4 ms·

When our first son was born 17 years ago I was making $10/h. My wife got WIC, and used medicaid. We told the government that she lived with her mom and that I w

When our first son was born 17 years ago I was making $10/h. My wife got WIC, and used medicaid. We told the government that she lived with her mom and that I was a deadbeat. We needed the help, and my low-wage job would have been prohibitive. $10/h actually wasn't too bad in '98 for a single dude. I had an apartment, ate, had utilities paid, with enough left over for beer, weed and cigarettes. It was rough, but definitely not hopeless. Not all of the decisions we made were good (lol, by a long ways), but enough of them were. I never expected to be poor forever, which makes a huge difference. There were spans of depression where I felt like giving in and just accepting my lot in life, but punched through and kept grinding. Thankful for that.

morgante 12y ago
> I had an apartment, ate, had utilities paid, with enough left over for beer, weed and cigarettes. That actually sounds pretty great. You covered your necessities and had a few luxuries. Heck, I make an order of magnitude more than minimum wage, but my life doesn't sound much more glamorous than that. If poor people are able to afford food, housing, and small luxuries (cigarettes), is life really so bad?
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Poor people lack mobility and flexibility, though. The poor life, at least as I lived it, was not excessively austere, but it was stifling and the slightest disruption could bring it all crashing down.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - Retra 12y ago
      You cannot save money you don't have.
- rcoder 12y ago
  If you're making an order of magnitude more than minimum wage that puts you at $72.50 per hour, or about $145k per year. That might not sound like a lot to the regulars on this site, but it's almost triple the median US household income ($52k) and should put you comfortably in the middle class in almost any developed part of the world. You also probably don't have to worry about getting sick or injured (health insurance and sick leave are basically assumed in most careers that pay >$100k/year), getting access to money (whether savings or credit) for emergencies, or being able to support a loved one when they have problems. There's nothing "glamorous" about scraping by month to month, working an hourly job with no benefits or paid leave, or having to lie to get access to social services to support your family. It might not be as bad as living in medieval-era poverty, but it's still miles away from your six-figure professional lifestyle. Life can be (and often is!) fine day-to-day when you're poor, but the complete lack of an effective safety net means the difference between "doing okay" and "living on the street with no options" is razor-thin.
  - morgante 12y ago
    To be clear, I'm well aware that what I make places me comfortably into the upper middle class. My point was simply that my life generally doesn't seem much/any better than joelhooks's ostensibly "poor" life. I might have health insurance, but I haven't used it once. Even though I have sick leave at work, I'd probably never take it (preferring to work remotely). I guess my main point is that we shouldn't lose sight of the advances which centuries of development have brought us. An order of magnitude income differential no longer connotes an order of magnitude difference in lifestyle. At least for young single men, it seems like there's almost no difference in lifestyle based on salary.
    - joelhooks 12y ago
      I'm going to call bullshit on this, as I currently rest well above a single order of magnitude beyond minimum wage. Life is awesome. I own a business. We have health coverage. We eat high quality nutrient rich food. We take our 4 kids to a lake house for a month every year. I work when I feel like it. We travel globally. I've got more options than I ever thought possible. Sure, sitting around getting loaded smoking cigarettes is Fun. This is better. A lot better.
- Retra 12y ago
  Food, housing, and small luxuries are necessities. They are not a recipe for a good life unless you are pacified by trite platitudes. Wealth is relative, but progress is not. What happens when you get old? What happens why somebody else needs your help? What happens if you have a good idea and nobody to listen to it?
  - morgante 12y ago
    > small luxuries are necessities By definition luxuries are not necessities. If people can do without them fine (millions of people don't drink or smoke), they are not necessities. > They are not a recipe for a good life unless you are pacified by trite platitudes. Then what is, which money could buy? I make a lot more money than that, but my life doesn't sound any better.
    - Retra 12y ago
      You have security. That is what money buys. And you may consider that a luxury, but that isn't how people who don't have it feel about it.
    - Chinjut 12y ago
      > By definition luxuries are not necessities. If people can do without them fine (millions of people don't drink or smoke), they are not necessities. I daresay, it's a necessity for human beings to experience less than complete absence of all pleasures in life. Many of the things described as "small luxuries" are individually forgoable, sure, but for one to live their life denying themselves the satisfaction of any expense anyone else might do without, experiencing nothing but the bare toil and drudgery required for physical survival, is a kind of mental torture no one should be expected to bear. If a drink now and then (or "junk food" instead, or movies, or videogames instead, or nice clothes, or this, or that, or the other thing, whatever the particular indulgences are that floats one boat) is what it takes to feel like a proper human being, it's worth it. Poor people like the same things anyone likes, and I cast no aspersions on their allowing themselves joy. (Also, yes, millions of people don't smoke, but at the same time, millions of people wish no longer to smoke but have great difficulty quitting, because it is physically addictive (rather famously), and though one might say no one should ever have picked up the habit in the first place, it's not uncommon for perfectly fine people to have made suboptimal decisions at at least one point in their life...)
- joelhooks 12y ago
  It wasn't terrible. I was stuck in that job with no escape for 5 years. That kind of sucked, but on the scale of global suffering, mine has been minimal.

morgante 12y ago

> I had an apartment, ate, had utilities paid, with enough left over for beer, weed and cigarettes. That actually sounds pretty great. You covered your necessities and had a few luxuries. Heck, I make an order of magnitude more than minimum wage, but my life doesn't sound much more glamorous than that. If poor people are able to afford food, housing, and small luxuries (cigarettes), is life really so bad?

nitrogen 12y ago
Poor people lack mobility and flexibility, though. The poor life, at least as I lived it, was not excessively austere, but it was stifling and the slightest disruption could bring it all crashing down.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - Retra 12y ago
    You cannot save money you don't have.
rcoder 12y ago
If you're making an order of magnitude more than minimum wage that puts you at $72.50 per hour, or about $145k per year. That might not sound like a lot to the regulars on this site, but it's almost triple the median US household income ($52k) and should put you comfortably in the middle class in almost any developed part of the world. You also probably don't have to worry about getting sick or injured (health insurance and sick leave are basically assumed in most careers that pay >$100k/year), getting access to money (whether savings or credit) for emergencies, or being able to support a loved one when they have problems. There's nothing "glamorous" about scraping by month to month, working an hourly job with no benefits or paid leave, or having to lie to get access to social services to support your family. It might not be as bad as living in medieval-era poverty, but it's still miles away from your six-figure professional lifestyle. Life can be (and often is!) fine day-to-day when you're poor, but the complete lack of an effective safety net means the difference between "doing okay" and "living on the street with no options" is razor-thin.
- morgante 12y ago
  To be clear, I'm well aware that what I make places me comfortably into the upper middle class. My point was simply that my life generally doesn't seem much/any better than joelhooks's ostensibly "poor" life. I might have health insurance, but I haven't used it once. Even though I have sick leave at work, I'd probably never take it (preferring to work remotely). I guess my main point is that we shouldn't lose sight of the advances which centuries of development have brought us. An order of magnitude income differential no longer connotes an order of magnitude difference in lifestyle. At least for young single men, it seems like there's almost no difference in lifestyle based on salary.
  - joelhooks 12y ago
    I'm going to call bullshit on this, as I currently rest well above a single order of magnitude beyond minimum wage. Life is awesome. I own a business. We have health coverage. We eat high quality nutrient rich food. We take our 4 kids to a lake house for a month every year. I work when I feel like it. We travel globally. I've got more options than I ever thought possible. Sure, sitting around getting loaded smoking cigarettes is Fun. This is better. A lot better.
Retra 12y ago
Food, housing, and small luxuries are necessities. They are not a recipe for a good life unless you are pacified by trite platitudes. Wealth is relative, but progress is not. What happens when you get old? What happens why somebody else needs your help? What happens if you have a good idea and nobody to listen to it?
- morgante 12y ago
  > small luxuries are necessities By definition luxuries are not necessities. If people can do without them fine (millions of people don't drink or smoke), they are not necessities. > They are not a recipe for a good life unless you are pacified by trite platitudes. Then what is, which money could buy? I make a lot more money than that, but my life doesn't sound any better.
  - Retra 12y ago
    You have security. That is what money buys. And you may consider that a luxury, but that isn't how people who don't have it feel about it.
  - Chinjut 12y ago
    > By definition luxuries are not necessities. If people can do without them fine (millions of people don't drink or smoke), they are not necessities. I daresay, it's a necessity for human beings to experience less than complete absence of all pleasures in life. Many of the things described as "small luxuries" are individually forgoable, sure, but for one to live their life denying themselves the satisfaction of any expense anyone else might do without, experiencing nothing but the bare toil and drudgery required for physical survival, is a kind of mental torture no one should be expected to bear. If a drink now and then (or "junk food" instead, or movies, or videogames instead, or nice clothes, or this, or that, or the other thing, whatever the particular indulgences are that floats one boat) is what it takes to feel like a proper human being, it's worth it. Poor people like the same things anyone likes, and I cast no aspersions on their allowing themselves joy. (Also, yes, millions of people don't smoke, but at the same time, millions of people wish no longer to smoke but have great difficulty quitting, because it is physically addictive (rather famously), and though one might say no one should ever have picked up the habit in the first place, it's not uncommon for perfectly fine people to have made suboptimal decisions at at least one point in their life...)
joelhooks 12y ago
It wasn't terrible. I was stuck in that job with no escape for 5 years. That kind of sucked, but on the scale of global suffering, mine has been minimal.