Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

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You're going to get pushback on this commonsense understanding of the world, but I've been on food stamps and of course you're right. "It's more complicated than that." No it isn't. Poor people shop at the same stores as everybody else. The food is all there. "They don't know the difference between healthy and unhealthy meals." How stupid do you think poor people are? They know how to prepare a healthy meal. The notion that this is just completely beyond the abilities of poor folks is risible. "They don't have as much time to prepare meals." Yes, they do. They have time to prepare a meal. Of course they do. Maybe not every single night, but they can make it work. (In fact, in the United States upper-income earners work more hours than those at the bottom [0].)

It's just an endless array of easily-overcome excuses (mostly from people who have never been poor and don't actually know any poor people).

[0] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/working-hours-america...

> They have time > work more hours

Work hours are not usually the issue. It is the wasted hours on all the things where a high earner can trade $ for time, versus the poor person that need to use an hour to save a dollar of cost.

Upper-income earners have different choices than the poor. Travel choices - Uber versus the bus, a car that works versus an clunker that costs maintenance and heavy breakdown side-effects. Appliances save time: dishwashers, your own washing machine, and a clothes dryer. A comfortable bed in a quiet and safe neighbourhood with helpful neighbours. Upper-income earners can buy services that give them time: cleaning, takeaways instead of cooking, supermarket delivery, childcare, massages or other re-energisers, good healthcare, yada yada yada.

When you get $40 dollars disposable in your pocket after household expenses for 40 hours work (ignoring travel), spending an hour to save a dollar is sensible.

Ideally if they worked an extra marginal hour, they would get a large marginal increase in disposable income. Somehow that doesn’t seem to work in reality (for many reasons, sometimes perverse government incentives).

One commonality amongst the less-well-off people I know, is that they are all tired. They can’t decide to spend another hour at their job because they are physically and mentally drained after a days physical work, and dealing with stressful people/children all day. Doing an hour on something different can make perfect sense to “earn” their $1.

I am not disagreeing with your main point - I do also see my friends spend their time and money poorly (in my opinion from an outside viewpoint).

Anything can be overcome, humans can do anything (get out of poverty, convert to healthy living, run marathons, stop smoking....) yet the majority (of a huge sample size of humans) is stuck in their way, held down by environmental conditions and, if you will, by limits in the human condition or whatever. If it could be fixed by telling people to "try harder" they would have by now, no?

The answer is to alleviate the environmental conditions. You have mentioned in another post that you have benefitted from food stamps for a while (did I understand that right?), allowing you to eat healthy; other people need that and maybe a little additional help with food, housing and clothing (all of it basic human rights anyway and relatively cheap to provide for in a modern society) to reduce the pressure and higher order effects of not having that safety net.

> You have mentioned in another post that you have benefitted from food stamps for a while (did I understand that right?), allowing you to eat healthy; other people need that and maybe a little additional help with food, housing and clothing

Absolutely. There’s a false dichotomy that runs all the way through this entire debate, which says that in order to demonstrate that we are compassionate and that we care about the plight of the poor and working class we must also insist that their condition is never the result of personal choices, but always external factors. This makes no sense. It is not particularly hard to keep two sets of books, one that says we should help those who need it and another that tells people who can benefit from this message that they do have agency, that their choices matter, that they can do things to improve their situation.

People need to believe that their actions have consequences. And the good news: it’s not a lie. Actions do have consequences. There actually are things you can do to improve your situation. That’s a hopeful message, not a cruel one.

And yet, there will of course be people who for whatever reason are unable to improve their lot in life. We should help them. There’s no contradiction here.

"(In fact, in the United States upper-income earners work more hours than those at the bottom [0].)"

I don't think this includes commute times or waiting in line for a security check. But maybe it does since these are all self-reported figures.

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