Why it's expensive to be poor

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html?referrer=emailarticle

by tialys • 17 years ago

183 193 17 years ago

washingtonpost.com

_cbsz• 17 years ago

read it, enjoyed it, but had to flag because it's OT. Sorry.

mattyb• 17 years ago

And what exactly is the topic?

gamache• 17 years ago

Hacker News. I flagged it as well, incidentally.

tialys• 17 years ago

I'll be honest, I thought it was on topic because I enjoy these types of stories on Hacker News, as well as the discussion. I rarely submit stories unless I think they will generate good discussion. If you want to define a 'topic' for this, I'd say it's understanding another market, and getting insight in to a lifestyle you may not fully recognize or understand. That said, I still understand if you flag it.

madair• 17 years ago

Another article goes to #1, and a couple people flag it. Something is wrong with this system.

run4yourlives7• 17 years ago

I think it's more a difference of opinion, which isn't exactly something that needs correction.

dantheman• 17 years ago

What's with the down modding, if you don't like it respond.

lutorm9• 17 years ago

What is it they say, "money rolls uphill"?

It's very true that when you don't have funds to make financial investments that pay off over time you end up even deeper.

I guess this is why I think progressive taxation is "fair", people with higher incomes can leverage it so it makes more difference than the apparent income difference would indicate.

noonespecial6• 17 years ago

This is exactly the arguement I make when people tell me that progressive taxation is some sort of evil and "fair" is when everyone just pays a fixed percent. I usually say "money has its own economies of scale" and a progressive tax is just a way to address these. "Money rolls uphill" is a nice way of saying that. I hadn't heard that before. I think maybe I'll borrow that. Thanks.

pg5• 17 years ago

Rich people pay more taxes if you have a flat tax rate too.

How do you know how much progressiveness you need to counteract the vague phenomenon you describe? How can you be sure a mere proportionate increase wouldn't be enough to do it? Or even less?

forinti• 17 years ago

Ok, you save a dollar on a gallon of milk, but how much does it cost to own a car?

lutorm9• 17 years ago

That's a very good question, but if you take into account that you can work 2h more per day because you don't have to wait for the bus, it might pay off.

sethg2• 17 years ago

you can work 2h more per day because you don't have to wait for the bus

It pays off if you already have the money up front to buy a car with, or if you have enough income before you buy the car that you qualify for a car loan. You can't get a loan by telling the bank "well, I'm living totally hand to mouth now but if you front me a few thousand bucks for a car then I'll surely find enough extra work to pay back your loan, and pay for gas, and pay the insurance, and pay the insurance deductible if my car gets crashed..."

Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.

akeefer• 17 years ago

The point is that the poor pay more for exactly the same (or even inferior) things as people who are better off, not that they somehow spend more in the aggregate. People who already are going to have less than others because of their lower income actually have that small amount of money go less far than exactly that same amount of money would go for someone who was better off.

You can view that as just the reality of how the economics work out, or you can view that as fundamentally unfair that people essentially get kicked while they're already down.

DanielBMarkham5• 17 years ago

You can view that as just the reality of how the economics work out, or you can view that as fundamentally unfair that people essentially get kicked while they're already down.

The two are not mutually exclusive positions.

ijuhytgjh2• 17 years ago

I spent a lot of time and money learning to be poor - it's called 'grad school'. Which is why I spend a $ on a home made meal of rice/beans/vegetables instead of $5 on a McDs.

Shop at supermarkets at 8:00pm (4:00 on sunday) when they are selling off fresh food and never buy anything except own-label staples that isn't on sale.

earl3• 17 years ago

Everyone should read this link by John Scalzi, as well, as a companion to this article. Being Poor:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

noonespecial6• 17 years ago

That's fantastic. They're all brilliant but, "Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.", just gives me chills.

asciilifeform4• 17 years ago

Search for Ilkka Kokkarinen's comment.

earl3• 17 years ago

Yeah. That reality is a major reason for my progressive politics. Plus the fact that my parents both grew up poor, obviously through no fault of their own, and I think a rich nation should do more to help it's poorest.

whacked_new3• 17 years ago

It's scary, but despite being written down for ages, and having parents and elders who have some sort of duty in imparting their "wisdom," people still make stupid choices for one reason or another, and commonly excusing themselves with "because they were young." It's not just scary on an individual level; it's scary on an organism level; it's scary how so many humans can be so resistant to self evolution: who is responsible for this?

The other scary thing is, poverty in an unequal society is a downward spiral, despite all the pop meritocratic sentiment that is especially rampant in the USA. Rich people are more educated, healthier, more emotionally stable, and... generally more attractive. This becomes a positive feedback loop down the generations.

The sickness is the widespread misattribution of the sum of all of these traits as the result of effort, rather than what is very largely a product of chance: you have no control over what environment you are born into. Essentially, people are credit hogs.

run4yourlives7• 17 years ago

I think that's a little extreme, although I understand the points of the articles and acknowledge the problem.

You can recover from your choices at any time in life, although it certainly gets harder the older you get, whether or not you realize it.

The notion however that your future path is set because of your past choices is part of the myth that the poor need to have destroyed through education. Tomorrow is about what you do tomorrow, not about what you did yesterday.

patio11• 17 years ago

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

Let's not mumble-mumble "choices" -- that makes it sound like you could be doomed forever if, in a fit of adolescent stupidity, you went out with friends instead of studying for a geometry test.

Here are the durable wreck-your-life decisions you can make at age 14:

1) Dropping out of high school, at age 14.

2) Getting thrown in jail for crimes you committed, at age 14.

3) Getting pregnant, at age 14.

They don't seem all that hard to avoid now, do they? And they don't look all that hidden now, do they? Its not like rich people get together and say "Psssst, pssst: having a baby at age 14 will wreck your life. Pass it on but don't tell the poor people!"

jodrellblank3• 17 years ago

Everyone should read that link to learn how nobody but poor and ex-poor people are allowed to comment on poverty.

timmaah• 17 years ago

>>But, Blakeney says: "I don't have time to mail it. You come here and get it done. Then you don't get charged with the late fee." <<

Huh? So you pay 10% for someone to do it for you..

JimmyL2• 17 years ago

To mail it himself would take some long-term planning. He'd have to book off a time when he knows he'll have the bill and the address with him, not put this off until tomorrow, locate and go to a post office/convenience store to buy stamps and an envelope, get the money in his account, and then keep it there for five or six business days until he's sure that it's been cashed.

If you're living paycheque-to-paycheque, this is more difficult than you would think - especially the part about having the fifty bucks sitting in his account for five days without touching it.

adatta022• 17 years ago

It seems like this should be a huge opportunity for someone to come in and optimize things.

The "pay day advance" stuff seems particularly wasteful and generally awful. Even my credit card company won't charge me $50 to front me $300 in cash. Hell on a clean card with one of those "0% APR for 6 months" I could probably cut myself a 3k bridge loan and pay almost nothing. (assuming I just pay minimums and then if the 0% APR expires I clear the balance).

ryanwaggoner3• 17 years ago

Those 0% intro rates rarely apply to cash advances.

sp332• 17 years ago

Yeah, but sometimes they do.

chollida1• 17 years ago

> Even my credit card company won't charge me $50 to front me $300 in cash.

Yes, but the credit car company has allready screened you and determined that you aren't a large risk to default.

The people who use payday loan services are statistically much more likely to default on their payments or to try and cash bad cheques.

JimmyL2• 17 years ago

If you're the kind of person that needs to go to a payday loan place, you're not going to be eligible for a 0% APR card - if you're lucky, you'd be offered a fully-secured credit card (meaning you have to give them money first before you can use it, and you can only use up to the amount you've given them) with a maximum balance of five hundred bucks, which you wouldn't have lying around anyways.

You get those card offers now because you're (presumably) employed to some degree and have a decent credit rating, so the card company thinks you're a pretty good bet to not default. If you need a payday loan, it's unlikely you have anything near a good credit rating, if you have one at all.

As for optimizing things, it depends on who you want to optimize for. If you want to optimize it for the credit card and payday loan companies, that's pretty much been done already - they have a very permissive set of regulations they operate under, and aren't short on profit margin. If you want to do it for the customers, that means you need to set up a financing service aimed at high-risk individuals, but you're going to have to mark-up some to make up for the default rate.

A good deal of people who frequent payday loan companies can't even get it together (for whatever reasons, both in and out of their immediate control) to get a normal checking account - you think that they'll be offered no-interest unsecured credit cards?

adatta022• 17 years ago

@optimizing why not do something like a fresh fruit/vegetable cart that rolls through every morning at say 8am. The cart is actually backed/financed/supported by some bigger "rich folk" store (Shaws/Krugers/whatever) and is only available from 8am to 10am.

This, theoretically reduces the "cost of doing business" since the likely hood that you get mugged for vegetables and fruit in broad daylight is probably pretty low.

Following from the article, low cost of doing business should mean lower costs - even if you factor in gas and such you should still be able to beat the corner market and cut a profit since you are selling "big box" product at a markup...

oldgregg• 17 years ago

I've always really hated vehicle emissions testing. It's evil. The government colludes with the auto industry to force perfectly fine but slightly older vehicles off the road. And 90% of the time it's not even related to emissions--- some damn sensor is just faulty. For the middle class it's a costly expense. But if you own a car that costs $1500 but to pass emissions you have to spend $1000 to get it fixed, you're hosed. So you don't have any option but to drive an unregistered vehicle, and so the cycle continues...

iron_ball• 17 years ago

Well, that varies by state, I think. Wisconsin had specific exemptions for cars over a certain age, or cars that would cost too much to bring in line. You just had to get an estimate from your auto shop demonstrating that compliance would exceed a certain amount, and you'd be waived.

onedognight• 17 years ago

Putting $1000 into a $1500 car still makes it much cheaper than any new car you can buy in the US.

As air pollution expert Glen Class used to say (while acknowledging its disproportionate effect one the poor), the most effective thing you can do improve auto emissions is to remove the oldest 10% of cars from the road as they contribute emissions equal to the newer 90%.

While I don't know who colludes with whom, new cars really are that much better emissions wise than older ones.

yummyfajitas• 17 years ago

I call BS on some of the "facts" in this story.

...an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston [says]. "You have to work a lot of hours and still not make a lot of money...."

Just not true. The typical poor family works less than half as much as the typical non-poor family (1000 hours/year vs 2100 hours/year).

http://www3.brookings.edu/es/wrb/publications/pb/pb28.pdf

You ask him why he didn't just go to a bank...He says he lost his driver's license and now his regular bank "won't recognize me as a human.

A check cashing place requires the same, usually more stringent ID than a bank.

...Jacob Carter finds himself standing in a checkout line at the Giant on Alabama Avenue SE...The clerk suggests that he use his "bonus card" for savings...Carter tells the clerk he has no such card.

Bonus cards are so hard to get. You need to walk over to the courtesy counter, ask for one, then fill out phony information on the card to get it.

randallsquared3• 17 years ago

You almost never have to walk to the courtesy counter; you can fill it out while standing at the checkout. But people typically don't know this, in my experience, and the cashier is unlikely to enlighten them, since then he'll have to wait for them to fill it out while there are people in line, etc.

Things like this are important to know, and if you don't already just know, you have to ask about them constantly. If you don't know that, though, and you're poor, it feels as though you're asking for handouts or special help whenever you aggressively inquire about this sort of thing.

jrockway3• 17 years ago

At most stores I've been in, the cashier will enter the store "bonus card" number if you ask them to. In fact, they often enter the number before I can even get my card out.

I'm surprised they don't do this in DC. It must be a Chicago thing.

jsrfded• 17 years ago

They can take a phone number too; I give them nnn-555-1212. It's always registered and you get the discount. I use this on vacation - "What's the area code here?" "808..?" "My number is 808-555-1212". Bingo.

But yeah, it's a hack.

jrockway3• 17 years ago

I agree with you here. Some of the things that the article dismisses as impossible are quite possible, like getting a bank account. You have to waste an hour waiting in line to get an ID, and then you can save $15 every time you get paid. That sounds like a good deal to me. These people should do that, and stop letting the check cashing places take advantage of them. They can also go to the public library and pay their bills online, saving the the cost of either postage or the fee on the money order. None of this costs money or much time, but it will save money.

Also, why are people with a 10 minute drive not riding a bicycle? If you can't afford a car, and the bus route isn't convenient enough, it's time to get a bicycle.

I also don't buy the article's premise that having a car is mandatory. I live in a big city (Chicago), and I have never owned a car. I ride my bike to the grocery store (even in the winter), take the CTA to other stores I need to visit, or just order what I need online. All of these things save me money, and don't cost me much time. (It would take as long to drive to the grocery store ad it takes to ride my bike.)

Don't get me wrong, I know the poor have a hard life. But some of their problems are easily fixed, if they are willing to invest time now to save time later.

huherto4• 17 years ago

That is kind of the point of the article. Part of being poor is not knowing ways of saving money. That is why they are stuck in this vicious circle.

quoderat• 17 years ago

Try living in rural North Florida without a car.

huherto4• 17 years ago

<i>...Jacob Carter finds himself standing in a checkout line at the Giant on Alabama Avenue SE...The clerk suggests that he use his "bonus card" for savings...Carter tells the clerk he has no such card.</i>

The way I understand the paragraph is that Carter doesn't even ask because he thinks it is something beyond his possibilities. Just one of the many things he cannot get because he is poor.

greyboy3• 17 years ago

In fairness to the other side, that sounds like a problem with Jacob Carter and his assumptions than with "the system." We can't really blame them for that, can we? I'm sure they WANT him to use they card, just as for any other class of people (so the retailer can use that information for advertising, move the goods they desire to, etc).

tomsaffell• 17 years ago

I had high hopes for this article (based on the title), but was utterly disappointed by it. It seems to serve no purpose other than to provide dinner-party fodder for the middle classes hoping to project a sense of I'm in touch with the poor empathy.

It deals with a generality that is stunningly obvious: it's expensive to be poor. In the space of five pages, it struggles to get beyond that generality. There are a handful of anecdotes and equal number of catch-phrase expert opinions that barely scratch the surface.

Where is the data: how many people are actually affected by these factors (not merely 'poor'), to what extent, and at what ultimate cost (in dollars).

Where is the root-cause analysis: is being poor linked to class / expectations of life / upbringing?

Where is the counter story: examples of people who got them selves our of the trap - how did they do that? What made them different.

Where is call to action: if this is truly an oh-so-terrible-problem then where is the call to action? What are readers to do?

I apologize now if this comes across as a rant. In my opinion this is a real and growing problem for the developed world, and as such a article that merely skims the surface like this one comes across as disingenuous, so I suspect the motives.

I'm reminded of the 1984 hit "Feed the world". The final lines of the verse (sung by Bono) always sends a chill through me:

  There's a world outside your window,
  and it's a world of dread and fear
  Where the only water flowing
  is the bitter sting of tears
  And the Christmas bells that ring there
  are the clanging chimes of doom
  Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you  (Bono)

This feels like classic 'tonight thank God it's them instead of you' journalism.

</rant>

davidmathers5• 17 years ago

I apologize now if this comes across as a rant.

Actually, I think yours is the best comment of the entire page.

thras5• 17 years ago

The poor tend to be the stupid (plenty of studies to back this up), and hence the poverty. Since they are more stupid, they fall for stupid payday loan schemes, credit card idiocy, etc., at rates greater than the rich do.

Please do not reply if you read "tend to" as "always." I'm not going to bother responding.

run4yourlives7• 17 years ago

While your comment is a little inflammatory, it's a shame to see it down-modded. That threshold has certainly changed as Hacker News has, and we're losing some good discussion because of it.

The thing is, you are in a way correct. Intelligence, ignorance and effort combine into defining a person's success level. We have done a relatively good job at neutralizing all other factors by making them illegal (not that they still don't exist mind you.)

Ignorance lessens with experience, as does effort. Intelligence however is the only uncontrollable trait that we still actively discriminate against, and joyfully so.

I'm not suggesting this shouldn't be, as I'd hate to imagine that world, but it does mean that a disproportionate amount of the "losers" in life tend to be of below average intelligence.

huherto4• 17 years ago

But they don't fall for those schemes because they are stupid. They fall because that is the only way they know. Quoting Alan Key."Perspective is worth 80 IQ points." So don't feel that you are way smarter than poor people. We just had a better context to make smarter decisions. Edit: grammar.

njharman2• 17 years ago

yep, so?

Your implying stupid people aren't equal, they deserve to be poor? That smart people are superior? Perhaps stupid people should have to stay in special stupid areas, go to separate schools, drink at special stupid people only water fountains.

I believe stupid people need more not less of a break, more not less assistance, more not less of everything from society and government precisely cause they are stupid.

thras5• 17 years ago

I implied nothing. I said what I said.

Your solution, however, leaves much to be desired. Affirmative action for the unintelligent is unlikely to lead to wonderful economic success on any scale.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

"The effective annual percentage rate is 806 percent"

A ridiculous metric for a week long loan.

gojomo2• 17 years ago

Unless you take one out (almost) every week.

ambition2• 17 years ago

No, because the 806 number includes compounding.

gtt• 17 years ago

    For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
    —Matthew 25:29, King James Version.

projectileboy• 17 years ago

Data point: I once worked on software for very large retail chains which allows those retailers to group stores by "zones" for pricing purposes. One of the commonly defined pricing zones is "inner-city", which consistently get their prices bumped by, say, 5 or 10% for many items. The reasoning behind this was exactly as laid out in the article: inner-city residents lack transportation options, and so retailers can command higher prices.

jamiequint• 17 years ago

I forgot what article I read it in, but there was something a while back about this. It justified the higher costs by describing the extra costs of the stores in these areas. Apparently, many of these stores have higher theft rates and need for security, which drives up prices.

bokonist6• 17 years ago

Here is a great blog post describing the crime problems of an inner city grocery market: http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=604 From the post:

A day in the life of Tom Boy Super Market consists partly of stopping people from robbing the place blind. "There’s so many days when I don’t do nothing," Jitu says. "My main job is to run the office and I don’t have to be here, but I have to come anyway. You don't want to have, like, one person here, and then half the store is gone. We have to have so many people. They don’t have to do nothing, but they have to be here."

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

Right, the article should have been about it being expensive to be the urban poor. Suburban poor have it much better. They largely have cars, because people in a city pay more to park a car for three months than people in the suburbs pay to buy a car. They shop at and work Wal-Mart rather than 7-11, and Wal-Mart costs less and pays more. Etc.

The moral is, if you're poor, get the hell out of the city.

bokonist6• 17 years ago

The urban poor usually have much better bus access and walking access to jobs. That saves a lot of money. The cost of housing is also super cheap. And many inner cities do have inexpensive super markets, cheap ethnic grocers, and dollar discount stores for household goods. I'd need to see some actual stats on the price of milk or eggs by neighborhood. I'm not sure inner cities are really that much more expensive.

discojesus• 17 years ago

I don't know about suburban as in "within commuting distance to the city", but rural poor largely have cars because they need them. You absolutely cannot get by in a rural area without a car, and that is a huge barrier to entry to the job market. Contrast this to living in the city (or close enough so that you can commute there), where you can commute whenever/wherever you want with a MetroPass for $70 a month .

The cost of living is much lower in rural areas, but the pay for an equivalent job is much lower as well.

If you're a poor person with an unskilled job, if you are in the city you can get another job the next day. In a rural area, this is close to impossible - jobs are very few and far between, so if you lose yours you might have to move to an entirely different location. (for an unskilled job, there are obviously more choices, but if you lose a skilled, professional job in a rural area and you don't have enough saved up to move somewhere else, you're pretty much fucked.)

So I dunno about the city vs. the suburbs, but if you are poor, you do not want to be anywhere near rural areas - they are absolute traps that leave you either on government assistance or at best in a situation with a single point of failure.

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

I feel bad for the people mentioned ... however, just by virtue of being in the US/Canada/Western Europe etc. you have already "won life's lottery".

Is it also expensive to be a flea-bitten, hungry, malnourished baby in Africa and with only a 50% chance (or whatever the number is) of making it to 25 years old?

No matter which country has higher mobility, the reality is, you can in fact improve your lot in life if you are poor and in the USA.

huherto4• 17 years ago

".. however, just by virtue of being in the US/Canada/Western Europe etc. you have already "won life's lottery"."

That is true. But you can also "win life's lottery" if you are born in a middle/upper class in a developing country.

hpvic03• 17 years ago

Print Version:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05...

larrykubin• 17 years ago

Related video: Comedian Louis CK on the cost of being broke:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q0dIktwJmw

christofd3• 17 years ago

This aligns well with the concept of economic mobility: Team of Brookings Institution researchers publish study - http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_American_Dre...

From the PDF: the U.S.A. has fallen behind other western nations, such as Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden in maintaining the concept of economic or upward mobility...

And this is the main reason, as I recall, why the U.S. was always portrayed as more desirable than European nations (and it was true in the 50s; part of my German family immigrated to the U.S. in the 50s). If you take that concept away - why would you want to live in the U.S. anymore:

- none of U.S. cities rank in the top 100 most livable places (Mercer Cities Ranking)

- high schools and many public schools rank low in comparison to other western nations

- education is much more expensive

- there is no organized trade school education, like in Germany, Britain etc.

- salaries for the lower third are less

- health care (don't get me started)

- hardly any social safety net

- crime, largest per capita prison population in the world

- infrastructure - roads, bridges, buildings etc. (don't get me started; it's almost third world country level)

- average lasting quality of housing (drywall, cheap wood framing, bad carpentry on windows and doors etc.)

- manufacturing quality and capability: look at American made cars or power tools (I always prefer foreign made)

- half of the government budget goes towards the military

- lack of public transportation (Standard Oil bought up the urban train networks in the 1940's and had them decommissioned: street cars, urban transit etc.)

- no functioning Euro-style city cores, urban sprawl, stuffed highways with commuters

- and the most important fact of all: the byzantine law system of the U.S. and the huge costs of lawyers and law suits (this affects many areas); lawyers can cost over $ 500/ hour and if you can't afford one you are out of luck; further, judges are not high-end lawyers trained as judges (like in Germany etc.) but can be any random divorce lawyer that got appointed regionally, as I understand

Final verdict: the U.S. has been badly managed in the last 30 years, and the poor carry the burden.

The final evidence is given in the study of Cliometrics and measuring average body height of nations (an indicator for health/ prosperity): it used to be (up until the 1950s) that U.S. Citizens were taller than Europeans; this trend has been reversed in the last 30 years - now the Euros are taller (especially the Dutch)

mattmcknight5• 17 years ago

"half of the government budget goes towards the military"

This is some serious misinformation that I see repeated over and over again, propaganda style. It's really under 21%.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/Fy2009spending...

christofd3• 17 years ago

"During FY 2008, the U.S. government spent nearly $800 billion on defense and homeland security, approximately 30% of tax collections." (and this does not include interest on debt owed on past military expenses - http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm; therefore, it can be argued that almost half of the U.S. budget goes towards defense) - (GAO-2008 Report Page 35): http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2008/08stmt.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S...

The big picture argument here is: the U.S. spends almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined - http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spendi...

greyboy3• 17 years ago

It sounds as if you aren't a US native, so I won't assume you are. However, a few remarks:

> none of U.S. cities rank in the top 100 most livable places (Mercer Cities Ranking)

Unless I am mistaken, this link shows 8 US cities in the top 50. Are you referring to something else?

http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/livable_cit...

> crime, largest per capita prison population in the world

Honest question, is this totally a bad thing? Does punishing criminals under a certain standard imply something poor? Or am I fuzzy on the statement?

> infrastructure - roads, bridges, buildings etc. (don't get me started; it's almost third world country level)

Whoa! Have you ever been to the US? This is a very bold statement to make. (note: I've been all around the world in my days)

> average lasting quality of housing (drywall, cheap wood framing, bad carpentry on windows and doors etc.)

Hmm, I've never seen this in my travels around the States. Quality depends on many factors. I've lived in newly built to 40+ year old homes and I've never had the problems you've mentioned. I've never heard of anyone I've personally known with those problems, either (not that they don't exist, of course).

> no functioning Euro-style city cores, urban sprawl, stuffed highways with commuters

Some areas could use some help, but I've successfully navigated around San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC, NYC, and other metros without a personal vehicle, and have relatives who do so all the time. Does this not fit the description? On a side note, my personal city is 400,000 people over 115 sq miles (county: 900,000 people over 832 sq miles) - it's a different way of life and trying to force a metro-city transportation system into this area is bound for failure (though I will agree that there is room for improvement).

The US isn't perfect. But not that imperfect, either.

joecode• 17 years ago

"- none of U.S. cities rank in the top 100 most livable places (Mercer Cities Ranking)"

This is rather false: http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html

This calls into question the other assertions. What is your source?

I actually agree that the U.S. has been pretty badly mismanaged lately, but despite this I've encountered many hardworking immigrants who manage to do well for themselves. I believe the main reason the poor continue to be poor is lack of drive and lower intelligence/education. Both of these derive mostly from environmental factors, especially family life, poor values, poor education and generally inhospitable surroundings.

You would need to make some pretty radical changes to turn it around.

christofd3• 17 years ago

My mistake - quoted from memory (comment system on HN locks edits after 1 hour), tried to edit later.

mattmcknight5• 17 years ago

"it used to be (up until the 1950s) that U.S. Citizens were taller than Europeans; this trend has been reversed in the last 30 years - now the Euros are taller (especially the Dutch)"

This is related to the fact that recent immigration trends into the United States have favored the shorter peoples of the world.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

Studies on this issue have screened out people of Asian and Hispanic descent in order to maintain a more consistent data set:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/05/040405fa_fact?cu...

c00p3r• 17 years ago

Yeah, it is expensive for a poor to try to live as middle-class. And it is stupid. Stupidity is always more expensive.

The advantage of being poor is that you're detached from all that useless goods, property, stuff and even people. Then you can move. You can live where life is better - some warmer and cheaper place - maybe some buddhist countries, but not California, of course.

Take a look at the Indian brahmins, Tibetan or buddhist monks - they are very poor, as poor as possible, but they are happy and healthy because they does not trying to catch some advertised illusion or broadcasted style of life.

The rule is very simple - spend less than you got. It means to avoid what you can't afford. If you have only one bag with some absolutely necessary things you can live in almost every place with warm climate and peaceful people.

jodrellblank3• 17 years ago

Read the article, didn't like it.

How can I comment that it's stupid to lease a sofa when you have to scrounge food for your family, without getting lynched by the "you don't know what it's like you evil smug lucky middle class brat" crowd?

It's a suboptimal choice. Maybe a stupid choice (BUT POOR PEOPLE AREN'T STUPID).

You could go on the bus to the cheaper shop and buy two lots of food while your friend does two lots of washing at the laundromat (BUT IT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE)

You could pool your money and get a washing machine between several people and free up a lot of time (BUT THAT'S NOT AN OPTION, DON'T YOU SEE?)

You could not spend 25% of your available money on fried chicken instead of food that lasts longer (and is healthier). (What the hell? Fried chicken? Is that paragraph solely there as bait to trap commenters like me?)

Isn't it silly for several people to have $800 cars they can't afford to repair, when together they could have a $2000 car and some spare cash? Well isn't it?

OK, OK, you can't do any of that. You can't do anything. You're not stupid or lazy you just didn't get a break. Yes I am lucky, yes I don't know what it's like. Yes I see it's probably extremely unpleasant. OK then, there's no way out. At all. So does it help that I now feel guilty about it? Not really.

Do you really believe it's possible to have a society almost like ours, but with no poor people? I don't. Not really. No good reasons why not, but it feels impossible. I mean, we can't all be millionaires, can we? Is that different?

So there's Bob. Bob is poor. It can't be OK. because that's something "you can't say" (see PG essay). So it's not OK. But it's not Bob's fault. If there's anything that can happen short of a lottery win that would help Bob, then that would be good. But that must include being able to publicly acknowledge bad choices without condemning them or the reasons for making them.

So is information the answer? You can't see what available options you have. Well hello the internet - information delivery a specialty. Hello HN - information crunching a specialty.

Whoever brought up AKay's quote that "perspective is worth 80 IQ points" in these comments, that rings true.

But I also want it to be true that anybody has the chance of happiness. This includes billions of people born in poor countries. It includes the billions and billions of people who were born and lived more than 50 years ago. In order for this to be the case, then the answer has to be in perspective, not money or sofas or cheap rent or abundant food or "lack of opression by the system" or handouts or community centres or lucky breaks.

Would it be as bad to be poor if I didn't know anything of any alternatives? There is so much poverty and so little luxury when you consider global population. Global population over all history - is wealth and comfortable living really a possible way forward, or just an aberration? A temporary break from a nasty, brutish and short life, for the lucky few?

Why it's expensive to be poor

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