
Why the poor pay more for toilet paper and just about everything else - e15ctr0n
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/08/why-the-poor-pay-more-for-toilet-paper-and-just-about-everything-else/
======
lotharbot
What the quoted study showed was a lot of "did" and "didn't" behavior, but the
article phrased it as "can't".

There are some poor of whom it is literally true that they can't spend $24 on
toilet paper. My local food bank gives out rolls of TP, and keeps nearly-empty
rolls in the public bathrooms because rolls that are above half get stolen.
Some of the clientele literally have every dollar for the month already spoken
for, and $24 of TP is not in the budget.

But for a lot of the poor, it's more accurate to say that spending $24 on
toilet paper would interfere with other things they've chosen to spend on
instead. It's not impossible to come up with $24, but they'd rather spend it
in other ways when they do. Now, it's not my place to say that a poor family
_should_ or _shouldn 't_ use a small surplus to become more efficient and
generate bigger surplus later, when they could spend it on something with a
more immediate psychological benefit (like a nicer-than-their-average meal).
This isn't a judgment, it's just an observation. But I think it's an important
observation to make, because the hidden implication is that an extra $20 a
month would allow for a new efficiency (like buying TP in bulk/on sale) which
would then snowball. But the reality is that an extra $20 a month rarely has
anything close to its full potential effect on efficiency, for psychological
reasons. Attempts to ease the inefficiencies of poverty need to account for
this.

~~~
developer2
I grew up on welfare, in a single parent home. Parent chainsmoked 2 packs a
day, which barely left enough money for decent food let alone toilet paper.
And yet, somehow, we stocked up on toilet paper when it was on sale.

~~~
lotharbot
I have three people I point to for how different the experience can be.

One friend was living on disability (about $570/month) and food stamps (about
$140/month), in a group home. His one "luxury" was he'd buy GI-Joe figurines
every month, for about $20. At one point he asked me to take him to the store
because he wasn't going to be able to walk the 10+ blocks that day. As he was
shopping, I realized he had something like 30 pounds of meat in his cart and
almost nothing else. I told him to put half of it back and add a bag of
potatoes, and that whenever he wanted to cook meat, cook half as much as he
normally would and replace the rest with potatoes. It was life-changing for
him -- he was able to eat every day, and had enough money left over to start
buying things like toilet paper in bulk. I've since lost track of him, and I'm
sure he's still poor, but he's a more secure grade of poor than he had been.

Another friend was a divorced mom, recently remarried to a disabled man. She's
unable to handle a full-time job, but works a few days a week as a substitute
teacher. Between disability, child support, and work she makes maybe $1500 a
month. She's always bought in bulk, usually splitting orders with her parents
and siblings who live in the same complex. The only real escape from poverty
she has is to recover from psychological trauma to the point that she can work
full time.

Third is a young couple, both just turned 20, and their son is 3 years old.
He's had adequate work for a while, but hides financial information from her,
they both have expensive phones they use for things my old prepaid Moto X can
do for a lot lower price, and they both have a tendency to eat fast food even
though he works at a grocery store that has a good selection and good prices.
The two things that have kept them from disaster for the past year: I let them
live in my basement for a token amount of rent that I stopped collecting after
a few months, and his grandparents have helped them pay off a couple of
surprise expenses. She recently found work, and with two incomes they're able
to afford their own place fairly comfortably, but for a while there it looked
like they were going to get into a bad cycle like the one detailed in the
article.

------
cubano
The poor get financially hosed in so many different ways in the US that
singling out _toilet paper_ , of all things, seems almost laughable.

How about real killers, like payday loans, bank fees, and paying more for
milk, eggs, and everything else at the corner store because you don't have
transportation to get to Costco?

And if you want next level hosedom, how about the _opportunity cost_ of having
limited or no transportation?

Many of the poor have felony criminal records, as I do, so how about the
_political cost_ of being denied the right to vote?

The list goes on and on. [edit] The title does say "..and almost everything
else" so I guess I missed that.

~~~
dclowd9901
How about more things?

Credit, which was literally created to hose the poor.

How about _goddamn product marketing_ which merely has the effect 1) robbing
poor people of their time and 2) jacking up costs of goods at the expense of
1?

It's all wrong.

~~~
dnautics
I always thought credit was created by merchants to screw the nobility. If
there's anything that screws the poor, it's _inflation_.

~~~
lotharbot
Clarification, for the benefit of the sibling comments: inflation screws the
poor because

(1) the poor are most likely to be on either fixed incomes, or incomes where
cost-of-living adjustments are substantially time-delayed relative to the
increased cost of living, and

(2) they're least likely to have any sort of hedge against inflation _or_
sudden shocks to the system, such as having a paid-off house, a fixed-rate
mortgage, adequate savings to handle an emergency, or investments in assets
other than plain ol' US Dollars That Only Come In On The First And Fifteenth.

The middle class weather inflation just fine -- they're likely to get yearly
raises that outpace inflation, to have savings to be able to handle unexpected
price increases, and to have at least some assets that keep up with inflation
even if their liquid accounts don't. And the wealthy benefit from inflation,
because their factories keep producing widgets but their labor costs go down
relative to the price of widgets.

~~~
johnchristopher
Sorry, I downvoted your post by accident.

------
mikekchar
I've never been able to articulate my own feeling about wealth and poverty.
I've been objectively poor at some points in my life. I became vegetarian in
my early 20s when I was travelling because I couldn't afford meat. Even then
there were some weeks where I didn't eat for a few days because I had spent
all my money for the week. It sounds bad, but being hungry taught me how to
prioritise and I don't regret it.

In other times of my life, I have quit my job and spent half a year writing
free software, or training karate -- without any income. I also spent 5 years
living in a run down shack spending less than $10K a year, when I was teaching
English in Japan.

By many measures, I was living in poverty because I had almost no income, or I
was spending almost no money. But at no time in my life have I ever thought of
myself as poor. I have always had money in the bank and I have never really
been in debt. When I went hungry it was because I stupidly spent my food
budget on beer (or something similar). I didn't have money for food, but I
_did_ have money.

Money is an option to buy things and for me the feeling of being rich is the
feeling of always having that option. You can be happy with less things, I
think. Nobody actually needs a yacht to be happy, or a big house, or a
collection of vintage wine. But I think it is really hard to be happy when you
have no options. It is even harder to be happy when you spend your options in
the future and have to suffer with crushing debt -- possibly enslaved forever.

I could choose to be hungry. I could choose to give up my job and do something
that paid no money. I could choose to move half way around the world and live
in a shack teaching English. That's incredible wealth for me. That kind of
wealth is available to many people, but I think that most people can't see it,
unfortunately.

~~~
lxe
You are "quit writing software and went to Japan" poor.

There is also the "working 2 jobs to feed 3 kids" sort of poor.

These are completely different kinds of "poor".

~~~
protomyth
Rural or urban also makes a difference. My brother and I regard fish as "poor
people's food", a thought brought on by experiences as youths.

I should point out many poor people on EBT (new name for food stamps) do buy
toilet paper in bulk once a month. I do wonder how many merchants raise some
prices on the 1st of the month.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
This is exactly one of the problems with EBT. Knowing that all the state
benefit income is fast approaching, businesses do everything they can to
ensure they sell as much cheap Chinese-made goods, horribly unhealthy food
products, and (cold) sandwiches (never hot, that's not something EBT covers)
as they can.

Every month this causes huge boom-bust cycles in neighborhoods and local
businesses, which adds to the perpetual trauma state benefits have wreaked
upon the disenfranchised poor that live in the US's major cities. But Coca-
Cola, Nestle, Walmart and Kroger all get their predictable windfalls as a
result. And people wonder why these companies are the primary supporters of
EBT! It's because EBT is not a people subsidy, but rather a massive corporate
subsidy that is also trapping our most vulnerable citizens into food desert
wastelands.

As "well intended" as these programs are, they are worse than doing nothing at
all, as far as I can tell. I don't see how such massive and ruthless
commodification of the poor could ever be achieved in private industry without
government support and regulation to bolster it.

~~~
protomyth
What exactly do you suggest to fix the problem with EBT?

~~~
jdietrich
Many states already stagger EBT payments throughout the month, which prevents
the boom-and-bust caused by the sudden influx of spending power.

------
Eric_WVGG
Some destitute-college-student friends were telling me that they lived on a
$20/week of rice + beans + canned tomatoes; I suggested that I take them out
to Costco and for $100 stuff their pantries with ~3 months of supplies.

They patiently explained to idiot me that the reason they ate so poorly was
because finding $100 was effectively impossible.

~~~
harryh
None of these college friends have any access to credit at all? I find that
very hard to believe. How are they paying for college?

~~~
jethro_tell
Funny that the assumption is you must have credit if you are going to school.
That's just a given now I guess.

------
dangerlibrary
Terry Pratchett said it very well:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they
managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus
allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an
affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then
leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those
were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so
thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the
feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could
afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry
in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would
have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have
wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

~~~
SilasX
Sorry, the quote irritates me to no end (doubly so how people trip over each
other to copypaste it).

In practice, most opportunities are not a pure savings like this where you
will end up ahead in every way if only you could borrow the money; usually,
you'll end up with more painful feet but more money to spend, as the cheaper
shoes aren't _completely_ useless and in need of replacement.

If the quote were as true as claimed, then someone could make a program where
helpers pair up with a poor person, loan them 50 dollars, and then let the
savings spiral up virtuously -- that loan enabled $100 of savings, which can
be reinvested in more savings, when frees up more savings, etc.

But obviously no one's figured out how to make that happen, and the poor can
often already get loans of such size and not trigger the upward spiral. So
something's missing.

With that said, being poor _does_ tend to be a double whammy where e.g. you
live in a places that makes bulk purchases harder ... but it looks nothing
like the dynamic in the Vimes copypasta.

~~~
542458
I don't think that's quite fair. While the quote oversimplifies it, you too
are oversimplifying it. If the boots situation existed your planned boots-loan
would never work.

Because poor people are high-risk loans, you'd need to put a significant risk
factor on that boots loan if you ever hoped to break even (there's a reason
credit cards charge 20+% interest). So now the $100 boots are $130 or more.

Additionally, nobody not already in heaps of debt would ever take the loan,
because people hawking predatory loans and money-for-nothing schemes are a
dime a dozen in poor parts of cities (cash4gold! payday loans!) and those who
don't lean quickly to ignore them all get screwed.

Finally, you're ignoring the psychological aversion to taking on debt, even if
it's for the best. Even among fairly well-to-do university students the
concept of business leverage seems to come as a bit of a shock, and takes a
fair bit of explaining - "But why would you _deliberately_ go into debt?".
Imagine trying to explain to somebody below the poverty line that the boots
are worth going into debt for!

~~~
SilasX
>Because poor people are high-risk loans, you'd need to put a significant risk
factor on that boots loan if you ever hoped to break even (there's a reason
credit cards charge 20+% interest).

Well, yeah, but that's the point: it's not that they're $50 away from a
perpetually self-reinforcing cycle of rising out of poverty. It's that even if
you loaned them the money, and showed them the savings, they still won't take
the rudimentary steps (pay back some of the easy savings). (Hence why my
disproof involved the example of a charity program.)

But at that you'd you'd be using a _very different_ theory of poverty than the
Vimes one; it's not that the person couldn't find an extra $50 one time, it's
that they are unwilling to plan ahead even when the seed money is given to
them. That has a very different moral than the one in the excerpt.

>"But why would you deliberately go into debt?". Imagine trying to explain to
somebody below the poverty line that the boots are worth going into debt for!

So wait, now you're saying the problem is that the poor are too unwilling to
borrow?

------
ryanmarsh
One day I needed to pick up a few things on the way to a party. Was passing
through a bad part of town and figured I'd stop at the only grocery store.
Surely they have the basics, beer, snacks, etc... To make a long story short,
I left without buying anything because the prices were more than I was willing
to pay.

I ended up wandering around the store comparing the prices to what I pay in my
neighborhood. Almost everything was more expensive. I have no idea how the
lower class folks in that neighborhood eat.

~~~
Retric
What people miss is those prices are high in large part due to theft and low
volume. A Safeway really can't operate in such places without jacking up
prices. And the same is true of most other retail, poor customers are both low
volume and expencive.

------
e15ctr0n
> spending patterns in developing countries, where cigarettes are sold in
> singles and shampoo can come in tiny, pricey sachets.

I wouldn't call the sachets pricey. They are single-use and come at an
extremely affordable price (mostly just one rupee = 2 cents). Sachets allow
the poor to try out products that they could not afford before, or products
that they don't use daily.

Sachet sales created a whole new business paradigm.[0] They form the basis of
C.K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's article _Serving the World’s Poor,
Profitably_ (HBR September 2002) [1] and C. K. Prahalad's book _The Fortune at
the Bottom of the Pyramid_ (Wharton School Publishing, 2004).

[0]
[http://repository.umac.mo/bitstream/10692/1300/1/7444_0_Sy-C...](http://repository.umac.mo/bitstream/10692/1300/1/7444_0_Sy-
Changco%20et%20al.%20APJML%202011.pdf)

[1] [https://hbr.org/2002/09/serving-the-worlds-poor-
profitably](https://hbr.org/2002/09/serving-the-worlds-poor-profitably)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid)

------
stvswn
This analysis ignores inventory costs. Those who can afford to buy in bulk
accrue a cost to holding inventory in their dwelling.

This can manifest in two ways: 1) the storage space physically necessary to
hold the TP and 2) the capital tied up in owning this before you need it.

To put it another way, maybe poorer people can afford to buy in bulk, but in
their apartments they have no place to _put_ a gigantic package of toilet
paper. Or, maybe they choose not to tie up $25 in securing future TP when they
need that liquidity to ensure they can make a car payment this month.

In either way, they get something of value by not holding inventory in their
house. That's why it costs more. It's not completely clear that they'd be
better off if they could lock in low TP prices, even if they did have the cash
on hand.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
The space issue seems to be a non-issue until you scale up to multiple bulk
products. Unless you are talking about people living in either a shelter or
the housing units that are basically a bed and everything else is communal.

~~~
redblacktree
It's nonsense even with multiple products. At scale, yes, inventory costs make
a huge difference. Practically, for most Americans anyway, there is storage
room in your place for bulk products.

We have what I like to call a "general store" in our basement that takes up
two shelves full of several bulk products. (perhaps 10-15 different products,
some small, some not) We're talking about a space that might be 2.5 ft on a
side, 1 ft deep. Hardly a ton of space that will require additional capital
"tied up in owning this before you need it."

In Tokyo? Sure. In the US? Not so much.

~~~
stvswn
There's not room in my two-bedroom house in Silicon Valley for bulk versions
of normal staples. I do not have a basement or attic. I have two closets; one
has my clothes in it, the other is full of my daughter's baby stuff. Toilet
paper gets stored under the sink in the bathroom. Does it seem insane to you
that I don't have space for bulk toilet paper buys? That I'd actually consider
storage space during these types of purchases?

Congrats on your basement, do you think apartment dwellers have basements?

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I have an apartment. I keep the toilet paper at the bottom of my closet. I
keep a bulk supply of paper towels in the corner of the kitchen area. I have
plenty of places where I can put bulk items. It would look cluttered, messy
even, and it would put things where they wouldn't normally belong, but I could
do it. But even if I had less space, I could still have space for the most
common bulk items. (Now if I had a pet I had to keep the items away from, that
would be another issue.)

------
matt_wulfeck
My wife has taught me so much about living frugally. We both grew up
relatively poor and I consider myself frugal, but she knows the power of
coupons and sales. She combines coupons with sales to get very good prices,
and budgets strictly for what we need. She'll also game the heck out of store
policies ("you are out of stock on item Y so I'm wondering if I can buy item X
for the same price").

Also buy a bidet. They cost less than $40, are better for the environment, and
will save on your TP costs!

~~~
chanux
_Also buy a bidet. They cost less than $40, are better for the environment,
and will save on your TP costs!_

THIS! I really don't understand why a bidet isn't very popular.

~~~
Freak_NL
Probably because the traditional Western image of a bidet is a separate bowl
in a luxurious bathroom. That is, it comes across as a luxury item.

It is an interesting topic though. I have spent a year living in Japan as a
graduate student, and had an ultra-modern all-in-one toilet with a built-in
bidet (these are quite common in Japanese homes, and even hotels tend to have
them en-suite).

At first you are confronted with your cultural baggage; all your life you have
been using toilet paper to sanitize your nether regions. After that curiosity
sets in, and you rationalize that if a whole modern society embraces this
technology, than certainly there must be something to it. Then you start using
it, and soon marvel at how barbaric and uncouth the toilet paper method is.

Upon returning to my Western country I was again back to toilet paper, but
getting a Japanese style toilet seat with built-in bidet is on my wish list…

Unfortunately, toilet habits are not something that can be easily changed in
any society. It is not something people like to discuss. If you've never
encountered a bidet (built-in or otherwise) and had the opportunity to use it
for a decent while, chances are you will reject the notion of owning one.

------
JustSomeNobody
Every so often I read one of these articles. Thing is, this isn't new
information. I've been reading about it since at least the 80's (and I'm quite
certain it's been happening since forever). Sadly, nothing every gets done
about it. The price of a half gallon of milk will never be half the price of a
whole gallon.

~~~
stvswn
Do you think it _should_ be?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
No, I don't. I think that would be trying to put a bandaid on a larger
problem.

------
fleitz
Oh fuck this shit, I was poor and I saved by buying rice in bulk and toilet
paper in bulk, and everything as cheap as possible.

Seriously, you have to be really fucked up to not be able to put away $25 for
rice.

If you're poor and not taking advantage of every savings you can I really
don't know how one expects to become not poor. If you're so poor as to not be
able to afford a large pack of toilet paper, sacrifice one of your dish rags,
I assure you they can be washed for long enough for you to save the extra cash
to afford a large pack of toilet paper.

Want to know what my 'rich' neighbors who have a BMW in their drive way do on
weekends? Collect cans from their neighbors trash. I can only assume at one
point that they were exceedingly poor.

Also, almost everyone I know who was/is poor also smokes. Poor people are
mostly poor because they make really bad financial decisions, yes its fucking
hard and it seriously takes its toll on you but eventually you get so tired of
it you stop making the decisions that keep you poor.

I have never eaten so well, or been so healthy as when I was poor. I walked
everywhere, never ate out, spent time with friends, meat was like dessert, and
you'd buy the cheapest cuts and marinate and cook them until they were
delicious and dropping off the bone.

The only thing I really had a problem with was saving $200 for a decent pair
of shoes that would last. Instead I just bought cheap shoes from the thrift
store, the nice thing about being poor is you generally don't have anything
else to do, so you check veevies every other day. Again if I wanted to solve
this problem I know full well I could have stopped smoking and in two months
I'd have cash for shoes.

~~~
anexprogrammer
Wow. Not everything is clear black and white you know. Your single experience
does not cover everyone else's. Let's ignore any depression or anything else
stemming from long term poverty that makes things worse, or at least less
clear cut.

> they make really bad financial decisions

A lot of the time they KNOW they are making poor financial decisions. Imagine
there is barely enough money coming in each month, the kids need to eat, the
cooker just broke, the mortgage/rent is due, and you don't have money to solve
all of those. So, make a sensible financial decision please, one that is not
going to worsen your lot. A second hand cooker is only £50

Sorry kids, no more hot food? Just instant noodles for all for a week, so we
can buy the old cooker?

Sometimes the choice is between a poor decision, a bad decision and a really
stupid one.

The thing about poverty, especially long term poverty, is it completely takes
away your ability to survive an emergency. That could be as simple as an
appliance or transport failure. It's the crisis that generally fucks people
up. The first three months, whilst the budgets remain credible and intact, is
something any fool can cope with.

Most parents I've known would put themselves into penury and risk malnutrition
to keep half decent food in their kids' bellies daily. Oftentimes knowing full
well, and with due consideration, that they are making their future a little
(perhaps a lot) harder.

And just in case you are thinking, but why have kids if so poor? Maybe there
was a good job when the kids arrived. Before the recession, accident, or
before dad died or whatever.

Yeah, it's easy man.

------
withdavidli
This exact example was given in a Reddit post. It was sad thread since the
question was to the poor of Reddit and what do they buy/how/why. One person
was buying tampons for his wife out of a quarter machine. It's easy to not
empathize with the poor when you can just ignore it, close yourself off in
gated communities.

------
ars
"One possible solution is that retailers could consider pushing their deals to
the beginning of the month."

I wonder is she realized what she was saying/implying by writing that.

She's basically saying "the poor can't be trusted to save their money, so help
them spend it well, before they waste it [later in the month]".

~~~
parenthephobia
No. She's saying that the poor _can 't_ save their money, because they don't
have the luxury of not having to spend it to stay fed, clothed, and housed.

~~~
ars
No, she did not say that. Otherwise why would the timing of the sale (start of
month vs end) make any difference?

~~~
auggierose
I didn't even read the article. But obviously, if there is an offer at the
beginning of the month, you can buy cheaply and save. If it is at the end of
the month, you already had to buy it at the beginning expensively, and you
cannot save anything.

That's really simple. I am wondering where your karma points come from.

~~~
ars
Like you said, you didn't read the article. It's usually better not to comment
if you have not.

But I'll help you out:

Implied was that they had enough money to buy in bulk for _multiple_ months,
but had wasted it on other things by the time the end of the month came.

There was another class of people who could not do even that, and could only
buy for that one month, they could not buy in bulk at any time. (Which is what
you were imagining I was talking about.)

~~~
parenthephobia
The article didn't imply anything like that to me.

Where it mentioned buying in bulk it mentioned two classes of people: people
who could not buy in bulk at all, and people who did buy in bulk at the
beginning of the month, if the option was available, but could not do so at
the end.

If you could point at the paragraph which led you to believe it implied the
poor were unable to afford bulk purchases due to "wasting" their money, that'd
be great.

~~~
ars
> two classes of people

There are three. There are also those who can buy in bulk for multiple months.

"And the poor often can't afford to do that — to pay $24 for a 30-pack instead
of $5 for a four-pack. Then, because they can't stock up, they can't afford to
wait until the next sale comes around."

30/4 = 7.5. i.e. implying a multi month purchase. Also "the next sale comes
around": at least by me sales are on a multi month schedule, not a monthly
schedule.

> If you could point at the paragraph which led you to believe it implied the
> poor were unable to afford bulk purchases due to "wasting" their money,
> that'd be great.

That's just it - I don't think she realized she said that. It would not be in
keeping with the rest of what she wrote.

And yet, her advice to stores to have sales "at the start of the month" does
in fact imply that. I assume it was inadvertent, but I called attention to it
because she did write it.

I think she would have preferred to advise stores to have sales on a monthly
schedule instead of a multi-month schedule. That would be more in line with
the rest of her article.

(Convincing stores to do that would be tough - they would have to stock medium
quantities of many items, instead of large quantities of a few. That hurts
their purchasing power and increases their labor costs.)

------
strathmeyer
"You've read your limit of free articles for this month." So.... how to the
poor read the Washington Post?

I was talking to a recruiter today. He asked me if I could start a job
immediately instead of the usual two week notice. I wondered how I was going
to buy gasoline to get to work. Guess I better start saving up.

------
BurningFrog
This article presents one theory of why the poor pay more.

Alternate theories are that (some) poor people have weak impulse control, are
bad at delayed gratification, and/or have low intelligence.

In reality the causes are very likely a mix of all these factors, but the
article makes no attempt to even consider other explanations.

------
fiatmoney
The poor _buy_ toilet paper? When I was a dirt poor student, it was assumed
that one would simply take two or three or etc doses extra, whenever one was
in a public bathroom.

------
re_todd
I went to a little store in a poor neighbourhood a few weeks ago and was
surprised to see a tiny container of Tide for 7.99, and there were no other
sizes or brands of detergent.

------
bane
There's some really insightful comments here that I don't want to take
anything away from.

I think one important observation is that it's _very_ hard to distinguish poor
because they can't from poor because they make bad choices and don't have the
tools to make better ones.

Some comments here point out that while toilet paper at Costco might be
cheaper than at the corner store, lack of transport options means the corner
store is the only option.

Other comments point out that somebody who is poor might spend what little
money they have on bad and/or frivolous choices with that money.

Having been pretty darn poor a couple times in my life, I can say that both
are true. I've personally been in situations where the only _available_
options were several times more expensive than the cheapest _possible_ one.
I've also (and have known many other poor folks) made fabulously stupid
decisions on what to spend our limited money on.

An anecdote, I had a poor friend who was constantly struggling to make his
rent and car payments and was in a state of near constant financial emergency.
He knew, down to the penny, how much money was in his bank account on a daily
basis, when pay day was and all his bill paying days. "Don't cash that check
until next Thursday" was a normal phrase from him. And yet when a local fair
would come around, he'd take a day off work, gather his family in their beat
up used car, buy expensive custom made costumes for everyone and spend the day
walking around and spending yet more money.

At one point when he ended up on the wrong side of collection for non-payment
of a medical bill I showed him with pretty basic arithmetic that his 2 WoW
accounts would cover that bill easily if he cancelled his WoW service -- but
there were all kinds of emotional reasons why he couldn't and he didn't and he
ended up in very serious financial trouble.

But he also packed his lunch every day, would skip meals, knew the prices of
all the local gas stations so he could save on fuel, and wore clothes that
were literally falling apart. Then spend $50 one Friday night at a movie
premier, or spending $500 on a tattoo or whatever.

It turns out humans are complicated, and poverty/being poor is complicated.
There are probably a pretty large number of people who are currently very poor
who would be in a far better situation with decent financial management -- but
have never had the luxury of learning how to do that. And who would probably
be better off with training on how to make better life choices.

For example, when I was putting myself through college, I remember coming to
the realization that I shouldn't buy any more entertainment of any sort
because

a) I didn't have enough time for it anyway

b) It turns out there's plenty of free and legal ways of killing time

Now I'm not poor (thankfully) and have carried this forward with me. I almost
never go to movies or concerts, I don't buy lots of bullshit or useless
electronics. I'm selective in clothes and other necessities. I don't pay for
cable TV or a land-line phone (neither of which I'd use) And when I feel like
blowing off some steam I simply fire up Hulu or a freeware game or youtube or
I paint, read a book or watch a DVD from the library etc.

I turned not spending money on stupid stuff into a habit, but it was
definitely something I had to come to a personal realization about and
consciously train myself for. I still get that sweaty palm feeling when I see
a Steam sale or a Humble Bundle. But paradoxically, I have the disposable
income to buy that stuff because I trained myself not to have disposable
income.

This is very hard to get across to many poor-but-could-be-ok folks because
they have strong emotional and irrational reasons for what they do and it's
those reasons that are very hard to break.

I'm almost convinced that there's a kind of poverty in otherwise high
functioning people that could be "fixed" with a certain mental health and
training regime, without any other changes to their financial status.

------
bcheung
The points in the article are all true but there's a case when the poor would
pay less that isn't discussed.

For something like toilet paper people who aren't poor probably don't even
check the price. In that regard they would be paying more than someone who did
comparisons to find the most economical option.

~~~
mikeash
That's just a matter of habits and motivation. A well-off person who can't be
bothered to price-compare toilet paper still _could_ pay less if they wanted
to, they just don't care to because they don't need to. The poor person stuck
paying more doesn't have the option to pay less if they want to.

------
unclebucknasty
Seriously, how much more of this analysis do we really need?

The poor have it bad. Now, what are we going to do about it?

------
Overtonwindow
I feel like this article focused exclusively on the African-American
community. I would really love to see the same type of article for Hispanic,
Asian, and white communities. I would love to just see the cultural
differences.

------
wprapido
being destitute indeed is expensive and low income + high costs let you down
the spiral

------
ars
This reminds me of getting ahead of a leveling curve in a game. If you can do
that, you can level in better areas (relative to your present level), giving
you better rewards (relative to your present level) which then helps you get
to even better areas.

The only way to get ahead of the leveling curve is to work really hard at
first, and it's painful (or boring), and then reap the rewards after.

Or in the context of this story live extremely poorly (in the "badly" sense of
the word, not the economic one), forgoing every single possible thing not
absolutely necessary, and then reap the rewards later.

It's hard to forgo every single luxury, or even to forgo simple inexpensive
entertainments. But it's worth it later.

~~~
saalweachter
My god, you've solved poverty!

~~~
ars
Much (most? all?) poverty is caused by human behavior, not adverse
circumstance. Just because we know it's caused by human behavior doesn't mean
we can fix it.

~~~
tomlock
Citation please.

~~~
parenthephobia
To be fair, I think most people probably agree about this. Where the
disagreement occurs is the question of whose behaviour is chiefly responsible:
people in poverty, or people very much _not_ in poverty.

~~~
tomlock
To be fair, I don't think most people agree on this.

~~~
parenthephobia
Really? Most people don't think that "much poverty" is caused by human
behaviour?

I'll grant that some temporary localized poverty may exist due to
circumstances beyond human control, but I'm absolutely certain that _most_
poverty exists because humans collectively permit it, not because we are - as
a whole - powerless to prevent it.

~~~
tomlock
Pure environmental factors for poverty won't necessarily be temporary, since
land might just be infertile for thousands of years.

I think that poverty is within human control in the same way that cancer is.
Cancer has always been around, and nobody has ever been able to solve it.
While most can agree that we have more control over cancer now, sometimes we
take a backwards step and introduce something that encourages it.

I'd argue that cancer, like poverty, is a circumstance we find ourselves in.
Something that has been there forever, and which we are trying to get under
control. And like cancer, the circumstances of poverty inordinately impact
people from different backgrounds, even though with a little help from the
experts, it could be better. But I'd argue that we don't actively permit
cancer to exist like we don't actively permit poverty.

------
aaron695
The true reality is, most poor people don't have the mental capacity to spend
money appropriately.

While we live in the fantasy land that they are quite smart, but happen to be
poor we really can't move ahead and improve the situation, the two issues are
linked.

Someone well off might also may not have the mental capacity, but it will
affect them less, I get that but that's an aside until the far future when
everyone is well off.

IE Using disposable diapers rather than reusable ones? It is kinda scary the
article has this as a given.

I get as a single parent time is hard to find, but it also means less
shopping. True you have to have a washing machine, but surely responsible use
of a credit card allows would make this cheaper and easier then going to a
laundromat.

Responsible use of a credit card is hard and this is more the issue, not a
strict lack of money problem.

~~~
aidenn0
You typically need to own your residence if you want to install a washing
machine. If your residence was not designed for a washing machine, you may
need significant changes to the plumbing to put one in.

In one case, I owned my residence and _still_ wasn't allowed to put in a
washing machine; it was a condominium, and the common drain lines were
insufficient for every unit to have a washing machine, so no unit was allowed
to install one.

There are some non-permanent washers available, but the reviews on them appear
to be very mixed, so I never took the risk to buy one, and that's as someone
with significant disposable income.

------
Sven7
Since the crowd around here can't exist without an increase in poverty, the
real question is how many poor people do we need to produce one Zuckerberg. If
we want more Zuckerbergs we need more poor people, just as if we want more
whales in the ocean we need more ocean.

Pretty sure Trump can work out a nice formula to export the poor into the
developing world, in return for an expansion of H1B visas or something. Given
the clamor I still see in China and India for people coming in, shouldn't be
too hard to work out. Also they don't use toilet paper there.

And yes I am that cynical of the crowd around here and the effect the tech
industry has had on increasing poverty.

~~~
mistermann
This comment is absolutely baffling to me - I can't even disagree because I
don't understand what you are saying.

~~~
reqctomaniac
I believe the op is referring to the debate about wealth creation and
distribution, where one could have a view that people in IT-startups like
Zuckerberg are not creating wealth, just distributing it. And to distribute,
you need to have someone to distribute FROM and someone to distribute TO. Now
the comment should be more legible, I believe.

~~~
mistermann
Ok, and yes that makes sense. The wealth creators don't have to be low paid
drones though.

