Being Poor-ish Revisited: Reader Questions (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Being Poor-ish Revisited: Reader Questions (2021)

residentcontrarian.com

66 pointsluu72 comments

I think this article needs to be read together with this other one:

https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-be...

"but in case you want a real answer for Spain specifically, an internet person I know named Cassander explained to me that the basic cause of this is that because the US is richer than Spain, the quality of our good is higher and the the cost of labor similarly so; if I buy a can opener or rent a house, I’m forced to buy or rent something at a higher quality level"

I am an American (San Franciscan) who have been staying in Córdoba Spain for half a year, and I see the opposite. The average quality of goods here is the same or often better than in the US. And everything is cheaper (and incomes are lower, too). All services are better: I was first stunned when a deli clerk at a medium level supermarket, similar to Safeway sliced me some cheese, and tried to carefully arrange all the slices vertically, before wrapping them, and then sincerely apologized because two slices broke. And it goes on.

Food (especially supermarket) is healthier in San Francisco, it's higher quality and there's more variety. It's also way more expensive. The restaurant food is way tastier and cheaper in Spain, although i would not call it very healthy.

Problem is that certain goods (computers, phones, electronic components) are never Spanish, but a lot of cars and high tech bikes are, for example. I had a very hard time getting a replacement Dell XPS13 fan here: not sold on any Spanish sites, and very long customs delays for a $20 part when shipped from the US. I ended up buying a MacBook pro from a local Mac reseller.

It's a similar situation in Germany. Overall costs are lower than the time I lived in the USA, the quality is much better (especially food and education), the infrastructure is head-and-shoulders above (especially the roads, internet, phone plans, environment, litter, buildings in general). Taxes at the end of the day are close enough compared to California. Plus all the city centers are car-free zones. And a medical procedure won't bankrupt you.

Indian living in Germany here - just came back after 3 weeks in the US.

>the quality is much better (especially food and education), the infrastructure is head-and-shoulders above (especially the roads, internet, phone plans, environment, litter, buildings in general).

I was there with you until you said internet. Internet and phone plans in Germany are painful. Most of the major providers are still on VDSL - though they are rolling out optical fiber. My current phone plan from O2 is 10 euros for 3.5 GB a month - that data volume is peanuts. I do not know if the US is any better, but I used to get 1 GB _per day_ in India.

> buildings in general

Oh this. So much this. I was surprised how much more sound insulated and better-fitted the German buildings were. This is also reflected in the prices - buying a house in the US is cheaper than doing so in Germany. Here in Cologne, I see ads trying to sell very normal looking apartments (decent location, not at the center) for upwards of 600k euros. I mean, who can afford that in Germany? Meanwhile, I remember walking around in DC and seeing ads where the normal-looking apartments were all between 400-600k USD, which is actually affordable adjusting for income and purchasing power parity.

> I was there with you until you said internet. Internet and phone plans in Germany are painful. Most of the major providers are still on VDSL - though they are rolling out optical fiber. My current phone plan from O2 is 10 euros for 3.5 GB a month - that data volume is peanuts. I do not know if the US is any better, but I used to get 1 GB _per day_ in India.

Yes, Germany is one of the worst in Europe (and nothing compared to India or the Philipines) but still head and shoulders better than the USA. In Oakland, I was paying $60 a month for a 50mbit connection, and another $40 a month for a phone plan that gave me 1.5GB a month with $10 per 100mb over that. And that was the super cheap plan.

In Germany I pay 35 euros for a 100mbit house connection, and 6 euros for my sim.de phone plan with 8gb of data (I don't use much mobile data so I opted for the super cheap plan).

It's probably safe to say that the median person enjoys much higher quality of life in spain than the median person in the US.

But i would also claim that it's also true that you can earn more money in the US, if you have the skill and may be initial capital, than you can in spain.

So in the end, you end up with a land of opportunity in the USA, but not the land you would retire on.

This is true in any country with high inequality: Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else.

> Those lucky enough to have the opportunities can make a killing, because it comes at the cost of everyone else.

that's not strictly true. It's only true if the person making a killing is not producing any value. Wealth creation can be a positive-sum game, rather than a zero-sum game. I do believe that the USA's wealth creation opportunities are mostly positive-sum.

That wasn't my experience in the 6 years I lived there. Even in the most advanced cities, the misery and squalor and decaying infrastructure was brutal. It's the only first world country I've lived in where I genuinely feared for my safety at times (especially in Chicago and Philadelphia).

Did you know that they have to close down BART stations from time to time in order to clean out the human faeces that have gummed up the escalators?

And the smaller towns in poor areas... yowsers! I've seen prison camps with better living conditions.

Americans are always commenting about how unusually clean Canada is, but Canada is actually quite ordinary; that's how first world countries normally look.

I’m not sure which part of the GP comment you’re responding to here. No one is suggesting inequality can't also be a problem, but this doesn’t negate a lot of the growth being positive-sum.

Consider a country like Switzerland where I lived, which still has a good amount of inequality (though perhaps less than the US), or based on the Gini coefficient Germany (which by this metric is more unequal than the US) [1]. The base standard is high enough that even lower middle class Germans tend to have better lives with a higher purchasing power than many middle-class people in less wealthy developed countries such as Spain, and the inequality in Germany compared to someplace like Spain then isn’t a concern for their absolute quality of life. Of course, relative quality of life can pose psychological concerns, but that’s separate to positive vs. zero-sum growth.

> Americans are always commenting about how unusually clean Canada is, but Canada is actually quite ordinary. That's how first world countries normally look.

To be fair, the US is incredibly varied in this due in part to the inequality, and someplace like the UK seems to have a large number of cities I find especially dirty even from a US perspective. I would say urban Canada is notably better than the first-world country average.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

> I’m not sure which part of the GP comment you’re responding to here. No one is suggesting inequality can't also be a problem, but this doesn’t negate a lot of the growth being positive-sum.

While this can be true, it follows along a curve. Up to a certain level of inequality you can still have a net-positive sum, but after a certain point you start to see negative quality of life, lower nutrition, lower life expectency, higher infant mortality, lower security, etc. The USA mostly crossed over during the 1990s and early 2000s.

> To be fair, the US is incredibly varied in this due in part to the inequality, and someplace like the UK seems to have a large number of cities I find especially dirty even from a US perspective. I would say urban Canada is notably better than the first-world country average.

I've lived in the UK as well, and you're right that it has some pretty dirty cities. But it also has a serious class and inequality problem. Paris has similar problems, although not to the same degree as, say, Liverpool or San Francisco. Southern Europe has more inequality than the north (excepting the UK), and it shows (but they're also being squeezed by European monteary policy so I can't blame them too much).

In America, I would say that Colorado is probably the most first-world-like place I saw, followed maybe by some parts of Montana, but all of the top cities had this ... decay for want of a better word ... about them.

> (but they're also being squeezed by European monteary policy so I can't blame them too much)

Southern European countries are actually being subsidised by the ECB’s monetary policy.

It's a LOT more complicated than that. But suffice it to say it's no picnic being married to a giant.

I’ve forgotten to mention that for the first time in their history Southern European countries have enjoyed the German inflation (which is no inflation) for decades.

Colorado/Montanta/etc are just too damn cold in the winter for homeless to survive, so they migrate to other warmer places

> Colorado/Montanta/etc are just too damn cold in the winter for homeless to survive, so they migrate to other warmer places

It's this level of ignorance that is part of the problem.

Just because someone is rendered homeless doesn't mean that they uproot and move away from their friends and family and job and life. If you're conjuring up images of vagabonds and junkies at the end of their tether, you really need to learn more.

Chicago alone has almost 60,000 homeless, and it's a huge problem that so many die in the winter. https://s6624.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Homeless-Es...

No, not really. It is hard to move and costs money and this is a major deterrent to moving. Not to mention that moving takes away your last connections to any sort of social network you've built up: They might not be able to get you housing, but an occasional warm meal or moral support helps too.

You are also assuming that homelessness means living in a tent on a street and that is only a single facet. Some folks bounce around between couches, for example. The government might not consider you homeless while doing this, even if you know you'll be on the street in days. (A friend of mine stayed in a shelter to get housing because of this rule, in Indiana). Lots of folks stay in shelters on cold nights as well. Many sleep in cars. Homelessness is simply less severe/deadly in warm climates.

And don't forget that Colorado/Montana/etc also have summers, which means that folks can (and sometimes do) decide to be homeless for part of the year.

I mean, seriously... I'm originally from Indiana. Indiana has winters every year, and storms in the spring and summer (so homeless = wet). Indiana has a homeless population. Same for Chicago and New York City, both of which have winter.

And lets not forget that different places have different ways of dealing with homelessness. I'm not caught up on policies in different states, but I'm guessing some states funnel more folks into housing than others, some funnel more folks into jails and prisons than others, and some simply see if folks die on the streets or not.

Precisely. When everyone is equally lower income the differences aren’t as stark.

I asked a friend who works at the local airport (no scheduled flights) about jet traffic. He said, once in a while, people come with a Spanish Cessna jet to hunt in Sierra Moreno. There are very rich people here too.

But eventually middle class people will get priced out of quality as well, as the market for them continues to shrink and optimise for cost. Soon enough only upper middle class wages will be good enough for a median living in the US, and the middle class will just be living comfortably poor.

In any strong middle class country I have been to, services, food and transport are all high quality because that is where most people exist in that country. There's competition for that market and rather than having to compete on price because everyone is poor, they can compete on service and quality while maintaning a fair price because people value that more than cost optimizing.

Right, because you might die of old age before your bankruptcy proceedings are over in Germany, and your debts can then be passed on to your heirs.

But you're right about everyting else, especially comparing to California.

Wow nice, a few questions if you don't mind:

1. Why are income levels lower?

2. Everything is cheaper, but is it cheap enough to be more affordable with the lower income?

3. Do you plan to stay in Spain long-term?

Thanks!

I have not lived in the US, and I'm not an economist, so this is annecdonte, not data.

1. Things are cheaper because there are fewer rich[1] people. It makes sense to price things to the level where you make a little for each sale but keep your market large.

There are intrinsically fewer people, which means less demand. A container of tin openers is still a container load to get rid of.

Of course selling for less means you make less, meaning the seller does not become richer than his customers.

There is also a massive difference in mindset between the US and everywhere else. In the US the only measure is money. If you have money, everything else flows from that, if you don't have money everything is harder.

Outside the US, money is still a driving force, but not to the same degree. There is less opportunity to be a billionaire, so the top is somewhat pushed-down, but at the same time the bottom is higher, and the safety net is better.

But we are all fish in water - we like what we know - Americans would not want to be Spain, and the Spanish would hate to be American. Europeans prioritize family time, vacations, shorter work weeks. Americans prioritize rich company owners. The latter allows for ordinary folk to become very rich. Or at least dream of it.

[1] rich in the sense that they have disposable income enough to afford your thing.

Billionaires per million people is about 1.8 in the USA and 1.5 in Germany. The opportunity is extremely similar, compared with say China that has plenty of billionaires but its 0.2 per million people. The reality is very simple, all of Europe looks extremely socialist in comparison to the USA. People don't need millions throughout their lifetime to cover medical bills. Student debt is either non existent or orders of magnitude lower etc. Europeans also work less per week, so you should adjust incomes to reflect prorated time worked.

This largely ignores the crucial role that the U.S. has played as global ensure-r of security, world order and enabler of global free trade. Peter Zeihan speaks at length about this.[1]

For example Germany has recently said it would sharply increase its spending on defense to more than 2% of its economic output in one of a series of policy shifts.[1]

Other European countries will be increasing their defense spending too. Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill. That will rapidly change. And that will also affect how much of the domestic spending it eats into. This has been largely ignored in past number crunching of living standards of various countries.

[1] The places America cares about post Globalization | Peter Zeihan (2021)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oeG170bv7k

[2] Germany to increase defence spending in response to 'Putin's war' - Scholz

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-h...

'Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill.'

This is quite unfair portrayal of the situation. It is always portrayed as if US is paying biggest share of the tab - like if we were all paying for shared commitments.

However in reality it's more everyone going out for a fancy dinner and one guy buying loads of dishes that turn out to taste terrible, or are left uneaten - and then bragging abiut paying the most. You can imagine that the budget would be quote a bit smaller without the war in Iraq, which was tremendously expensive, so was F-22 programm and littoral combat ship programms that came to nothing, etc. Clearly we have spent a lot of money bombing some poor people that should have never been harmed, and creating regime change that turned out to be a mistake.

Like does anyone remember that time US installed a Fashist regime in Greece?

Dont forget thaylt Nato's budget, without US, is still larger than Russia's or China's - i am not sure how much is enough, but there is still a lot of rich countries spending money.

> Formerly it was just the U.S. footing the lion share of the NATO bill.

That’s not quite correct, though it’s true that the US spent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. And that did turn out great: Europe had the longest stretch of peace in recorded history (about 70 years). Much cheaper for the US than getting into a war.

This is another thing that the war in Ukraine has upended, though I suspect the cost of reconstruction will cause that spending to revert to the mean.

The percentage of billionaires is not the whole story of social mobility. Social mobility in Germany is significantly worse than in the USA. Here's a German source: https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-social-mobility-among-poorest....

Besides, about 30% of German billionaires inherited their money as opposed to about 12% of US billionares. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/10/where-...

Europeans frequently have a very distorted view of the American social safety net - it exists and benefits are substantially similar. It has some unique problems - the working poor who don't qualify for Medicaid frequently go uninsured despite significant subsidies for their insurance. Student debt is a national fiasco, but it is quite possible, the norm really, to get an education in the USA without becoming one of the horror stories. Medical costs are out of control, but the American sport of posting the top line (before discounts and insurance coverage) on an insurance statement for an emergency room visit or major procedure to the internet is more a reflection of how bureacratic requirements for billing paperwork differ.

Literally no one in the US needs "millions throughout their lifetime to cover medical bills" - max out of pocket in the US for an individual is currently $8700/year, which is significantly more than the 5000 euros/year for the privately insured in Germany, but not an order of magnitude difference.

Germans also tend to recoil in horror at the notion of bankruptcy because individual bankruptcy in German-speaking countries is actually a horror. I think this is a civil-law vs common-law difference, but I'm not an expert. It's not easy going broke anywhere but the process in English-speaking countries is much faster and much less punitive - it is intended to get people back on their feet as quickly as possible rather than to discourage them from entering into the process at any cost.

1. I do not yet know why. I think somebody may chime in on here. Maybe because there are no multinationals, the economy appears to be somewhat local, insulated.

2. Middle class here has way more comfortable life than in San Francisco. I mean life quality. If you want to do something new, eg some new tech, it's another matter.

3. For a while, but it's not super easy from the bureaucratic standpoint, without the EU residency. The bureaucracy here is very slow and inefficient.

Replying to 2.

Curiously, curiosity (exploring tech) is cheaper in the US. I don’t see why it necessarily has to be, though. EU folks are more educated, hence they can select promising avenues and avoid boredom and even upfront costs. E.g. you want to train a new language model? Harnessing your polyglot nature, you find a far better kind of language model where you eschew the latest TPU. You learn quickly from Juergen Schmidhuber, whom Americans do not realize, has already solved everything in machine learning. It is hard to do new things in the EU because there is nothing new in the EU — someone already did it.

> 1. Why are income levels lower?

USA is in a unique position where it can stimulate its economy to a degree that is treatise-wise impossible for EU governments in EMU, and (until recently) without causing inflation.

Southern Europe used to have very high inflation before EMU.

For Spain, there is no equivalent to all the US government debts held by China and Japan, which you might view as subsidies to the US government.

A better question might be why Germany is wealthier than Spain. The answer will involve work ethic and discipline, attitude vs self-sacrifice, long-term strategic planning for industry, and so on. You probably won't see this is in individuals nowadays, but systemically and historically this might have been what "set the stage".

China hold very little US debt…around 1T USD. Americans are far and away the largest holders of US debt.

>Food (especially supermarket) is 1) healthier in San Francisco, it's 2) higher quality and there's more 3) variety.

How so, on all three points?

A lot of it is grown locally (other US states also import food from California, but it’s not local).

Also in SF these days food prices are high for the US. Head east 100 miles and the food is the same as everywhere else: factory output even though that’s where a lot of food is grown!

In California, most of the state (by land) is red state poor and votes accordingly. However 60+% of the population lives in a couple of blue state rich pockets, hence the politics. This is why, for example, at the national level the leader of the House of Representatives and the leader of its opposition are both from California.

"You mentioned poor people skills like fixing cars - couldn’t you market those to make some money on the side?

Not easily. Poor people skills like fixing cars, appliance repair and Craigslist purchasing are absolutely essential to the family-on-an-extreme-budget experience, but they don’t translate very well to making more money, usually."

It's so bizarre to read this, as I personally know so many people who make some really decent coin doing exactly these things mentioned (quite a few from dirt-poor backgrounds, and two who are functionally illiterate).

To be fair, I run a fairly successful business selling used games for a living, so my social circle would look different to the author's - but on the other hand "selling poor people skills" basically describes every single Lebanese guy in Australia.

I don't get it. Why on earth would anyone want a random person to fix your car? An apprenticeship in Germany only takes 3 years and then you are a real car mechanic. I get that people want to go to a cheap family owned garage but even those have competent and properly trained car mechanics.

Where I live, mechanics billing rate is $90-120/hr. Usually the shade tree mechanics are like $30-40, and usually work off books.

People who can’t afford to get their car fixed by a “real” mechanic.

What would be the body of knowledge of a competently trained mechanic? The basic principles are simple enough that anyone with mechanical aptitude can pick up auto work without formal studying and the rest is complicated details of things that vary by manufacturer and vehicle.

I'm guessing, for example, safe torques on various bolt dimensions based on thread force and tension. Experiencing the various failure modes of each operation (or part), and learning to recognize them by sight and ear. Being able to explain with technical detail which situations impact drivers are unsuitable or dangerous. Hardness of various metals and coatings, metal nobility and understanding and recognizing galvanic corrosion. And so on ...

Not necessarily the body of knowledge, but the tools. When I pay for repairs, it's usually because I'm not nearly as well-equiped as the local garage.

The author lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Think of it as being Sydney, but in the desert, with a government that doesn't provide any of the social services you think are basic human rights.

Ah yes, Phoenix. The thunderdome of the United States! Where, unlike anywhere else in America, there is no public education, no food stamps, no Medicaid, no Section 8 housing, no disability insurance, no Social Security or Medicare...

For many years I would mutter a similar response to several issues brought up.

Then I started actually helping people get to these services to help them with a hand up instead of hand outs.

What I found - section 8 housing - 18 month waiting period for the actual housing complexes - with priority given to X people with Y situation and Z thing. Section 8 vouchers can be navigated to, but finding a place that will take them, and take them before your limited window expires is not possible.

Disability insurance? that thing you have to afford and pay for before you need it, that only covers a portion of your previous income for a period of time - yeah everyone has that and it saves all.

Food stamps are taken away when you start making 11.35 / hr (TN - no idea what it is in AZ)- the living wage for a person (Nash, TN) with 1 child is like $30 / hr here - https://livingwage.mit.edu/ - and I have no idea where MIT is finding housing around here for 1200 / mth - the average apt without utilities is now $1800 just for rent I believe.

medicaid / care and SS are awesome when you can get it - and I'm glad they exist. For many people actually getting it is not going to happen.

There is public education - which is a god send for keeping childcare costs down and a meal a day.

Depending on your social class you may not score good grades and learn as well as you could, and you could be permanently damaged mentally / emotionally from the lack of actual care, especially if you are not in a protected class... but you may know algebra and geometry when you get kicked out into a world that pays you the same if you can't even speak english / never passed the sixth grade..

but it'll save your parents from paying for a meal and babysitting for some years - so they are subsidized in being able to work cheaper for whatever company benefits from that.

No phoenix is not a thunderdome of the US - the US is the US.

except for those water use issues- then phoenix is the most unsustainable city in the world ( https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2b88bcee697c4ca682136f1... ) - haha - but we pay for it somehow.

yourLocationMayVary

The economics of fixing cars must be quite different in the US maybe parts are a lot cheaper but new cars are more expensive? I had a 10 year old Toyota estate car that was basically worth the scrap value of the metal but it ran ok. In year 11 it failed its yearly safety inspection, the part I needed to fix this was £700 on ebay I would have needed ramps to get under it and probably an oxy cutter to cut the old parts out as the bolts were all seized up. It would have cost me about £1400 for the local garage to do this work. I don’t have anywhere covered to do this work and it would have taken me days to do it in the rain with a significant chance of screwing it up. The garage that inspected the car told me to scrap it as it was not worth fixing. There’s no scrap dealer near me and it’s illegal to drive it so I phone the scrap dealer and the best I can get is to get it taken away for free. I looked online and found to my surprise that a new car that would suit us fine was ~£2300 per year in payments. I looked at what I had spent on repairs on the old Toyota and some other old cars I had and how much the depreciation had cost me and the figures are within £30/month. Which is why most people around here are driving quite new cars even though I know they are not making a much money.

The standard of excellence for diy is lower than with a professional. Being good enough to keep your car running a couple extra years isn't the same as being good enough to charge.

There is a sense in which being poor is a direct result of an accumulation of choices made over one’s life to date. However these choices are not made in a vacuum and are often influenced by things beyond one’s control.

When I was in Junior kindergarten I didn’t think school was important didn’t pay attention to lessons from the teacher. At one point we were tested on sight words and I knew none of them. I came home and told my mother I was stupid. She thought otherwise, identified that I hadn’t made it a priority and taught me the material in two weeks. I learned to take things seriously going forwards as well. With different parents that life experience could have had very different outcomes with big effects on my life trajectory.

I think many decision points are like my junior kindergarten experience and are as influenced by others as myself. Some people refuse to see this and focus on just the accumulation of choices without the factors that go into them.

Higher returns are usually associated with risks and imho. one of the main reasons we have limited social mobility is the inability of poor people to take risks and people born into money taking risks.

The thing to note is that for rich people there is very minimal risk since they usually have a safety net to fall back on.

This is a paradox. Taking risks is derisked by wealth.

The word "risk" is overloaded: https://www.optimizedportfolio.com/risk/

There's risk as measured by volatility. This is exemplified by the stock market - it's highly volatile, but has a higher expected return than the bond market. People who can't afford the risk of the stock market (because it's too volatile) put their money into the bond market, which has less expected returns.

There's risk of not meeting your retirement goals. There's risk of unemployment. There's risk of permanent loss of investment. There's risk that you can hedge with insurance.

> rich people there is very minimal risk since they usually have a safety net to fall back on.

Rich people have minimal _overall_ risk because they can afford to take large risky bets with positive expected return. This is because they have so much capital they can afford to take these bets over and over until the reward arrives (Kelly criterion). Poor people can't afford the risk, and therefore have to do things like pay for more insurance coverage, pay for extra warranty, or have a (relatively) large emergency fund.

An example helps.

Suppose that you're offered an opportunity to bet $10 with a 90% chance of $0 return and 10% chance of $1,000. That's a good bet, especially if you can keep making it. Put $100 at risk and you've got a reasonable chance of ending up with $1000.

Now let's multiply all of the dollars by 1,000. The numbers still work, but how many people can afford to put $100k into 10 bets? There are far more people who can afford to lose $10 than there are people who can afford to lose $10k.

This can be applied to buying several good defi project coins, at smaller entry amounts. Investing at smaller amounts is becoming available to those who can not qualify for SEC accredited investor status.

A better way to phrase it is you have the same risk of failure, but somebody who's rich can afford to fail.

There is a reason that most people who go into relatively low paying prestigious jobs like journalism come from affluent backgrounds.

To get somewhere you have to be able to take risks, gather quality feedback (feedback tethered to reality) and create knowledge out of it.

For the poor there are scarcely any opportunities, because they can't afford to take risks. For the rich however there are less opportunities to learn from mistakes, because of the lack of consequences.

This is why the middle class is important, the lower class is usually pinned down by reality, and the upper class is hardly affected by it. Neither is a healthy relationship with reality.

>For the rich however there are less opportunities to learn from mistakes, because of the lack of consequences.

Citation needed there. Even though it's not as bad as homelessness, I can't imagine it being easy to tell your rich, successful parents that their child is a fuckup.

My parents aren’t “rich” - my mom is a retired school teacher and dad a retired factory worker. They retired at 55 and 57 respectively. They now in their late 70s. But they have helped me get over a lot of fuckups.

- a wrecked sports car because of carelessness when I was young with more dollars than sense.

- they never complained about me being a graduate school dropout.

- a dumb first marriage and a financially draining divorce

- a side real estate business that ended around 2010 (do I need to explain?)

This was all before I turned 35. I got better. I would have been in far worse shape if it weren’t for them.

You can think of a two-income family with union jobs and pensions as the bottom rung of the upper middle class. It's more clear than not "rich".

I disagree. People with nothing to lose are risking the least. Poor people can most afford to take risks.

When you run out of money you risk your own health. You are still gambling the roof over your head and the certainty of your next meal.

That's a lot more to risk than a few months of savings.

Yep.

I've worked a lot as a teenager, and amassed a modest sum. It allowed me to take a lot of risks, even after I moved out.

It allowed me to go freelance and wait a long time to get paid. It allowed me not to work in university. It allowed me to easily relocate to another country.

A decade later, this cushion has compounded many times and funded many more risks that paid off.

Without those savings, I would have taken many more conservative decisions that would have left me in a very different situation.

>I’m suspicious that this particular lack of situational grease has a not-insignificant negative effect on the upwards mobility of the lower class. It wouldn’t be a huge effect, since with some planning you can still figure out how to transition with a minimal gap, but it’s definitely a bit riskier to abandon a low-paying but secure position for a position with better prospects but less known stability.

The triple negative is incredibly tedious here.

I will translate "I’m suspicious" as "I believe" even though it could equally be translated as "I don't believe", nice vague sentence here.

second negative here: "that this particular lack of situational grease"

third negative "has a not-insignificant" -> "significant"

fourth negative "negative effect on the upwards mobility of the lower class"

Final translation: "I believe lack of situational grease has a significant negative effect on upwards mobility of the lower class".

Why am I bothering with this sentence? Why am I complaining so much? Because I want to make my own opinion clear. I will now rephrase the sentence in my own words.

Liquidity preference is the cause of unequal wealth distribution.

Let's use a very benign example. Students need a certain book from the library. There are 10 students but only 5 copies. Students can easily finish the book in 2 weeks and then bring it back to the library. However, if a student hasn't read the book, his chance of passing drops by 50% requiring him to study harder with worse material. Students have learned this lesson the hard way in previous courses and will want to get the book at all costs. So now they try to go the library as early as possible and get as many books as possible. Since students have 5 courses almost everyone is missing at least one book and only a handful of students actually have all of them. Some are missing more than two. There is one student without any books.

The downside of being late or never getting a book is huge but there is also no downside to just never returning the book even once you have finished it, leaving some students stranded. Suddenly those early birds get a positive reputation and everyone believes being an early bird is a good personality trait that brings you on the path to success. The competition over books gets more and more aggressive. Instead of putting their energy into studying, students are spending their energy on elaborate ways to getting the books. One student has started working in the library and is guaranteed to obtain all books that way. This is clearly a case of corruption. Students with books live an easier life.

All of this is a waste. If people cooperated and agreed that those who borrow a book must return it within two weeks then everyone would have equal access to the books. This gives everyone an incentive to finish the books sooner and thus free up more books for everyone. Students end up with better scores because they get access to the books they need and can have part time jobs outside the library.

There are multiple ways to interpret this story. For example. The quantization of jobs into a 40 hour work week, when there are people who would rather work more or less, leads to a concentration of jobs on less than 100% of the working population that is seeking a job i.e. unemployment. In this case, it's jobs that are being hoarded, not books, because being without a job is absolutely awful, but working 10 hours more than you need has no significant downside.

This also applies to land and money. Having too much books, work, land, money carries no downside. Having no books, work, land or money carries huge downsides despite the fact that there are enough books, enough work, enough land and enough money for everyone if all of them were fairly distributed. It's a local minima that humanity should get out of.

Society, "Why don't you move to a cheaper place to live?"

Answer, "I've lived in this county for years. My youth is pretty much gone. I barely have saving for this months rent, let alone moving expenses to a new city. Plus--the few friends I kinda have are my only emotional, and sometimes financial support ("Could I borrow $300 until next month friend. I have never not payed you back?").

Society, "Just do something. Work on cars? Do non-union construction work?".

Answer, "The rules of my rental agreement state I can't work on any vechicle on their property. The town will fine me overnight parking, and any disabled vechicles. My hand tools are not sufficient. I need a minimum of two jacks, and four jack stands, and my tranny jack. Non-union construction work will not pay my rent, let alone any bills."

Society, "The immigrants seems happy? Come on dude? You seem like a entitled American?"

Answer, "Many have a support system. Many pool their money. I have no one to pool my resources with."

Society, "Move back home?".

Answer, "There is no home to move back to."

Society, "Don't you have family to help you out?"

Answer, "I do, but they arn't in much better shape than me."

Society, "I just don't get it. You are brighter than me, but you are so pathetic?"

Answer, "I just don't feel well. I tried Prozac, Escitalopram, Klonopin, Lexapro, the isomer to Lexapro, Trazadone (could end up in an icu with a needle in your brain due to a bad reaction), tri-cyclic antidepressants, off labeled Bupenorpine for depression (which works at first, but then you are just addicted. Small studies done, and not long term. I doubt placebo controlled.), and all the other medications I see on tv. My sleep is reversed, and I just lost hope, but haven't given up."

Society, "Don't forget about Therapy? Therapy did wonders for my mother. She has no desire to shop-lift from Nordstrum's anymore.". (Nordstrom's looks up your buying habits before filing charges with the authorities. Doctor's wives are never turned in. Minorities are handed over with glee. Off topic--sorry.)

Answer, "I was till tapping the register at work to pay for the visits. After 6 months, I was no better. The therapist said, "But it takes years of Therapy to get better! Just hang in there!"

(THIS IS NOT ME. I own a home. I just have known too many homeless individuals. Seen a few Programmers age out of the industry, and end up in a thicket of Scotch Broom. Cops wake them up. A locked porta potty greets them after the wake-up call. It's not just loosing a job. It's having an emotional hiccup in your 20's. Life is very fragile for certain people. They are usually to proud to tell anyone until it becomes to late, and when they'd o reach out, their is usually zero real help.)

"I have no one to pool my resources with." and "There is no home to move back to." contradicts the following answers, "I do, but they arn't in much better shape than me."

First, I didn’t get the idea that in the parent post all the answers were from a single individual. I got the impression it was a summary of exchanges with different people.

Second, I have met people who have families but neither home to move back nor resources to pool. Think of two siblings, both homeless in different cities (this happens).

and even if they have a home, they may not be able to accommodate another person.

I'm sure they are able to. The bottlenecks would be a place to sleep and access to the bathroom at a bare minimum. I've slept on the floor for a year so I can attest that there is definitely room on the floor where one can sleep. For access to the bathroom I don't think it will be a problem unless there's a significant amount of people sharing it.

we could go around endlessly constructing examples where someone would or would not be able to get help from friends or family. the main point is that it doesn't make sense to generalize. everyone's circumstances are different. and to get help each one needs to be addressed individually.

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