

Mental State of the Poor - negamax
http://mohit.me/logs/mental_state_of_the_poor.html

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patrickmclaren
A few months ago, after moving apartments and traveling to renew some official
documents (passport, visa, etc.), I had exhausted my emergency fund.

It turned out that in my next pay period, someone in accounting had forgotten
to file time sheets on time, so all the employees who were not paid a salary
had to wait until the next period, which was another two weeks. Following the
next pay period, I didn't receive any work for 4 weeks. Over the next few
days, it followed that my university raised tuition by 2k (for international
students) and was due very shortly, and my car died whilst out and about,
resulting in having to tow it home.

I spent the next 6 weeks living off of about $15-$20 / week. Although this is
still very doable, when you are faced with buying a new tube of toothpaste,
buying dinner for a few days, and running a load of laundry, you will of
course choose the food.

Everything quickly deteriorates. Your clothes get dirtier and dirtier, because
you are wearing them all continuously. Your lack of hygiene becomes noticeable
(can I really afford a haircut?). Your shoes develop tears and holes from all
the walking (could not afford public transport). The worst part of it all, is
looking at other people who are more than comfortable and wishing for their
help but being far too embarrassed to ask for it.

It is an extremely rut to get out of. It's very hard to achieve goals when you
have such little energy. The easiest way to prevent this situation is to
increase the size of your emergency fund, by definition, you cannot plan for
emergencies. I should not have used my emergency fund to move apartments and
do some last minute traveling.

------
Nanzikambe
Really? A few days without heating and now you think understand the poor??

~~~
indlebe
Having grown up in poverty I was impressed that he was able to relate fairly
well given the short experiment.

~~~
Ygg2
I'm not too surprised, the mental composure of poor people does seem different
than that of non-poor human beings. They probably operate on a more basic
level.

Please don't take this as offense, but it does seem logical that if you
operate on limited supplies you'd go for a very primal - just survive today
mode. I'm pretty sure ANY person that has no fallback to rely upon would go
into same mode.

I heard that steady supply of cash does help them a lot. Like a monthly wage.
That way you can say, ok if I skip this trash meal and go learn something,
maybe I can live more decently.

~~~
indlebe
>I heard that steady supply of cash does help them a lot.

Definitely. Although pairing that with help from someone who isn't from a
poverty stricken mindset is key. Having a friend who comes from a more
"stable" background that puts effort towards relating to you goes a really
long way.

------
altero
Some geek is without heating, misses a few deadlines and gets depression from
not heaving regular healthy snack.

So lets start:

1) there is nothing wrong with sleeping long periods of time. Just a century
ago most of the Europe hibernated over winter. Awake time could be as little 6
hours, but in that time you could do normal work. My great-great grandfather
carved wonderful sculptures during winter time.

2) healthy food is bullshit. Only valid number under that conditions is energy
content. The more fat the better. Leafs are for rabbits.

3) I think author skipped a few meals, and got depression out of that. With
some practice and reasonable body fat, 3 days without food is not a big
problem.

4) Dining out (in McDonnalds) or ordering stuff online is not luxury, but
necessity. It might be cheaper to buy stuff this way. How are you going to
cook at home if you are homeless?

5) I do not agree with connection poor = depressed. For example some really
poor people can still save money for cheap holiday. By putting down this
equality, you will be only helping people who are "miserable enough". This
creates whole industry with really nasty side effects.

Also Social state is not the solution. I live in state with "good social
system". However it has number of conditions, for example if your grandfather
has a pension, you are not entitled for any social benefits. Want to marry?
Forget it, your family would loose significant part of income.

Lovely part is taxation. If I would send invoice for webdesign for 1000 euro,
I would only make 280 euro profit. VAT, income tax, and compulsory social and
health insurance would eat most of it.

And the absolute worst part is that everyone has to pay social and health
insurance (60euro per month). So if homeless guy (or prisoner after release)
gets a job, their first have to pay hundreds euro to cleanup their Social
Security number.

~~~
negamax
I actually struggled with the thoughts on welfare. That's not the solution I
would like to see myself as it leads to multiple other problems. I have
written my thoughts on welfare state. You can read that on /logs.

But I do strongly feel that state should ensure that poor has means for
improvement. I am further afraid that without that, many people would be
inclined to take extreme steps which may cause harm to society in unforeseen
ways. More than state, I would like to see rest of the society have better
attitude towards poor. Probably we don't need higher taxes and channelling of
money/resources by some people(who see long term benefits) towards the poor
can help them a lot.

------
VLM
There seems to be a recent fad of these sort of "experiments".

Much like "drop 15 americans on a tropical island" life is pretty easy for the
experienced locals, pretty tough for a guy with only two days experience. What
I'm getting at is poor people tend to get pretty good at a poverty lifestyle.
It has a lot more to do with priorities than with the contents of a wallet.

For example, I was a little disturbed by the guys description of putting
himself into low-grade hypothermia; little food and no heat tends to do that
after awhile. I am well aware its a social faux pas to wear a sweater or two,
and maybe warm sweatpants instead of designer jeans. Or a hoodie. But given
the choice of death by hypothermia or wearing two sweaters at the same time, I
think the average poor dude would wear two sweaters, regardless of what a
temporary tourist would do. I live in a cold climate, and I've been poor, and
I thought it was super creepy reading how he slipped into hypothermia, mental
effects and all. I expected it to end in an ambulance or lost toes from
frostbite or something.

~~~
negamax
Sorry my writing disappointed you. For me it was a different perspective on
things and I felt like to share it with others.

~~~
sebkomianos
You gotta share for those that want to share, not for those that look to
critic everything.

I mean, come on guys, he just wrote something and put it on his personal
website. It's not like he went to the President claiming he knows how poor
live their lives and asked him to tax you to help them. Chill...

~~~
VLM
I'd take issue from three aspects.

The first is its merely a factual observation that there's a social media
trend of non-poor people goin it alone pretending to be poor for a very short
amount of time and then writing about it, usually online. There seems to be no
area for opinion about this factual observation.

Secondly this is example X of the same experiment with basically the same
conclusions. It would be WAY more interesting for someone to try an experiment
of say, teaming up with someone who knows how to be poor? Agile / pair
programming development techniques applied to being poor for a weekend? That
would be very interesting. Being poor is a learned skill, to some extent, so
its not necessarily insightful that the first couple days of a new skill don't
turn out so well. Try any craft, like perhaps metalworking, or any skill, like
perhaps a new programming language, or any sport, like perhaps snow shoeing,
and your first couple days are probably not going to be very successful and
thats not entirely insightful. Its not much of a critique that fifty people
have independently released version 1.0, and here is an obvious next step
roadmap for version 2.0, someone Please try it?

The third thing which is the only valid critique I raised is the story as
presented was hair raising because I live in a cold climate almost all my life
and have many cold climate outdoor hobbies and I know plenty of first aid as
relates to cold climates, and the subplot of the story was a pretty good
autobiographical example of early stage hypothermia, to the point of being
creepy to read. Feel cold for awhile, and hungry, then the brain gets really
foggy, then unusual ideas start flowing as the body shuts down, then extremely
sleepy... I genuinely thought it was going to end with an ambulance. Nothing
wrong with an experiment or observation taking, but try not to get hurt?
Listing the symptoms of hypothermia in a story format is interesting but
distracts from the main story. I think this is a calm, fair, reasoned, and
fundamentally useful critique.

