For years, my father would say "that guy using the food bank has an iPhone! I don't have an iPhone, and I'm not poor. How can these people afford iPhones?"
It's a generational thing, especially. iPhones are seen as glamorous luxury items, not as an essential tool for living. I always remind my father that the people who have little money but also have iPhones likely don't have a home phone number, home computer, or Internet service in their house. Their iPhone is their only connection to the modern digital world: The one asset they have to get themselves a job, assistance, information. It's arguably one of the most important items for a person to own, today, right up there with a car. Without a good phone and a car, people in the US are basically beached on a shore of unemployment, or low employment, especially in rural towns.
It's incredibly hard for people to get back on the horse when they've fallen off, economically. Even harder if they never had a horse to begin with. At the local library, people are constantly coming in to ask for help with digital literacy problems that affect their lives heavily: paying bills, responding to emails, seeing pictures of their grandchildren that were sent to their email. Having a phone with Internet is literally an essential part of modern life, and the generation that thinks poor people shouldn't have iPhones are the same ones who generally view all this technology stuff as magical hoo hah. Like my dad...
I obviously think that Chaffetz's comment was roughly as idiotic as you'd expect from Jason Chaffetz (the high end of Healthcare costs are so exorbitant that any common luxury purchase you can think of completely pales in comparison).
But your comment conflates "one of the most expensive smartphones" with "having any connection to the digital world". No disagreement that connectivity is critical and that mobile devices are an efficient way to get there on a low income, but iPhones are definitely not. My mom doesn't have a working computer in her house atm, and her phone cost 200 dollars (or free with carrier subsidy). There's pretty much no reason to get an iPhone on purely functional grounds, just as there would be no reason to get a $700 Galaxy S7.
Though I should note that ios has moved downmarket when they started selling older models, which filled some of this gap.
A second hand iphone would do just fine and would be cheap. 'Iphone' does not magically translate into $700 piece of hardware, it could easily be $50 or $100 when bought second hand or even free when a gift from a family member or even a stranger. Heck I know of some iPhones that have gone through 4 pairs of hands by now. Just because the first owner moves on to a newer and shinier model whenever they come out (talk about bad decisions...).
People with little internet access don't have the tools to properly comparison shop, they're going to walk into an AT&T or Boost store and probably leave with what the salesperson is able to push on them. iPhones have always been available for around $200 with carrier subsidies, if I'm not forgetting an early period when it cost more.
Then there's the issue of older people using the term "iPhone" generically. Poor people overwhelmingly have Android phones (as evidenced by the massive disparity between the perceived iPhone market share in the tech bubble and reality), but it's all the same to Republicans.
No, it's not all the same to Republicans. They know poor people have Androids. Which is the whole point of this thread. Why do some poor people have an iPhone?
We live in a free society where the government doesn't have much control over how you live your life. Even though it's smarter for a budget-conscious consumer to buy a Moto G, some people won't, and there's nothing we can do about it. And with health insurance being expensive as it is, it's just lying to claim that poor people could buy their own health insurance if they would only drop their standard of living even further.
Obama - In a lengthy answer, Obama speculated about someone making $40,000-$50,000 a year, who thinks an insurance option that costs $300 a month is too much.
Chaffetz - people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.”
I get very different meaning from what they said, thus no I do not think what he said was 'just as idiotic'.
Oh for the love of God, adults are trying to have a conversation here. Get out of here with that /r/politics, "there are only two sides and every conversation is about which is worse!!" bullshit. I don't follow the non-policy part of politics closely and don't remember those remarks of Obama's: if they were substantively similar to Chaffetz's, then yes, they were idiotic.
From the very article you are sharing : Chaffetz "conceded he didn’t make his remarks “as smoothly” as he could."
The argument is always the same, the idiotic part is when you need to convince an entire nation to sign up for your healthcare plan but instead blame people for having an iPhone.
People become poor after buying stuff like iphones and often wouldn't improve their financial position by selling them.
People get expensive phones for cheap with contracts. If the problem is that family needs 400 per month in food stamps and 700 help affording health insurance which amounts to 13000 a year in help the extra 200 they paid for an iphone is a small thing.
People buy older phones for cheap or even get given them by family members who upgrade. I can buy an older iphone on craigslist for $40 right now.
Why is it that you imagine that the hypothetical father can tell the difference between a used and a new iPhone held by the individual in line at the food bank?
Android isn't really more difficult to use than ios. And not 650 dollars more difficult.
This is just a rationalization to buy the more expensive version.
If you are poor, an iphone is a shitty use of your money when a Moto G4 exists.
Of course, this won't make or break a person, but if it's representative of their cost/benefit analysis in general, their spending could be a huge problem.
> Android isn't really more difficult to use than ios.
Having supported a variety of non-technical folks both in a business and family capacity, this simply isn't true.
Hell, even basic directions depend widely on the manufacturer - the OS may look and act totally different depending on whether it's a Samsung device or not.
I know a mentally challenged person who uses android just fine. Whatever learning curve there is, it's not worth an extra 650 dollars to a poor person.
Maybe it's worth extra money to a businessman who refuses to learn a slightly different UI, but he isn't asking for subsides to afford it.
If you apply to the same logic to all of a poor person's decision they'd go broke. Cooking it pretty hard. You need pots and pans and stuff. Better eat McDonalds every meal!
Yeah, but we all know this stuff because we live on the internet. How much tech experience does the average homeless/poor person have when they buy their first phone (ie get their first internet access)?
Phones are a luxury, what percentage of the poor demographic do you think can afford a smartphone? Much less, know how to operate something they've never had experience with.
Around 2 billion people have cellphones (~30% of the population) which is a minority. Although, in the U.S 64% of those in poverty have a smartphone[1].
Maybe you confused my generality for locality. I'm talking in broad strokes, all over the world (not just the developed world).
It's just that your own numbers show that 2/3 poor people own a smartphone, compared to 4/5 in general (in the US). That's not a luxury item by any definition. And you're not including the fact that people might have access to the Internet anyway, even if they don't own a smartphone. Or their friend might have a smartphone... Or they might have a kid who knows about smartphones. Or they see ads for a smartphone.
You can get a real phone instead, say, something like Samsung Galaxy J5, lowish end but strong enough, bit more expensive but not a lot. Especially if you find a used one. That will set you back $150 or so. You can go lower still with J3 and it is also good enough, $90 - in fact better than not that old S5 most of the time.
That is without considering carrier subsidies or used market. (So compares to $700 iPhone price.)
and the generation that thinks poor people shouldn't have iPhones are the same ones who generally view all this technology stuff as magical hoo hah.
Which means they are unlikely to accurately identify an actual iPhone. More likely, they see a glass surface on a diagonally 5" device, and just assume the $50 low-end Android phone is an iPhone. That, and it conveniently fits their uncharitable mind set.
I own a 4 year old Nexus 4 that I got for $200. Almost everyone I encounter thinks it's an iPhone initially. Many people (especially the older ones) still think it's an iPhone after I tell them it isn't.
Not just the poor, but even homeless often have phones.
I'm the author of YSN[0], which is a web and mobile app for helping homeless youth in Minnesota.
Whenever I show the app to people, the usual response is: "Wait, homeless youth have phones?"
The answer is yes, a great many do. Because, as you note, it's their only connection to the digital world, and often times, the only connection to friends or family.
The fact that lots of day-to-day life has moved online.
Try finding a job through a news-paper ad, try making a doctors appointment by phone, try reaching the authorities without having to go through email. Try buying a regular map of any city and try staying in touch with your family without facebook or email.
Without a home-address email/phone is suddenly the only way authorities can reach you or vv.
(Smart)Phones are safety devices. And I'm saying that as a 'dumb' phone user, but I can only afford that because I also have a laptop and a desktop machine and don't care one bit about facebook.
If 15 years ago you could tell a homeless person that they could carry a post office, a phone box, a map, a list of social services, a research tool, and a way to communicate with friends, family and allies in their pocket, they would have gotten one, too.
Of course you're not going to pay for an iPhone if you're short on cash, but smartphones have cost less than 100 dollars for five years, and used phones sell for less. Combine this with wifi, and maybe a pay-as-you-go or super cheap unlimited SMS plan with limited talk, and the low price you pay for the kind of resources you get access to is a no-brainer.
And let's not forget you have a lot of down time when you're homeless. Candy Crush Saga might just keep you from going crazy.
The worst part is it doesn't even matter if it's an 'essential tool for living' or not. People who say stuff like your father have obviously never been the crippling, soul destroying, kind of poor.
When your life is filled with stress (because you have to work two jobs) and you are constantly on the verge of being homeless/going hungry (despite working 50-80 hours a week), the choice is simple. Choosing between some brief happiness and luxury given by an iPhone, satellite TV, tasty junk food,a nice pair of sneakers, or even a hit of heroin versus more AGONY, STRESS and PAIN provided by real life is a no brainer.
It's hard to fault someone for choosing to take a slice of happiness for themselves in between long stretches of crappy existence. Is it not obvious that one should think twice about judging someone else's motivation and behavior without context? What do you know about their life and why they do the things they do?
There is even related research that has repeatedly demonstrated[1] that being poor is /not/ due to laziness or being a lesser human. When poor/disadvantaged people are provided funds (with no strings attached!) they do the right thing and improve their own lives. They don't just "spend it all" on "booze and drugs". With the money their lives improve significantly and permanently.
Along these lines, a while ago I was fortunate enough to come into (indirect) contact with an organization that was retiring a bunch of old Apple systems and a few PCs. Because of this, a number of people too poor to consider buying a computer have one. One larger family has two. One small family has three, but it allows the father to work from home, rather than working another 70 hours at work (for no extra pay).
I'm sure that a number of the people in this thread, on seeing these computers in these homes, would immediately jump to the conclusion that these poor people are undeserving of any kindness or welfare because they wasted their money on shiny computers - an attitude often proudly worn on the sleeve. I've heard the satellite dish argument before, which makes the very same assumption. ("I was in a poor area and I saw satellite dishes on most houses!" What percentage of houses? Why assume they were hooked up? Why assume that in every house is a poor family? At what threshold would you allow people to start spending their own money as they see fit, and what if there's no way they can earn enough to reach this threshold? Who died and made you dictator of the world, anyway?)
Funny thing is that while some small number know who I am, and some think I'm awesome for giving them a computer, I'm not. All I am is the middleman. It's the organization doing the upgrading who got the computers to me that's the real star here. I just happened to know some people in need - and I'm quite excited because the organization may be retiring a few more computers in the near future.
We might be able to help change a few more lives for the better. I will have to start looking for more struggling families.
I agree. My grandmother used to complain in a similar manner, except it was about TV. See, here in Czech Republic, during communism, things like rents and utilities were cheap, but TVs (especially color ones) were a luxury item. Now anybody can have a TV, but the poor people actually spend most money on rent and utilities (we fortunately don't have such a big health care problem as in the U.S.). But I also recently realized she was wrong, because she had wrong "pattern" of status imprinted in memory.
One of the things that irks me about this is the number of people who would pull a gun on me and insist they're free to live their lives the way they want, do whatever they like, but the moment there's a poor person with a TV then that person is scum and lazy and should be forced - possibly even at gunpoint - to give up any positives in their lives, and live according to the standards set by the person who just insisted that nobody can tell them how to live.
It particularly irritates me when it's a some shady employer who refuses to pay for the work done, or demands absolute devotion and loyalty for the barest minimum they can bear to part with.
From what I have observed low income people have ObamaPhones. So perhaps that is how they are affording them. But then again the people I observed lived in a ghetto and were signing up for cable and seemed to have more disposable income than they let on... A bit like your father I am confused how they afford a bunch of stuff they appeared to own.
Wow, you are the only commentator in this thread to mention the ObamaPhone; I guess most HN readers here don't interact with less well off society. I know a fair few people that have one and love them. The program, from my anecdata, really does help out the less well off get a job, find information and opportunities, and generally interact with the larger world. Yes, some are just wackos and lazy, but from my view of the world, the taxes that are used via Obamaphones are very out weighed by the increased taxes from when people get stable jobs through the program. If the world is becoming increasingly automated, networked, wired, whatever, then a smartphone is the 0th step in getting people at least up to date with today's zeitgeist.
Remember, these are the kind of people that conflate wealth with owning even a used refrigerator. Or having a used car or anything else that's a modern staple of industrial societies. It's all about the idea that poorness is a sign of sinfulness. And that the righteous are magically immune to the misfortunes of the corrupted material world. Essentially, it's a heretical belief that so many Christian Americans love to entertain even if they verbally denounce it. I really wish more Christians would denounce such heresy to the point of shunning even politicians from their congregations. Maybe then we'd see this nonsense dropped for good.
It's a generational thing, especially. iPhones are seen as glamorous luxury items, not as an essential tool for living.
What planet do you live on?
An iphone is not an essential tool for living. I was without a smartphone while I was looking for a job last year, and used an old monochrome cellular device. I managed to keep on living without much difficulty. And yes - I travelled.
An iphone is a flagship smartphone, there are much cheaper devices you can use to browse the net.
What? My redneck cousin who lives out in the woods in western Idaho somehow figured out there are alternatives to iPhones. He's about as non-technical as they come. Before I became a "techie" I never had an iPhone. My mom non-technical mom always had an Android. I could go on.
Lots of people in my generation have purchased iPhones because they're en vogue and easy to use.
I'm not necessarily begrudging somebody who does purchase an iPhone, but non-technical people aren't always as dumb as we make them out to be.
exactly. smartphones are entry level internet devices, it requires almost no knowledge to use. saying you "don't have one and can do everything just fine" is a humblebrag
> just people claiming luxury smartphones are essential tools for living.
"Luxury smartphones" aren't essential. Cheap smartphones themselves aren't essential. Access to some kind of internet-connected computing device is becoming essential. Starting from 0, the intersection of price, function, and convenience is more likely to be a smartphone than any kind of laptop/desktop.
> There's no scenario
The topic is basically "poor people with smartphones". This is the "scenario" that we're talking about.
There are other smartphones that fulfill the same purposes (that you outlined above) which are much cheaper.
If someone in poverty buys an iPhone instead of a budget alternative, it's an indicator that they lack a basic ability to evaluate a handful of economic choices and choose the most appropriate (and thrifty) one. It's the smartphone equivalent of getting chrome rims on your car wheels.
EDIT: I was disappointed but not surprised that the article didn't even acknowledge this fact, nor really make a case at all for what it was saying. I couldn't find any attempt to convince at all in what was written; it was simply a declaration of how right the author's view is and how obviously stupidly wrong the concept of someone being responsible for their own outcomes is.
You make it sound like "iPhone" must mean "Brand new, cutting edge iPhone!" It could also be... old, refurbished, or "The iPhone I won" or "the iPhone I got on the best sale, " or "The iPhone I still have from when I had a home, and stuff. It's my connection to the world so I can't sell it off."
It isn't just a failure of empathy, but creativity, to miss these points.
It's disingenuous (and insulting) to suggest that the reason poor people can't afford expensive health insurance is that they all have brand new iPhones, or some other unnecessary luxury.
It is a valid rebuttal of that argument that poor people don't all spend their money on brand new iPhones, or the like. One cannot rebut that rebuttal by repeating the original claim.
The things you're stating would explain a small number of iPhones among a given group of poor people. The observation is that the things are damn near universal and often quite new.
It isn't just a failure of intelligence, but cognitive discipline, to miss these points.
Besides the fairly obvious jealousy permeating your comment one has to wonder: Were you physically present every time a homeless person came into the possession of a phone? No? Then how do you know what caused them to be able to afford it? It could be:
- a gift from a family member
- still the property of someone else, but they get to use it (possibly including a plan)
- a refurbished device
and so on.
It's a failure of intelligence to assume that just because someone has the use of something that they should not be able to afford that they are somehow making bad decisions.
You could easily argue that for some yuppie buying a car on credit but for a homeless person their phone pretty much is the only expensive thing they will own.
"damn near universal" is the biggest myth going around, implicitly and explicitly, in this thread. The data is clear, even in 2014, when cheap android phones were damn near universally terrible.
I think it's safe to assume, from the total radio silence on the multiple requests to back up that claim, that the original poster probably knew that going in.
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?
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".
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.
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.
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.
I think this is based on a misunderstanding of the kind of "economic choices" a person with little or no income will face. If a person can't afford to pay for housing or food, it's probably not because they're blowing lots of cash on phones. If you buy a $100 smartphone instead of a new iPhone, you'll save maybe $650 over a period of years, which won't cover even a month of expenses in most cities.
For many middle class and upper middle class people, being financially responsible is a matter of being thrifty with the adequate resources they have; for a person who is truly poor the issue is more likely to be a straight up lack of income, and no amount of pinching pennies is going to result in enough money to pay rent.
Yet you can pick up an iPhone 5s for less than $200 off-contract at Walmart.
So, no, your argument fails to hold water. Maybe their circle also uses iPhones. Maybe they want robust hardware and software for a device that will help determine whether they get and keep a job, and rightly or wrongly they feel an iPhone provides that robustness.
Making an assumption like that ("I don't think poor folks buying older or used iPhones is prevalent") is a bit foolish given the vastly incomplete "data point" you cite.
Until you can tell us how many smartphones you see, what percentage of them are iPhones, how often you see them, how the iPhone was acquired, and the apparent class of the person carrying it, you're just saying things that reinforce your viewpoint without any way of disproving it. Might also help if you can admit any bias you have to start with - do you really think that poor people are poor because they can't budget, spend unwisely, and are lazy?
I tried to be neutral, but c'mon, that's ridiculous. Given the vast array of Android hardware and price points, I refuse to believe there are "tons" of hardware problems unique to iPhones. I'd be surprised if the quantity is greater than one.
Have android phones ever had the problem of holding the phone blocking the signal, consistently failing power buttons, or that bending issue? I just can't remember any Android having a major hardware issue like that, not even the lower end ones. Nothing bad enough to get publicized like those 3 examples that happened with various iPhone models definitely.
If you use the same iPhone or iPod Touch for a while, something in the power buttom at the top wears down and it stops popping upwards, and you have to press it in very hard to activate it. Happened to my iPod Touch back in the day and was apparently a common problem.
I have no idea which iPhone had "consistently failing power buttons" but I have little doubt you can find other phones which have had problems with physical buttons.
It was never an explosion risk, it was fire risk, they haven't been banned because they don't use latest batteries.
That said, the lower end phones don't either.
The trade-off for the flagship phone in case of iPhone is battery life - it is noticeably shorter.
Used iPhones and year-old iPhones (likewise for Galaxy S-model phones and others on the top end) still perform better than "mid-tier" phones. Given this, an iPhone and "a budget alternative" are not mutually exclusive terms. Keep in mind that for most people today, a phone might well be the closest they can get to having any form of decent connectivity, so it becomes an investment in one's future to buy a device with years of life ahead of it.
A _new_ iPhone might be mutually exclusive with "a budget alternative," but that's not what's being argued.
I wouldn't be so sure, recent mid-tier phones have started to finally surpass a flagship phone from a few years back... (when it depreciates to same price point)
Durability is also improved. I'm talking about newest of Samsung A and J series compared to older S models here.
You also get the vastly updated software which will be hard to get on the old device.
Are you serious with this?
You are just as clueless as these idiot politicians.
More often than not people are NOT responsible for their outcome. It is a genetic lottery. Will you be born into money? Then you're set for life. Not born into money? You're going to struggle and have to work much harder just to survive, let alone get ahead. That's unlikely to happen.
So a big old FRAK YOU to the arrogant assholes who claim poor people just need to work harder and be smarter, when I promise you they work much harder than yourself. Friends with that piece of human garbage Jason Chaffetz? He tells people they need to stop wasting their money (that they don't have) while he gets everything in his entire life paid for by rich donors who control his vote. Fuck. You.
The causes of individuals' poverty can be complex and varied. Large factors are often oppression and disenfranchisement. People also make bad choices, sometimes copying actions they witness in others. I acknowledge both facets, and I've made my own poor economic choices. It's not always 100% the system's fault.
Sure, it's just almost 100% the system's fault. When tons of people are living in poverty you can't look at that and go "well, they just made some poor purchasing decisions".
You're not doing much to add information to the situation. If you wanted to actually, you know, make a point or offer some info that'd be useful though.
We value rational discourse here. At least I do. You radiate anger and I won't guess the cause, but I'm sure it has little to do with anything Banthum has said.
But the strategy of defining disagreement as evil, and then stating that the other person is so morally below you as to be not worth communicating with, is a great way to ensure you'll never have to question or change your beliefs. Cognitive dissonance: solved!
Came here to say this. An argument could be made several years ago that an iPhone was a savvy purchase as they truely worked significantly both better and for longer, than the competition.
>it's an indicator that they lack a basic ability to evaluate a handful of economic choices and choose the most appropriate (and thrifty) one. It's the smartphone equivalent of getting chrome rims on your car wheels.
You act like an iPhone is a Rolls Royce to an Android being like a Kia. It's absolutely not that materially different in cost, and most decent Android devices worth their salt cost as much, or almost as much as an iPhone. Nearly all of these device (irrespective of platform) are bought on time/installments as part of one's monthly bill anyway! Another thing to consider is that if someone of limited means needed a device and was trying to buy a cheaper unlocked Android, that actually might be harder for their cash flow since the monthly installment plans are lower and easier to manage from a cash flow standpoint than dropping $200-$300 at once for a more economical (but already inferior!) model. These seem like small trivial things, but they're the kinds of decisions people need to make, and again a lot of pople have to have some kind of net/web connected device for more than leisure.
Ultimately, it just does not follow to me that people who need a decent and reliable smart phone in 2017 would have better healthcare outcomes if only they skipped having one, or bought a flip phone or even an Android phone instead of an iPhone. Medical procedures run into the thousands or tens of thousands. Premiums on family medical coverage are like 2 iPhones _per month_, so getting that less robust model device really isn't going to make much difference and it may not last as long, costing more in the end, anyway.
FWIW, I use an Android device, I just don't think iPhones are the culprit or an automatic indicator that the person of limited means using one is irresponsible or incapable of making good financial decisions. That seem like a harsh judgment.
I'll add that the article doesn't seem to add the monthly cell phone costs (minutes, text and data -- especially data) into their calculation. Dependending on how much data you are using, that could be significant. Also, I imagine most phone are bought using installment plans, which increases the monthly costs, and makes it hard to save and make better investments in your future. (What you think you can afford today, may not be what you can afford tomorrow).
"makes it hard to save and make better investments in your future" definitely applies to cell plans, even though it pales in comparison to the cost of health insurance these days.
Even when it comes to smartphone ownership, the poor get screwed. You get better pricing if you have good credit, and if you're going with prepaid or non-credit plans, they charge you even more for subpar service (some features are entirely unavailable). So even if you skimp and buy a cheapo smartphone, you're still getting less value for your money than a middle-class buyer.
At various points of time you've been able to get a new (not used) iPhone for $99. Cut the bullshit.
You can get an Android phone for cheaper than an iPhone, but you pay for it in lost time (not to mention the low quality of budget Android phones)
iPhones are iPhones. There are luxury priced ones, of course, and they were never 'budget', but having access to the internet isn't a luxury anymore. It's a requirement.
Huh? By then same logic, you can get a used Android phone for cheap as chips too. I'm not entirely sure if he's the one bullshitting or if it's you. Lost time? What does that even mean? An iphone makes you more productive? THAT much more?
And the "all androids are cheap and useless" trope is so trite at this point.
Not "by the same logic". He called iPhones "luxury smartphones". They're not. There are cheap ones and expensive ones, just like how the alternative platform - Android - comes with cheap and expensive phones.
Lost time because typically Android phones require more maintenance and produce more hassles for novice users, and a budget Android phone is going to have more problems (and probably stop getting updates).
FTR, I haven't owned an iPhone since the original one came out. All Android since. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's owned multiple different Android handsets and given them as gifts to family (I've since learned my lesson about that one).
Christ. Sorry for continuing to belabour this, but that's another tired old cliche of iPhones being somehow "simpler". The settings menu of an iPhone is idiotic, the API is more restrictive, meaning that there are things you can do on Android that are impossible on an iPhone, and the asinine arrangement of back buttons/hamburger menus being stacked on the top left of the screen is such poor UI design. On the other hand, the Android of 2017 is crisp, modern and just as capable of handling things stored on it. What exactly is _simpler_ about iPhones specifically?
I also really disagree with iPhones somehow having fewer issues than Android phones. You're never just "holding it wrong"? Or being unable to even Copy and Paste? Or having to lug around dongles? Of course, Android has it's own share of stupidities, but to argue that iPhone is vastly superior is being less than accurate.
Edit: to add, the bottomline I'm suggesting is that the differences are minor enough that, if an iphone from a couple generations ago is costing you the same as an Android from the same time, it's not clear that an iphone is better. I have an ipad that has aged just as horribly as older androids.
You do get very weird behavior and UI decisions from some apps to compensate for those deficiencies.
Some things Android does way better, some it does way worse. As far as ergonomics go, Apple went way too far recently with hiding functionality under gestures or pressure sensitivity, making them not discoverable and sometimes finicky to activate. I'm talking basics, like app switching.
On the other hand, for some apps, the limitations mean they have to hold to OS GUI guides more closely.
If I'm young and have owned more than one smartphone, I more or less know how they work. To suggest that the poor are somehow too dumb and stupid to appreciate the mysterious, multi-layered nuances of a fucking _App store_ is to crap all over them from your ivory tower.
Rap critics that say he's "Money Cash Hoes"
I'm from the hood, stupid? What type of facts are those?
If you grew up with holes in your zapatos
You'd celebrate the minute you was having dough.
I'm from India, and in general, the Indian attitude towards money is "you only spend it if you have it" and even then, essentials came first and then money saved in a shoebox for a rainy day. There is no concept of borrowing money as a "personal loan" to afford a new MacBook or new Chrome wheels. In my very limited, east coast experience, this was not the attitude of the American poor.
Poor people can't get a personal loan in America. Maybe in 2006, but not in 2017.
Maybe from some kind of loanshark, but no bank is going to give someone a loan, especially if they don't have the means to make the payments, to go out and buy a new MacBook.
Borrow the money when you'll enjoy it. I can't get my dad to spend his money. He's older and he's happy with what he has. I want him to spend it, but he says its just a waste now. I honestly wish he could have loaned some of his money to his younger self. He's legitimately happy now spending almost nothing, and has by far more money than he has ever had in his life.
I'm afraid I had to edit my comment, my point wasn't clear and I was bordering on rambling. I tend to get a little lippy first thing in the morning, but I'm glad someone caught the point regardless.
I work with the poor often, and I think this article is off a bit.
I work with a group of homeless shelters in my job, and my local religious congregation regularly volunteers at homeless shelters, food shelves, multiple times a month. And one thing I've found is that while many poor aren't lazy, some most certainly are. Some people don't want to work.
Here's one example. A man whom I've never met contacted me through my congregation. He said he had no money for groceries. We met him a few times and sure enough, he was unemployed and living bare minimum on welfare. So we helped this guy. I bought him groceries every week for a few months. All the while, we tried to help him get a job so that he could stand on his own feet.
But what we found is that this particular man always found excuses not to take a job. It didn't make enough money, it wasn't what I wanted to do, etc.
Eventually, we saw he was merely using our limited resources to live and eat for free.
When you're living on the charity of others (or the government), it's wrong to be picky and choosy about employment.
Bottom line: While not all poor are lazy, I'm absolutely convinced that some poor are poor because they don't want to work. Some are more comfortable living off the charity of others. And I wish this weren't the case.
Thank you very much for adding some useful experience here.
Obviously there are poor who really don't want to be.
And there are some who really do just refuse to do the basic things one needs to do to not be poor.
Too many people act like one of these groups can't possibly exist. So many people seem to think it's evil or unthinkable to even suggest what you're saying is real to any degree.
It's really just a question of how many.
Considering how well some refugee groups (e.g. Viet boat people) have done starting from absolutely nothing in America, I'm willing to believe there is a path up for people willing to take the basic actions required to climb it.
Going against the grain, I don't think Chaffetz meant it literally.
While he may or may not have been taking an extremist Right ideological view of poverty, the OP article takes another extreme ideological view, that poverty is inevitable and individuals can do little to avoid it.
While it sounds heartless, I think there is some truth to the assertion that sound financial choices can lift you up from poverty. Duflo, Banerjee, etc. from the randomista economists crowd have shown that poor people are sometimes likely to spend extra cash in suboptimal ways (TV ownership when they need extra calories, etc.). http://economics.mit.edu/files/530
This includes buying health insurance. That health insurance is too expensive is unfortunate, and I think GOP earnestly believes that their plan makes it cheaper for people to buy health insurance. This is not unlike how Obama and Democrats implemented their healthcare overhaul with the best of intentions, yet it lead to expensive premiums, etc.
While we are loathe to admit it, poverty is a result of both poor choices and unavoidable bad-luck. Like the common debate of 'nature vs. nurture', it is hard to delineate bad-luck and poor-choices as causes leading to poverty.
At the end of the day, we should have compassion and understand that many things that affect our situation are beyond our control, and yet not be afraid to consider honestly and objectively, the various causes of poverty.
- People without healthcare are charged more for healthcare as they are unable to negotiate bulk rates for care and medication.
- The system is setup in a way that people who live day-to-day are unable to respond to life-events such as a car accident or a death of a income generating family member. They live hanging by a thread.
- It costs more to be a poor person. You can't buy things in bulk or pay by the quarter/year for things at a discount.
- poor people eat less-healthily, and have less free time to excercise. This leads to poorly health outcomes (the aggregate stats don't lie).
- "poor decisions" often come from education. poor people live in neighborhoods where their ability to learn other life skills but surviving is limited a(critical thinking, long term planning etc) and the public education on offer leads to poorer outcomes.
I agree with your final point and the general assertion that situations can drive behavior just as behavior can drive situations- but I think giving Chaffetz credit for a more reasonable point of view than expressed is unwarranted.
Even if you (very reasonably) want to resist demonizing folks who disagree with you, it's important to not overcorrect.
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity"
So he didn't mean it literally, just meant to insult the poor and shirk his own party's responsibility for providing healthcare to people (especially children) that can't afford it out of no fault of their own. But hey, if you're making $20k a year, you should be able to throw down $10-$15k a year on health insurance with no problem, right? Conservative math is amazing!
And there is just no room in your view that there is systemic racism in this country that precludes some people from "making it" in America? And that beyond racism that the economic system in America is basically geared toward those who have a lot of wealth collecting more and those that don't basically staying put in the bracket they are currently in?
I'm not saying there are not exceptions. Poor minorities make out of the neighborhood they grew up in sometimes. Middle class people get lucky and get rich, I'm sure both of these happen everyday in a large population like ours.
But I believe these occurrences to be the exceptions not the rule and that for a large majority of Americans in our time working hard and making perfect decisions isn't an automatic ticket to success and wealth.
I guess you missed the part of the article where it explained that the largest group of poor people are children. Do you think they made poor financial choices?
And you also missed "Rates of intergenerational income mobility are, in fact, higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and other countries in the world than they are here in the United States."
Governments can do a lot to help people get out of poverty. Blaming them isn't one of them.
> I guess you missed the part of the article where it explained that the largest group of poor people are children. Do you think they made poor financial choices?
And you also missed "Rates of intergenerational income mobility are, in fact, higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and other countries in the world than they are here in the United States."
Are you suggesting that I am not acknowledging bad-luck (the sole reason for childhood poverty) as a factor? Because, I do.
As to Germany, Japan, etc. there are many reasons why those countries are better off. "Germany does this, their poverty is lower, so America should do this," isn't a valid argument for anything.
> Blaming them isn't one of them.
Blaming them (i.e. chiding them) doesn't serve any purpose. But helping them modify behavior, educating them, etc. does. The Government should acknowledge this.
> At the end of the day, we should have compassion and understand that many things that affect our situation are beyond our control, and yet not be afraid to consider honestly and objectively, the various causes of poverty.
Do you let people die on the street, no matter what got them there, or not? It's a simple question.
You wouldn't if you had compassion. Holding compassion and objectivity in your head simultaneously would enable you to both help the person and acknowledge that the person may have made poor choices and decisions to get them to where they are. If you ignore that people make poor choices, you are doing a disservice to the poor, since you won't then be able to address this cause/aspect of poverty.
What about people with mental health issues? Why are Republicans always in favor of cutting mental-health programs? Oh, that's right. It's because they really don't care at all about poor people. And, only schmucks believe that they're ever being earnest when they present their boot-strap, trickle-down bullshit.
Plus, there's money in prisons, not so much in complicated home-care, lifelong mental health support, and even housing. A person who's desperately ill, earns your cronies supplying the prison with soap and "food" money. A person who hears voices can still stamp out license plates and make a buck for the state or the company.
We're slavers who've just put some steps in between the misery and ourselves, while making sure the slaves are also all "bad people". Treating them like just... people... even only a percentage of them, would destroy the system and its profits. (Not to mention power, control, and political power)
The essential problem is that most people can't accumulate, synthesize, and understand the requisite knowledge to appreciate that fact. We're strongly limited by our perspectives, which tend to become more rigid with time, just as we're having maximal influence on the lives of others. We're tribal, we're competitive, and we find it difficult to relate to distant strangers in vast numbers.
As a result people eschew the attempt to gain a broad view of the world, and its history, and instead decide to trust an ideologue, ideology, religion, or just as likely these days, invent their own bullshit and find others with similar flavors of crap. "Oh you think the universe is crystals and orgone? Me too!" "Oh you think that black people smell funny? Me too!" "Oh you think the moon is an illusion created by God?..."
You get. At the top you have people with enough money and time, power and education to appreciate these factors. Most of them seem to be in it largely for themselves, and even those who later come to some kind of humanitarian spirit do so in a fractional way compared to their total wealth. Exceptions exist, but they are so rare we all know the names.
Is it any wonder that in a world of such massively "Haves" and brutally "Have-Nots", that each group invents a largely specious narrative to explain the actions of the other?
No, but wealthy libertarians with vast amounts of political power believe it. According to adherents of this belief system, poverty is a symptom of laziness, full stop, and government can do nothing, and more importantly must not.
I doubt that they believe it, as much as they see it as a convenient philosophy to propagate. It really is the philosophy of the exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or just plain uneducated. You can't have even a passing knowledge of history and think that philosophy has merit. You could very easily think it has merit as a cultural sword and shield though.
It's ironic that the people with the resources and power to rapidly alter the self-destructive course humanity is on, are the most invested in maintaining that course.
Your and GP's inability to articulate libertarian philosophy does not constitute a reasoned critique of said philosophy. If you want people to be convinced, learn the actual arguments of the other side, and explain why you disagree.
I don't believe it's a philosophy, it's just a convenient collection of delusions held by people convinced that if the law of the jungle were the rule, they'd somehow not be a greasy smear on the pavement. If you feel there's a subtler philosophy to articulate, by all means, articulate.
It is a highly unfortunate and indisputable fact that certain misguided individuals find libertarianism to be a convenient excuse for not caring about others. However, that tendency is antithetical to most libertarian thought.
In the absence of government coercion, it should be obvious that the moral responsibility for aiding the poor and unfortunate falls heavily upon us as individuals (primarily acting through voluntary civic associations). Libertarians acknowledge that the "free-rider problem" that requires taking of resources by force is a real thing, but believe that it is a result of the withering of civic responsibility as government has increased in scope over time.
You can disagree with any and all of these premises, but to accuse all libertarians of being psychopaths is not a great way of convincing them to rethink their assumptions.
A lot of things should be obvious to people, that are not, or that they conveniently ignore. Your fantasy of human nature, is not human nature. Humans are the ones who wait for the comet to whisk them away to a spaceship, and when it doesn't happen they believe in it even more. People march each other into mass graves and ovens. People as a group are vulnerable to populism, and the vagaries of chance and hard times leading to short-term instabilities that rapidly magnify.
We are chaotic. You're welcome to entertain whatever optimistic fantasies you like about the natural state of ungoverned people, just don't try to sell it to anyone.
I guess I'm not clear how government force solves the problems you're worried about. In the vast majority of modern cases, the government has been RUNNING the ovens, not protecting people from them.
That is quite the combination of ignorance and arrogance. Before attacking others beliefs as delusional (and then creating a ridiculous straw man argument) you might want to spend a little time trying to understand how their beliefs differ from anarchism, fascism, communism, etc.
I never said anything about anarchism, fascism, communism, etc. The fact that in the real world, "Libertarianism" inevitably covers for, or becomes of them is more to the point than the notion that it is one of them. If you feel differently, feel free to do more than be angry and insulting.
>I never said anything about anarchism, fascism, communism, etc.
I never said you did. What I said was "...Before attacking others beliefs as delusional (and then creating a ridiculous straw man argument) you might want to spend a little time trying to understand how their beliefs differ from anarchism, fascism, communism, etc."
>...The fact that in the real world, "Libertarianism" inevitably covers for, or becomes of them is more ...
So, besides attacking others beliefs as delusional, now it appears you are saying they are disingenuous. If you are simply going to use straw man arguments and ad hominem attacks don't be surprised if people don't take you seriously.
Much of what determines outcomes is socioeconomic or race based, much less is determined by hard work or agency.
This honestly is the fundamental difference between conservative and liberal political ideologies; conservatives feel that they earned their place in society based on hard work, liberals understand more often than not, that place was the result of something akin to a lottery, and many people are less fortunate by no fault of their own.
> "According to adherents of this belief system, poverty is a symptom of laziness, full stop, and government can do nothing, and more importantly must not."
So I think what M_Grey was probably getting at when they said, "It really is the philosophy of the exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or just plain uneducated" we can believe it to be in the context of a libertarian who believes, "[...] poverty is a symptom of laziness [...]".
So to just fully concatenate that:
Libertarians who believe that poverty is a symptom of laziness and government can and should do nothing must be exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or plain uneducated.
Or maybe I'm contextualizing too much? Either way, it hardly seems the comment thread worthy of trying to turn people's words back on them.
I have a young friend who made poor decisions when she was younger.
She has virtually zero family support, almost a net negative. Her father died two years ago from a lifetime of substance abuse, her mother suffered a stroke and has been in rehab for months, her step-father is an alcoholic who has problems keeping a job.
Yes, she's responsible for her outcome to the extent that she made some poor decisions as a teenager growing up with a dramatic absence of good role models, and she'll be paying the price for those decisions for the rest of her life.
But the fact that her family is of little help and the government really, really doesn't want her to succeed (I could describe the challenges she's had getting a suboxone prescription but I'd be here all day) is very much not her fault.
It's also downright cruel. If one is willing to look at the data, past their own delusion of the 'just world' fallacy, they'll see that one's birth location and parents determine an overwhelming majority of one's outcomes.
Who do you mean by "people" in this context? Because if you're generalizing across the whole population of the earth, a significant portion of those people are doomed to suboptimal outcomes due to factors outside of their control. Future generations will be worse off because prior generations destroyed the environment and the economy for their own benefit.
You misunderstand his comment. He is saying that "wealthy libertarians with vast amounts of political power" are exceedingly short-sighted, arrogant, or just plain uneducated
If people woke up to how unearned things like intelligence and circumstances of birth are, and how much they affect life outcomes, they'd be beset with guilt. Thus it's psychologically imperative that they can blame some other factor for poor people. They'll pick out one thing, and load it up with all the meaning.
What particularly disgusts me is judging people for their choice of resource allocation, for using their very freedom. If a poor person chooses to invest in a high-end phone, it's probably because they really really want it; because it will transform their lives more than can easily be appreciated on the outside. It's the same thing with a luxury meal; being poor doesn't mean you ought to live on water and gruel for the whole of your life with the aim of saving a small bundle of cash in case of illness - such a life would hardly be worth living. Flourishing demands peaks, local maxima of happiness, and to deny poor people that is almost inhuman.
I think the reason people here don't have health care is we don't require and provide it, and we make it more expensive than any other country.
60 countries have universal health care. Some have a basic national requirement that all insurance companies are required to cover everyone with no exceptions, and that for the most basic health insurance they are not allowed to make a profit, but can offer supplemental plans. Some countries have a dual models of both state and private insurance providers. Some make non-elder care private and compulsory while elder care is provided by taxation. Some require co-pays, some are free. Some are centralized, some decentralized.
What is clear is that in the majority of modernized countries around the world, they figured out how to do universal healthcare a long time ago, and here we are looking like fucking country bumpkins who can't figure out how to give people a basic public service. One of our many national embarrassments.
one thing I haven't heard mentioned is that a lot of poor people DON'T have iPhones. they have cheap flip phones with prepaid cards. And guess what? They still can't afford health care.
It's yet another sign that they have no clue about how much healthcare actually costs (likely having had employer-subsidized coverage before their cushy Congressional coverage).
I'm on the exchanges, and my family of four pays $2,001/month plus a $4k max out-of-pocket (that we're guaranteed to hit). That's about three iPhones a month.
To the arguments focused around "An iphone is a flagship smartphone", please consider the highly driven narrative of thus..."the iPhone is the only smartphone". I realise this perspective may appear delusional, but in reality we enforce immensely strong ideologies...with our silly marketing budgets... yet we are unable to relate with the precariat all that we have affected...When we elect a president like this it's, honestly, time for a thoroughly investigated reality check.
Even if it was true that the cost of iPhones and other minor indulgences could buy a year's worth of quality health insurance (as mentioned in the article, it's not even close), I'd still have a hard time seeing the Republican side. My past flirtations with right-libertarianism make it hard to cringe at the idea that society doesn't have to save people from making bad choices, but it's not that simple and the Republicans obviously know it. They're trying to stop a budget review of the Obamacare repeal because they know that the government, hospitals, people paying insurance premiums, and so on, will see a sudden increase in the financial burden they bear for ER treatment of people who lack health insurance (not to mention the wider public health implications and the complicated cost calculations on that). That's what Obamacare was really about, and by some standards it was very effective at addressing the issue. Once again, Republican voters shoot themselves in the foot by cheering for the poor to suffer.
America is the land of opportunity; rich people in America took advantage of the opportunity. Therefore taking advantage of this opportunity can make you rich. Says nothing about the arguments for the causes of poverty. Also valid modus ponens but unsound. Also potentially suffering from Hume's "problem with induction".
As it is now, many low key opportunities have been taken and/or removed, it is now much harder than ever to break through for an enterprising person - need much more up front investment.
In the past, you could indeed go from a paperboy to a writer. Try doing it today.
It's a generational thing, especially. iPhones are seen as glamorous luxury items, not as an essential tool for living. I always remind my father that the people who have little money but also have iPhones likely don't have a home phone number, home computer, or Internet service in their house. Their iPhone is their only connection to the modern digital world: The one asset they have to get themselves a job, assistance, information. It's arguably one of the most important items for a person to own, today, right up there with a car. Without a good phone and a car, people in the US are basically beached on a shore of unemployment, or low employment, especially in rural towns.
It's incredibly hard for people to get back on the horse when they've fallen off, economically. Even harder if they never had a horse to begin with. At the local library, people are constantly coming in to ask for help with digital literacy problems that affect their lives heavily: paying bills, responding to emails, seeing pictures of their grandchildren that were sent to their email. Having a phone with Internet is literally an essential part of modern life, and the generation that thinks poor people shouldn't have iPhones are the same ones who generally view all this technology stuff as magical hoo hah. Like my dad...