4 ms·

> Normal families have sofas, she says, and you’ll do what it takes to feel normal. "Normal" families buy new things too. "Normal" families don't scrimp and s

> Normal families have sofas, she says, and you’ll do what it takes to feel normal. "Normal" families buy new things too. "Normal" families don't scrimp and save just so they can have chairs to sit on, and beds to sleep in. Interestingly, I neither have chairs in my apartment nor a bed. Nobody thinks I'm "abnormal" in this respect because I live in Japan. It is a bit strange that I work from home, program on an end table I borrowed from my mother-in-law and I sit on a stool that I bought for about $15 (admittedly new). But I started using that 6 months ago thinking I would upgrade when I needed to. Surprisingly I haven't needed to. The expectation of "normality" is what is killing the poor. This is based on your culture. You need a bed. You need a sofa. You need a kitchen table. You need an oven. You need a car. You need a sensible desk to work on. You need a special work chair. You need cable television. None of these things are actually needed in most cases. Possibly a person needs one or two of these things in specific cases, just like I need a computer to do my job. I don't have any of the things listed above and I'm not poor by any stretch of the imagination. My life seems perfectly "normal" to me. Without trying to sound superior (which is really difficult because probably I am unconsciously feeling that way), the skills you need to live happily on a very, very low income are probably the same skills you need to have to make (and keep) a lot of money.

reagency 11y ago
Your last sentence doesn't really make sense. Plenty of rich people buy plenty of frivolous things
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I had to think about your 2 sentences for a long time before I decided that you are right. The top 10% of income earners make $113,799 per year in the USA. The number of people I've seen who can earn that amount of money and burn through it all is astounding. I personally even know people who can spend that kind of money and even need to look for food handouts at the end of the month. I suppose what I meant is that if you can live happily on $10K per year, then probably it will be very easy for you to get and maintain employment for a lot more. As well as meeting people who can burn through money at a ferocious rate, I've met (much fewer) people who can live happily in what most Americans would call poverty. Those people always seem to have much more money than they need. It takes rare skills to live like that. The end result is that the poor have very little chance of bootstrapping themselves out of poverty (because if they could, they already would).
deleted 11y ago
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bane 11y ago
Absolutely spot on. One of the things my wife taught me, and allowed me to escape from my poor environs was to simply stop trying to fulfill expectations of the poor people I grew up with and re-purpose the skills I had for being poor into skills that I could use to generate wealth. "You don't get rich by spending money" she used to say. It helped that she grew up fairly wealthy, but her parents had pulled themselves out of abject poverty within their own lifetimes -- they still had the kinds of ingrained penny-minding skills they grew up with, but had used it towards positive effect. For the first two years of my marriage, we sat on the floor, ate off of a re-purposed used coffee table somebody gave to use for free. For the first year we slept on an old mattress on the floor until in the second year we finally bought a bedroom set that was ridiculously discounted and that allowed us to move our clothes into some kind of organization. It felt weird having friends over, since we couldn't offer them anyplace to sit but the floor, but you get over it.

reagency 11y ago

Your last sentence doesn't really make sense. Plenty of rich people buy plenty of frivolous things

mikekchar 11y ago
I had to think about your 2 sentences for a long time before I decided that you are right. The top 10% of income earners make $113,799 per year in the USA. The number of people I've seen who can earn that amount of money and burn through it all is astounding. I personally even know people who can spend that kind of money and even need to look for food handouts at the end of the month. I suppose what I meant is that if you can live happily on $10K per year, then probably it will be very easy for you to get and maintain employment for a lot more. As well as meeting people who can burn through money at a ferocious rate, I've met (much fewer) people who can live happily in what most Americans would call poverty. Those people always seem to have much more money than they need. It takes rare skills to live like that. The end result is that the poor have very little chance of bootstrapping themselves out of poverty (because if they could, they already would).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bane 11y ago

Absolutely spot on. One of the things my wife taught me, and allowed me to escape from my poor environs was to simply stop trying to fulfill expectations of the poor people I grew up with and re-purpose the skills I had for being poor into skills that I could use to generate wealth. "You don't get rich by spending money" she used to say. It helped that she grew up fairly wealthy, but her parents had pulled themselves out of abject poverty within their own lifetimes -- they still had the kinds of ingrained penny-minding skills they grew up with, but had used it towards positive effect. For the first two years of my marriage, we sat on the floor, ate off of a re-purposed used coffee table somebody gave to use for free. For the first year we slept on an old mattress on the floor until in the second year we finally bought a bedroom set that was ridiculously discounted and that allowed us to move our clothes into some kind of organization. It felt weird having friends over, since we couldn't offer them anyplace to sit but the floor, but you get over it.