Hacker News Reader

Comment by vertbhrtn | Hacker News Reader

Your countertops or your landlord's countertops? Because all the rest - all those iphones & vacations - is cheap fluff, really.

View on HN

That's the point. The cheap fluff today was expensive stuff yesteryear, if it existed at all.

Seems like the ol' "poor people aren't really poor because they almost all have refrigerators and not even kings had refrigerators two hundred years ago!" argument.

The counter to your strawman is that you are poor if you feel poor.

Since we have proven that a majority of people feel poor (i.e. they need to earn 20% more), and that this is true even of millionaire’s, we need a different definition of poor, because something isn’t right here...

Yeah, because real poverty doesn't exist in this country right? It's all just about feelings!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low...

> The average income is just $18,046 (£13,850) a year, and almost a third of the population live below the official US poverty line. The most elementary waste disposal infrastructure is often non-existent.

> Some 73% of residents included in the Baylor survey reported that they had been exposed to raw sewage washing back into their homes as a result of faulty septic tanks or waste pipes becoming overwhelmed in torrential rains.

I call the counterargument "You can't live on pepper". As in even though pepper is way cheaper than it was 500 years ago, you'll starve if that is all you can afford.

A good thing is still a good thing. And for the vast majority of Americans, we aren't talking about starvation, or even homelessness.

With tens of millions of Americans facing food insecurity and tens of millions of Americans facing eviction now, thanks to years of precarity exacerbated by the COVID-19, I think the situation is worse than you're suggesting.

I’m not sure how cheap that is overall. For example an extra $400 a month is $100k in mortgage loan right now. It all adds up, and is easier to do if you avoid the wasteful spending.

This is an excellent point - I think we are definitely a generation of consumers, and what happens is, kids who aren't taught how debt works get caught up in it.

And once you're caught up in debt that extra 400 doesn't go to a mortgage it goes to that credit card or that high car payment on a 72 month term..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com