The Gentle Art of Poverty | Hacker News Reader

The Gentle Art of Poverty

theatlantic.com

153 pointsamadiver70 comments

Every once in a while a discussion of poverty comes up on HN and provokes typically two kinds of responses: The poor are deserving of their lot, lacking the necessary wherewithal to get up off their asses and take responsibility for their lives; or, the poor are trapped by circumstances in a life not of their choosing and deserve whatever assistance we can give them to help them cope with their lot. This article tells the kind of unexpected story that, when you think about it, should have been expected all along. The poor, like the rich, and everyone in between, are not a homogeneous bunch of people that fit neatly into any predetermined category. This is a story of how a smart person learned how to be a smart poor person, learned, in effect, how to hack the life of poverty, and in a way that demands from me a certain amount of respect for the sheer skill and will involved, if not for the ethical character of all the actions such "hacking" entails; but it is also the story of a person who became disillusioned with his way of life. At that point, reading the story, considering how eloquently written, if how poorly edited, it was, I expected a tale of redemption, a tale of a man finding a new job as a writer, lifting himself up by his bootstraps, returning to the American dream, a tale that would end with a predictable heartfelt plea for understanding and compassion. Instead, the story ends with his being still depressed, but in a situation all the more unsure just for his proud refusal to play the system. I don't know that I have a point here, except to say that the story brings home more clearly than any other I have read on this matter that the poor are a many-colored, heterogeneous group, and stock responses, of whatever stamp, and of a type all too common on HN, are almost sure to fail to be answerable to the complexities of poverty.

I recalled from my history class that the Georgia colony was originally founded for the "worthy" poor. So they made distinction between the kind of poor. There are some poor who deserve their lot in life and those who don't.

However, I think being poor is not alway as simple as people like to make it. Sometime, growing up poor meant adopting ideas and values that make it much harder to rise out of poverty. I recalled a book that for example said that middle class women read much more to their children and emphasize effort over "rightness", ask questions to their children about what they read. The poor were more likely to be authoritarian in character, less likely to do the kind of educational reading that a middle class woman did, and so on. The effect is so large, that it even persists over generations.

If you have poor parents that did everything in their power to educate you as an autodidact, than you and your family would rise out of poverty quick. However, it is probable that all our families face bottleneck. We aren't exactly optimized to make our children the most ambitious, smartest, and autodidact as we can.

I myself have parents that didn't exactly encourage the kind of ambitious and curiosity that I have right now. It was my own innate and the computer that I used. During the time when I still used AOL, I would look up encyclopedia article and educate myself about the various topics that interests me. Eventually I would learn programming and a fair amount about certain obscure subjects, IP and innovation theory being one of them.

Oddly enough, I recalled my past IQ to be around 90, below average. I tested myself at a few IQ site several weeks ago and it returns somewhat above average. I supposed I am not so smart as much as I am innately curious. Apart from the real and likely accurate probability that human memory are easily corrupted, my curiosity probably drive my IQ above average.

Probably just due to age curving, my IQ scores have dropped by about 30-40 points over the past 10 years on the 'normal' tests.

Oddly enough, I regain a lot of those points back if I take a 'harder' IQ test.

I don't think my IQ has done me any real good except enable some lazy habits and some pretty rapid adaptation faculties. (Hauling ass and learning on the job)

I'd rather have better habits and be better at using my time wisely, although that's steadily improving (as my IQ keeps dropping ;) )

Your bit reminds me of the 'there are two kinds of people, those that divide people in to two kinds and those that don't'.

The funny thing is that you implicitly treat HN in the same way, but there is plenty of nuance here to be found. The mass reactions are quite predictable though, the reactions typically are the opposite of the article in a kind of internet action vs reaction law.

Usually people will respond to something they don't agree with in a stronger way than if they do agree.

Sure, individuals are unique, but that doesn't mean that it's not possible to make generalizations about groups of people. It's called social science and statistics. There is tons of data about the causes of poverty, generational poverty traps, how people escape poverty, etc. Of course when people argue these topics nobody bothers referring to academic literature, mainly because it's boring but also because people form strong opinions based on whichever political ideologies they're subscribed to and don't want to hear any conflicting data.

That's one of the problems though, there are generalizations and data but in reality every case is different. So when you implement something based on statistics you will get people it helps but also get a lot more people who's specific situation doesn't allow them to benefit.

Re: the editing, is was most likely scanned from paper copies to be put online, and not checked. It would be interesting to see where the page breaks or other layout features were, based on those mistakes :) I think that the sentences that were repeated were in callouts, which the OCR software didn't account for.

I cannot agree more with you and I might add: I was born american overseas and have lived in the US only half my life time. I think this gives me a different perspective. Poverty and economic inequality in general is one of the most misunderstood phenomenon in american life I believe. You are quickly called socialist (which is like an insult, in this country only) if you dare say something different about it. So, kudos to John Brooke for a fantastic article which questions our usual perceptions of poverty.

It's important to remember that some people are poor by choice, e.g., dropped out or just lazy, some are poor by circumstance, e.g., mental illness, addiction, disabled, and some are poor by a combination of the two and everything in between.

I used to have a different view of the world. It seemed if someone like me, from a lower middle class family could go to college and pay for it myself without much trouble then why can't everyone? Stop complaining and just do it, right?

My girlfriend of seven years has spent most of her adult life working with the homeless. Long talks with her, events at homeless centers, and the occasional talk with one of her clients has changed my views. Yes, there are some people who are pretty rotten and all to happy to work the system. Most people are not like that though.

Imagine trying to study if you're bat shit crazy. I've met people who will only sleep in chairs because they think beds are where "they" shoot you with lasers. Ever been addicted to meth or heroin? Try finding the fortitude to enroll in school while fighting that battle. Fractured your spine in a car accident while you where unemployed? Try gutting out that pain and getting a job. Parents beat you, sexually abused you, told you you're shit every day? Well buck up and get on with your life son! This is the land of opportunity!

I can only imagine how difficult life is for many people. I come from a privileged world, one without endless money, but endless love and encouragement, where going to college was never questioned, just assumed. That type of upbringing opens doors. It's important to remember that.

Ever been addicted to meth or heroin?

I've managed to avoid that by not actively going out, asking friends where I can get meth/heroin from, approaching a person I believe to be a meth/heroin dealer, trading money for meth/heroin, putting it into a bong, lighting it, inhaling, and repeating until addicted.

I have great sympathy for the disabled and mentally ill. While we do a tolerable job of taking care of the disabled, our mental health system sucks.

But you really undermine your point by including people who deliberately went out of their way to fuck up their life.

Some "fucks up" their life with drugs because at some poit they tried to evade some things. You do not always deliberately fuck your life with drugs sometime you think your life is so fucked up that drugs can't make things worse even if indeed they do but you're past beyond reason

sometime you think your life is so fucked up that drugs can't make things worse

Word to the wise: this is never true!

This doesn't stops people from believing it. You can't judge people only on their acts

I don't know about you, but where I come from, some poor kids get high on glue from a very early age.

I was really curious to know the amounts of money the author was talking about in 2010 terms.

His annual income was $1980 + $168.75 = $2148.75, which was 6% of "what I earned in my prime..."

So, 100 / 6 * 2148.75 = $35,812.5 annual income

The article was written in either 1977 or 1969 (see comment by sorbus), so let's guess his highest salary was earned in either 1965 or 1975.

Using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation calculator (http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm), income during his prime in 2010 dollars was somewhere between $145,321.53 (1975) and $248,199.95 (1965)

Depending on when he wrote this article, his retirement income was somewhere between $7,740.89 (1977) and $12,781.96 (1969)

Long story short, the author took a 95% hit to his income in "retirement" (~$200k -> ~$10k in 2010 dollars)

Hang on...

You read that his retirement left him with 94% of his old income... then you did some loose maths to inflate the two amounts to today's money... then you wrote a conclusion to your comment saying that he took a hit of 95%. Errr, what?

Thanks for giving a rough idea of what his money was in modern terms, but your "long story short" was actually a longer version of what he had already said, and somehow less accurate.

The contribution of the grandparent was putting some kind of real dollars on the income extremes.

Don't forget the divorce - his ex-wife probably got the property, the savings, etc, leaving him destitute.

Holy cow that is a well written little piece on depression and poverty.

And inflation. Look at those prices. More interestingly, imagine that there was a a time when basic nutrition in San Diego cost about twice as much as a cheap apartment. Today, the cheapest possible apartment would cost $500+ a month and you can still feed yourself comfortably (without ripping off senior centers) for $150-200 a month in San Diego. So the price of housing as compared to food has risen ten-fold. That says a lot about the changes in values and industry over the past 40 years.

I'm glad to see it recommended here.

How do you feed yourself for 50 cents a day with anything approaching a balanced diet? You'd have to be incredible frugal to make one nutritious meal for 50 cents, let alone three. I know beans and rice are cheap, especially in bulk, but if that's all you eat then your health will surely suffer.

You have a decimal-point problem. $150/30 is $5 a day; it's entirely possible to eat quite well on that.

I think a lot of people don't realize how cheap food can be. I average $400 - $500 a month on food, and I buy for myself and my girlfriend. We eat steak, fish, chicken, meatballs, something good every single night. I never even look at prices in the grocery store, I just buy whatever it is I want to buy and it comes out to that amount. If I could spend $800 on food at the grocery store in a month I wouldn't mind, I just don't know what I'm missing out on. The only thing we don't do is go out to eat, or drink much.

We went out for our anniversary the other night and blew $100 on a dinner for two, for a meal I probably could have made myself if I had put my mind to it. That was the first time we ate at a restaurent in probably 3 months, and it was 20-25% of our monthly food budget for 1 dinner. I enjoyed my food but I couldn't help but think, I could eat filet mignon every single night this week and it would be just as good for this same amount of money.

Not to mention the $10.50 martini that cost them $1 to make, or the beer I had that cost more than a six pack of nice local beer.

So don't eat out, learn how to cook, and suddenly $5-15 a day is plenty to eat like a king.

How embarrassing. I've managed to keep my problem a secret for so many years. $5 is entirely doable.

Notice how, more than once, the man refuses a well paying job because it is difficult to do, but also does so with the understanding that enduring that hardship would lift him out of poverty.

Notice how, instead of honorable thriftiness and hard work, the man relies on taking advantage of the system and other peoples' hard work.

It's not romantic to acknowledge this, but it is the truth. I'm hard pressed to find some thing which I can learn from this man.

To what end? Why would he do that? To die marginally wealthier than he is now?

To not be a parasite on society. Unless you seriously believe that morality has no value?

I don't think being poor and availing oneself of charity is immoral, no. I also suspect that this guy has paid a fair share of taxes in his better years; I doubt he's actually a parasite on net.

So you are saying he has a moral obligation to not make use of the charity offered that he spent his entire life paying into?

Most people would argue everyone else has a moral obligation to not let our veterans starve to death after they paid taxes their whole lives, especially when you consider how little his existence actually costs us.

And that, right there, is the cause of poverty in America, both for this guy and for most present day poor.

The poor have their needs met. Once you reach that level, why spend precious leisure time just to become marginally wealthier?

Perhaps the 60-year old poor veterans have their miserly needs met, but from what I understand, I don't think it's because the marginal rewards to earning that's holding back the US's poor.

How long were you homeless? How long did you go unemployed with neither savings nor education, being turned away for even the lowest things, like shelf-stacking in supermarkets? It's hard to judge another man without walking a mile in his shoes.

One of the most valuable things youth have is option value: you don't know how much they'll amount to, how good they'll end up being. It gets other people to take chances on them. Come 60, you have a lot less of that; you're a known quantity.

How long did you go unemployed...being turned away for even the lowest things, like shelf-stacking in supermarkets? It's hard to judge another man without walking a mile in his shoes.

It's not that hard, thanks to the power of statistics. For four of every five poor people, the answer is less than 26 weeks. Of the poor who spent at least 27 weeks/year searching for work, the answer is also less than 27 weeks.

More than 9 in 10 of the poor who actually searched for a job for at least 27 weeks found one - just over half of worked full time, one quarter voluntarily part time, and one quarter involuntarily part time [1].

[1] The precise numbers are in this report: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf I cite 2008 because the 2009 report isn't yet released, and 2010 isn't over.

[edit: Hi downmodders. Sorry for injecting facts into this discussion.]

I don't think you can derive the conclusion from that that if only the other ones had searched longer, they would also have found jobs. (Haven't read the report, just your comment).

They might have had good reasons for assuming they would not get a job, for example. Or maybe the searched 40 weeks in vain in the previous year and didn't have it in them anymore.

Of the 20% or so in the labor force, less than 10% don't find a job. 10% of 20% is 2%. So of the poor people not in the labor force in 2008, only about 2% could possibly have been poor and unemployed in 2007.

There may be an additional source term of people who were unemployed but not poor in year N-1. But since the number of people in poverty remains roughly stable over time, this source must also be balanced by a sink of people who were poor in year N-1 but not poor in year N. I.e., for every person who becomes unemployed and enters poverty, there must be another person who leaves poverty (the exact balance varies a bit from year to year). Numbers on this are somewhat harder to come by (most surveys don't track the movement of individuals throughout categories).

(Again, rough numbers, these fluctuate a bit from year to year. )

Furthermore, if you search for work too long and don't find it (I believe 12 months?) The BLS classifies you as a 'discouraged worker' and removes you from the labor force. (You become 'marginally attached')

This has the effect of juicing the BLS statistics over time by reducing the unemployment by definition. (i.e. if you've been unemployed long enough, you're no longer considered a part of the labor force, regardless of what efforts you may be making to find a job.)

It would have taken you about 20 seconds with google to discover this is false.

"Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work."

""Discouraged workers" are a subset of the marginally attached. Discouraged workers report they are not currently looking for work..."

http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

Sorry, been a while since I looked @ all these definitions and I was typing from memory.

A discouraged worker is one who has looked for work at some point in the last 12 months, but is no longer looking because they believe there is no work to be found. (and are often correct in aggregate)

Where the BLS further skews the statistics is that discouraged workers who have been discouraged longer than 12 months just drop from the labor force completely, they are a hidden statistic. (I believe this definition was changed under the Clinton Administration)

For me, having one's needs met kind of equates to not being poor. (I am aware that the official definition of being poor is just some percentage of the average income - that is not a very interesting category imo).

It seems rather to me looking at marginal improvements or as you call it would pose a better explanation. If you know that if you work really hard, you can afford a house and a nice car, it might motivate you to work hard. If all that working harder gives you is money for an extra bottle of beer, the motivation is not quite that great.

The jobs mentioned in the article are not really set up to changing anything fundamental about the guys situation. You can't get rich by donating blood.

Also there seem to be other problems he had, like depression, that prevented him from seeking a better paying job (also his age, of course).

How old are you? After a certain age you begin to notice that working actually tends to take a toll. So you think twice about trading your health for money.

If by "poor", you mean people who's needs aren't met, we just don't have very many of them in the US. The author of this article certainly was not poor by that definition.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi...

As for aging, that was an issue in the past, particularly when most work was manual labor. Luckily, the present and future are much better - projections suggest most old people will be capable of working well past 65. Here is the hot paper:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/329/5997/1287

If you are on the wrong side of the academic paywall (my NYU library account still works), here is a press release: http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/PR/2010/2010-09-09.html

Pretty much all of this is predicated on him being a senior citizen i.e. retired, he just made choices with his savings over the course of his live. It is a fair assumption that he paid far more in taxes than he consumed in poverty at the end of his life.

The poor have their needs met. Once you reach that level, why spend precious leisure time just to become marginally wealthier?

So that when you are too feeble to care for yourself, you can afford care that doesn't involve turning you into a blob by overfeeding you or conveniently killing you off with a negligently spread staph infection after years of soul destroying institutional care by the embittered and underpaid. Becoming marginally wealthier than poor wouldn't do this, but I suspect this is the real goal of most 9to5for40 life plans in the US.

And when you get sick they'll ensure you aren't in pain by giving you morphine, which of course hastens your death. (Only barely hyperbole.)

Maybe we should talk about this again when you are 60.

I did not notice any part of the story where he was offered a well paying job, or even any job. Did I read a different story?

On the two semi-reliable, specific sources of income that were mentioned, can recycling and giving blood:

> But since most of the collecting was done after midnight and is arduous, I tired of the relationship and severed it. If I ever care to return to scavenging, I am assured an extra $1248 a year-my 40 percent share of the gross.

> ...began selling two pints of my plasma a week-the limit-for $6 a pint. This source could add $624 to my annual income. But I found the 90-minute sessions, luring which time I was affixed to a needle, utterly boring, and I stopped.

(Never mind that he would have had to stop giving blood for other reasons.)

In at least those two instances, he says quit the job because it was hard work or boring. (If you're going to point out that these aren't "real" jobs, then neither is running a startup.) The author also mentioned that there were other ways he could supplement his income, but deigned not to.

He comes to the conclusion, at the end of the 3rd paragraph from the end, that he could "still pass... into the sort of life I once took for granted, when all the institutions of upper middle-class life in the suburbs meant something", but that it was futile, just a wait for death; unsatisfactory. The sham that punk rock holds up: drive to work to pay for the nice car; so you can drive the nice car to work; to pay for the nice car. More eloquently coached perhaps, but I get the same sort of ennui from it as in the last paragraph - he admits to wanting to live it, without wanting to work for it.

About the blood donation, I wonder if you end up having to eat more or something like that, to compensate for the blood loss?

In any case, both jobs don't sound as if they had made a big difference to his well-being.

Keep in mind that this article is from the 70's, his yearly budget is $1765.

$1248 from cans, or $624 from plasma is a bigger deal if you look at them as a percentage of his budget. maxawaytoolong asked for examples of any job, which is what I gave.

Collecting bottles after midnight seems like a recepy for getting sick, if you are over 60.

But you are of course right, he did mention jobs in his article. (donating blood really isn't a job, but collecting bottles might be OK).

Yes, I'm going to make the controversial claim that donating blood and scavenging for cans in the dark are not real jobs.

It's more than a bit callous to suggest a senior citizen is not doing his part for society because he's decided to live off the benefits afforded to him by paying into taxes his whole life, instead of wallowing in the trash and selling his own bodily fluids.

If you're going to point out that these aren't "real" jobs, then neither is running a startup.

Previously, I thought the guy who suggested seeding the southern border of the US with landmines to keep the scourge of underpriced gardeners and line cooks out of the country had made the stupidest statement ever on Hacker News, but this is a close rival. Hopefully none of the more impressionable readers of this forum take this to heart and decide to apply for YC funding with their sperm donation startup idea. I'd hate to be the one screening the application videos.

From 1977, it's worth noting (or perhaps 1969, depending on whether you look at the text or the url).

I wish people would mention this when they submit. The text makes much more sense now!

Sorry -- I'd thought of including it in the link title, but I'd had the realization that this was an old article about midway through, and for some reason it increased my satisfaction in reading it. The clues are all there - the prices are what gave it away for me.

That explains why everything seemed so cheap. Adjusting for inflation, $2,000 in the early 70's is around $10,000 today.

$7,205.02

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

According to this http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/the-gent... it's from 1977

Edit: Interestingly, changing the year in the url still return the same page. So:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1977/10/the-gent...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1954/10/the-gent...

Both point to the same article

In fact, much of the URL is meaningless:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1666/09/great-fire...

I wonder at the many comments here that missed or ignored that the article's author was diagnosed with depression. That's a chronic and debilitating disease, only marginally better medicated now than in 1977. It does not deprive the sufferer of wit, interest, intelligence, craft or any other human value, as the article amply demonstrates.

The personal observations remind me of Orwell, but without his perspective - this author observes himself but does not rise above his observations as Orwell did in his similar descriptions of personal poverty.

The unreliable narrator is its own observation for the reader.

I can see him trapped in his pretensions, and it seems to me that it's clear to him too, but that he's unwilling to acknowledge it, and wallows in a form of cynical self-pity as a self-defense mechanism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying

was a book disowned by Orwell in later years (mostly because of editorial changes he was forced to make).

Still, it is a good book to read on trappings of wealth and poverty.

Down and Out in Paris and London is his best work on poverty in my opinion (also his first book). You live through every embarrassment, stolen meal and shitty job like they are your own.

The main message of this post to me was that if you're above 60 you can live off gov't welfare if you know where to go, and this is enough to keep you off the streets (not sleep in a box). I wonder what this story would have been like if he were 45 years old.

Assuming he didn't have a disability not recognized by the welfare system (living with a recognized disability presumably grants similar opportunities to being old), if he was 45 years old he would have probably found a (perhaps menial) job.

A wrenching story of bad memes and their long term outcomes? Not sure what to make of it. Poor bastard seems to end up making a profoundly nihilistic statement -- life is pointless and the only thing to do is get off the bus.

I would be really interested to know what happened to him

he died

Perhaps, it won't make sense to many of you, but I am really curious as to what happened to this person afterwards he wrote this article. What path in life he followed... any body can help finding out? Googling his name didnt yield anything relevant yet.

Written October 1977

Why does the URL of the archive at the bottom of the page shows "1969", then?

Is he claiming that he actually has, in his own words, an ANNUAL TOTAL of $1980+$168.75 ($179/mo), with no wellfare in the picture, or is it implied that these are the monthly pension payouts?

That is the annual total. The article is from 1979.

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