7 ms·

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 cur

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 11mo ago
think of this way, the less capital you have the more you depend on luck
doubled112 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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.
    - ProfessorLayton 11mo ago
      >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. There's a lot of dumb rich people, too. Sometimes the wield a lot of power and are indeed bad people.
      - antisthenes 11mo ago
        Yes, inheritance is a thing, and having smart kids from smart parents is not a guarantee.
    - tredre3 11mo ago
      > 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. The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a useful job is staggeringly low. Unless in your mind anybody of average or below average intelligence "can't contribute to society" in which case I suggest you step off your tech pedestal and look around you.
      - simoncion 11mo ago
        > The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a useful job is staggeringly low. Sure. OP didn't say otherwise. OP did say that some folks "will always be poor" because they are "under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society" and that "[t]hat doesn't mean that they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke" and that "Maybe eventually we will have enough mastery over genetics where we can make people truly equal in ability." but until then "The only thing we can do is be compassionate and help out.". Perhaps you've been so lucky as to never encounter folks who hold the bone-deep belief that being unable to work [0] makes you worse than worthless. If so, celebrate your good fortune, I guess? [0] Typically, these sorts of folks have carveouts for retirement, pregnancy, childbearing, and maybe a begrudging carveout for short-term injury. Anything else and you're a filthy drain on society.
      - 11mo ago
  - tavavex 11mo ago
    Don't forget the luck of living in a country where programming was a viable career path that could lead to a decent job, the luck of having the opportunity (and/or money) to attain the higher education that's usually required for it and the luck of living in a time when the tech industry was in an upswing that would allow a person to find a job in this industry. Really, having any of these puts most of us well above the amount of luck an average person gets (at least on a worldwide scale).
dangoor 11mo 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? External factors (aka luck), perhaps? Someone gets their resume into a job just after they made the last hire for that position. Or the car they can't afford to fix breaks down on the way to the interview.
magicalist 11mo ago
> But what I'm curious about is the causal difference between the two A majority of personal bankruptcies in the US being caused by medical expenses might be a good place to start looking. You can be "broke" living paycheck to paycheck and "making it", but you're on even more of a razors edge than most. One medical emergency, one car accident, one removal of work hours etc and you start to fall behind, and that's when late fees and compounding interest work to make sure you never get out of the hole.
- PeaceTed 11mo ago
  While we are not at the same state in history, there is a reason why Usury was illegal in many societies. Interest on loans can end up crushing one part of society while enriching another that any feel didn't deserve it. It can actively produce inequality.
- mlrtime 11mo ago
  > majority of personal bankruptcies in the US being caused by medical expense I see this said over and over without actual unbiased stats. As quick google search tells me it's not. I don't blame you for saying it, it's just said so casually and it seems true but isn't.
  - HalcyonCowboy 11mo ago
    Thanks for being skeptical, looked it up because of that. Looks like the primary study people cite is this one, which indicates around 65% of people filing for bankruptcy cite a medical contributor of their bankruptcy. That includes medical bills (highest contributor overall) and loss of income due to medical issues. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/ I’d like to see what information you have that’s different though.
    - mlrtime 11mo ago
      Loss of income is #1 with medical being close #2. https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/ https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/ 78% cited loss of income.
jokethrowaway 11mo ago
[flagged]
- potsandpans 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - alaxhn 11mo ago
    Well if the poster is not doing drugs and is taking care of their health the odds are overwhelmingly against this scenario even if it would satisfy your schadenfreude.
    - potsandpans 11mo ago
      Oh really? Please cite the sources. I didn't say I hoped it happened. Just that it does happen. And it's an extremely myopic and callous way to look at the state of the world.
- pixl97 11mo ago
  >Immigrants arrive here This is a massively broad brush with a huge filter bias applied. 1. Many immigrants not from the contiguous countries next to yours were actually rather wealthy and education in relation to where they came from. 2. Immigrants from close countries typically are the ones that are more motivated in the first place (bias filter). It's also common they have relations and contacts in the country they are going to as a means to gain a foothold in the place they are going.
  - randallsquared 11mo ago
    > Many immigrants [...] were actually rather wealthy and education in relation to where they came from. But they're not wealthy here, and they can't buy the cost of living in NYC or LA with that level of wealth. With the education point, you're gesturing at something like the real reasons they often outperform very poor Americans (if we compare only equivalent capacity for the sake of argument), I believe: habit, work ethic, drive, belief in improvement. Dom's article about what "poor" looks like makes sense from the inside, but after making it out one looks back and sees all the opportunities everyone around them had to get out of poverty, and it looks a little different, then. Not everyone has all the same opportunities, but a key driver is being open to those that appear, and conducting your life such that they are more likely. The despair of believing they can't get out of the rut they're in is one of the causes of not getting out of the rut they are in. It's not that the despair isn't real, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy (and this is true even if they win the lottery, looking at outcomes there).
webdood90 11mo 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 actually think a lot of it comes down to self control. Can you resist the allure of consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses? Are you buying liabilities that actually make your life harder? Are you living outside of your means? IMO it matters little how much you earn if you don't know how to spend it.
- rectang 11mo ago
  From the article: > Being poor is you already did all those things. You cancelled all your streaming services years ago. You make all your food from scratch all the time. You never go to fucking Starbucks. You fix everything yourself. You already stretch everything to the limit. That is how you have to live every day of your life, for eternity, with no relief in sight.
  - bigstrat2003 11mo ago
    Yes, the article says that, but I have direct experience which says the article is not telling the whole story. Some people are making all the right decisions and are still poor due to bad luck trapping them in a cycle of financial ruin. But also, some people really are poor due to their own crappy decisions. I've known them! They exist and must be accounted for in any productive discussion about poverty. Many, many people try to act like only one of these two groups of poor people exists. For some people, that means they claim that if you're poor it's only because of your own bad decisions. For some people (including, to be frank, most of the commenters in this thread), it means they claim that if you're poor it's only because of systemic issues. Both claims are wrong, however, and both hamper us from finding effective solutions. Whether one is poor due to external causes or their own bad decisions, they deserve to be treated with compassion and for us to try to help them. But the solutions for those two failure modes look very different and helping one group isn't going to do anything to help the other. Thus, trying to effectively solve problems of poverty in our society must include a balanced view, recognizing that both causes of poverty (systemic issues and bad personal decision making) are quite real.
  - 11mo ago
etchalon 11mo ago
Growing up with a single mother we've vacillated between being poor, broke and "getting by". It was always a reverse slide down. First, we'd go broke. The meager savings she'd put together would get wiped out. It was generally an impossible crisis that would do it. Something that shouldn't have broken, did. Something that shouldn't have happened, did. Something that should have only cost X cost Y. If the crisis was a single instance event that year, we'd slowly return to "getting buy". Small savings would get restored. Some debt written off. A windfall from something or other that put our heads above water. But sometimes, it was too many things at once. We'd go from being broke, to being poor. Every dollar was a trade-off. There was no "even" or "reduced". There was just "no". The water bill couldn't get paid. The mortgage had to be late. The credit card was going to default. There were no options to shave or save. The bare minimum was still too expensive. The answer is just ... luck. When you're broke, you're on borrowed time. For some people, at some point, that debt comes due and can never be repaid. For some people, the debt comes due but something balances it. For others, the debt just never gets called in.
cowpig 11mo ago
Things that are pretty much out of those peoples' control can include health problems, dependents such as kids or needy older relatives, accidents, a long tail of other kinds of bad luck (fires, victim of fraud, etc)
monero-xmr 11mo ago
I’m wealthy but I wasnt always. When I was 22 through 30 I didn’t take a single vacation that wasn’t driving to a long weekend. My wife and I both pulled 60 to 70 hour weeks for our entire 20s (I still do). No one “deserves” free time. If you don’t want to work 70 hours a week and want to watch Netflix instead, go for it, but don’t bitch to me
- dbspin 11mo ago
  I'm not sure what this contributes? Not being rich and experiencing absolute poverty are radically different things. Of course, in America as everywhere else, there are millions who work sixty hour weeks and remain in poverty, often extreme poverty. Especially those undocumented, incarcerated or working in circumstances where minimum wages do not apply. I wonder if you've examined your own evident anger and defensiveness and why you've responded in that way?
- tome 11mo ago
  I'm confused because the comment you're replying to didn't mention free time or Netflix.
- thewebguyd 11mo ago
  Such bullshit. Don't continue to glamorize the mentally and physically harmful hustle culture that invades this country, and ignores the very real factor of both luck and privilege that not everyone is blessed with. What's the point of society if everyone needs to bust their ass 70+ hours a week to get by? Might as well go homestead in the woods and be a subsistence farmer and do it on your own at that point. Just fuck having time for creative pursuits and hobbies outside of working and making someone else rich?
- Dilettante_ 11mo ago
  What was your job at the time?
- mayoff 11mo ago
  Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this and I hope no one else does." Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this so everyone else should too."
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
tstrimple 11mo 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? They don't have the same skills. One is far more skilled at existing while poor.

nathias 11mo ago

think of this way, the less capital you have the more you depend on luck

doubled112 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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.
  - ProfessorLayton 11mo ago
    >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. There's a lot of dumb rich people, too. Sometimes the wield a lot of power and are indeed bad people.
    - antisthenes 11mo ago
      Yes, inheritance is a thing, and having smart kids from smart parents is not a guarantee.
  - tredre3 11mo ago
    > 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. The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a useful job is staggeringly low. Unless in your mind anybody of average or below average intelligence "can't contribute to society" in which case I suggest you step off your tech pedestal and look around you.
    - simoncion 11mo ago
      > The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a useful job is staggeringly low. Sure. OP didn't say otherwise. OP did say that some folks "will always be poor" because they are "under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society" and that "[t]hat doesn't mean that they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke" and that "Maybe eventually we will have enough mastery over genetics where we can make people truly equal in ability." but until then "The only thing we can do is be compassionate and help out.". Perhaps you've been so lucky as to never encounter folks who hold the bone-deep belief that being unable to work [0] makes you worse than worthless. If so, celebrate your good fortune, I guess? [0] Typically, these sorts of folks have carveouts for retirement, pregnancy, childbearing, and maybe a begrudging carveout for short-term injury. Anything else and you're a filthy drain on society.
    - 11mo ago
- tavavex 11mo ago
  Don't forget the luck of living in a country where programming was a viable career path that could lead to a decent job, the luck of having the opportunity (and/or money) to attain the higher education that's usually required for it and the luck of living in a time when the tech industry was in an upswing that would allow a person to find a job in this industry. Really, having any of these puts most of us well above the amount of luck an average person gets (at least on a worldwide scale).

dangoor 11mo 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? External factors (aka luck), perhaps? Someone gets their resume into a job just after they made the last hire for that position. Or the car they can't afford to fix breaks down on the way to the interview.

magicalist 11mo ago

> But what I'm curious about is the causal difference between the two A majority of personal bankruptcies in the US being caused by medical expenses might be a good place to start looking. You can be "broke" living paycheck to paycheck and "making it", but you're on even more of a razors edge than most. One medical emergency, one car accident, one removal of work hours etc and you start to fall behind, and that's when late fees and compounding interest work to make sure you never get out of the hole.

PeaceTed 11mo ago
While we are not at the same state in history, there is a reason why Usury was illegal in many societies. Interest on loans can end up crushing one part of society while enriching another that any feel didn't deserve it. It can actively produce inequality.
mlrtime 11mo ago
> majority of personal bankruptcies in the US being caused by medical expense I see this said over and over without actual unbiased stats. As quick google search tells me it's not. I don't blame you for saying it, it's just said so casually and it seems true but isn't.
- HalcyonCowboy 11mo ago
  Thanks for being skeptical, looked it up because of that. Looks like the primary study people cite is this one, which indicates around 65% of people filing for bankruptcy cite a medical contributor of their bankruptcy. That includes medical bills (highest contributor overall) and loss of income due to medical issues. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6366487/ I’d like to see what information you have that’s different though.
  - mlrtime 11mo ago
    Loss of income is #1 with medical being close #2. https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/ https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/ 78% cited loss of income.

jokethrowaway 11mo ago

[flagged]

potsandpans 11mo ago
[flagged]
- alaxhn 11mo ago
  Well if the poster is not doing drugs and is taking care of their health the odds are overwhelmingly against this scenario even if it would satisfy your schadenfreude.
  - potsandpans 11mo ago
    Oh really? Please cite the sources. I didn't say I hoped it happened. Just that it does happen. And it's an extremely myopic and callous way to look at the state of the world.
pixl97 11mo ago
>Immigrants arrive here This is a massively broad brush with a huge filter bias applied. 1. Many immigrants not from the contiguous countries next to yours were actually rather wealthy and education in relation to where they came from. 2. Immigrants from close countries typically are the ones that are more motivated in the first place (bias filter). It's also common they have relations and contacts in the country they are going to as a means to gain a foothold in the place they are going.
- randallsquared 11mo ago
  > Many immigrants [...] were actually rather wealthy and education in relation to where they came from. But they're not wealthy here, and they can't buy the cost of living in NYC or LA with that level of wealth. With the education point, you're gesturing at something like the real reasons they often outperform very poor Americans (if we compare only equivalent capacity for the sake of argument), I believe: habit, work ethic, drive, belief in improvement. Dom's article about what "poor" looks like makes sense from the inside, but after making it out one looks back and sees all the opportunities everyone around them had to get out of poverty, and it looks a little different, then. Not everyone has all the same opportunities, but a key driver is being open to those that appear, and conducting your life such that they are more likely. The despair of believing they can't get out of the rut they're in is one of the causes of not getting out of the rut they are in. It's not that the despair isn't real, but it's a self-fulfilling prophecy (and this is true even if they win the lottery, looking at outcomes there).

webdood90 11mo 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 actually think a lot of it comes down to self control. Can you resist the allure of consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses? Are you buying liabilities that actually make your life harder? Are you living outside of your means? IMO it matters little how much you earn if you don't know how to spend it.

rectang 11mo ago
From the article: > Being poor is you already did all those things. You cancelled all your streaming services years ago. You make all your food from scratch all the time. You never go to fucking Starbucks. You fix everything yourself. You already stretch everything to the limit. That is how you have to live every day of your life, for eternity, with no relief in sight.
- bigstrat2003 11mo ago
  Yes, the article says that, but I have direct experience which says the article is not telling the whole story. Some people are making all the right decisions and are still poor due to bad luck trapping them in a cycle of financial ruin. But also, some people really are poor due to their own crappy decisions. I've known them! They exist and must be accounted for in any productive discussion about poverty. Many, many people try to act like only one of these two groups of poor people exists. For some people, that means they claim that if you're poor it's only because of your own bad decisions. For some people (including, to be frank, most of the commenters in this thread), it means they claim that if you're poor it's only because of systemic issues. Both claims are wrong, however, and both hamper us from finding effective solutions. Whether one is poor due to external causes or their own bad decisions, they deserve to be treated with compassion and for us to try to help them. But the solutions for those two failure modes look very different and helping one group isn't going to do anything to help the other. Thus, trying to effectively solve problems of poverty in our society must include a balanced view, recognizing that both causes of poverty (systemic issues and bad personal decision making) are quite real.
- 11mo ago

etchalon 11mo ago

Growing up with a single mother we've vacillated between being poor, broke and "getting by". It was always a reverse slide down. First, we'd go broke. The meager savings she'd put together would get wiped out. It was generally an impossible crisis that would do it. Something that shouldn't have broken, did. Something that shouldn't have happened, did. Something that should have only cost X cost Y. If the crisis was a single instance event that year, we'd slowly return to "getting buy". Small savings would get restored. Some debt written off. A windfall from something or other that put our heads above water. But sometimes, it was too many things at once. We'd go from being broke, to being poor. Every dollar was a trade-off. There was no "even" or "reduced". There was just "no". The water bill couldn't get paid. The mortgage had to be late. The credit card was going to default. There were no options to shave or save. The bare minimum was still too expensive. The answer is just ... luck. When you're broke, you're on borrowed time. For some people, at some point, that debt comes due and can never be repaid. For some people, the debt comes due but something balances it. For others, the debt just never gets called in.

cowpig 11mo ago

Things that are pretty much out of those peoples' control can include health problems, dependents such as kids or needy older relatives, accidents, a long tail of other kinds of bad luck (fires, victim of fraud, etc)

monero-xmr 11mo ago

I’m wealthy but I wasnt always. When I was 22 through 30 I didn’t take a single vacation that wasn’t driving to a long weekend. My wife and I both pulled 60 to 70 hour weeks for our entire 20s (I still do). No one “deserves” free time. If you don’t want to work 70 hours a week and want to watch Netflix instead, go for it, but don’t bitch to me

dbspin 11mo ago
I'm not sure what this contributes? Not being rich and experiencing absolute poverty are radically different things. Of course, in America as everywhere else, there are millions who work sixty hour weeks and remain in poverty, often extreme poverty. Especially those undocumented, incarcerated or working in circumstances where minimum wages do not apply. I wonder if you've examined your own evident anger and defensiveness and why you've responded in that way?
tome 11mo ago
I'm confused because the comment you're replying to didn't mention free time or Netflix.
thewebguyd 11mo ago
Such bullshit. Don't continue to glamorize the mentally and physically harmful hustle culture that invades this country, and ignores the very real factor of both luck and privilege that not everyone is blessed with. What's the point of society if everyone needs to bust their ass 70+ hours a week to get by? Might as well go homestead in the woods and be a subsistence farmer and do it on your own at that point. Just fuck having time for creative pursuits and hobbies outside of working and making someone else rich?
Dilettante_ 11mo ago
What was your job at the time?
mayoff 11mo ago
Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this and I hope no one else does." Some people suffer and think "I had to go through this so everyone else should too."

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

tstrimple 11mo 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? They don't have the same skills. One is far more skilled at existing while poor.