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Comment by elvirs | Hacker News Reader

man I know people working as bank tellers, who rent just a room and still cant make ends meet. I dont think the 'employment' is good enough anymore. The tech who services my car at the premium car dealership said he has another job in addition to this full time job and still cant afford stake at home. I think in last 10 years a lot of new living expenses have been added to our daily life. cellphone bill, internet bill, all kind of bullshit mandatory donations to kids school, new 100 dollars per year for each point above 3 points on driver license, school books cost like 10 times more than they used to, have to have alarm system costing 30 dollars per month to get a property insurance discount, all that shit. wages did not keep up with raising costs. i see too many employed hard working honest people whose average checking account balance is usually a 2-3 digit number

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> man I know people working as bank tellers, who rent just a room and still cant make ends meet

It's always been like this for people. There's this myth these days that all the employed people of yesteryear had comfortable lives. There's always been a large portion of society struggling to make ends meet - until recently, it was basically the definition of 'working class'.

As an example, ask your bank teller friend if they've ever had to darn a sock. Struggling to make ends meet looks a little different these days, but it's far from a new phenomenon.

Honestly, I think the biggest difference is in expectations. Look at this graph [0] from an NPR article.

The amount of disposable income spent on food has almost been cut in half since 1960. The example of darning socks is a good one. When people darned socks it was not really because they were poor, per se. It was because socks were expensive. Now socks are considered to be disposable items.

When I grew up, my mother had a carbon steel kitchen knife. Singular. I wander into people's homes and it's rare that I see less than 5 or 6 crappy knives that are, again, basically disposable. How many people have a sharpening stone in their house (and I'm not talking about the next-to-useless honing instrument that people buy and also don't know how to use)?

You've got people spending over $100 per month on cable TV, internet and cell phone. Not just one cell phone either. Every single person in the family needs one, so that they can play Candy Crush and take pictures of their breakfast (pancakes made from a mix because people have lost the ability to add baking powder to flour). Darning socks? Who has time for that???? Socks are free anyway.

Look at this graph for real disposable income since 1929 [1]. Money is like computer memory. The more you have, the more inventive ways you will find to use it. There is never enough. I wonder how many people would actually be better off spending an evening darning socks instead of stressing about how many "likes" they have on Facebook.

[0] http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/02/27/thr-income-spent-...

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

Steak at home?

I meant steak, sorry for typo.

I still don't understand that phrase. Help?

the guy said he would like to be able to afford steak to take home more often, and I quote 'but nope, I guess its beans again this week too"

sorry I wrote 'stake' twice. it may be keyboard on my phone messing with me

hahaha. thanks.

> The tech who services my car at the premium car dealership said he has another job in addition to this full time job and still cant afford stake [sic] at home.

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche?

I guess thats why she was hang later

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