Thanks man, you really understand. Good post.

It's sad to say, but the pandemic was lifechanging for me. With the unemployment benefits I received, I was able to save up some money and had time for myself to start thinking about what I needed to do before the money disappeared into rent. I applied for the local community college and trying to get financial aid here in California, and if it works out, I'll "only" pay like $3.5k for each of the two years. If they don't give me financial aid, it's time to give up lol. I wouldn't have been able to afford even entertaining this idea before, because all the money disappears into living expenses. The pandemic saved me...the only way for someone like me to get a higher education, is for a global pandemic to happen at 24 years old haha.

These are just hypothetical numbers but I think the problem here is that people are resourceful and work to change or reduce these expenses. Everyone’s story varies, but it’s pretty common to address these with:

Rent- get a roommate or rent a room instead of a one bedroom flat. Rent is reduced from $1400.

Use a prepaid phone plan to reduce from $100.

Use a slower speed or share internet to reduce from $100.

Motorcycle or cheaper car to reduce from $530.

These aren’t impossible problems and are things that are really common to deal with. I worked with people in Manhattan who slept three to a bed. That obviously sucks but assuming that every single person should have a one bedroom flat with their own car and luxury internet and phone is not as good an assumption that people will adjust their spending.

There are a lot of inherent assumptions in your rebuttal.

>Rent- get a roommate or rent a room instead of a one bedroom flat. Rent is reduced from $1400.

While that is an option, it is not reasonable to make that assertion for the millions of people struggling without adequate housing. How can you tell people, with a straight face, that have been sexually assaulted, robbed, or battered by previous roommates that they should continue to put themselves at risk because they can't afford the market rate for a 1br apartment? Many people that are housing insecure face discrimination in their searches as well. Landlords have countless incentives and ways to refuse renting to people who they perceive as poor. Credit checks, wage statements, large cash deposits. Then there's everything they can learn during a showing. How do they dress, are they wearing Wal-Mart clothes or Patagonia? Did they bring their same sex partner? Are they BIPOC? Do they have a nice car or no car? Is everything they own in their car? I think that I've said enough to make this point but I can continue if you want.

>Use a prepaid phone plan to reduce from $100.

Phones are still several hundred dollars, and are effectively disposable items. In conversations about poor people we cannot assume they can afford to put up several hundred dollars for a used phone. $100 might be on the high end, but I am thinking more about the amortized all-in costs of phones. Stuff like cases, chargers, screen protectors, that often get sold to people at stores under high pressure sales tactics. We also need to consider access. If someone just broke their phone and need a new one ASAP or they'll lose their job they are at the mercy of what's available to them at that moment. They may not be able to shop around or know how to do a price comparison between providers. They may get coerced into signing expensive multi year contracts by dishonest sales reps of which the total cost is not apparent for weeks.

>Use a slower speed or share internet to reduce from $100.

That's not always an option. For years, the cheapest non-dsl, option available to me was cable internet, for over $100/mo without a contact. For people with housing insecurity signing multi year contracts is scary because they have no reason to believe they will live in the same place for that long.

>Motorcycle or cheaper car to reduce from $530.

Motorcycles are not a rational option for virtually everyone. They're unsafe, and at greater risk of being stolen in the areas poor people are congregated. I'm not saying the car payment is $400, but ones either paying more upfront for a reliable vehicle or on the back end in repairs. If one gets burned enough by scam repair shops and used car sales people they'll inevitably look to cars with manufacturer warranties. Poor areas have more sketchy repair shops and high pressure used car sales lots that straddle people with high interest car payments, even if they qualify for great rates.

>These aren’t impossible problems and are things that are really common to deal with. I worked with people in Manhattan who slept three to a bed. That obviously sucks but assuming that every single person should have a one bedroom flat with their own car and luxury internet and phone is not as good an assumption that people will adjust their spending.

I think you're making wide assumptions that are not reflective of the reality poor people face. It is callous to assume that poor people have the same ability and education to know how to navigate things like loans, auto repair, comparison shopping, house hunting, etc while they're possibly homeless and probably working in excess of 40 hour weeks barely scraping by. This is my lived experience, I've seen too many families that do everything right get absolutely crushed into homelessness because the company the worked for blew up, they got scammed, or were disabled by a workplace accident. These conversations are overly reductive when we cannot focus on the specific contexts under which people fall out of 'normal' society into homelessness or near homelessness. Without this context we cannot have reasoned discussions about the factors that lead to homelessness and prevent people from escaping.

I think I’m making likely assumptions. Obviously, individual experiences will vary, but when trying to estimate and model cost of living, assuming that everyone was sexually assaulted or traumatized so badly that they can never live with another is not useful. It also denigrates sexual assault victims by assuming that they are alone, without family, friendless, or without a spouse. It is possible for one to recover from sexual assault and find non-assaulter roommates and this is extremely common. Both based on personal experience and housing data (extrapolating from percent of population sexually assaulted with percent of population living in households with greater than two adults).

I’m talking about my lived experience here and find it odd how you’re finding rare, negative edge cases that don’t disprove my point.

I’m not saying that every single person can get internet for less than $100. I’m saying it’s unreasonable to assume $100 for budgeting purposes. In the rare situation where the only option for internet is $100 and one must have internet the systemic solution isn’t to pay the person an extra $100, the solution is to reduce the cost of internet. Rewarding the exploitative company charging $100/month only makes things worse within the system.

Similarly with phones. $100/month or $1200/year is a poor assumption for someone who needs their salary to go towards more important things. In 2019 I bought a new iPhone6 from Walmart for $100 with a no contract prepaid mobile plan for $20/month. Annualized costs of only $340. I cracked and scratched the screen but if I had had to replace it I would have spent an additional $100.

For “normal” society and to understand people’s experiences I think it’s valuable to model what is typical and then use that as a baseline to plan protection for edge cases. In my head I’m thinking “What should we plan to fix this?” Planning and modeling with assumptions that edge cases are most common means that our mean values will be way off and we’ll have wasted resources.

I’ve seen too many families that waste $180 on phone plans every month because they don’t know there’s a better way, corporations market expensive plans more heavily, and conventional wisdom reinforces that this is routine and acceptable.

If I’m only netting $2k/month and I’m spending $100/month on a phone, that is a problem with me that I can easily fix. If society is trying to get me to buy a new phone every year and have an expensive plan, that’s hard to struggle against and overcome. The solution isn’t to reinforce bad decisions, but to help.

>...when trying to estimate and model cost of living, assuming that everyone was sexually assaulted or traumatized so badly that they can never live with another is not useful.

I'm not assuming this of people, but that's quite an extreme projection you're making... Rather I'm stating that telling people to find roommates or rent a room is generally bad advice, if they're not first time renters then it is reasonable to assume they have valid reasons, that should be respected at face value, to not live in communal environments. Modeling the cost of living around communal living environments is ignoring the reality of how people want to live on a fundamental level. What people freely choose to do is different than what people with only bad options do. Communal environments are notorious for the factors I mentioned above, and many people refuse to deal with that, at great cost to themselves.

>find it odd how you’re finding rare, negative edge cases that don’t disprove my point.

My point is that 37k is insufficient for a single person to live independently in many, many, cities. 74k is also insufficient to raise a family, hence the growing movement of child free people.. Snide paternalistic advice like get roommates, get a cheaper phone/car/internet/etc is insulting and blaming the poor for being being poor. If you'd like to give free financial advice, and are qualified too do so, I can get you in touch with an organization offering these services in your community. If not, your arguments come across as made in bad faith. I've given you reasons why these common pieces of advice aren't always helpful, in good faith.

>I’m not saying that every single person can get internet for less than $100. I’m saying it’s unreasonable to assume $100 for budgeting purposes. In the rare situation where the only option for internet is $100 and one must have internet the systemic solution isn’t to pay the person an extra $100, the solution is to reduce the cost of internet. Rewarding the exploitative company charging $100/month only makes things worse within the system.

Okay, but hypothetical person needs internet today and telling them they shouldn't be paid more because the government should instead make internet cheaper is, absurd. It does nothing to help them and marginalizes their problem. If the government can't regulate ISPs like utilities what reason do poor people have to expect relief in the form of government aid? Just. Pay. People. More. 44% of households spend 100 and less per month on cable internet[] which in many places is the only option outside of dsl.

>Similarly with phones. $100/month or $1200/year is a poor assumption for someone who needs their salary to go towards more important things. In 2019 I bought a new iPhone6 from Walmart for $100 with a no contract prepaid mobile plan for $20/month. Annualized costs of only $340. I cracked and scratched the screen but if I had had to replace it I would have spent an additional $100.

That's great. But we can't assume people made a bad choice to lock themselves into an expensive phone contract, rather we should give them the benefit of the doubt and recognize that most people are not paid enough to live a dignified existence. What is someone who lost their job to do about their contract? What was affordable yesterday may not be tomorrow. This type precarity makes people act rashly.[0] I'm really trying to focus on the types of situations that poor people find themselves in, not the nuances of their budget. $100 less on internet and cell isn't world changing.

>For “normal” society and to understand people’s experiences I think it’s valuable to model what is typical and then use that as a baseline to plan protection for edge cases. In my head I’m thinking “What should we plan to fix this?” Planning and modeling with assumptions that edge cases are most common means that our mean values will be way off and we’ll have wasted resources.

We are already wasting resources everywhere. We should plan to fix expensive housing, healthcare, transportation, telecommunications. there's no political will from establishment politicians. In the mean time let's have some humanity and help people instead of just talking about it and sending out the occasional pittance.

[...your other comments about how much people should spend on phones here]

*You're way to focused on the phones. The point is everyone is an edge case somehow. Planning for averages forces more people to run into more edge cases. Say hypothetical person is now paying $50 for internet and $50 for their cell a month. What say you now?*

[] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034487/united-states-mo...

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422783/

Tldr:

You're not putting yourself in the shoes, nor the mindset of a poor person. Try to do that. When the next meal, or bed is uncertain thinking rationally is hard. It's easy to point at a hypothetical budget and say you can do better. It's another thing to walk in the shoes of someone who's not as intelligent, gifted, connected, wealthy, or whatever as you.

> live a dignified existence

I think spending $340/year on a decent phone is pretty dignified. I think it’s comical to assume that dignity requires $1200/year in phone service.

I’ve lived in poverty, I’ve worked and fought against extreme poverty and I’m not sure your basis of reality. Poor people live in group settings. I’m not sure what advice you would give to help them as me saying “get a roommate” and you saying “$37k is not livable” have very different levels of usefulness.

I used a lot of help when poor (and still do now) and the most frustrating part was people who expressed their sympathy but did nothing to help me. I didn’t want empathy, I wanted food and safety. Of course I’d rather have both empathy and food, but if I have to choose one, you know what I and most will choose.

A person that buys a 5 year old version of an iPhone, is probably either a frugal person and/or a person that does not have too much money. To me it seems like a person that is used to think about how to stretch her/his wage. I find it interesting that you can say to this person: "You're not putting yourself in the shoes, nor the mindset of a poor person". Have you walked in this HN member's shoes in different stages of her/his life?

I should have been more clear, but I didn't have coffee yet.

$18/hr being "great" was meant to compare to what I hear people tend to make in that position, not that it is objectively great as a living wage for a family.

My post was a little twist-and-turn - I was thinking about two related things, one being the tactical issue of wages in food service, and the other macro issue about the fact that this country has enough wealth in it for everyone to be well taken care of.

30% is way to high an effective tax rate at that income. Below median earners pay effectively zero taxes with the EITC and standard deductible.

$400 is way too high for a car payment. You can get a great used compact for $10k. With decent credit that’ll run you $150/month.

$100 is way too high for home Internet. I pay $40/month for 100 mbps, which is more than enough for five decides to stream simultaneously.

$1400 is too high. A low earner should be saving money by getting a roommate. I can easily find rooms for rent in my medium COL metro for $700/month. Heck, I can find one bedroom houses for sale where the PITA mortgage is well below $1400.

> $100 is way too high for home Internet. I pay $40/month for 100 mbps, which is more than enough for five decides to stream simultaneously.

It's either pay that or get DSL in many places in the US.

Federal income tax, state income tax and local property and sales tax. Social Security and Medicare taxes. I agree 30% is too high an estimate for below median incomes, but its closer 9-15%, according to this: https://thecollegeinvestor.com/34072/effective-tax-rates/

And if you include health insurance--which in other countries is provided for and paid for with taxes--then it goes up. A lot.

> And if you include health insurance-

OP explicitly broke out health insurance as a separate line item.

Okay, half the tax rate and my point still stands. I responded to your other points in another comment of mine up thread. Feel free to address my rebuttal there.

$100 is not too much for internet, I pay a bit more than that and it is the only internet available at all outside of my cellphones poor 4g coverage.

I pay $100/month for internet, but that's basically the top tier offer (and I WFH every day). I could get a plan for $40.

If I were low income, I could get a plan for as little as $15 to $25/month.