Hacker News Reader

Comment by Quinzel | Hacker News Reader

>”By all financial measures, we were poor.”

>”But here’s the thing: I never felt poor.”

>”I had everything I needed and wanted. I had all the resources I required to do well at school too, so I never felt underprivileged there either.”

This is written by someone who doesn’t understand that they were not poor.

Poor is only eating 3/7 days a week. Poor is not owning pyjama’s, underwear or socks. Poor is not having school books, and stationary. Poor is being excluded from community events and activities because you cannot afford to participate. Shit it irks me when people who haven’t lived poor try to explain how it’s just a matter of perspective. Even people who decide they’re going to be homeless for a while by choice to you know, have that lived experience so they can say they know what it’s like make me grr, like if it’s ever a choice on any level you just don’t know what it’s like.

View on HN

Poor is a fuzzy word that could mean many different things. I think what you are describing could be understood as "poverty" while what OP described could be understood as poor.

I think OP's point is that wealth isn't requisite for a fulfilling life. If you have a good home life, a community, and enough money for the essentials, you can live a "rich" life.

Sure wealth isn’t a requisite for a fulfilling life, but it’s pretty clear that OP wasn’t actually poor. If you have a good home life, a community and enough money for the essentials (and everything you want - according to OP) you’re not poor.

People seem to be using simple financial metrics to define poor/poverty. They don't seem to understand that someone with 1000usd/mo (in the US) that chooses that lifestyle (usually has a decently supportive family structure to fall back on) is drastically better off than someone earning 1500usd/mo, that has two kids to clothe/feed and has zero opportunities to escape the cycle whereby the beater car that is all they can afford breaking down is a make or break it situation.

there's also no empathy

"what!? I was able to save on 1000usd/mo... with a kid!"

assets are either greater than your liabilities, or they're not. the dollar amounts aren't really relevant.

Being poor does not require being in debt. In fact it seems much more important to stay out of debt when poor.

It can also mean that, but my point was including the possibility that expenses were higher than earnings

Maybe because poverty is mostly a relative concept/status/whatever? i.e. I'd bet I'm relatively poor compared to many people from there, or even from my own country (Living in an impoverished neighborhood on a suburb from a third world city, don't own a house or a car, haven't ever left my country nor even my state in more than 30 years, I've never been how paid vacations feels like...) but definitely am not poor compared to what I was 10-15 years ago, or compared to several people from my own neighborhood.

Surely if OP has all of their basic needs covered isn't poor for most people, but maybe some wealthy person can ponder them like they actually are.

Maybe because poverty is mostly a relative concept/status/whatever?

No, actual poverty involves physical survival being uncertain, it involve fear and the pain of hunger and the pain of other things related to an uncertain existence (untreated health problems, physically carrying the limit stuff you possess around, etc).

If you can afford to do all the things you want or need to do, it’s hard to call that being poor.

If you can barely afford all the things you need, but none of the things you want, then that sounds like the definition of poor to me.

Not being able to afford basic needs needs a stronger term like ‘starving’.

The term is poverty. Which poor definitely encompasses!

As always, 'need' and 'want' are somewhat up for debate.

Is medical care a need, or a want? For most of the world (by numbers), it's a want.

Is dental care a need, or a want? For most of the world (by numbers), it's a want.

Is a roof over your head that you own (or have control over anyway) a need or a want? For most of the world (by numbers), it's a want.

Is physical safety (reasonably free from random assault and physical violence) a need or a want? Depending on your region of the world, its a want.

Is a diet with meat and/or flavor a need or a want? Depending on your region of the world, it's a want.

Is schooling/formal education a need or a want? (and to what level?) Depending on your region of the world, it's a want.

Etc.

But nothing in the article described someone who was even close to poor, let alone in poverty from my experience. Just not well off or rich, by American standards.

By most of the world's standards (by land area especially!) they were describing upper middle class.

Humans can survive on very little, and the basic level of objective 'need' is faaar below what HN might consider humane. So it's hard to draw a concrete or objective line.

Feel free to browse [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/poor]

If you were living in the Netherlands anywhere in the past 50-60 years, none of the things you’ve described would be ‘wants’, they would all be described as needs. And needs provided for by the state regardless of income at that (housing is a bit iffy at the moment).

Given that regardless of how much money you have you’d have access to all of those, how would you define poor?

What the OP describes is what my definition of poor was while growing up. There were simply no people around that had less than we had.

Of course by comparison with any country in Africa we were all filthy rich, but that’s not really a useful comparison to make. In the context we were living we were poor.

From your description, you literally weren't poor even by the context of the netherlands, at least using the dictionary definition of the word.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poor]

You might have been at the lowest income level, but society ensured you met no reasonable definitions of the word, correct?

You had what you needed, even by the high standards of the society you were in.

That is a good thing.

Very few societies (now or historically) are able to do that, let alone willing.

So I'd just say you were doing ok. Or comfortable.

Just because you didn't have anyone handy at any given moment to point at and say 'hey look, they have even less than we do!' doesn't mean you were poor. It just means you were less rich. There is a difference.

By that definition nobody is poor, which makes the word kind of useless, which means the definition changes. Which is definitely not how people think of themselves (as OP so helpfully told us).

I was wondering if this is just a case of a different definition for the word poor, and I find that the equivalent word in Dutch (arm) is defined as: “Not having a lot of something, especially money.” Which was definitely the case.

Whereas in English it’s: “of insufficient quantity to meet a need”, which was not.

There’s a different Dutch word (armoede) that indicates much more far reaching poverty, which has an almost equivalent definition to the English ‘poor’: “situation in which one does not have enough to live”

Poverty in English is: “the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions” which seems more equivalent to poor.

Haha, yeah no.

You said - you did not lack for the necessities. Not even housing! Nor schooling. Nor food. Not healthcare. Nor basic entertainment. Nor safety. Not even by the standards of the area, which were high. And it wasn’t at risk - it was a stable and reliable thing.

Poor people do lack these things. It’s part of the definition. I know, I’ve been there.

And I wasn’t very poor (but poor - issues with clothing, food, healthcare, housing sometimes), but I had friends who were very poor. Some didn’t end up growing up because of it. Some ended up growing up in a way they’re still in jail.

You were just in a very well protected bubble, which is awesome. But almost no one else is.

If you go to any society that isn’t in that kind of bubble (China, India, most of the US, Eastern Europe, Russia, 95% of Africa and South America), the difference is obvious. You were in a place that that ‘cliff’ just didn’t exist. Society pulled out all the stops and filled it in with cement.

Which is awesome for you!

Some of us grew up staring over that Cliff every day though, and that is where this discussion is coming from. Most people (even/especially rich people) in those societies are acutely aware of its existence, even if they work hard to stay very far away from it.

There is a line where needs aren’t possible to get met. Where it’s a hard, sometimes fast downward spiral to actual death, imprisonment, etc.

Where it’s a constant desperate scramble to have the basics necessary to survive, and often some of them just aren’t there sometimes, but they show up somehow just enough you somehow make it through. But man does it suck.

And that’s not even talking about actual poverty. Or what happens when a primary caregiver gets cancer. Or ODs.

I understand the point you're making, but it's probably best to avoid gatekeeping, especially when it comes to an inexact term like "poor".

"Living in poverty means not being able to afford medical care or access to basics such as electricity, shelter, and food. Improper nutrition can cause stunting and wasting, permanently impacting children’s development. Poverty in countries lacking access to clean water and sanitation leads to the spread of preventable diseases and unnecessary deaths, particularly of children."

https://www.worldvision.org/sponsorship-news-stories/global-...

> Living in poverty means not being able to afford medical care or access to basics such as electricity, shelter, and food.

Your own quote says the person you’re replying to is right — and the linked post wasn’t describing living in poverty.

I think it's probably going to do more harm than good trying to gatekeep the status of "poor" against any but the most egregiously out-of-touch claimants. E.g. asserting near-literal starvation as a prerequisite is just antagonistic to no useful end.

I think that’s a useful metric.

About 10% of US households experience food insecurity [0] — and that overlaps very heavily with the poorest US families, who have 32% experience food insecurity.

I’m pretty comfortably saying that if you always had enough food as a family, you were lower middle-class, not poor.

[0] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

No. I was lower-middle class in a country with a social safety net, and the day my mother broke her car and had to fix it, we ate potatoes and were handed vegetable for months by a local producer, and we had to cut them because they were all partially rotten (but free!). Luckily my grandmother gave us eggs and milk regularly (yeah, countryside boy here, bite me), so we never missed on vitamins nor proteins, but each time we had cheese at school i was in heaven. The same thing happen in a city with less family support, and we would have been hungry (or at least would have suffered from deficiencies).

If all your needs are being met and you aren't personally struggling, then you aren't poor. This isn't gatekeeping. It's simply not what being poor actually is.

Yeah the linked post rubbed me the wrong way too. I don't know anyone who grew up poor who didn't know they were poor. Not being able to afford vacations or nice things isn't a sign of being poor

Being poor is dealing with housing instability, untreated mental illness, not calling 911 during likely medical emergencies, not being able to afford gas or bus fare to go to work, and generally catastrophe after catastrophe. People around you are also dealing with various catastrophes: abuse, imprisonment, alcoholism and addiction, and loss after loss after loss.

Being poor is traumatic. Even after you claw your way out of that hole, into a comfortable life funded by a comfortable tech salary, you never feel quite secure. You keep waiting for that next catastrophe to hit, and to be back in another job where you have to ask permission to use the bathroom or plead for time off to attend a funeral.

> Being poor is traumatic. Even after you claw your way out of that hole, into a comfortable life funded by a comfortable tech salary, you never feel quite secure. You keep waiting for that next catastrophe to hit, and to be back in another job where you have to ask permission to use the bathroom or plead for time off to attend a funeral.

Excellent point.

A related trait I've seen from some people who've made (or are making) an economic class leap up is that they're accustomed to soldiering through tough and unjust situations.

For example, imagine some really awful situation that shouldn't be happening, in a workplace or school or housing or safety or bureaucracy or similar.

Someone of more fortunate history might react like "WTF?! This is not OK! I don't even know what to do with this, other than get a lawyer!"

But the person who's been through many situations they shouldn't have been through, is desensitized to the injustice, and just getting through it somehow is familiar, so that's where their energy goes. (I don't think it's only fear of the next catastrophe, though that might also be a factor.)

The person with the "WTF?!" reaction, who demands their rights (and maybe has the family money to back it up) will probably have a better outcome from the unacceptable situation, and less stress and misery along the way.

> Being poor is dealing with housing instability, untreated mental illness, not calling 911 during likely medical emergencies, not being able to afford gas or bus fare to go to work, and generally catastrophe after catastrophe. People around you are also dealing with various catastrophes: abuse, imprisonment, alcoholism and addiction, and loss after loss after loss.

This take on being “poor” bothers me tremendously, because it equates being poor to something near sub-human or nearly irredeemable, and that’s an unfortunate take.

Except for the warm home environment and blissful ignorance of circumstances, the environment I grew up in was in many ways similar to the OP.

Medical issues were catastrophic, affordability of housing was at whim of landlords, and public transit was a real expense.

The financial strain was palpable but that didn’t mean our family or our immediate circle were criminals or drug abusers; but it did strain the stability of the family considerably.

> Being poor is traumatic. Even after you claw your way out of that hole, into a comfortable life funded by a comfortable tech salary, you never feel quite secure.

It is, because I certainly live this trauma daily and in many of my life choices, but by your measure I wouldn’t have been considered “poor”.

Tech had been good to me—I liked it when it was still a low-paying career and few considered Comp Sci as a major—but a more secure environment and I would have had a far more financially secure and comfortable life.

> This take on being “poor” bothers me tremendously, because it equates being poor to something near sub-human or nearly irredeemable, and that’s an unfortunate take.

With all due respect, equating these things with “sub-human” or “irredeemable” is something you’ve done, not something the original commenter did.

I don’t view being an alcoholic or someone imprisoned as sub-human or irredeemable. We grew up poor and many people in my family suffer from these catastrophes, but they aren’t sub-human or irredeemable.

These things happen to everyone, but they happen more frequently to those in poverty.

I think the dissonance is that this really only happens in the US. At least it’s not a thing in mainland Europe.

You can be poor while still having everything you need (even if others were more poor than you).

I grew up poor, but didn’t realize it until adulthood, because we had everything we needed. I rarely got new clothes, mostly wearing hand me downs or thrift shop purchases. We had food 7 days a week, but in the winter when dad was laid off from his construction job and worked part time where he could, someone from the church would drop off a big food box every week (as a child, I thought everyone got that box). The same church sponsored a Santa Clause that delivered gifts to us at Christmas time (mostly practical things like clothing, shoes, etc). At school I got a packet of free lunch tickets every week from the teacher, while almost all of the rest of the class had to bring in a check or cash from home. We did have family vacations in the summer which were almost always a tent camping trip to a state park within driving distance, dad still went to work from that vacation spot. Eventually he worked his way up the ranks at work to a better paying year round job and we move firmly into the middle class, but until grade 6 or so, we were definitely what I’d call poor.

These comments make me so angry. I can't properly articulate why. But I hate "you don't know what it's like - there are people POORER THAN YOU - you are not allowed to speak of POOR if you have not gone days without eating".

I can very well feel poor without being homeless and starving. I don't claim to know what it's like to be homeless and starving, but I sure as hell Feel Poor.

If you're eating 7/7 days a week, but what you're eating is mostly white rice and beans and your entire family lives in one room of an apartment shared with three other families, you're poor.

Pure caloric intake is not a good way of judging poverty in the developed world because calories are so cheap relative to everything else.

The point of the gp imo isn't that poverty is only absolute calorie limits but that there are levels of poverty that aren't "relative" or "a feeling" but an objective, miserable situation. Poverty involves a chronic lack of basic human needs, these are often described as food, clothing and shelter but they also include health care, physical safety, the ability leave abusive situations and so-forth.

Sounds like a no true scotsman: "if you didn't feel poor, you're not poor enough to count."

I think if you’re genuinely poor, you do feel it. It’s a level of instability that just fundamentally undermines your sense of security on multiple levels (food security, job security, health security etc). Sure there are those that cannot afford the frills in life, or they have to occasionally make sacrifices in order to make ends meet. Even wealthy people probably have times of financial difficulty if they have some unexpected financial loss, or a massive unforeseen bill forcing them to sacrifice a few of their luxuries or whatever, but when you’re actually poor, you have nothing left to sacrifice, you have nothing to fall back on, you end up walking a fine line of making difficult choices of whether to buy food to feed your kids, or pay the electricity bill to keep them warm (and you can’t have it both ways), and your mindset is about surviving the next week, there’s no planning for the next month, there’s no contingency planning for what if the car breaks down. I think that’s what people don’t get. I understand that the middle class can experience hardship, but I firmly believe there is a distinction between middle class hardship and being actually poor, and that’s not because I want to “gatekeep” poor or undermine other people’s experiences of hardship (because at the end of the day it’s all relative) but the OP who wrote this was not writing from a position of ever having truely been poor, because when all your needs are met, and you have the things you want, and you have the luxury of poor just being a matter of perspective, you’ve not really experienced poor.

People also attack people living in poverty for making poor decisions, but if you are poor, your entire brain is overwhelmed with thoughts of survival. Of course poor people are going to make poor decisions because they are not given the opportunity to think about anything else other than survival.

I think we could consider poor as having all of your needs but none of your wants. And if you have all of your needs and all of your wants, then you are absolutely not poor. I agree with you. You cannot 'be poor but not feel it'.

While it is true that children may not realize they are living in poverty, when they grow up, they look back and then realize the conditions. I can see the point of someone saying they never realized they were poor growing up, but if they look back, they must realize that they felt it but did not realize it at the time.

I absolutely agree with this. You do not need to homeless to be living in severe poverty, but poor people feel poor. To your point about 'choosing to experience homeless', going homeless by choice is called camping.

People claim, "I did not feel poor even if I could not afford the designer clothing..." Like, we are not talking about designer clothing. We are talking about basic clothing. Shoes that do not fit. We are talking about food. Never, never, never going to the doctor unless you are literally dying -- perhaps a broken bone being the only exception... maybe.

Interestingly, things are much better now than in the past for many. Even rural communities are often given the opportunity to have basic necessities. Some families act too proud to accept assistance, but they really should if they have children. They must humble themselves to accept the assistance that is provided because that is the whole point. They reap the benefits now to get themselves back on their feet so they can contribute to others that will also need it.

I see so many people act like they are going to starve if they do not eat two or three meals PER DAY. Yet, they have never actually known true hunger in their life.

Here’s a question I’ve lived: what if you live in comically impoverished conditions such that the elements you’ve described are mitigated? Squatting in a half collapsed 1970 single wife trailer with raccoons sleeping on your futon couch.

The schooling is there, the meals are there, but you’re living a life so embarrassing you don’t mention it. Is that poor?

Yeah man, that’s poverty. The thing about poor/poverty is that it completely shapes your frame of reference. Sometimes you don’t even know how impoverished you really are, just like how privileged people often don’t understand how privileged they are. But I think, if you’re so embarrassed by your living conditions you don’t mention it, I’d say you’re poor, and you know you’re poor too, by virtue of the fact that you feel embarrassed - not that I think people should be embarrassed about being poor, it’s not a signal of some moral failing as a human being (in my opinion).

There are a few definitions of being homeless depending on the frame of reference. For a number of years I lived in a busted up unrentable storefront and it was certainly not by choice. It certainly fit a few of the government definitions of poverty and/or homelessness that are out there.

Being poor, being homeless, etc is a fuzzy thing in its nature. It’s not just being without everything.

My personal definition of being poor is having to make trade offs between food, shelter, and safety where you’re going without one or more on a regular basis.

I didn’t sleep in a bed, the place I slept in would pour buckets of water when it rained, it was cold in the winter, and the neighborhood could be unsafe at times. I didn’t go hungry since I always had the money for a $1 package of pasta and a $1.50 can of tomato sauce. I was able to go to school because my specific version of homelessness matched one that California recognized in order to waive tuition.

Ultimately life worked out for me.

15 years later I feel stressed for money due to all the asks my family makes of me, but I never feel poor.

And until I was homeless I didn't even know what being homeless was like.

For instance -- people say "there are millions of shelters! why are people living in tents?!" -- and I wondered the same thing. But then you go to a shelter and honestly, it is horrible for most people in shelters. Not only are you absolutely surrounded by people who (sadly) suffer from a slew of addictions and mental illness and want to steal from you, or fight you, or drag you into their endless drama, but the rules and regulations at shelters are so onerous that it makes prison seem like a holiday camp.

I now understand why people set up in a tent. They can support themselves, and be by themselves, and that agency is not to be under-rated.

Except for eating—and that’s only if it’s because of lack of means—every one of the listed criteria are relative to the community and culture.

The elitist poor. Now I’ve seen everything.

Just because there’s grades of poor, does not mean the family eating rice 5/week out of a small apartment so they can afford school materials is not.

Someone making $100/month is poor, and someone making $1000/month is also poor, even though they can afford wildly different standards of living, simply because 99% of people earn more.

Would you say a person like Bezos would remain poor if they were in that exact situation?

Yes. Jeff Bezos parents gave him a loan of $245,573, in 1993 money to start Amazon. This indicates that he grew up if not very wealthy, but solidly on the upper side of middle class. Growing up poor he would've probably not had the opportunities to get into Princeton (statistically), so probably would have had a harder time breaking in the hedge fund industry, giving him less cash on hand, and probably wouldn't have started Amazon. Maybe growing up poor he could have, but its more likely as a smart ambitious poor person, he'd have gone to whatever school gave him a good scholarship, and then ended up as an Engineer or some other safe profession and landed middle class.

Being born rich lets you take a lot more risks.

He might have not founded Amazon if he was poor, but that's not a question anyone was asking.

The overwhelming majority of people, if they were given $245,573 in 1993, would not go on to build a trillion-dollar company. What Bezos accomplished was extraordinary, whatever way you look at it.

Yes, but he had safety nets upon safety nets to take risks. Of course, the more likely outcome is that he would have been ok but not a billionaire, but he had the luxury of aiming high because he would still be ok if he failed.

> > Would you say a person like Bezos would remain poor

> Yes. ... but its more likely as a smart ambitious poor person, he'd have gone to whatever school gave him a good scholarship, and then ended up as an Engineer or some other safe profession and landed middle class.

So by yes you mean...no. Unless middle class is now poor?

Anyone whose parents can give them a quarter of a million dollars as essentially fun money is so far divorced from reality than actual middle class people that it's hilarious to even attempt to make that comparison.

By the time Bezos started Amazon, he was already an SVP at DE Shaw, so he certainly could have found the money somewhere else. His mom had him as a teenager and his adoptive father was a Cuban refugee. That said, his grandfather was quite wealthy.

Someone with extremely valuable skills and knowledge? No, of course not. Even assuming he somehow didn’t know anybody from when he was rich, he’d know where to find people to talk to, and what to say, to start getting enough money to stop being poor pretty fast.

poor is not knowing you don't have any of the things that idebtify you as poor

Reply on news.ycombinator.com