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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

An ACA silver plan means you have a $4500 deductible. You will NEVER go to a doctor. You will also not have sick leave, and if you don't show up for your randomly timed work shift you will be fired. Thats if you get hours in the first place.

So you pay your $500 for rent. Add 150 for utilities. Add 200 for gas and 50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place. Thats 900 for a roof and ability to pay for it.

Now you have $600 a month for food and literally any other expense. Say you never eat out and use staples like rice and beans as the basis for every dish, thats $250 a month (maybe you can squeeze out another $50, but one must have a slight bit of slack for say, a single gallon of ice cream per month). $350 for everything else. Entertainment. A gym membership. Your medical deductible. Your sanity.

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> An ACA silver plan means you have a $4500 deductible. You will NEVER go to a doctor.

Silver plans are eligible for Cost Sharing Reduction (reducing deductibles to $500-1,000), and pay for doctor’s visits before deductibles kick in. And preventative care has no co-pay and no deductible.

> So you pay your $500 for rent. Add 150 for utilities. Add 200 for gas and 50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place.

How much do you think gas costs in Iowa? The median rural/town commuter travels about 1,150 miles per month. A 2000 Honda Civic gets 27 mpg. At $2/gallon for around 40 gallons a month, that’s under half your estimate.

> Now you have $600 a month for food and literally any other expense. Say you never eat out and use staples like rice and beans as the basis for every dish, thats $250 a month (maybe you can squeeze out another $50, but one must have a slight bit of slack for say, a single gallon of ice cream per month).

You are out of touch if you think $250 per month is a “rice and beans” food budget for a single person: https://mymoneywizard.com/how-i-spend-less-than-35-a-week-on... ($67 per week for two people). A weekly trip to Aldi for my family of five clocks in at about $100, and we don’t even try to save money.

> $350 for everything else. Entertainment. A gym membership. Your medical deductible. Your sanity.

In central Illinois, you can have a sit-down meal for $10, less if ethnic food. Coffee is a buck. The Y near my house is $40/month for a very nice place with heated indoor pool, and making minimum wage you qualify for financial aid. The county one, which is also nice, is $25/month. Netflix is $13/month. A Verizon MVNO is $35/month. In Iowa City, you can get $1-2 well drinks four days a week: https://www.brothersbar.com/iowacity.

> Silver plans are eligible for Cost Sharing Reduction (reducing deductibles to $500-1,000), and pay for doctor’s visits before deductibles kick in

You’re right about the deductible - after doing the math I saw that youd qualify for the 150->400% bracket of the federal poverty level. But can you afford 3 weeks pay for that $750 deductible? On top of other stuff?

> You are out of touch if you think $250 per month is a “rice and beans” food budget for a single person

I didn't say it was only rice and beans, but a cheap diet consisting of the cheapest carbs. The USDA has it around $180 as the absolute cheapest per person. Your money wizard person lives in the cheapest area of the country. I'll bet they have a stocked kitchen as well so they never need to buy spices.

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/fil...

> In central Illinois

Having been thru Normal/Bloomington and Champaign, it’s extremely reasonable in price as rentals are dirt cheap, as long as you’re going to aldi. $1-2 well drinks aren’t a thing in a lot of the country. Coffee isn’t a dollar since the 90s. Your original example was between DC and baltimore. Things aren't so cheap there.

Oh, and I forgot about the actual premium cost of the silver plan, which is around $200 per month.

Sorry, but you're going into debt or homelessness the second your hours get cut. You have no stability. The smallest thing going wrong will ruin you. Have you seen the absolute hordes of people going into just APPLY for section 8? https://youtu.be/Q5ocjZ9GatA?t=140

> You’re right about the deductible. But can you afford 3 weeks pay for that deductible, and then your car breaks down because you can’t afford to maintain it?

What percentage of people suffer both an adverse health event in their 20s or 30s and a car maintenance event in the same year? I don't understand these types of arguments: you can't establish whether something is a "living wage" or not by reference to worst case scenarios achieved by piling on conjecture upon conjecture. Again, in France the minimum wage works out to $10/hour, and they have 20-30% co-insurance if someone has an adverse health event, and outside Paris most people have cars. It still works out fine for almost everyone.

> The USDA has it around $210 as the absolute minimum per person. Your money wizard person lives in the cheapest area of the country.

The USDA food budget is used as the basis for SNAP benefits, so it has to accommodate costs in high-COL areas. It is, in fact, designed to allow a healthy, balanced diet that most people can follow and is not an "absolute minimum" number. The person I linked to is not some wizard: https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/how-save-money-grocerie.... Regardless, the point is that $250 is not a rice-and-beans diet, like you claimed. This guy is eating lean meats, fruits and vegetables within the sub-$200 USDA Thrifty budget.

> While Trader Joe's stocks no shortage of reasonably priced pre-packaged indulgences, I stuck to my health-conscious diet of fruits, vegetables, eggs, and lean meats. For $39.68 I bought more than enough for the week.

Note that the co-insurance framing doesn't work out in your favor, because in France the costs for medical procedures or emergencies is far, far cheaper than the US. An emergency room visit might cost you around €10 while in the US visiting the emergency room is likely to bankrupt you.

Hell, it would likely put a big shock in my finances and I actually have good health insurance right now. You can't compare co-insurance costs like you are because it's apples to oranges.

Do you want to know how much it cost me to get my dental work done in the US versus how much it costs in France?

$250/month sounds about right for me for food+drink for a month, shopping at Jewel in Chicago, just getting whatever I want without caring about the price (based on about $300/month in total spent at Jewel, which includes cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc).

Even in your best attempt to try and rationalize living off of poverty-level wages, your argument only makes things look worse.

> Silver plans are eligible for Cost Sharing Reduction (reducing deductibles to $500-1,000), and pay for doctor’s visits before deductibles kick in. And preventative care has no co-pay and no deductible.

Note that this is ignoring one massive part of healthcare: Dental care. As someone that lived in deep poverty I had to deal with teeth quite literally rotting out of my head because there were no options for me to get care and the insurance that I had didn't cover it. That's easily upwards of a few grand to fix a few teeth which no one can afford on those wages.

> How much do you think gas costs in Iowa? The median rural/town commuter travels about 1,150 miles per month. A 2000 Honda Civic gets 27 mpg. At $2/gallon for around 40 gallons a month, that’s under half your estimate.

Gas costed around ~3 dollars a gallon where I lived and our old car got around 20mpg. That alone creeps up to around $200 for gas and we couldn't afford to get a more efficient car for obvious reasons. The only reason why gas is cheaper now is because of the crash, it was not the norm at all for most people.

> You are out of touch if you think $250 per month is a “rice and beans” food budget for a single person: https://mymoneywizard.com/how-i-spend-less-than-35-a-week-on.... ($67 per week for two people). A weekly trip to Aldi for my family of five clocks in at about $100, and we don’t even try to save money.

You seem to be the one out of touch here considering what the USDA has said. Note that in your money wizard example the prices were incredibly off compared to where I live where things were easily 1.3-1.5x the price at the nearest grocery store. For example, 3lbs pound of chicken breast was easily around $2.80 compared to their example which is around $1.90. It also assumes people actually have time to cook and plan out their meals.

> In central Illinois, you can have a sit-down meal for $10, less if ethnic food. Coffee is a buck. The Y near my house is $40/month for a very nice place with heated indoor pool, and making minimum wage you qualify for financial aid. The county one, which is also nice, is $25/month. Netflix is $13/month. A Verizon MVNO is $35/month. In Iowa City, you can get $1-2 well drinks four days a week

At the very least we can reduce that remaining $350 by another $100 once we factor in internet and phone bills, both of which are required in today's environment.

So let's say you have around $250 left total. That's $250 for emergencies, for feeding your pets, for paying off dental bills, for putting towards loans, for dealing with everything else life has to throw at you.

And people wonder why your average American can't save money or put any of it towards stocks?

Dental check up is like 25$ Dental care isn't really a huge part of healthcare.

Cleanings aren't $25 though and those are recommended every 6 months. Along with exams once a year. You're looking at $100+/cleaning and $100+/exam.

From my experience of talking to people - seems like the quickest way to get cavities and ruin your teeth (beyond not brushing) is to not do the regular cleanings.

They may be "recommended" every 6 months, but practically nobody does that. In fact, in surveys, only about half of respondents see a dentist once a year. There's also little evidence to support the necessity of twice-annual dental checkups.

> They may be "recommended" every 6 months, but practically nobody does that.

Source?

It's pretty routine in my circle that everyone does it. If they don't, cavities appear not too long after.

And btw - argument from "oh the masses don't do it, therefore it isn't important" isn't very strong.

You are being lied to by the medical industry in the US.

I think heredity plays into this. I’ve gone 10 years without and zero cavities. My maternal grandmother had all her natural teeth at the age of 94. Not everyone gets cavities

Cavities are caused primarily by too much sugar combined with inadequate home care. There is also a genetic component - some people are going to get more cavities than others no matter what they do. Cleanings and checkups don’t really prevent cavities, they screen for them.

The country i come from with free healthcare doesnt even suggest cleanings after reachign adulthood. You get a few free ones once every 5 years. Thats not a major part of healthcare lol

>50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place. Thats 900 for a roof and ability to pay for it.

Someone in this situation is not paying cash for a car so there's probably $100-$200 for a car loan on top of that.

There’s another level of subsidies called cost sharing reductions which bring the deductible/out-of-pocket expenses down as your income is reduced.

At 150% FPL the Silver plan deductible falls from about $7,000 to $250, and your maximum annual out-of-pocket expenses falls from $7,300 to $550.

At some point you hit full-on Medicaid which is, depending on the state, truly excellent insurance and totally free.

High deductible just means that you have to pay upfront for preventive care — like flu shots, bacterial checkups, and annual physicals. We pay out of pocket for tons of things, like food, clothing, and utilities. Insofar as this is undesirable, it's probably because the pricing system is impaired.

If you have a financially ruinous healthcare event, the ACA silver plan saves you — that's the whole point of insurance.

Annual physicals and flu shots are generally (possible ACA mandate?) free with no deductible. Maybe bad example choices?

That's all the more reason why the higher deductible isn't inherently a bad thing, even most of the basic needs are covered. Outside of that, it's just catastrophic coverage, just like car insurance.

No it doesn’t. If you go in with a cold, they check your temperature and give you some Tylenol you get charged $600 out of your pocket, until you meet the deductible. It’s the preventative care stuff that is /sometimes/ not counting against the deductible.

Also literally any surgery is a financially ruinous healthcare event insured or not until you’re rich relative to the average person - I have the receipts of the tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills I’ve had to pay while insured to prove it.

Also small employers are generally exempt from contributing to programs that help with employee healthcare or insurance.

Almost 4 litres of ice cream per month? Every month? And someone wonders why there are so many type 2 diabetes cases...

That’s about 250 calories per day, which is pretty reasonable for a daily treat.

And I actually looked it up and it’s about a half gallon per American per month. I wonder if that includes children too. Probably. And then factor in the mountains of other garbage we also eat...it’s honestly a miracle that we’re not more obese than we are.

Forgot how big a regular thing of ice cream was :p

1 gallon/month is 1 scoop of ice cream each on 5 or 6 days per week, or on average about 12–15 grams of sugar per day. It’s about the same amount of sugar you’d get from drinking one 12 oz can of soda every third day.

If it’s the only sugary treat someone is eating, that’s still well below average for people in most industrialized countries. If combined with soda/candy/cake/cookies/cocktails/... then probably not such a good idea.

I presume this is for a family of 2-4; in that case it's arguably not much at all.

So to put the below in context: my first job (at the tail end of the last recession) paid around $12-13 an hour, and was enough to survive with more than double that rent figure. Granted, I had a couple factors on my side (namely: my grandparents in the next town over, who would insist on stocking my fridge and cupboards with the essentials), but even if I hadn't it was workable, even if not comfortable. I also didn't pay for health insurance at the time (I wasn't eligible for work-provided insurance until shortly before I switched jobs), since I think this was right before the ACA's individual mandate made it "mandatory".

That all being to say: $10/hr full time does not in the slightest bit seem unreasonable to me, even if I do strongly believe that workers deserve better than that.

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> Add 200 for gas and 50 for car insurance since you're gonna be living in a rural place.

Or a bike, which is a thing, that people ride to and from work, even in "rural" areas. No gas and no insurance, even for an electric one (and those have come down quite a bit in price, to the point where the only cheaper cars are absolute beaters).

Even "rural" cities/towns often have buses, too. They don't always have the most exhaustive coverage, but bikes can make up for that for the "last mile" of each way's commute (especially if the bus has a bike rack on it, which is becoming increasingly common for exactly this reason and because it's relatively cheap compared to the cost of the bus itself).

> $350 for everything else. Entertainment. A gym membership. Your medical deductible. Your sanity.

You don't need a gym membership to work out (as I'm sure most of us trying to get even basic fitness in can attest over the last couple months, what with all those gyms being shut down). Jogging, hiking, bicycling, pushups, planks, jumping jacks, shovelgloving¹... all dirt cheap to do (if you don't go overboard and splurge on fancy bikes or backpacks or whatever; the basics will work fine). If you happen to live in a snowy area, snow shoveling is a good workout, too, and helps out your neighbors (you might even get paid for it).

All of those things can double for entertainment and "sanity", too, so that just leaves the medical deductible. That $350 would give you enough savings to cover that deductible in a bit over a year (even faster if you throw in the aforementioned $250 you'd be saving without a car). Anything past that is pure savings, enough to eventually buy a used car for the occasional out-of-town trip, or to eat out every once in awhile, or what have you.

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¹: http://shovelglove.com/

Read the word "granted" and disregarded the rest of the post. Trying to pass off your experience as some kind of canonical working class struggle when you don't need to pay for food is about as tone deaf as it gets, not to mention starting it with "to put that into context" as if you have ANY idea what that context is.

I can tell you're just like "well, the poors can just ride bikes" having never ridden one yourself, otherwise you would know that a bike that you could cycle a 40km to 60km round commute on in a rural area is gonna set you back $2k and you won't get finance on it the way you do with a car, not to mention the fact that the cycling clothes you would need to buy to cover rural distances are mostly in the designer category and therefore very expensive. Not to mention your mechanical service, which if you're commuting daily is probably $80 every six months plus any parts which wear out, $15 for brake pads, $5 every time you puncture any wheel, $60 for new tyres every year, and the occasional unexpected uninsurable $200 "bottom bracket, crank and chainring all wore out at once" repair.

> Read the word "granted" and disregarded the rest of the post. Trying to pass off your experience as some kind of canonical working class struggle when you don't need to pay for food is about as tone deaf as it gets, not to mention starting it with "to put that into context" as if you have ANY idea what that context is.

No, you’re the one lacking context. Most low wage workers are young, and the median American lives 18 miles away from their mom. People making $10/hour living on their own for the first time who have parents or grandparents randomly drop by with food is a very common scenario. People making $10/hour trying to support a family is not.

Also, the notion of biking 60 km round trip in rural areas strongly suggests you’ve never been to one. Someone working a $10 service job in a rural county isn’t commuting 30 km each way. My wife grew up in Sibley, Iowa. It’s about a mile and a half across North to south, and less than that East to west. The apartments are all in town, and so are the stores.

The people who might need to commute longer are farmers and farm hands, but they make a lot more money. The average farm hand in Iowa with a high school education or less makes $30-40k/year: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c1-60.... (The hours are long, so it works out to $12-15/hour.) They’re not riding bikes.

Sibley sounds like a nice place, but it's not the whole world.

Most of America is closer to Sibley than to the big coastal cities. Median home value in Osceola County is $100,000, or about double the median income. According to ACS, the median American home is $217,000, about three times the national median income. The median California home price is $615,000, almost 9 times the median income. In the Bay Area, the median home is a million, ten times the median income.

To expand on rayiner's comment a bit: Sibley sounds pretty much identical to all but the absolute smallest cities/towns I've visited or lived in. Just because they're small doesn't mean they don't have apartments (or trailer parks), nor does it mean they lack grocers or restaurants or auto shops or gas stations or offices.

If anything, the average commute is shorter (at least distance-wise) in a rural town/city than a large city, since there's less distance to cover to get from one end of town to the other. Cities tend to grow outward faster than they grow upward, so from a square-cube-law point of view, the bigger the city, the longer the commute (without having to pay through the nose for rent).

> I can tell you're just like "well, the poors can just ride bikes" having never ridden one yourself

I did ride one to and from work for 3 years, specifically because I couldn't afford a car at the time (and then later did buy a car but couldn't afford to drive it for my daily commute because I was unemployed).

> otherwise you would know that a bike that you could cycle a 40km to 60km round commute on in a rural area

Maybe if you hadn't "disregarded the rest of the post" you would've read the part about using bus services to cover most of that distance. Bus fares are an additional expense, sure, but you can readily save money on a monthly pass, and plenty of transit systems offer discounted rates for low-income riders (though I think $10/hour might be above the typical threshold).

Not that such a commute is typical even in rural areas anyway. "Rural" areas include small towns/cities, and quite a few of the jobs in such towns/cities are within those towns/cities. Ain't everything way out on some random farm (though even in those cases, you'll typically have access to live either on or very close to work; this is a common living arrangement for migrant workers in California).

The furthest I had to bike for work was a one-time computer repair job about 13 miles outside of town, uphill in the mountains. Did that on my bike, even while carrying parts and tools.

> when you don't need to pay for food

Like I said in the comment: even if I didn't have that particular resource (for which I'm grateful and count myself lucky), I still had enough from my paychecks to cover that. That money went into savings and the occasional meal eating out instead.

And I still did need to pay for most of my food; the main things they brought were soup and Spam (because they could buy them on the cheap at Costco), plus a bag of rice if I remember right. I was on the hook for anything else.

And mind you this was with no roommates and more than $1k/month rent; there were plenty of other areas where I could've trimmed my budget and made things work.

> not to mention the fact that the cycling clothes you would need to buy

You don't need cycling clothes to ride a bike.

> Not to mention your mechanical service, which if you're commuting daily is probably $80 every six months, $15 for brake pads, $5 every time you puncture any wheel, $60 for new tyres every year,

All of this is still a tiny fraction of the $250/month figure for a car.

Though I will say that in the 3 years I did ride my bike daily I didn't change the tires once. Nor did I change the brake pads. Probably should've taken better care of that thing, lol

> otherwise you would know that a bike that you could cycle a 40km to 60km round commute on in a rural area is gonna set you back $2k

Pot, meet kettle.

That's an almost laughably out of touch estimate for a 40-60km commuter bike. Speaking as someone who has cycle-commuted between 30 and 60km, full time, for the better part of two decades (including a couple winters in the upper midwest and a 10 year stint of not even owning a car), plus recreational riding on the weekends, my response is: Horsefeathers.

A nice gravel or cyclocross bike (with components one level below, say, Shimano 105, or SRAM Rival), one that will easily take 10 years / 75,000 miles of daily commuting with moderate maintenance costs, should set you back no more than about $1k. Paying more than $1k doesn't get you a more reliable bike. It gets you a lighter bike (which is often less reliable).

And, respectfully, if you're paying $5 every time you puncture a tire, that's a you problem. When you're on a budget, you patch tubes instead of throwing them away. Cranks generally last the life of a frame, and bottom brackets don't suddenly catastrophically fail without warning.

You're criticizing someone for not understanding what it's like to live on a low income, but all your cost estimates are from the perspective of an upper-middle income person who rides a fancy bike recreationally on the weekends. Like a politician who thinks that a gallon of milk costs $20.

And to expand on this: that ain't even factoring in the fact that used bikes exist. As do the dirt-cheap ones at Wal-Mart. Yeah, they suck, but they do the job. I don't know of any electric bikes in this category, of course, but certainly lots of regular ones.

Mine was probably nice when it was new, but it was 10+ years old by the time I got it.

> Or a bike, which is a thing, that people ride to and from work, even in "rural" areas. No gas and no insurance, even for an electric one (and those have come down quite a bit in price, to the point where the only cheaper cars are absolute beaters).

> Even "rural" cities/towns often have buses, too. They don't always have the most exhaustive coverage, but bikes can make up for that for the "last mile" of each way's commute (especially if the bus has a bike rack on it, which is becoming increasingly common for exactly this reason and because it's relatively cheap compared to the cost of the bus itself).

Bikes are not a viable commuting option in most of America, you cannot transport groceries or children effectively on a bike. This is the strawiest of straw men arguments.

> you cannot transport groceries or children effectively on a bike.

I had a basket on my bike (hacked together with a plastic crate and some bungie cords) that worked great for hauling groceries (and computer parts / tools - hell, even whole towers - when I was doing freelance computer repair during various periods of unemployment), and I know plenty of people who have little to no issue with bike strollers/trailers for hauling kids.

> Bikes are not a viable commuting option in most of America

Yea - this was the main point bud. You ever ride your bike 10 miles to get to work in the dead of winter in Iowa or Minnesota?

Like I'm glad you were able to rig a basket and all for your bike but acting like your story is relevant for people who are in actual financial hardships is disingenuous and weird. You're pissing people off who actually struggled... like didn't have food sorta struggle. Stop.

> You ever ride your bike 10 miles to get to work in the dead of winter in Iowa or Minnesota?

Not Iowa or Minnesota, but it was the dead of winter, and yes.

> Like I'm glad you were able to rig a basket and all for your bike

My point is that anyone can. The most expensive part was the $10 for the part to strap the crate on (attached to the pole under the seat). The basket was literally in the trash. The bungees were, like, $5, tops.

> but acting like your story is relevant for people who are in actual financial hardships

It is relevant, because I was in financial hardship, despite what you somehow seem to think.

You're the one pissing people off who actually struggled - that is, you're pissing me off by shitting all over me because God forbid I accepted some help from family when I needed it and wasn't in a position to refuse.

> You're the one pissing people off who actually struggled

I have one person arguing with me - you. You have multiple people arguing with you, some even sharing difficult personal stories of having to go to a food kitchen to not go hungry...

I'm sorry "I'm pissing you off" and "shitting all over you" but you are not going to change my opinion: you had some serious help but still talk like you're an example..? I agree with others that you sharing your experience of being "poor" is punching down, tone-deaf, and invalidates those who actually find themselves struggling right now.

> I have one person arguing with me - you.

There are actually a couple people in this discussion who seem to be backing up my points.

> you had some serious help

What part of "less than $50 a month v. more than $500 more in rent" are you not getting here? Real fuckin' serious help. Obviously I was sitting there eating lobster and caviar every day, right? Is that what you think?

My intention is not to "punch down". My only intention is to describe a situation that I think is comparable, based both on facts (namely: the mathematical realities of having to live in a high-cost area with a low wage) and feelings (namely: the emotional toll of having to make the best of every resource available - which, yes, included a whopping $50 a month... wow, so extravagant and sheltered, that'll totally make up for my higher rent).

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EDIT:

Nor should my experience be taken as "invalidating" anyone else's (except maybe the 1%ers trying to "relate"). Just because I was able to stay afloat taking home less than $1k a month after rent doesn't mean people should ever have to do that. We as a country should be paying our workers what they're worth, not merely "enough to live".

I think this stems from me misspeaking and saying $10/hour is "not unreasonable". What I meant was "not unlivable", and that much is true in much of America. We absolutely should be striving for a higher goal than simply "livable" for every American, given that this country was founded on inalienable rights beyond merely "life"; until every American can exercise one's rights to "liberty" and "the pursuit of happiness", this country has not fulfilled its mandate to its people and to the world, and every one of us should be working together to fix that.

> I think this stems from me misspeaking and saying $10/hour is "not unreasonable"

Right, which is why a ton of people got flustered. $10 is unreasonable. You posited it was, positioning yourself as some sort of positive example as-to why it is.

> What I meant was "not unlivable"

You said that $10/hr is reasonable. I see "livable", "not unlivable", "survivable", "reasonable", and "not unreasonable" as all synonymous. Your shifting of definitions and "what I meant"-isms doesn't add any sort of positive spin to what you were putting forth with your original comment, it's just backtracking because people called you out.

Clarifying things that people like you misinterpreted (or outright invented, like the "hundreds of dollars in support" claim or the claim that I had health insurance even though I specifically said I didn't) is backtracking? And fuck me for admitting a single word I mixed up, right?

I stand by my original comment. Just because some random jerks on Hacker News think I wasn't poor merely because I accepted what amounted to less than $50 of help doesn't mean I wasn't poor.

Children of certain ages are challenging, I'll grant you, but the rest of this is just dripping with privilege.

Go visit any of the rougher parts of a big city, and you'll find plenty of low income people transporting groceries and commuting on bike (You can find them in small towns, too). Look for people with plastic shopping bags slung from the bars. It's not just viable, but absolutely essential.

And it's not limited to just people with low income, either. A rack and a set of nice panniers can easily carry a week's worth of groceries for a single person, including bulky items like milk.

What you're saying is complete nonsense. Not only it is not true in most of the US (try to find cheap places in the US where you can have a reasonable life without a car), but it just takes ONE bad thing happening to you to disrupt your life: a broken leg, a lost job, or, wait for it, a virus pandemic!

> try to find cheap places in the US where you can have a reasonable life without a car

Pretty much any small/medium town or city that's not a tourist destination or near an ocean will fit that bill.

What jobs or opportunities, exactly, exist in those small/medium towns?

I seem to recall having to move away from my town because there were zero job opportunities for me except for those that were outside of my career and minimum wage.

Thinking back on the various small towns in which I and family members have lived...

- Stores

- Restaurants (usually fast food)

- Beauty salons

- Auto shops

- Gas stations

- Small offices (think lawyers, accountants, etc.)

- Clinics (even full-blown hospitals, one of which being my employer for my second job / first IT job)

Not to mention various jobs without fixed workplaces. I did freelance computer repair to help supplement my unemployment checks (during the times when I was on unemployment), since that's what I was good at; landscaping, housecleaning, pest control, plumbing/electrical work, etc. all come to mind there, too.

There are certainly jobs outside of town, too (e.g. farm work), but those often have on-site or near-site housing (whether as simple as renting a room in a farmhouse or there being an outright mobile home park or somesuch) specifically due to the realization that a lot of people working those jobs can't afford to drive every day.

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EDIT: if you're in a specialized career I can definitely understand why it'd be hard to find work. Bigger cities seem to have higher demand for specialized work, while smaller cities/towns more often than not need generalists. I've definitely felt that even in IT. Still, this pandemic notwithstanding, these towns/cities do tend to have up to tends of thousands of workers in 'em, doing the same things that a bigger city needs, albeit probably with less specialization and more generalization.

And indeed, I think that's why I'm doing okay now, even while working in a small-ish city: I learned the hard way that it probably ain't realistic to specialize on a specific technology or a specific role, and that if I'm gonna develop a lasting career I've gotta be flexible enough to be effective in any sort of role. I can't just be the "Linux and Erlang guy"; I gotta be willing to learn and work with whatever the job requires.

Of course, I'm also lucky enough to be working for a company that's not only able to stay open but actively thriving in pandemic conditions; I recognize most Americans - including multiple friends and family members - ain't as lucky as I am, which is exactly why I'm strongly in favor of helping them out wherever possible.

As someone who now has a cushy tech job but grew up struggling, it’s infuriating to read a post as out of touch as yours.

My main question is, as you yourself have admittedly never experienced it, why even bother commenting on it? All your comment provides is ammunition for those looking to dismiss the such wages as livable, when (if you experienced them yourself) they’re clearly not.

> As someone who now has a cushy tech job but grew up struggling, it’s infuriating to read a post as out of touch as yours.

Makes your blood boil. Seriously - someone posited "hey - in most of the US a bike is not a viable commuting vehicle..." to which op just replies (paraphrasing) "yes it is! I jerry-rigged a plastic basket on mine to carry things!"

Incredibly out-of-touch and from directly from a place of privilege. This is a person who may have had to ride their bike/budget carefully for a year or two to get on their feet, not someone who's actually experienced poverty.

> to which op just replies (paraphrasing) "yes it is! I jerry-rigged a plastic basket on mine to carry things!"

Yeah, fuck me for figuring out how to make the best of my situation, right?

> This is a person who may have had to ride their bike/budget carefully for a year or two to get on their feet, not someone who's actually experienced poverty.

Three years, through both the aforementioned first job and two multi-month periods of unemployment, plus a period of making less than minimum wage as a contractor.

But no, apparently I'm "too privileged" to be able to talk about when I was poor.

Talk about making blood boil...

In your posts:

1. family fills your fridge

2. $12-13/hr wages

3. didn't pay for health insurance, but still had health insurance

4. have the skills to do IT work (doing it from a bike is moot)

> Yeah, fuck me for figuring out how to make the best of my situation, right?

In good faith, I am not trying to say "fuck you"... I just don't agree that your past self was actually poor given the above bullet points. We have differing definitions of "poor" as you had the tools to improve your situation, without experiencing food scarcity, and all while having a health insurance safety-net.

As someone who's worked around extreme poverty - it's hard to not get flustered reading your posts. Sorry.

> family fills your fridge

"stock" != "fill". We're talking, like, $50/month, tops. I could've swung that myself. Instead I put it into savings and graciously accepted the help.

> $12-13/hr wages

In an area with double the rent of the proposed scenario

> didn't pay for health insurance, but still had health insurance

No, I didn't have health insurance. I specifically said I didn't qualify for my employer's plan until I had already put in my notice.

(I was also uninsured after my second job all the way up to my current job, so covering about a 4-year span; given that the ACA's individual mandate was in full effect, this effectively ate hundreds of dollars out of my tax returns, at least for the years where I actually had returns rather than owing taxes on e.g. my less-than-minimum-wage contract work).

> have the skills to do IT work

That's cold comfort when you're stuck working a non-IT job (as I was), or when you don't have a job at all (as I was later, on two separate occasions, hence the riding of my bike to fix computers and supplement unemployment under-the-table).

Keep in mind I didn't (and still don't) have a degree. That probably helped with keeping expenses low (no student loan debt to worry about), but it also made it substantially harder to find solid work (given that even help desk positions typically required at least an Associate's; I got my first IT job specifically as a temp job that turned unexpectedly permanent).

> I just don't agree that your past self was actually poor

I mean, I obviously can't make you relive my working life (at least up until my current job, which does thankfully pay much better and is helping me bounce back). Nor would I want you to. Still, I definitely think I was poor, both when I was working my first job and after I lost my second job. Really boggles the mind how you'd somehow disagree with that assessment simply because of a marginal amount of support.

It's bizarre that y'all are willing to discount my experience solely because I happened to make two dollars more per hour and had slight support from family, neither of which come anywhere close to offsetting having to pay $500/month more in rent than the hypothetical to which I replied.

Like, I'm under no illusion whatsoever that I wasn't fortunate. I'm endlessly grateful that I had a family eager and able to help out, and I know that there are plenty of people who don't have that much. That doesn't mean I didn't still struggle. It doesn't invalidate paying that rent, or making things work. It doesn't invalidate being in that situation two more times due to extended periods of unemployment, or when I was later making less than minimum wage and living off my savings working for a startup that ended up failing.

I don't care that a bunch of FAANG employees think I'm too "privileged" to be able to speak about a situation that very much is comparable. Your downvotes do not invalidate my life experiences. Begrudgingly accepting help from family (that, mind you, added up to, what, $50/month, tops? Yeah, real fuckin' luxurious) does not invalidate my life experiences.

> It's bizarre that y'all are willing to discount my experience

...Your experience of having a family or network subsidize $100s per month in various costs, which you are using to try and explain anyway the enormous and well-established economic inequality problem in the US.

Why? Can't you be grateful for your privileged position and not punch down?

> having a family or network subsidize $100s per month

As I've explained in multiple other follow-up comments now (EDIT: including, I now realize, in the exact comment to which you replied): it was not "$100s per month". It was barely $50, if that. I think the most luxurious thing was some protein shakes, and that was a box for, like, $20 (that'd be the thing in the fridge). They still give me boxes of those shakes sometimes, since my grandma likes 'em and I do, too, so why not, lol

And, as I already explained in the original comment, it was a $50 that I could've still paid myself. Instead, I accepted the help. I'm grateful for that help, and recognize that even that much is a privilege a lot of people don't have. That doesn't mean I wasn't poor at the time, nor does it mean that describing my experience is somehow "punching down".

Sorry if you feel like myself and others are invalidating you’re experience.

My sole intent is this: you claim that such a wage is livable on its own today. Your evidence for that claim is that you yourself had a similar wage, over a decade ago, with additional family support, and other benefits (eg no healthcare costs).

The two are not the same. Not even close. By by claiming they are, you invalidate the experience of everyone else who actually had to face the struggle of living on a low-wage without any of the benefits you did.

I myself ate from a homeless shelter a handful of times in college just because I couldn’t afford food at that moment in time. That is not an exaggeration. So forgive me if it feels like I’m invalidating your experience - I’m sure you struggled as well, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak for the experience of something you’ve clearly never experienced for yourself.

A $10 wage is not a livable wage in the vast majority of the country today. It’s a survivable wage at best, but not in every city.

> Your evidence for that claim is that you yourself had a similar wage, over a decade ago, with additional family support, and other benefits (eg no healthcare costs).

And more than double the rent. That's the part y'all seem to be ignoring, and is the exact part that makes my situation comparable and - IMO - worth presenting. If you disagree, can you at least articulate why paying that much more in rent somehow doesn't matter?

That doubling in rent is greater in dollar value than the slightly-higher wages + the occasional Costco run from family. If anything, my income minus rent was lower than the $10/hr minus $500/month situation originally presented and to which I responded ($970 v. $1100, respectively, when factoring in that support from family; this assumes 40 hours per week and a 4-week month). And that's assuming zero taxes (which wasn't the case, especially since this was in California).

> I’m sure you struggled as well, but that doesn’t give you the right to speak for the experience of something you’ve clearly never experienced for yourself.

To be clear here, I don't mean to invalidate your experience, either. My only intent is to describe a situation that IMO is comparable to the one originally presented. If it's not comparable, then fine, but I remain unconvinced when the best that people can do is entirely neglect to read what I wrote and then assume that I was totally paid for and expense-free.

It does sound like your situation was worse than mine and the originally-presented one

> It’s a survivable wage at best

Which is really the only point I was trying to make. Living on that sort of a wage sucks, but it is possible, and it's better than nothing. I strongly believe that human labor is worth more than some measly $10 or $12 per hour, and should be paid accordingly, regardless of whether or not it's technically possible to survive on such a low wage.

That said, "survivable" does definitionally mean "livable". The trouble is that "livable" ain't really enough for class mobility.

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