Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn | Hacker News Reader

Luxury or Necessity? The Public Makes a U-Turn

pewsocialtrends.org

24 pointscrocus26 comments

Given how correlated these trends are, I am not sure what is changing is the desire for any particular item, but the actual interpretation of the word "necessity". I suspect what is happening is that when financial security is low, necessity is applied as a term close to its actual definition, whereas in times of financial plenty it starts wandering up the scale towards "want".

That said, I boggle at the clothes dryer rank.

> I boggle at the clothes dryer rank

Some American towns actually forbid residents from hanging clotheslines.

True, but it's usually a neighborhood association rule, not something that applies to a whole town.

But you can hang them inside.

We don't have a clothes dryer and the weather here is generally wetter than the clothes are. We just have two drying racks. Works perfectly for a two-person house hold. I don't think it's hard to scale up for more persons.

Slightly off topic, but related none-the-less: something that has always bothered me about "necessities" is that 99% of US households have a TV [1] but at the same time, ~12% are in poverty. [2] How do "necessities" like this tie into poverty?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_the_United_States [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

In America, you are poor if you only have one TV.

(The statistic you point out has bothered me for a long time, but it's hard to control people's spending priorities, and it's not like these people are buying new flatscreens with welfare checks. You can drive around any college town during May or August and pick up a working TV for free off the curb.)

>it's not like these people are buying new flatscreens with welfare checks

this is a very good point. I wonder if there is data around that examines how welfare checks are spent.

What do you mean by "welfare". Food stamps are accepted at certain locations for certain items. Unemployment insurance is a general check - but that isn't exactly welfare.

I meant welfare to mean cash payments to the poor as provided for in the Welfare Reform act of 1996. [1]

You brought up a good point to differentiate this from food stamps and unemployment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_Reform_Act_of_1996

Spending priorities don't just stop with TV (which is probably the least offender since they can be relatively cheap).

I could drive around neighborhoods in Detroit (as far back as pre-2000) and see a lot of people with houses that were falling apart from disrepair, but they have a decked-out car with gold rims and hydraulics in the driveway... Or the ricers that can only afford a Ford Escort, but add some huge spoiler to it... People spending mounds of money on things that don't matter that much isn't something new.

Read the book Bowling Alone.

If you are poor, TV is probably the only entertainment you can afford. America has lost or greatly diminished almost all its local communities. A poor person without television would need a lot of other local poor people without televisions to start recreating a community where people do things with each other.

(Nobody say "library". I love libraries, but in low-income neighborhoods they're usually less common and less well-stocked. If you can even afford to get there and back.)

The fact that 50% of people still believe things like a TV, Microwave, and central A/C are "necessities" means we have a very long way to go. I guess I can be happy it dropped from 60%.

Have you ever lived in the south? A/C is very much a necessity.

Yet people did it. My parents grew up in St. Louis without air conditioning. It gets uncomfortable but is not unlivable.

People live in the tropics without it. It is not a necessity.

I'm really confused how people got along before A/C. If the A/C is broken or otherwise off, your windows are down and fans are running everywhere, and you are completely naked, it still feels like you are sitting inside a very hot wet oven.

I can hardly do anything but think of ways to get away from the heat (cold shower, going into the shade outside, going someplace with A/C) and falling asleep usually takes about four more hours than it should as I wallow around like a pig. Every 6-month 100-degree summer reminds me why I need to move out of the South.

I asked my dad the same thing and here was his trick to fall asleep at night:

He had a ceiling fan but no AC. So he would wrap himself in a blanket until he was soaked with sweat. Then he took the blanket off and laid on his sheet and let the fan blow on him thereby evaporating the sweat. This would cool him down and allow him to sleep.

> Yet people did it. My parents grew up in St. Louis without air conditioning.

In the past, people were allowed to sweat (and smell of sweat.)

There is a difference between "home air conditioning", i.e. central air, and independent A/C units. I live in Boston and would be insane to go the summer without A/C, but a few portable units strategically placed work fine.

Even still, there are countries far hotter than the United States which do not generally (or never) have A/C and they seem to survive just fine. Perhaps the definition of "necessity" is the argument here, but in a strict-leaning sense, A/C is hardly a necessity. None of the things on that list are, really.

Please live in Tucson in July. :)

I would give up Internet before I gave up A/C. I've only seen one home in Tucson well enough insulated to give up A/C, and it was built, brick by brick by the owners, and only had two very small windows.

Maybe construction techniques appropriate to local conditions are more of a necessity than AC? There are plenty of places where people have survived in similar conditions for hundreds if not thousands of years prior to AC.

Of the many ways that people handled heat before AC [1], most involved thicker walls and living underground. Air Conditioning has allowed the use of modern building materials (drywall & studs, rather than poured concrete or bricks), and therefore greatly accelerated the growth of home ownership.

As with everything, there are pros and cons--cheap electricity has simply led to the use of AC rather than natural cooling.

[1]http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7424

I'm rather blown away that 49% of 18-29 year-olds consider a land line phone to be a necessity.

I think the last time I had a land line was a decade ago, when I was 17. And I live in the decidedly non-cutting-edge midwest. Even my parents haven't had a land line in years.

When I was laid off a little over a month ago, I was looking for things to get rid of. Even though I have a cellphone, I kept the landline: I knew I was going to be doing a lot of interviews over the phone, and I knew that my cellphone drops a lot of calls and generally sounds crappy inside the house.

The average middle class citizen have access to luxuries unheard of even for kings and queen ages ago.

What is luxury very often become the masses' necessity through free maket process.

What about the internet? I don't have a TV but I wouldn't give up the internet because my work depends on it - but for others it would be a luxury.

In your case internet connection is not household item but office equipment.

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