The 'Almost Homeless' Subreddit Is a Stark Glimpse at Soaring Wealth Inequality | Hacker News Reader

The 'Almost Homeless' Subreddit Is a Stark Glimpse at Soaring Wealth Inequality

wired.com

33 pointsBrajeshwar14 comments

I don’t think Reddit is really a stark glimpse at anything except how to write engaging stories online for people who look at a screen.

It's a stark glimpse at what someone you don't know is paying to make you think about.

What about Hacker News discussing a Wired article about a discussion on Reddit? Is that a glimpse of anything substantial?

>> And everyone agrees that social welfare services have been stretched to the limit—where they still exist at all.

US yearly spending on welfare systems: $1.80 Trillion

The entire GDP of England: $2.16 Trillion

The entire GDP of France: $3.60 Trillion

The entire GDP of Germany: $5.45 Trillion

The entire GDP of Spain: $2.09 Trillion

And? How about you compare the gdp between those and let me know how it goes out. Also don't forget to include free health care in the comparison

> US yearly spending on welfare systems: $1.80 Trillion

And maybe people should think and ask why is so much being spent with so little getting to the bottom? Medicare / Medicaid cost almost 2 Trillion USD / year. But when you will look on prices of i.e. Insulin, which is simple drug available outside of USA for 10EUR but in USA it costs 300USD out of pocket without Medicare. Now it makes sense why you got 2T in the budget when Medicare is paying for 100 years old drug like it would be a latest cancer treatment.

There's no insulin that is 100 years old that diabetics use. The insulin used is of many types and all these types have been developed over the 100 years you seem to ignore, and new ones are still being developed. You can now buy inhaled insulin. There's rapid acting and medium and fast and super fast and there's mixes developed for certain patient groups.

There is no reason for insulin to cost 300USD when competition can make it for 10USD.

> As of 2025, the wealthiest 1 percent in the US control $55 trillion in assets, roughly equivalent to the net worth of the bottom 90 percent of Americans combined

I’m surprised that it’s only 90:1 ratio. I’d have expected it to be quite a bit greater ratio than that, to be honest.

What’s the net worth of the 9% in between?

https://archive.ph/XQqLs

The first example given is someone who is "living out of their car and running out of money for gas".

Let's take a deep dive through that person's comment history and try to see where they might be going wrong. This is what I found within the last 5 days of their comment history.

- "Evil looks like fun at a family picnic. Going to work. Getting by." <- Believes that going to work is evil

- "Humans cooperating via corporations is evil. And until people grasp this, we're are fucked. " <- Believes that working for or even interacting with corporations is evil

- "We just need money. Give us money." <- Just wants people to give them money

- "Corporate culture needs to die and we all need to actively be killing it" <- Surely this person is interested in working a job and earning a living

- "The clouds are real. They're some kind of giant UFO camouflaged drone tech they're trying to perfect and it's scary AF" <- Sure seems solidly connected to reality

- "We need people to RECOGNIZE that this society isn't worth saving"

- "I'm approaching stand on the corner and beg after 20 years of successfulish Internet begging between jobs" <- Has spent the last 20 years just begging people for money on the internet rather than working

Looking through their post history, at all the vile extremist ideological stuff in there, if anything the system kind of has failed, failed the rest of us, because this person should have been forced into mental health treatment. They're unhinged and not able to function in society.

One person's anecdotal experience doesn't negate how bad the economy is and how many people are losing the ability to pay rent

I think people who take a deep dive into reddit post histories should be forced into mental health treatment. What was this great research project of yours supposed to accomplish? You found a crazy person on the Internet?

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