13 ms·

I worked in a grocery store in the late '90s, and the older customers (who grew up in the Great Depression) always carried penny pouches, because they remembere

by cs137 4y ago

I worked in a grocery store in the late '90s, and the older customers (who grew up in the Great Depression) always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive. This is how I know that, even if we miraculously fixed our medical system tomorrow and outlawed private health insurance by a constitutional amendment, we'll still have, thirty years from now, 60-year-old Millennials dropping dead of preventable causes. The American healthcare system has already killed millions, but it's also killed future millions.

tootie 4y ago
My grandma did this. Never left a penny on the sidewalk, always took the bread from a breadbasket home. Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  Yep, my parents are baby boomers and definitely have this ingrained in them. I also have some habits around eating where I (usually) waste nothing, which was instilled in me by my grandfather.
  - distances 4y ago
    Not wasting food is just normal though, or is it just so ingrained in me that it only seems so?
    - JamesSwift 4y ago
      When I say dont waste food I mean my plate is completely clean when I'm done. I eat everything off a chicken wing so its _just_ bone left (eat all the cartilage and clean every bit of meat off). My grandfather would actually break the bones and suck the marrow out of each one.
- Markoff 4y ago
  > always took the bread from a breadbasket home Care to explain it to non native speaker from Europe? Is it some bakery chain and she took home some cheap/free leftover bread?
  - quartesixte 4y ago
    Some restaurants give a free basket of bread with a meal as a sort of appetizer. Most people either consume all of it or just leave the leftovers.
    - bluedino 4y ago
      Many people ask for more bread after they wolf it down and even ask for some to take home. It might be buttery, lightly seasoned bread or something like rolls, usually fresh-baked.
    - Markoff 4y ago
      Ah, OK, my (Chinese) wife is like that, she won't leave anything behind, I don't mind leaving it behind, but I can understand trying to avoid waste since many places will throw away bread which was offered to other customer. And often the bread taste actually good, so it makes sense to take it.
    - yobbo 4y ago
      It's to fill stomachs so that the portion sizes seem bigger.
    - SilasX 4y ago
      Ah so like a mild version of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      Ah, so it's just that the OP wrote something that was prone to be misparsed. I read "breadbasket home" as a compound noun and guessed it was some kind of food bank or something, but "home" was really an adverb modifying took. So what was meant was something like "My grandma ... always took [home] the bread from a [restaurant] breadbasket..."
- quartesixte 4y ago
  > Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation Yup. As a child of immigrants it gets passed down a very long way. Pass it down far enough and it just becomes “culture” and “tradition”.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  We were surprised to discover after her death (in the late 80's) that my great grandmother kept $1,000 in a pouch in her bra. I can understand not trusting the banks and wanting to always have some sort of cash on your person.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I cannot understand not having at least a couple hundred cash on you, and much more at home. What are people’s plans if the power or payment networks go offline? Earthquake, hurricane, ice storm, volcano, etc.
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
      You obviously have considerable wealth if you think most people have the savings to keep hundreds of dollars on them at all times and much more at home. A large percentage of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Also, many people don’t carry cash because they’re worried, rightfully or not, about being robbed. Same idea behind leaving stuff in your vehicle.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I thought it would be obvious that my comment would preclude people who did not have emergency funds. Or who live in areas where the probability of robbery is high enough to negate the benefit of having some cash on you. My intent was to show that while electronic payments are nice and convenient, I still like the peace of mind of knowing I have a resilient payment method like cash on me.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I am suspicious of that "can't afford a $500 emergency" number that is thrown around. It apparently comes from a survey [52] which says: "53% could manage an unforeseen expense of $500 without worry" What that actually means isn't directly stated - but people read it as "half of Americans can't afford $500" which isn't what it's stating. https://www.personalcapital.com/assets/public/src/2022-Wealth-and-Wellness-Index.pdf https://www.personalcapital.com/assets/public/src/2022-Wealt...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ansible 4y ago
  Same. I always clean my plate (though I try hard not to take more than I can eat), and am always very reluctant to get rid of anything that "still works".
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Doctors say they are the only profession that saves lives. Well they're the only profession allowed to save lives. And the only profession making money saving lives. Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives. What happens when they make a mistake in what someone is able to pay? EDIT (I tried replying but can't yet): The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics. In Chile anybody who wants to be a doctor can go to some medical school and make a pretty decent wage (but less than 20x what an American doctor makes) and help people in some role, some specialty, if that's what she really wants to do. No quota on helping people. And they get better results, lower infection rates than American hospitals, longer life expectancy, and medical school is shorter and much cheaper, like night and day. In particular maternity care is like the best in the world--I can't corroborate that but I've heard that. Lowest medicine costs in the OECD, blows every other developed country out of the water. America is the most expensive and Chile is the cheapest.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  > Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives. Most first world countries have a solution for this already. It is baffling that the US does not.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Most first world countries have a solution for this already. Even second and third world countries have implemented this solution.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      Part of the cost is equipment, too. Have you seen the regulations that medical equipment must meet? And the certifications that equipment requires? I’m not talking about big ticket items like MRI machines. I mean just blood pressure cuffs.
      - freeone3000 4y ago
usrn 4y ago
Honestly fuck the medical system, young people don't care. Housing is what's really getting us. Some days I feel like driving up to McLean and burning banks down. EDIT: I'm out of comment quota but dymk I'm so tired of hearing that, here's my reply: Oh fuck off. I make six figures and work remotely. My family lives in a rural part of a small state and I can't afford a house within driving distance of them. EDIT2: Asset price inflation pops an asset price bubble? Who taught you economics? They should be fired. Also, that's not a bubble this time, it's the market equilibrium. We aren't building enough housing and it's so bad the cost of labor to build more housing is going up. The entire US is the bubble this time. EDIT3: Is that your solution? Send all the children to therapy for being kicked out of their own country? How do you expect that to work? EDIT4: corrral: when the upper middle class ends up in "lower class" conditions you usually get guillotines.
- diob 4y ago
  What... I don't know if you realize this but plenty of young folks need healthcare. Ultimately, we can do both (fixing healthcare and housing). But honestly more countries have solved healthcare than housing.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Maybe "plenty" need healthcare but all of them need housing. This sounds like some boomer whining about their issues and pretending to care about millennials.
    - diob 4y ago
      Me or the article? No need to go on the attack btw, I was pointing out the privilege / falsehood rooted in saying young folks don't need healthcare. I stand by my statement, healthcare is much easier to solve (we have examples of places doing it right). AND we can try to tackle both.
      - usrn 4y ago
        Is it? What countries is it solved in? Do their demographics look like ours (hint: no.) Most of us get by just fine without healthcare. Some of us certainly could use it but that's not what nearly all of us care about right now, that is in every way another problem for old people (and probably another way they're going to fuck us all over.) Edit: No Australia is mostly White with the largest minority (5%) being Chinese. Try again. Also, I'm done empathizing; I'm warning/threatening everyone.
ravenstine 4y ago
The generation of the Great Depression didn't have ubiquitous forms of usury. With credit cards, personal loans and student loans, I imagine the future stinginess of Millennials will be short lived.
- faitswulff 4y ago
  It’s not so much about stinginess as unwillingness to seek medical attention because it’s so highly correlated with unbearable medical debt.
- Nick87633 4y ago
  They still had installment plans for buying appliances and repossessions. I'm pretty sure usurious loans have existed since money was invented.
  - Domenic_S 4y ago
    Yep, various holy books talk about usury and they're quite old.
  - ravenstine 4y ago
    Of course. Loans have existed since the beginning of money. That doesn't mean average people were using credit and loans to buy everything from Lambos to Cheetos to pornos like they can today. Not until very recently. Credit wasn't really something that was available to most people until around the 70s when it began to be digitized successfully. The psychology of debt today compared to that of a few generations ago is entirely different.
    - astrange 4y ago
      If you know the general store owner or your pub landlord and you ask them to put something on your tab, that's credit. Exact payment on the spot is what develops when you're trading with strangers.
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      Haven't (later) Millennials already learned from the mistakes of those before them? I know I'm scared of any type of debt due to the stories I've heard about it going wrong.
giantg2 4y ago
"always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive." Sure. But you also have to realize that a loaf a bread cost a nickle and that cards didn't exist. People carried around change because you could actually buy meaningful stuff with it and there wasn't really an alternative to cash (sure someplaces give credit but much different than using a card today).
- throw8383833jj 4y ago
  yup, it's pretty easy to forget that the dollar has already lost over 98% of it's value.
  - dixie_land 4y ago
    exactly, back in the days a penny coin actually was worth more than the metal in it
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    IIRC, when the US stopped minting the half penny, the whole penny was worth somewhere around $0.33 in 2022 currency. Lopping the last digit off of everything isn't practical for many reasons but I wish we could at least finally put the stupid "9/10" on gas prices into the grave.
    - takeda 4y ago
      Yeah, seriously. It was there to visually fool customer into thinking the price is cheaper than it really is. But because today it is insignificant difference as well everyone else is doing it, it is just nonsense and no longer serves its purpose. Another thing (and that actually matters much more) is that tax is not included in the prices there are excuses about it that tax is different in different areas, but it's just yet another way to lie to a customer.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      In some places you're getting your wish, because they plan to need that space on the sign when the dollars go double digit.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway894345 4y ago
Scarcity mindset is real. I studied abroad in France, and the government promised up and down that they would cover my housing only to reneg a few days before my trip (long after I had secured my student loan money, bought my flight, etc) and saddled me with a $600/month payment and no income. I was counting individual bus trips into town and skipping meals (I went from 160 to 140 pounds in a few months) to save up 60 euros for a RyanAir flight to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife who was studying in Austria at the time (and I broke down when I was forced to miss it because I put my luggage in a train station locker that advertised "24 hours" but the room housing the lockers was only available during the day, and this was not advertised). Even after I graduated and got a series of increasingly high-paying engineering jobs, I couldn't shake the scarcity mindset, and I would scrimp and save (although I didn't skip meals any longer!). In time (with a whole lot of help and encouragement with my wife), I was able to largely overcome it. We're still very conservative with our money--we're probably in the top 10% of Americans with respect to income, but we spend like we're median (or lower) Americans and save the difference. However, now it's because we want to retire early or pursue other loftier goals (some combination of traveling the world, buying a hobby farm, and/or starting a small business) rather than my debilitating anxiety. (Since we're getting a little political) It also makes it hard to sympathize with my peers who didn't work, skipped class, lived in the dorms, paid for meal plans and still went out to eat several times a week, bought daily $7 lattes, and majored in some art history or leisure services or (non-teaching) English Literature when they insist that the government should forgive their enormous student loan debt (I'm fine with universal education, but no one should be surprised that they have to repay the debt that financed their unsustainable lifestyle or demand that society foot the bill).

by cs137 4y ago

tootie 4y ago

My grandma did this. Never left a penny on the sidewalk, always took the bread from a breadbasket home. Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation.

JamesSwift 4y ago
Yep, my parents are baby boomers and definitely have this ingrained in them. I also have some habits around eating where I (usually) waste nothing, which was instilled in me by my grandfather.
- distances 4y ago
  Not wasting food is just normal though, or is it just so ingrained in me that it only seems so?
  - JamesSwift 4y ago
    When I say dont waste food I mean my plate is completely clean when I'm done. I eat everything off a chicken wing so its _just_ bone left (eat all the cartilage and clean every bit of meat off). My grandfather would actually break the bones and suck the marrow out of each one.
Markoff 4y ago
> always took the bread from a breadbasket home Care to explain it to non native speaker from Europe? Is it some bakery chain and she took home some cheap/free leftover bread?
- quartesixte 4y ago
  Some restaurants give a free basket of bread with a meal as a sort of appetizer. Most people either consume all of it or just leave the leftovers.
  - bluedino 4y ago
    Many people ask for more bread after they wolf it down and even ask for some to take home. It might be buttery, lightly seasoned bread or something like rolls, usually fresh-baked.
  - Markoff 4y ago
    Ah, OK, my (Chinese) wife is like that, she won't leave anything behind, I don't mind leaving it behind, but I can understand trying to avoid waste since many places will throw away bread which was offered to other customer. And often the bread taste actually good, so it makes sense to take it.
  - yobbo 4y ago
    It's to fill stomachs so that the portion sizes seem bigger.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    Ah so like a mild version of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    Ah, so it's just that the OP wrote something that was prone to be misparsed. I read "breadbasket home" as a compound noun and guessed it was some kind of food bank or something, but "home" was really an adverb modifying took. So what was meant was something like "My grandma ... always took [home] the bread from a [restaurant] breadbasket..."
quartesixte 4y ago
> Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation Yup. As a child of immigrants it gets passed down a very long way. Pass it down far enough and it just becomes “culture” and “tradition”.
CalRobert 4y ago
We were surprised to discover after her death (in the late 80's) that my great grandmother kept $1,000 in a pouch in her bra. I can understand not trusting the banks and wanting to always have some sort of cash on your person.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I cannot understand not having at least a couple hundred cash on you, and much more at home. What are people’s plans if the power or payment networks go offline? Earthquake, hurricane, ice storm, volcano, etc.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    You obviously have considerable wealth if you think most people have the savings to keep hundreds of dollars on them at all times and much more at home. A large percentage of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Also, many people don’t carry cash because they’re worried, rightfully or not, about being robbed. Same idea behind leaving stuff in your vehicle.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I thought it would be obvious that my comment would preclude people who did not have emergency funds. Or who live in areas where the probability of robbery is high enough to negate the benefit of having some cash on you. My intent was to show that while electronic payments are nice and convenient, I still like the peace of mind of knowing I have a resilient payment method like cash on me.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I am suspicious of that "can't afford a $500 emergency" number that is thrown around. It apparently comes from a survey [52] which says: "53% could manage an unforeseen expense of $500 without worry" What that actually means isn't directly stated - but people read it as "half of Americans can't afford $500" which isn't what it's stating. https://www.personalcapital.com/assets/public/src/2022-Wealth-and-Wellness-Index.pdf https://www.personalcapital.com/assets/public/src/2022-Wealt...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ansible 4y ago
Same. I always clean my plate (though I try hard not to take more than I can eat), and am always very reluctant to get rid of anything that "still works".

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Doctors say they are the only profession that saves lives. Well they're the only profession allowed to save lives. And the only profession making money saving lives. Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives. What happens when they make a mistake in what someone is able to pay? EDIT (I tried replying but can't yet): The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics. In Chile anybody who wants to be a doctor can go to some medical school and make a pretty decent wage (but less than 20x what an American doctor makes) and help people in some role, some specialty, if that's what she really wants to do. No quota on helping people. And they get better results, lower infection rates than American hospitals, longer life expectancy, and medical school is shorter and much cheaper, like night and day. In particular maternity care is like the best in the world--I can't corroborate that but I've heard that. Lowest medicine costs in the OECD, blows every other developed country out of the water. America is the most expensive and Chile is the cheapest.

manuelabeledo 4y ago
> Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives. Most first world countries have a solution for this already. It is baffling that the US does not.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >Most first world countries have a solution for this already. Even second and third world countries have implemented this solution.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    Part of the cost is equipment, too. Have you seen the regulations that medical equipment must meet? And the certifications that equipment requires? I’m not talking about big ticket items like MRI machines. I mean just blood pressure cuffs.
    - freeone3000 4y ago

usrn 4y ago

Honestly fuck the medical system, young people don't care. Housing is what's really getting us. Some days I feel like driving up to McLean and burning banks down. EDIT: I'm out of comment quota but dymk I'm so tired of hearing that, here's my reply: Oh fuck off. I make six figures and work remotely. My family lives in a rural part of a small state and I can't afford a house within driving distance of them. EDIT2: Asset price inflation pops an asset price bubble? Who taught you economics? They should be fired. Also, that's not a bubble this time, it's the market equilibrium. We aren't building enough housing and it's so bad the cost of labor to build more housing is going up. The entire US is the bubble this time. EDIT3: Is that your solution? Send all the children to therapy for being kicked out of their own country? How do you expect that to work? EDIT4: corrral: when the upper middle class ends up in "lower class" conditions you usually get guillotines.

diob 4y ago
What... I don't know if you realize this but plenty of young folks need healthcare. Ultimately, we can do both (fixing healthcare and housing). But honestly more countries have solved healthcare than housing.
- usrn 4y ago
  Maybe "plenty" need healthcare but all of them need housing. This sounds like some boomer whining about their issues and pretending to care about millennials.
  - diob 4y ago
    Me or the article? No need to go on the attack btw, I was pointing out the privilege / falsehood rooted in saying young folks don't need healthcare. I stand by my statement, healthcare is much easier to solve (we have examples of places doing it right). AND we can try to tackle both.
    - usrn 4y ago
      Is it? What countries is it solved in? Do their demographics look like ours (hint: no.) Most of us get by just fine without healthcare. Some of us certainly could use it but that's not what nearly all of us care about right now, that is in every way another problem for old people (and probably another way they're going to fuck us all over.) Edit: No Australia is mostly White with the largest minority (5%) being Chinese. Try again. Also, I'm done empathizing; I'm warning/threatening everyone.

ravenstine 4y ago

The generation of the Great Depression didn't have ubiquitous forms of usury. With credit cards, personal loans and student loans, I imagine the future stinginess of Millennials will be short lived.

faitswulff 4y ago
It’s not so much about stinginess as unwillingness to seek medical attention because it’s so highly correlated with unbearable medical debt.
Nick87633 4y ago
They still had installment plans for buying appliances and repossessions. I'm pretty sure usurious loans have existed since money was invented.
- Domenic_S 4y ago
  Yep, various holy books talk about usury and they're quite old.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  Of course. Loans have existed since the beginning of money. That doesn't mean average people were using credit and loans to buy everything from Lambos to Cheetos to pornos like they can today. Not until very recently. Credit wasn't really something that was available to most people until around the 70s when it began to be digitized successfully. The psychology of debt today compared to that of a few generations ago is entirely different.
  - astrange 4y ago
    If you know the general store owner or your pub landlord and you ask them to put something on your tab, that's credit. Exact payment on the spot is what develops when you're trading with strangers.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    Haven't (later) Millennials already learned from the mistakes of those before them? I know I'm scared of any type of debt due to the stories I've heard about it going wrong.

giantg2 4y ago

"always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive." Sure. But you also have to realize that a loaf a bread cost a nickle and that cards didn't exist. People carried around change because you could actually buy meaningful stuff with it and there wasn't really an alternative to cash (sure someplaces give credit but much different than using a card today).

throw8383833jj 4y ago
yup, it's pretty easy to forget that the dollar has already lost over 98% of it's value.
- dixie_land 4y ago
  exactly, back in the days a penny coin actually was worth more than the metal in it
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  IIRC, when the US stopped minting the half penny, the whole penny was worth somewhere around $0.33 in 2022 currency. Lopping the last digit off of everything isn't practical for many reasons but I wish we could at least finally put the stupid "9/10" on gas prices into the grave.
  - takeda 4y ago
    Yeah, seriously. It was there to visually fool customer into thinking the price is cheaper than it really is. But because today it is insignificant difference as well everyone else is doing it, it is just nonsense and no longer serves its purpose. Another thing (and that actually matters much more) is that tax is not included in the prices there are excuses about it that tax is different in different areas, but it's just yet another way to lie to a customer.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    In some places you're getting your wish, because they plan to need that space on the sign when the dollars go double digit.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

throwaway894345 4y ago

Scarcity mindset is real. I studied abroad in France, and the government promised up and down that they would cover my housing only to reneg a few days before my trip (long after I had secured my student loan money, bought my flight, etc) and saddled me with a $600/month payment and no income. I was counting individual bus trips into town and skipping meals (I went from 160 to 140 pounds in a few months) to save up 60 euros for a RyanAir flight to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife who was studying in Austria at the time (and I broke down when I was forced to miss it because I put my luggage in a train station locker that advertised "24 hours" but the room housing the lockers was only available during the day, and this was not advertised). Even after I graduated and got a series of increasingly high-paying engineering jobs, I couldn't shake the scarcity mindset, and I would scrimp and save (although I didn't skip meals any longer!). In time (with a whole lot of help and encouragement with my wife), I was able to largely overcome it. We're still very conservative with our money--we're probably in the top 10% of Americans with respect to income, but we spend like we're median (or lower) Americans and save the difference. However, now it's because we want to retire early or pursue other loftier goals (some combination of traveling the world, buying a hobby farm, and/or starting a small business) rather than my debilitating anxiety. (Since we're getting a little political) It also makes it hard to sympathize with my peers who didn't work, skipped class, lived in the dorms, paid for meal plans and still went out to eat several times a week, bought daily $7 lattes, and majored in some art history or leisure services or (non-teaching) English Literature when they insist that the government should forgive their enormous student loan debt (I'm fine with universal education, but no one should be surprised that they have to repay the debt that financed their unsustainable lifestyle or demand that society foot the bill).