Hacker News Reader

Comment by yibg | Hacker News Reader

I grew up poor (first gen immigrant family, the poor kind), so I empathize with the points raised. At the same time I don't really understand how some / a family can be (outside of some circumstances like health issues, disabilities etc) repeatedly behind on water bills or other necessities.

For the first few years my family had an income of ~$1000 / month (back in the 90s). My mother wasn't legally allowed to work and my father was on a stipend. The whole family lived in a studio apartment, that 900 sq ft place in the article would've been huge for us. Our car was a $1200 tiny little rust bucket, but it ran.

Sometimes I see documentaries about people living in poverty and going pay check to pay check, yet the kids are wearing Nikes and playing on iphones. Being poor was definitely stressful though, and I'm definitely grateful that stress isn't part of my life anymore.

View on HN

All that you needed to break down was the car failing, or someone falling sick.

Minimum wage in the US hasn't kept pace with inflation for decades, and rents, school fees and the costs of medication have kept rising even faster. Banks charge even higher overdraft fees, so the small joys of a pair of branded shoes or a fancy phone are affordable, but the longer term gains aren't likely to be in reach.

Escaping poverty needs 20 years of everything going right. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/economi...

True the minimum wage hasn’t kept up. That’s mainly due to exporting manufacturing offshore.

People want cheap crap but they also want to keep wages high. Bernie understood this which is why he was against trade agreements and cheap labor.

Now people are used to paying $5 for a Tshirt. They want to get paid $15 an hour but also balk at a $20 Tshirt. You can’t have it both ways.

> True the minimum wage hasn’t kept up. That’s mainly due to exporting manufacturing offshore.

That’s partially true but this trend has been widespread well outside of manufacturing, too. There’s no shortage of companies engaged in wage theft, converting full time positions to contract, changing benefits plans to shift more cost to the workers, etc. in every sector. Programmers are in high demand but even in tech, consider how many companies contract out core competencies or, especially, have things like helpdesk jobs which pay considerably less than they used to and no longer have a promotion path.

There’s been a well-funded push to roll back the New Deal since around the end of WWII. This has included funding libertarian think tanks, religious denominations which encourage self-reliance and distrust of the government, etc. One big factor feeding into demand for cheaper goods is that people are acting rationally in a world where their income lags behind their parents or grandparents at the same age.

Kevin Kruse wrote a book about this a while back which is good for understanding some trends in the 20th century:

http://kevinmkruse.com/book/one-nation-under-god/

> the kids are wearing Nikes and playing on iphones.

This is investment. If your kids are socially rejected at school and can't get on the internet, are they going to be better off in the long term or worse off?

If you are poor, looking poor is not going to help you up, it's going to drive you farther into poverty. It's the same impulse that makes lower-middle class parents go into debt to put braces on their kids' perfectly functional teeth (in the US.) Your kids are going to have to impress fellow students, charm their teachers, get into colleges, and interview for jobs. A bunch of people who don't see class are going to see your crooked teeth.

Not to mention: an iphone (or any smartphone really) is a really efficient investment. I'm not sure, but for a few hundred dollars you have a very good device already.

Compare that to my own growing up, and we had separate costs for a TV, a radio, we would save up for a walkman or CD player, internet started off as dial-up at the library, then a PC. We'd buy CD's with games and things like Encarta, we'd record or rent films on a video recorder, etc etc etc. And all of those things had to be shared.

Now, with a smartphone, you have all of the above and then some - at a one time investment. Each of those individual devices back then cost the same as a single decent smartphone does nowadays.

I really don't see the issue. I mean I kinda get the objections, because for some reason smartphones are still considered luxury items (but only if you're poor), but it's such an empowering tool (and a source of distraction, which is something everyone needs).

i don't think it's smartphones that are considered luxury items, it's the $1000 iphones when a $50 android will provide all those benefits just fine.

But then you can't even browse the web properly with these, though. Not with all those fat Javascript-heavy pages and the whole "RAM is cheap" prevailing development mentality nowadays.

the 80/20 rule still applies. $50 is probably too low of a price point, but the example works if you compare a $250-400 android phone to a $1000 apple/samsung flagship. I could buy those phones if I wanted to, but I'm getting by just fine with my pixel 4a. hell, my pixel 2 was still perfectly serviceable but for the lack of security updates.

$50 to $400 is basically one order of magnitude, though. So the argument changes a lot.

kinda, but kinda not. $1000 is still a lot more than $400. I consider $600 to be a meaningful amount of money. it's definitely not a good move to spend that much on a phone if $600 matters to you. in any case, this conversation is drifting off the rails (or was derailed from the start). the iphone SE exists and sells for $400. with apple's track record for updates, that might be the best value on the entire market right now. I wouldn't consider it irresponsible for anyone to purchase that phone. I'm also not sure I believe that large amounts of poor people are buying brand new $1000 iphones anyway. most poor people I know are using whatever cheap phone happens to be supported by a local MVNO.

perhaps. now that i think about it i was buying my kids $50 androids when they came of age, but with the last two that didn't seem to cut it. i spent more like $100 with an extra $20 for an extra SD card.

for myself i paid under $250 for my android and i'm a professional full stack developer with android as part of that stack. (essential ph-1 phone on clearance sale on ebay).

I understand there is social pressure, but then pretty much anything can be bucketed under investment by this standard. Is a nice car and nice house also investment so the kids don't get rejected at school? At certain level of income, sacrifices need to be made, and I would argue Nikes and iPhones are luxuries, not necessities. e.g. you can get a pair of good quality shoes that costs less than Nikes, and a functional smart phone for less than an iphone.

Some poor families handle it better than others. A lot has to do with the parents and how they manage the situation psychologically.

There is peer pressure on the kids (and even parents), so they upend Maslow’s pyramid to their detriment.

Some of it may be educational —home ec is not taught in many schools. Some of it is cultural (advertising) and some of it is propaganda (we’re Americans, we must have a TV and consume brand names!)

I recall in Japan if you went on the dole you first had to sell your ‘luxury’ items before getting government support. It indicated you had to be in need and not supplementing or aiding poor economic decisions.

> in Japan if you went on the dole you first had to sell your ‘luxury’ items before getting government support. It indicated you had to be in need and not supplementing or aiding poor economic decisions.

I agree with the theory, but what is a luxury? Cheap shoes are penny wise and pound foolish as i've discovered. (though some expensive brands last no longer than the cheap ones). You can't really do anything today without an internet connection - school or apply for a job, and you are expected to answer your cell phone when called, so some form of smart phone is required and if you have an iphone it isn't worth enough used to be worth selling to buy a cheaper phone...

Being poor is doable as long as there are no disasters or gross unfairness. Every student who gets buy without parental help will attest.

I think it's also about trade offs that are made. For example, TV dinners (from an article in another thread here) for us was not a staple, it was a luxury. They kept for a long time, but they were also high cost to calorie ratio. We got the cheapest cut of meat we can in bulk and frozen it.

While I'm not suggesting your method isn't more economically efficient, it also requires time and money investment. When I was "poor", my parents would often both work late and it wasn't uncommon to not see them until later in the night if at all before bed. Many nights my brother and I would make our own dinners. Dealing with large cuts of frozen meat takes planning and skill that microwaveable dinners do not.

Also equipment: one thing working with our local mural aid group has really underscores is how many people have, say, a microwave or hot plate but not a working stove or enough capacity to store bulk food purchases. That’s definitely not true of everyone, of course, but it’s a real barrier for some people- especially, say, a newly-single mother who can’t feed an infant rice and beans.

Yes absolutely. Definitely different trade offs to be made depending on circumstance.

I grew up like you but you and I weren't poor.

If your parents immigrated like mine (wife legally not allowed to work, dad on stipend) then your father (and possibly mother) was very well educated in your home country, then immigrated to the US, finished his studies or did a temporary training and then took a well paying job.

When having a $1000 a month income is known to everyone to be temporary and you know a well paying job is on the other side, that's not the kind of poor the author is talking about. When you know you will have money soon you can make all sorts of wise choices to handle a period of low liquidity. When you don't know that, you can't make any of those choices.

We definitely weren't at the very bottom of the ladder. We had some stable income, a roof over our heads and food on the table.

Looking back the financial position we were in was clearly temporary. But at the time it wasn't so clear. It wasn't obvious that once graduated, my father would be able to find a well paying job (they were also pretty ignorant on the job market at the time). We definitely had financial stress in the family, which bled out to me all through childhood.

I consider myself fortunate and I had a legs up in multiple dimensions. Educated parents, stable home life etc. But like I said, very grateful that type of stress is not a part of my life now.

> Nikes and playing on iphones.

This is the kind of statement you hear from conservatives that blame poor people for their poverty.

There’s a number of reasons. Because when you churn through a dozen pairs of cheap no-name shoes, it ends up being more than just buying a better set of shoes. Maybe a relative gave you some Christmas money. Or maybe you got overtime for working an extra 20 hours.

Being poor, you are constantly judged on your appearance, and it has a huge effect on how you are treated by retailers, government (police, social services, etc), teachers/school admins, and friends.

When you’re poor, everything you own is half broken, purchased used, worn thin. You most likely live in an area that has a high crime rate, is loud, has a long commute to your job, is dirty. You have access to terrible, low quality food. You skip doctors appointments (can’t afford the time off or co-pays) and dental work. (American) society constantly blames you for your situation.

Whatever the reason, poverty is a daily assault on your human dignity. It’s incredibly difficult to escape. Sometimes, you have to say, “Screw it” and buy your kid the expensive shoes. That money won’t get you out of poverty, but it may make you and your child happy for a bit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com