I was a kid during both oil shocks of the 1970s. That has absolutely nothing to do with my driving. What does, and not just for driving, is the family taught cultural value of 'don't be wasteful'.
So unlike so many people today, I don't make 12 trips a day to stores/friends/whatever when I can just make one or two if I actually think 5 minutes ahead. That applies whether gas is $1 or $5 per gallon.
I also try to make good use of what I own and not discard things that are functional simply to get the new shiny.
I read a few news stories that during lockdowns, many people would only buy a few groceries at a time, so that they could go out more, and spend time at the market.
As someone who probably falls partly under your definition of 'wasteful':
I don't like planning, and I forget things. So I sometimes leave the light on when I leave the house, forget something when I have to do groceries at the store so I have to go back, if I have half a meal left, I throw it out rather than freezing it, etcetera.
I've learned that, for me, accepting that gives me more peace of mind than trying to plan every part of my life. It also wastes less time than being super organised with my groceries, and I also end up throwing out less if I just shop for a single meal at the time.
Still, my spending is not that high, and my ecological footprint is not big. I switch electricity companies each year, taking advantage of their sign-up bonus. I make sure to double check that I've turned of the heating when I leave the house. I only have LED-lights in my house. I invested in solar panels, which will take a long time to earn back. I bought a house that is 20% cheaper than what I could afford. When buying the house, important factors were that it was well isolated, and that my commute is short, cheap and fast (20 minutes by bus). I compromised on its garden and square footage. I buy a phone that's 300 euro rather than 700 euro and use it until it breaks.
To me, 'don't be wasteful' is best applied selectively, both ecologically and economically. I approach it like an optimization problem: Identify the bottlenecks and attack those.
Nobody is born enjoying planning things, it's something you like better as you do it more. Of course, you can accept the fact that you are not born enjoying it and then just not do it but that doesn't seem like a decision to be celebrated, to me.
Edit: Because it is essentially celebrating the fact that you are at least in part measurably dysfunctional. It's part of the zeitgeist, but there is such a thing as taking it too far.
Accepting is different than celebrating. I disagree that it's part of the zeitgeist. The zeitgeist is that you and your life have to be perfect, because that is the image you get from everyone on social media.
I was a kid during the 80s when gas was (comparatively) cheap. But I got so sick of living out in the middle of nowhere and having to drive all the time (as a kid, with my parents), that I spend more on housing in urban areas where I can walk to multiple stores.
Throwing things away is so difficult these days that I try to make purchases that avoid it. But like...we still have my 5 year olds car seat in our garage because no place will take them (I have to make a trip to the dump, or get a junk hauler to come by with a big load for them and a few hundred bucks).
> we still have my 5 year olds car seat in our garage because no place will take them (I have to make a trip to the dump, or get a junk hauler to come by with a big load for them and a few hundred bucks).
Our garbage system allows us two "bulky item" pickups per year with our regular garbage if we call in advance where they'll take anything in a 3x3x6 volume.
For everything else, I just destroy it with old power tools.
> I was a kid during the 80s when gas was (comparatively) cheap.
The 1980s are funny, because, the early 1980s were one of the periods of highest sustained gas prices in history, while the late 1980s and 1990s are the lowest ever.
I do the same behaviours but mostly not to waste time. It feels to me like you're arguing against your own point though. You state that your personal experiences confirm the hypothesis (you grew up during economic shocks, you are not wasteful), but that somehow doesn't confirm the hypothesis? How one feels about one's own values says little about why those values are the way they are. We all feel our values are right, otherwise why would we believe in them?
> I was a kid during both oil shocks of the 1970s. That has absolutely nothing to do with my driving. What does, and not just for driving, is the family taught cultural value of 'don't be wasteful'.
For me the 1970s were drought and a lifelong awareness of water conservation. Edit to add: buckets to collect water from "warming up the shower" and using them to flush toilets must be one of my earliest complete memories of a complex process.
If anything, our family culture of thrift came from parents who were small children during WWII rationing and grandparents who were children in the Great Depression. I sometimes can even imagine there is an epigenetic factor here, leading to more obsessive (compulsive?) planning, optimizing, and risk management behaviors...
> I don't make 12 trips a day to stores/friends/whatever when I can just make one or two
This seems like a bit of a straw man. I live in a pretty suburban area and drive my car probably 2-3 time a week. I've rarely seen my neighbors, even the ones with a bunch of kids drive more than 2 or 3 times a day.
If you've known people that "make 12 trips a day" they might be a very rare anomaly, I don't think this is normal behavior from what I observe.
But an iPad can replace a hundred toys in terms of the amount of variety in entertainment. Just like it can replace thousands of CDs and books. If we're talking wastefulness I think it comes out ahead.
I wonder which is more wasteful: A built-in rechargeable battery that lasts 500-1000 charge cycles but is difficult to replace, or a requirement of six AAA batteries that need replacement after every 3-4 hours of use.
While I'm on my 4th trip out for the day I'll bet he's already back home watching TV.
Joking aside, I've definitely see the cost/hr add up by purchasing new things that still have bugs to work out. The price might be $500, but I'll spend another $700 of time working on issues. I'm fine being a few months late to the party so I can conserve time for more important things.
In the words of the characterized OP: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
Many people nowadays see retirement, especially early retirement, as a means towards whatever goal they have in life. You can focus on whatever you like without worrying about your financial stability.
My point was that this isn't the only goal people have. Just not being willing to waste too much time in traffic (while waiting for retirement) could also be the reason one prefers scheduling their trips to the shops.
if you're a worker, then mostly yes. Ideally, self-fulfilling goals that require those extra 40-60 hours you're giving to a company then can be diverted. Not everyone can work at ChangeTheWorld corp for their day job.
Part of it is that, in general, there aren't great options to spend 10 or 20 hours/week--or, really, 700 or so hours a year doing interesting work for someone else on your schedule getting paid at full-time professional salary levels. You're not available when needed. You're not keeping current probably. Even if I could do some part-time consulting on what I currently work on, I'd become much less interesting to hire pretty quickly.
Being poor in general, during your childhood, scars you for life.
It makes you penny wise and pound foolish, adverse to taking risks in your career and investments, can destroy your confidence in yourself, while always having to look over your shoulder monetarily speaking.
Habits that even after you remove poverty from your live, you still feel the the anxiety and triggers in your head.
My wife grew up very close to the poverty line, with her parents always just about to lose the house. And she has this anxiety. (Edit: to be clear, she's a successful civil engineer, considered one of the best in her field locally and makes great money- she has nothing to worry about.)
In order to help with it, we have a bank account that our bills come out of that has a little more than 6 months worth of all our bills (mortgage payment included) just sitting there, collecting zero interest. Every time a bill is paid, we top it up to the target amount. If we stop making money today, we don't have to do anything differently for 6 months.
It's not logical or financially wise, but it means that she doesn't worry about money as much. I consider the opportunity cost on the interest we might collect on that money as a bill that I'm happy to pay.
People vastly underestimate the "peace of mind" costs - once those are taken into effect it can suddenly make sense to do things that many consider "financially unwise", such as having a large emergency fund, paying off a mortgage, etc.
And once you do that you can find yourself suddenly feeling much more free - knowing that even if everything goes south room and board is taken care of can give you the courage to take risks you'd not otherwise take, such as starting a business, a family, even moving.
The main thing about "living paycheck to paycheck" that scares me is that feeling of being trapped.
> It's not logical or financially wise
I'm taken aback by this statement. I am in an incredibly similar situation to your wife in terms of growing up and being successful today, and I do this. Granted, I think I'm at 3.5 months, but the point stands.
Sure, the money isn't generating more wealth, but that amount is finite. It's a cushion that should effectively indefinitely and every dollar beyond is vigorously invested. And, should something happen to employment, you use it as a buffer (assuming no severance) and replenish as soon as you're employed again.
I have a friend who helped me get where I am. He makes even more than I do, but financially, I'm more well off than he is because he thinks that every single dollar needs invested -- to the point that despite making the top 2-3% of income for our entire region, he regularly is paying off revolving credit card interest because he isn't equipped to pay a $500 unexpected expense.
Sure, if you invest every single dollar, it's always earning 7-10% on average. But if you have to then pay 20%+ APR on credit cards because you can't handle unexpected expenses, it begs the question whether you're really getting ahead.
Stocks are liquid enough that you can sell enough to pay your credit card off before getting hit with interest. There's no reason to have 6 months worth of expenses in cash just sitting around unless you strongly suspect a crash.
Broad munis and intermediate treasuries are both down 10% YTD, and so are TIPS (though at least those have had inflation adjustments). You might want to check your "emergency fund investment account" lol...
Gains from the past isn't so much the point, but rather when you may need to liquidate. An emergency fund is typically needed at the worst possible time, when the economy isn't good and investments are deflated. That's the liquidity risk you take with anything but cash.
With our system, our bills get paid with the money we have, and then when we make more money, it just goes back to the buffer account. Overflow goes into investing.
Stocks are the definition of not liquid, in that their implied duration is 10+ years at least. How many fools are using stocks as an emergency fund during a tightening cycle that's removing liquidity at the fastest pace since the 1980's?
Having a solid emergency fund is actually pretty wise. Maybe split some of that into something low risk like I-bonds. My wife has similar anxiety, and it took years of financial education to get her comfortable with the idea that we only need a month of backup, and can float the rest on CC until we liquidate other assets.
As someone who went through two recessions, survived multiple layoffs, and had a few medical things, this seems like crazy talk. The general rule of thumb is 6 months of savings. I've known many that didn't follow this rule, and ended up in very bad debt.
Do you need it all sitting in a savings account, though? Inflation ate almost 9% of its value this past year. Granted stocks are down 20% this year, but assuming you don't have to touch it for a while, they should more than recover in a few years (well, assuming no massive global disaster, which seem more and more common lately).
We have a decent amount sitting in our savings account, but not six months worth. But I can liquidate assets to get us the rest of that six months if necessary, and it would take about a week to get that into our bank account.
If you need six months of expenses, you likely got laid off, which means your stocks are likely tanking as well, and it takes longer to get a new job. A cash or bonds emergency fund is perfectly logical. Six months isn't even that much money; in a normal 2% inflation year, that means you're losing less than 0.01% of the amount each month to inflation. The peace of mind is worth that, isn't it?
Personally I have 2 years in cash because I like to take 6+ month sabbaticals between jobs, but even that is a negligible amount due to my expense/income ratio.
This year. Meanwhile it would have missed out on 27% in gains the previous year (and its associated dividends), if I kept it in a bank account.
Also that 20% loss will most likely recover in time. Inflation almost never reverses itself, it only slows down.
There's a reason rich people park most of their money in assets, and not in savings accounts. If they got more returns by keeping it in savings accounts, they would do that.
6 months of basic living expenses isn't "most of their money" for rich people. Ideally it wouldn't be for the rest of us either.
You seem to be thinking I'm against investing altogether - I'm not, but there is a significant risk avoidance in having an emergency fund that is 100% liquid and not tied to market risks.
But you will be liquidating your assets at the worst possible time (assuming the cause for needing to dip into your emergency fund is more systematic than being individually fired and not being able to find another job).
A cautionary tale for you - I burned through 8 months of savings in the 2008 crisis. While the I-Bond isn't subject to market fluctuations, I am glad that my emergency fund was in cash/CDs and not invested. Because it would have lost 40% of it's value just when I needed it the most.
Several months is excessive. Even if you think you might going to spend six months with no income, you don't need six months' expenses in cash - one month's worth in instant access savings (or, sure, half in savings and half in cash under the matress, just in case), two months' in one months' notice savings, and three months' worth in three months' notice savings works just as well and will get you a better return.
What if your car suddenly breaks down and you have to replace it? Is the extra income of investing, let's say, 3 months of expenses really worth it?
Let's say you get 3% in an instant savings account, and 3.5% in a three months' notice savings account. If you never touch that money until your retirement in 30 years, that would give you 0.5 months worth of expenses extra interest.
Compare that to the hassle, extra work to keep track of several savings account, and the added risk in the unlikely event that you do need the money quicker (eg. A broken car, an unexpected medical emergency, whatever). Surely the trade-off must than tip in favor of simply having a bit bigger emergency fund?
You could use that logic to say keep all your savings in cash all the time. What if your roof gets blown off and you suddenly need to replace it? What if your house burns down and you need to buy a new one? The relevant question to ask is when having an extra couple of months' expenses in instant access is going to make the marginal difference. IMO the window between "one months' expenses" and "six months' expenses" is pretty narrow, so it makes more sense to keep one month or so in cash or current account and then invest the rest at the best rates you can.
(e.g. I would say for most people a car probably costs more than three months' expenses, so having that much extra in instant access probably doesn't shift you from "can't buy a new car in cash" to "can buy a new car in cash". Realistically you're (hopefully) insured and you're quite likely to finance your replacement car.)
I've had an "instant access" savings account take 2 months to pay out my money - some kind of AML issue, supposedly. Conversely, a lot of "three months' notice" accounts aren't "you physically can't take money out with less than three months' notice" but rather "if you withdraw with less than three months' notice you sacrifice one year's interest" or similar. I don't find the "hassle of an extra account" to be significant when it's two accounts at the same bank under the same login, but if you do then I would seriously consider having only a notice-requiring savings account.
It's absolutely both of those things. It's financially unwise to take any risks at all with your emergency funds and operating expenses, so having 3-6 months worth locked up is absolutely the best thing you can do.
with the market being as it is, actually very wise to have a lot of cash on hand :) we also operate this way. i could become unemployed today and we buffer enough so that it's not an emergency at all.
I prefer a layered approach - some investments take longer than others to cash out. And some are in between but still provide some return. A ton of cash on hand is probably a bad idea
Should be noted that a significant portion of Berkshire Hathaway's usual cash pile is not for deal making, but as a backstop for their large insurance portfolio.
I have a high yield savings account and interest is 0.75%, 6 withdrawals per month and the transfer completes same day if I need it in an emergency, plus it’s FDIC insured. Same peace of mind plus interest.
You could also say being poor in childhood teaches you how to be frugal. I regard this as a healthy habit and better discipline I wish I had with money (coming from a middle-class family).
Another way to look at frugality is just an aversion to spending money on whatever it is that society or mass media tell you you have to buy, an important and healthy attitude one can have, IMO.
It goes way beyond frugality - it is usually accompanied by a touch of hoarding (bought a new phone? Let's keep the old one even if it has a cracked screen, just in case... <throws phone into drawer full of hopelessly unusable and outdated electronic doodads>.)
A term I've seen bandied about for the collective symptoms is having a Scarcity mindset and it's based on insecurity/fear of unexpectedly running out of money (which was a frequent event in childhood)
John Scalzi's classic "Being Poor" blog post[1] details the effects of poverty in detail.
With electronics specifically, it's often just more convenient to toss the old device in a drawer. You're not supposed to put them in the trash, and e-waste disposal often incurs a fee. This is why refrigerators end up dumped on the side of a road in a ravine, because municipalities make it harder to dispose of them responsibly than to just dump them.
>(bought a new phone? Let's keep the old one even if it has a cracked screen, just in case... <throws phone into drawer full of hopelessly unusable and outdated electronic doodads>.)
Never been poor; me and my whole family have always done this. I just forced them to get rid of their standalone DVD player. They have remote controls for devices going back to the 90's.
The cellphone example is even better; you'd be a fool to immediately dump your old phone. It's small and easy to store, and if your new phone craps out or gets lost or stolen you may very well have a use for another phone that works right now. I have phones going back 2 generations.
This is just frugality and contingency planning.
Scarcity mindset is more like, "I have $300, I need to spend it before it goes away". That's what keeps people poor.
You don't have to be/(have been) poor to be a hoarder. On the old cellphone, my emphasis was a drawer full of backup-to-a-backup-to-a-backup devices that are now 10 years old and is running Android 2 and are potentially a fire hazard while charging and are not fit for use - they are emotional support devices. Keeping one generation of backup device is rational, 3+ means there's something to unpack.
I'm curious about how your family tradition came to be: a high number of people who experienced the great depressions in their formative years are/were compulsive hoarders in latter years.
Being poor is what keeps poor people poor; costs of necessities go down the richer you get; being poor is expensive
There’s a fine line between frugality and being stuck in a local optima. Sometimes, expensive things are better in the long run, because they serve their purpose better and last longer.
My approach is to always buy the first "stuff" cheap and then try to use it the best possible way. If it breaks or I see the limits with the "stuff", then I go for the good and expensive one. This way I know I need it but I can also better assess the quality.
This of course after having spent too much on high quality "stuff" with little use.
The only problem with this approach is the amount of time before your interest in a new thing starts to fade is often just about the same amount of time it takes to recognize the limits of the cheap stuff and decide to upgrade.
It's definitely happened to me multiple times. And I don't think it's just a coincidence, with any new hobby or skill you will start out improving very quickly and then eventually hit a plateau. The first thing you think when you hit the plateau is "I would be a little bit better/have a little bit more fun with this if I had better gear", and it's usually true and you do get a slight boost. But then a little while after that you hit a sustained plateau anyway and that's the point where you'll often lose interest.
This is what I do with tools. If it's obviously something I will use again and again, I'll pay for quality. If it's something I might need just once, but not certain, I'll buy a cheap one to get the immediate job done. If I need it again and it breaks, I've now needed it twice so I'll replace it with a good one. (If it doesn't break, it's a better value than I thought).
I think you are both correct. It is true that people who grow up poor simply have much fewer chances to learn how to grow wealth. They may be frugal and manage the little they have with care, but that kind of mindset is not enough in general. They don't get any chance to learn how to invest money properly, because they don't have any to invest. If they do put something aside, they are encouraged (by the circumstances) to keep it as safe as possible (ie cash), which is generally a bad investment decision.
You are also right in that there are plenty of people who are high earners, but never get to actually build wealth because they spend it all. This can often be the curse of living in a high cost of living area. You see all the wealthy people driving in nice cars and living in luxury homes, and this makes it difficult to consciously deny yourself these things and live (relatively) modestly but build long term wealth instead.
That overlooks the basic point, that poverty causes trauma. Budgeting is just one symptom. It causes negative life-long outcomes; there's plenty of research on this.
Is it possibly both? ;). I mean, a good education in frugality at the same time as being traumatic? And as an adult you have both strengths and weaknesses as result of this? You have excellent frugal habits that help you live happily on less, but also may be risk averse to the detriment of your career, and lacking in confidence at times. That's certainly my wife's experience.
One of the other aspects of being poor is the assumption that any windfall you get will be nickeled and dimed away from you pretty soon, so the only way you'll ever be able to enjoy it is to spend it all immediately.
Poor people who manage to accumulate some savings also face intense social pressure to give or "loan" that money to family and friends who are in more desperate circumstances (or at least claim to be). It's nice to help people out, but being too generous makes it impossible to ever get ahead.
You can very easily teach yourself to be frugal now as well - it just requires taking the time out of your day to do so. Of course there are potential confounding factors but there are plenty of super rich people I know who are annoyingly frugal.
This is fixable without suffering. Read a few books on the subject, and develop an appreciation of why money is important. Suffering is the last and blunt resort.
True facts, this. My spouse never had to wonder where the electric or gas money was coming from, even though their family is really frugal despite making really good money, and I'm still surprised at their decisions that I irrationally describe as extravagant even though they're better decisions all told.
Even though I have a great job now and have for years, I still find myself shying away from good things that I really can afford, or buying cheap shoes when dropping a Benjamin is better even in the immediate term.
Coming from the more well-off side, it makes friendships with people on the other side harder as well. By chance a good chunk of my social circle in college was less well off than me, and while we liked playing games together I got weird looks for buying shirts new at Macy's or Michelin tires. It just seemed to rub them the wrong way, like they thought I was trying to show off or rub something in their face even though I'm just upper-middle-class and buying what I saw as the best product for what I needed. It's not like I was showing up in a new Lexus or something. Some of them also expected me to drive them everywhere even though they had working cars of their own, and that got rather toxic after a while.
Can confirm this. Middle class here. Have a relationship with someone well-off. I view it as cultural differences that we need to overcome. In our case we did. The only "downside" is that it takes a very consistent form of energy. I'm constantly thinking "if I'd be as rich as she is, how would I deal with the situation?" I can imagine it to some extent due to how I play poker and seeing parallels with my stack size versus my financial situation. Long story short: when I feel I don't have enough, I get very tight on my spending. When I feel I have enough, I get loose and lax. As one might imagine, I wasn't a very good poker player because of that ;-)
I’ve been with my fiancée 10 years, she was solid middle class with a single mother teacher, I am pretty solid upper middle class growing up.
I just want to say that if allowed to happen you can really be a force together, a moderation force coming from your side and your SO. She buys higher quality trash bags and tires (lol) now and I don’t splurge on stuff all the time now, and don’t waste as much money.
I really appreciate the perspective being with her has given me.
> It makes you penny wise and pound foolish while always having to look over your shoulder monetarily speaking.
Could you explain what you mean? I grew up pretty poor, single income PhD student/post-doc salary family with two kids. Eventually my father got a proper position at a university, but until then we were pretty poor. My parents used to sleep on the floor, we had almost no furniture(I remember playing football in our living room with my dad since it was entirely empty) with most of our stuff coming from charities.
I wonder if I exhibit the behavior you talk about or not.
I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things, when the savings I would make would have no meaningful impact on my yearly net worth, but the time and mental energy wasted browsing/walking around comparing prices could have better return on investment if used on other things like learning a new skill, reading a book, etc.
I avoid any kind of subscription services (Netflix, Spotify, cloud-storage, phone contract, etc.) to the disbelief of my friends ("But it's only 10 Euros a month!, Why don't you have it?"), preffering instead to spend my time building my own self-hosted solutions for cheap, which probably explains how I got into tech in the first place.
I own a cheap old car and prefer to fix it myself if I can, rather than paying someone to do it, even though the time I spend learning how to fix it, buying the parts, then actually fixing it, is probably worth more than a professional would have cost.
I'm afraid to make investments fearing that the market could crash the second I enter it, and erase my money, leaving me vulnerable to being homeless or dependent on doing shitty jobs I hate just to stay afloat, so I just hoard cash like an idiot as that makes me feels safe and lets me sleep well at night.
I think I might not be good enough for some bold career steps, like giving up my tech job and risking everything to start my own business of a coffee cart in the city center or pivoting to something other than tech that's less well paid, like being a teacher.
I spent too much of my youth studying hard at useless subjects on the pressure from my parents that "education will get you far in life, so beat those books and get good grades", only to realize far too late in life that I could have gotten in the same spot with 20% of the effort, leaving me time to actually enjoy my youth.
Sure, I'm working my way out of these habits slowly, but the Pavlovian impulses are still in my brain. Complex things these minds of ours.
I'm guilty of doing everything you've mentioned as well, for the same reasons, but this especially:
>I'm afraid to make investments fearing that the market could crash the second I enter, and erase my money, leaving me vulnerable to being homeless or dependent on doing shitty jobs I hate just to stay afloat, so I just hoard cash like an idiot as that makes me feels safe and lets me sleep well at night.
I am terrified I won't have money when I need it, worried it won't be there or accessible. I've learned over time that there is no amount of money in my savings account that can alleviate this.
When I was a kid there was never enough money and disaster was one unexpected bill away. As an adult I know that's not true of my situation now, but I am incapable of getting out of that mindset.
I've found that reducing the "monthly" bills can help - which usually means paying down and off debt entirely.
Then consider things as "one time purchases" instead of monthly obligations - buy Disney+ for a year, once, and immediately cancel. Then if something goes wrong, there's no upcoming bill to pay.
Strangely, I've observed the same behaviour with people on the exact opposite side of the spectrum too (i.e. UHNW).
A friend of mine worked on superyachts which were £400k a week to rent. He said that without fail the owners would be penny pinching at the end over a few £ here and there (on food, drink, suncream etc.) Same with upper-class Brits who had hundreds of years of intergenerational wealth but won't turn their heating on until November.
Not sure what to make of this; I've often wondered if it is a form of bell curve.
Rich penny pinching is often all about forcing counterparties to give you more favorable terms-- using the copious other economic options you have as leverage.
Poor penny pinching is often about doing what's necessary to survive, even if it's a terrible outcome in the medium term.
I wonder how much of that is because at those wealth levels, you start to feel you don't have much in the way of agency (you're not bargaining for the cost of the superyacht, someone does that for you, etc) - and you want to feel "in the game".
Now if by "owners" you mean the owners of the yacht, then it makes more sense as it's a business and they're controlling costs, especially the ones they see as "variable".
> the time and mental energy wasted comparing prices could have better return on investment if used on other things like learning a new skill, meeting a friend, reading a book
Maybe. Actual cost savings are observable now, with very high probability. Maybe that book or skill is useless; in other words, there's a broad distribution on possible outcomes. Who actually measures this stuff to assess ROI? It's not obvious that most people get a good ROI out of university degree, or at least at the same levels as in the past. At best I've seen some average measures, but not bottom 10 percentile measures, you know, essentially guarantees that one's time and energy and money isn't wasted. It should be of significant concern that even a CS degree isn't an effective guarantee of a job offer that requires the knowledge gained from that CS degree. It's as if a lot of the actual skill an employer requires is learned outside school, which is insane and conflicts with the broad everyone-must-graduate-college narrative in the US and Canada.
Correct, this is what I’ve observed too. It’s stunning to me that the big tech companies - Amazon comes to mind - aren’t writing colleges big checks in exchange for “produce us people who can function in real life teams”.
>aren’t writing colleges big checks in exchange for “produce us people who can function in real life teams”.
The US has has the privilege($$$) to import the minds and workforce it needs, thereby skipping the need to invest in local education, and offshoring this burden to brain-drain countries in the process.
The US spends more per capita on education than any other large country on earth. The only countries in the OECD that surpass the US in per capita education spending are Luxembourg, Norway, Austria, and Iceland. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
So, the US is actually doing both: doing its best to brain-drain other developed countries while also spending more than anyone else on education. Is college the best place to train people to function better in teams? Or would Amazon be better served in funding lots of youth sports teams and recruiting from those?
And this is done without any violent process of physical capture. Others could play that game too, and the US could play it as well as it once did. All the participating parties would benefit directly, and "the world" indirectly.
>So I just hoard cash like an idiot as that makes me feels safe and lets me sleep well at night.
If you haven't already, look into Certificates of Deposit ("CD") at your local bank. They're FDIC insured (so if the bank goes under, you're covered, up to something like $250k) and you don't have to worry about losing the principal amount you put in. If you ever need to withdraw that money in case of an emergency, you only risk losing out on the interest. Instead of dumping a ton of money into a single CD, look into CD laddering wherein you setup multiple CDs that expire in 3 months, 6 months, etc or some other cadence that you're comfortable with.
For I-Bonds the rates are now worth it. They are very CD-like, in that you can't withdraw them for the first year, and in the first 5 there is a few month interest penalty for early withdrawal.
You can only buy $10k per person per year, but as a married couple, you could build up 100K in savings over 5 years, and even faster if you hold them in a trust.
One limitation of buying I Bonds is the annual purchase limit. Each person can buy a maximum of $10,000 per calendar year as the primary owner.
In addition, if you have a trust, you can buy another $10,000 per year under the name of the trust. A lawyer created a revocable living trust for us back in 2018. It was surprisingly easy when I opened an account for the trust at TreasuryDirect last month. It took only 15 minutes to open a new trust account and buy another $10,000 of I Bonds.
> I realize I waste a lot of time in the supermarket comparing prices,
Interesting, I've always hated shopping for food, but I happily waste money on takeaways/restaurants. I think for me it is more about food waste and the mental energy wasted planning all my ingredients to make sure nothing goes to waste rather than saving money. I spend money now to not have to worry about it as much.
> I'm afraid to make investments fearing that the market crash or something like that would erase them leaving me vulnerable to being homeless or dependent on doing jobs I hate.
Yeah, I'm pretty risk averse when it comes to investments, which is screwing me right now with inflation as high as it is :(.
> "education will get you far in life, so beat those books and get good grades"
In India at least, this is a time tested way to escape poverty. Doing well in academics and get into STEM you will greatly increase your odds. Not for nothing India has millions of coaching centres and some of the most valued ed-tech startups. The poor can and do mortgage their house, land etc., to send their kids to good school and college.
> I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things, when the savings I would make would have no meaningful impact on my yearly net worth, but the time and mental energy wasted browsing/walking around comparing prices could have better return on investment if used on other things like learning a new skill, reading a book, etc.
That's a feeling I know well. It's even more irrational when it's a habit inherited from parents who weren't particularly poor, so you grow up living in quite a nice house that a lot of time and money has been spent extending, but a 50p ice cream is considered decadent. And after you've made a whole bunch of career choices not optimising for income, saved loads without investing it well, you still find yourself avoiding buying icecreams or coffees when out unless you've got company and comparing cheese prices per kg in a cheap supermarket, not because it's necessary or because you aren't aware that negotiating the price of your next house will save you more than three lifetimes of cheese price comparisons, but simply because doing anything else feels like being ripped off.
>I realize I waste a lot of time in supermarkets, shops or online stores, browsing/walking around and comparing prices just to penny pinch on low value things
Of course it pales in comparison to cashing out your overpriced McMansion in some Karen infested suburb of a major metro with nice schools and moving to rural Idaho or switching jobs for a new one with "senior" in the title. But have you ever actually run the numbers? Cheaping out and/or reducing consumption has a huge impact on weekly or monthly finances if it is applied with any breadth. Monthly finances have a huge impact on money available for savings/investment.
The right answer really depends on what the opportunity cost is. If you're a FAANG engineer, the time spent trying to save small amounts of money could be better spent doing a better job at work, getting a better review, having a bigger impact, and a bigger RSU grant or even promotion.
It's an adaptation to an environment where nothing you could do or say would earn you a raise, ever. Never get more money to take home, exploitation in the workplace. In comparison comparing for pennies on flour is fun, it's entertainment.
* In comparison comparing for pennies on flour is fun, it's entertainment.*
This just isn't true for me. Comparing pennies on flour is extremely stressful. At one time - a time when I couldn't pay for natural gas for proper heat nor hot water - I cried because I spent 25 cents more on a product I liked a whole heck of a lot better. That quarter might have been the difference between going to the laundry or washing clothing in the sink (with water heated on a hotplate). Or at least, this was what was in my head.
I generally don't count pennies for flour as much anymore, but it took years, divce, remarriage, and a move to another country to even get to that position. I still get pretty panicked about spending money. Usually it happens on things more than approximately $50-$100 (after exchange rate). Occasionally I just go without a haircut or don't buy new clothes despite a few holes/being a bit threadbare, though.
> I own a cheap old car and prefer to fix it myself if I can (...) probably worth more than a professional would have cost.
Maybe! It all depends on whether or not you would actually do something more productive with the time. If you were to write a book or work on your company or take an extra job with those hours, sure, pay the professional. But if, instead, you were going to be watching TV instead, then you are way ahead. You have learned a skill, which can save you in the long run, even if you pay (you know if you are getting a good service and not being gouged, etc).
Having a cheap car – as long as it's not a lemon – is a good thing.
> I'm afraid to make investments fearing that the market could crash the second I enter it
Ok, that is a problem. Keep hoarding cash if it makes you feel better but take a portion and invest. Once you have managed to save enough to have 3-6 months expenses covered, you should be investing the rest. That's how you get out of shitty jobs, specially later in life. Markets generally recover and have for a century. If this stops we'll have bigger problems (and not investing doesn't shield you from them).
> I'm afraid to make investments fearing that the market could crash the second I enter it, and erase my money, leaving me vulnerable to being homeless or dependent on doing shitty jobs I hate just to stay afloat, so I just hoard cash like an idiot as that makes me feels safe and lets me sleep well at night.
Blended funds! You can choose what % of your money is invested at various risk levels. Choose a fund that puts only a fraction of your money in stocks, money markets, CDs, etc., and finally cash.
Was this formerly a good site? I remember running into cracked periodically in the last few years and it always looked like the absolute worst of clickbait spam, but these articles are rather decent
Once upon a time, yes. I mean, it was always a bit fluffy and lighthearted - that's the point, right? - but they often had quality articles. But then they were acquired in 2016 and it was downhill from there.
I remember feeling like I'd bought cheap shirts at my first job. I didn't want to spend £25-£100 on nice shirts when there were cheapass shirts you could buy for £10. Made me look cheap at a place where the bosses were driving Ferraris.
Also, not buying a holiday until well into my 20s. I still feel like it's mostly not worth it, even though I can pay for it and it's probably sensible to take a break from time to time.
Yeah I don't like travel either. Not because I can't afford it, I just find it more tiring than anything and don't really get a lot of pleasure or relaxation just being somewhere different. I'd rather be sitting on my back porch given the choice.
That's fair. My parents left the collapsing USSR with nothing and ended up in Australia. Materially poor with no support network or generational wealth, but well educated and with a clear path to the middle class. I still think I/we were very fortunate and didn't mean to offend anyone by saying we were poor. I am well aware there are/were many people less fortunate than us.
This is one problem with socio-economic class: When somebody's 'socio' doesn't match their 'economic', things get weird. I'm a first generation college student who has 3 great-grandparents with college degrees.
It makes it easier to dig yourself out, but depending on the circumstances it can also cause its own issues. For example, my mother ran away from an abusive but well-off home, so I was regaled with tales of upper-middle and well-off hypocrisy and all their problems, which makes it really hard to want to fit in/keep my mouth shut in spaces that I share with those people.
There's a reason Fussell puts college professors as a kind of appendix on the side of his "Upper-Middle", and not down in classes that tend to be closer to their income level (Middle, or even Prole).
Still, I'm not sure how much difference that upper-middle-adjacent socialization makes when it comes to poverty thinking.
Not necessarily, I grew up pretty poor, my mother stealing food from kitchen she worked to save money (and I had to lug it every day when I was older), father having mediocre salary (later divorced without father's income), yet now belonging to like top 3% earners in country I live, I have like 150K EUR in stocks and don't really give a F about losing currently 10-20%, it's long term investment. It probably also helps I bought apartment without mortgage in 4th most touristy city in Europe.
So yeah, I dislike the idea of being mortgage slave, but if I didn't optimize my income I wouldn't mind taking one to buy investment apartment, so I had to invest money in stock.
But the funny thing is I will refuse to buy something I consider overpriced even when total sum makes absolutely no difference at my income, I just don't like the idea of wasting my money on something which can be bought cheaper, so some people may think I am poor or cheap although I don't mind spending money on something I consider worth the money. For instance almost nobody here in Czechia has AC, but I am one of those few people who have one, because I value my comfort at home more than having newest smartphones and other crap.
I frequently encounter people and family with obvious issues arising from childhood, and 95% of the time their parents were poor as kids and thats where it all comes from.
On one hand these people are a pain to deal with, but in most cases its not their fault either.
I work with ultra-privileged people who by all accounts are “well adjusted” and I find them harder to deal with than people I grew up with from home. Many of them have no history of and don’t understand trauma, and as a result they’re unempathetic to what the literal majority of people experience.
> I work with ultra-privileged people who by all accounts are “well adjusted” and I find them harder to deal with than people I grew up with from home. Many of them have no history of and don’t understand trauma, and as a result they’re unempathetic to what the literal majority of people experience.
Financial issues aren't the only trauma in life, by a long shot. Plenty of people in that group have trauma. What makes people unempathetic is often that they don't come to grips with their own trauma; they deny it and thus deny it for others - if it's too painful to admit to yourself, think how dangerous other people's trauma could be!
I think you’re underestimating how much trauma correlates with wealth in America.
It’s not just the trauma of being poor, it’s trauma of growing up in a dangerous area, or of your parents getting divorced, or of getting sexually assaulted, or of young friends or family members dying. All of which get far more likely the poorer you are.
Obviously I’m not saying that there aren’t wealthy, Ivy League educated people with trauma. But if we’re looking at the stats it’s not even close.
It's not a competition for who has more trauma, but I generally agree. If you look at my other posts in this thread, I am generally trying to explain what you said well here.
Another way of stating that article is that most people in their 20s and 30s have only ever known low-inflation and stability. Those in their mid-40s onwards are possibly young enough to remember how what their parents dealt with in the 70s.
I remember sitting in the car with my mom outside an Amtrak train station in the late `70's asking her why she was cutting the tops off of several cereal boxes that we had just bought from the grocery store. Apparently they were for a discount on train tickets.
Low inflation, yes, but not stability. Many people in their 20s now watched a parent lose their job during the 2008 housing crisis. Just because they didn't see the 70s don't mean they haven't seen macroeconomic calamity affect their parents microeconomic reality.
Everyone's character, behaviors, preferences, etc, etc, are formed in very large part by their life experience.
If I had a nickle for every time someone said something about the poors being scarred or broken and then in short order started spewing nonsense about how the poors have minimal agency, need guidance or protecting from themselves, are doing it wrong, etc, etc. I would be a very wealthy man. And a hell of a lot of HN would be poorer in $.05 increments.
Did you (in general, not personally) ever think that maybe it's all the upper middle class types who are doing it wrong and the only reason we get away with it is because we have money to sustain the lifestyle?
People who act like cheapskates, buying $500 cars, $20 Walmart jeans, while their peers sneer about the $2k Camry, and $50 Levis being a "better value", seem to do well at all levels of the economic ladders and even frequently improve their lot in life.
It doesn’t have to even be in your youth. I lost a lot of money with a real estate deal in the 90s plus a lot more when the .COM bubble crashed. Since then I have no confidence in investing or jobs. I always look over my shoulder and wait for things to go bad. Especially since 2008 it made sense to blindly invest into housing and stocks even while knowing they would crash eventually. Being gunshy from previous experience made you lose out on a lot of gains.
Yeah, it's not just in childhood, it also hits early adulthood as well, when people are just starting out.
I scraped by on ~ $600 / mo in disability until I graduated college in my mid 20s in 2008. My spending habits, my hobbies, everything was ingrained around that age.
Today I make 25x as much, and barely spend 2x. It's hard to change early habits.
If you're able to live without the credit aspects of the credit card, why not take the 1-2% discount on nearly everything consumable that you buy?
If you pay it off every month, credit cards have a negative cost (to you) and a fair amount of convenience (for renting cars, hotels, booking flights, etc).
It's a refund on the interchange fee from not doing chargebacks and paying your bills on time. Your data is not interesting or valuable, that's your ego talking.
Data brokering is a 200 billion dollar industry. Some individual data brokers say they have data on half of all transactions in the US, so it's safe to say that your transactions are more likely to be sold than not.
Nobody cares about your data (unless you're high profile), but -- for example -- hedge funds and the like will spend big bucks to get aggregate sales data before this quarter's financial reports are written.
> Habits that even after you remove poverty from your live, you still feel the the anxiety and triggers in your head.
In high school, I went to a friend's house for lunch. Their father served a mountain of food. My friend said, a bit exasperated, 'Dad - why do you always serve so much food?!'
Dad said, caringly but directly: 'Remember that I grew up in a refugee camp in Palestine. It is very important to me that nobody ever runs out of food to eat in my home.'
That's true, I grew up during the 2008 recession so I constantly have that at the back of my mind. Massive layoffs, housing crash, breaking news everyday, everyone in just constant worry for an extended period of time.
Now in 2022 I find myself reliving these memories a little, and I have observed my behavior to be extremely risk-averse these days.
I feel like the results of risky behavior in the real world are somewhat similar to risky behavior in investing. When there is a bull market and overall growth trajectory, risky behavior is more likely to pay off. When a nation is in its growth phase, risky behavior is also more likely to pay off. If a nation starts to enter a phase of decline, perhaps more conservative behavior is a better gamble? Certainly you have to take risk to make outsized gains, I'm just thinking the likelihood of a payoff changes depending on the overall environment.
I have seen it also go other ways though - I think it really depends on the family and how they deal with being poor. Families who are poor in currency but very rich in love and social connections seem to still produce great adults who might have some of the scars you are talking about but also are able to overcome them.
It's pretty well studied that people who grew up poor have a harder time saving and are actually more reckless about spending, because they a) didn't have modeling or financial education from their parents and b) had to spend money when they got it before some random fee or cost gobbled it up
Not all consequences are the same, even if the initial conditions are of the same-type; not all people who acknowledge negative consequences think of themselves as victims. Saying one is aware that certain conditions and circumstances in childhood tend to cause certain negative behaviors in adulthood is helpful information. Dismissing it as having a victim mentality is unhelpful.
>take a few hundred from the bank and physical set it on fire keep doing it until you don’t care
That sounds bad. Why not give it to a homeless guy or to charity or something?
>it’s illegal
Honestly, the central banks can go to hell. They can print way more money than you can ever burn, which they do, even far too much of it, bringing us to where we are today.
Better approach that I am trying is try to buy luxury version whenever I need something. Broke a plate, buy one from boutique ceramic shop. Need some glasses sure a high end crystal. Though on counter side, be really sure that you are rich before trying to act like one.
This is very similar to how I tried (am trying?) to evolve my spending, usually having the impulse to buy something now before it become scarce or buy the cheapest possible thing to get the task done in the moment.
These days I realize I have nearly everything I need, so if I'm buying something I figure I can't really afford it unless I'm getting the "best" out there. Best for me means researching the best performing/quality/etc. item in the category. If I'm replacing a broken item I also take the opportunity to upgrade.
For example I needed a carpet shampoo cleaner recently. Instead of heading to Walmart to buy whatever consumer gear was slapped on the shelf, I spent a few weeks deeply researching the ecosystem and ended up with something about 4-5x the expense - but with performance to match. The difference in quality makes it almost a pleasure to clean my carpets these days.
It's easy to spend money simply on fancy and not get much out of it. But I feel pretty satisfied when I make an absurdly expensive purchase like the above but still feel great about it a year later due to the value/increased quality of life it bought me. In the moment if feels ridiculous paying many multiples more than I would have in the past, but over time these little incremental improvements add up.
It's the spending that I do like a "poor person" that bothers me the most - just buying crap on impulse, or "collector" behavior. I find I need to actively mitigate both impulses or I'd end up on a hoarding TV show.
I worked in a grocery store in the late '90s, and the older customers (who grew up in the Great Depression) always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive.
This is how I know that, even if we miraculously fixed our medical system tomorrow and outlawed private health insurance by a constitutional amendment, we'll still have, thirty years from now, 60-year-old Millennials dropping dead of preventable causes. The American healthcare system has already killed millions, but it's also killed future millions.
"always carried penny pouches, because they remembered a time when one had to keep track of cents to survive."
Sure. But you also have to realize that a loaf a bread cost a nickle and that cards didn't exist. People carried around change because you could actually buy meaningful stuff with it and there wasn't really an alternative to cash (sure someplaces give credit but much different than using a card today).
I paid $1.50 for a candy bar the other day. My earliest memory of scrounging change for a commercial transaction to obtain a candy bar was a $0.45. That would have been in the eighties.
IIRC, when the US stopped minting the half penny, the whole penny was worth somewhere around $0.33 in 2022 currency. Lopping the last digit off of everything isn't practical for many reasons but I wish we could at least finally put the stupid "9/10" on gas prices into the grave.
Yeah, seriously. It was there to visually fool customer into thinking the price is cheaper than it really is. But because today it is insignificant difference as well everyone else is doing it, it is just nonsense and no longer serves its purpose.
Another thing (and that actually matters much more) is that tax is not included in the prices there are excuses about it that tax is different in different areas, but it's just yet another way to lie to a customer.
Scarcity mindset is real. I studied abroad in France, and the government promised up and down that they would cover my housing only to reneg a few days before my trip (long after I had secured my student loan money, bought my flight, etc) and saddled me with a $600/month payment and no income. I was counting individual bus trips into town and skipping meals (I went from 160 to 140 pounds in a few months) to save up 60 euros for a RyanAir flight to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife who was studying in Austria at the time (and I broke down when I was forced to miss it because I put my luggage in a train station locker that advertised "24 hours" but the room housing the lockers was only available during the day, and this was not advertised).
Even after I graduated and got a series of increasingly high-paying engineering jobs, I couldn't shake the scarcity mindset, and I would scrimp and save (although I didn't skip meals any longer!). In time (with a whole lot of help and encouragement with my wife), I was able to largely overcome it. We're still very conservative with our money--we're probably in the top 10% of Americans with respect to income, but we spend like we're median (or lower) Americans and save the difference. However, now it's because we want to retire early or pursue other loftier goals (some combination of traveling the world, buying a hobby farm, and/or starting a small business) rather than my debilitating anxiety.
(Since we're getting a little political) It also makes it hard to sympathize with my peers who didn't work, skipped class, lived in the dorms, paid for meal plans and still went out to eat several times a week, bought daily $7 lattes, and majored in some art history or leisure services or (non-teaching) English Literature when they insist that the government should forgive their enormous student loan debt (I'm fine with universal education, but no one should be surprised that they have to repay the debt that financed their unsustainable lifestyle or demand that society foot the bill).
My grandma did this. Never left a penny on the sidewalk, always took the bread from a breadbasket home. Even my parents absorbed some of that behavior despite being born in the next generation.
We were surprised to discover after her death (in the late 80's) that my great grandmother kept $1,000 in a pouch in her bra. I can understand not trusting the banks and wanting to always have some sort of cash on your person.
I cannot understand not having at least a couple hundred cash on you, and much more at home. What are people’s plans if the power or payment networks go offline? Earthquake, hurricane, ice storm, volcano, etc.
While having some cash is good, if you're planning ahead for a disaster it's better to have stuff than cash cause in the event of disaster your ability to buy things is likely to be decreased.
Or at least that's my experience from living in an area where hurricanes sometimes take down power for 2+ weeks.
When things shut down for a long time the government usually sets up free distribution of MREs and water and already having gas in your tank is more valuable than having cash to buy gas at the theoretical gas station with power to pump but not payment network access.
Plenty of us didn't always have 'a couple hundred cash' at all, much less 'free' to just carry around 'in case of emergency'. I can now, but don't for the most part, partially because of decades of not being in that position. We have a modest amount of cash on hand at home - we sometimes pay service folks in cash, or can tip a delivery person now and then, but those are rare instances. Neighbor kids selling door to door now and then too, but even then I wrote a check last time, directly to a school fundraiser, didn't just hand over cash.
If we needed to leave due to an emergency, some cash may help for a hotel, probably, assuming it's far enough away to have power/water.
If there's earthquake/hurricane/etc with resulting power outages, most of the places I'd go to wouldn't be able to even open their POS systems to take cash in the first place.
> If there's earthquake/hurricane/etc with resulting power outages, most of the places I'd go to wouldn't be able to even open their POS systems to take cash in the first place.
Businesses or anyone wanting to get paid will figure out an alternative. Dealing with cash is not complicated.
I worked at a fast food place where our power went out. They forced us to keep ... open and selling anyway. The 240v was out so no grill, but 120 outlets worked so we could make coffee/tea. That was about it. Cash registers didn't work. I was writing everything by hand, calculating tax, etc, keeping records.
2 hrs later, the regional manager - WHO HAD TOLD US IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS THAT WE HAD TO REMAIN OPEN DESPITE NOT HAVING POWER - came in and chastised me for 1) not wearing the full uniform (we had no AC and it was July, so I took off the tie) and 2) handling money without a register. "You can't guarantee your numbers are right - that's what computers are for". "But... they're down, and you said to stay open and keep selling". "That doesn't change the fact that you might be making mistakes!"
Dealing with cash is complicated actually. You need to protect it from theft. You need to count it daily. You need a bank to deposit it. You need to have change because people don't bring exact amounts. Having change requires a bank or some other facility to exchange currency with.
Cards require a machine, some kind of network connectivity, and an account. It's actually a lot easier to deal with as a small business. Most of the people I know who go to conventions as vendors prefer cards because it greatly simplifies their logistics.
Yes, but I was talking about a scenario where there is no network connectivity and hence no ability to take card payments.
In the case of getting paid something versus getting paid nothing, I am guessing most merchants will opt to put in the work to accept cash rather than shut down.
Note that some retailers can and do store and forward transactions, for example with gas stations using satellite connectivity for payment processing. The amount one stores depends upon one's fraud tolerance.
There are attacks where bad guys will disable a gas station's dish (by covering it with foil among other methods) and then rack up a bunch of gasoline sales with a stolen card. They've got generally got a limited window so they have to hit a bunch of local stations quickly, but meth users aren't known for high dollar scores.
But if someone robs you then you have both zero money and less merch due to sales that day. I'm guessing a lot of places will err on the side of caution rather than some income.
I saw a supermarket operate with calculators ~10 years ago when power grid was off for days. I don't believe I will see it again at least not in any big store as financial conciliation is a PITA and the old ways are lost. But small vendors that are often marginalized by the market will.
You obviously have considerable wealth if you think most people have the savings to keep hundreds of dollars on them at all times and much more at home. A large percentage of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Also, many people don’t carry cash because they’re worried, rightfully or not, about being robbed. Same idea behind leaving stuff in your vehicle.
I thought it would be obvious that my comment would preclude people who did not have emergency funds. Or who live in areas where the probability of robbery is high enough to negate the benefit of having some cash on you.
My intent was to show that while electronic payments are nice and convenient, I still like the peace of mind of knowing I have a resilient payment method like cash on me.
There are always tradeoffs. Based on how much fuel and food costs these days, I would not say a couple hundred dollars is a significant amount of cash. Not even enough to get you a bed at night in case of an emergency.
When hurricane sandy rolled through NJ/NYC area, I remember the power being out for 4+ days, and we used cash to buy groceries and fuel.
I also did not have time to drive 1+ hours for supplies, especially when roads were not necessarily cleared of trees and whatnot, and I had elderly to take care of at home.
Also, gas itself was challenging to get with very long lines so driving an hour was not a guarantee to getting it (since everyone else has the same bright idea, you can’t just shift 10M+ vehicles worth of demand overnight to surrounding areas).
I’m surprised gas pumps and everything else still works without power. I guess if you’re effectively tethered to an area that is prone to widespread regional disruptions it makes sense, but that’s a lot more niche than the original “I can’t imagine not having at least a couple hundred dollars in cash…”.
I'd probably just drive somewhere that has power/payment networks (stay with friends, family, or airbnb/hotel/etc), especially since those point-of-sale systems are almost universally electronic anyway.
I'm expecting to rely on pen and paper IOUs in this situation. That's really no different than cash, presuming you and local businesses have already established some trust.
Why would you need cash on you? I can understand leaving some at home in case card networks fail, but day to day if I'm out and about I just pay with my phone.
Same. I always clean my plate (though I try hard not to take more than I can eat), and am always very reluctant to get rid of anything that "still works".
Ah, OK, my (Chinese) wife is like that, she won't leave anything behind, I don't mind leaving it behind, but I can understand trying to avoid waste since many places will throw away bread which was offered to other customer. And often the bread taste actually good, so it makes sense to take it.
Ah, so it's just that the OP wrote something that was prone to be misparsed.
I read "breadbasket home" as a compound noun and guessed it was some kind of food bank or something, but "home" was really an adverb modifying took. So what was meant was something like "My grandma ... always took [home] the bread from a [restaurant] breadbasket..."
Yep, my parents are baby boomers and definitely have this ingrained in them. I also have some habits around eating where I (usually) waste nothing, which was instilled in me by my grandfather.
When I say dont waste food I mean my plate is completely clean when I'm done. I eat everything off a chicken wing so its _just_ bone left (eat all the cartilage and clean every bit of meat off). My grandfather would actually break the bones and suck the marrow out of each one.
The generation of the Great Depression didn't have ubiquitous forms of usury. With credit cards, personal loans and student loans, I imagine the future stinginess of Millennials will be short lived.
Of course. Loans have existed since the beginning of money. That doesn't mean average people were using credit and loans to buy everything from Lambos to Cheetos to pornos like they can today. Not until very recently. Credit wasn't really something that was available to most people until around the 70s when it began to be digitized successfully. The psychology of debt today compared to that of a few generations ago is entirely different.
If you know the general store owner or your pub landlord and you ask them to put something on your tab, that's credit. Exact payment on the spot is what develops when you're trading with strangers.
Haven't (later) Millennials already learned from the mistakes of those before them? I know I'm scared of any type of debt due to the stories I've heard about it going wrong.
Doctors say they are the only profession that saves lives. Well they're the only profession allowed to save lives. And the only profession making money saving lives.
Charging for saving lives. Price discriminating to save lives.
What happens when they make a mistake in what someone is able to pay?
EDIT (I tried replying but can't yet): The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics.
In Chile anybody who wants to be a doctor can go to some medical school and make a pretty decent wage (but less than 20x what an American doctor makes) and help people in some role, some specialty, if that's what she really wants to do.
No quota on helping people.
And they get better results, lower infection rates than American hospitals, longer life expectancy, and medical school is shorter and much cheaper, like night and day. In particular maternity care is like the best in the world--I can't corroborate that but I've heard that.
Lowest medicine costs in the OECD, blows every other developed country out of the water. America is the most expensive and Chile is the cheapest.
I'm from Chile (and still live here). I don't know where you got the idea that anybody whot wants to be a doctor can go to a medical school without much effort. Medicine is by far the most exclusive career that you can apply to, they're always the highest scores in our version of the SAT (you can check the scores that are needed for one of our universities here https://www.uchile.cl/admision-y-matriculas/admision-regular...). There are some private colleges that have a lower entry barrier, but they're still far and above the rest of the careers that you can apply to.
Their salaries are also ridicously higher than the rest of the population, our minimum wage is 462 USD$ and a doctor can make easily 20 times that amount (and if you're a specialist you can make way more than that). Obviously there are some cases where a doctor can earn less than that, but they are in no way or form just another professional.
Yes, there are plenty of people who would work in the medical field not necessarily for the big pay but because of their calling, to care for the others. A lot of these people can't make it through the med school gauntlet and don't want to risk their mental health while in med school. Plus the crazy and insanely school loans... It's a system that disincentives the people with a calling and instead is replaced by people who can put up and have a stomach for a very complicated and inefficient system. While hospitals are run by MBAs this problem will not go away.
> The basic solution to make medicine cheaper is supply more medics.
It's shocking how little this is talked about... This is so obviously the root of the problem. People like to blame the free market but there is no free market in medicine. Corporatism is to blame for artificially restricting the supply of doctors and artificially restricting who is allowed to render medical services, both of which benefit the corporate members, the doctors. Of course, those anti-competitive measures are always sold under the guise of protecting the population.
Actually the primary bottleneck in the supply of new doctors is lack of federal (Medicare) funding for residency slots. Every year, students graduate from US accredited medical schools but are unable to enter clinical practice because they can't get matched to a residency program. Ask Congress to increase funding.
Do you have a substantive comment to contribute or are you going to stick with baseless low-effort snark? The comment I posted is true and correct. You could verify it with other independent sources if you bothered to do any research.
Why would you believe the AMA's line on this? Do you think the professional association that represents all doctors, one of the highest paid and influential professions in the country, has no power to control the amount of residencies are funded by the government? They have no reason to increase the number of doctors, absolutely none. They benefit in every way from having constrained supply.
An article from 17 years ago reflects the PoV at that time, not today. The AMA has had different positions based on what they thought was best at the that time.
If they cared about expanding access to medical care they'd stop lobbying to prevent PAs and NPs from providing care. A half hearted attempt to add a paltry amount of residencies after 30 years of lobbying which led to the state we're in now does not absolve them of blame.
Yes - they're lobbying now to reverse caps they themselves[1] helped put into place, and like I said, have also limited primary care availability by lobbying against the ability of NPs and PAs to provided basic medical care. It's a complete bunch of talk until they get change done.
By the way, that expansion of 15000 residency positions barely puts a dent in the number of doctors we are lacking[2]. But yeah, a press release from 3 years ago really absolves them of guilt for sure.
How does that make any sense? Aren't student graduates actually paid to do those residency programs? If it's too expensive to train them, can't they take a pay cut? How come no other profession requires federal funding for placing/training graduates? Makes absolutely no sense unless you uncritically accept the status quo.
Residents are paid an average salary of $64K. That's less than many entry-level STEM jobs, and they often work up to 80 hours per week. They can't afford to take a pay cut. And hospitals incur other costs for running residency programs which go beyond paying resident salaries.
Most other private sector professions don't require nearly as much postgraduate training before being allowed to work. Prospective lawyers usually take the bar exam less than a year after graduating from law school. Medicine is simply more complex.
What would you propose as an alternative to the status quo? The AMA has proposed a number of improvements, but perhaps there are alternatives?
Even if they supply of doctors was infinite, there is still the problem of demand being basically inelastic. What would the incentive of healthcare providers to lower prices? Inelastic demand means there is no incentive to lower prices, because there is no where else for someone to go and comparison/price shop. If you are hit by a bus, there is no ability for price negotiation to get healthcare.
Also blaming "corporatism" is basically just a meme at this point, because it is just used by libertarians when someone criticizes capitalism. Its the same when communists say "true communism has never been tried".
> What would the incentive of healthcare providers to lower prices?
In case of life or death emergencies, your insurance or ambulance driver would send you to a reasonably priced doctor, and doctors that charge unreasonable prices would go out of business. But my guess is that life or death emergencies do not account for most doctor visits.
> Also blaming "corporatism" is basically just a meme at this point, because it is just used by libertarians when someone criticizes capitalism. Its the same when communists say "true communism has never been tried".
Well, I don't feel like arguing about semantics. Feel free to call the problem I described however you like.
So for life or death decisions, the ambulance driver would first go on some price comparison website or ask the insurance and see "ok, this person wants a doctor in the $10,000-15,000 range, the closest of which is 30m away. The hospital next door costs at least $50,000 minimum, so we will not send them there for life saving medical care." And what incentive would insurance have to send me to a reasonably priced doctor, when they can send me to one in their network which is more expensive but means they keep more money? Also, they could send me to an expensive hospital and then just not pay out. These are both things Obamacare tried to fix [0]. Insurances want to maximize profits, which means paying as little as possible themselves and extracting as much as possible from customers. Your system would only work if insurances had to always pay 100% of medical costs and could never deny care, which is similar to how it works in Germany (at least for some baseline level of care).
Again, what incentive would there be to lower prices? New doctors could just be bought out and the prices jacked up. There are a lot of industries where there is little barrier to entry (for example tech), where the big companies just buy anyone trying to "get in on their territory".
Also, why would the "unreasonable prices" (what would that even look like?) doctors go out of business? They could just provide some kind of "luxury deluxe" ("no poor people here") state of the art care for people who can afford it.
No, very quickly everyone would know the hospitals that charge way more than the others, and not patronize them.
Emergency services are only like 5% of costs, anyway [367]:
> The percentage of U.S. health spending attributable to the ED has increased from 3.9% (CI, 3.9%-3.9%) in 2006 to 5.0% (CI, 5.0%-5.0%) in 2016.
So the other 95% is more flexible. I know when looking at birthing costs they could vary wildly but it didn't really matter because who cares, they're all in-network anyway.
It feels like you don't understand or don't believe in free enterprise in general, not just when it comes to medicine. All the theoretical issues you mention do not actually occur in industries that are closer to a free market.
There is no cost problem in "tech". In fact, many services are literally free of charge. Despite Google having a near-monopoly on search, it is unable to charge users for it. Demand for software developers has grown massively in the past decades and yet, wages have only slightly gone up.
Anyways, I didn't mean to start a debate on the merits of free enterprise. I was hoping that we could at least agree that artificial limiting the supply of doctors causes medicine to be more costly, regardless of the economic system.
I understand just fine, I just don't share the naive "invisible hand" narrative. I think there are a lot of places where free markets make for better products and services, but not all products and markets are fundamentally the same, so I believe the same prescription of "just remove all limits to a free market -> all problems solved" does not work everywhere.
But Google can charge their "actual" users, i.e. advertisers quite a bit, and it is much harder to do any advertising without also advertising on Google Platforms, such as Search, Maps, Youtube, Adwords, etc. The wages may have only slightly gone up, but the profits definitely have gone up quite a bit, which shows that amount of workers and their pay has little to do with how much money can be made (which I believe is perfectly fine, because tech is not a place where I think free markets create a detriment to society).
I don't want to start a debate on free enterprise in general, just to show that free enterprise is not a once size fits all solution. My argument was just that the supply of doctors has very little to do with the price of medicine, because the market forces that determine price and can lead to lower prices in some markets do not work correctly in this market.
Their analogy is bad, and it’s valuable to call out the nuance.
The statement is a reaction to blaming free market economics when the reality is a scenario of the opaque third party payer system in a highly regulated environment. Consumer gets no price transparency, state regulatory boards made up of current market suppliers control market entry - say what you want about it’s appropriateness but the US medical industry hardly resembles a free market.
“Corporatism” may be a ham-handed way to call this out, but it’s not helping society to lay the medical industry’s problems at the feet of capitalism. This problem of cronyism in markets (especially) exists in communist economies as well. It’s throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Part of the cost is equipment, too. Have you seen the regulations that medical equipment must meet? And the certifications that equipment requires? I’m not talking about big ticket items like MRI machines. I mean just blood pressure cuffs.
All healthcare systems impose some sort of rationing. Canada rations care by imposing long queues for non-emergency cases, with significant variations between provinces. Affluent Canadians frequently travel to the US as medical tourists and pay for treatment out of pocket in order to skip the lines.
There are also major differences in MRI scanners. A 3.0T unit can produce higher resolution images than a 1.5T unit, and this makes a difference in patient care quality. Countries like Chile are more likely to have the cheaper units.
Funny, I do the same thing, medical tourism in Chile. Like all Hispanics. We all get all medicine in Latin America, never in America, to the extent it's avoidable. It used to be the other way around, like I knew a kid who kept traveling for medical tourism from Chile to America because he had a rare heart thing, rare disease.
There should be flying ambulances, like international flights taking emergency patients to where they can be treated economically instead of getting signature after signature squeezed out of them, one per hour starting inside the ambulance.
Well I’m waiting in the US. Appointment times for a dermatologist are out to 6 months earliest.
The Fraser institute is a libertarian think tank so even if their data is right I don’t trust their conclusion. So what if 3% of people are waiting on a procedure? This needs to be apples to apples compared to other countries, per capita healthcare spending, life expectancy before drawing conclusions
OK yeah the medication is expensive, the pharmacies are rigged. Farmacias Ahumada, Farmacias Cruz Verde, and Salcobrand are three divisions of the same single...trust, basically. The Chilean pharmacy monopoly. Enforced with eg intermarriage. However, now there's lots more pharmacies, it's opening up. And I am personally boycotting Cruz Verde in almost all circumstances because I saw a shill of theirs (a real life shill, not on a forum, in a brick-and-mortar retailer) shilling for Cruz Verde[1] at a pharmacy that actually competed with them. There's some.
But I don't know, did you try the municipal pharmacy in Recoleta? Way cheaper.
[1] Note for admins: this is not the same as calling someone a shill on the forum, I went and gave my account and signed an affidavit in the complaints and suggestions book, with the help of the guard who also witnessed the shill, and backed by a third witness who conversed with the shill like I did. I told them by all means use this in court, I'll vouch on the witness stand, and I'm doing this with the same moral authority and motivation of being a hero according to Roman Law, in a very similar set of conditions that led to my actions and consequent recognition as a hero by the victims in the spur of the moment, ten years ago.
Looking at this it’s mind boggling how much the US is being overcharged vs all other countries. How are Americans putting up with paying 400%-900% more than any other country?
Those so-called "representatives" created the problem in the first place by restricting the supply with drug patents, FDA regulations, import restrictions, and limitations on the number of new doctors and medical facilities, and now you want to "demand action" from them on behalf of patients? Good luck. They're representing someone all right, but it's their donors, not their official constituency.
That, BTW, is a consequence of the system responsible for selecting and influencing those in power and not any particular individual, so voting in someone new won't change anything. And that goes for much more than just health care.
Chile might have cheaper healthcare, although I doubt it, but that's completely obscured by their health insurance. They copied the US health insurance racket almost perfectly, and that's what needs fixing much more than healthcare costs.
The only real solution is to completely abolish privatized healthcare. No more discrimination between the poor and the rich when it comes to something as critical as that. When everyone has to row the same boat, then the rich will finally have a good reason to make sure the poor don't drown.
EDIT: I don't remember Chile having that much cheaper healthcare, either. I lived there for 14 years and it was just as much of a constant drain on my salary as it is here in the US. And those who couldn't afford good insurance were pretty much screwed, just like here in the US. And the real costs were buried deep and obscured by insurance waffle, just like here in the US.
> Doctors say they are the only profession that saves lives...
Yeah. Because rescue workers, fire fighters, EMT's, nurses, etc., etc. don't count. (As if the ways in which America's medical establishment treats those people didn't make that obvious enough. And the alpha sociopath in the room always deserves 100% of the credit for anything good happening...right?)
My impression is that other countries (ones not poisoned by the AMA) don't have this particular problem nearly so much.
Honestly fuck the medical system, young people don't care. Housing is what's really getting us.
Some days I feel like driving up to McLean and burning banks down.
EDIT: I'm out of comment quota but dymk I'm so tired of hearing that, here's my reply:
Oh fuck off. I make six figures and work remotely. My family lives in a rural part of a small state and I can't afford a house within driving distance of them.
EDIT2: Asset price inflation pops an asset price bubble? Who taught you economics? They should be fired. Also, that's not a bubble this time, it's the market equilibrium. We aren't building enough housing and it's so bad the cost of labor to build more housing is going up. The entire US is the bubble this time.
EDIT3: Is that your solution? Send all the children to therapy for being kicked out of their own country? How do you expect that to work?
EDIT4: corrral: when the upper middle class ends up in "lower class" conditions you usually get guillotines.
I’m a very well off millennial. My fiancé and I both have high paying tech jobs. We easily make the income of multiple families.
That being said we are strained to buy a 3-bedroom house like that of my single Mother who only has a high school education to her name.
Given our success, we don’t have the “burn it all down” mentality but I fear it building in many of my friends and totally understand the sentiment of this being a #1 problem for younger generations.
If you grew up somewhere cheap, you probably encountered the attitude that people moving to big cities and expensive states were insane because of the housing prices (and/or taxes and general living expenses). Actual concern over the wellbeing of friends and relatives who did so. For a large segment of people living cheap places, moving to California (as in, the whole state) New York (ditto, except maybe the extremely rural and also not-popular-for-vacations bits), several entire New England states, most big cities unless you're actually living way outside them, et c., was seen as simply impossible. Not in the cards. Cannot be done without ruining your finances. You don't buy somewhere expensive until you retire, and then it's probably in Florida or the Carolinas. On a local lake if you're not rich enough for those.
From that perspective, nothing's changed except that some people living in those expensive places are starting to realize the same thing, and the people experiencing that are a bit higher up the economic ladder than before. Welcome to the lower classes, folks. Don't worry, you've got plenty of company.
I'm not in SF. The last listing I looked at was 800 sq ft, run down, literally "as-is" property: $500k valuation from Zillow (it's listed for less … but not by much). That's about $2500/mo, in mortgage alone.
Decent properties, in suburban areas, at ~$1M.
Ir rural areas, yeah, they're cheaper … and salary would get "adjusted" the moment I try that.
Everyone sells 30 years of their future for a house, so you’re competing with that. On top of that, when prices rise people can leapfrog into more expensive houses, and you’re competing with that. Finally there’s a lot of corporate and private investing money in single family housing. It’s fucked up. But many do predict a decline or even crash soon.
That's just one example but you can find thousands of similar listings all over the country. Outside of high-cost coastal areas, housing is still fairly affordable in most of the country.
And, as stated, I would take a "CoL adjustment" by moving there.
That particular property falls pretty squarely in the "exception proves the rule" territory for me; it's a 135 y/o dwelling, so I expect you'll be paying more than the immediate price tag. Like too many listings, it doesn't come w/ a floorplan, and with what photos it gives I'm a bit suss on the 3bd/3ba (piecing together the photos, I think we've converted a second story apt.'s LR into a BR?). It's certainly seen a remodel (although … IDK about the taste of the remodel. But let's say taste is unimportant!) No driveway. The backyard is … well it needs work. You're still batting $2k/mo in Cleveland.
I'd almost hazard a guess that my CoL adjust would be >$500/mo, but I don't get to know these things, being an employee.
There are a few intangibles in my situation that make "move to Cleveland" a "it's not going to happen".
There's a point where one needs to step back and ask oneself, if that's what's affordable on SWE's salary, what's affordable on a baker's salary?
I guess it depends how you define "suburbs", but it's outside the core downtown area. If your prefer a house further out in the suburbs or exurbs then there are plenty of options to pick from.
Anyway, the point is that people on HN who have relatively high incomes and job skills, and still complain about lack of affordable housing are mostly just being picky about location. There are options available but it might mean living in a area with shitty weather or not being able to walk to trendy restaurants or among neighbors who don't share your political views. The real housing crisis is hitting people with much lower incomes who are being squeezed out.
I am from Cleveland, that is considered a very nice area these days including the proximity to Steelyard Commons, bars, West Side Market, St Ignatius HS etc
I think that's their "point", in that it's an urban home that's "affordable". I.e., if I only chose a city that wasn't part of one of the megalopolises, I wouldn't have problems.
I'm looking at moving to a significantly nicer [edit: than where I am now, that is], coastal region with excellent schools and within occasional-but-not-daily commute distance of two top-tier US cities, including by rail (some of you may be be able to guess the area, at this point), and the housing prices (4-bedroom with some land, even) are surprisingly affordable. Nothing like that, certainly. Houses within daily commute range of one (but not both) of those cities can be had for way under that, too, some miles away from where I'm looking, especially if you'll accept good-but-not-excellent schools.
I guess if you're somewhere insanely expensive and won't go somewhere that's not, then... you're gonna pay a lot for housing. Go figure. "Here's the 97% of the country that's not like that, just throw a dart at a US map and you'll probably hit a place with much cheaper housing"—"No, I won't, because reasons"—"Uh, OK then, kinda sounds like a choice, good luck"
The train comment makes me guess somewhere on the mid-Atlantic east coast: DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia or NYC are all fairly close together, and a train ride from NYC to DC I think is only ~3 hours
Because my mother taught me that 100% of my value as a person is being a home owner because that's the only thing that matters. Not even a condo will do.
At least you have a partner. If you're on your own you're absolutely fucked. Not only are you alone but everyone else is out to get you. When we have the crunch in the near future I could see me and my peers torching things.
I don't even worry about this anymore; I look forward to it.
Based on your other posts, I don't think you would sound much different if you had a partner. You clearly have a lot of anger and I encourage you to find someone to talk to. I mainly mean a therapist, but if that isn't an option than a close friend. Those feelings will eat you alive.
Majority of millennials on social media sites like reddit share the same thoughts as that person. To be more specific everyone that isn't making six figures in a career like tech. I have anxiety about the resentment of my peers and I think the riots we've seen in the US non-related to the housing crisis have been bad but likely nothing compared to what's to come. The elephant in the room is that therapy isn't going to cut it and especially when almost all of young adults entering into the timeline of entry-homeownership years realize it's impossible while having flashbacks of how much easier it was for their parents while comparing homes on the market to what they lived in during childhood years. I think the older generation is naive to think that everyone is just going to adapt to apartment living without extreme resentment and torching things down. Even my tech colleague millennials are trying to prepare for what their peers are likely to do.
Maybe "plenty" need healthcare but all of them need housing. This sounds like some boomer whining about their issues and pretending to care about millennials.
I believe your perspective is limited by your experience.
As someone who is (a) a millennial and (b) has a chronic medical condition, I need medical care WAY MORE than I need to own a house. Or even rent a house. A crappy apartment will do. Right now I live in a relative’s basement.
I’ve learned to settle on living situations that I don’t love because medical care takes priority.
Is it? What countries is it solved in? Do their demographics look like ours (hint: no.) Most of us get by just fine without healthcare. Some of us certainly could use it but that's not what nearly all of us care about right now, that is in every way another problem for old people (and probably another way they're going to fuck us all over.)
Edit: No Australia is mostly White with the largest minority (5%) being Chinese. Try again. Also, I'm done empathizing; I'm warning/threatening everyone.
Honestly, to me, this sounds more like an older person take than a young person take (ironic given your claim of boomer whining). America is not exceptional! Talking about demographics / geography, all that bs is how we get rooted in thinking America can't learn from other countries or change.
Australia, for one, does a massively wonderful job with healthcare. My friends there, young by the way, love the healthcare there. But, like us, the housing market is awful. Well, worse honestly.
And this is one of many countries who have great social healthcare.
I don't think you're talking to me in good faith though given you've fallen back to "most of us get by just fine without healthcare". I'm young, like you, and I need healthcare. Plenty of my friends do too, especially some with rare conditions like narcolepsy.
Did you honestly accept in an earlier comment that plenty need healthcare?
It sounds to me like you want someone to confirm your viewpoints rather than to talk / learn / empathize with others.
> Millenials: people born 1981-1996, thus a critical mass hits adolescence when Fight Club is released.
Millenials, except the affluent or very early ones before '83, were also the generation to see the 2008 financial crisis undo their entire Life's hard work (several times now) due to a broken and rigged economic system and were left to internalize how rather than address the corruption and malfeasance the very people who destroyed the Global economy were rewarded with bonuses and golden parachutes. Corporations were bailed out while people were forced to default on loans and forced into bankruptcy and were literally forced out of their homes: some who had already paid for them no less, because of arcane investments instruments like MBS and CDO that were so over-leveraged that they made the entire world' economy implode.
What's really f'd was that some of us who had to take time from our studies to focus on this saw it coming: I probably broke that 10,000 hour mark on studying Global finance and economics in 2007 by the time I was taking my upper division courses in my undergrad. I couldn't make sense of my degree because I realized by my junior year we were not just going to enter another temporary recession but that the entire economic model was based on short term thinking and gambling: derivatives and (re)hyptohetication were all that made the credit expansion possible. Unfunded liabilities, derivatives Markets and dark pools exceeded the Global GDP by many times!
Instead of focusing on the adverse affects of cytokine production in my experimental models, I was learning about Basel I. Instead of focusing on the long term implications of RNA-synthetase in possible therapeutics I had learn what the Glass-Steagall Act act was and why it would have to be violated to keep Goldman Sachs afloat etc...
I can keep going, but the point is: this wasn't about being an Edgelord quoting Tyler Durdan this was about the systematic and wanton destruction of the institutions we were FORCED into since birth; people also seem to forget that millennials represent the most Schooled generation that is walking this planet, I was coaxed into a head-start of sorts at age 2 and almost never had a semester where sports or extra curriculars/Summer School weren't involved until I left University at 23 as we were told this was the only way to get ahead in Life. We were also the first generation unable to expunge our University debt, all previous generations could and routinely did in order to get ahead for their advanced degrees, and these were for seemingly trivial sums compared to the immense increase in costs from that period assuming their were any costs at all: many universities in the CSU system were no cost for residents most of its existence.
This had cascading effects all over the World and with the advent of ubiquitous wifi connectivity we could see first hand the devastation of it happening in real-time.
I still recall with great clarity how austerity being imposed on Greece had children having nothing to eat and literately passing out form mal-nutrition while the EU stripped it's public assets away while rushing to get to my biochemistry finals because I had to work in catering in order to feed myself because I couldn't eat more than once a day otherwise.
I remember how JP Morgan, led by Blythe Masters, were consolidating their stronghold in the Global commodities Markets that spiked the cost of food that led to the Arab Spring after having been bailed out years before with NO ONE going to jail.
I also called the largest bankruptcy in US History (at the time) in 2007 a year before it occurred in what can only be called regulatory capture and blatant corruption by the SEC/FDIC and JP Morgan when it took over Washington Mutual: who I was a customer of.
So, your over simplification is not just vapid, it's insulting to our collective intelligence: we have more in common with our grandparents in terms of being scarred by artificial crisis after manufactured ones that only end up enriching and serving the most corrupt amongst us: to this day the fact that Nancy Pelosi still hasn't been indicted is testament of who this system really serves.
There was an article here yesterday[1] about a study showing a correlation between Glucosamine and reduced lung cancer mortality. The top comment[2] challenged the worth of the study on the grounds that these sort of observational studies in large populations have too many confounders to be taken seriously.
There's truth to that point, but it's interesting to see which topics slide into skepticism and critiques of method, and which take results at face value and build a discussion on top of them.
"Scar consumption" as a phrase assumes that consumption in the American style is a healthy activity to begin with, and this outcome is damaging or ugly. "Permanently reduce consumption" would be more worthy of an academic setting, that title is clickbaity. Perhaps some will overdo avoidance of something because of fear of expense. Better than masses overdoing from building their lives around unsustainable inexpensive consumption. Look where we are for sprawl and emissions.
Plus, a lot of that gas consumption is spent commuting, which makes people miserable. Murdering the daily commute is a good thing Covid-19 did, although I don't expect it to last long (WFH-ers will get fewer promotions, despite working harder, and eventually RTO fetishists will rule the roost).
Very few people want to "consume gas". They want to be able to live decently and have meaningful jobs. Unfortunately, in today's market, that usually means a shit-ass load [1] of driving.
----
[1] You don't want to know how much time I spent deciding whether to use the more conventional hyphenization ("shit-ass-load") or the version with better cadence.
> You don't want to know how much time I spent deciding whether to use the more conventional hyphenization ("shit-ass-load") or the version with better cadence.
It’s not a question of “cadence” but of grammar. “Shit-ass“ is an adjective modifying the noun “load”. Your choice is grammatically correct.
> a lot of that gas consumption is spent commuting, which makes people miserable. Murdering the daily commute is a good thing Covid-19 did
I guess this applies more to those who drive from the suburb.
I lived in a dense city with great transit. I miss the commute, which forces me to walk a bit, starts myself up, and helps me compartmentalize my time.
I myself would ealk or bike to the train. My tolerance for walking is 2.5 miles each way and I've been fortunate to have spent all but about 9 months of my career like that. So many can't or don't, though.
> "Scar consumption" as a phrase assumes that consumption in the American style is a healthy activity to begin with, and this outcome is damaging or ugly.
Well, not really. The basic problem is that production has to equal consumption. And so there are three possibilities:
1. People consume all of their income
2. People work less
3. People work, but get paid less
In a fair economy, the third point won't happen. In a country that wants an internationally competitive economy, the second point can't happen. And so people have to consume 100% in order to work 100%; this choice maximizes tax revenue.
If people produce less, the tax intake will be lower, which makes the country less competitive internationally.
In particular, the smaller the GDP, the less military spending the country can support. If the country can not support a sufficient military spending owing to a lack of consumption (production), it will be conquered by someone who can, a bit like private equity buying out an unprofitable company with good potential. (c.f. Ukraine - very poor GDP, but decent possibilities for growth w.r.t. arable land, supply of young human capital, seaports, industry etc, thus currently undergoing hostile takeover)
> You assume people don't even consider saving somehow. Why is that?
There's no such thing as saving; if I save money, it's to consume it in the future eventually. So this has to cancel out over the long term.
If people are saving money and never withdrawing (e.g. never using the freedom bought by the past work to avoid future work), that's fine too, but if they withdraw it, it decreases national production, so it only works if people are prevented from withdrawing savings, at which point nobody would keep them.
Basically, people have to work, and this is the fundamental premise. That being said, the basic nature of the consumption is irrelevant. This is why digital services, gambling, and financial services are so important - it's much more socially efficient for people to dispose of $100 worth of money through slot machines or Netflix subscriptions or overdraft charges (all of which are effectively free to "produce" in terms of national resources) than by e.g. buying a new car, which requires actual steel and semiconductors and rubber and ... which require the expenditure of resources (land, labour, capital) in order to produce.
Speaking of gambling, you also left out theft and loss.
You seem to be applying a macroeconomic template. Individuals can and do behave somewhat differently. I don't have any responsibility to prop up your economy with my spending and you have no responsibility to prop up mine, but please do. If I spend less and you spend more, I hope you spend it on my services and goods, so I get your money and you get my designer throw pillows or whatever. The vast majority of the wealth of the wealthy is in unrealized gains which may be spent someday, it sounds like you're calling them economically unproductive.
I hope to pass my savings on to my heirs, and they can spend it or not as they see fit. I can also spend less on f**ing petroleum and spend more on something else, which is the point of this whole thread. Desiring not to spend, and desiring not to earn, are vastly different.
> Speaking of gambling, you also left out theft and loss.
Correct. Theft is included in GDP, as is spoilage. As I said, it doesn't matter how 'good' people's consumption is, only that they consume. This being said, theft isn't ideal, because it could depress the prices for the items later on. Loss would be better.
> You seem to be applying a macroeconomic template. Individuals can and do behave somewhat differently.
That's correct, which is why the state - if it wishes to remain relevant - has to get them back in line, lest it be consumed by someone who does.
> I don't have any responsibility to prop up your economy with my spending and you have no responsibility to prop up mine, but please do. If I spend less and you spend more, I hope you spend it on my services and goods, so I get your money and you get my designer throw pillows or whatever.
You don't understand - it's not about "propping up an economy" - it's about making sure that people work. If you stop spending, there's a risk that it would cause you to stop working. This is the risk; the consumption itself is damaging for the economy, and it would be preferable that people lose their wages to less damaging forms of consumption (e.g. buying scalable forms of entertainment services)
> The vast majority of the wealth of the wealthy is in unrealized gains which may be spent someday, it sounds like you're calling them economically unproductive.
The money isn't economically unproductive, because money isn't what makes production, but people can be unproductive, and this is the risk.
In practice, the losses from this are very small, because it's held by a rather small billionaire elite, and so the losses to rentiers don't actually end up in a lot of real-world consumption.
> Desiring not to spend, and desiring not to earn, are vastly different.
Different, perhaps, but they are brothers. Spending = earnings + borrowing, or, conversely, earnings = spending + saving. If you don't consume, your net saving goes up, and those savings are like a ticking time-bomb that can be sprung on the economy at any time to seriously cut the GDP.
It's correct to say that you can spend less on petroleum and more on other stuff. It's even more correct to say that, from the macro-economic view, you have to. (And if you don't want, you will be forced to)
In your model, retirement and leisure don't exist. When I can, I will absolutely stop working. Work to live, not live to work. I've done my time earning money for others. People don't need to be maximally productive all the time. Only the owner class thinks this, and we fought a civil war over an extreme form of this.
I remember there not being seconds at supper (1960s), Mom would serve, deciding how much everyone got: Dad first, then each of four kids, then herself. I know this is part of who I am, and some of why the house is stuffed. My wife laughs at how much clothing I have, because I still have clothes from 1979. Well, mostly she laughs at my stuff from the Eighties. But I remember shopping at Goodwill or my mom making everything we wore. It's not worth the anxiety to not-have.
Absa-bloody-lutely. Living through a price shock informs you of actual reality, not the government created illusory one (constructed with central banking and government policy) that encourages indebtedness and leaves you weak and unprepared for unforeseen events.
Keep in mind, this article is from a business school website. The perspective is going to be skewed towards whatever is perceived towards benefitting businesses.
Mindless consumption is nothing but a disease, of the mental illness variety. People who get a dopamine burst or some similar neurotransmitter release when they go shopping have been indoctrinated into patterns of behavior that do them no good in the long run. They'll end up with a house crammed with possessions they never use, bought on a whim in order to make themselves feel better.
A better mentality is to always think: "Do I really need this product/service, or can I make do with things on hand that I can rebuild/repair/reuse in some manner, and am I sure this purchase isn't just for the dopamine reward?"
Sometimes the answer will be yes, and a simple purchase can have a lot of positive knock on effects - good tools, for example, allow you to repair things that would otherwise cost much more to replace, and last much longer than cheap tools.
The claim that economic growth relies on consumer confidence (high levels of consumption) is also pretty suspect and relies a lot on how you define 'growth' - what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population and fixed levels of demand for goods and services, anyway?
> The claim that economic growth relies on consumer confidence (high levels of consumption) is also pretty suspect and relies a lot on how you define 'growth' - what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population and fixed levels of demand for goods and services, anyway?
on a micro level, most people would prefer for their QOL to increase over time. I was happy to live like a college student when I was in college, but I wouldn't be happy to live that way as a 35 yo. this can't happen for everyone without some amount of growth.
you rightly call out that people often spend money on temporary kicks that don't actually improve their QOL. but if you take a more intentional approach to spending, there are lots of opportunities to exchange money for less stress or more free time. for example, not everyone can afford an in-unit washer/dryer, but it sure is nice to have one.
and then on a macro level, there is the unfortunate reality that we are a tribal species, constantly locked in a prisoner's dilemma with the other tribes. the more tribes onboard to the "steady state" model, the greater the incentive to defect and outgrow/dominate the others.
Take a moment, when you leave your house next, and find anything upon your travels/commute/walk, man-made, which is trying to NOT get you to spend (time/attention/money).
Our entire civilization is built around programming consumerism, and lauding profiting from the inability to NOT spend.
> what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population
We don’t have a stable population. It’s growing.
We like things to get better even if we don’t have “more”. I don’t have multiple cars just for me. But the car I have now has adaptive cruise control. It costs more, it makes my driving experience better, and I’m glad I have it.
Both of these, among many other factors, influence economic growth.
> We don’t have a stable population. It’s growing.
The rate of growth is declining, though. So it's not unreasonable to foresee peak population in the near future (most estimates are around 2060, and it's not going to increase much between 2050 and then).
No it's not, most developed countries force their populations to accept immigrants to keep the population growing in order to prop up the "growth" economy.
> what's wrong with a steady-state economy with a stable human population and fixed levels of demand for goods and services, anyway?
Because there's no such thing as a steady-state economy. You might as well ask why people need to breathe in and out, why can't they just hold their breath?
I thought that was pretty funny, but after laughing it made me think… is it?
Breathing in and out actually sounds like the respiration equivalent of exactly a steady state economy. Like, I don’t continue to grow in size with each year, thus requiring more breath than the previous year. I grew a lot as a kid/teenager, then a tiny bit as an adult, and now I am more or less the same size (and relatively same breath size) as I will ever be.
i certainly wouldn't want to be living in prewar houses with prewar safety and prewar appliances with prewar electricity efficiency and driving prewar cars and receiving prewar medical attention. but i guess to many people, that seems like an upgrade, because they are far too poor to afford modern living. life has gotten worse for a lot of people.
Is it fair to conclude that fossil fuel price shocks are good for the planet? If everyone experiences them early then we will all reduce our carbon footprint for life and slow global warming?
I 100% welcome higher gas prices. Americans are so wasteful it's ridiculous. It'll hurt if you're currently in an inefficient car but once you get a hybrid / EV you won't care. I don't even look at the price filling up my Prius.
SUVs that look like school buses and people commuting to an office job in full size trucks is madness.
I'm in the automotive industry and the biggest fan of EVs in general. I was even home-building an EV before I moved to the city.
I think we still have a lot to figure out with our charging infrastructure, in cities where often it's hard just to park. I want an EV badly, but it'd be a constant struggle to keep it charged.
There's also an issue with car companies generally not making the cars I want anymore, though I understand this is a me problem. There's not a nice plug-in hybrid small convertible, even if I could charge it.
EVs have really large batteries nowadays which should make home charging feasible for most. The Tesla Model 3 has an EPA estimated mileage of 358 while the Nissan Leaf has estimated 149. If you mostly travel within city limits, I'd be surprised if you could deplete your whole battery before you get home at the end of the day.
Indeed almost all EV charging happens at home, but the parent comment is talking about city living where people may not have access to charging at home.
The article addresses that a bit. The effect is small and they are still driving everywhere alone (instead of public transport) so the authors say that electric vehicles are the only way out.
what if i told you a lot of fossil fuels go into producing electric cars, which then drives up the price of them making them out of reach for the avg person
I'm sorry, but are you saying that the high price of EVs is due to fossil fuel prices? EVs were far out of reach of the average person well before fuel prices ticked up. They're priced high because they're based on relatively new technology and processes.
My grandmother grew up during the great depression and often went hungry as a child.
Decades later when she had plenty of money she still refused to ever throw anything away. Her huge house was stuffed full of balls of old string, used popsicle sticks, ancient newspapers and wire.
I had a relative that was a child during WWII and they had some very distinctive (borderline maladaptive) 'quirks' ....
One of which is they would never take the last item of anything from out of the fridge (eggs, cheese slices etc) and would become irate if anybody else did. They (much like your grandmother) were also unable/unwilling to throw anything out 'just in case'.
My grandparents didn’t go hungry this year (after Russia’s invasion) because they had a cellar full of preserves. For them, it was part of a tradition of hunger, a “never waste food” mentality reinforced by WWII, and Holodomor prior, and WWI prior, and the experience of being serfs prior to that.
Debateable. The reason rich kids turn into such pieces of shit isn't material abundance (since, after all, anyone born before ~1990 in the middle class also experienced material abundance) but the unearned high social status and the impunity that comes with it.
Deprivation and poverty, on the other hand, fuck people up severely--often, through no fault of their own--and there's tons of empirical evidence showing this.
Huh? Social status is relative, that is, defined by some kind of difference in a characteristic over which there is some competition (like wealth, looks, connections, fame, etc.). So how do you get that rich kid status without reference to material abundance?
Remember, most people are comparatively poor: the wealth histogram is heavily skewed toward zero and with a wide tail toward infinity.
It's impossible for everyone to be relatively wealthy and relatively high status. It is possible for everyone to have absolute wealth (or at least income) beyond a fixed absolute level, yet still widely disparate status.
Is there a "material abundance" difference between a new Benz and a 25 year old Camry? I wouldn't think so, they both fulfill the same basic role and are composed of approximately the same materials, but getting dropped off at school in one will get you unearned social clout and the other might get you unearned social derision.
Unless you're claiming violent seizure, then the Benz had a good probability of being earned by someone, thus meriting some social clout by those who value those contributions. I have a pickup over a decade old and with a noisy muffler, and write comments on forums like this instead of, apparently, providing value sufficient to afford more. It's not meritorious, and I receive and deserve some derision. Well at least I don't genuflect before the God of egalitarianism, so I'll accept credit for that.
In almost all situations, a high school student being dropped off by parents in a fancy car did nothing to help the parents earn the fancy car. In fact, generally kids at that stage are a net negative on parents finances.
The key is that the wealth used to buy the car was earned (unless evidence to the contrary is convincing). The parents elected to buy an expensive car, and maybe they bought their kid more expensive clothing. But can't you see, that having one's child lack want is (one) motivation for making the efforts to earn wealth? Suppose those parents were otherwise identical (in terms of their privileges), but, like you, decided that such differential wealth displays were to be shunned. Not needing those displays caused them in part to lose motivation to obtain wealth, and thus lose motivation to perform the efforts that would lead to that. So they produce less. Great, now the people who can produce the most are encouraged to produce less. Try selling that to the people who will now be more poor as a consequence.
Instead of clipping the knees of the productive, realize that envy can encourage the unproductive to imitate the habits of the productive to themselves become productive. We all benefit indirectly thereby.
I never claimed the wealth was unearned - I said it was unearned by the high school student who is gaining clout from it.
> but, like you, decided that such differential wealth displays were to be shunned. Not needing those displays caused them in part to lose motivation to obtain wealth
I don't think you'll find any evidence to support this. No one decides that since they don't need a Benz to show off, that they would like to live in a hovel and work until they are 75.
> Instead of clipping the knees of the productive, realize that envy can encourage the unproductive to imitate the habits of the productive to themselves become productive
An equally plausible scenario is that the envy leads unproductive people to spend every last penny they can earn on the displays, leaving them in a much worse financial position than someone who eschews the displays and invests their money in productive enterprises.
edit: just realized I posted this from my phone which has a different account signed on...opsec fail, just a heads up googlryas=oh_sigh
Extreme are often bad. Having either not enough, or excessively much early on, lead to various irrational or otherwise maladaptive behaviors later. Humans perform best in a happy middle range along many axes.
The "for life" remark is interesting in relation to generation Z.
Materially, the most spoiled generation ever, through no fault of their own. Material abundance, cheap goods, instant gratification and very liberal parenting. Mediocre work ethic, a something for nothing attitude, if I may exaggerate a little. Peak individualism.
...until they move out and meet actual life. The contrast is quite cruel, so I wonder if "for life" always applies.
Not everyone, I grew up in abundance but became a total cheapo in adulthood. It has been kind of a problem actually. I don't spend on some things that I really should spend on.
Frankly, what happens is people learn the value of prudence early in life which then saves them a ton of money, time and anguish.
I grew up in hard times, and spend to solve problems was rarely the right answer.
Each new skill mastered was worth an awful lot of money! I picked up many and have broad competence today. The savings are still compounding.
If you ask me, the current emphasis on consumption and so damn many things made to fail hard and or be replaced rather than serviced, refused or repurposed is morbid!
Gluttony on parade.
A lot of people need work and or to live on not a lot of money too.
Right to repair plus some way for people to learn, maybe learn together would put a dent in many businesses. I get that, but which is it?
Pay them more to actually consume, or maybe we all should not be surprised when large numbers of people begin to really walk that rugged individualist talk.
I have a form of this in other areas. Growing up we didn't have a ton of money and batteries were expensive. We never had batteries to replace depleted ones, so once a toy was out of batteries, it was done. We just played without those features. Now, having kids, I'm so conscience of batteries. I have a tester and check each battery when "dead" and put them in a separate box if I think they have enough juice for a lower power item. We have the money to just replace batteries when we need to... I just need to conserve them.
The other area is colour ink. Printing in colour as a kid was a big deal. I think think I'm going to get in trouble at work when I print in colour... like the massive organization I work for is going to care about 5 pages of full colour document.
Ya now I have the money to buy whatever batteries I need (thank you Amazon Basics) but as a kid we definitely didn't have the money to afford batteries. We didn't even buy paper towels, just used tea towels (as we called them). This also created an aversion to over using paper towels in my adult years. This isn't meant as some "whoa is me", but just a comment on how pricing and costs growing up can affect you for a very long time.
1. the cotemporaneous rise of (this iteration of an) environmental movement during exactly the same time period as the "price shocks" for gasoline that it considers. This has almost certainly had a significant impact on the zeitgeist for the cohort the study is considering, and it doesn't take much imagination to believe that it is a much more substantive impact.
2. studiously avoids an international comparison. The 78-80 "shock" caused by the Iranian revolution had impacts on gasoline prices everywhere, and even if (as the paper notes) the USA is a much more car-centric culture than elsewhere, certainly people were driving a lot in Europe during that period too. If the effect is real, you should be able to demonstrate it there too.
Economic shocks are not fun, but to lighten the mood I figured to share a weird but hilarious subculture: vrekken.
A "vrek" is the dutch word for somebody that is extraordinarily frugal in unhealthy ways. The vrekken culture embraces this as a quality and then escalates it to Olympic standards. Not even out of necessity, instead as an avenue for creativity.
In America there are subcultures devoted to couponing (hunting for discount promotions) and churning (opening many credit card or bank accounts to collect "new account bonuses").
Sounds like my father in law: voluntarily chooses not to turn up the heat in winter to avoid spending, even when he could pay the bill multiple times and still have plenty left from his retirement monthly paycheck.
I know someone who immigrated from a former communist country. She talked how they lived in extreme poverty and now despite having great job and substantial savings, she pretty much lives the way she learned.
For instance cooking the same food her parents used to cook from whatever they managed to find, only wearing used clothing.
When her phone was stolen and she had to buy a new one, she literaly cried for a week thinking that for the lost money she could have food for months.
The bad side is that I remember she berated her then boyfriend because he bought potatoes in the store that had them 20p (like a quarter in the US) more expensive than the one little farther from her place. Can you imagine being screamed at for 20p? He eventually left her and needed to attend therapy.
I perfectly understand her, I am in similar position despite being in top 3% earners in Czechia I will refuse to buy overpriced goods I know they are cheaper in other shop. I have 4 years old phone, wanted to upgrade for really long time, but I don't see the value in new one worth spending that much money for flagship just because I want compact phone with good camera and battery (Pixel 4A was closest price wise, but battery and punch hole killed it) despite I could buy easily 4-5 flagships from my monthly income.
Is there something wrong though with keeping your spending habits low instead splurging on stupid things and risking potentially you will have to adjust them, if you lose job? I find it better to just keep them pretty much stable no matter how high is the income. Though I would not touch second hand clothes, but would not have problem to buy second hand phone and I consider people buying brand new cars crazy, you will lose lot of value just after leaving the dealership.
It probably helps my wife is (stereo)typical Chinese who will reuse everything and has problem to throw away anything, that's even more extreme than me not buying overpriced goods when I know they are cheaper elsewhere (I'm actually supporting price competition this way, sadly most of the people are lazy and don't give a F about few cents causing inflation for everyone). I love especially expiring food with 60-70% discounts, finding best possible deal makes me probably more happy than products itself.
This is totally reasonable. However, I found that going out of her way to find a product marginally cheaper to be counter productive. I was unable to explain to her the concept of alternative cost. For instance spending extra 30 minutes to save £1-2. I mean there is nothing wrong with that if you don't have anything else to do and can be a form of entertainment, but these things pile up and that shows in her looks - constantly tired. She could have spent that extra £1-2 and used gained time to do something else like relaxing bath, listening to music or reading a book.
I mean if she doesn't do it during her work time it's difficult to calculate cost of free time vs savings, personally I don't see it that way either, it's just thing I have to do and whether my grocery takes 20 or 30 minutes makes really no difference, those few extra minutes spent on checking cheap (expiring) things I could not use elsewhere.
I don't really think she would literally spend extra 30 minutes to save 1 GBP, seems like exaggeration and I also doubt she is really allocating time to those activities. She can be constantly tired more likely because she is burned out (my case, not taking any vacation in years besides bank holidays when they often bother me anyway) than because of time spent on saving money.
This is for me one key to understand this effect. I was a small kid in the 70ies, I didn't have any idea about gas prices and how much a driving license costs - I didn't even know that my toys did cost something - but I grew with parents who would scold me whenever we left some light on for no reason, or a door open for too long when it was cold outside, or opening the fridge for too long.
I remember I was witnessing the exact opposite behavior in the American TV shows of that time. The "traditional" food battles were in particular not entertaining at all, but rather we were disgusted by the huge waste of food - this, although we were a middle class family that certainly had less money problems than your friend.
To this day I still turn off unused stuff and close doors as soon as possible. And I try not to waste water too. And I check the price-per-weight rather than the unit price. Despite the fact I could afford to not give a huck to all this.
Sounds like a good thing in a world where we over-consume almost
everything?
I can't agree with some of the commentary in this thread about risk,
drive and early poverty. Some of the wealthiest people started out
dirt poor. They didn't like it and resolved to become rich. Plenty
more started out spoiled rotten and grew up to be lazy minded with
mediocre life outcomes.
"Brewster's Millions" is still a great film on this theme of growing a
healthy relationship with money.
Anecdata: I hate driving. I'd much rather take a bus or light rail, but that battle was lost in the 1940's[1], along with asinine city planning that was pro-car, anti-community that still exists today.
1) How the article focuses entirely on fossil fuel consumption rather than something much more damaging, like housing
2) The author's key takeaway is this is great and we should use it to manipulate people into consuming less fossil fuels by making their usage punishingly expensive.
In particular, 1) is a societal wrecking ball, because no home means no stable environment to raise children, means more trouble in the pipeline for the next generation. Many people in the generation won't even have children and others will have fewer than replacement rate. 2) makes me think the same sort of people are behind the housing crisis. They believe in overpopulation and therefore they want to curtail it by making housing punishingly expensive.
My late grandmother, whom lived to the respectable age of 99 years, experienced the Dutch hunger winter. A period of famine during WW2.
For the rest of her lengthy life she could not tolerate any type of food waste. As an example, she'd buy a cabbage and then eat cabbage the entire week, even as it increasingly goes bad.
She had zero interest in food quality or nutritional value, just food in itself. Behavior learned during the famine where you don't have the luxury to discriminate. As an example, she once babysat me and my brother and made an abundance of snacks. Just way too much. Quite soon we were full, but the single word "finish..." and her stare told us all we needed to know. We finished, with stomach cramps. Out of respect.
Also, she had 9 children and survived 7 (genetic blood disease). She survived two husbands. In her extended family and friends, she survived...everybody.
We have a single photo of her childhood, where she stands in front of her house. Which was...made from clay and reed. An astonishing reminder of how even in today's developed nations, wealth for common people is brand new. Despite plenty of opportunities in her lifetime, she rejected material wealth outside some basics. Zero material desires.
Despite all this, not once in her life have I seen her sad or complain or moan. If us grandchildren did something bad or stupid, she didn't give a shit. You're still alive, in health...so what's the problem? Carry on.
She didn't eat very healthy, smoke a pack a day and didn't exercise. And still she made a daily trip on her bicycle to get her own groceries. Or make two trips in a row if needed. Up to the age of 98.
The collapse was short and sudden. After a hospital stay she was returned home to die. As she got carried out of the ambulance she saw my dad's work: her front-garden completely replanted with hundreds of blooming flowers, a sight to behold.
"That looks nice"
She was never very generous with compliments. And those were her last words. I'd call her Iron Lady, but it's an insult really. Iron is too soft to describe her.
She lives on as my compass for life. When I worry, see darkness in the world, contemplate about world events and threats, I think of her.
I'm alive, and I'm eating. I'm fine. Her scars are my lesson, and it's liberating.
She lived in an occupied country, ate grass and flowers, whilst nearly freezing to death. She encountered enough personal loss to fit several lifetimes. And still lived a full life and remained positive throughout.
So if at one point I have to cancel my Netflix, yeah...I think I'm going to be fine.
My great grandmother was 9 at the end of the Great Depression. Not that she talked about it, but I did an assignment for an anthropology class that was basically, "bother some old people about one of these Bad Times."
She actually was a good cook, a lot of her dishes rode the line between simple and fancy. She had either the oldest fancy stove or the fanciest old stove I'd ever seen, and she treated every glass jar she met as a reusable container (to this day the majority of glass jars on store shelves are the same dimensions and threading as a Ball Mason Jar lid), had odd collections of belongings and many of her wide, wide variety of plants seemed to have come from an extensive network of barter and gift economy.
We spent one trip to her house clearing her entire pantry of expired food, because my mom found one can, asked some questions and did not like any of her answers. Some of it was bad. Rob you and leave your body in a ditch bad.
I so recognize that behavior, and in our family it has carried on into the boomer generation, my parents and in-laws.
Half the food in their house is expired. They have this lifelong habit of needlessly stocking lots of food as well as opening a food package and then not finishing it for way too long.
Our parents never experienced a famine yet did experience a different culture of food logistics. Very large families (my mother has 8 siblings) so you need lots of food. Food being more seasonally available only, so stock up. Older houses having deep cold cellars to store food, whilst modern houses don't tend to have that, but they don't unlearn the behavior.
Yes, I too have found lots of food expired by years. The most shocking thing is that quite a lot of it looks exactly like it was bought including a salad with an egg on top of it. When you slice a freshly boiled egg and put it at room temperature, it turns dark in an hour. This egg is 8 years old and looks brand new.
Yeah the whole thing with Boomers was not just that everyone in the neighborhood had kids, it was that a lot of them had 3. 4. 6. The dynamic with 4+ siblings is to heap your plate with food because all the serving dishes were empty long before you realized that you were hungrier than what was left on your plate.
That it was another generation before obesity became a huge issue probably says more about how many manual chores the boomers still had to do. You can suck up an extra 500 calories a day pretty easy, pushing things around and hauling them in and out of storage. An extra thousand or two if you're on a farm.
"“Those who came of driving age during the oil crises of the 1970s drive less in the year 2000,” the paper found. The doubling of gasoline prices in the late 1970s saw that generation drive 3.6% to 8.7% less than those born earlier or later"
I can't find the paper, but when they say "born earlier or later" are they still looking at rate of driving in the year 2000?
If so, aren't they just comparing ages? People born earlier or later would just be younger or older in the year 2000, which likely impacts driving too.
Oh economics! You keep calling yourself a science, but you need to start acting like one!
Maybe I’m going nuts but it looks like they used 2000 US Census data on driving, so yes, they only looked at that year.
They are literally comparing people who are older and younger with the cohort in question, so confounding results with how driving changes at various ages.
> it looks like they used 2000 US Census data on driving, so yes, they only looked at that year
The first major sentence under data:
“The decennial census asks questions about commuting mode and time. ‘Journey to Work’ questions appear in the 1980, 1990, and 2000 censuses, and in the American Community Survey (ACS) (Ruggles et al. 2020). We use data from these three censuses, as well as the 2006/10, 2011/15, 2016, and 2017 ACS” [1].
I was a kid during hyperinflation years in Brazil: 80s to early 90s, sometimes higher than 70% a month. To this day I'm very frugal, and I have a strong aversion to having debt of any kind: the only kind of debt I ever had was a mortgage and I paid them off as soon as I possibly could. I can only sleep well at night if I don't owe any money to anyone.
I cannot be sure, but I have this feeling that it is due to my formative years in that kind of environment.
I grew up and watched Enron implode with stories of life savings going poof. That influenced me to sell every vesting round which is averaging. This strategy always haunted, but thankfully my performance made up for it.
With the recent crash, the stock went down over 50% and it turns out that my strategy yielded me an average loss of 22% from peak.
I feel like it is more optimal to have those scars to be cautious earlier than later. That being said, there is also a truth in taking more risks earlier in life.
When I was a lad, my grandfather used to hound me to finish all the food on my plate, and not waste a thing. When I'd complain to my mom her explanation was Grandpa grew up during the Great Depression and he often went without enough food.
This isn't exactly unexpected as your childhood and adolescent experiences are what people vividly remember the most. Adulthood is all a blur otherwise.
Growing up not rich in the 60s and 70s was useful on the balance. I was willing to take risks in business because when you don’t have much to lose you are perhaps a little more free to try scary things. I read tons of how to succeed books and biographies and learned a lot about how failures are learning experiences. OTOH many of my peers wound up dead, on drugs, or incarcerated.
I do tend to be hoardy and my clever technique has been to just buy more houses, so not a great role model in that regard.
If we accept that events in life can scar or even just affect you for life (as this article claims) then why stop there? These people have children. Do you think that habits that form out of trauma, housing insecurity, food insecurity or were in fear of their lives don't subconciously impact their children?
We don't even have to imagine that. We have physical evidence that the conditions a woman faces can impact her grandchildren [1]. Remember that a cis-woman is born all the ova she'll have so pregnancy conditions can affect grandchildren.
But even if you ignore the physical, you'll find cultural and psychological effects on children from people who, say, fled a war zone or survived the Holocaust or whatever.
If you accept all that you've then accepted that generational trauma is real (which it is).
So what do you think that slavery did to people long after chattel slavery (officially) ended?
At least from the conversations I've heard about this topic, the issue isn't acknowledging that slavery and Jim Crow has caused problems for generations of blacks. The problem comes when measures to address it are discussed, like reparations or quotas. People see it as monumentally unfair because, while being black is a handicap, it's only one of many that are too endless to enumerate. For example, there is no affirmative action for poor whites who grow up in broken homes. There is no affirmative action for simply having parents who are a standard deviation below the population in IQ. Insofar as student spots at high-tier institutions go, here poor whites see favorable action to benefit blacks when they themselves never played a part in their oppression. Black, well-spoken immigrants from Nigeria who never experience discrimination in their home countries get benefits merely by dint of their skin color, and not actual suffering.
Even if you limited it to some way to only US blacks who could prove lineage to an actual enslaved individual, suffering is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. So... why action on this topic is politically impossible. I think color-blind welfare policies based on economic resources would be much more feasible, but... good luck raising taxes to increase the size of the welfare state.
My parents grew up in the depression and I was in high school in the 70s. I'm very careful with money, and have always been a frugal saver. Of course, people who save money are punished the most by government policies, and especially by politicians like Joe Biden.
So unlike so many people today, I don't make 12 trips a day to stores/friends/whatever when I can just make one or two if I actually think 5 minutes ahead. That applies whether gas is $1 or $5 per gallon.
I also try to make good use of what I own and not discard things that are functional simply to get the new shiny.