Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with you in a lot of ways, but keep an eye out on what "basic needs" means. Those are poverty-line wages, which don't give you any provision for becoming sick and little chance to save for retirement. Social Security might still exist by the time you retire, but even if it does, it won't even match that $1,000 per month (in whatever inflation-adjusted terms are available).

If you've spent the last two decades socking away some of that sweet, sweet programmer cash, you may well have enough cushion to live the beach-bum/starving-artist life you're talking about. That's great, and go for it. But a lot of people trying to skate by with the minimum will discover that the minimum isn't quite enough, and then they get caught up in a very bad vicious cycle.

UBI is one plan which would alleviate a lot of that, and I'd be all in favor of trying. Technology means there's so much to go around that not everybody needs to spend a third of their waking life to get the basics. But until then, people should be aware that they have needs outside of basic maintenance that must be taken into account.

I see what you are saying, although I do want to mention that the $1000 per month isn't permanent. I'm doing it more to point out the absurdity of living in a society where it's easier to earn $100,000 per year than $12,000 per year. That's self-evidently outrageous and IMHO unsustainable.

After doing this for a few months, I've reached the conclusion that the status quo structures America this way so that we're all locked into the workaday world rat race to bolster corporate profits. The penalties for working less than 40 hours per week are so severe that it's effectively a dream now, out of reach for most. The opportunity cost of that for American innovation is incalculable. We might as well measure it in years instead of dollars. I've lost 20, has anyone else succeeded as a sole proprietor or made a living from patents?

I've already begun to notice the biases against the working poor interwoven through our society. Overdraft fees are crippling, and groveling to get them reversed is demoralizing (luckily my credit union is more understanding than banks ever were). I've begun measuring everything in time again. Eating at a restaurant costs 1-2 hours of income, rent costs at least 30 hours, veterinary bills are out of the question, medical care is a fantasy, I'm at the mercy of my vehicle holding up. I hardly thought about those things on salary, and I grew detached from the chronic daily misery 100 million Americans face just to survive.

Anyway, I want to document all of this as a roadmap for other entrepreneurs that I never had. Reaching $2000 per month, with half coming from self-employment, is the next milestone. Success for me will look like making between $30k and $50k working 20 hours per week by a year or two from now. I figure the odds of that are 90% against, but by working the gig economy, I might be able to get that to 50/50.

I hear ya. Being poor sucks harder than most HackerNews denizens realize, and I'm frequently aggravated to read "just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" talk from people who don't realize just how much easier life is without a huge number of daily hassles. Being poor is literally very expensive.

Seeing past that realization is incredibly difficult, especially when one isn't motivated to. If you find a way to help make that clearer to people, good on ya.

I also use hours to equalise between between myself and friends on low income.

An important trick I use is to take all fixed living costs out of weekly income. Then divide disposable income left by hours to work out your return on time invested.

For example: one friend gets NZD20 per hour and works 40 hours. She only has $30 left to spend on whatever else she wants after living expenses (carefully budgeted in her case). So 0.75 $/hour is what she actually “earns”.

I use this to help explain to her that we don’t need to put in equal $ when we share activities - instead we put in equal disposable income per working hour.

It also means I don’t feel guilty when a friend who has 5x the disposable income pays more than I do for something we share.

It's good to see someone express this. I really hate working and you've enumerated my concerns about stopping.

The conclusion I came to is that I need about $3M to provide a life-long safety net, then I can try just making enough to cover the "basic needs" and not end up homeless if things go wrong.

Do you have any thoughts about taking a year off? I'm considering doing that once my current employment expires, but I'm concerned that if I taste freedom and begin enjoying life, I may not be able to go back to work.

I personally took a sabbatical precisely to rediscover my love for the craft of programming, on which I'd become pretty burned out. Travel was great, and I acquired a lifetime of stories, but I missed home and feeling like I was achieving something -- as well as the earning of money that I knew I was spending at a rapid clip.

That's just me, of course. I have long enjoyed programming, and am incredibly lucky to be good at a lucrative job. You might find that a year of climbing glaciers or weaving tapestries ruins you for the office job. I personally am well aware that if I were to pursue my passion for theater as a means of living, I'd come to hate it. So I dunno if my experience generalizes, but that's my $.02 for what it's worth.

(I can say that I'd heard a figure of $2M rather than $3M, and God I hope so. That burnout thing cost me over a decade of productive earnings.)

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