29 ms·

Being poor vs. being broke

• rsyring 1y ago
  https://blog.ctms.me/about/ https://blog.ctms.me/about/ It would appear from the about page and the article that he has the requisite skills to earn an income that should move him out of the "poor" category: - auto mechanic - digital tech - landscaping I'm not trying to dismiss the difficult realities associated with being poor. But if you have the skills to make more money and bring your family out of the "poor" category, why wouldn't you do that? IMO, basic financial security for your family should trump "I like to work outside." He obviously has different priorities, which is fine. But I'm not sure the search for sympathy/empathy in the blog post is warranted.
  • cluckindan 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • rsyring 1y ago
      I read every word of the article and the about page.
      • cluckindan 1y ago
        Then why did you present fallacious arguments which were already discussed over several paragraphs?
        • tome 1y ago
          Perhaps you could elaborate, because I read the article and the About page too, and I don't understand what you're getting at.
          • cluckindan 1y ago
            ”It would appear from the about page and the article that he has the requisite skills to earn an income that should move him out of the "poor" category: - auto mechanic - digital tech - landscaping” cf. ”The other mindset is poor people are lazy. Quit complaining and do it yourself! Just get a better job! Get a second job! There’s money out there, you just have to go get it.”
            • tome 1y ago
              So is it your belief that the author currently considers himself poor? (FWIW, I don't think he does.)
              • dugidugout 1y ago
                Why is anyone assuming this? It was the GP of this chain who was providing this assumption. The OP was commenting on the condition of being poor and the meaningful difference between the commonly experienced condition of being "broke". This entire digression is likely a reflection of what motivated OP to put this post together.
                • tome 1y ago
                  I don't know, but it seems that rsyring and cluckindan are both assuming it, and at odds about a counterfactual.
                  • cluckindan 1y ago
                    I’m just pointing out the other is assuming it.
            • rsyring 1y ago
              > The other mindset is poor people are lazy. Quit complaining and do it yourself! Just get a better job! Get a second job! There’s money out there, you just have to go get it.” There are more options than the "mindsets" given in the article. It is legitimate to ask someone who believes they are poor why they are poor. Maybe they truly are. But maybe they aren't and they just don't know it. Questioning whether or not someone has a higher earning potential does not imply they are currently lazy.
        • rsyring 1y ago
          What was fallacious about my OP? He asserts that being poor is different from being broke. The former being tied to a permanent state. But, if you have the skills and opportunity to make better-than-poor money, then in most cases, I presume, you aren't really poor. It's only a matter of time until you can make additional money. And if you need to charge the $300 of parts to your credit card, on the presumption that if you have a running vehicle you can go to an interview of do the next landscaping job, you have a reasonable expectation of being able to pay it off. It's an investment in that case. There are all kinds of reasons why you might find yourself poor anyway for reasons outside your control. Health issues, weird economic situations, whatever. I'm not discounting them. And maybe they apply here. I just feel like there is a disconnect between the earning potential of the skills he has and being truly "permanently" poor. I'm not arguing there isn't a legitimate reason, just that it wasn't clear to me what that reason would be. You may not like the reasoning or think I'm being too critical, but it's hardly fallacious.
    • alaxhn 1y ago
      The article directly mentions that the author has done complete engine rebuilds. Mechanics who can do things like engine rebuilds (efficiently) can crack six figures in a MCOL area although this industry does tend to expect quite a bit of work (e.g. 50 hours a week probably and not just M-F). Similarly the about page of the author mentions that they didn't like working in tech and left. The author seems to have all of the tools to make well above the median national salary and afford the proverbial white picket fence house with a wife and two kids. Therefore it seems that the author is making a choice to be poor and many of us would find this choice questionable. Coupled with the author stating things like "Should I kill myself for capitalism" this reads like a fairly typical far-left rant against the inhumanity of actually having to work for a living. The author should check their privilege. There are many rungs below what the author describes and people in this environment would kill for the job of doing engine rebuilds 50 hours per week to earn a six figure salary and support their family. Hey Dom we all find work tough a good chunk of the time and none of us would do it without the paycheck so we aren't exactly feeling sympathy that you don't like it and are choosing to force your family to live in miserable conditions because you don't want to embrace the grind.
      • bombcar 1y ago
        If you have six kids and a wife and don't work I'm pretty sure most states in the USA will pay you quite nicely. Probably not a good life, but a great life by any historical standard. But you'd have to write blogs convincing yourself that you're doing the right thing.
    • nyeah 1y ago
      It's an obvious conclusion to draw when folks seem to be unaware of the content of the article. But you're not supposed to say it.
      • cluckindan 1y ago
        I don’t want to live in a world where anything resembling wilful ignorance of systemic inequality is propagated uncontested. Chalk it up to wilful ignorance if you must.
  • philipwhiuk 1y ago
    I was unconvinced he was writing about his current state, but a prior state / maybe his family background.
    • rsyring 1y ago
      I hadn't considered that until reading comments like this. It's possible...probable even. In that case, was he really poor? His whole argument is that being poor is a permanent state. If he's not poor now, was he ever?
      • QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
        His comment that you can get out- two people did- may either be a claim that his own escape doesn’t prove that escape is possible for all, or a batman reference. I lack the media literacy to be sure which.
        • dugidugout 1y ago
          It fits the Batman reference, somewhat. Bruce Wayne (Batman's public-facing identity) was imprisoned in a pit where he was the second person to ever escape. What I find a bit ironic, is this allegory can be used to reach the opposite perspective OP is trying to dispel. The bit about the "hopefulness" doesn't only refer to the light at the opening of the pit, but also in that the "escape" mechanism was actually being facilitated by the prison. This "escape" was supposedly designed to enact the "true despair" the OP was highlighting. The element they left out, was the fact this was done by extending a "support" rope from the opening which was deliberately too short to be useful. This causes Bruce to muster his own raw physical and mental strength to make the climb without the rope and ultimately prevail through personal will-power. I guess OP would say Bruce is actually only "broke" here and not "poor".
      • lotyrin 1y ago
        System thinking please. Can every person in poverty become IT employed? Start a landscaping business? If they did would that likely cause a whole brand new set of problems? What jobs are these people currently doing? Don't those jobs need to be done? Can our society afford them to be done? Shouldn't anyone contributing to society (or legitimately unable to) be permitted to thrive? What could we do that would permit that? What do we do currently which harms it? If there are jobs are legitimately not worth doing or paying someone to thrive while doing, why do those jobs exist? If these people aren't capable (or even willing) to do these jobs (or better jobs), why? How can we motivate or train people. (Lots of education, healthcare and especially psychotherapy are missing, I can tell you that.) We can't solve poverty by thinking "well, some individuals might be able to solve theirs". It's a whole population, we have to solve for the whole population.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • Jotra7 1y ago
    [dead]
  • wat10000 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure the author's membership in the "poor" category is in the past tense.
    • wat10000 1y ago
      I poked around their blog some more out of curiosity and I can't figure out what his situation is. In a year-old article about burnout and vacation, he mentions burning out from a job in marketing, and ends by saying therapy isn't an option because he lives under the poverty line and can't even afford to get vital blood work done. Maybe this hit so hard that it actually made him unable to do more remunerative work. But it sure feels like he's poor by choice. Which is odd because this article seems like a pretty good description of what it's like to be poor not by choice. There is an almost throwaway line that stands out at me now: "Should I work a second job and never see my wife? My kids? Should I never have any personal time? Should my entire life revolve around money? Should I kill myself for capitalism?" The rest of the article is about how you can't just choose to stop being poor. And in the middle of all this is something that boils down to, "I could stop being poor, I just don't like the tradeoff." Which is certainly his right, but it makes this whole thing feel like poverty cosplay.
      • msandford 1y ago
        "I could stop being poor, I just don't like the tradeoff." I feel like this is an ugly truth, but still a truth. It's also very ugly. For some people there's no tradeoff on how much they have to suffer to get some financial security because they already have it. Some people have to suffer a bit but quickly hit escape velocity. Some people never stop suffering. It's terrible. I think Dave Ramsey has many annoying qualities but his "sometimes you have to act crazy to get out of it" is basically correct even if it's very, very uncomfortable IMO.
        • wat10000 1y ago
          It's one of those difficult topics that people like to take to extremes. Many poor people are in difficult situations with no clear way out. They're already working the best paying job they can find, as much as they can, and doing as much as they can to advance. Learning new skills requires time and energy they don't have. Some are poor by choice. They could put in more hours, get a second job, or learn new skills, and escape the trap. But they don't want to. This might be "lazy," or it might be "prioritizes family time," or whatever. But as soon as you say that some people are really stuck no matter how hard they try to get out, it's taken as saying nobody can ever get out of it. And if you say that some people can get out of it and don't, it's taken as saying every poor person is just lazy. What's curious about this post is that it seems like a pretty good insider description of being completely stuck, except the author isn't.
  • switchbak 1y ago
    Not just that, they appear to have 6 kids. I have a lot of empathy for people that are struggling financially, especially with how hard things are now. I grew up in a way that most would consider to be "poor", though I mostly never felt that way. I do well for myself now, better than I ever thought I could, and yet still I had to think very hard about the financial implications and compromises that come with choosing to have kids. Making 6 babies then complaining that you're poor, come on man, wtf? If you're going to do that, you have to do absolutely whatever you can to bring resources in for your family. That means working the "boring desk job" if it pays more, even if you prefer to be outside wiring up sprinklers. Where is the accountability, the locus of self control? Sorry, but I don't buy any of this.
    • strix_varius 1y ago
      This gets me too. I generally agree that success is basically luck * effort, so I don't judge people who haven't been able to "make it." Similarly, I don't really admire people for having "made it"... If I don't know them personally, there's no way for me to gauge the ratio of luck and effort. However, I do judge adults who aren't in good circumstances who also decide to bring children into their hardship. I have two kids, which is the most I felt I could provide for (time, money, attention, energy, etc).
    • bombcar 1y ago
      I don't see how you can be "dirt poor" of the way explained if you live in the USA and have 6 kids. Even the "worst" state in the USA will give tons of assistance quite high with 6 kids.
  • billfor 1y ago
    - Cancel Netflix - Make food at home - Stop going to Starbucks - Fix it yourself - Don’t upgrade your phone I have money and I do all of these things. It's got nothing to do with being poor. More of just a best practice imho.
    • nyeah 1y ago
      In the article he says those things are not really relevant, because he's already been doing them at 100% for a long time.
    • DonsDiscountGas 1y ago
      Poor people should have Amazon prime because it doubles as fast delivery, and zero other streaming services. Staying in is always going to be cheaper than going out so some entertainment at home is a good idea.
      • bombcar 1y ago
        Poor people shouldn't be buying shit on Amazon, nor should they be spending money on Prime. They'd be better off with DVDs from the library. The problem is the same as with dieting; we do know what we need to do but the willpower required is quite high. And the world is engineered to make it hard, because they want to separate us from what money we do have.
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • s5300 1y ago
          [dead]
  • pixl97 1y ago
    >landscaping You're not going to make any money in this unless you have a ton of tools. Working for someone else with the tools generally doesn't pay crap. Also in the US it is/was common to use undeclared immigrant labor for these kinds of jobs.
    • kmoser 1y ago
      Also, I imagine if you live in the middle of nowhere, landscaping skills would be all but useless. You need to be within reasonable distance of enough people willing to pay you a living wage.
• rwmj 1y ago
  I feel like this is an AI summary of https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-the-experience-of-being-poor-ish https://residentcontrarian.substack.com/p/on-the-experience-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139)
  • j16sdiz 1y ago
    Not an summary, I think. TFA said something cancel Netflix as "advice for getting through being broke". This is not in the "original" article you linked. Could be AI (I honestly don't know), but it is not a "summary".
    • rwmj 1y ago
      Well the other article is 10 times better, so everyone should go read that one instead :-)
  • philipwhiuk 1y ago
    If it is then his AI policy lies..
• andunie 1y ago
  I don't understand what am I supposed to do with this information. Now that I know what it means to be poor what should I do?
  • aduwah 1y ago
    You are now educated about being poor. Enjoy!
  • smcg 1y ago
    This information should inform your political and personal decisions relating to poverty going forward.
  • eptcyka 1y ago
    Go back to reading man pages for fun - your venture into non-technical writing was a failed experiment.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • acuozzo 1y ago
    Remember it before considering giving advice to the poor and... just don't.
• dukeofdoom 1y ago
  It's also owning lower quality goods, that plague you by breaking all the time. So the maintenance cost (time and energy) is quite high. It's almost better not to have things when you're poor, because the things you have are just a big headache. I think it's also that increasingly working people are living in old houses that were never built properly, and now have lots of problems. And even new things you buy, are just kind of annoying. I have an LG electric stove. Instead of modulating heat, it pulses the burner top. So you can't effectively lower the heat, just extend the time it takes to cook. The oven timer doesn't turn off, it tries to keep the food warm, and plays chime every minute. Exactly opposite of what I want, since I cook food for my dog and want the food to cool off. And it's stuff like that, the constant annoyance of dealing with badly designed products, and things breaking. I had 2 driers break (all plastic parts), and a washing machine that started leaking oil inside that damaged the clothes in the last year. It's the cumulative effect of dealign with lower quality things.
  • energy123 1y ago
    I've heard it described that being poor is expensive. The poorer you are the more expensive it is. Being poor in a poor country is the most expensive. You can't just buy coffee, you can only afford a sachet of coffee. So per gram you're paying double. You can't afford medical care, so the condition gets worse and thus more expensive to do something about. You're in debt most of the time, which is expensive. You have to travel for work, again expensive. You rent, expensive. It must be awful.
    • gdulli 1y ago
      When I think of so many people who can least afford to do so buying everyday items at dollar stores, CVS, gas stations, and other convenience stores with such high unit prices it bums me out.
    • kgwgk 1y ago
      > You can't just buy coffee, you can only afford a sachet of coffee. Imagine if they tried to do without coffee until they saved a few dollars for a can. It could take years!
• WheelsAtLarge 1y ago
  Very true but I also think that being poor is a mindset to change. I've known of people that would couch surf but they were never poor. We knew, they knew, that at anytime they could turn it around, and they did. They wanted to do things that were not the norm so they chose not to follow society's norms so they lacked money and they lived day to day. Once they changed their mind set they were able to work their way to an American middle class. It was not easy but they did it. They had little money but they were never poor. Then there's the other side. Families that can never get out. Families that have been poor for generations. Sure there are valid reason but I also think it's a mindset that needs to change. The multi-million dollar question is: how?
  • aduwah 1y ago
    I can give you an example. Single divorced mother with two kids. Working in social care for minimal wage, often earning lower amounts than the people she cares for. There are no savings, no relatives to help. Job change is an uncertainty that could introduce homelessness for the whole family if it doesn't work out. Not many options there. Now if you move this scenario out of rich countries it will get even worse
    • vdqtp3 1y ago
      My mental poster child for "poor" is exactly this person. She had three kids (all in public school), lived in section 8 and worked part-time bagging groceries. The kids had nothing nice, clothes were all hand-me-down or donations with holes in them from being so old. No car, no health care, horrible dentistry to the point of becoming an emergency. They had a bigger TV than my middle class family, a premium channel package, and ordered pizza not infrequently. I get all the arguments, but when you're working 20 hours a week and living off food stamps and subsidized housing you don't get to have luxuries AND complain about being poor. The person described in TFA as being poor is rare at best.
      • xp84 1y ago
        > you don't get to have luxuries AND complain about being poor. Some people might be inclined to try to drag you for the first half of that statement, and honestly I'm inclined to try to not judge poor people for what I usually assume is one or two small splurges that raise their moods just high enough to not slit their wrists, you know? But I think the second half of the sentence is kinda fair. IF they are self-aware that they are choosing to divert money from more important things, it's their life and I don't really want to pass judgment. If they whine constantly that "the system" is keeping them down while continuously making "unforced" errors with their money, that's when it makes me start to roll my eyes.
• merth 1y ago
  I have poor friends, they spend more on Netflix, Gym, Starbucks, IPhones, steam games etc then me, and they are poor for atleast last 10-20 years. I almost never have any of these and I have given them that classic suggestions like the cancelling the gym membership that he/she rarely or never uses, and it doesnt work, they keep spending money on garbage with money they don't have.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • Jotra7 1y ago
    [dead]
  • jamiek88 1y ago
    Ah all you had to do was mention avocados and we had boomer bingo.
  • moralestapia 1y ago
    This argument is baseless. All those things add up to a couple hundred a month, let's be extreme and say it's $1,000 USD/month. That amount will never move you up in the socioeconomic ladder. You're two-three orders of magnitude away(!). "But it adds up" could argue the midwit, "why don't you just get a job that pays you more", "just invest", "why didn't you buy bitcoin in 2010", "why don't you just buy the winning lottery ticket". I wrote all those in order of increasing stupidity. Not aimed at you @merth, it's just stuff that I've actually heard. Nobody who is wealthy these days got there by skipping Starbucks and instead throwing that dollar in a jar. Nobody. You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely difficult these days because the denominator there is almost zero. As TFA states, people who have not experienced poverty have ZERO idea of what it is like.
    • merth 1y ago
      > You need to cross a threshold of (income/purchasing power) to be able to start building things that matter. It's extremely difficult these days because the denominator there is almost zero. I agree, but you should do both I think, increase your income and decrease your expenses.
• smithkl42 1y ago
  The post does a good job of describing a phenomenological difference between being broke and being poor, and its account seems plausible to me. But what I'm curious about is the causal difference between the two. I've known working class folks who seem like they're getting by fine, even if they're occasionally "broke", and I've known working class folks who are constantly in financial crisis, and definitely fit in the category of "poor". I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills, intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can nevertheless end up in very different places?
  • nathias 1y ago
    think of this way, the less capital you have the more you depend on luck
  • doubled112 1y ago
    > I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills, intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can nevertheless end up in very different places? I don't want to sound dismissive but sometimes it's just luck.
    • janalsncm 1y ago
      Luck really can’t be overstated imo. I was genuinely just lucky to be interested in computer programming as a teenager. I wasn’t thinking about careers, I just wanted to make games. If my interest was basketball my life would have been very different.
      • antisthenes 1y ago
        You were lucky to have the genetics that allowed you to have cognitive capabilities to understand computers and programming. Many people don't and never will. There is always a bottom % of people who are under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society. That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke. Ranting about this is just ranting about human nature. Life isn't fair, some of us will be short, have bad looks, be unappealing to women, etc. And some of us will not have the cognitive capacity to have a job that keeps you above water, forever. The only thing we can do is be compassionate and help out. Maybe eventually we will have enough mastery over genetics where we can make people truly equal in ability.
• ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  I like this guy’s backstory[0]. I grew up in Africa. The poverty I saw, as a child, was foundational in my own personal development. There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes. I have family that dedicated most of their life to fighting poverty (with very limited success). They believe that poverty is probably the single biggest problem in the world, today. Almost every major issue we face, can be traced back to poverty. Income inequality is one thing, but hardcore poverty, as described by the author, is a different beast, and creates a level of desperation that is incredibly dangerous. [0] https://blog.ctms.me/about/ https://blog.ctms.me/about/
  • reaperducer 1y ago
    There are some places in the US, that have that kind of poverty, but I have not seen them, with my own eyes. Americans are very often blind to the poverty in their own backyards. There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in America who do not have electricity or even running water in their homes. I'm always reminded of a photograph from a few years ago in the Navajo Times showing a handful of children sitting in a little clearing bordered by rocks at the top of a hill, surrounded by endless desert. That was their classroom. No desks or chairs. Not even walls, a roof, or a floor. Just out in the open, sitting in the dirt. According to the photo caption, they had to have their classes there because it was the only place where they could get a cellular signal to do their lessons. Edit: I can't believe I found it - October, 2020. (I took a picture of it, and it was still in iPhoto.) Caption: Milton T. Carroll, left, and Wylean Burbank, center, help their daughter Eziellia H. Carroll, a kindergartener at Cottonwood Day School, with her school work on Monday in Fish Point, Ariz. Carroll said he built the circular rock wall to protect his children from the elements. I was wrong about no desk. The three of them share something that looks like it was nailed together from a discarded wooden palette. There's also a plastic milk crate nearby. These are American citizens. In America. It's hard not to go off about the gilded ballrooms and trillion-dollar bonus packages.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • 1y ago
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• tome 1y ago
  I'm confused whether the author is poor, has been poor, has never been poor but has deep understanding of what it's like for other reasons (friends, family, etc.). He writes > I have a van that is falling apart. It needs a lot of work that we cannot afford to do. but I think that should be read as "Imagine that I have ...", because, from his About page, he seems to have an irrigation and landscaping business and plays around with technology on the weekend. I think the article would have been more effective it had been clearer exactly on what basis the author is writing about the experience of poor people.
  • rectang 1y ago
    I think the ambiguity is leading to a better discussion. Many commenters are struggling mightily with the urge to dismiss the author as a lazy moral failure, which would allow them to ignore his arguments as originating from an unreliable source. Since there's not enough information to do that, we're getting a certain amount of discussion of the actual ideas.
    • tome 1y ago
      Hmm, possibly, but from my point of view the fact that he might not be speaking from experience, or at the very least from the experience of someone he has been close to, makes me disinclined to put a lot of weight on his opinions.
• lbrito 1y ago
  The geographic variation on the semantics of poverty always amaze me. Poverty and having a credit card, a van, and a house to live in. No matter how maxed out or broken all of those are, having them automatically means you are not poor in most of the world's point of view. Not to say that the struggles aren't real or that we shouldn't empathize, of course. Just that what strikes me most about these kinds of posts is how the semantics simply implode if you expand your context window just a bit, looking at a broader perspective country-wise.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • forgotoldacc 1y ago
    There are countries where you can have none of those, but still visit a doctor and not worry about violent crime. The dynamics vary.
    • lbrito 1y ago
      That is a great point and probably the most valuable take out of this discussion. We often use wealth as a proxy to well-being, but these kinds of posts shatter that concept. The author is, objectively, _not_ unwealthy. He has a credit card, a large car and a house. But still he struggles and is not well. Well-being is not just wealth, it is also (and more importantly) social safety.
  • renewiltord 1y ago
    On Reddit, I once saw someone saying something like “You never hear about the Chinese having to live out of their cars.” with respect to a pro-communist take. Forgetting the politics, it really brought home to me how mind-blowingly wealthy Americans are. The poor man this guy conceives of has a motor vehicle.
• renewiltord 1y ago
  Sure. That’s the theory. Then I read the book Evicted and I understood. One of the people gets a small windfall. Enough to stop the treadmill. What she does is buy something nice for herself because she “deserves a treat”. Also the sums of money here are humongous. Someone is net -$40k? They need $40k more per year to not be poor? That is the British median income. So this shortfall in money a person needs to be not poor in the US is what half of the people in the UK live under, total. Heck even in Germany that’s the 40th percentile or so. This shows how poor Europeans are compared to Americans. Some half of them are in this comparative state of misery.
  • solveit 1y ago
    Even the US median household income is "only" $83k. Looking at stuff like this + the rest of the blog I'm not convinced the author is any less out of touch than the people this post is criticizing.
  • trinix912 1y ago
    > This shows how poor Europeans are compared to Americans. Some half of them are in this comparative state of misery. If you completely ignore cost of living and public services, then maaaybe, but still quite a stretch ;)
    • TacticalCoder 1y ago
      [dead]
• lubujackson 1y ago
  "Poor" is why razor blades are behind a glass case at Walgreens. Because people steal razor blades, not (just) to use, but to sell at a discount to other poor people. There is also the interesting situation of "newly poor" people getting crushed much faster than people who have been poor a long time. There are community safety nets that bubble up from everyone being cornered all the time. You don't go to the mechanic, but ask that guy who charges $100 and can hack something together so you can get to work this week. You know an old lady around the corner who will take your kids in for the night if you don't make it home for some reason. These aren't solutions, they are patches and stopgaps. But this is also the strength of community that to be more common in the U.S. before suburbs made every family an island.
  • potato3732842 1y ago
    I know it makes a nice clean narrative that's especially appealing to the kind of people who would be in these comments but it probably wasn't suburbs that did this. That sort of community existed and probably still exits the most in places where the population is the least dense. I'm not gonna speculate on what other things could have been more responsible but I have my suspicions.
    • pixl97 1y ago
      >That sort of community existed and probably still exits the most in places where the population is the least dense. I think you misunderstand suburbanism... In those places where the population is not dense the number of people that move commonly is not that high. Again, neighborhoods tend to have longer and deeper roots. Suburbia has little to no community these days.
      • potato3732842 1y ago
        You're getting at what I was hinting at. It's not the literal distance between houses (or lack thereof) that cause this. It's the people and what they think and how they act.
• umvi 1y ago
  It's way more nuanced than this. Ultimately poverty comes down to an individual's ability to be self-sustaining. Take a software engineer, take away their house, job, and all of their money so they are homeless and have literally nothing ("broke"): how quickly can they reach a stable self-sustaining state again? Probably pretty quickly: - Ask family for help (they are anchored in a higher place to help bootstrap you up again - borrow some money, temporarily move back in with parents, etc) - Get a new programming job - Build a small nest egg - Done, back to a self-sustaining state in a short time frame Now take a kid from Baltimore who dropped out of high school and who has no skills. Repeat the scenario - Ask family for help (they probably aren't in much of a position to help - they can't pull you up when they aren't anchored in a higher place) - Get a new job (good luck when you have few marketable skills. The high(er) paying jobs for people with no marketable skills usually involve selling drugs/sex) - Can't build a nest egg easily Poverty (in the USA at least) is mainly a product of your family situation and your knowledge/marketable skills. If you have an unstable family and no marketable skills, escaping poverty is extremely difficult without an external actor helping to pull people up.
  • johnisgood 1y ago
    I see the steps. What if they have no family members or they do not give a damn? Start again please from the state of being homeless but assume this person has no family members, or has relatives, but they do not give a damn. It crumbles, IMO.
    • tome 1y ago
      Maybe you didn't read the whole comment?
      • johnisgood 1y ago
        I dunno if that last sentence was there when I made the comment...
  • kgwgk 1y ago
    > The high(er) paying jobs What about low paying jobs? I’m sure some people on minimum wage have netflix - which automatically makes them non-poor according to TFA.
• hexator 1y ago
  Understanding poverty starts with empathy. People thinking that "poor is a mindset" are lacking in that. It's not that simple! You can't just mind your way out of poverty! This isn't a math problem.
  • netsharc 1y ago
    Too many people buy the American dream of "If you just work hard enough, you'll be successful.". If you believe this, then you'd have to believe the opposite: "If you're poor and unsucessful, that means you didn't work hard enough, you must be lazy.". And too many trust-fund kids or kids from rich parents who could afford to send them to expensive schools (or rich enough to live in a district with a well-funded school) dismiss their luck and believe "I'm successful, that must mean I've been a diligent and smart worker.". Also, beware of survival bias, most of people in here will have similar paths (born with smarts, good education, high-paying IT job, great success) and probably have similar beliefs about hard work and luck... This 2+ hour documentary partly talks about it, in particular from ~28m: https://youtu.be/t1MqJPHxy6g?t=1584 https://youtu.be/t1MqJPHxy6g?t=1584
    • pixl97 1y ago
      >If you're poor and unsucessful, that means you didn't work hard enough, you must be lazy.". Calvinism. Your poor because you're bad. Interestingly enough Calvinism serves as a lot of the basis for what became Capitalism.
      • netsharc 1y ago
        Yeah... and the basis of how to Make America Great Again: make the poor's lives miserable and they'll be forced to work hard. They'll be successful, problem solved! If they stay poor, that must mean they're still lazy, let them rot!
      • peterspath 1y ago
        where can I read more about it? I don't see the connection, but I could be wrong, so interested in some reading on this topic.
• fullshark 1y ago
  It's interesting how many comments here are knee jerk annoyance at this blogpost, which in my mind does a good job outlining two different financial situations and how flippant suggested solutions for escaping poverty don't make sense. The fact that many of us here have so much compared to others in our community however you define it is disturbing and not helpful information for our day to day lives so we do what we can to ignore it.
  • neuralkoi 1y ago
    “How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich I feel like we generally compare ourselves relative to those around us. The US enjoys incredible amounts of comforts (for which I'm grateful for), but one need not travel far to understand how much potable water, breathable air, and electricity are very much not a ready given in other countries.
  • carlosjobim 1y ago
    I guess because the ratio of people complaining about poverty is 10 000 to 1 compared to people who give solutions to poverty. There are solutions to poverty, which the individual person can follow, but nobody wants to talk about those. It has always amazed me, because poverty is hell. Who wouldn't want to get out of that, and who wouldn't want his fellow brother to get out of that? I could talk about it here, but I would just get down voted [dead], [flagged] and so on.
    • dugidugout 1y ago
      While I understand the sentiment, you stated it yourself, "It has always amazed me, because poverty is hell. Who wouldn't want to get out of that, and who wouldn't want his fellow brother to get out of that?". This is a puzzling question to ask and it shouldn't stop there. The post is very much trying to add some depth here, however it isn't targeting solutions for "poor" people, it is hoping to provoke those who are not to take the problem more seriously. > I could talk about it here, but I would just get down voted [dead], [flagged] and so on. Go ahead and just talk about it, I want to hear it. This isn't so easy a problem, even on an individual level as you put it.
• empiricus 1y ago
  I "like" when ppl talk about UBI and say "but ppl on UBI are not happy and lack purpose". Compare with being poor.
  • tavavex 1y ago
    It's even more annoying when you consider that most proposals that gain any type of traction can't even ever approach the "I have everything now so I'm not going to work because I'm so lazy"-type abundance that the fear-mongers try to sell you. If we just were able to use some of all this wealth to create an absolute baseline of "enough money to not starve, have any kind of roof over your head and not be trapped in your current situation", I wonder what society could've looked like.
• etchalon 1y ago
  "All of the general guidance to escape being poor is actually advice for getting through being broke." Paragraph level upvoting needs to be a thing.
• JohnMakin 1y ago
  I understand the sentiment. I grew up lower middle class but with financially illiterate and neglectful parents and had a great deal of food scarcity and other things that caused me to leave home at 17. It was really difficult. The first place I managed to get, was a room for $750 a month and I took home $900. I had no car and had to take the bus everywhere. It's true - everything just piles up when you are stretched thin. What I ended up doing was finding a cheap place to live in a crappy area with a buttload of roommates, started searching for promotion at my job, got one, which gave me more financial leeway and time (more flexible schedule) to pursue a degree at a community college, which was free because of my income. From there I went to a good state school which was also free due to my income and did well and got a degree in CS and was hired by a professor's startup. This whole process took like 15 years of brutally difficult grinding. A lot of people in my spot, that have "made it" (although I still bear the scars all over the place, and I am handicapped in habitual ways, especially financially, that I may never get over without hundreds of thousands of $ of therapy), will look down on people like this author for "not trying hard enough." I think it's bullshit. I got extraordinarily lucky and had a streak of nothing too "bad" happening (didnt get a crippling illness, car mostly stayed good, grades stayed stable, didnt get laid off), plus innate talents not everyone has. I think it's a myth a lot of people tell themselves that they "made it" because they just worked hard enough. The truth a huge amount of the time is you got lucky. Hard work + luck yields opportunity, but not all opportunities pan out. My career may dead end because of AI and I may end up in the same spot again for all I know. All I can do is keep trying.
  • magicalist 1y ago
    Really great comment. > The first place I managed to get, was a room for $750 a month and I took home $900. I had no car and had to take the bus everywhere. It's true - everything just piles up when you are stretched thin. After I got my first job in tech that honestly felt at the time like it paid too much, it was crazy to find just how expensive and stressful it was just to exist before that point and how so much of that just evaporated the second I had even just enough money. And then on top of that, so often I'd get access to free things or services just from shopping somewhere, or being a subscriber to something, things I often didn't need at all, but sure I'll take it. Besides the other scars like you mention, I feel like the experience burned the idea of diminishing marginal utility of money into my soul, and unless you've been on that side of the curve, it may just be really hard to understand how much it falls off. So it may be easy for someone to think they understand because they didn't have much money for going out all the time after they got out of college or whatever, and so it makes sense to suggest that other people can just better budget their money and they can be successful too.
• Atlas667 1y ago
  This is talking about philosophical liberalism. It's the official ideology of capitalist countries, to think that were all equal in the eyes of the govt and if youre not on the same economic level it must be cause you're fundamentally different/flawed. It's a type of thinking that does not take into consideration peoples material reality (even their own) and manifests as narcissism and egotism in those who employ this thought. It seeks to detach material reality from peoples life and simply judge based on merit, or a sort of spiritual value or other attributes. It is an idealist ideology. To counter this idealist thought: I assure you, if you were me you'd be doing exactly what I'm doing. The real explanation for life is to look at the material basis of said life. Poverty is a hole full of material and psychological ills. Stress, coping mechanisms and just straight up lack of knowledge, lack of opportunities, lack of someone to teach you, lack of a proper learning environment, the psychological effects alone could kill a rich kid, let a lone the material ones.
  • MarsIronPI 1y ago
    > It's the official ideology of capitalist countries, to think that were all equal in the eyes of the govt and if youre not on the same economic level it must be cause you're fundamentally different/flawed. IMO good government (i.e. the government that I would want to live under) treats all citizens equally under the law, not because everyone is equally lucky or everyone who is poor is a terrible person or something but because it's not the government's business to do anything but enforce the law. Good government is not a caretaker and is not a bank. Communities should look after their needy members and give them a lift up, not the government. If our communities aren't tightly knit enough for that, then that's a different and IMO deeper problem.
    • Atlas667 1y ago
      This is a false dichotomy. The problem isn't that there is equality in the eyes of the law. The problem is what that means in practice. A poor citizen has the right to use their money as they see fit. <spoiler>A poor citizen has the right to: lobby, to fund think tanks, to advertise their interests, to sway research through funding, to fund the careers of politicians, to gift resources to local police departments, to fund ballot initiatives and referendums, to acquire media outlets, to fund documentary films, to buy bots online, to fund lawsuits against the corporations, to host fundraisers with high net-worth individuals.</spoiler> How many poor people are able to do this? Very very very tiny amounts. These rights are nearly exclusively actionable by a certain class of people. And you may argue about the philosophical implications of 'equality of opportunity' vs 'equality of outcome'. But the thing is this so called "neutral legal framework" leads to a monopoly of power by the rich, because the law pretends both of these kinds of people are the same. The very framework is in negation of itself because it leads power in the hands of a few. That is the true problem of this framework. And to suggest that the alternative must be "equality of outcome" is a false dichotomy. The "neutrality of the government" is more like "a broken clock is right twice a day" kind of thing. The founding fathers were already aware of this, in fact I think they made the state in their own interests seeing as during the founding of the US the vast majority of Americans at the time were illiterate farmers/workers and/or slaves. In a very real sense the state was made for the rich by the rich, but with lingo that pretended it was for everyone. This is why class politics is the most important aspect of politics in our lives. We live in class society where there are fundamental differences between classes of people. This difference is not strictly and categorically based on the amount of money they have, but on HOW they fund their lives which allows them to have extra rights. Effectively we can't afford all the rights. This is the classic "All animals are equals, but some animals are more equal than others".
• jiehong 1y ago
  I once saw people start their month with 0 on their bank account, and live in the negative monthly credit their bank allows. Them having a job (luckily), means they just about manage to fill that debt back at the end of the month, covering the debt and the small bank interest. They end up paying the bank money bit by bit every month, yet they stay locked in that negative money pit. It’s like being permanently broke, and it all started with one a bad month of extra payments…
  • jorts 1y ago
    I had a roommate who was taking payday loans to support his brother for a while. I saw how ridiculous the interest was, paid it off for him, then had him pay me back. It got him out of the constant cycle of debt.
• fellowniusmonk 1y ago
  I climbed out of extreme adolescent poverty (for the U.S.) brought on by my mother's cancer diagnosis pre-ACA to become a top 1% earner in my cohort. Practically speaking as a 15 year old teenager I started 30k (56k) in today's dollars in the hole per year or my family went homeless and hungry. The complete stupidity of people who think poverty and homelessness are in any way indicative of moral fiber, work ethic, discipline, etc. is undeniable. Having now spent many years with the intelligencia, cocaine, DMT and crypto gambling class I must say. The working poor are morally better than all of them and the majority of the homeless are too. The moral value of the way any of these groups spend their first available 50k chunk in comparison to their wealthy counterparts is just vastly superior. Maker geeks of all stripes are the only group I've seen that I can distinguish as interacting in a more meaningful ways. Poverty is a multi factorial societal issue, no amount of mindset is enough to get you out alone but a vastly superior mindset IS required to get out and that's a failure of society because the wealthy are immoral and _don't want the competition and often times do want the cheaper labor._ It's a constant effort to widen the leverage gap. The poor shouldn't have to have a vastly better mindset, grind, cognitive powers just to get to the baseline in a dead end job, we are crushing the best among us instead of ensuring that their above average capabilities are contributing to society at large, instead they are being used to get out of the hole we made for them.
• tracker1 1y ago
  While I get it, I disagree with some of the premise... especially the idea of working two jobs. My dad has worked multiple jobs at a time when I was growing up... I've worked multiple jobs at a time as recently as this year. Now, I'm getting old (50yo) and really couldn't handle it as well as I could in my 20s, but I still did it. It's not a permanent solution, but it's not a bad thing to do when you need to in order to pull ahead. For that matter, self study and personal advancement. It's hard to get into some jobs as an autodidact... I've been a software developer for going on three decades without a formal education. There are plenty of times I can't get through the HR screening alone. That doesn't mean you don't try, or don't put in effort to improve your position in life or yourself. I get being broke and poor... I grew up relatively poor. It sucks. I also worked very hard to get where I am. It's not always where I want to be, but that's life to an extent. My opinions don't always align with everyone else though... I just don't like the idea of giving up, or not putting in extra effort when it's an option to pull you ahead. I say this having spent about a year out of the past 3 years without regular income and massively in debt with medical issues I cannot cover, and cannot currently afford insurance (due to debt payments). It sucks, and I can't change the past... I can only put in the effort I need to improve the future.
  • JohnMakin 1y ago
    Lots of low skill jobs have constantly shifting schedules given at the last possible minute (day by day sometimes) that don’t necessarily allow the time luxury of juggling multiple jobs. Fast food is a great example.
    • tracker1 1y ago
      Not sure about that even.. in my late teens I worked fast food and as a clerical temp worker (I could type fast) for data entry/processing. The fast food job didn't have an issue scheduling me just in the evenings/weekends. A lot of employers are pretty understanding if you have multiple jobs and will work around your needs as much as possible.
      • JohnMakin 1y ago
• qwertox 1y ago
  > You can’t afford to go to the movies, but will stay home and watch what’s new on Netflix. I never had Netflix nor Spotify and I am not poor. I always thought that having Netflix and Spotify is some kind of luxury. Not a big one, but those services are not cheap, if you're on a tight budget.
  • barbazoo 1y ago
    If you're a family it's much cheaper to have Netflix, spread these $20 over 4 people a month than going to the movie theater for $100+ every time. These $20/month are already out of reach for many, I realize that.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • qwertox 1y ago
      I see. Makes sense.
    • bluGill 1y ago
      Or you can do without both - as a large number of people do. Taking that family to the movie theater once per year is a lot cheaper than a monthly netflix subscription, which is another option.
    • bombcar 1y ago
      If you're a poor family you're better off with not having Netflix or go to the movies; you just watch DVDs and stay home. The underlying problem not talked about in all this is how our entire financial system is built around charging you a bit more than you can bear, but not actually driving you into bankruptcy. Then a huge percentage of your income goes to interest payments.
    • ValentineC 1y ago
      Or: they download movies and shows through BitTorrent, or just stream them from any of the thousands of ad-supported piracy streaming sites out there.
• uzidil 1y ago
  In the book "Starling House", being poor is defined as: you make a list for what you need, another for what you want, and then you throw away the second list.
  • bpt3 1y ago
    The author of this post goes even further than that: He says to make a list of only what you need, and then flounder while you fail to acquire the items on that list.
• mehulashah 1y ago
  He right. I’ve seen poverty in India, but I misunderstood it. There was a 12 year old kid who guided our boat down the Narmada after we spread my Dads ashes. He was not in school because he wanted money. I told him I’d pay him double and continue to pay him for his days work, if he’d go back to school during the day and only row boats at night. He said no. Just give me what you owe me. He had no hope that education in the government schools would meaningfully change anything for him. Poverty is not a single static state. It’s a negative feedback loop that requires systemic change to get out of.
  • prasadjoglekar 1y ago
    Sometimes, a visible example does that. I know of numerous people in Mumbai who do servant jobs, whose kids have gone to engineering schools and gotten corporate jobs. This sort of story - 1st in my family to go college - needs to be prominent for a parent to want to aspire to that for their kids. Doesn't work for the absolutely destitute of course.
  • antisthenes 1y ago
    > He had no hope that education in the government schools would meaningfully change anything for him. I have over 14 years of education in developed countries, and out of those, maybe 1 year combined meaningfully helped me in my jobs/career in terms of skills. Everything else was self-taught/learned. There's an enormous disconnect in educational systems between what skills will get people out of poverty, what skills are great for wealthy navel-gazing students and what skills some bureaucrat decided "everyone" should have (but no one does, because no one pays attention in those classes). And when people lose faith in the public educational system is when you get dysfunctional societies for the majority of your citizens.
    • nomadpenguin 1y ago
      > I have over 14 years of education in developed countries, and out of those, maybe 1 year combined meaningfully helped me in my jobs/career in terms of skills. I think you're underestimating the effect of 14 years of daily training in literacy and numeracy.
• PaulHoule 1y ago
  Not all poor people are poor in the same way, that is, there are different reasons you might be poor. This is explained pretty well in this classic book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_America
• wslh 1y ago
  Sorry, but poverty is also a spectrum. Many people who have never been poor cannot understand that, but even if you have been poor, you still cannot fully understand someone else’s poverty.
• d_silin 1y ago
  Poverty is a funnel with slippery sides and no bottom. You can struggle your entire life just not to slide downwards even further. The post's author understands this and so do I.
• OutOfHere 1y ago
  Half of the poor voted for Trump who has been doing everything in his power to make them poorer. Speaking of the people as a whole, you get what you vote for.
• rckt 1y ago
  This is kind of a good way to understand that people who never really struggled in life aren't able to understand, step into struggling's person's shoes. It's simply an unknown concept for them. Everyone's values, perspective, actions are dictated by the past experience. I made my way from a poor country to a western-European wealthy one. And the question that amuses me is "So, how do you like here?". I fucking LOVE it here. People don't even understand that I can compare these nice streets to an absolute shithole. And they either have never lived abroad or just been to some neighboring countries. And they talk about food, views, sea, whatever. Oh man, they don't understand that just going outside is already a nice experience for me. Going to a doctor, using public transport, taking my kid to a nice school. Ha! I just tell them that yeah, it's nice, I like it. But there's a huge gap between our concepts of nice places.
• sgarland 1y ago
  As a child, I went from firmly middle-class (dad was a firefighter in San Diego, CA) to pretty damn poor (we moved to the middle of nowhere in Nebraska). I joined the U.S. Navy, and got a B.S. while I was in, then an M.S. in SWE afterwards on the government’s dime thanks to the GI Bill. I did the latter while working nights. I now make more money than I ever thought would be possible. I said all of that to say, I am a poster child for “I crawled my way out of poverty, so you can too,” and I hate that sentiment. Even though I know that I did in fact work hard to get to where I am, I know plenty of people who work way harder than I ever have, and who have very little. It’s not that they’re blowing their money, it’s that their skill sets don’t pay nearly as lucratively as tech. Very little comes close. If you have never been poor (or at least were raised poor) yourself, you cannot possibly understand what it’s like, and you should probably not be giving advice to those who are.
  • silvestrov 1y ago
    > I crawled my way out of poverty, so you can too Sounds for me like "I could do it on my own, so nobody should have to help you". I really hate this mentality of not helping others. Everybody gets better when everybody gets help.
    • sgarland 1y ago
      I absolutely agree, and if my words didn’t convey that sentiment, I apologize.
• dijit 1y ago
  Even this does a poor job of explaining being poor. The constant open loop on everything you own, terrified to discard anything even if its broken because there are components that might be useful to fix something else; the constant churn of second-hand (and cheap/disposable) things that are already close to death before they come into your possession and- crucially: the crushing weight of knowing that any financial roadbump is existential. As the author mentions, a £50 fine might as well be £50,000- its unpayable, and leads to a sort of doom-spiral of lending to avoid worse consequences. Easily you can end up in unmanageable debt, in rare cases prison, its not uncommon to have the few worthwhile items you own being seized by bailifs to recoup debts, treasured heirlooms that cannot be replaced and have little monetary value so they do no impact to your debt. The hoarding of canned goods to avoid being unable to eat. It’s hard to convey this, and what it does to your mentality- I am now built mentally to think quite fiscally conservative and do not take debts or put savings into investments like my peers. I am well off but a fraction of what I could have been had I not has this mentality. You have to live it to understand it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, its a tarpit and getting out of it without someone handing you a branch (and if you no longer have the strength to pull yourself out) then you’ll be stuck in it forever.
  • AndrewKemendo 1y ago
    I spent years getting over the idea of saving some half broken thing because “I might need a part from that later”
    • ASalazarMX 1y ago
      Specially because occasionally the usefulness of such saved junk appeared to prove the thought right, the rest of the unused pile of junk notwithstanding.
    • potato3732842 1y ago
      And the more skilled and richer and better tooled up you get over time the more potentially useful everything is so the more you feel like you have to save it.
    • 1y ago
• qaq 1y ago
  This sounds more than legit for many places outside of US and maybe some places in US, but in general US does give you an opportunity to move up. So unless it's health issue or family issue it really is in one's own hands here. I know a ton of people who came here with no $/legal status/english and are doing really well. If you are a US citizen you already have a huge asset.
• fredgrott 1y ago
  One of the common myths is... If repairing auto at shop costs $1000 one should op out to spend $300 in parts and own labor..... Paying for the wrong utility makes you remain poor as the down car repair has a very low utility to you earning that higher wage while the shop repairs your car. It would only make high value utility sense if you did that several times and then open your own car repair shop as business owner. Warren Buffet implies this obliquely in his writing about the choices he has made.
  • jaredhallen 1y ago
    That only makes sense if you have the opportunity to make more money than you'd be paying the mechanic with the time you spent fixing the car. I'd venture to say that's true less often than not. Even if you day job makes more per hour than you're saving by repairing the car, it doesn't necessarily mean you can just choose to book more hours on the job. To make it more concrete, let's use the given example. Let's say the repair is $300 in parts, and $700 in labor. Let's call the shop rate $100/hour, to be conservative. So in order for it to make sense for me financially, I have to a) have a job that makes at least $100/hour and b) have the choice to work an extra 7 hours.
• hartator 1y ago
  > never see my wife? My kids? It seems you have what matters man.
• vaidhy 1y ago
  I do not remember where I read this, but it has struck with me for the last 35+ years - "Poverty is a crime, but the poor are not guilty of it". I have seen abject poverty growing up in India.. It is right in your face most of the times. I have friends from the other side of the street and pretty much, you live in very different realities.
• maerF0x0 1y ago
  > A lot of poor folks are having to stand in line for hours and hours to get food at a food bank due to [government] ineptitude This is an element of the argument for dismantling the nanny bureaucracy and instead going to UBI / cash payments. 1. It doesn't waste time, both of the gov't employee, but also of the recipient. 2. The author could buy better food, or car parts, or a bus pass, or ... with what otherwise might have been a more or less forced purchase in a single category. The flexibility returns agency and self-help behavior into the hands of the recipient. All this needs to be tempered against the progress[1] we are making against poverty. I know it's a lot to ask the poor to be patient, but I do think there's an element of knowing that a lot of good people are trying really hard to alleviate the situation can help with the mostly mental elements of the article > No matter how fast you run or how high you jump you can never see the finish line. No matter how tired you are the ground keeps moving. eg: this statement is not actually a fact, it's a mindset Overall, this is a big big testament to the overall worldview that I think is missing, just how impactful choices actually are. Some of these kinds of stories start generations ago, some of them start with the individual themselves having spent excess in the past that could have taken them through the low times (kind of "a waste not, want not" scenario). Some folks had opportunity and squandered it. Some flipped tails (failing scenario) 20 times in a row... People don't really want to help the former, but definitely the latter. [1] - https://x.com/BillGates/status/1086662632587907072/photo/1 https://x.com/BillGates/status/1086662632587907072/photo/1
  • yunwal 1y ago
    Now do homelessness and make it over the past 20 years. Now do chances a child makes it to their 20s over the past 20 years. Now do suicides. No, we are not making progress on poverty, at least not in the United States. We are simply trading one problem for another. Progress has entirely stopped since essentially the 1990s, and things have gotten much much worse in the past 5 years.
• kylehotchkiss 1y ago
  > There is this mindset from folks that poor people must not be smart. Ever since I was a child, that idea has been shoved down my throat. "The American Dream", "they're lazy", "they should work harder". Spending some serious time in developing countries fixed that mentality up real quick. Being able to escape the circumstances you're born into is a rare privilege in any culture. And that aspect of life in USA seemed to end in the late 90s/early 2000s.
• gnarlouse 1y ago
  Another point the author doesn't make but probably should is the home economics of DIY: A solo person gets 24h a day, just like everybody else. Ideally 8 are spent asleep. Another 8 (minimum) are probably spent working. That leaves a person 8 hours to do their whole life. It eats away at personal time, it bleeds into work and sleep, often by interrupting or occluding the ability to do either.
  • acuozzo 1y ago
    > It eats away at personal time, it bleeds into work and sleep And, most significantly, eats away at time which could be allocated for retraining/career-advancement.
• 486sx33 1y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  One way to imagine being poor: imagine lots of slow leaks. Your bank account leaks, your car's engine leaks, your mental health leaks. Everything is slowly getting worse, and you know it. Every time you try to fix one leak, the other leaks start leaking more. You might think, hooray, I fixed the engine leak! And then suddenly your wife is leaving you and taking the kids. So you rush to court to deal with that, and park in the wrong place, and your car gets impounded; getting it out costs money you don't have. In trying to deal with all that, your mental health suffers, so you're rude at work, and now your job is at risk. So then you work on being more positive at work, you finally get dual custody of the kids, and pay for the car to be returned... and then the transmission dies. It's that, but your entire life.
• eulgro 1y ago
  I have trouble understanding how someone really can be poor. I spend about 30% of what one makes earning minimum wage full time. I live a frugal lifestyle, but I still feel like most people would consider my lifestyle normal and comfortable enough. If I really needed to, I could probably get by on 10-15% of the minimum wage. In other words, earning the minimum wage, I could make 6-10 persons live on my salary. This is possible because we live in an era of abundance. This wasn't possible for most of history. So to me, being poor, for those without major health issues and with the ability to work full time, is either a skills issue, or a mindset issue. This guy has a car. I don't think we need to look further than that.
  • hexator 1y ago
    Telling poor people we're living in an era of abundance is not a little bit tone deaf. Also, having a car doesn't make one not poor— A car in America is not a luxury, it's a requirement to have a job in most places.
  • SilverElfin 1y ago
    Exactly. There are many ways to make things work even if you’re earning very little. People don’t think about giving up the nice things they feel they’re entitled to. But you have to be willing to change where you live, what kind of food you eat, who you share a roof with, what you drive (if at all), and all of that. If you haven’t done those things, you can’t claim you’re poor in my opinion, because you haven’t made the life changes you could make to make ends meet.
  • quesera 1y ago
    > I could probably get by on 10-15% of the minimum wage Your math might be wrong here. Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr, so if you have a FT job, that's $14.5K/yr, or $1200/mo. 10% of that is $1450/yr, or $120/mo.
    • eulgro 1y ago
      I live in Canada. Minimum wage is 16$/hr where I live, that gives around 32k$/yr. At 3200$/yr 10% might be stretch, but I could probably make it work without relying too much on social services. It wouldn't be comfortable, but I would survive. For example working in a place where I can get some free food, 500$ for food is manageable. 2400$ rent/services (e.g. rural areas with roommates) and 300$ misc. Always walk for transportation. Yes, it's a stretch.
• bradlys 1y ago
  The semantics here really suck. I grew up lower middle class because for most of my life my parents both had full-time jobs. (By the definition, you are not "poor" in the US if you have a full-time job) However, we grew up what I would call educationally poor. My parents struggled with financial woes constantly. In my mind, we were broke due to their ineptness but they were poor as far as this writer is concerned. That said, I grew up around much more poverty than most in the US can imagine. I went to (public) school four days a week because the local district couldn't afford the fifth day. My parents had no thoughts about college or me getting ahead. There was no planning for my future. I had to entirely self-drive everything. There's obviously a lot more dark parts of this that come with being educationally poor as well but no need to elaborate. Anyway, my point about all that is that I think it's really a mindset more than anything else. I don't think everyone can do what I did but I came from such a bad background with no hope at all and I still managed to be early eng for an IPO, FAANG, competitive university, etc.
  • wredcoll 1y ago
    I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that what you did is impossible, merely unlikely. You, presumably, worked extremely hard at things you thought would help you long term. You also, presumably, got lucky at some points. One does not diminish the other. And more to the point, now that you're "successful", do you think society should pay for more/better systems to help people like you achieve what you did?
    • bradlys 1y ago
      > And more to the point, now that you're "successful", do you think society should pay for more/better systems to help people like you achieve what you did? Yes. I'm very far left. Landlords going under the guillotine wouldn't be a bad thing in my book. > I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that what you did is impossible, merely unlikely. In some woke circles, a lot will say it's impossible. Also, I don't know anyone who has managed something similar as to what I've done, especially from where I grew up or similar. I hear of random stories online but random stories online come with a lot of missing details.
• jandrewrogers 1y ago
  Most Americans don't understand real poverty. It exists outside their reality. They've never seen it, let alone experienced it. To the article's point, it is about being in a situation where there is no viable path to not being broke. You are stuck in an intrinsic local minima financially due to a total lack of capital, leverage, and optionality that a merely broke person has and takes for granted. If you end up not being broke it is because you worked very hard and/or were very lucky. Climbing the hill to get out of that minima can be extremely difficult. It is pretty rare in the US for an otherwise functional person to end up there, most people are born into it. You usually have to make a lot of bad choices and/or have serious behavioral issues to find yourself in this situation if you weren't born into it, which isn't the same thing. People who are homeless drug addicts aren't "poor" in the sense of the article; if they weren't drug addicts they'd merely be broke in most cases. You don't see many of the cases of the truly economically poor who get out of poverty ending back there again. These cases are routinely conflated with people who aren't poor for structural economic reasons.
• rapfaria 1y ago
  I worked at a media company that used to track time the users spent watching TV, so they could charge advertisers accordingly. "Hundred million watched the Super Bowl", things like that. The way they measured that was by having devices installed on peoples homes, that tracked TV usage, and all of it was planned around demographics as well. People would get a few bucks for having the device installed. But hey, if you wanted to measure the top 1% of income, what would you do? A few bucks meanth nothing, so it was always in terms of 'favors' and 'gifts'. A nice champagne here and there. What about the bottom 5, 10%? Well, you can't give them any money, because that could effectively move them from one social class to another (not the US, but locally this would be moving them from Class E to Class D). So you took them to lunch. I thought it was wild once I learned that.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• phplovesong 1y ago
  Im not rich, but i get by, and can say i live a decent life (in terms of what i can get "with fiat"). Im from a totally normal middle class-ish family. I always worked (since like 14-15) and got my own savings started when i was young. I really cant think of why you could not get out of beeing poor, IF you have the wits and willpower. If you grind some shithole job for 6 bucks/hour you should think really hard on your choices. Where did you spend your check? Do you live in a too expensive appartment? Did you have kids without being absolutely fucking sure you can support them? Did you fuck up something like foolish debts? Do you drive a car when you can take the bus? Im not really sure what to say, but i know what I would do if things webt south.
  • atomicthumbs 1y ago
    "Im from a totally normal middle class-ish family." Maybe that's why you can't comprehend the idea of being poor in a fashion that doesn't let you escape, even working as hard as you possibly can and making all the right choices.
    • phplovesong 1y ago
      I have seen kids from poor families make it. Many have been highly successful in life, even we should not measure it by pay-check. It usually boils down to alcohol/drugs, idiotic credit card debts and/or living way beyond your actual capability to sustain that lifestyle, and having zero savings, and possibly having children way too young.
  • xp84 1y ago
    I don’t think you’re wrong, but considering how imperfect humans are, it’s easy to make a mistake or two (or to basically inherit mistakes from parents, in many cases), and I think one of the problems is, it’s very, very difficult to claw your way back after that. It would be ideal if a small screw-up could be more feasibly repaired, but tbh I don’t know a fair and good way to do that that didn’t generate dependence and a bailout cycle.
• owyongsk 1y ago
  One of the best charities that is fighting extreme poverty is GiveDirectly (https://www.givedirectly.org/ https://www.givedirectly.org/). Their cash transfers program (https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/givedirectly-cash-for-poverty-relief-program https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/gi...) have been evaluated by GiveWell who is probably the best at charity evaluation.
• stego-tech 1y ago
  I’ve ridden the spectrum, as it were. I grew up upper middle class, with a sprawling McMansion, a car for each sibling, a country club membership, the works. I’ve been broke, squandering money and racking up debt, but finding enough escape hatches to avoid irreparable harm. I’ve been homeless, getting by through the good graces of friends and family until I got back on my feet through the help of a good friend and wildly risky move to a place I’d never been, sight unseen. I’ve spent years being poor in a food desert, stretching pizza deliveries across a week of meals because the nearest store was a ten mile walk down an interstate highway. And now, through luck, work, and the help of friends (but mostly luck, statistically speaking), I’m eking out a good life in a good apartment with extortionate rent and a toxic job. This author lays out the experience of being “poor” perfectly. It’s a case of doing all the right things, and still failing. It’s being constantly stuck in survival mode no matter how hard you work, because there’s always a new expense, a new hurdle, a new obstacle to reset your progress - because being poor means you can’t even afford the “save point” of insurance or redundancies or savings to fall back on. It’s why even when I was scraping above the $200k mark at PriorCo in TC, I was championing more social services. More healthcare support, more housing assistance, more compensation. We could afford it, but shareholder returns came first. It was sickening knowing colleagues who lived in vans because despite pulling down six figure salaries, it simply wasn’t enough for rent when expenses continued to pile up for injuries or illnesses. Those of means and privilege simply do not grasp how hard it is to exist in America without large sums of cash behind you. I was struggling on less when rent was still considered reasonable, in one of the cheapest states to live in. In the fifteen-odd years since, it’s just gotten exponentially worse, even as the stock market has exploded in value. It’s why I never stop arguing for better, because I know how bad it can get. I was just lucky enough to escape.
  • wredcoll 1y ago
    > "What happened to society? I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, they gave me encouragement, and they gave me a vision. That came from my education".
• posix86 1y ago
  Travelling to a 3rd world country with genuinely poor people can help, a bit. When you see the houses genuinely poor people live in, it purs things into perspective. Being in appartment where the roof... is broken. And you have no way to fix it. No way. There's cold coming inside, mold on the walls, no real kitchen, no real bed, "living room"?? Lol. You grow up not getting a proper education, your parents have worked tirelessly for years, as you probably will. Having a dream - during the entire life!! - of just travelling to a first world country, just ONCE, just to see it. And never even approachikg savings to be able to do that. And you, the 1st world country, walk past, and complain about the hotel staff being rude. You work work work, no break ever, hardly an improvement. You come home, no food, no money. No food, no money. And nobody to ask for food, or money. Nobody. You're hungry, and there's that. Tomorrow maybe.
  • coffeeaddict1 1y ago
    > Travelling to a 3rd world country with genuinely poor people can help, a bit. I agree with this. For anyone who's young and can afford, I wholeheartedly recommend travelling to a poor country. It will truly give you a lot perspective on the world and appreciate your life more. Having said that, I often see people grossly misunderstanding that just because you visited a poor country you understand the lives of the people you saw (e.g. their cultures, opinions and lifestyle). It really does not. You only get a very superficial glimpse, but it takes years to embody their experience in your mind.
  • projektfu 1y ago
    I feel that this experience can cause us to have less patience for the poor in the developed world. Something like, "How poor can you be in the USA? In Mexico, just outside a major city, there is a town without electricity, where people eat corn and raise cows, and they send their children to the city at night to beg because they don't have any cash and no way to make it." How many people live in that level of poverty in the US? But, still, perhaps the poverty in the US is worse, and more insidious, because it is often a poverty of spirit as well as money. It is hard to grow your own food here, as you don't have land, and you cannot buy it, because you don't have money.
  • amazing_stories 1y ago
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• periodjet 1y ago
  The point of disagreement here seems to be about poverty itself. The author (and many in these comments) seem aghast at the very idea of poverty: how can this state be allowed to exist?! The truth is that humanity’s default state is one of “poverty”. It should evoke no surprise or confusion whatsoever, and yet it does. Poverty is an entirely valid and normal state for a person to be in. There isn’t a vast shadowy conspiracy trying to keep you down; you’re just at the default state of humanity. Humans improving their situation, now THAT is surprising and interesting, and it’s the thing we should be focusing our curiosity on. If you’re poor, emulate those who aren’t. Maybe they’re onto something. The alternative is to blame the vast shadowy conspiracy, “capitalism”, etc, and remain poor. That’s an entirely valid mode of being. Nobody owes you anything.
• ge96 1y ago
  I'm "low-rich" (middle class?) poor eg. I have a six-fig job but I also have almost six-fig of debt, so I have after paying all my bills (mostly debt) almost nothing left. But I have an apt/cool cheap car, toys like 2nd hand computers/cameras. I've been in debt for the last 15 years since I went into college. I don't eat canned food often actually trying to fast as it's hard to not gain weight when I spend most of my time sitting in a chair in front of a computer. I do recreational drinking so it's not like I'm absolutely poor.
  • tavavex 1y ago
    To me it's still insane that education (the implied reason for your debt? correct me if I'm wrong) is so absurdly expensive in the US. Mind you, I'm saying that from another country where education isn't free, but most people will never be able to have anything remotely approaching six figure debt. You presumably work in a professional field, judging by your salary, yet you have an enormous anchor that's been dragging behind you for all your life. In some ways, the high-lower-class person that has a poor salary but isn't indebted might have it better than you. I wonder how much society would change if that system of student loans was reformed to offload the burden from young people, how much more growth there could be if these people weren't stuck in debt.
    • ge96 1y ago
      My student loans weren't as bad $30K, the rest is from other things eg. CC debt/car loan (28% APR). I also help out my own blood-related family eg. I have given away over $100K over the course of a few years. But mostly I'm dumb, buying things I can't afford. The six-fig jobs come and go also but in general I've had at least $75-$83K jobs aside from the couple six-fig jobs I've had. I only started to have that kind of money in 2019 to now. I spent 2023 working in a warehouse/my own fault that time I went down to the $50K range or so with side gig work added in to warehouse work. I did pay $3K for an MRI one time, well not yet it's on a defaulted card. Oh and loneliness eg. I spent $1.2K at a strip club one time. It's crazy how you go up in levels though like in 2016 I was living on $20K+ a year, now it's $100K+ a year
  • bluGill 1y ago
• haritha-j 1y ago
  The author complains about the cost of fixing their car. I come from a country where vehicle ownership puts you in the top 20% in terms of wealth. A motorbike is often the farthest most get.
  • 1v1id 1y ago
    I can appreciate the totally different perspective that must bring. I would also add that living in a car-centered society where you are expected to have a car presents its own set of challenges, namely that you can't afford to live near food sources (grocery stores, etc.) or jobs because it's expected that people drive to those things. For people in those situations struggling to make ends meet, I think they view their car more as a required liability they struggle to maintain rather than a privilege.
  • dangus 1y ago
    95% of American commuters get to work in a personal vehicle. The distance Americans drive is very high. Driving 30 minutes to work might mean traveling ~45km because the infrastructure is heavily reliant on highways. The average daily travel is about 65km. Many motorbikes aren’t legal or fast enough for the interstate. America is just built in a way intended car infrastructure. The poorest in America have above average access to cars compared to the rest of the world as a whole, but that doesn’t make them wealthy. Owning an operating a car in the US is more affordable than many other countries, and things like gas prices, the car industry itself, and road maintenance are heavily subsidized/supported by the government. The US basically chose personal vehicles as the primary way to get around and structured society around it, with only a small amount of exceptions. A functioning car in the US is not really much more money than a motorbike, especially because it’s far more common and popular. Motorbikes are more like a niche product.
• rzzzt 1y ago
  Past discussions on the topic about articles that explore the mindset: 1) John Scalzi's "Being Poor" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15041758 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1712493 2) Meg Elison's "Poor in Tech" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27206899
• LennyHenrysNuts 1y ago
  I've been there as a young man. It wasn't very nice. I always seemed to find the money for beer and smokes somehow though.
• cmnzs 1y ago
  I actually thought this was going to make the point that just because you are poor, doesn't mean that you have the skills to fix things on your own. It's great that the author is able to work on their own cars (but doesn't have the money). I think probably more common is that you don't have the money AND you don't have the skills. And I don't think that's the fault of the individual. The world is more complicated than ever. Even cars that may have been possible to work on yourself 20 years ago, it's becoming less easy to do this.
• mattio 1y ago
  I grew up poor as dirt. My mom has four kids with three dads. Eventually we were a family of six. I think we had about 100 euros a month for food, clothing and recreation. My mom and stepdad did not work one day in their lives (welfare in NL). Right now I’m still recovering. It’s my fifth year making over 150K and I have zero to show for it because I did a poor job managing my finances. To help me (in general, but also productivity wise) I have a coach and coincidentally today exerpeinced a breakthrough. I am still afraid of being poor. Of being made fun of. And not being enough. I’m operating out of a ‘it’s not enough’ mentality, because I don’t feel enough. It feels like a life sentence, but some hope shimmers at the end of the tunnel. What it’s like being poor: even buying a simple football in a supermarket felt leagues out of reach. Being sent back home because a teacher told me my clothes did not cut it. And my parents just sent me back. I never thought there was a path for me to become a doctor. Or any other noble job. Growing up or being poor is not being able to see a way out. Recognising opportunity. Forgive me my language. Super tired and on my phone.
  • justsomejew 1y ago
    If you don't mind telling about it, who or what helped you?
    • mattio 1y ago
      I was just lucky that I started programming when I was about 32, and when I started freelancing (35) money started flowing. But tbh I am still managing the holes my upbringing left me (financial habits, attachment issues, focus and productivity). I know I’m responsible for my action, but it does not make it easier. It kind of feels it’s never enough. So it does not feel I am helped in the sense that I left my problems behind me. Just traded some problems for better (but also bigger) ones.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• idkfasayer 1y ago
  OK, one of my clients is a payday lender in a wealthy country. I have the complete banking histories of 10s of thousands of low income people in front of me. I insist that the distinguishment proposed in the article is BS. There is a small subset of clients with disabilities AND absense of insurance/government pensions, whose situation is permanent for all intents and purposes. But everyone else, one-off clients as well as regulars have ups and downs, and get through defaults or manage to repay their debt at times. Gambling and alcohol are a clear factor (drug abuse is harder to identify on someone's bank statement), but cases such as divorce from a partner with abuse problems bring relief most of the time. Children grow up or grow older and require less work or even generate income of their own. I know it's different, when you live in a low income country and everyone around is poor and scamming people on the internet or marine piracy are the only possible access options to wealth, but that's a different topic.
• Brendinooo 1y ago
  There's a tension between descriptive and prescriptive claims here. Descriptively, the author is (worthily!) conveying the real, lived experience of resource scarcity so complete that standard budgeting advice is useless, tone-deaf, etc. But prescriptively, he goes much further than "useless": advice "doesn't work". The endless runner, The Pit, eternal poverty with "no relief in sight." This language of inescapability creates a framework where "poor" is effectively defined as "people for whom interventions don't work." This is unfalsifiable! If someone escapes, they were never really "poor". And if that's true, then what? We can't identify what interventions help, we can't learn from success stories, we can't reason about different causes needing different solutions. The framework meant to defend the poor actually makes it impossible to help them effectively. The author almost certainly wants to avoid victim-blaming, which is respectable. But defining poverty as this inescapable, almost metaphysical state removes all agency from both people in poverty and those who'd want to help them.
• egao1980 1y ago
  Well written. Straight to the point. When poor is a rat race and no room for risk. Any mistake and you're done. Even if you see opportunity you can't afford to try. And hopelessness.
• poplarsol 1y ago
  This Dickensian pastiche ignores the difference between being "poor" and being part of a client population, which covers a substantial part of the same nominal income bracket.
• DonsDiscountGas 1y ago
  I feel like the target audience is this is people who have zero sympathy for the poor, but the thing is that's generally not an opinion they reasoned themselves into. They don't want to spend the money helping anybody so they rationalize that a decide nobody deserves help. So don't expect any minds to change based on facts and logic. (For the record I give no money to charity because I'm completely selfish; I make no assumptions about the people I don't help)
• losvedir 1y ago
  I'm privileged to have never had to worry about this, growing up comfortably middle to upper middle class. With that said, I have a perpetual point of confusion here, likely due to my own blindspots and something I don't want to ask in person because it's not nice: is it an issue of budgeting? Take someone who makes $15/hr and someone who makes $16/hr. Both are poor. Both live paycheck to paycheck, have no savings, etc. But theoretically, couldn't the latter person live exactly like the first one, and save $2000/yr? Or, consider the same person from one year to the next. Expenses are lumpy. They begin the year at $0 and they end the next year at $0. It seems... unbelievably coincidental, I guess?... that they happened to earn the exact amount of money they needed. The second part is that I've heard it's expensive to be poor. You get crappy stuff that breaks and needs replacement more often. You can't afford the larger, cheaper-per-ounce item at the grocery store, so you're paying more for the smaller things. The flip side is that if that's true, it provides kind of a ramp out, since as you're able to save, you can use your money more efficiently and save more. Where am I going wrong in my thinking here?
  • mg41 1y ago
    They didn't earn the exact amount of money they needed—they didn't have enough money to meet their expenses more likely. And likewise one therefore can't save and buy better stuff. And thus the cycle of poverty continues.
    • losvedir 1y ago
      > they didn't have enough money to meet their expenses more likely What does this mean, exactly? I think that's the core of my question, and something I don't understand since I lack the experience. If someone can live like this for, say, 10 years then in some sense it is meeting their expenses exactly. I understand a situation of accumulating debt - that's a state that's not in equilibrium. But a lot of poor people can't really obtain credit, I believe.
  • hiq 1y ago
    > They begin the year at $0 and they end the next year at $0. Or they're dead. If you save an extra $2000/year, what are you supposed to do with the money if you're always hungry, if you're always cold? I'm guessing you could buy food and clothes; you'd end up at $0, just slightly better off. If there's no safety net to rely on, you'd save to be able to face the next problem, and maybe pay it less with your health (which is a kind of invisible debt). And that's even assuming there's some certain income you can rely on. In my case, I know that for the next few months, I'd at least get unemployment benefits if I lost my job. Not everyone get that, and if you don't, the income floor is $0 and it's way harder to budget. Another aspect to consider is that maybe the case of a single person who would be in poverty throughout a long life is not representative of poverty. Some people get out of poverty, some fall into it, some die early from it. If we're considering a single person always starting at $0 and always ending up at $0, several years in a row, we already dismiss these nuances. I'm sure you can find such examples, someone who lived to be 80 with a constant wealth of $0, but how common are they really?
• anthomtb 1y ago
  The article resonated but I disagree with his terminology. To me, broke and poor are exactly the same thing. He can define them differently if he wants, of course, but what he calls "broke" I would call "feeling poor" and what he calls "poor" I would call "being poor". I grew up in circumstances that were very much "broke"/"feeling poor" and it took a long time to learn that we really weren't poor. Some of the simple actions that are mis-directed towards the truly poor (second job, DIY car/home maintenance, better financial planning) would have elevated our circumstances quite a bit. Not to the point of being rich, but definitely to less precarious circumstances. And, selfishly, I would likely not have spent my childhood feeling like an impoverished outcast from my peers.
• belviewreview 1y ago
  Conservatives have three explanations for why people are poor: 1) they are all stupid and lazy because they have absorbed liberal values 2) they are smart enough to get ahead but can't because liberal governmental policies have ruined the economy. 3) they are mentally inferior due to belonging to the wrong race.
  • twothreeone 1y ago
    Particularly the numerous variations of 2 have found widespread success when explaining to the poor the reasons for why they are poor: 2.a) the foreigners / jews / muslims invading and pillaging our glorious, Christian home country are stealing their jobs 2.b) the socialists / communists / antifa bureaucrats are stealing their wages This can be tailored and highly specific towards the target audience (e.g., Facebook Ads, Twitter Bots, in a small town with abandoned industry), alternatively keeping it broad and widely accessible (for Podcasts, banners, or national TV). What really matters for explaining this with impact though is the tone. It is imperative to be loud and angry, ideally you are yelling at your audience. Repeat yourself often and use the most limited vocabulary possible. You need to empathize with the anger of the poor for the clear and obvious injustice that has happened to them. Leaning into that emotion will make anyone happily abandon any remains of rationality and critical thinking, which they have experienced as being completely futile in advancing their own quality of life, or improving their family's living situation. Which is of course the reason why Conservatives would like to have as many poor people as possible amongst their constituencies, and are fighting hard to actively push more people into poverty. They know those people will be their most faithful voters.
• silexia 1y ago
  People will say anything to justify stealing another person's earnings or work product.
• Exoristos 1y ago
  I grew up poor, but with two competing narratives about poverty filling our ears at home. You see, my mother came from a well-off upper middle class ("prep") family, and my father came from generational poverty in Appalachia ("trailer trash"). They met in D.C. where he was a soldier and she worked at the Treasury. Due to my mother's urging, he ended up being the first of his family line to graduate from college -- however, he didn't perform well in his profession, became more or less unemployable, and we ended up back in Appalachia. Here Mother refused to work in protest, while Dad bartered, bargain-hunted, salvaged, gardened, and begged to keep us in food and shelter. His narrative was that poverty isn't so bad, he'd enjoyed a dirt-floor lifestyle as a kid, if you get sick or someone dies it's not worth dwelling on. Keep your chin up, argue with the bank, eat junk food, tell jokes before bed till everyone cries laughing. "What you going to do about it? There's nothing you can do about it." Her narrative was that anyone can be rich with enough effort. One has to work with complete dedication, sleep little, constantly increase one's education, one's social network, personal abilities -- it's an endless fight that should be taken on with zeal. "There's always room at the top." I've pushed to realize my mother's doctrine, with very mixed success, and I've often been glad to have my dad's absolution to fall back on.
• mgraczyk 1y ago
  Why is it that the 50 year old Pakistani man who just moved here and doesn't speak English seems to be doing so much better than "poor" Americans who complain online all the time. Or the 23 year old dishwasher from Mexico who speaks no English and stopped going to school at age 13 with two kids he's supporting in a small apartment Sure they struggle but they seem to do a lot better than a lot of the 25 year old college educated Americans I see constantly complaining about "living wages" and the like The cases where I've spent time with people like this, I generally find that they spend a lot of money on alcohol/drugs and work very little or not at all
  • spwa4 1y ago
    Because humans compare against their previous situation. If humans don't advance against their previous situation and against their peers, even very slowly is enough but if they don't, best of luck motivating them to do anything.
  • speakfreely 1y ago
    Happiness = reality - expectations
  • el_memorioso 1y ago
    It's good you put "poor" in scare quotes. The truly poor are not complaining online all the time because they don't have the time and/or money to be bitching online. You seemed to have missed one of the primary points of the article.
    • mgraczyk 1y ago
      No I agree with that point in the article. The people I meet who complain are not standing in line at the food bank
  • seattle_spring 1y ago
    I've seen the sentiment several times right here on HN that $250k is "basically poverty" in San Francisco. It's unbelievable to me how out of touch and spoiled one would have to be to reach that conclusion.
• vivzkestrel 1y ago
  with respect to food i wanted to ask HN here, what if a bunch of people came together. Let us say 10000 americans who are poor decide to pool in money and import groceries from a country with much cheaper prices (say India) would this cost less after shipping? What if there was a startup that groups people like this in a bunch and does weekly shipping of groceries from a low cost country? Would that help?
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• foobarbecue 1y ago
  > Everyone has experienced being broke. No, they haven't.
• Aeolun 1y ago
  I feel like the author tells us that being poor means worrying about problems you can’t fix all the time? Or at least, that you believe you can never fix them? If you don’t have the $300 for the own part repair on your truck, there’s no point in worrying about it. If you truck breaks it breaks, it’s never going to recover unless you think of something else. Complaining that you don’t have $300 for even the home repair doesn’t do anything to improve the situation. Better figure out a way to live if the truck breaks.
  • chistev 1y ago
    We know complaining doesn't fix any problem, but we can't help it. Easier said to tell people to get on with their lives.
    • Aeolun 1y ago
      That’s as true for the weather as anything else xD I just feel people always say ‘I have no options’, when they eminently have tons of them. They’re just all bad ones.
  • wiseowise 1y ago
    Yeah, this right here has never been poor. “Just don’t worry” “Just pull yourself by your bootstraps” “Just stop being poor”
    • Aeolun 1y ago
      No, I said to stop worrying about stuff you can’t fix. That’s easier said than done, but entirely wealth independent. It’s like worrying about impending death when you are a 90 year old billionaire.
  • dangus 1y ago
    How do you get to work if your car/truck breaks? 95% of American commuters are using personal vehicles. “Fixing your car” is just one example and not anywhere close to the worst imaginable one. “Just don’t worry about skipping meals” “Just don’t worry about that abscess” “Just don’t worry about getting evicted”
• suchoudh 1y ago
  Never thought about this difference before. It has given me a lot of new ground to explore. Thanks for the effort. Found the post to be Shockingly true. "You have to live it to understand it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, its a tarpit and getting out of it without someone handing you a branch (and if you no longer have the strength to pull yourself out) then you’ll be stuck in it forever. " In India there is a concept of "Langar" at Sikh temples where you get free hygienic vegeterian food. The weather is also a lot forgiving ( as of this year you will not die of cold or a heatstroke in summers - but this situation is changing with extremes weathers due to climate change) I do not have a solution .. but am looking on this problem of poverty due to job losses since a long time. If you know of some good pointers to look at pls share.
• nathias 1y ago
  another thing the op doesn't mention is a pro-risk attitude, when you are poor it is rational to take risks, or even seek them out, because there is very little to loose...
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• QuiEgo 1y ago
  Imagine you can get 20 rolls of toilet paper at Costco for $20. Or one roll at your corner store for $5. However, you need a car to get to Costco, which you don't have, so now you're looking at riding the bus there. But you just worked two back-to-back 8 hour shits, and you're a zombie so that's not happening. Besides, $20 is a stretch, you really might need that $15 to cover a few meals until your next paycheck if you can't get enough hours this month. So, you have to pay $5 for what should be a $1 roll of TP. Now imagine that for everything - food, rent, everything. To quote a song, "having money is not everything, not having it is"
• Havoc 1y ago
  Think growing up middle class is possibly a sort of sweet spot on this, especially combined with a slight jump up the ladder as one ages. Not burdened by the mental challenges described here but also not so disconnected from reality for "let them eat cake" syndrome of the really rich
• thePhytochemist 1y ago
  I see a lot of musing and wondering here about the cause of poverty. One thing that's missing that I have seen a fair bit is crime and scams. People who are victims of crime can get dumped into the poverty trap through no fault of their own. For a while I was living in my car because my signature was forged by and an employer decided to simply opt out of payment. I took the employer to arbitration and won but that took 2.5 years - that's obviously a structural problem when eviction happens in 30 days.
• abustamam 1y ago
  > Should I work a second job and never see my wife? My kids? Should I never have any personal time? Should my entire life revolve around money? Should I kill myself for capitalism? This part gets me. I once saw someone on Twitter who was like "I was poor, I worked a bazillion hours a week and never saw my wife and kids, just so I could put food on the table! If I could do it, anyone can!" And one response was just like, "if you need to do that just to make ends meet, the system is obviously broken. If I'm gonna work that hard, there better be a private jet at the end of that road" Yeah, just because one CAN kill themselves for capitalism, doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to.