on that decision, and not using that energy for recreation or other work. Tons of these decisions are non-factors for those who have enough to just have their kid take a bath without worrying about it. Another example are those who can fill up a gas tank when they stop, because they’d rather minimize the number of stops at gas stations and don’t need to worry about whether they will over draw or be able to eat if they fill up their tank).