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Comment by Helmet | Hacker News Reader

> The reality is those perspectives are from someone educated enough to understand economics, government programs and how the system works, and someone with a supportive well functioning family. All of which someone working a food-service job is unlikely to have.

Don't make assumptions.

They can move. My reality is of a first-generation immigrant. My parents did not have degrees and worked minimum wage jobs. They moved multiple times when it became financially unfeasible to live somewhere.

It wasn't fun, it sucked a lot actually, but we did what we had to do, not what we wanted to do.

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Man you're all over this thread handwaving away real concerns because of your parents. It's totally reasonable to think that a family with kids who moves to Nebraska is still going to be food insecure. If I'm an unskilled worker and I can live in the bay area near my family, where I'm comfortable, where I have friends and I'm food insecure or I can go move out to the Midwest where I have none of that and I'm still food insecure because now I have the added costs of childcare, less public transportation options, etc. AND I have none of the support network I had around SV then there's no way I'm moving. Maybe the difference between all the people in the article mentioned and your parents is that what made sense for your parents actually doesn't make sense for these people.

>Man you're all over this thread handwaving away real concerns because of your parents.

He's not handwaving anything. He's not promising anything, either. If someone wants guarantees, they've got the wrong mindset. It's all about managing probabilities.

>It's totally reasonable to think that a family with kids who moves to Nebraska is still going to be food insecure.

And it's totally reasonable to think that low income people who stay in SV will remain food insecure.

>If I'm an unskilled worker and I can live in the bay area near my family, where I'm comfortable, where I have friends and I'm food insecure or I can go move out to the Midwest where I have none of that and I'm still food insecure because now I have the added costs of childcare, less public transportation options, etc. AND I have none of the support network I had around SV then there's no way I'm moving.

Thank you for phrasing it as a choice. Just please own the outcomes of your choices!

Don't treat staying as a "default". Think of it as two choices (many, in reality, of course), and you are actively choosing one. So own the difficulties you will have while food insecure.

Advice often given to me in life, that I'm sure you've heard: If you're in a bad state, things are not going to change unless you do something about it. Granted, that something may make your life worse, but not doing much about it is usually a guarantee that things won't improve.

I'm not understanding some of this thread. Are people seriously looking for some kind of guaranteed solution? Most serious decisions - the major you pick, the school you go to, the city you live in, the job you decide to take - have attached to them a risk that your life may be worse if you follow through. When I was quitting my first job because of poor management and the work conditions, almost everyone tried to discourage me with your type of question: "Well what if you take that other job and it turns out even worse?" I just couldn't understand the question: So if your job sucks you will just sit and hope for better management?

Unlike a young tech worker who isn't materially tied down to any location and can view all locations as equal, many people have strong ties to the bay area which serve to keep them there. Moving to Nebraska is pointless if all it does is make you worse off and that's the main point of my post and one you haven't addressed. Most of these families are in some crappy circumstances where they're at but moving would only make those circumstances worse - so let's not pretend there's options here that there aren't.

> many people have strong ties to the bay area which serve to keep them there

It sounds like you're saying that something there is important to them, so they choose to stay. We all make choices and live with consequences.

> but moving would only make those circumstances worse

How can anyone be sure of that? But let's say it's true that moving anywhere else would make their situation worse. Then what are they upset about? They're already in the best place, aren't they?

>It sounds like you're saying that something there is important to them, so they choose to stay. We all make choices and live with consequences.

Yes, I guess that's basically my point. Many in this thread are talking about "options" and "choices" but really what we're talking about is an option that's better for these families than the status quo. No one cares that there's a million things that could make these families worse off, we're here figuring out what could make their lives better. What I'm saying is that for most of these families the option: "moving to Nebraska" belongs in the million pointless worse off options bucket and not in the life-improving options bucket. Even when you speak of "consequences" you mean the negative effects of their decision not to move to Nebraska, but I'm saying that not moving to Nebraska doesn't have that many negative consequences because moving to Nebraska is a totally shit option for most people.

>How can anyone be sure of that? But let's say it's true that moving anywhere else would make their situation worse. Then what are they upset about? They're already in the best place, aren't they?

You don't understand why someone trapped in the cycle of poverty would be upset? Why someone who has to go to a food bank every week to get by would look at the incredibly wealthy citizens of the city they inhabit and be a bit peeved? Are you familiar with poverty? Are you human?

> Many in this thread are talking about "options" and "choices" but really what we're talking about is an option that's better for these families than the status quo.

OK, this is interesting. One source of fundamental disagreement between people in this thread seems to be that some people are looking at options that are currently available, and some people want better options. I'm more in the first group because life is short and I don't want to wait in a bad situation for years in the hopes that someone somewhere will provide some totally new option that I'm really pleased with. Of course it goes without saying I want better options to be available for everyone. But that takes time.

> You don't understand why someone trapped in the cycle of poverty would be upset?

Yes, of course I do. I'm sorry if I made my point badly. It's just that you say moving anywhere else would make their situation worse. I don't accept that at all, but if it's true, then they're already in the best place for them to be. What do you want? Instant worldwide elimination of poverty no matter what choices people make?

> Then what are they upset about? They're already in the best place, aren't they?

They're upset because they're food-insecure. Did... did you forget how this whole conversation started?

> many people have strong ties to the bay area which serve to keep them there.

My family had strong ties to Yugoslavia, until NATO bombed it, so we moved to Germany. We had strong ties to Germany, until it seemed likely that our temporary refugee visas weren't going to get extended, so we moved to the USA. We had strong ties to Washington DC, but it was too expensive. We ended up in Roanoke, VA.

You do what you need to do for your family. Life is about making choices and sacrifices. It's not anyone's responsibility to improve your life, you need to do that. These people cannot afford to live in one of the most expensive regions in the world, so they need to move.

I think you're still missing the point. These families can't afford to live in Nebraska either.

You repeatedly phrase your family as being different from these people, your family knew what to do and made temporary sacrifices for a better long term success right? And these families just lack the grit or determination or smarts or whatever of your family right? Have you considered these families are doing the same thing as your parents? That they're making the same calculations your parents made but that the Bay area is still a better scenario for them? That your family isn't really that different from these families?

Moving from a SV Chipotle to a Lincoln Chipotle is great until I try to figure out what to do with my 2 year old son and realize all the gains I've made and more will be eaten up by childcare bills that my mom/grandma in SV could have done for free.

Moving isn't some inherent good that magically makes you better off, it's a calculation: just because your parent's calculation came up with "Move" doesn't mean these people doing the exact same calculation are going to come up with "Move."

>Most of these families are in some crappy circumstances where they're at but moving would only make those circumstances worse - so let's not pretend there's options here that there aren't.

Can I borrow that crystal ball of yours?

You're acting as if you/they have complete information about what life in Lincoln/elsewhere will entail.

A lot of your comments are simply loss aversion. Focusing on what you may lose, not on what you may gain.

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