If by "you", you mean a poor individual living in the United States, then I guess your reasoning is absurd, because one individual cannot change the laws. If by "you", you mean all individuals lumped together as the people making up the United States, then the argument makes slightly more sense, but then still, they can't, because they can't seem to agree on how to divide all wealth properly.

So, no, "you" cannot fix this via laws. You can hope for it to be fixed, you can lobby for it to be fixed, you can pray for it, even go to war for it, but I don't think it's as easy as you make it seem.

Moving to Europe might be an option, but even that is not an option for most people outside of Europe, mostly thanks to the laws that "we" put in place to stay rich.

That is a very uncharitable interpretation, not sure why you would read it like that. "You" can refer to governments or countries in general and not just individuals.

And that was the entire argument of your post, please don't make strawmans like that.

I am often a bit disappointed that in common language, it is very easy to suggest that one can change the world for the better, but in reality it is not an option for nearly everyone.

I think that the problem leading to this is that most people believe that a group of people has similar traits as a single individual. A lot of reasoning goes awry by mixing the two. In my personal opinion, the way an individual makes up their mind is completely different from how a group of people makes up their collective minds. The first can be attributed to freedom of choice, agency, gut feeling, rational thought, etc. The latter lives in the realm of sociology, group think, religion, politics, marketing and communication.

Another example of where I think this goes wrong is in the idea that we can rescue the climate by starting with ourselves. This is simply not true, unless nearly all people do this. Another one is the idea of contemporary voting in democracies. It simply does not help at all to put out just one vote.

Change requires the opinions of many people to align. Sometimes, only sometimes, does a change by one person incur change in others. Most often, if you are not a leading figure, your change does not do anything at all. Ignoring this results in falsehoods and make-belief. I find this counterproductive in discussions.

It may well be that I made up the strawmans, but I tend to believe that they're already there.

But perhaps, and given your response, this is probably not at all the direction you'd want the discussion to go.

USA is a special case since the poorer 50% somehow failed to organize politically and form a party to represent them like they did in basically every other democracy. I think they still can organize, but there has to be massive barriers that are hard to overcome or they would already have done so.

It seems to be fixable with changes to the electoral law.

for real progress a complete overhaul of the electoral process is needed. i'd abolish the concept of parties wholesale. instead each representative is elected individually, and there is no party association that limits any of them on which issues to support. think of it as each representative being their own individual party.

Does not look like an achievable first step.

There are a hundred absurdly impractical comments for every half-practical when it comes to US politics (or global politics which US could/should lead). I habitually scroll over ideas so brilliantly revolutionary that they wouldn't even qualify for bad sci-fi literature.

change is possible, but it takes time and effort. which means patience. and it requires picking your battles. you can't fight all the problems at once by yourself. you have to pick a few issues that matter to you the most, and focus on those. and then instead of trying to make a visible change focus on a few people and try to win them over.

Meritocracy requires a hierarchy; it requires winners and losers. Meritocracy wouldn't make sense if everyone had the same merit, if everyone was equally worthy.

Meritocracy allows people in the middle, people who are average by definition, ordinary, not special, to feel better about themselves by looking down at the poor. "They made poor choices, that's why they're poor. I made better choices." The point of meritocracy is to undermine sympathy and solidarity, to turn everything individualistic. Divide and conquer.

The economics of competition, supply, and demand is amoral: it's just a method for determining the prices of products and transactions, without any judgment about whether the outcome is morally good. What we've done is turn our economic system into an ethical system: you are judged worthy, meritorious, based on your economic value. It's almost as if the so-called Invisible Hand of the market is God distributing punishment and reward.

Amusingly, Capitalism as a concept fits the definition of an "Eldritch Abomination."

Growing up in Eastern Europe, you could be extremely hard working and honest and the second you reach even minor success there would be a strong man (mafia muscle or political/government corruption) knocking on your door to trim you down a bit and take your everything if you fight back. If you were born in a village, you were not allowed to move to the city and had your destiny sealed as the farmer to feed the privileged citizens.

There is a Bulgarian Book called “To Chicago and Back” where the author travels to America for the world fair. One of the highlights mentions that in the bus or train in America, even low level workers can wear a suit. Unlike the rest of the world, in capitalistic countries your money and effort is just as green, regardless of your parentage, color, proclivities, etc. You can make what you are willing to work for and the rest is a matter of choice. At least you have a choice. The rest of the non-capitalistic world mostly doesn’t.

1. US Capitalism uses money as priority for getting whatever you want. Those willing to spend more get first dibs at most legal things and the more money something costs, the faster you’ll see resourceful people find a way to make more of it - so if something is in shortage, that doesn’t last long and eventually everyone who wants it can afford it (assuming the scarcity is not deliberate like a rare location) . You have many legal and some illegal ways to make money and once you make a surplus of that, you can have the stock market grow your nest egg for you, so the older you get the more likely you are to have money. In countries without a stock market, seniors can live in misery and barely afford food on government rationed pensions.

2. Communism/socialism - point system is political connections. If you have them you get nice things, if you don’t you are assigned to where you can live and where your kids can study and punished if you complain. Government rations to you whatever it hasn’t spent on frivolous stuff, while its officials can be partying every weekend with shared resources. You can get whatever is available, whenever it is available - cars in 20 years, for example, because everyone works as much as they want and is equally poor. Rich or educated/higher class people get fleeced or imprisoned. You can prioritize what you want with connections or money (corruption thrives after all).

3. The stuff in between gravitates to one or the other because your system either prioritizes getting more stuff supplied to its people or more people restricted to meet the available eternally lesser supply. If your birth rate goes up or you get immigration gets higher, the process accelerates.

Take your pick, or offer more currently available societies with different point systems.

Which all did you have in mind here? All the top 10% of HN contributors? Or all the people in whichever country you are in? if it is the latter I can assure that it is most certainly not the case that "We are all .. able to move to countries .." unless they are EU citizens proposing to move to another EU country.

A substantial fraction of all people wouldn't be able raise the money for the flight, let alone have the necessary qualifications to satisfy the visa and residence permit issuing authority of most western countries.

I think you missed my point. I didn't say that our social values come from capitalism. Quite the opposite. I said that capitalism is nothing more than an amoral economic system. The problem is that we've imposed a bizarre ethical system on top of capitalism.

I suspect that this unholy alliance is a result of trying to reconcile capitalism with the dominant American religion, Christianity, which originally was vehemently anti-materialistic: Jesus himself was exceedingly clear about this. But eventually the self-sacrificial ethos of Christianity morphed into the Protestant work ethic, and wealth became God's earthly reward for "hard work".

> in America, even low level workers can wear a suit

Can, or must?

I personally don't want to wear a suit.

I'm sure the opportunities for poor people in the US are much greater than they were for a poor person growing up in late 20th century Eastern Europe. But I think it is wishful thinking to say that any poor person in the US can become rich if they work hard enough. Of course, it suits the rich people to have everyone believe that.

That argument looks like it is based on equivocation between different meanings of 'merit'.

On the contrary, for meritocracy proponents, 'merit' is explicitly amoral quality as it is clear that it has significant pure luck factor. Fundamentally it says that economic outcomes (both positions in economic structures and personal incomes) should depend just on ability to create economic value (which is in this context called 'merit'), not on other factors like moral worth.

This is a strange argument. Luck is the opposite of merit, and meritocracy proponents are at pains to deemphasize the luck factor, to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.

I think it is pretty clear. Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from (which is clearly based on many factors, some a luck, some are your good decisions, some are good decisions of other people). There are obvious examples of luck factors, like genetics and accidents. If your merit is based on ability to think deeply, and after a hit to a head by a robber you end with concentration problems, then your merit is lowered, by bad luck.

> to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.

These are not really descriptive statements about merit, these are advice how to behave to maximize your merit. If you want to maximize your merit, then it make sense to focus on aspects you can change and not on that you cannot.

By analogy, getting hit by a car has significant luck component, but if you want to give someone advice how to avoid getting hit by a car, you would focus on things like 'look around before crossing' and not 'have good luck'.

This is in danger of being a tautology. How do you distinguish one's actual economic value created from one's "ability" to create economic value?

> These are not really descriptive statements about merit, these are advice how to behave to maximize your merit.

How can you tell whether someone has "maximized" their merit? Especially if "merit", according to you, includes luck? You could always have more luck.

From a previous comment:

> economic outcomes (both positions in economic structures and personal incomes) should depend just on ability to create economic value (which is in this context called 'merit'), not on other factors like moral worth.

I think you're misunderstanding. According to meritocracy, the ability to create economic value is moral worth. Meritocracy is a moral (or immoral) system. That's my point. Economic value itself has no inherent moral/judgmental component.

> This is in danger of being a tautology.

Well, that is an definition of a term, so it is tautology.

> How do you distinguish one's actual economic value created from one's "ability" to create economic value?

That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some explicit criteria.

So yes, in some sense idea of 'meritocracy' is a value system, but a value system about societies (saying that society should aspire to be more meritocratic), not about individuals.

The concept of 'meritocracy' is pretty clear on specific examples. I guess that few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery (even if we do not know how effectively evaluate that) than some other criteria like class origin, loyalty to the regime, or based on whether their parents were surgeons. But also i guess few people would consider 'have better outcomes when doing surgery' as factor of moral worth.

Using terms like 'creating economic value' is just universal term (and kind of simplification) for merits in specific positions.

It's not just an aspiration. We wouldn't be talking about meritocracy so much if were some pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal. What makes the idea of meritocracy so pernicious is that many people believe that our society is in fact more or less a meritocracy, albeit imperfect. We do judge people in our current society based on their so-called merit in the capitalist economy. That's the whole point of this discussion, going back to how we view poor people, as having "made bad decisions" and thus "deserving" their predicament.

> few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery

You've chosen the least controversial question to answer. But this says nothing about, for example, how much money surgeons should get paid, or who gets admitted to medical school, when surgical outcomes are definitely unknown at that point. And it says nothing about what social services we should or shouldn't provide to the poor, again going back to the original issue.

Meritocracy views poverty as a personal moral failing, deserving blame rather than sympathy. It doesn't view poverty as a natural, predictable side effect of the economic system that needs mitigation.

This sounds like an oxymoron, but nonetheless you are right that it's a distinctively American credo.

The middle class is sold on the dream that two cars, a house, and kids make you rich. And any day now you'll get bigger/more of all of that -- if you just work harder and more. Just don't look behind the curtain, that's above your station.

This is why they vote against their own interests and support less taxes for the rich. They'll join the rich as soon as their hustle and long hours of work pay off

$6,200 is not going to be a comfortable experience - but there is no fundamental reason it should be impossible, crushing or stressful. And the non-linear effect of dropping price that the article mentions is probably going to be caused by regulatory factors demanding minimum standards.

If people directed the effort they put into minimum wages into driving down costs, they'd have a much more meaningful impact on the experience of impoverished people. Increasing incomes is good, but controlling costs is better.

[0] https://www.move.org/the-average-cost-of-food-in-the-us/

That being said, if I had to choose, I think I would prefer to increase my income instead of decreasing the cost of items I had to purchase. (Of course, both would be best!) Lower cost items only benefit me, if I need to purchase them. With an increased income comes an increased set of options for how to deploy that income.

That'd hold small picture too. Observe that income is a flow while costs are a static measure. In theory, if my costs halve then we wouldn't expect wages to halve. They'd halve per-widget and there would be more demand for widgets, leading to a slight quality of life increase.

> feeding a family of 4 should cost around $20k

This sounded absolutely crazy to me, so I did a little bit of digging. $20k is $416 per person, per month. For reference, we (a family of two adults) spend less than that total per month on groceries - not including eating out, which we do a couple times a month. That's been relatively constant, it was ~20% more or so when we lived in a much more expensive city (typical rent more than double our current).

I would be really interested in hearing concrete stories from other middle class or poor people (or seeing links), but the relevant points of difference seem to be these:

* The cost estimates are based on a 2400 calorie diet per person. Both of us eat less than that as adults, and 2 children can certainly be expected to do so.

* The food estimates they're using [1] seem outlandish. It includes no processed foods, has you eating apples, bananas, oranges, and tomatoes every day, and the weights given are strange as well - 300 g of apples is probably two apples, so we're talking a lot of fruit in this meal plan. It also estimates eating 2.4 eggs per day??!

* It's not clear how the average values for the whole U.S. are derived. If only large cities are considered, the cost will probably be artificially inflated relative to the true average.

* We're both vegetarian, and a considerable fraction of our food is made fresh. Even with the US government heavily subsidizing meat purchases, it's probably significant cost savings for us to live like this.

* In the other direction, I don't think grocery cost is likely to account for anything close to 100% of the true cost of "feeding a family of four", because it doesn't account for eating out, drive-through coffee purchases, etc. Americans spend more on food away from home than they do food at home. [2]

In terms of food cost estimates that are not based on the grocery cost of an arbitrary (and odd) subset of the food that people eat, I found the following estimates:

* USDA: the middle quintile household spends $9k a year on food (with the lowest quintile around $5k). [3] $20k a year would be more than spent by the average household in the highest quintile. (Note: this is for a typical household, not a family of four. On the other hand, this includes realistic not-at-home food expenses.)

* The USDA offers food plans that are intended to be healthy (so likely more expensive than typical American food choices). On a "thrifty" budget (the lowest level), their costs for a reference family of four are $975 a month, or $11.7k a year. [4] Even on the most liberal plan provided [5], the cost for the reference family of four is $19k.

[1] https://www.numbeo.com/food-prices/country_result.jsp?countr...

[2] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...

[3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

[4] https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-f...

[5] https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-f...

What I get for that money is luxurious; I only use maple syrup for sweetener, fancy grains and lentils, halawi dates as my main winter fruit, and fairly expensive nuts. For veggies I mostly eat cabbage, beets, sweet potatos, and squash which are low cost but delicious (lettuce is such a rip off, particularly considering it lacks any nutritional value). I don't eat as much fruit as I should but I think the model diet in your [1] link has it about right in terms of healthy fruit consumption (that is about 4-5 pieces of fruit per day; 300g of apples is more like 1.5 apples). I think you are right that it is common to not eat particularly healthy, although I think a fair number of people do eat that much fruit (fresh orange juice with breakfast for example). I think I grew up eating about that diet (but a wider range of veggies) before I became vegetarian then vegan and I think it is fairly common. 2.4 eggs a day sounds about right for many people too as I don't think it is uncommon to have an egg or two for breakfast and all sorts of stuff is commonly made with eggs.

I think you are right that for many people these days the cost of eating out is a major part of food costs. I'm surprised that people are spending as much on food away from home as food at home these days (your [2]), although considering food away from home is often quite a bit more expensive it is still going to be less than half of all food and I'd guess a large part of that will be meals during working hours.

In my experience, the number of calories does not as directly relate to the cost as you might think since high calorie grains are usually inexpensive (particularly wheat). Even for non-vegans a lot of the higher calorie diet will be wheat or other grains (or oil or sugar, which are also inexpensive). Although too much maple syrup or expensive nuts can certainly add to the cost :/.

Given than the average monthly rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is ~$1300, how does this make any sense? Even if it was only $500 a month, this theoretical family of four would be spending their entire $6000 on rent. I realize that talking about driving down costs probably includes rent, but getting the typical cost of a two bedroom apartment well below $500 is almost certainly not possible.

But the issue I'm seeing here is, right now, people are staving themselves and having their water cut off because they can't afford to pay for it. If anyone was going to help them, it'd have happened by now - so it is a safe guess that they're on their own. Living in a tent is brutal, but humans have millions of years experience doing that and they'll probably be ok. Dehydrated starving is worse.

The path to wealth is to get costs down below income. Then they save a little bit of money each month and can start investing in long term improvements. That isn't possible if society makes it impossible to survive at low incomes.

I can't get them myself due to my immigration status, but I spend perhaps $3/wk on food since there are food pantries which give you all sorts of random stuff that is expiring.

I found going to Hiroshima a fascinating example of this. Tokyo and Kyoto are all very walkable and contain few cars. Since Hiroshima was re-built after cars were already a thing (and when Japan was under US occupation), it feels very un-Japanese and more like a big US city.

In a sense, such family is better off than a middle income family.