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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

The article addresses this exact form of argument in a manner that I find compelling:

> There’s one final problem with these kinds of arguments, and that is the implication that we should be worried by the possibility of poor people buying the occasional steak, lottery ticket or, yes, even an iPhone. Set aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on. Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence? Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?

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Or even simpler: why do people whose net worth is likely >> $100K begrudge someone whose net worth is < $1000 their only expensive item?

I think it offends them on a basic level... after all it makes their silly purchases so much more obviously silly. It probably explains why at high income levels, people still collect so much useless shit just for the sake of having it. It's also why there's a $10,000 iPhone, or ones you get crusted with jewels.

The aristocracy is always seeking to distinguish themselves from the "Nouveau", and far more so from the "peasants". That's not a nice thing to think though, so it's rapidly sent through cognitive/ideological/religious filters and produces a more agreeable output for the thinker.

Doesn't work, though. An iPhone is not an "occasional indulgence".

Fancy chocolates, or a meal at a mid-tier restaurant are an "occasional indulgence".

An iPhone is a massive class-signaling purchase that requires expensive ongoing payments to use.

Uh, no. Ting supports iPhones and they have $6/mo plus pay as you go. That isn't an "expensive ongoing payment" at all.

https://ting.com

Most people buy $200 iPhones with massive monthly bills, at least in the US. I don't know if that changed yet.

Do you think it's possible that most poor people don't do that, though? Who do you think the $6/mo deals are made for?

I would have thought poor people are more likely to do that because they can't afford the upfront cost of the phone.

I mean, I don't have any data, feel free to prove me wrong. But when I was a poor student, I wouldn't even dream of buying a smartphone outright, yet alone an iPhone.

And I had a look, those $6/month contracts barely subsidise anything. I don't really get what's relevant about them.

You can buy a used iphone cheap and get ting. As a bare minimum of needing a phone to get a job anymore this is one of the cheapest options.

> a massive class-signaling purchase

So here we have the heart of the problem.

You begrudge those who you feel are not in your class their ability to lower the value of your signal.

Maybe you should stop seeing phones as 'class signaling devices' but see them instead as small portable computers that you can make phonecalls with.

> An iPhone is a massive class-signaling purchase that requires expensive ongoing payments to use.

It's entirely possible to use an iPhone without a service plan. Free wifi is easy to find in any city or decent-sized town.

Used iPhones (even the 6, for example) cost less than $150, and as low as $50. And you don't need a phone plan to use free wifi.

Plenty of providers exist for those who are cost conscious. As an exmaple, Ting offers service for $15/month for a line, 100 minutes, sms, & MBs. Not gonna compare to a Verizon plan, but not something most people would consider an expensive ongoing payment.

Only "MBs"? In Germany, I get 1 GB of data, 50 minutes and 50 SMS for €10/month (with 1€=1$ roughly). And Germany is notorious for overpriced phone contracts.

> Doesn't work, though. An iPhone is not an "occasional indulgence".

It absolutely is. You can buy a decent used iPhone for a couple hundred bucks. This is a purchase that will be used for hours each day and last years. Amortized, its hourly cost is almost nothing, a fraction of your alternate options. Purchasing a good phone is thus a rational economic decision to maximize utility, because of how often it gets used.

> Fancy chocolates, or a meal at a mid-tier restaurant are an "occasional indulgence".

You can buy "fancy chocolates" once a month for two years for the equivalent cost of using an iPhone over that period. As for a meal at a mid-tier restaurant, you're looking at eating out once per quarter versus getting to use a nice phone for hours each day. The poor aren't stupid. The phone is simply a much better use of their limited funds than these frivolous wastes of money that for some reason you are projecting that they should rather indulge in.

> An iPhone is a massive class-signaling purchase that requires expensive ongoing payments to use.

Bullshit, it's a necessity of modern life. If you don't have a phone and Internet access it's nigh impossible to even find a job. Employers of all levels expect you to be accessible, if for no other reason than changing your shift time on you.

What are these expensive ongoing payments?

I can get a used perfectly good iphone on craigslist for $40 and use it exclusively with wifi to browse the internet.

Well having a non-iPhone is not really a "miserable" existence...

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