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Comment by superchroma | Hacker News Reader

I strongly disagree with the premise. This isn't proper poverty, this is a borderline agrarian lifestyle utilizing various allowances as well as support structures intended for the poor. The author has a personal safety net, as well as a social one supporting them, and took advantage of lax property enforcement to build a house on state land. If you have means and options like they do, you aren't dirt poor. This isn't poverty, this is conscientious objection. Many small farmers live this way. At any point they could stop and have a normal life if they chose. That's not poverty, merely poverty tourism.

As such I don't think documenting this lifestyle serves as useful as advice for other poor people.

This isn't a commentary on the ethics or merits of their life either. Good for them.

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Completely agree, the author is describing frugality, not the experience of being dirt poor.

> Each month the very generous Swedish government gives us no less than 600 dollars in child allowance. We also have some other incomes from book sales and irregular jobs. And we do have savings, larger than we like to admit, which in good years give capital income and in less good years give a cushion to take from. All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure

Author does not get it whatsoever. Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings. You have no or barely any money coming in from the government, not $600 a month just in child benefits. You don't have passive income in book sales or investments. If anything is broken, you cannot afford to fix it, including things like your utilities and appliances. You are one wrong decision from ending up homeless, which in turn is one wrong decision away from death. Subsequently, every decision you make is run through a lens of extreme anxiety. Your entire life is a fight for survival and you have no-one to turn to. That is dirt poor.

"Still you'll never get it right

Cause when you're laid in bed at night

Watching roaches climb the walls

You can call your Dad and he'll stop it all, yeah."

This author has multiple safety nets. Until they're stripped away, he has no idea what dirt poor looks like.

> All in all our seven-person family has around 1400-1500 dollars in monthly expenditure

Yeah, I doubt that takes into account external things like school lunches and neighbors giving things to the “poor” children. With “poor” meaning unfortunate and not poverty stricken.

Every time I hear of a school closing for whatever reason they always state that the food program will remain open because truly poor people rely on it out of absolute necessity. Nobody wants their kids to go hungry and that goes double for the collective “we”.

Now that I think about it my sister’s husband grew up dirt poor, and not because his grandparents(?) chose that lifestyle, and spent his entire youth working as hard as he could to not be poor. Like commuting 3 hours every day to attend a “good” university and never looking back. Dude absolutely hates poverty.

School lunches in Sweden are free.

That's great to hear, I think that's extremely important. Here in Belgium, a large percentage (20-ish if I'm not mistaken) of the children lunch very poorly at school because their parents can't afford it, don't care or for some other reason. Providing kids with at least 1 healthy, nutritious meal on a week day is at least a step in the right direction and I will be happy if my tax euros would be spent on that.

> Being dirt poor means having no savings, or being in debt in which case you have negative savings

Exactly.

I hate to say it, because I've often heard it coming from very financially privileged people as an accusation towards poor people, but in essence being poor is a state of mind, meaning it's not necessarily the lack of money and financial means that gets to you (even though that's not ideal, of course), it is the constant thought of not having money and financial means that eats at your soul.

I know because me and my parents stumbled upon a period of quite severe lack of financial resources about 20-25 years ago, in my adolescence years, and even though I've personally and thankfully managed to get out of it (thanks to free uni education) the feeling is still there, I suspect it will always be there till the day I'll be no more.

And, yes, whenever someone writes poverty tourism pieces like this one Common People is the first song I think about. Often times I come back listening to it on YT and watching the video just because.

> Your entire life is a fight for survival and you have no-one to turn to. That is dirt poor.

You are correct, and it's basically impossible for a Swedish citizen to be dirt poor - we have enough safety nets to prevent it.

Still, we have our share of people living in the streets; mostly due to poorly thought through mental illness reforms and drugs. And I bet at least some illegal immigrants have it pretty rough as well.

Yes. The piece from Resident Contrarian hit hard because it was about being trapped in poverty.

Choosing to live with low consumption is laudable. I grew up in a thrifty household, though nowhere near so thrifty as the author's, and using less was much better for all of us. However, spending very little money but having a safety net and the opportunity to leave is the opposite of being trapped.

It's like a controlled retreat versus a rout. When you're choosing to be poor you have time and slack to make the choice. You might choose to live in a nice but remote house in the forest, which you may actually own outright (the article has no mention of rent or mortgage), and collect wood and grow your own food. When you're forced out of your shitty apartment because you lost your job or your landlord kicked you out on some flimsy pretext, as has happened to a few of my friends, then you've got two options: either find someone to give you a bit of breathing room by loaning you money/space on the couch/etc., or get an even shittier apartment for a worse price.

Right. I got a feeling that the OP is OK with their situation because they feel rather safe in their life conditions, there's an undertone "well if I _really really_ have to, I can take that job, or call my middle class parents, or the government will step in". None of these things are default for most poor people. When you're trapped in the cycle of poverty, you have one chance to get it "right" and you don't get a "phone a friend" option.

This aspect of poverty just mangles your mental state really. Suppose, if you're lucky, you manage to live an OK, accident-free, healthy life while poor, but the anxiety about "what ifs" is going to haunt you all the way.

Folks which have been poor and managed to escape it, are not driven by consumerism (not as the main driver at least), but by a sense of security.

Perhaps this article can be actually instructive for a poor person then? Say you used to be trapped in poverty, but making it a choice reduces your psychological overhead and helps long term.

You're right about everything you said, minus the "poverty tourism", I think that's a little excessively condescending.

Poverty is the wrong word for this. Someone else in this thread said it better than I can come up with: poverty is lack of options. If this lifestyle is a choice it isn't poverty. I agree with that. No matter how simple you choose to make your life, if you've got options you're doing good.

Fair. I intended it in the most charitable way possible.

i think the "poverty" definition is suspect. i recall 20k annual being declared the poverty line, and i would be able to live way beyond my needs if i had that much revenue.

unfortunately we train most kids to be dependent on government conventions, and dont provide the tools, and opportunity, to live independently of this regime. this is a dependency trap.

considering your comment, i identify as tech-agrarian.

Perfect. That’s what I wish I could say if I wasn’t personally affected by it. Thanks.

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