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The cost of being poor: Why it costs so much to be poor in America

• m348e912 4y ago
  I went to the dollar store today looking for stocking stuffer items. It's now the "dollar twenty-five store" due to inflation, with some items four and five dollars. Here are my observations. * The food will likely make you sick if you eat it regularly, the food options are highly processed and made of cheap, poor quality ingredients. * Kids, lots of kids. Lots of lower income families have multiple kids and the dollar store is one way to stretch the budget. * Dollar stores do a decent job at keeping things at $1.25. There were definitely some products that I would see 2x or 3x the price at other stores. * It was busy, very busy.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    I cannot imagine buying food at the dollar store even if you are poor. Eggs, beans, rice, bread, potatoes, apples, bananas, are among the cheapest foods at any grocery store or supermarket.
    • pengaru 4y ago
      > I cannot imagine buying food at the dollar store even if you are poor. If DOLLAR GENERAL qualifies, for many poor communities it's the only option in town.
      • neilv 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
      • nanidin 4y ago
        Dollar General is not a dollar store. Traditionally a dollar store is a store where everything costs one dollar. Dollar General is a general store that has dollar in the name.
        • UncleEntity 4y ago
          I used to go to the “99¢ Only” store and, let me tell you, everything doesn’t cost 99¢. Frozen burritos did so I didn’t complain too much.
          • ridgered4 4y ago
            I once bought a pair of needle nose pliers at the dollar store (actually a dollar) back in the 90s. The first time I used them both the grips immediately bent under a small amount of force, which is actually so funny that I think I got my money's worth in the end.
        • escapedmoose 4y ago
          Regardless, it’s often the only option.
    • bluedino 4y ago
      <insert food desert> But you see people with SNAP pushing around carts full of things that aren't eggs and beans and potatoes... and why would they? The maximum monthly benefit for a family of 4 is $939/month, you can buy whatever you want with that. <insert excuse that poor people can't cook or don't have time or ...>
      • KerrAvon 4y ago
        The most corrosive idea in our society is the notion that someone somewhere is getting slightly more than they deserve, just slightly more than you think they earned through their god-given talents, and that it’s therefore worth trying to correct at huge expense, because we certainly can’t have that tiny bit of unfairness in the universe. And the correction, when applied, is always to the detriment of a huge number of other people who actually needed the help. This is how we get means-testing, SALT caps, and bad immigration law. We have got to be more humane than this.
        • ramesh31 4y ago
          >The most corrosive idea in our society is the notion that someone somewhere is getting slightly more than they deserve, just slightly more than you think they earned through their god-given talents, and that it’s therefore worth trying to correct at huge expense, because we certainly can’t have that tiny bit of unfairness in the universe. Maybe. But this is how America works. We wont let you starve to death. If you're truly physically disabled, we won't leave you to die. But beyond that it's up to you. And in exchange, what's "up to you" is limitless and celebrated and compensated endlessly. Other societies make this tradeoff in a different direction. But I'm happy there's at least one place on earth that doesn't.
          • trentgreene 4y ago
            The last number I’d heard was that around 100/year starve to death in the US, but I suspect that number is higher when including deaths from folks who incur fatal health conditions from insufficient nutrition.
          • 4y ago
    • trentgreene 4y ago
      I kind of hate that your being downvoted b/c your perspective here is a very common one. It’s not just a matter of unit price, but also time, convenience, and cal/$. Fruit / veg in general is pretty expensive when looked at from a cal/$ perspective — you pay for a lot of water there. Potatoes, beans, rice are pretty slow cooking, and require dealing with dishes after. So for my single mom, it was pretty hard to provide anything but 1) fast food (decent cal/$, extremely convenient) 2) microwaveable tv dinners (Meh cal per dollar, but long shelf life, extremely convenient) 3) PB / lunch meat sandwiches (basically god tier for poor chow) For reference, my mom worked many jobs and got maybe 4-5 hrs sleep a night. Adding 30 minutes for a days worth of meals was a lot.
      • thefounder 4y ago
        I know fast-food and microwaveable tv dinners are cheap and "worry free" but you pay the price with your health. Consider it like achool abuse. You get away with it several times but eventually your health will deteriorate. You have to want to eat healthy and set the appropriate mindset. For example instead to order that fastfood crap just eat some simple raw, "spartan" food(bananas, boiled meat or even fried meat etc). I have some good experience with that working long hours on my own startup(s) without distractions. I doubt you don't have 30 minutes to "prepare" your dinner. After all you don't really prepare much. Just boil or fry whatever raw food you have. Of course convincing kids to eat not very tasty food may be a different story but it's doable because I've seen that too. At some point you may start to appreciate the simple food and hate when the chefs put you sugar and all kinds of "flavours" in your food.
        • trentgreene 4y ago
          I can say with 100% certainty there was not 30 minutes to cook dinner alone. At a certain point you’re balancing how much sleep you need to perform at work (4-5 hours) and the amount of time you’d spend commuting and working (~16 hours a day). When you throw in errands, cleaning, maintenance, and maybe 30 minutes in passing period leisure, there really isn’t time to cook.
          • 4y ago
    • qbasic_forever 4y ago
      You clearly haven't bought eggs, beans, rice, etc. at the grocery store and been on a budget. In the last two years the price of eggs have easily doubled--a dozen large store brand eggs are over 3 bucks now vs maybe 99 cents pre-pandemic. Every single staple you mention has gone up in price significantly. Food inflation is astronomical and if you don't feel it then it's quite a privilege. If you were struggling to make ends meet two years ago, you are in deep deep trouble or probably completely forgotten by society and/or dead now.
      • mikeyouse 4y ago
        There are unfortunately a bunch of factors that added up to this.. e.g. for Eggs, there's just normal food inflation, but then there's a massive avian flu outbreak that resulted in ~50 million birds culled in the US alone. It doesn't help but either way, prices are indeed up ~100% since pre-pandemic (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111). https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-...
      • LAC-Tech 4y ago
        In the last two years the price of eggs have easily doubled--a dozen large store brand eggs are over 3 bucks now vs maybe 99 cents pre-pandemic. Food in the US is insanely cheap. Wow. $4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special.
        • aix1 4y ago
          > $4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special. I was about to say that this is roughly what supermarket eggs cost here in Switzerland but then realised that your price was for a dozen and I was thinking a box of six. Eggs here are often sold in units of one (you fill your own box with however many eggs you need) and cost about US$0.80 per egg.
      • jraby3 4y ago
        $0.25 per egg is still a great value in terms of health and satiety.
  • WalterBright 4y ago
    Lots of times you're better off getting stuff from the thrift store. Lots of lightly used household items, cheap as dirt.
    • pubby 4y ago
      Thrift stores in rich neighborhoods have significantly higher quality of items than ones in poor neighborhoods. I would not recommend shopping at poor thrift stores.
      • dmkolobov 4y ago
        In my experience, this is true for just about every type of store. Especially grocery stores. I live on Federal in Denver, and the selection relative to some of the wealthier suburbs is atrocious. The past few years have made me wonder who gets the job of ensuring poor neighborhoods get screwed in the face of nationwide shortages of items.
        • WalterBright 4y ago
          Try running a store in a poor neighborhood and it will soon be obvious why they are the way they are.
          • dmkolobov 4y ago
            Fine, the pursuit of profit over all else forces people to make decisions like screwing entire neighborhoods out of access to basic quality food and other goods. Is that better?
            • WalterBright 4y ago
              Opening a store is not screwing entire neighborhoods.
      • WalterBright 4y ago
        I've been in thrift stores in both neighborhoods. Found lots of nice stuff in the poor one.
  • medellin 4y ago
    Yes but almost everything is going to break quick and you will be back buying more soon.
    • ramesh31 4y ago
      > Yes but almost everything is going to break quick and you will be back buying more soon. Hence, the entire point of the article. Beginning with the boots paradox.
  • RandallBrown 4y ago
    Much of the food at dollar stores is the same stuff you'll find in regular grocery stores, just in smaller packages.
    • prawn 4y ago
      I always got the impression that it was largely things with a long shelf life, to minimise waste. Which doesn't discount what you've said, but just worth asserting that it's a subset (not always healthy) of regular grocery stuff AND in smaller packages.
      • bruceb 4y ago
        I would say 90% of the food in dollar stores is high in oil, salt, or sugar and most of the time all three. Most of it is cookies, crackers, potato chips, sauces, soda, etc. I have seen a few with decent staples such as wheat bread, eggs, meat but that is small pct of all foods. Rarely vegetables (or ever). Would be hard to eat healthy if got most of your food there. Regular supermarkets have plenty of bad food but still wide selection of nutritious food.
  • maria2 4y ago
    Nutritious food can be very cheap. Others have mentioned beans and rice. Beans are an amazing source of nutrition. Dried beans are dirt cheap and require little work to prepare. Organic bananas from Whole Foods are about $0.50 each. I'm pretty sure you can find a cheaper banana elsewhere. Broccoli costs less than a $1 per head, typically. Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound. I could go on. The point is, good food can be cheap. And yes, food deserts exist. And yes, people buy poor quality food from stores like Dollar General. But perhaps there is a correlation here? Maybe (some) food deserts exists because there is little demand for fresh food in those regions.
    • Quarrelsome 4y ago
      might also be hard to find the time to cook when you got two kids and three jobs.
    • satellites 4y ago
      As mentioned in the article, some low income housing units literally don’t have kitchens or don’t allow cooking. This blew my mind and is a facet of poverty I hadn’t even considered. Also, are you actually making the point that food deserts exist because all the people in the area just decided not to buy groceries? I haven’t read such a blatant “blame the poors for their situation” take in a while.
      • qbasic_forever 4y ago
        If you've really fallen out of society and gone through an eviction or foreclosure then your credit is shot so badly you can only afford to live at a weekly rate motel (you'll never pass a real apartment's credit check). Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have.
        • satellites 4y ago
          Good point. I hadn’t considered that type of housing. It got me thinking though. My partner got evicted when she was younger (early twenties) because her roommate was lying and stealing rent money. Her credit was shot and she had to live with family for years while getting her record cleared. It’s sad to think that if she hadn’t had family to fall back on, she could’ve ended up in that situation. More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap.
  • anon291 4y ago
    Food is really cheap. In my experience, American born people assume that immigrants and poor people are buying packaged foods. In my experience as a child of immigrants, my parents bought actual bulk food items and produce at stores. It's exceptionally cheap unless you're shopping at a DINK store like whole foods. Dollar stores are amazing for kids things. For example, balloons are a dollar at the dollar store and ten dollars for the same balloon at Safeway.
  • FrontierPsych 4y ago
    Dollar stores are awesome. If you buy crap at the dollar stores, then you are buying crap, but if you buy Cheetos at the dollar store or at the regular grocery shop, they are the same crap. Crap is crap no matter where you buy it. Any food will make you sick. You can find crap food at any store. Dollar stores don't have the monopoly on that. I think that 90% of "food" at ANY store is crap. Food is extremely inexpensive if you learn how to make stuff yourself and don't buy anything that is prepackaged. Don't buy Thousand Island dressing for example, make it from base ingredients. Instead of paying $3 at a regular grocery store, you can make it for 25 cents, if that. Croutons? Costs $2.50 at the store, or make them at home in your oven for 10 cents or whatever. All you need is bread and spices, and as I said, this is not a $2.40 savings, oh no. it is a 2,500% return on your money.
    • leereeves 4y ago
      Don't forget to include the value of the time spent making food yourself.
      • FrontierPsych 4y ago
        Yes, but that is often calculated incorrectly. Like it might take 4 hours to make beans, and people say that. But really, it takes 15 minutes. This is the amount of time to sort and was the dried beans, put the beans in the water. That's it. Then you let the beans simmer for 3 1/2 hours. But people will count the entire 4 hours as time they spent making food. Not saying you do that, but many do. Also, the more one cooks, the faster it gets. First time it might take 45 minutes to make something, but after you make it 15 times, it gets down to 10 minutes. Also, it is about making staple foods, like pasta. Of course if you make some complex dish for the first and only time, every night, that will take a lot of time. But if one has many easy dishes to make, then it is fast. I like oil and balsamic vinegar dressing - to make it from scratch takes me less than a minute to make a big jar of it that will last me 2 or 3 months. It really does not take too long to make one's own food, if one does it correctly.
• bluedino 4y ago
  People of all income groups in the US seem to have problems living within their means. My co-worker and I were talking about how much we spend on groceries per week, and it turns out they spend about twice as much as we do (and we could cut some corners). I'm sure my mother spent half of what we spend. She buys the big container of store brand oatmeal, we buy "better oats". My co-worker buys the cups of individually portioned servings. My mother buys the store brand chocolate milk, we buy fairlife, my co-worker buys individual fairlifes. $8 bottles of salad dressing, more expansive cuts of meat, $15 bags of frozen shrimp, it all adds up. And this is just groceries.
  • neilv 4y ago
    I think the article is speaking more about it being expensive to be poor due to options that are not available. The "living within their means" examples you give sound like a person having the option of spending less money, but choosing not to (or not being aware they had an option that they did).
  • jeffbee 4y ago
    The article is not about folk tales of "living within your means". It is about paying more for the same thing because of various factors like whether you can afford to transport yourself to a better store, whether you have the space to transport and store bulk goods, or the working funds to afford bulk purchases, and whether your dwelling even has a kitchen or refrigerator.
    • josephcsible 4y ago
      > It is about paying more for the same thing because of various factors like whether you can afford to transport yourself to a better store What's a "better store"? I've heard people say Target is better to shop at than Walmart, but Target's prices are usually higher than Walmart's.
      • glasss 4y ago
        A large chain grocery store will usually have better prices than a corner grocer / convenient / liquor store. Some people have to do some grocery shopping there because they can't commute to a Jewel, Safeway, etc.
• remote_phone 4y ago
  It always comes down to education. An educated poor person can pull herself out of poverty within one generation. My parents were dirt poor because their country was devastated by war, but they were able to concentrate on education and were middle class, and now me and my siblings are 1%ers. The problem is the poor areas in the US are exceedingly violent and basically succumb to victimization to explain why they can’t get out of poverty. If they can’t have safety and the culture is to just blame others and not try to better themselves, this is a perfect way to create generational poverty. I think we need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into the most economically devastated areas of the US and first create safe neighborhoods with jobs. Once kids can go to public schools and not worry about violence, that neighborhood will thrive. In order for that to happen we need to INVEST in those communities with more police and more jobs with middle class wages. Instead of $100B to Ukraine we need to invest that money on Americans in South Side Chicago, where there are 50 shootings a weekend, and Baltimore that has live birth rates lower than 3rd world countries, and Missouri and Oakland, etc. Create Amazon warehouses there or whatever can create an impact immediately and then hire a ton of police officers from the community and train them (1 day of training a week). Within a generation it will change the entire city and you will have a thriving middle class where wss once generational poverty.
  • Pigalowda 4y ago
    Why would we want DoD budget going to chicago or Baltimore?
    • remote_phone 4y ago
      Because we spend too much on the military industrial complex and not on our own communities. We are rotting from the inside because we create generational poverty in these communities and just leave them to themselves. Occasionally when a cop kills someone there, we will remember them for a few days and then forget them in a couple of weeks. Over 3000 people were shot in Chicago this year so far. And that’s down 20%. Did you even hear anything about that? We let these poverty-stricken neighborhoods live in violence and don’t do a goddamn thing about it. Meanwhile we feed the military industrial complex to fight wars on the other side of the world. That’s bullshit.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  > If you can qualify for a mortgage, you have a big leg up on people who rent. This is not always true. Often, the price of real estate outpaces rent. I.e. renting is cheaper than buying. As a renter, you're not paying property tax, insurance, repairs, maintenance, and maybe utilities. As a renter, you have no risk. Remember 2008 when housing prices tanked? Making money off your house often depends on how good a negotiator you are. Most people neglect to consider transaction costs. For example, you have to pay your real estate agent 6% of the sale price of the house. The house also may sit vacant for many months waiting for a deal, this is all dead weight cost. The first few years of your mortgage, you aren't gaining much of any equity. It's nearly all interest payments. A renter can walk away any time. This is why renting is better if you're going to stay less than 5 years.
  • Scoundreller 4y ago
    > This is why renting is better if you're going to stay less than 5 years. Sometimes the opposite if you have rent control. Mine can only pass on property tax increases and capital improvements. As monthly strata fees, interest and repairs go up, they can’t pass any on to me. At this rate, I’ll never move out!
    • FlingPoo 4y ago
      I'm in the same boat as you. I live in Southern Ontario (Canada) in a small town (10-14 thousand people). I have a 1000sq/ft apartment, 2 bedrooms, central air/heating . Moved in 15 years ago, rent was $726/month (Canadian dollars obviously). It's rent controlled. 15 years later, I'm now paying $868/month. Just 15 units/apartments here, VERY quiet building. On top of rent, I pay my own hydro, which is about $100/month, water supply is included in rent. I write software for a living, and over the last 15 years I've saved (invested) enough money to buy any house in town for cash. But I don't see the need, I'm single, no kids, and I work from home (second bedroom is my office). I'm 56 now, and am on track to retire in 7-8 years, with low 7 figures saved. The more I save, the more cheap/stingy I become with my money. While I could easily buy a new vehicle for cash, I prefer to keep my (rusted in places) 2010 F-150, I keep it maintained mechanically, and it is still purring along.... except for the rusted rocker panels that is. :) There is VERY rarely any units in my building for rent, all 15 units/apartments are rented by long-term tenants. The only way the landlord/owner can raise the rent is when a tenant moves out. About 5 years ago, the couple across the hall moved out, landlord renovated their apartment, and rented it for $1,800/month (same apartment as mine, just a mirror image). I don't know anything about the US of A, if there is rent control there or not, but it's almost universal in Canada for "purpose built" commercial rental buildings. Private rental units, like privately owned condos and houses, they can raise the rent as much as they want AFAIK.
• whatever1 4y ago
  Simple things that have little effect for an upper middle class family can completely devastate a poor one. If you own a 20 y.o. car that you bought for 3k to commute to work it will for sure break down. You go to the mechanic and they quote you 4k, while you live paycheck by paycheck. Now you cannot drive to work. In non coastal America, that typically has 0 public transportation, you are now convicted to bankruptcy. An upper middle class family just buys a new car every 5-6 years and they avoid most of the maintenance.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    And here I am driving a 17 year old car which is worth less than I make in a week. It doesn’t really break ever either, just some small stuff over the years.
    • 0_____0 4y ago
      You’ve obviously never lived somewhere that salts during the winter. Where road salt is used you don’t see many vehicles that old.
      • ericd 4y ago
        We do, we have a couple Toyotas older than that. Paint tech has come a long way since cars were rusting out left and right.
        • ip26 4y ago
          17yo was actually right in the era of the Toyota rust fiasco.
          • ericd 4y ago
            I vaguely remember that, was that on the trucks, specifically?
      • perceptronas 4y ago
• renewiltord 4y ago
  An interesting thing is that the rich will keep the poor down in a strange way: they'll encourage crime in poor communities, demanding less policing, asking for shoplifters to be let free, etc. resulting in food deserts. The poor want safety and peace and our society wants them to tolerate violence and crime.
  • sockaddr 4y ago
    Can you give some examples of this? I know there exist some humans who may behave in terrible ways like this if given the chance but to think that this is a generalizable behavior among the rich just seems like a stretch.
    • qwerpy 4y ago
      I think what they mean is that people who live in nice neighborhoods and never have to deal with the practical effects of high crime, are often the ones calling for defunding the police, building low barrier homeless shelters in less well-off neighborhoods, etc. Their Teslas parked in their garages in their gated communities will never get broken into or have their catalytic converters sawed off. They earn social virtue points by espousing these views. But the middle class households living in a blue collar neighborhood are constantly getting their packages stolen, mailboxes and cars broken into, even occasional gunfire once in a while. Unfortunately, they don't have the disposable income to handle these mishaps easily.
      • renewiltord 4y ago
        Precisely this. In the Bay Area, the rich areas have slow streets, stop signs, and police. The poor areas should not have speeding enforcement or red light enforcement or stop sign enforcement because of racial disparity due to excess policing in poor neighborhoods. If poor neighborhoods have more stringent speeding enforcement, that means the streets there are safer! A lot of these are defacto policy here in the Bay Area (another commenter accurately surmised I'm in SF - I am). You won't find someone making it explicit policy every time but as sibling commenter has mentioned, it is how things are done here.
• odysseus 4y ago
  I can’t find much in this article about why food deserts exist in the first place. One big reason is it costs more to deliver food into high crime areas. It costs more to secure the property and employees who work in those areas.
  • boppo1 4y ago
    I find there are lots of omissions like this in addressing societal issues these days. Hard to pin down why.
  • tutorialmanager 4y ago
    A bit like how CVS closed 6 stores in San Francisco in Jan. 2022 because of unstopable crime.
• 10g1k 4y ago
  I spent far too long in a job where I was supposedly earning around the average salary for my city. But I had almost zero disposable income because the cost of rent was so high. People just one paygrade higher than me were able to afford vacations all over the place, because a tiny bit of extra pay each payday meant more disposable income. If( (salary - requirements) == 0 ){ You are screwed. } If( (salary - requirements) > 0 ){ It snowballs. } Luckily I quit, and now earn more than the directors where I worked before. :)
  • kens 4y ago
    That reminds me of the quote from David Copperfield: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Translation for those unfamiliar with obsolete English currency: 19 pounds 19 shillings 6 pence is 6 pence short of 20 pounds. 20 pounds 0 shillings 6 pence is 6 pence over 20 pounds. The point is that the very small amount of 6 pence over or under your income makes all the difference.
• BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 4y ago
  Coming out of a spell of intermittent contract work, I found a job a 30-45 minute commute away. I rented a car from a shop that offered older cars for decent rates for the first few months before taking a loan for a new car. Because I was enrolled in a car sharing service for a few years before, I had an insurance record and got a good rate. If you don't have a daily commute, car sharing services can be a very good deal.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  It is worse than the bar chart implies. If you are rich and your housing is costing $5k a month, because you want to live centrally, or in a massive house, you have the choice to downsize and put up with living not so centrally, or a smaller house. The poor person might already be in the cheapest accommodation it is possible to get. In Australia for example, if someone gets a government allowance due to unemployment, it will cover renting a room, and then maybe $10 or $20 a week for food or something like that. Basically it doesn't cover the cost of living. They can't downsize. To what? There is a base level of accommodation cost. Similarly there are a bunch of other jettisonable features of the rich person's life. Their health insurance is better, they buy convenient and funky food that is delivered fresh, they have nicer cars and so on.
  • brailsafe 4y ago
    True, but many of them think they're richer than they are, and develop dependencies on things that max out all of their income and going into so much debt that they don't realize how little volatility they can actually handle.
• adriand 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • Eextra953 4y ago
    Thank you for this comment. I read the article and it really resonated with my experiences while growing up. Unfortunately, reading the comments here makes it clear how ignorant and uninformed lots of the HN crowd is regarding socio-economic issues. These are not new problems. There are fields of study dedicated to understanding poverty and its effects on people. There is no excuse for the ignorance and callousness of some of these comments.
• pmulard 4y ago
  One thing the post didn’t touch on with regards to health care - it’s tied to employment. On one hand, we have tech companies covering all out of pocket expenses, and on the other, we have service industry people who can’t even get health care from their employer. The same can be said for childcare, free meals at work, etc.
• aaron695 4y ago
• DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I'm really tired of such analyses. Money, money, money. Quality of life is not measured by money per se. We've made money into an excessively big issue in the US. Money is just supposed to reduce friction in trade so you don't have to make ten trades to get the thing you really want. Poverty is not about money. It's about all the myriad ways we say "Fuck you" to "the wrong kind of people." Wrong skin color. Wrong gender. Wrong sexual orientation. Etc. I don't even know where to begin. You can't solve a problem from the same mindset that created it and actively keeps it alive.
  • judge2020 4y ago
    I don't see how you prove your point. It's basic economics that, in the job market, supply and demand are the forces that set the amount of money any job will pay, so a job that anyone can do might pay $10 an hour, while a highly-specialized job might require paying $100 an hour to attract that smaller group of people to consider dedicating their skills to that job. None of that involves any of the attributes you've mentioned. And it's tough to believe you when you say that "money is not the mindset" then go on to say "money is just how we exchange our value for goods and services without making 10 trades to get what we want".
    • DoreenMichele 4y ago
      One of the biggest risk factors for homelessness is being LGBTQ. Now explain that one by saying who gets hired or whatever has nothing to do with anything I said.
      • judge2020 4y ago
        In a town of 1000 people, if 100 are homeless, and 25 are LGBTQ, that certainly does spell out that the town has a discrimination problem. However, that doesn't mean that homelessness is guaranteed if you're openly LGBTQ, nor does it mean that everyone who is homeless is LGBTQ. It just means that it's a big risk factor. So while discrimination of protected classes is still likely the biggest factor in homelessness in the US, it's not the only thing, and thus it's demonstrably false that "Poverty is not about money. It's about all the myriad ways we say 'Fuck you' to 'the wrong kind of people.'". If you solved discrimination overnight, we'd still have homelessness.
• ravivooda 4y ago
  On this post, - the first level commenter: Empathetically describes the problems of a person/family in poverty. - the second level commenter: No I disagree with what you are saying. Here is how they should have approached the problem. This reminds me of how much divided our society is, the have's vs have-nots
  • judge2020 4y ago
    It's important to approach it from both POVs. We need to reiterate that, as humans, we are all the same in that our struggles emit terrible emotions that either deprive us of our liberties or freedoms (freedom to spend time doing what you want when you want to do it). And doing this might turn people to different political parties, causes, and charities that will help achieve this. But going straight to "everyone gets free rent" isn't exactly likely, so throwing out ideas that might only requires maybe 10 years of political shenanigans to move the needle is better than going far into the unrealistic category.
    • thebradbain 4y ago
      We haven’t really moved the needle on anything in regards to lowering the COL (except, maybe and in only some circumstances, healthcare, but look at how far we have to go and how bad the political backlash was) in… at least two decades? Maybe three? Federal minimum wage hasn’t even increased from $7.25 since 2009. In 1997 it was $5.15 (or $9.55 in 2022 dollars, so even 25 years ago we paid workers more than we do today) Maybe it’s time to start putting those crazy ideas out there, because the status quo is proving more and more unsustainable
  • Eextra953 4y ago
    Thank you for pointing this out. I am disappointed by how ignorant so many commenters are when it comes to socio-economic issues.
    • vpilcx 4y ago
      That's because many of them from the Elon Musk school of problem solving. "You're poor? Work harder. Get a better job. First principles." "You're unhealthy? Exercise more. Eat better food. First principles."
• 29athrowaway 4y ago
  What is better, one banana today or 2 bananas tomorrow? If you do the math for these intertemporal choices with different combinations of time and rewards, the answer is hyperbolic discounting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting Behavioral economics is part of the knowledge that predatory people use to exploit the poor.
  • brailsafe 4y ago
    Ideally you'd want want one banana today and one tomorrow, especially if all you can afford is one banana per day.
• stevecalifornia 4y ago
  As a landlord of single family homes, I have to look at the detailed credit history of potential tenants. Before I even get to that stage I let them know the income requirements, etc. so usually we are looking at the top 3 applicants out of the 30 that applied. With almost no exception, the renters make horrible financial decisions that set them up to work until they die. The average credit report I see is about a 500 and it's filled with missed payments, loans sent to collections, etc. Then, right at the top, in the last two or three months will be new loans for expensive cars and jewelery. It's mindboggling and sad. Most of my tenants have a nicer car than me (I own a pretty vanilla $30k sedan). The renters usually come just above the 3x income to rent ratio and they never fail to pay their rent. But I don't really ever forsee them owning a home if they continue to make luxury purchases that prevent them from saving. The loan industry really enables a life of debt.
  • fathyb 4y ago
    > The loan industry really enables a life of debt. It really does, and I've seen so many people fall into it, especially at the beginning of their career. Financial responsibility should be something taught early on at schools. With cryptos today, maybe even with the risks behind investing. That said, I'm glad I live in the majority of countries where someone more privileged than me cannot judge my financial decisions to give me access to housing. I consider myself financially responsible, and credit scores aren't a thing here anyway, but I find it very disturbing.
    • josephcsible 4y ago
      What happens in your country if you move into a house and then just stop paying?
      • into_infinity 4y ago
        It is pretty unusual in most parts of the world for landlords to get access to one's credit records. Credit reporting is a pretty US-specific phenomenon, even if you're applying for a bank loan or a credit card. You usually present proof of earnings and possibly references from previous landlords. And if you get unlucky - well, same as in the US, in many of the nicest markets, you're facing an uphill battle to evict people.
• bigmattystyles 4y ago
  I've never been poor in the sense that when I was young and didn't have much or any money to my name, my parents were well into the middle class and if my back was against the wall (or even near it), they were a phone call away. That being said, at that time, fucking overdraft fees. I remember doing the math of whether I could afford something on my debit card and the times I was wrong, not realizing it for a few days (had to go to an ATM to check balance back in the day) and each transaction with a balance below 0 incurred a $35 penalty. How could that be legal? It said everything you needed to know about our laws really.
• pSYoniK 4y ago
  It's really shocking to see the disconnect between middle-ish class and everyone below them. The same way I find it shocking to see how the same group almost worships millionaires/billionaires thinking they can easily enter those classes if they just work hard, I find it shocking to see how little critical thinking is applied to seeing the problem from someone else's perspective. My family was poor, but luckily due to a number of circumstances, we had a place to live and we had access to a gas cooker and grandparents that could provide the raw ingredients for food - the beans, flour, meat that people keep quoting. Without those, we couldn't have made it through many months of me growing up. I was also fortunate enough to have access to those as I know the importance of a healthy diet for a child growing up. None of the vegetables we got from them or the meat was processed, filled with pesticides or other chemicals or any growth hormones or antibiotics. Remove this safety net which was obtainable through hard work (it's a lot and I really mean it, a lot of work to grow plants and vegetables when almost all farming is done using manual tools) and I might've suffered from the same problems some of my classmates at the time - overweight, underweight, etc... While most raw ingredients can be cheap, even cheap is relative. Through an even darker period in life, I had the chance to see first hand what it meant to not have enough money to even get to the next month. When all outgoings are 120-125% of your monthly income, there is nowhere else to go. I used to smoke (a lot) smuggled cigarettes (couldn't afford buying them at the shop) because it was cheaper than eating and they are appetite suppressants. So instead of spending money on buying food (let's say 5 dollars per family in my part of the world per day) we'd smoke (1 dollar per day) and live of whatever we could get for free. It generally meant one meal per day (not nutritious at all because surprisingly most foodbanks aren't filled with organic avocados). This then brings me to the last point which is - you might not know how to cook it, you might not have time to cook it (I had worked a job at a point where I would start at 6 AM to 10 PM to make enough to get some food) and you might just not have money to buy those things. A recent scheme to place immigrants in the UK places them in modified hotels. Your average hotel room doesn't have a kitchen so that means you can at most cook something in a microwave. Pot noodles (one pack per day in a good scenario) is what most people eat in that scenario. Your 50 cent organic bananas each can be a pack of instant noodles (36 cents at walmart for beef noodles) which can hide your hunger and maybe leave you enough for your children or to pay those pesky electricity/heating/gas bills. Never forget the fact that having a shelter, food and safety are privileges. We like to think that they are rights, but if that's the case, we failed more than half the planet. Be happy for being able to sleep with a full belly, in a warm room and a locked door, a lot of people can't afford those things.
• bombcar 4y ago
  > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness. Even if the poor are smart and well behaved this will still apply.
  • e-master 4y ago
    Reminds me how my mother used to say that we’re not rich enough to buy cheap things. I think it must be some proverb somewhere, but I only ever heard it from her.
    • xlii 4y ago
      It’s quite common. I heard exact same anecdote about boots from my grandfather loooong time ago. It’s possible that author hadn’t had chance to hear in “in the wild”. I believe it’s one of those wisdoms passed from generation to generation.
      • postsantum 4y ago
        I believe this was a marketing strategy of some boots maker that went viral
        • xlii 4y ago
          I was curious and decided to check - there’s Wikipedia page about it. Looks like it Pratchett wasn’t first and took from general wisdom but that specific anecdote was popularized by the book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
• WhiteBlueSkies 4y ago
  This is true, it's a vicious cycle but it's not only about poverty. It's about human life in general. When something goes wrong other things follow it. Having health problems directly implies that your career will suffer that your dating life will suffer that your finances will suffer. It's all connected. The good news is that it's not as bleak as improving one area improves the others as well and people just don't need as much money as is advertised to lead happy lives. When I had very little money I was much happier. I've been utterly depressed in a 4 star hotels and happy as a clam in a single room crap-hole with very poor heat isolation. What I've learned is that if you aren't happy living modestly you are compensating for some deeper issue by throwing money at cars and things. Whenever I see a Westerner concerned about money I realise they have much bigger problems that aren't being addressed. Yes, US is a place where it's really bad to be poor but all you need to get out of the cycle is for a single time to get lucky. And that's it suddenly you are on an upward trajectory with compounding success. I think everyone should experience at least once in their lives how it is to be poor. If they don't get traumatised by the experience and become misers constantly scared of losing their wealth then they win if not then it's really sad. Rich people who are petrified of losing their wealth look utterly miserable.
• dhosek 4y ago
  Back in the 90s in L.A., I remember that that some grocery store chains were routinely more expensive than others (e.g., Vons always cost more than Lucky’s). I found it interesting while exploring some neighborhoods that in lower-income parts of the city, I was more likely to see the more expensive grocery chain than the less expensive one. And that’s putting aside the whole food desert issue with South Central where there weren’t any grocery stores at all. I’m not sure how the grocery situation looks now.
• panick21_ 4y ago
  Lets all say it together: Car dependency and bad city planning. This is literally the majority of the problem. If you have a walkable town, you don't need a car for your basic you need to live. You just walk to the store. Also, because going to a store is not a car trip, you can do it every day, or every other day. You don't need a insanely large fridge and freezers that Americans seem to have. You can also take advantage of temporary price reductions. Towns built around walkability, bikes and public transport are just superior in every way that we can measure, from health to water use and so on. The US needs to fundamentally change its approach to cities and towns. You can't have poor people working in cities to provide services and then force them to live in some Cul-de-Sac cheap house 1-2h drive outside of the city. I highly suggest people listen to Peter Calthorpe, who coined the turn Transit Oriented Development. Here some great videos that are worth checking out, one general, one about California: - General/China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqldZhxl86I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqldZhxl86I - Cali: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtdFbK4YG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtdFbK4YG4 This article is missing the forest while talking about trees.
  • josephcsible 4y ago
    > because going to a store is not a car trip, you can do it every day, or every other day. You don't need a insanely large fridge and freezers that Americans seem to have. I don't want to go to the store that often. Going to the store twice takes way longer than going once and buying twice as much stuff, even if you don't count driving time. > You can also take advantage of temporary price reductions. I can do that now, by buying a bunch of food when it's on sale, then loading it all into my car and putting it in my fridge and freezer that have room for all of it. In your world, I couldn't do that.
    • panick21_ 4y ago
      > I don't want to go to the store that often. Then don't, its not forced on anybody. What you are missing is that you think of going to the store as a trip in off itself. If you like in a walkable community, going to store is just something you do on the side. I might bring some of my recycling to the center, go to a friends place to hang out then on my way home I quickly go to the store and pick up a few thing that I am missing. Or simply on my way home from work. Or sometimes I just go because its a nice couple minutes walk in the fresh hair and I can get some fresh bread. > I can do that now, by buying a bunch of food when it's on sale, then loading it all into my car and putting it in my fridge and freezer that have room for all of it. In your world, I couldn't do that. You realize that you just said that you need a car and a large fridge and freezer to save money right? I have neither of those and pretty sure that saves money. Often those lower priced things are not huge bulk products that you can buy at lower price in unlimited quantity. What I am talking about is that usually there is a box with lots of stuff that is close to expiry date that you can pick up for cheap.
• waynesonfire 4y ago
  Yeah if I wasn't poor I'd buy a farm to create food for myself. Why pay someone else to make the boots! But a farm costs lots of money, and though I have leather boots, I'm still paying to be poor in other ways. In many many ways. This doesn't just affect Americans. The article describes an obvious concept to anyone not privileged.
• FrontierPsych 4y ago
  I hate articles like this, and especially the "boots" example. Like most things, it sounds great in theory. Reality is usually much different. >“Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars." So he makes $38 per month...where is that other money going? As a cowboy, he is spending that on whiskey and prostitutes. We've all seen the movies. These days, it is the exact same thing where people spend their excess money on crap - big screen tv's, and that kind of stuff, even if they are very poor. People do not do comparison shopping to get the right price. People wait to the bitter end before they fill up their car with gasoline, and do it at the gas station that costs $.50 cents more per gallon, but they travel past a station that is less expensive all the time, they are just not near it when they absolutely need gas at that second - they could fill up their tank when it is 1/4 tank left at the cheap gas station - people don't plan ahead. It's pretty easy to lift oneself out of poverty in many (not all) cases, but people are ruled by emotions and what they want at this second. People don't plan. They don't comparison shop. When they get a little extra cash to buy in bulk quantities on some kind of thing like a great toilet paper sale - they spent the money on a dinner at a restaurant instead, because "they deserve it". I'm not saying this is the same with all poor people - if you are a single mother with 2 young children, well, that's tough if you have nobody to help you out. . Furthermore, that cowboy in the example could go out and try to get a side hustle. Make enough extra to get more basics. And the "food deserts" are complete bullshit, in reality. Yes, there are places that don't have large grocery stores, for sure. BUT, when I looked at a map in Chicago, for instance, there are Costcos and all kinds of stores that are 5 miles away. There's no desert, unless you mean that there's no grocery stores within a block. But one of my relatives lived in a remote area and traveled 1 hour to get to Costco to make big purchases of living staples. So if a poor person doesn't have a car, well, they need to work - find someone who has a car that can drive you there and split expenses. Find a church that has a van to travel there. Yes, you have to work at it a little bit, I personally am not going to life someone up and carry them piggyback for 5 miles because they don't want to work at finding someone to help them. I'm looking at ALL this stuff in the article and it's almost all bullshit...but one does have to try to figure it out. It is not super easy, but it isn't super hard either. The main problem, though, is that people just don't want to what is necessary.
  • 4y ago
• naveen99 4y ago
  nonsense headline and thesis.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  In the UK we make it much cheaper to be poor than <whatever you call the 20% of people above the poor>. That's nice, but it also means we have a lot more poor people, and that people trying to stop being poor get fucked. I am not justifying either choice. I am just saying you pick your problem and live with it...
• RickJWagner 4y ago
  Inflation really hurts the poor. When you can't afford groceries at $70 a week you surely can't afford groceries at $120.
• air7 4y ago
  I was shocked to learn what "Credit Card" means in the US. Here (Israel) a Credit Card is always connected to a bank account and at the end of each month the accumulated debt is just recovered from the balance. It's done automatically and you would get a very stern phone call (from your bank) if you balance is not enough. Of course, the CC companies and banks would be happy to give you a loan with outrageous interest rates, but that takes a phone call, or a form on their website. From a human fallibility point of view, American CCs are evil.
  • Redoubts 4y ago
    > Of course, the CC companies and banks would be happy to give you a loan with outrageous interest rates, but that takes a phone call I mean it’s exactly the same here, except the loan doesn’t require a phone call. There’s no interest if you pay off your card every month.
• black_13 4y ago
• wizofaus 4y ago
  "One analysis of tax burdens relative to income suggests that in ten US states the percentage of income spent on taxes by low-income people is six times greater than that paid by the wealthy" The footnote is to a study at https://itep.org/whopays/ https://itep.org/whopays/ - is this a reputable study? If so the findings seem like something people should be objecting to in the strongest terms possible - I'd be horrified if it were true in Australia. But at the highest level it seems to contradict the usual numbers you see floated around where the wealthiest X% pay Y% of all taxes (where X is considerably less than Y).
• nunez 4y ago
  The cost of renting furniture surprised me. My wife and I were looking for a dining room table to rent for Thanksgiving. Our house has a dining room that goes largely unused, as its just the two of us and we eat in the kitchen. However, we were having a large party for Thanksgiving and wanted to make sure that everyone had a place to sit, but just for that day, hence the need for a table rental. She found a great listing on Rent a Center: a perfect table for $24/week. Perfect! Then we saw the fine print: You couldn't rent anything for less than three months, and late fees were SUPER high. We would have needed to spend at least $360 to rent this table, which makes no sense! The kicker? This table was a $500 table. I feel bad for people that have no choice but to rent furniture.
• bonnetdedouche 4y ago
  I just do not understand the concept of renting a property. If you can't live there, let other people do! How good is that system for society? You're rich enough to buy extra property, then you make money of poorer people. That's sick.