Meta-Note: I’m sorry it’s been so long between articles; for better or worse writing here is something that I do for fun, and sometimes work and family get in the way.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this down. I could go on and on but you definitely hit the high points. I am an American living in Canada (so two cultures, and wildly divergent ideas about health) and I am someone who grew up "poor-ish" and now lives at a very comfortable income (so, wildly divergent ideas about money between me and my friends depending on how long we've known each other). I have had SO many interactions like the baby shower one you mention, and while I always silently sigh to myself what I really want to do is scream. I grew up with nothing, like literally we had the utilities shut off and would have to deal with power but no water or water but no power depending on what month it was. I went without food, often. I was also discarded by my parents as a teenager, and know what it's like to pick through trash for clean, fresh food (thank wealthy college kids!). Now that my wife and I bring in a very comfortable six figure income decades later, I find myself often unable to relate to ANYTHING most people say about money. I also strongly identify with being able to fix cars and appliances and all kinds of housing-related stuff (when you're poor-ish, it's not like your landlord will ever fix anything without months of argument). This is a good primer that more people need to read...and also, that doctor couple and everyone like them really needs to get their heads out of their asses and start living sensibly. A gilded youth is no excuse.
I really don't blame the doctors in the anecdote for a couple reasons, the first being that I really don't think the poor girl knew enough about the world to know her experience wasn't typical. The other reason is that she was probably legitimately stressed about those things (given her limited experience in more stressful situations). I try not to discount other people's sadness/stress/anxiety/depression too much - money is only one part of a big formula at play there. I'm lucky enough to have a good enough life in other ways that I'm probably happier then she or her husband, overall, and I try to keep that in mind when I see someone with a bunch of stuff I don't have.
I want to get to all your comments and respond - and I will - but I'm having a bit of a crazy day. I'm really happy about all the engagement here. I know there's some debate happening and it mostly looks pretty reasonable, but I'd ask that to the extent you can you try to be fair to each other - I can't / don't want to moderate very much in here if I can help it.
Again, this has been a great day for me and every interaction I've had with all of you has been very positive. I appreciate it a lot - thank you.
Thanks a lot for this piece. Coming from the more lucky part of earth's population I disagree with one thing you're writing repeatedly:
>> And if you do better than I do - say, if you are a person who completed college on time and went on to your deserved place in the upper-middle class - I hereby command you not to feel bad about it.
I just can't identify with that. As an upper middle-class in one of the richest countries on earth (some say the richest), I do call on all rich people to feel bad! How can you allow one guy to have access to 200'000'000'000 dollars, while others have their water turned off? An American friend of mine said: "because otherwise it would be socialism". So what?
What's wrong with caring about poor people? The author is trying hard, but it's difficult, he doesn't manage. Why not force the guy with the zeroes to pay for the water bill? Pay for the health care? It wouldn't even need to be a full zero (pun intended).
So to all the rich guys out there: if this piece doesn't make you feel bad, because you're afraid of being socialist, communist, or whatever, then you have a wrong idea of what it means to care about poor people.
And one more thing: even though my country is (one of) the richest countries in the world, I cannot imagine somebody having his water turned off because he cannot pay the bills! Or his power turned off. So it's a socialist country that is (one of) the richest countries of the world. Think about that.
What rationale? Having the rich guy pay for the water of the poor? If it's that, then I'm really sorry for you.
I only read the wikipedia entry for the book. But I can tell you that the USA is far from my country with regard to basic human rights and basic human decency. The USA is far worse. And my country is far from what I read in the summary of wikipedia to "Atlas shrugged". And we have very rich people, too ;) So you have a looong way to cover.
While I read that the USA Democrats are called "left extremists", they would pass as our "rightwing party". Bernie Sanders would probably be center-left in my country. I vote more left than Bernie Sanders, and there are still 20% voting more left than I do! And we still have a lot of very rich people.
So you have a lot of leeway. Just because you pay the poor man's water doesn't mean you can't have rich people, too. Just because the poor can live decently, doesn't mean you can have very rich people, too.
But telling me that you don't want to pay the poor man's water because: "taken to its logical conclusion, that would be like "Atlas Shrugged"" is just stupid.
So if you think that going all the way to have everything shared by everybody is a bad thing, I might even agree. However, the imbalance in today's world is soo huge, and it's getting bigger every day, that we can reverse this, share more, and go a looong way before I'm worried that rich people will not be rich enough anymore.
But who's left to do work which adds the value which is taxed to give to everyone too poor to work? I mean, in the system you describe, I'd rather just be on the receiving end of the welfare rather than producing end, if I'm guaranteed my water bill will be paid, and there is a roof over my head, and poverty is eliminated. Why am I busting my ass to try to make enough money for a decent vacation every once in a while, if I don't have to do anything at all and have all my basic needs met by the government? What if we all did that?
Yes, that's what our right wing parties also tell all of us rich people. Knowing some poor people, I see the following:
- very few just want to slack off.
- In fact, most of the poor people (want to) work hard
- unfortunately they don't have the diplomas that gets them good jobs
The ones who are really dependant on the welfare system in my country are mostly mentally ill or physically disabled. And I cannot blame them for not wanting/being able to work.
On the other hand:
- the rich often don't work that hard
- they often profit from investments
- even with half of their wealth, or 1/10th, they would still be immensly rich
Like the 1% who have half of the world's health. That's just crazy. Just try to imagine. You take a stash of money, you take 100 people, and you give half of the stash to 1 person. Even if you give 1/4th of the stash to that one person, he's still immensly privileged. However, for the 99 others, that already changes a lot!
So, most of the poor people I know don't want to slack off. They want to work. But they only get shitty work. At least here, they get a health insurance, school for their kids, a roof over their head. And you know what? The poor people vote mostly right-wing parties! Go figure. It's rich people like me who vote left-wing parties, so that our money gets distributed. I'll never understand it.
You wouldn't just stay on the receiving end because you would feel bad about yourself. I live in a country where I could do that, but I know no one who just receives and does nothing for it. I've been in that situation for a short time and after about two weeks of relaxing, your self worth drops into the abyss and you start to be willing to do about anything to feel some pride for yourself.
Some people end up in a rut, but that's an issue for a psychologist and not for welfare cuts.
Not everyone will start to do paid work, but you at least start to take care of people/infrastructure/your community, which adds value to your economy, too.
But forget about e.g. finding a woman to have children with, if you don't prove that you are striding for a position where you can take responsibility of others.
>> "You wouldn't just stay on the receiving end because you would feel bad about yourself."
Probably right. I agree with your statements above... But those on the producing end are supposed to feel bad about it too, right? I mean Ineiti started this sub-thread stating as much. So who should feel good in all of this? Those producing, but not "too much"? We should all just aspire to be mediocre.
There will also be a spectrum of production output as we're all different people, not robots... and as it seems to be the case, those who've accumulated more due to their efforts are typically looked at disfavorably by those who have not. We want equitable outcomes, but we start from non-equitable feelings about our fellow humans.
I think wanting to have equal outcomes is not possible, you're right on this one. Of course some people are just lucky and just have a huge charisma and just are good at business or are just smarter than others. I have no problem with some being richer than the rest.
My problem is if some people cannot live decently (like: running water, power, healthcare) while others don't know what to do with their money. And all these arguments about "but then nobody would work", "this would be socialism (sorry, still cannot believe my friend said that)" are mostly bogus.
So to the system in the USA, once again: you can take away a lot of money from the rich and give it to the poor before you come even close to my country with regard to equality. And even in my country we're far from an egalitarian system, which is not what I think is best. So don't fear having more equality. Currently the system in the USA is so unjust that even discussing it makes me cry.
I'm from Germany and we basically have this system. If you loose your job you will get 60% of your previous salary for one year. After that you will still get 420 Euros and the apartment is covered as well. It's not much and you will basically just cover your basic needs, but you don't have to work. There is even this one famous person that didn't work for years and doesn't plan to. And now I tell you what: You need to accept that there are people that will abuse that system like this person I mentioned before. But the number is so low, that it doesn't matter. Germany had an unemployment rate of 5.0% in 2019 (USA 3.67%, but it was also way higher than Germany's some years ago). This is not a high number. So the scenario you are describing isn't happening. Germany is even one of the countries with the highest taxes in the world and people still work. This system is successful since around 70 years.
Think about it this way. There are a set of jobs that are absolutely required in society. You need someone to grow food, you need someone to supply water (assuming we aren't getting it from a river/natural water source), you need people to pick food. In modern society you have things like electricity and what not but it all looks the same in this example so we can group all of that together.
Say we decide as a society that the government should supply food to everyone. How do we "pay" for that? Well we need someone to grow the food, so the government (which prints/controls money) can create a job of "food grower" (aka farmer). But no one wants to do it, they are content to continue to get free food and housing. How do we get people to do that job? We increase the pay. Money buys a nicer house, nicer food, etc. Eventually you will find a person who is willing to sell their labor for the money the government is offering. That salary would be one part of the cost of supplying food to everyone. No one is forced to work but people who want nicer things will want to work to be able to buy those things.
The problem with the argument of "I'd rather just be on the receiving end of the welfare" is that we can see, with the current society in the USA, that there are people that always want more. You look at billionaires, who have more money than a person could spend in a lifetime, trying to get more money. That drive in some people isn't going to magically go away once they have a basic shelter and food.
And there you have it... in the end its the people without the drive demanding that the people with the drive give up what they've worked for because "equity". If we assume "drive" is something people are born with, and can't really do anything about, then it seems ironic... the people born with drive are almost being taken advantage of by those born without it... and those with drive are being told to "feel bad!" about it too. So if I'm born with the ambitious gene, its okay to be shamed for it... just not okay to shame people for other genes they are born with.
Also: in my country it's mostly the rich voting left-wing. Poor people and foreigners are mostly voting for right-wing parties. They propose to kick out people who are voting for them and ask the people voting for them to pay more taxes. Reading it like this doesn't make sense. But I had many conversations this way.
In 2004 a right-wing leader got elected in my country, and I shared my concern with a foreign student from Rumania. His response: "yes, it's a good idea to kick out foreigners. They are just lazy and don't want to work". He was a foreigner, he was working hard, he was (is) very smart, and these were his words!
You assume that you have to give away _everything_ you earn. Which I never proposed. All I'm saying is that I find it unjust if the 1% of top earners make half of the total money. And more so, if these 1% spend a lot of money to convince people that they should share even less.
Again: I'm OK with some people getting more money if they are gifted in something useful. But I'm not OK if the people at the bottom have their water supply turned off, cannot eat other things than rice, or don't have healthcare. These are part of the human decency. Our technology allows us to distribute this to everybody. And even if we do so, we can have very rich people.
Honestly, if Jeff Bezos has 2e11 US$, 1e11, or even just 1e10 US$ is irrelevant. It's a whole f**king lot of money that could pay a lot of healthcare, money, and power.
What I think is crazy is if those rich people are so rich and can influence so much, that even the author of this article has to write: "don't feel bad about being rich and not sharing".
Hell yes, feel bad about not sharing more! Don't feel bad about being a genius, charismatic, whatever makes you gain a lot of money. Feel bad about not sharing. Feel bad about asking more money from the poor. Because this is what is happening.
How are you being shamed? No one is forcing you to work and you are being fairly compensated for your labor. If we need 1 person to grow food to feed everyone in the world then that person should be compensated for providing an important service to society. What part of this exploitative? The government has a farm it needs worked, we are assuming that farm land is not stolen but let's not get into that now, it needs 1 person to grow the food. It pays that person a good wage to feed all of the people in the nation. Who in this relationship is getting shamed?
The concept of socialism in the USA has been used by the political right wing to instill fear. It provides a convenient excuse why people the rich should not help the less fortunate. Socialism (in that it might come after them for their money) being contrary to their belief system allows them to abdicate moral values that would otherwise suggest helping is simply the right thing to create possibility for everyone climb out of poverty.
The doctors in the author's scenario complaining about not having enough to meet expenses indicates a strong lack of self awareness about the world around them. You'd have to really have your head up your arse not to notice the disparities around you. There may truly be people like that, but I rather think it's easy for them to just ignore the uncomfortable stuff. After all, <sarcasm> they represent a different 'class' </sarcasm>.
And of course it has been historically instilled to the people of the USA during the cold war! Coming back to my friend who exclaimed "but that would be socialism" (giving _some_ money of the rich to the poor), I really felt it was coming as a gut reaction, not a really thought through conviction.
A bit like "sleep-teaching" in "Brave New World" - repeat after me, "Socialism is bad!"...
I'll worry about the author later; it's YOU that needs to feel bad, and NOW! Not tomorrow! You're calling the guy out, for explaining things to a great degree, and, now it's YOUR TURN to grab the megaphone and want somebody to pay somebody's water bill? HE cares about poor people; I care about poor people. YOU care about how many zeros is on somebody's paycheck, and you want that person to start scratching checks for poor people, on the assumption that he/she/we haven't/won't/shant continue. YOU should feel bad, *immediately*, because you are a defacto communist. Seriously, stop shitting on the free world.
I love you. That's exactly the discourse I usually get when I ask people from the USA to help poor people: "you are defacto communist". Come on, you're smart guys, you can do better.
My country is Switzerland. I love this country, I identify with it. But it's in no way communist. All I wrote here is my experience in my country. We care for the poor, at least in our country. Nobody gets his/her water turned off because he/she doesn't pay the bills. And I would not call that communist, rather common sense.
Yes, I feel bad. Even Switzerland should care more about the poor outside. But that goes much farther than the discussion here. If you call me communist for proposing to care for the poor, what will you call me when I ask you to care about poor people outside of your country?
And how can you say: "I care about poor people" and then accept that poor people have their water turned off? While I say: "let's make it so that poor people don't have their water turned off" and you call me a communist? Come on. The 1980s are over. Communism is over. Get a new word to fling on people. I'm not asking for communism. I'm asking for sharing a little bit. Not all 0s, just 1 (or 2)...
"...because you're afraid of being socialist, communist, or whatever,..." not wanting to be communist and or socialist is not the same as not caring about poor people. The viewpoint of free market proponents is that poor people would have more opportunity without government hindering their growth. For example, the perverse incentives mentioned in the article.
OK, you're right! And that's exactly my point! However, working in an international setting, most of the people from the USA I talk to think that giving money to the poor is "socialist, communist", whatever. So I did tease you. Sorry about that ;)
I don't see how the government is hindering the growth of the person described in this post. By taking away help above a certain threshold of income? But you just said that the government should not intervene? Decide what you want...
I don't think it is enough to "get out of the way of the poor" to let them become rich. I also don't understand how you cannot feel injustice against a system (the USA) that lets some people be stinking rich, while others don't have water? How can that be anything worthwhile? How can you remove the participation of the rich guys to the poor by reducing the rich guy's taxes and increasing the poor guys taxes? And then say: "but else it would be socialism". Well, you don't say that. Thank you. But a lot of people do.
Even though I pay very little taxes (15%) in my socialist country (teasing again, sorry), I add another 10% to give to the poor. No questions asked. But honestly, I would prefer that the government would do that. Why? Because they know better than me who _really_ needs that money. Now it just goes to poor people I know. Which is probably not the most effective.
"I also don't understand how you cannot feel injustice against a system (the USA)"
I do. I don't like how the government spends tax dollars starting wars I don't want them in while individuals struggle to purchase basic necessities.
The fundamental difference is I see governments as incompetent at best and malevolent at worst.
"Why? Because they know better than me who _really_ needs that money." I also disagree with this statement as well. Why would a centralized system be able to understand whom needs assistance more than individuals in their own community?
I think that's a good point. I served as a missionary for 10 years in Africa. There, the government was "an evil beast that you need to feed so it doesn't eat you". That's the impression I have the USA citizens think about their government. Like a third world country. Yes, I'm teasing you, sorry.
Living in a democracy I don't like _everything_ my government does. But most of it. I see the government as an expression of the people's will. As such I suppose it's competent, does what the majority wants, and protects minorities. It has its flaws, sure. But you can discuss it and make propositions, steer it somewhere you think it makes more sense.
So I'm happy to pay taxes. I have roads, schools (free), universities (1'200US$ A YEAR), hospitals (best hospitals are public ones, the private ones only give you better room service), infrastructure, you name it. Yes, sometimes it goes awry, but most of the time the decisions are made on sound policy. So they know better than me who really is poor, and who just tries to be my friend because he knows I give away money.
From an outside view, the USA government is all about show and money. The presidency costs an enormous amount of money that would pay all water of all the poor people, I'm sure. It's all about making sure the rich get richer. Tax cuts for the rich, more taxes for the poor. Worst of all? See this article: the poor "don't want to complain - if you're rich, enjoy it". That's the worst thing that can happen, the poor thinking they don't even have the right to complain! Please do! Complain! Tell the rich the pain you're feeling! They (we, I) don't know what it is like! Tell us! Make us feel bad! We should feel bad! We have the resources to pay your water, but we complain about the car we just cannot have! Or the one 0 we need to give away! F**k us! Rise! We deserve it!
OK, that was a bit harsh, sorry. But I think it's true. Worse than rich getting tax cuts is the poor voting for it. Don't.
Or, as Jesus puts it: "there is one more thing you need to do: go and sell all your belongings, give it to the poor, then follow me"...
Thank you for sharing your story. You captured a lot of nuance in what it’s like to be broke. I’ve been poor, really poor, with a family. So I empathize, and am very familiar with that territory.
I was poor and managed to have the right opportunities come along, one after the other, and I managed to take said opportunities. Some of that, of course is what some might call “dumb luck.”
I have one tiny piece of unsolicited advice: You are obviously an intelligent, logical, articulate, and technically-minded person given your aptitude for mechanical things. Software engineering might be a good fit, I think, if you are interested.
If you haven’t already done so and you’re at all interested in coding, Google “Free Code Camp”. It’s a great resource that can actually lead a person into a career in web development. Everything you need is there. Of course, that’s only if you are interested and can spare some time to focus on that.
Best of luck to you, and I hope that didn’t come off preachy. Web development is just how I got myself and my family out of poverty. That and a lot of good opportunities I was fortunate enough to have.
You didn't come of preachy at all. I'm sort of learning SQL right now for some of the reasons you mentioned - I like working with data where I get the chance. I'm probably going to have to pick up a programming language and some data-related tools as well, but it's not a bad direction to go (assuming I end up being smart enough to do it, which is a bit of a crap shoot).
In case you get the influx of traffic I suspect that you will (and deserve) and are wondering why: this article appeared on Hacker News and is doing quite well there.
My metrics definitely picked it up when I checked this morning after noticing the influx. You are correct that it's a pretty large influx of traffic - >10x the hit count compared to what it was before, which I'm thrilled about.
Since you’re able to do “anything less complex than a full engine or transmission rebuild,” I’m sure becoming a mechanic (an in-demand job that requires rare skills) has crossed your mind. Is there some high barrier to entry, the blue collar equivalent of “just the skill without an associated degree”?
Both you and Jean are right to an extent on what's going on here, at least for me. To cover where Jesse is right: there is a pretty big difference between me and a "real" mechanic - namely that he usually has training and experience I don't have. I can do stuff on my own cars, but it takes an awful lot of time and there's a significant risk I do the more complex stuff wrong in some way; this is the difference I think between accumulating a lot of hours either in school or having worked my way up through lower-paying mechanic-type jobs (being the oil change kid) in the past.
The other thing to consider is that mechanic work generally just doesn't pay a whole lot - it has the potential to, but a majority of full fledged mechanic jobs I'm seeing right now are <50k; if I walked in and could convince someone to hire me "because I've maintained my own cars" I would be getting significantly less than that. It's not an impossible route, but it's not super easy and I'd likely have to take a pay cut to start working up an entirely different career ladder - that represents a lot of risk.
Believe it or not, the Craigslist market for mechanics is pretty packed, and an awful lot of them have certs that make them a little bit more attractive to the average consumer. I've thought about trying to just drop my price to compete with that, but given that I then would take much longer compared to a real, experienced mechanic, I'd be getting into a pretty low-wage territory per-hour. That's before I have to consider liability, or getting halfway into a job and realizing I'm not good enough to do it - that sort of thing.
As for paying it forward, I pretty regularly help people I know with car problems of the type I know how to fix; less paying it forward and more just what I can contribute to the friendship besides fiendishly good looks.
I don't find bartering to be that common in my neck of the woods, although I'm sure there are people who do it.
You handled that remarkably politely. XD As a guy who drives a car that's older than my girlfriend, I've done some downright stupid repairs to my vehicle - I've even crawled around in the dirt of a road side stop because the alternator gave out while I was on the highway. But no, that doesn't mean I have any ability to become a mechanic, either at a dealership or off of Craigslist. Not to mention that there's a huge difference between occasionally fixing your own car, and fixing cars all day long. The former has an element of fun and engagement to it - the latter would have me blowing my brains out with whiskey on the reg, and ultimately getting fired before my three months were up.
I don’t understand these sorts of armchair quarterbacking giving him advice how to parlay his skills. He obviously thinks about those things and is not going to have an epiphany from a blog comment
Most people probably don't realize that Mechanics generally have to supply their own tools. It gets expensive. I have a friend who went from mechanic work to IT once he capped out his salary on mechanic jobs. Only the very specialized can really make bank; and cars keep needing less and less work.
There's a huge difference between "google/youtube info on my car to fix it" and "having the knowledge necessary to be hired as a mechanic". Not to discount the author's skills, but it's not what a mechanic shop would be looking for, and if they were they'd just hire some teen/20s w/ comparable knowledge at a lower wage.
“Anything less complex than a full engine or transmission rebuild” implies a lot more skill than “google/youtube info on my car to fix it.” It takes a huge amount of experience to go from merely reading service manuals (or watching the youtube equivalent) to actually working on a real car.
Not really, anyone can follow directions and do most of the stuff outside an engine or transmission. That's where skill and a clean environment start to come in. Otherwise, it's more about swapping out parts and figuring out how much stuff you have to take out to get to something.
hey, great article! I'd add two things. First and foremost is mental health. Most don't choose to be poor and (like obesity) there are typically comorbidities. This means that people with additional, stigmatized needs are unable or less able to get professional help. Thus higher rates of a addiction and self medication and compounding injuries (bad back > job loss or no exercise > poor diet). Most things are made for average height, white, right handed, english speaking, mobile people. These are a couple of dimensions most people don't think about most of the time, but the more atypical you are the harder it can be to be traditionally successful. This is generally fine, but 10% of people (statistically) don't have the "fluid intelligence" (IQ) to serve in the military. These people, especially, have a hard time adapting and their poverty (including social poverty) can be astounding.
The other thing I'd add is that your lower class comparison was for $17.50/hour. This was a great comparison, and I really appreciated it. Finding housing when you're making $10-$12/hour or when working part time is a large part of the american experience; 31.3% of americans make less than $12/hour (source: https://policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/poverty-in-the-us/low-wage-map/). Again, thanks for the article.
Those poor people are the victims of IQ denialism. Quite frankly, if the army can't find something useful for you to do, nobody in a capitalist, ends-based system can find something useful for you to do. I would absolute support a make-work program that paid these people a living wage, to help them get out of the house and give them some dignity, not just welfare designed to keep them at home and out of sight.
But it's not like anybody in charge cares what any of us think. Denying IQ is not just fashionable, it also compliments the lower two-thirds of the population. So, it will continue for the foreseeable future.
i can't tell you how much time i spend trying to convey the experience of being Actually Poor in america. the responses usually come down to a few major categories, most of which have come around in the comments even:
>can't you just [obvious surface-level change that you've already thought of and won't help]?
>that doesn't seem so bad when i do the math in my head!
>this just proves everything about my socio-economic opinion bundle!
>i'm not american, so it'd be different if you joined me in a more advanced civilization
you're being incredibly polite about all of it, but i see where you're putting the effort in. i used this article to explain a couple of specific situations to someone i know, and, well, it's still very hard to get across the difference in lifestyle, you did better than a lot of people who get paid to write about social issues. i did notice a couple of things i can comment on:
1) in the auto-expenses section, you didn't mention one thing i think people might not immediately realize: it's actually illegal in most places to drive uninsured. this means that you're forced to pay for the frankly-unfair pricing on liability insurance, which like you mentioned, doesn't even help you in most practical cases. a lot of people don't, and so they drive uninsured, and they hope they don't get pulled over for a tail light or turn signal, because if they do, they could face license revocations, car impounds, and other harassments of the justice system. this isn't rare-- i myself have driven uninsured for this reason, and i've known a lot of people who have faced real consequences for it, like a car that gets impounded and the driver just cannot afford to pay the fees to get it back, so it ends up being auctioned off. another similar situation arises with child support: at least where i'm from, if you fall behind on your child support payments, you can have your driver's license revoked. usually, you can't just stop driving because you need to work, so people drive without a license and risk being arrested if they get pulled over at random. again, i've seen this happen more than once, in addition to it happening in my family growing up. i shouldn't need to mention that this policy does nothing to help the family on the other side of the divorce; if the other parent can't go to work, it just makes it even less likely that they'll see their full support payment next month.
2) square-footage is a fairly unreliable comparison for people to make with regards to housing, because Arizona is a pretty open place and it might seem to them that your apartment is fairly sizeable, as far as apartments go. i could walk into a hundred apartments and sort them into middle-class or lower-class, but at no point would size factor into the equation. age of appliances and fixtures, general level of maintenance, and the attitude of the holding company are going to make a much bigger difference-- but even then, it's not as big as the location. most cheap housing in the US is held very far away from city centers, and i rarely ever meet poor people who are housed in an area that doesn't have a horrible commute. i've had coworkers in LA with ninety-plus-minute bus commutes, and the transit situation here, while a meme, is not worse than that in Phoenix. and people seem to be commenting to the expectation that your $1200 apartment was fairly reasonable, which i'd argue is much the point-- but according to conventional budget advice, it's far too expensive for somebody on a lower-class wage. you can make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and still not really be able to afford that apartment. and everything below that is not just cramped, it's dangerous.
My family lived with a somewhat upper-middle-class income for most of my adult life. We managed to get by but never ahead (a lot of that was our poor decision making around expenses and debt). But it was always very clear to me that people in the lower middle class and working class could barely stay above water, and something like a cracked engine block would be absolutely devastating.
Things have gotten really unaffordable over the past 30 years, I believe much of this is due to financialization of the economy as well as Federal Reserve policy to keep asset prices as high as possible. It does seem that the jenga tower is likely to collapse soon.
This was a good read. I'm going to forward this to my kids, hoping they will actually read something that is longer than a tweet or InstaGarbage post. I am in the 'do not feel guilty' category, but got there mostly via luck (yes, and some hard work). I have not gone through any hardship to get there, and had a comfortable youth. Being where I am with just highschool and some courses I consider myself extremely lucky, and posts like yours just reaffirm that. They also scare me to death.
I admire your resilience, and wish you continued happiness!
A word on dental-school clinics: in my experience the trade-off is not quality, but time, which can change the calculus a bit (if you're poor and working multiple jobs, you might be able to stand a substandard teeth-cleaning but not one which takes three times as long as ordinary). Dental students are, in my experience more meticulous if anything than their credentialed peers, because they have so much more to lose from an imperfect performance. But because they are being assessed on their performance — because during and after the process teaching dentists come in (on their own time, and they're usually riding herd on several students at once) to assess the work, there's a lot of waiting around for a third party to look into your mouth and assess the job. That can really make it a longer process, by a good chunk.
It definitely seems to take a bit longer, although I don't have a non-dental-clinic frame of reference to compare it to. For a lot of things it's ~33% of the cost, so I don't mind too much.
Just chiming in to say thank you for this post. I grew up poorer than most of the people I interact with, and it's hard for people to understand what it was like. My siblings and I went to the doctor at the health department, our utilities were cut off once a year or so until my parents could borrow money from their siblings to reconnect, and we had years where the only Christmas presents were from charity. Dentistry still scares the hell out of me. Although I still feel sadness and shame looking back, those are my own issues to work through; my parents did the best they could and loved us all and worked harder than everyone.
So thank you for writing this. Not just for those who don't understand what it's like, but also for those who do. Life can be alienating and difficult, and it's nice to know we're never truly alone.
This article could have been 10 times longer and I would have read it. I have gone from being "broke" to being "ok" to being legit poor in about 15 years as an adult. Broke my back for almost all of those years too. I think something not covered in this article which is incredibly annoying is how much people who have financial success are never willing to admit how much luck is a factor. What neighborhood you were born in, who your parents are, what time in human history. Hell when my dad was a kid you worked at the mill for 35 years and retired comfortably. I don't know a single person who has had less than 5 jobs by now.
Extra spicy layer to the Craigslist equation: being femme. Facebook Marketplace is amazing for deals, and I've been using it more often than CL for the pay few months. Yesterday I tried buying a torch (for metalworking) and there guy decided to mention "don't take this the wrong way but I looked at your profile and you're a cutie".
There was no way I was going to pursue any further interaction with the seller after that. I told him I'd pass on the torch. Creepy shit.
Thanks for this article - it was a great read. Here's one thing I've been struggling to understand a little bit. You said that pre-COVID you were earning $50k - I think that's just you, and your wife, if she works, is additional to that. I live in the UK, and at the current exchange rate $50k is £36k. Median earnings for full-time employees in the UK is just over £30k. So in the UK, you would be modestly above average, perhaps the 60th percentile or something.
But what you describe sounds way, way worse than what 60% of people in the UK experience. The UK is not as rich as the US but it is clearly a rich country. So what's going on here? I have a few ideas:
1. It's not individual income that matters, but household, and maybe your wife doesn't work and that's relevant.
2. It's not before tax income that matters but after tax (net). But I assume taxes in the UK are higher than the US. And - related to (1) - median *household net* income in the UK is like £25k or something.
3. You get more services provided by the government in the UK. But I think that's only true for healthcare and dental, and you get your health insurance for free anyway? (NB. You have to pay a bit for dental and prescriptions here, but it's pretty much nominal). I guess public transport might be a bit better in the UK - certainly in London it's very good and no-one (even rich people) drives to work. Though if you don't live in a big city, there's very little generally. And I'm fairly sure that the bottom 60% of the population outside big cities largely have cars.
4. Some of it is expectations. You described a 900 sqft apartment as "very small" - in the UK a modest sized house is about that.
5. Something to do with the cost of living differing? I don't know.
This has actually been tough for me - having not lived in the UK it's hard for me to compare things place-to-place in the same way it's hard for you to imagine the cost of things in the US/Arizona. I do wish that in writing this I was a little more aware of differences between countries - I'm naturally very US-centric in how I view the world, and a lot of the feedback I've gotten is like yours.
One thing that's been suggested to me is the average cost of goods/services is higher in the US; that since the country itself is richer, things just cost more. This might be. I think the easiest way to explain it might be like this:
Let's say I make 35k a year; that amounts to about 2300 a month, more or less. Say $900 a month goes to rent; this gets a place in a not-so-safe part of town that does none-the-less contain us. I pretty much have a car in the city I live in to work/participate at all in society because of the distances involved and how poor our public transit is. Let's say petrol/insurance costs are around 150. My average utility bill is something like 300 a month for gas/water/sewer/garbage/electricity (electricity costs are high in my municipality - it's a desert and A/C is pretty necessary). Between one cell phone and internet, say another $100.
At that point I have something like $850 left to live on. The USDA estimates a monthly "thrifty" level of food cost at something like $675 (https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJan2021.pdf). So at that point I'd have something like $175 left to live on - to buy toiletries and clothing, any necessary car maintenance, anything extra at all.
So bear in mind these numbers are approximate, but I think they are pretty close to what it's like to live in a major American city at that income level. There's definitely some room to trim, but choices at that level are pretty hard; there's not a lot left to trim that doesn't hurt, if that makes sense. And that's assuming no major catastrophes; a engine blowing up on you could be a pretty big deal here.
Please pick holes in this - anything that doesn't make sense or that doesn't jive for you, let me know and I'll try my best to explain it. Also please let me know what stands out to you as a difference between my country and yours - that kind of thing is as interesting to me as it is to you.
$35k a year married with two kids all else equal leaves you with a tax bill of $1k (no income tax in AZ) before any credits. That's $2800 a month, not $2300. Then you have credits. Child tax credit wipes out your $1k tax liability. Additional child tax credit and EITC get you $8k extra. So total after tax is $43k or almost $3600 a month. In 2020 there was an additional $5800 in stimulus payments (and it looks like maybe another $5600 for 2021)
you get to wait and pay all your bills when your tax return arrives? Do you know about compound interest? Go look up what a poor person has to pay for APR on a credit card to make things meet in the meantime.
I have also realized you took the 50k job to be my typical wage - it was the most I had ever made, and the job lasted all of five months before COVID. Most of what I'm talking about in the article would have been a wage range more typical to me for most of my adult life - think $30,000-$38,000.
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Yes you're right on the 50k vs 30-38k - sorry that was a bit of a misreading. But even $35k would put you not far below UK average earnings, so there's a bit of a puzzle.
My wife and I have just been discussing this. The rent cost seems pretty reasonable to us - we live in London which while not NYC is pretty expensive - we live in a 600 sqft apartment with one child, and it rents out for £1400 a month. It would be cheaper elsewhere, London's definitely the worst; other major cities would be more like what you describe.
I have no idea about car costs because we don't have a car (a consequence of living in London). Some of the other things do seem higher for US than UK. We spend maybe £350 = $480 a month on groceries. And we aren't pinching pennies, we eat pretty well, have wine & beer in that - could definitely trim if needed to. That actually chimes with my (limited) US experience - we have been on holiday a couple of times and definitely thought the supermarkets seemed very pricey.
Bills seem similar, I think - gas, electricity, water, council tax (pays for sewer & garbage) might come to £200=$275 per month. Though for internet and two phones I think we're paying like £35 a month so that's cheaper.
Hmm, so putting those things together things do seem a bit, but not drastically cheaper here, though modest changes I guess might be of very large significance (I should say I have no experience of what you describe - even though we live in a small apartment, we are clearly well off, eg we save about half our income). I wonder if the larger difference is other sources of income. For example, a lot of couples here are two earners. But also, welfare benefits for workers can be significant. I just used a benefit calculator website and someone in our situation, except with two kids, and one adult not working and the other earning $35k=£25k would be entitled to almost £20k per year in welfare benefits (which are not taxed). That's a lot of cash! Almost doubles after tax income. I presume you get EITC? But maybe that's not nearly as large? So maybe it's as simple as that.
I split my time between the US and Italy. I can see that it is much easier to get work in the US, but in Italy it is easier to live at below median wages driven by housing density and subsidized public transportation.
For example, I pay ~$400 for a yearly bus/tram/metro pass in Turin and can generally get by without a car as Italian neighborhoods are zoned and dense enough to have everything within walking distance. Also, one can find inexpensive apartments fairly close to any place you might work in the city, or at least with a straight shot bus commute.
In the US, however, one cannot effectively live without a car.. and the cheapest option will be far more expensive than my Italian bus pass. As the article vividly paints, poverty in the US means one small problem (e.g., broken transmission, new prescription) can trigger cascading failure with little or no safety net beyond the family.
For complicated reasons, the market exchange rate doesn't really capture the cost of living in different places. (Heck, even within a country, or within the Eurozone, the cost of living can vary dramatically from place to place, even though the market exchange rate is inherently 1:1.)
Economists address this with the concept of "purchasing power parity", which lets you compute a sort of exchange rate based on how much things cost at each location instead of the actual market exchange rate between the locations' respective currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity
Welcome to everyone coming from Hacker News - I'm glad to have you!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this down. I could go on and on but you definitely hit the high points. I am an American living in Canada (so two cultures, and wildly divergent ideas about health) and I am someone who grew up "poor-ish" and now lives at a very comfortable income (so, wildly divergent ideas about money between me and my friends depending on how long we've known each other). I have had SO many interactions like the baby shower one you mention, and while I always silently sigh to myself what I really want to do is scream. I grew up with nothing, like literally we had the utilities shut off and would have to deal with power but no water or water but no power depending on what month it was. I went without food, often. I was also discarded by my parents as a teenager, and know what it's like to pick through trash for clean, fresh food (thank wealthy college kids!). Now that my wife and I bring in a very comfortable six figure income decades later, I find myself often unable to relate to ANYTHING most people say about money. I also strongly identify with being able to fix cars and appliances and all kinds of housing-related stuff (when you're poor-ish, it's not like your landlord will ever fix anything without months of argument). This is a good primer that more people need to read...and also, that doctor couple and everyone like them really needs to get their heads out of their asses and start living sensibly. A gilded youth is no excuse.
I really don't blame the doctors in the anecdote for a couple reasons, the first being that I really don't think the poor girl knew enough about the world to know her experience wasn't typical. The other reason is that she was probably legitimately stressed about those things (given her limited experience in more stressful situations). I try not to discount other people's sadness/stress/anxiety/depression too much - money is only one part of a big formula at play there. I'm lucky enough to have a good enough life in other ways that I'm probably happier then she or her husband, overall, and I try to keep that in mind when I see someone with a bunch of stuff I don't have.
My utmost respect to both of you.
Hi again, everyone!
I want to get to all your comments and respond - and I will - but I'm having a bit of a crazy day. I'm really happy about all the engagement here. I know there's some debate happening and it mostly looks pretty reasonable, but I'd ask that to the extent you can you try to be fair to each other - I can't / don't want to moderate very much in here if I can help it.
Again, this has been a great day for me and every interaction I've had with all of you has been very positive. I appreciate it a lot - thank you.
Thanks a lot for this piece. Coming from the more lucky part of earth's population I disagree with one thing you're writing repeatedly:
>> And if you do better than I do - say, if you are a person who completed college on time and went on to your deserved place in the upper-middle class - I hereby command you not to feel bad about it.
I just can't identify with that. As an upper middle-class in one of the richest countries on earth (some say the richest), I do call on all rich people to feel bad! How can you allow one guy to have access to 200'000'000'000 dollars, while others have their water turned off? An American friend of mine said: "because otherwise it would be socialism". So what?
What's wrong with caring about poor people? The author is trying hard, but it's difficult, he doesn't manage. Why not force the guy with the zeroes to pay for the water bill? Pay for the health care? It wouldn't even need to be a full zero (pun intended).
So to all the rich guys out there: if this piece doesn't make you feel bad, because you're afraid of being socialist, communist, or whatever, then you have a wrong idea of what it means to care about poor people.
And one more thing: even though my country is (one of) the richest countries in the world, I cannot imagine somebody having his water turned off because he cannot pay the bills! Or his power turned off. So it's a socialist country that is (one of) the richest countries of the world. Think about that.
To see this rationale taken to its logical conclusion, I suggest the book "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand... a great read!
What rationale? Having the rich guy pay for the water of the poor? If it's that, then I'm really sorry for you.
I only read the wikipedia entry for the book. But I can tell you that the USA is far from my country with regard to basic human rights and basic human decency. The USA is far worse. And my country is far from what I read in the summary of wikipedia to "Atlas shrugged". And we have very rich people, too ;) So you have a looong way to cover.
While I read that the USA Democrats are called "left extremists", they would pass as our "rightwing party". Bernie Sanders would probably be center-left in my country. I vote more left than Bernie Sanders, and there are still 20% voting more left than I do! And we still have a lot of very rich people.
So you have a lot of leeway. Just because you pay the poor man's water doesn't mean you can't have rich people, too. Just because the poor can live decently, doesn't mean you can have very rich people, too.
But telling me that you don't want to pay the poor man's water because: "taken to its logical conclusion, that would be like "Atlas Shrugged"" is just stupid.
So if you think that going all the way to have everything shared by everybody is a bad thing, I might even agree. However, the imbalance in today's world is soo huge, and it's getting bigger every day, that we can reverse this, share more, and go a looong way before I'm worried that rich people will not be rich enough anymore.
But who's left to do work which adds the value which is taxed to give to everyone too poor to work? I mean, in the system you describe, I'd rather just be on the receiving end of the welfare rather than producing end, if I'm guaranteed my water bill will be paid, and there is a roof over my head, and poverty is eliminated. Why am I busting my ass to try to make enough money for a decent vacation every once in a while, if I don't have to do anything at all and have all my basic needs met by the government? What if we all did that?
Yes, that's what our right wing parties also tell all of us rich people. Knowing some poor people, I see the following:
- very few just want to slack off.
- In fact, most of the poor people (want to) work hard
- unfortunately they don't have the diplomas that gets them good jobs
The ones who are really dependant on the welfare system in my country are mostly mentally ill or physically disabled. And I cannot blame them for not wanting/being able to work.
On the other hand:
- the rich often don't work that hard
- they often profit from investments
- even with half of their wealth, or 1/10th, they would still be immensly rich
Like the 1% who have half of the world's health. That's just crazy. Just try to imagine. You take a stash of money, you take 100 people, and you give half of the stash to 1 person. Even if you give 1/4th of the stash to that one person, he's still immensly privileged. However, for the 99 others, that already changes a lot!
So, most of the poor people I know don't want to slack off. They want to work. But they only get shitty work. At least here, they get a health insurance, school for their kids, a roof over their head. And you know what? The poor people vote mostly right-wing parties! Go figure. It's rich people like me who vote left-wing parties, so that our money gets distributed. I'll never understand it.
You wouldn't just stay on the receiving end because you would feel bad about yourself. I live in a country where I could do that, but I know no one who just receives and does nothing for it. I've been in that situation for a short time and after about two weeks of relaxing, your self worth drops into the abyss and you start to be willing to do about anything to feel some pride for yourself.
Some people end up in a rut, but that's an issue for a psychologist and not for welfare cuts.
Not everyone will start to do paid work, but you at least start to take care of people/infrastructure/your community, which adds value to your economy, too.
But forget about e.g. finding a woman to have children with, if you don't prove that you are striding for a position where you can take responsibility of others.
>> "You wouldn't just stay on the receiving end because you would feel bad about yourself."
Probably right. I agree with your statements above... But those on the producing end are supposed to feel bad about it too, right? I mean Ineiti started this sub-thread stating as much. So who should feel good in all of this? Those producing, but not "too much"? We should all just aspire to be mediocre.
There will also be a spectrum of production output as we're all different people, not robots... and as it seems to be the case, those who've accumulated more due to their efforts are typically looked at disfavorably by those who have not. We want equitable outcomes, but we start from non-equitable feelings about our fellow humans.
I think wanting to have equal outcomes is not possible, you're right on this one. Of course some people are just lucky and just have a huge charisma and just are good at business or are just smarter than others. I have no problem with some being richer than the rest.
My problem is if some people cannot live decently (like: running water, power, healthcare) while others don't know what to do with their money. And all these arguments about "but then nobody would work", "this would be socialism (sorry, still cannot believe my friend said that)" are mostly bogus.
So to the system in the USA, once again: you can take away a lot of money from the rich and give it to the poor before you come even close to my country with regard to equality. And even in my country we're far from an egalitarian system, which is not what I think is best. So don't fear having more equality. Currently the system in the USA is so unjust that even discussing it makes me cry.
I'm from Germany and we basically have this system. If you loose your job you will get 60% of your previous salary for one year. After that you will still get 420 Euros and the apartment is covered as well. It's not much and you will basically just cover your basic needs, but you don't have to work. There is even this one famous person that didn't work for years and doesn't plan to. And now I tell you what: You need to accept that there are people that will abuse that system like this person I mentioned before. But the number is so low, that it doesn't matter. Germany had an unemployment rate of 5.0% in 2019 (USA 3.67%, but it was also way higher than Germany's some years ago). This is not a high number. So the scenario you are describing isn't happening. Germany is even one of the countries with the highest taxes in the world and people still work. This system is successful since around 70 years.
Don't forget that the USA's system's unemployment number excludes those who have given up on looking for work so it is artificially low.
Think about it this way. There are a set of jobs that are absolutely required in society. You need someone to grow food, you need someone to supply water (assuming we aren't getting it from a river/natural water source), you need people to pick food. In modern society you have things like electricity and what not but it all looks the same in this example so we can group all of that together.
Say we decide as a society that the government should supply food to everyone. How do we "pay" for that? Well we need someone to grow the food, so the government (which prints/controls money) can create a job of "food grower" (aka farmer). But no one wants to do it, they are content to continue to get free food and housing. How do we get people to do that job? We increase the pay. Money buys a nicer house, nicer food, etc. Eventually you will find a person who is willing to sell their labor for the money the government is offering. That salary would be one part of the cost of supplying food to everyone. No one is forced to work but people who want nicer things will want to work to be able to buy those things.
The problem with the argument of "I'd rather just be on the receiving end of the welfare" is that we can see, with the current society in the USA, that there are people that always want more. You look at billionaires, who have more money than a person could spend in a lifetime, trying to get more money. That drive in some people isn't going to magically go away once they have a basic shelter and food.
And there you have it... in the end its the people without the drive demanding that the people with the drive give up what they've worked for because "equity". If we assume "drive" is something people are born with, and can't really do anything about, then it seems ironic... the people born with drive are almost being taken advantage of by those born without it... and those with drive are being told to "feel bad!" about it too. So if I'm born with the ambitious gene, its okay to be shamed for it... just not okay to shame people for other genes they are born with.
Also: in my country it's mostly the rich voting left-wing. Poor people and foreigners are mostly voting for right-wing parties. They propose to kick out people who are voting for them and ask the people voting for them to pay more taxes. Reading it like this doesn't make sense. But I had many conversations this way.
In 2004 a right-wing leader got elected in my country, and I shared my concern with a foreign student from Rumania. His response: "yes, it's a good idea to kick out foreigners. They are just lazy and don't want to work". He was a foreigner, he was working hard, he was (is) very smart, and these were his words!
You assume that you have to give away _everything_ you earn. Which I never proposed. All I'm saying is that I find it unjust if the 1% of top earners make half of the total money. And more so, if these 1% spend a lot of money to convince people that they should share even less.
Again: I'm OK with some people getting more money if they are gifted in something useful. But I'm not OK if the people at the bottom have their water supply turned off, cannot eat other things than rice, or don't have healthcare. These are part of the human decency. Our technology allows us to distribute this to everybody. And even if we do so, we can have very rich people.
Honestly, if Jeff Bezos has 2e11 US$, 1e11, or even just 1e10 US$ is irrelevant. It's a whole f**king lot of money that could pay a lot of healthcare, money, and power.
What I think is crazy is if those rich people are so rich and can influence so much, that even the author of this article has to write: "don't feel bad about being rich and not sharing".
Hell yes, feel bad about not sharing more! Don't feel bad about being a genius, charismatic, whatever makes you gain a lot of money. Feel bad about not sharing. Feel bad about asking more money from the poor. Because this is what is happening.
How are you being shamed? No one is forcing you to work and you are being fairly compensated for your labor. If we need 1 person to grow food to feed everyone in the world then that person should be compensated for providing an important service to society. What part of this exploitative? The government has a farm it needs worked, we are assuming that farm land is not stolen but let's not get into that now, it needs 1 person to grow the food. It pays that person a good wage to feed all of the people in the nation. Who in this relationship is getting shamed?
The concept of socialism in the USA has been used by the political right wing to instill fear. It provides a convenient excuse why people the rich should not help the less fortunate. Socialism (in that it might come after them for their money) being contrary to their belief system allows them to abdicate moral values that would otherwise suggest helping is simply the right thing to create possibility for everyone climb out of poverty.
The doctors in the author's scenario complaining about not having enough to meet expenses indicates a strong lack of self awareness about the world around them. You'd have to really have your head up your arse not to notice the disparities around you. There may truly be people like that, but I rather think it's easy for them to just ignore the uncomfortable stuff. After all, <sarcasm> they represent a different 'class' </sarcasm>.
And of course it has been historically instilled to the people of the USA during the cold war! Coming back to my friend who exclaimed "but that would be socialism" (giving _some_ money of the rich to the poor), I really felt it was coming as a gut reaction, not a really thought through conviction.
A bit like "sleep-teaching" in "Brave New World" - repeat after me, "Socialism is bad!"...
I'll worry about the author later; it's YOU that needs to feel bad, and NOW! Not tomorrow! You're calling the guy out, for explaining things to a great degree, and, now it's YOUR TURN to grab the megaphone and want somebody to pay somebody's water bill? HE cares about poor people; I care about poor people. YOU care about how many zeros is on somebody's paycheck, and you want that person to start scratching checks for poor people, on the assumption that he/she/we haven't/won't/shant continue. YOU should feel bad, *immediately*, because you are a defacto communist. Seriously, stop shitting on the free world.
I love you. That's exactly the discourse I usually get when I ask people from the USA to help poor people: "you are defacto communist". Come on, you're smart guys, you can do better.
My country is Switzerland. I love this country, I identify with it. But it's in no way communist. All I wrote here is my experience in my country. We care for the poor, at least in our country. Nobody gets his/her water turned off because he/she doesn't pay the bills. And I would not call that communist, rather common sense.
Yes, I feel bad. Even Switzerland should care more about the poor outside. But that goes much farther than the discussion here. If you call me communist for proposing to care for the poor, what will you call me when I ask you to care about poor people outside of your country?
And how can you say: "I care about poor people" and then accept that poor people have their water turned off? While I say: "let's make it so that poor people don't have their water turned off" and you call me a communist? Come on. The 1980s are over. Communism is over. Get a new word to fling on people. I'm not asking for communism. I'm asking for sharing a little bit. Not all 0s, just 1 (or 2)...
"...because you're afraid of being socialist, communist, or whatever,..." not wanting to be communist and or socialist is not the same as not caring about poor people. The viewpoint of free market proponents is that poor people would have more opportunity without government hindering their growth. For example, the perverse incentives mentioned in the article.
OK, you're right! And that's exactly my point! However, working in an international setting, most of the people from the USA I talk to think that giving money to the poor is "socialist, communist", whatever. So I did tease you. Sorry about that ;)
I don't see how the government is hindering the growth of the person described in this post. By taking away help above a certain threshold of income? But you just said that the government should not intervene? Decide what you want...
I don't think it is enough to "get out of the way of the poor" to let them become rich. I also don't understand how you cannot feel injustice against a system (the USA) that lets some people be stinking rich, while others don't have water? How can that be anything worthwhile? How can you remove the participation of the rich guys to the poor by reducing the rich guy's taxes and increasing the poor guys taxes? And then say: "but else it would be socialism". Well, you don't say that. Thank you. But a lot of people do.
Even though I pay very little taxes (15%) in my socialist country (teasing again, sorry), I add another 10% to give to the poor. No questions asked. But honestly, I would prefer that the government would do that. Why? Because they know better than me who _really_ needs that money. Now it just goes to poor people I know. Which is probably not the most effective.
"I also don't understand how you cannot feel injustice against a system (the USA)"
I do. I don't like how the government spends tax dollars starting wars I don't want them in while individuals struggle to purchase basic necessities.
The fundamental difference is I see governments as incompetent at best and malevolent at worst.
"Why? Because they know better than me who _really_ needs that money." I also disagree with this statement as well. Why would a centralized system be able to understand whom needs assistance more than individuals in their own community?
I think that's a good point. I served as a missionary for 10 years in Africa. There, the government was "an evil beast that you need to feed so it doesn't eat you". That's the impression I have the USA citizens think about their government. Like a third world country. Yes, I'm teasing you, sorry.
Living in a democracy I don't like _everything_ my government does. But most of it. I see the government as an expression of the people's will. As such I suppose it's competent, does what the majority wants, and protects minorities. It has its flaws, sure. But you can discuss it and make propositions, steer it somewhere you think it makes more sense.
So I'm happy to pay taxes. I have roads, schools (free), universities (1'200US$ A YEAR), hospitals (best hospitals are public ones, the private ones only give you better room service), infrastructure, you name it. Yes, sometimes it goes awry, but most of the time the decisions are made on sound policy. So they know better than me who really is poor, and who just tries to be my friend because he knows I give away money.
From an outside view, the USA government is all about show and money. The presidency costs an enormous amount of money that would pay all water of all the poor people, I'm sure. It's all about making sure the rich get richer. Tax cuts for the rich, more taxes for the poor. Worst of all? See this article: the poor "don't want to complain - if you're rich, enjoy it". That's the worst thing that can happen, the poor thinking they don't even have the right to complain! Please do! Complain! Tell the rich the pain you're feeling! They (we, I) don't know what it is like! Tell us! Make us feel bad! We should feel bad! We have the resources to pay your water, but we complain about the car we just cannot have! Or the one 0 we need to give away! F**k us! Rise! We deserve it!
OK, that was a bit harsh, sorry. But I think it's true. Worse than rich getting tax cuts is the poor voting for it. Don't.
Or, as Jesus puts it: "there is one more thing you need to do: go and sell all your belongings, give it to the poor, then follow me"...
Thank you for sharing your story. You captured a lot of nuance in what it’s like to be broke. I’ve been poor, really poor, with a family. So I empathize, and am very familiar with that territory.
I was poor and managed to have the right opportunities come along, one after the other, and I managed to take said opportunities. Some of that, of course is what some might call “dumb luck.”
I have one tiny piece of unsolicited advice: You are obviously an intelligent, logical, articulate, and technically-minded person given your aptitude for mechanical things. Software engineering might be a good fit, I think, if you are interested.
If you haven’t already done so and you’re at all interested in coding, Google “Free Code Camp”. It’s a great resource that can actually lead a person into a career in web development. Everything you need is there. Of course, that’s only if you are interested and can spare some time to focus on that.
Best of luck to you, and I hope that didn’t come off preachy. Web development is just how I got myself and my family out of poverty. That and a lot of good opportunities I was fortunate enough to have.
You didn't come of preachy at all. I'm sort of learning SQL right now for some of the reasons you mentioned - I like working with data where I get the chance. I'm probably going to have to pick up a programming language and some data-related tools as well, but it's not a bad direction to go (assuming I end up being smart enough to do it, which is a bit of a crap shoot).
In case you get the influx of traffic I suspect that you will (and deserve) and are wondering why: this article appeared on Hacker News and is doing quite well there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26300139
My metrics definitely picked it up when I checked this morning after noticing the influx. You are correct that it's a pretty large influx of traffic - >10x the hit count compared to what it was before, which I'm thrilled about.
Congrats!
I hereby recommend all newcomers subscribe to this author!
Since you’re able to do “anything less complex than a full engine or transmission rebuild,” I’m sure becoming a mechanic (an in-demand job that requires rare skills) has crossed your mind. Is there some high barrier to entry, the blue collar equivalent of “just the skill without an associated degree”?
Both you and Jean are right to an extent on what's going on here, at least for me. To cover where Jesse is right: there is a pretty big difference between me and a "real" mechanic - namely that he usually has training and experience I don't have. I can do stuff on my own cars, but it takes an awful lot of time and there's a significant risk I do the more complex stuff wrong in some way; this is the difference I think between accumulating a lot of hours either in school or having worked my way up through lower-paying mechanic-type jobs (being the oil change kid) in the past.
The other thing to consider is that mechanic work generally just doesn't pay a whole lot - it has the potential to, but a majority of full fledged mechanic jobs I'm seeing right now are <50k; if I walked in and could convince someone to hire me "because I've maintained my own cars" I would be getting significantly less than that. It's not an impossible route, but it's not super easy and I'd likely have to take a pay cut to start working up an entirely different career ladder - that represents a lot of risk.
Are you able to parlay your skills of fixing cars into a bartering opportunity? Or a way to pay it forward?
Do the poor use tools like Craigslist for this purpose? How important is bartering in their economy?
Believe it or not, the Craigslist market for mechanics is pretty packed, and an awful lot of them have certs that make them a little bit more attractive to the average consumer. I've thought about trying to just drop my price to compete with that, but given that I then would take much longer compared to a real, experienced mechanic, I'd be getting into a pretty low-wage territory per-hour. That's before I have to consider liability, or getting halfway into a job and realizing I'm not good enough to do it - that sort of thing.
As for paying it forward, I pretty regularly help people I know with car problems of the type I know how to fix; less paying it forward and more just what I can contribute to the friendship besides fiendishly good looks.
I don't find bartering to be that common in my neck of the woods, although I'm sure there are people who do it.
You handled that remarkably politely. XD As a guy who drives a car that's older than my girlfriend, I've done some downright stupid repairs to my vehicle - I've even crawled around in the dirt of a road side stop because the alternator gave out while I was on the highway. But no, that doesn't mean I have any ability to become a mechanic, either at a dealership or off of Craigslist. Not to mention that there's a huge difference between occasionally fixing your own car, and fixing cars all day long. The former has an element of fun and engagement to it - the latter would have me blowing my brains out with whiskey on the reg, and ultimately getting fired before my three months were up.
I don’t understand these sorts of armchair quarterbacking giving him advice how to parlay his skills. He obviously thinks about those things and is not going to have an epiphany from a blog comment
Most people probably don't realize that Mechanics generally have to supply their own tools. It gets expensive. I have a friend who went from mechanic work to IT once he capped out his salary on mechanic jobs. Only the very specialized can really make bank; and cars keep needing less and less work.
There's a huge difference between "google/youtube info on my car to fix it" and "having the knowledge necessary to be hired as a mechanic". Not to discount the author's skills, but it's not what a mechanic shop would be looking for, and if they were they'd just hire some teen/20s w/ comparable knowledge at a lower wage.
I replied to Jean above - I agree with both of you to an extent.
“Anything less complex than a full engine or transmission rebuild” implies a lot more skill than “google/youtube info on my car to fix it.” It takes a huge amount of experience to go from merely reading service manuals (or watching the youtube equivalent) to actually working on a real car.
Not really, anyone can follow directions and do most of the stuff outside an engine or transmission. That's where skill and a clean environment start to come in. Otherwise, it's more about swapping out parts and figuring out how much stuff you have to take out to get to something.
You sound like an awesome person and I wish you the best.
Thanks! Same!
hey, great article! I'd add two things. First and foremost is mental health. Most don't choose to be poor and (like obesity) there are typically comorbidities. This means that people with additional, stigmatized needs are unable or less able to get professional help. Thus higher rates of a addiction and self medication and compounding injuries (bad back > job loss or no exercise > poor diet). Most things are made for average height, white, right handed, english speaking, mobile people. These are a couple of dimensions most people don't think about most of the time, but the more atypical you are the harder it can be to be traditionally successful. This is generally fine, but 10% of people (statistically) don't have the "fluid intelligence" (IQ) to serve in the military. These people, especially, have a hard time adapting and their poverty (including social poverty) can be astounding.
The other thing I'd add is that your lower class comparison was for $17.50/hour. This was a great comparison, and I really appreciated it. Finding housing when you're making $10-$12/hour or when working part time is a large part of the american experience; 31.3% of americans make less than $12/hour (source: https://policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/poverty-in-the-us/low-wage-map/). Again, thanks for the article.
Those poor people are the victims of IQ denialism. Quite frankly, if the army can't find something useful for you to do, nobody in a capitalist, ends-based system can find something useful for you to do. I would absolute support a make-work program that paid these people a living wage, to help them get out of the house and give them some dignity, not just welfare designed to keep them at home and out of sight.
But it's not like anybody in charge cares what any of us think. Denying IQ is not just fashionable, it also compliments the lower two-thirds of the population. So, it will continue for the foreseeable future.
i can't tell you how much time i spend trying to convey the experience of being Actually Poor in america. the responses usually come down to a few major categories, most of which have come around in the comments even:
>can't you just [obvious surface-level change that you've already thought of and won't help]?
>that doesn't seem so bad when i do the math in my head!
>this just proves everything about my socio-economic opinion bundle!
>i'm not american, so it'd be different if you joined me in a more advanced civilization
you're being incredibly polite about all of it, but i see where you're putting the effort in. i used this article to explain a couple of specific situations to someone i know, and, well, it's still very hard to get across the difference in lifestyle, you did better than a lot of people who get paid to write about social issues. i did notice a couple of things i can comment on:
1) in the auto-expenses section, you didn't mention one thing i think people might not immediately realize: it's actually illegal in most places to drive uninsured. this means that you're forced to pay for the frankly-unfair pricing on liability insurance, which like you mentioned, doesn't even help you in most practical cases. a lot of people don't, and so they drive uninsured, and they hope they don't get pulled over for a tail light or turn signal, because if they do, they could face license revocations, car impounds, and other harassments of the justice system. this isn't rare-- i myself have driven uninsured for this reason, and i've known a lot of people who have faced real consequences for it, like a car that gets impounded and the driver just cannot afford to pay the fees to get it back, so it ends up being auctioned off. another similar situation arises with child support: at least where i'm from, if you fall behind on your child support payments, you can have your driver's license revoked. usually, you can't just stop driving because you need to work, so people drive without a license and risk being arrested if they get pulled over at random. again, i've seen this happen more than once, in addition to it happening in my family growing up. i shouldn't need to mention that this policy does nothing to help the family on the other side of the divorce; if the other parent can't go to work, it just makes it even less likely that they'll see their full support payment next month.
2) square-footage is a fairly unreliable comparison for people to make with regards to housing, because Arizona is a pretty open place and it might seem to them that your apartment is fairly sizeable, as far as apartments go. i could walk into a hundred apartments and sort them into middle-class or lower-class, but at no point would size factor into the equation. age of appliances and fixtures, general level of maintenance, and the attitude of the holding company are going to make a much bigger difference-- but even then, it's not as big as the location. most cheap housing in the US is held very far away from city centers, and i rarely ever meet poor people who are housed in an area that doesn't have a horrible commute. i've had coworkers in LA with ninety-plus-minute bus commutes, and the transit situation here, while a meme, is not worse than that in Phoenix. and people seem to be commenting to the expectation that your $1200 apartment was fairly reasonable, which i'd argue is much the point-- but according to conventional budget advice, it's far too expensive for somebody on a lower-class wage. you can make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and still not really be able to afford that apartment. and everything below that is not just cramped, it's dangerous.
My family lived with a somewhat upper-middle-class income for most of my adult life. We managed to get by but never ahead (a lot of that was our poor decision making around expenses and debt). But it was always very clear to me that people in the lower middle class and working class could barely stay above water, and something like a cracked engine block would be absolutely devastating.
Things have gotten really unaffordable over the past 30 years, I believe much of this is due to financialization of the economy as well as Federal Reserve policy to keep asset prices as high as possible. It does seem that the jenga tower is likely to collapse soon.
This was a good read. I'm going to forward this to my kids, hoping they will actually read something that is longer than a tweet or InstaGarbage post. I am in the 'do not feel guilty' category, but got there mostly via luck (yes, and some hard work). I have not gone through any hardship to get there, and had a comfortable youth. Being where I am with just highschool and some courses I consider myself extremely lucky, and posts like yours just reaffirm that. They also scare me to death.
I admire your resilience, and wish you continued happiness!
A word on dental-school clinics: in my experience the trade-off is not quality, but time, which can change the calculus a bit (if you're poor and working multiple jobs, you might be able to stand a substandard teeth-cleaning but not one which takes three times as long as ordinary). Dental students are, in my experience more meticulous if anything than their credentialed peers, because they have so much more to lose from an imperfect performance. But because they are being assessed on their performance — because during and after the process teaching dentists come in (on their own time, and they're usually riding herd on several students at once) to assess the work, there's a lot of waiting around for a third party to look into your mouth and assess the job. That can really make it a longer process, by a good chunk.
It definitely seems to take a bit longer, although I don't have a non-dental-clinic frame of reference to compare it to. For a lot of things it's ~33% of the cost, so I don't mind too much.
Just chiming in to say thank you for this post. I grew up poorer than most of the people I interact with, and it's hard for people to understand what it was like. My siblings and I went to the doctor at the health department, our utilities were cut off once a year or so until my parents could borrow money from their siblings to reconnect, and we had years where the only Christmas presents were from charity. Dentistry still scares the hell out of me. Although I still feel sadness and shame looking back, those are my own issues to work through; my parents did the best they could and loved us all and worked harder than everyone.
So thank you for writing this. Not just for those who don't understand what it's like, but also for those who do. Life can be alienating and difficult, and it's nice to know we're never truly alone.
This article could have been 10 times longer and I would have read it. I have gone from being "broke" to being "ok" to being legit poor in about 15 years as an adult. Broke my back for almost all of those years too. I think something not covered in this article which is incredibly annoying is how much people who have financial success are never willing to admit how much luck is a factor. What neighborhood you were born in, who your parents are, what time in human history. Hell when my dad was a kid you worked at the mill for 35 years and retired comfortably. I don't know a single person who has had less than 5 jobs by now.
Extra spicy layer to the Craigslist equation: being femme. Facebook Marketplace is amazing for deals, and I've been using it more often than CL for the pay few months. Yesterday I tried buying a torch (for metalworking) and there guy decided to mention "don't take this the wrong way but I looked at your profile and you're a cutie".
There was no way I was going to pursue any further interaction with the seller after that. I told him I'd pass on the torch. Creepy shit.
Thanks for this article - it was a great read. Here's one thing I've been struggling to understand a little bit. You said that pre-COVID you were earning $50k - I think that's just you, and your wife, if she works, is additional to that. I live in the UK, and at the current exchange rate $50k is £36k. Median earnings for full-time employees in the UK is just over £30k. So in the UK, you would be modestly above average, perhaps the 60th percentile or something.
But what you describe sounds way, way worse than what 60% of people in the UK experience. The UK is not as rich as the US but it is clearly a rich country. So what's going on here? I have a few ideas:
1. It's not individual income that matters, but household, and maybe your wife doesn't work and that's relevant.
2. It's not before tax income that matters but after tax (net). But I assume taxes in the UK are higher than the US. And - related to (1) - median *household net* income in the UK is like £25k or something.
3. You get more services provided by the government in the UK. But I think that's only true for healthcare and dental, and you get your health insurance for free anyway? (NB. You have to pay a bit for dental and prescriptions here, but it's pretty much nominal). I guess public transport might be a bit better in the UK - certainly in London it's very good and no-one (even rich people) drives to work. Though if you don't live in a big city, there's very little generally. And I'm fairly sure that the bottom 60% of the population outside big cities largely have cars.
4. Some of it is expectations. You described a 900 sqft apartment as "very small" - in the UK a modest sized house is about that.
5. Something to do with the cost of living differing? I don't know.
Do you have any ideas?
This has actually been tough for me - having not lived in the UK it's hard for me to compare things place-to-place in the same way it's hard for you to imagine the cost of things in the US/Arizona. I do wish that in writing this I was a little more aware of differences between countries - I'm naturally very US-centric in how I view the world, and a lot of the feedback I've gotten is like yours.
One thing that's been suggested to me is the average cost of goods/services is higher in the US; that since the country itself is richer, things just cost more. This might be. I think the easiest way to explain it might be like this:
Let's say I make 35k a year; that amounts to about 2300 a month, more or less. Say $900 a month goes to rent; this gets a place in a not-so-safe part of town that does none-the-less contain us. I pretty much have a car in the city I live in to work/participate at all in society because of the distances involved and how poor our public transit is. Let's say petrol/insurance costs are around 150. My average utility bill is something like 300 a month for gas/water/sewer/garbage/electricity (electricity costs are high in my municipality - it's a desert and A/C is pretty necessary). Between one cell phone and internet, say another $100.
At that point I have something like $850 left to live on. The USDA estimates a monthly "thrifty" level of food cost at something like $675 (https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJan2021.pdf). So at that point I'd have something like $175 left to live on - to buy toiletries and clothing, any necessary car maintenance, anything extra at all.
So bear in mind these numbers are approximate, but I think they are pretty close to what it's like to live in a major American city at that income level. There's definitely some room to trim, but choices at that level are pretty hard; there's not a lot left to trim that doesn't hurt, if that makes sense. And that's assuming no major catastrophes; a engine blowing up on you could be a pretty big deal here.
Please pick holes in this - anything that doesn't make sense or that doesn't jive for you, let me know and I'll try my best to explain it. Also please let me know what stands out to you as a difference between my country and yours - that kind of thing is as interesting to me as it is to you.
$35k a year married with two kids all else equal leaves you with a tax bill of $1k (no income tax in AZ) before any credits. That's $2800 a month, not $2300. Then you have credits. Child tax credit wipes out your $1k tax liability. Additional child tax credit and EITC get you $8k extra. So total after tax is $43k or almost $3600 a month. In 2020 there was an additional $5800 in stimulus payments (and it looks like maybe another $5600 for 2021)
you get to wait and pay all your bills when your tax return arrives? Do you know about compound interest? Go look up what a poor person has to pay for APR on a credit card to make things meet in the meantime.
I have also realized you took the 50k job to be my typical wage - it was the most I had ever made, and the job lasted all of five months before COVID. Most of what I'm talking about in the article would have been a wage range more typical to me for most of my adult life - think $30,000-$38,000.
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. Yes you're right on the 50k vs 30-38k - sorry that was a bit of a misreading. But even $35k would put you not far below UK average earnings, so there's a bit of a puzzle.
My wife and I have just been discussing this. The rent cost seems pretty reasonable to us - we live in London which while not NYC is pretty expensive - we live in a 600 sqft apartment with one child, and it rents out for £1400 a month. It would be cheaper elsewhere, London's definitely the worst; other major cities would be more like what you describe.
I have no idea about car costs because we don't have a car (a consequence of living in London). Some of the other things do seem higher for US than UK. We spend maybe £350 = $480 a month on groceries. And we aren't pinching pennies, we eat pretty well, have wine & beer in that - could definitely trim if needed to. That actually chimes with my (limited) US experience - we have been on holiday a couple of times and definitely thought the supermarkets seemed very pricey.
Bills seem similar, I think - gas, electricity, water, council tax (pays for sewer & garbage) might come to £200=$275 per month. Though for internet and two phones I think we're paying like £35 a month so that's cheaper.
Hmm, so putting those things together things do seem a bit, but not drastically cheaper here, though modest changes I guess might be of very large significance (I should say I have no experience of what you describe - even though we live in a small apartment, we are clearly well off, eg we save about half our income). I wonder if the larger difference is other sources of income. For example, a lot of couples here are two earners. But also, welfare benefits for workers can be significant. I just used a benefit calculator website and someone in our situation, except with two kids, and one adult not working and the other earning $35k=£25k would be entitled to almost £20k per year in welfare benefits (which are not taxed). That's a lot of cash! Almost doubles after tax income. I presume you get EITC? But maybe that's not nearly as large? So maybe it's as simple as that.
I split my time between the US and Italy. I can see that it is much easier to get work in the US, but in Italy it is easier to live at below median wages driven by housing density and subsidized public transportation.
For example, I pay ~$400 for a yearly bus/tram/metro pass in Turin and can generally get by without a car as Italian neighborhoods are zoned and dense enough to have everything within walking distance. Also, one can find inexpensive apartments fairly close to any place you might work in the city, or at least with a straight shot bus commute.
In the US, however, one cannot effectively live without a car.. and the cheapest option will be far more expensive than my Italian bus pass. As the article vividly paints, poverty in the US means one small problem (e.g., broken transmission, new prescription) can trigger cascading failure with little or no safety net beyond the family.
> at the current exchange rate $50k is £36k.
For complicated reasons, the market exchange rate doesn't really capture the cost of living in different places. (Heck, even within a country, or within the Eurozone, the cost of living can vary dramatically from place to place, even though the market exchange rate is inherently 1:1.)
Economists address this with the concept of "purchasing power parity", which lets you compute a sort of exchange rate based on how much things cost at each location instead of the actual market exchange rate between the locations' respective currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity