Spent – Poverty Simulator (2011)
playspent.org
playspent.org
It was kind of nice to switch back to the current discussion and see it lean a bit more toward empathy for the poor.
Someone just asked me, "why do you have to register to vote? why can't I show up with a passport?" - which sounds reasonable until you start thinking about local elections, where you need to prove that you live in a certain area, and then the need for some sort of registration becomes more obvious. (Or another refactoring of the system, at least.)
Same here - people think, "why do you need a car, I certainly don't need one on the Upper East Side!" - and for them, they don't. In rural Texas, not having one means you're very geographically bound, and effectively unemployable.
So, for some things, I don't think it's just a lack of empathy; it's just a quick knee-jerk comment on an internet forum.
I took the numbers provided and worked out what their finances looked like. Tracked income and outlays. It quickly became clear that while Uber hadn't helped their situation, the several thousand dollars they had spent on financially unsuccessful art shows had more to do with their distress.
The artist in question was blown away. They'd literally never encountered the notion of tracking their money in a meaningful sense.
What I learned from this is that what's unimaginable to me - such as the idea of budgeting being entirely foreign - is someone else's normal. I also learned that it's impossible to put myself into their shoes fully, because life experiences can easily diverge wildly.
You're absolutely correct. I'm lucky enough to live in Melbourne Australia. Until this year "world's most livable city". Public Transport is fantastic and affordable.
However, if you're unemployed and looking for a entry level job, then lets give a few examples.
Warehouse and factory work - plenty of that around. However by nature they're going to be in industrial zones quite far from residential areas and transport. You can probably rule that out without a car.
Cleaning - You might be able to get commercial cleaning, although your inability to get between jobs isn't going to look great to employers. Residential cleaning doesn't seem likely.
Labouring - No chance you can be reliable because the jobsite will constantly be changing.
By nature plenty of the low-skilled work you're immediately unable to do by not having a car, even in a city with a VERY good infrastructure.
I don't necessarily think the posters are lacking in empathy, I think I was just trying to bright side that perhaps the tone of the comments meant there was a bit more societal awareness than we had back then.
> It may seem like a waste of money, but for people like you who have no 401(k) or savings account, it can look like an investment in a better future.
How is that advice helpful? A lottery ticket is not an investment in any way.
The point is, that's actually how real people see the lottery. A big payout feels more likely than a $100k/yr job when you've been under the poverty line long enough.
Remember, the goal of this game isn't to see how efficiently you get to the end; it's to help you put yourself in the shoes of people actually in this position.
If you're very poor and stuck in a bad situation, there could 0.0% chance you ever become a millionaire through the normal mechanisms, maybe spending $1 a week on a lottery ticket raises that to 0.00000000001% and creates a bit more hope in your mind.
Again, I'd never advise anyone to buy a lottery ticket. But if it makes you hopeful, maybe it's a better treat for yourself than a chocolate bar.
Per capita lottery spend by state: Massachusetts @ $761/year. West Virginia @ $594/year. Georgia @ $391/year.
Is that per capital lottery spend just total sales divided by population? The more interesting statistic would be average spend by people who buy at least a ticket a month. I'm sure the $761/month is brought down by people who buy 0-5 tickets a year.
Reminder that 40% of Americans can't cover a $400 emergency expense[1].
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-house...
However, I think that's the gross spend. If a lotto system has a lot of little prizes it could inflate those numbers quickly. You might not win the $1.6B, but if your tickets win $1 or $2 on a regular basis then your net outlay could be quite a bit less.
Effectively each ticket might only cost $0.25 instead of $1 because you get $0.75 back on average. On this chart it would look like you spent the full $1 each time because it doesn't include winnings.
(Of course the entities buying these tickets are not necessarily "Californians", just thought this was an interesting take on "per-Capita" investment in a different sort of lottery ticket. It is also funding amounts, rather than opportunity costs people "invest" in these companies by working for reduced or no salary in exchanged for equity - which is the "cost" of the lottery ticket people usually talk about on HN. I just found the resulting number in this exercise really interesting and thought I'd share.)
[1] https://tech.co/10-best-states-startup-funding-ranked-2017-0...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=california+population+2017&o...
So no, it is not helpful advise. It is a teaching statement about why poor people continue to play the lottery.
That's why it says "it can look like" an investment in a better future. (Not "is" one.)
Look, do you want false hope or not?
Hope is all some people can afford.
On the other hand, money is not the solution to all life's problems. What I would literally wish for my worst enemy: you win that Mega Millions drawing tonight.
Recommended listening from This American Life:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/329/nice-work-if-you-can-ge...
He's talked with thousands of lottery winners, and the vast majority, he says, wish they'd never won.
Heck, there are a lot of people still paying off debt from ITT Tech; you can get Pell grants reduced if the college closes while you're attending, but not private ones.
I think you mean Stafford loans. Grants, by definition, do not need to be repaid.
http://time.com/money/4658059/college-grads-workers-overqual...
How long ago did he finish his program? Is your friend limiting his search only to jobs in academia? Is he capable of getting a security clearance? What's your gauge of "respected"?
There are many government and industry jobs for fresh Physics PhDs right now.
The cell phone bill makes me question how realistic this "simulator" is. Are the healthcare costs realistic? Obviously in every other western country these costs would be zero (or very close to zero if you don't qualify for 100% free prescriptions in the UK at least).
Is healthcare really that bad in the US? Really? Genuinely staggering if so.
Healthcare tends to suck if you don't get it provided by your workplace. If you have a job with healthcare, your outcomes are pretty decent (on average, better than Europe in many cases, for example Cancer survival rates). If you don't have a job it is all free, as no one to make a broke person pay. If you are in the doughnut of <have a few dollars> to <paying $300 a month for healthcare> is a big deal you are really screwed. Developers are past that doughnut, so we do okay. Plenty of people do not though.
I pay $35/month for 1GB of mobile internet + unlimited phone calls/texts. Over that, I pay 47$/month for unlimited 30Mbps internet. That's ignoring taxes.
Take a look:
https://www.planhub.ca/quebec/compare-cellphone-plan/0min.10...
https://www.planhub.ca/quebec/compare-internet-plan/search?l...
Remember that the province I live in is more the size of France and is covered with ice during winter. Carriers have to support the entire province and then the entire country.
See those size comparison:
https://mapfight.appspot.com/quebec-vs-fr/quebec-france-size...
https://mapfight.appspot.com/ca-vs-fr/canada-france-size-com...
I can't remember the exact amount but it was ridiculous more than I can use in a month unless I really try though my home WiFi let alone on a mobile.
He talked to them but In the end he still had to pay something like $150.
I'd like to say thinga like that don't happen often. But it seems like I hear stories about it fairly regularly.
Telus plans start at around $80/month
https://www.telus.com/en/mobility/plans?linktype=nav
Rogers at $85 for 3GB of data
[1]: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Straight-Talk-35-Unlimited-30-Day...
I pay between $50 and $80 per month on a prepaid plan that generously gives me 20mb(!!) of fast Internet a day.
What you describe would cost about $40, or with a more realistic 2GB at least 50$-60$ per month.
No phone included.
Yes this is Switzerland. But having owned phone plans in many western and non western countries there definitly are big exceptions between countries.
I managed to reach a month, but in that month: a relative died, the landlord arbitrarily increased the rent $150 BEFORE the end of the month, a kid broke a window that cost $100 to replace, got an incontestable false speeding ticket for 250, the car broke and a dental problem needing $800 developed, got depression, etc. How much can this guy endure?
Also, this guy should have had food stamps already. Maybe he didn't qualify before? I figure him at 45-50, trying to get a job like the one he just lost and letting things go too far before realizing he had to get a low-paying one.
It makes you think, that's for sure.
Even if you _could_ fix all that, you're still not going to make ends meet. The player is effectively bankrupt.
Now imagine the player developing cancer, or needing to have major dental surgery!
I think the creators reduce the impact of their own message by making it so far fetched. I can't relate to anyone who would put themselves in such a terrible financial position, so its just an unwinnable game.
edit: Don't get me wrong, it's better than nothing. I'm on the exchanges myself. That said, a major illness is still going to be a massive financial hit even with subsidized premiums.
There are all sorts of problems with this, such as:
- assumption of a car (within 5 miles, cycling is completely reasonable, and it improves health) - single income w/child apparently? That's not my situation at all - Why does laundry cost $30? Most places near me are $5-10 - Why is my mobile phone $75? I can find lots of plans for cheaper - why do I start with $1k? I've had way more than that since I was a teenager; I always keep 3-6 months of expenses for precisely this reason - why does not paying a bill for one month result in immediate closure? Most utilities don't shut off services until 3 or so months of missing payments
However, the app is pretty eye opening because it _doesn't_ fit my situation. I'm very interested in helping the poor get out of the cycle of poverty (it's my life's goal).
If you are poor, then living alone or taking on a lease is insane. The implicit assumption that you can't move and that "the rent" is as high as it is in this demo is untrue.
So what you end up with in this demo is a race against unsustainably high costs because you arbitrarily can't remove them.
Actually sounds pretty realistic to me. People tend not to have as much agency as we like to think.
"Just get a roommate" is not always an option. This applies to lots of other "obvious" solutions people like to come up with when it's not them.
It is not common in the US because there are aid programs for people with children that suffice to let them get private housing, and at the very least pay for their childrens food.
It's not an interesting "simulation" because it's effectively just stating that you can run your life into a corner if you don't pay attention.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth or assume what attitudes lie behind your personal thinking, I'm just reflecting on my own thoughts about this.
We might be able to move the bar, and that might be a good idea (welfare programs, etc), but that's all we can do, and there is clearly a point beyond which trying to rescue people is throwing good money after bad.
There is no way of preventing a human from damaging themselves in the general case (whether that damage be intentional or unintentional; I'm not moralizing here.).
For starters:
Lifting 20lb is not going to take a toll on your body unless your body is already beat to crap from something else.
Most people can replace a window. If you don't then you probably know someone who can. Poor people trade semi-skilled labor around as favors all the time.
You don't need to join a gym to stay in shape, especially if your job involves manual labor. You also don't need to stay in tip top physical shape, just don't let yourself get seriously out of shape.
Nobody is doing credit checks for lower end jobs or lower end housing. They care more about your criminal record or lack thereof. If your poor you're either not going to use credit or your credit will be crap. Good credit isn't going to help you dig a ditch or unload a truck so you'll get hired anyway.
The whole point of choosing housing on the rural end of the available options is to reduce the cost of living and not have someone siphon the gas out of your car. In the simulation the shopping selector reflects city prices and the crime happens anyway.
Doing laundry in a sink, tub or 5gal bucket is a perfectly fine option if your washer doesn't work. It also doesn't cost $30 to go to the laundromat. You don't just wear dirty clothes. That's what college kids who've never lived on their own and lose their laundry card do.
I get that the whole point of this game it to make a statement but it paints a picture that seriously undersells the resourcefulness of poor people. It's also very clear that the decision tree in this simulator was written using a set of assumptions about how certain problems be solved and those assumptions were either made in an ivory tower or were designed to mostly go unnoticed to those in ivory towers.
edit: Yes I have had jobs like this. I know exactly what they're like. I've been a janitor, I've worked in food-service, I've done under the table construction, I've worked for a temp agency. I've literally dug ditches and scrubbed toilets (not that bad on average, watch out for the edge cases though). If you expect me to have a lot of sympathy with people who lift 20lb in a 70deg warehouse then you will be disappointed. Yes it's a crappy job that pays poorly and I'm sure it's soul crushing but it's not the pyramid building slave labor that some people like to equate it to. The lack of advancement opportunities (advancement to better paying jobs) in some of these jobs are what I consider the primary reason that people in these jobs can't get out of poverty.
Sure. Now do it for 8 hours a day without air conditioning.
There’s a difference between lifting/carrying the occasional 20lb weight, and doing that continuously for 8 hours.
I used to have 8 hour shifts at a standing only checkout - it took about a month before my back started hurting continuously. This was just a standing on concrete job, not even lifting all day.
Low end housing does do credit checks, and does increase your “deposit”.
Several. I edited my original comment to reflect this.
>I used to have 8 hour shifts at a standing only checkout - it took about a month before my back started hurting continuously. This was just a standing on concrete job, not even lifting all day.
Not imagine it being hotter, louder higher humidity, and having to bend over slightly to reach things all the time. Welcome to a dishroom.
Just to be clear though
1. I said I got back pain just standing on concrete, without actually lifting anything
2. People are super bad at lifting things properly, so I’m sure a reasonable number of injuries are “avoidable”
3. I’m not saying that everything in this was realistic (there are some questionable options), just that this particular case is super plausible. After all the equivalent in tech is RSI/OOS (whatever it’s called now), and that’s super common even though avoiding it is way easier than avoiding back problems when your job is picking things up.
"You've made your bed and now you need to sleep in it."
His rationale is "I picked myself up with no help from the state, so why should I have to pay for others? If you're poor, it's because you're lazy". I was of the opinion that the help he received from his church is just a smaller version of socialized healthcare, but he disagreed.
Yes this game is not realistic. Now let's talk about fairness and responsibilities of us for all others.
In reality I would have squatted and forced them to spend 6 months evicting me, giving me time to save up firsts month rent for a new place.
It's worth considering that that approach might be an excellent way to make it very, very difficult to get a new place. Squatting to afford rent on a new place is very much like declaring bankruptcy so you can afford a new car loan, complete with the major black mark on your credit report that makes it much more difficult to get a reasonable interest rate. This is less fanciful than it sounds, as agencies that track information about your rental history can and do exist.
Your idea is very clever. It's maybe worth thinking about if clever is the same thing as a good idea.
A couple of suggestions:
1. The Facebook and Twitter icons were too close to the last choice on the screens, and I ended up tapping on them when I intended to tap on the last option. This was on a phone. Please move those buttons down a bit.
2. The site didn’t work on Firefox Focus onnthe phone. But it did work on Brave. Something about Firefox Focus’s blocking must’ve caused this. I didn’t have time to figure out the issue.
And it just randomly decided to take tutoring money away even though I answer its math question correctly? Why do I have over $7000 on my CC bill? Was I living well above my means for some reason? Why do I have a kid? That was a rather poor financial planning decision...
This isn't true even in most urban centers.
There's news articles about how the worst low income areas of NYC don't have good transport options.
I’m surprised it even lets you live close enough to walk to work. There are a lot of jobs out there where it’s impossible to live that close.
Move closer to the new job, you say? Not everyone can drop a few grand to terminate a lease and hire a moving truck and put down a new first-month-and-security-deposit.
I know what poverty feels like.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/census-data-half-of-us-poor-or-...
Enough said. We're talking about someone making under $20k here. At $45k you can easily afford a car.
"Cheap" cars get expensive quick, and living in a low-income area means your insurance rates are way higher as well.
> With other factors being equal, addresses in less affluent ZIP codes with higher minority populations were quoted annual premiums that were $410 higher, on average, than those in neighboring ZIP codes with wealthier, more heavily white populations, according to the analysis.
and from the linked study, these are minimum liability rates, not comprehensive:
> Except for the address, the tested drivers were exactly the same in every way, and the coverage is for the state mandated minimum liability policy.
(Add in what happens to a low-income family when their new-to-them $2k, minimally insured Corolla gets totaled in the first week to the "things that make it expensive to be poor" list, too.)
Unless you have other expenses, or live in a place where keeping a car is unusually expensive.
This is honestly pretty accurate as simulators go. There might be technical flaws but the feel is there. The actual numbers you control are $40-50 variances, while the costs are an order of magnitude higher. Getting ahead in that scenario is virtually impossible. You might save an extra month's worth of expenses every year, if you budget flawlessly and don't give in to a single indulgence.
Wish I could upvote this bit more.
One thing that gets us into trouble financially more than anything else is our belief that revenue streams will not go away. They DO go away. (And often at the most inopportune times.)
As I recall that one, it was trying to argue that driving for Uber was unsustainable, but the fundamental position was absurd. It started you off living in a not-cheap town with low Uber demand, buying a not-cheap car solely so you could drive for Uber, and pretended that was a fundamental indictment of the business.
Nothing here strikes me as that kind of flawed. The details might be arguable, but the broad strokes are completely reasonable. Honestly I'm a bit disturbed to see people leap to "oh, this doesn't count, credit card debt means I lived beyond my means!" Partly because "I screwed up in the past and want to work hard to make up for it" is something a healthy society makes possible, but more urgently because it makes me worry people have no idea how common issues like "oh, I have a $7,000 hospital bill after insurance" really are.
"completely reasonable" is one of the last ways I'd describe broad strokes that do not approximate the average or median case.
All the bad stuff that happens in a year or three happens within a month in this simulation. Certain good options (if my washer is broke I'm doing my laundry in the sink thank you) are unavailable or neutered (the whole point of renting in BFE is the low cost of living but groceries are still city prices). If you're making $1k/mo your healthcare is free (thanks Obama, no really). Etc. etc. The picture being painted here is definitely not quite reality. I have relatives who's income is on the order of the simulation. Life generally trends upward for them so long as they don't make particularly dumb decisions.
I had initially gone for a longish commute to save money, but now that I look harder at living close (and find out that the car is mandatory regardless), the savings are bizarrely low. Presumably the character lives in a smallish town since parking a car isn't expensive, but living distant to work isn't a major savings?
Other options I hadn't picked initially were shockingly bad: applying for a scholarship for the student gifted program got me a job strike, because the player (unlike the character) doesn't get to find out that it'll require an unapproved absence from work until after the fact!
And then I tried to look up some stats on the 2011 ACA rules. You're right: even at $18,000 (40 hr/week, 52 weeks/year pre-tax at the warehouse job) I can't reconcile the options listed. In Medicaid-expansion states the plans should be vastly cheaper, and even in those that declined it the mandatory coverage fee should be absent or waived. For that matter, the lack of an offer to buy paired health insurance (mandatory to offer under the ACA) is a pretty manipulative thing to pair with a major dental bill.
It looks like I got substantially lucky with my initial choices. I understand that the game is trying to show a typical case, not an ideal one, and that being poor can mean a lot of unexpected expenses and setbacks. But things like "oh, surprise, that option actually meant taking off work without permission!" don't represent the difficulties of poverty, they represent the difficulties of a game made to punish sensible-looking choices.
Once when we had no car we took public transport to the opposite side of town to visit the cinema .. it was 2 hours each way because of connections, afterwards we walked a few-hundred metres to the stop and waited in the rain and wind for the bus back, the wait was so long for the connecting bus that we walked the last 2 miles. Fun! We never tried it again. I've done the journey on foot since, only took 1h30m; 15mins by car, parking is free. (In a large UK town.)
When I moved back to the U.S., that's when I needed a car.
Are you sure that's not some bias slipping in there?
Seeing that leap straight from "credit card debt" to "bought frivolous crap" helps me realize just how little common ground there is on stuff like this, and how much good might be done by sharing examples of how normal, sensible people get in these situations.
Leaving the rest aside, an awful lot of people end up here via medical bills. Even with means-based billing or health insurance, a bad accident or a chronic issue can add up extremely fast. The player might even have had savings that were wiped out paying down a higher bill before the game started, and settled the rest on a credit card.
(Yes, most hospitals offer payment plans at better rates than credit cards. No, I don't think all healthcare providers do, and no, they don't necessarily offer any clear way to find out.)
I hope you're ready for a 2-hour commute each way. Buses in the US are terrible everywhere outside of some very specific cities.
> Why do I have over $7000 on my CC bill?
Emergency dental or health care?
There is, in fact, a massive confluence of reasons why poor people end up having children, and shaming them for doing so instead of helping those reasons will not help anyone.
If we lived on a planet where every person was a rational, level-headed adult, lectures and books would be enough of an education. Sadly, most of the people are irrational and emotional; if you want to steer them towards better life decisions, for their sake as well as society's, shame is a very good tool.
America has a long, ugly history of shaming single mothers, sexual abuse victims, adulterers and interracial and non-heterosexual relationships. I don't think that we should encourage more of it.
> Sadly, most of the people are irrational and emotional; if you want to steer them towards better life decisions, for their sake as well as society's, shame is a very good tool.
Would you use the word 'paternalistic' to describe your views on an ideal society?
This is not true at all. Everyone knows how not to have children, just like everyone knows smoking can cause cancer. People just take the risk anyway. It's basic human irrationality, no amount of education can fix it.
Societal pressure, on the other hand, does have some of the desired effect, even if it's not a "nice thing" like education.
I used to help moderate a LiveJournal community called "amipregnant" and this is a laughably false assertion.
"Yes, you can get pregnant your first time having sex" and "no, you can't get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat a boy used" were both pretty common sorts of things we had to tell folks.
Otherwise, I think it's self-evident. There's many behaviors that would've been socially unacceptable a hundred years ago, which today are accepted and far more common. For a somewhat related example, consider inter-racial or (to some degree) inter-religious marriages.
Offering free vasectomies (subsidized from tax money) would indeed not a bad idea to help these people before the problem occurs.
/s !
If you mean me: I have good, deep reasons why I do not even want children (these reasons shall by off-topic here). And I live by my words so that other people can follow my anti-natalist example. :-)
Yes, I would rather shame people who are "having kids when they clearly have no resources of place for them in their lives" than spending any of my personal resources on actually helping them, if those are the only two choices I have.
Your empathy in and of itself is worthless. How much of your income are you personally willing to give up to bail out people who make poor choices? Where do you draw the line? I hope we can agree that having children without having the resources to take care of them is a poor choice. All that "neglect and undereducation" is due to that poor choice, first and foremost. Welfare doesn't fix the problem. Just look at all the "angry young people" in France (20% youth unemployment), a country which has some of the strongest welfare programs in the world, including free university education.
At the time of conception, nobody knows how things will turn out in their life a few years down the line. Will I still have that job that allows me to pay my bills? Will I have been bankrupted by an acute medical issue, because I lost my health insurance at a critical moment?
Having kids is a commitment. But you have to take a leap of faith. You can't just undo that commitment later, or walk away from it.
But shaming people for having kids? Have you no heart? How on earth is that going to help with anything? Is it going to make their lives better? Is it going to help the kids?
There is always some uncertainty in life. And yet, we're somehoe able to make decisions despite this uncertainty. However, you take this uncertainty argument to absurd levels - by your logic, no human being should be expected to be responsible for any life decision, ever, because uncertainty.
How about we just presume that having a child without a good, reliable job and some sort of partner (not neccesarilly a heterosexual or even romantic one) it plain stupid?
> Is it going to make their lives better? Is it going to help the kids?
When you shame someone for bad decision, the purpose is not to influence these exact people. The purpose is to create a strong understanding in the whole culture that this is a bad decision, and prevent other people from doing the same.
I think my point didn't come across. I wasn't talking about avoiding responsibility. I simply meant that it's easy to make assumptions. Just because someone has a child and doesn't have the resources to care for it, doesn't mean that it was always that way. Things in life don't always go as planned.
> How about we just presume that having a child without a good, reliable job and some sort of partner (not necessarily a heterosexual or even romantic one) is plain stupid?
Personally, I agree with that statement. But who am I to judge other people on their choice to have kids? That's just not my place.
And I am also a realist - things happen. Live throws curve-balls. Birth control doesn't always work. And sometimes people do things that are not smart in the spur of the moment. Procreation is a very powerful drive.
It seem to me that more and better education and easier/cheaper access to birth control would be a more effective way to help people make smart choices about having children.
As I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18284196 Let's subsidize vasectomies so that they can ideally be gratis. They just have to be done once. No regular visits necessary.
> But shaming people for having kids? Have you no heart?
I have a very big heart. But my heart is a deeply rational one instead of an empathic one (I know, I will never become a diplomat). My big, rational heart is the reason why I became very anti-natalist.
> Sterilization was most frequently recommended by physicians because of a pervasive belief that Puerto Ricans and the poor were not intelligent enough to use other forms of contraception. Physicians and hospitals alike also implemented hospital policy to encourage sterilization, with some hospitals refusing to admit healthy pregnant women for delivery unless they consented to be sterilized. This has been best documented at Presbyterian Hospital, where the unofficial policy for a time was to refuse admittance for delivery to women who already had three living children unless she consented to sterilization. There is additional evidence that true informed consent was not obtained from patients before they underwent sterilization, if consent was solicited at all.
You're assuming that the poster actually cares about these things, and not just shaming people he thinks are below him.
Yes, people should be allowed to make their own decision on whether or not to have a child, but it should be an informed, considered decision, including the cost of supporting a child for their whole life, and not "oh no, the rhythm or pull-out method didn't work, ah well, let's just keep it".
I've been wanting to get a tortoise though. I'm told that once you get their living arrangement right, with the special lamp and whatnot, they're easy to care for.