Downvoting this because it does not belong in this sub. Blaming one of the seven deadly sins for poor social outcomes is talk that belongs in a religious sub, like those dedicated to Christianity or Communism.
Neoliberals see this sort of “greed” more as straightforward common sense - after all, if two renters want to rent a unit, and one can pay $100 and the other will pay $150, of course you will rent to the person who is willing to pay more. The people who criticize this sort of logic, I imagine, think of themselves as inhabiting the role of the poorer renter - but in the real world, they could just as easily end up in the position of the richer renter who now must navigate a bizzare renting landscape where they might not be able to find a place to live even if they are willing to pay more. Similarly, if two potential hires with identical skills apply for a job, of course you will hire the one willing to work for less.
Neoliberals, on the other hand, think about things for more than 2 seconds and ask questions about what the actual cause of rising housing prices or stagnating wages. “Greed” is a constant - landlords were greedy 10 years ago just as much as they are today, so we can’t possibly say that “greed” is the cause of inflated rents. Instead, we consider what policies or market forces led to this situation (and importantly, we gather evidence to determine what is causing them), and then we consider various proposals for courses of action to correct the matter. For example, rising housing costs may be driven by more people wanting to live alone, growing populations in in-demand cities, NIMBY policies which restrict the construction of new housing, localized housing monopolies, or any number of other things. From there, we might say that we should liberalize laws around housing construction, increase subsidies for poor people to afford housing or for developers to build affordable housing, investigate anticompetitive practices between large landlord corporations and throw their leaders in jail if we find they have been breaking the law, or tax vacant or underutilized land in urban areas to incentivize the owner to develop or sell the land rather than speculating.
The other reason I dislike this post is because it implies that good personal finance advice is irrelevant to people today. It isn’t. Obviously things are worse for people today than they were in previous decades, but being financially well off isn’t a discreet state that is either true or false. You can be better or worse off financially by every dollar you have access to. It is crazy to have someone argue that it makes good financial sense for them to order door dash 3 nights per week “because I’m broke either way, so why not enjoy myself?” Leaving aside for a second that whether or not someone delivers food to your front door isn’t a good metric for a happy and fulfilling life, being “broke” is not a static state. This person will discover this once they start trying to not be broke. The difference between being $5,000 and $15,000 in credit card debt isn’t nothing. In fact, it is something very specific - it is $10,000! Yeah, not eating fancy avocado toast might not be the difference between owning or not owning a house, but it could be the difference between being able to pay for a car repair out of pocket or having to take on debt to take care of it and then needing to dig yourself out of the debt hole.
This doesn’t diminish the need to create policy-level solutions to address wages or housing affordability. But jfc, yes, you should practice sensible personal finance. No average individual can really control what the billionaires or politicians do - but they can 100% take control of their personal financial descisions and end up way, way better off in 10 years time if they just make reasonable descisions.
You seem to be trying to make this into some kind of moralistic gotcha. But, well, I’m going to ignore that because it isn’t related to my point, which is that regardless of your financial status, making good financial decisions results in better outcomes than making bad financial decisions.
For example, suppose you are living on minimum wage, renting an apartment for 50% of your monthly income. But then, because you are a strawman in an internet argument, you decide to set the other half of your money on fire each month, and meet the remainder of your monthy expenses by accruing debt. I don’t think it should be controversial to say that this is a bad idea. Setting your money on fire and not setting it on fire result in two very different, very tangible outcomes which will come to fruition in not too long. Note that I am not saying that the “don’t set your money on fire” option is going to lead to fabulous riches and a Lambo. Success here could simply be keeping your head above water, or slowing your slide into debt while you try to figure something else out - which doesn’t sound very appealing! But it sounds a heck of a lot more appealing than accumulating endless debt, tanking your credit score, losing your ability to take on more debt, losing your apartment when you fall behind on rent, not being able to find a new apartment anymore because you now have terrible credit, and moving back in with your abusive parents who smell like cabbage. Yeah, you are deciding between bad and worse, but the obvious choice is “bad” and the obvious way to get there is “don’t set your money on fire.”
50% on rent. 40% on food and utilities. 15% on a cell phone. You’re already going into debt.
So no phone then. All you do is work, eat meagerly, and sleep. Your clothes are aging but you can’t replace them. You have no friends, but that’s ok you can’t afford to do things with them anyway. You pray inflation stays at zero and you never get sick.
At this point, you choose debt or suicide because this isn’t a life.
So… you’re on team “set half your money on fire” then…? Because if your point is “I’m so poor, pity me!”, then you should know that I won’t, because I don’t like being emotionally manipulated.
As for your “choice” - you are describing being poor in a developed nation. As a resident of a developed nation, you are already richer than about half the world’s population, and are richer than pretty much every human who ever lived more than 100 years ago. Given that all those people weren’t/aren’t offing themselves at an astonishing rate, we can conclude that your financial situation is not the cause of your suicidal ideation. As someone who’s been there before, I can tell you that it is probably more about social isolation. Sorry you aren’t feeling great - the solution is to move in with some friends and make dinner together. At the very least you’ll save money on rent, even if you still want to kill yourself.
I’m not asking you to pity these people. I’m asking you to recognize that we’ve set up a system where some portion of the population absolutely is destined to fail and there’s nothing they can realistically do about it.
For some portion of the population, “man up and tough it out” is not a reasonable answer.
And I’m not sure why you’re thinking this is about me. I’ve got friends and family and money and health. I also have a realistic view of reality and numbers. And the reality is, for a lot of people, these numbers don’t line up.
I’m asking you to recognize that we’ve set up a system
I explicitly addressed this in my original post when I said:
This doesn’t diminish the need to create policy-level solutions to address wages or housing affordability.
absolutely is destined to fail
My point is that “failure” is not a singular state. I have repeated this several times. If you are “destined to fail” then following good rules of personal finance is even more important to you than to someone who has some extra cash but is sad that they won’t be a homeowner. Every good financial descision that someone living with the budget you described makes is a decision that is keeping them housed and fed for longer. This is simple math.
The other reason I dislike this post is because it implies that good personal finance advice is irrelevant to people today
I overall agree with what you’re saying, but I think this post might be referring more to advice coming from a place of ignorance of the current reality. If you’re trying to tell someone how to manage their life when you don’t actually have experience of what they are facing, it can be less than helpful and not very supportive. Also, at some point “here is how you can optimize your outcomes in a largely hopeless situation” isn’t very helpful either; if 90% of your income is going to pay rent, information about how to optimize the way you spend the remaining 10% is probably the wrong thing to be focused on.
Downvoting this because it does not belong in this sub. Blaming one of the seven deadly sins for poor social outcomes is talk that belongs in a religious sub, like those dedicated to Christianity or Communism.
Neoliberals see this sort of “greed” more as straightforward common sense - after all, if two renters want to rent a unit, and one can pay $100 and the other will pay $150, of course you will rent to the person who is willing to pay more. The people who criticize this sort of logic, I imagine, think of themselves as inhabiting the role of the poorer renter - but in the real world, they could just as easily end up in the position of the richer renter who now must navigate a bizzare renting landscape where they might not be able to find a place to live even if they are willing to pay more. Similarly, if two potential hires with identical skills apply for a job, of course you will hire the one willing to work for less.
Neoliberals, on the other hand, think about things for more than 2 seconds and ask questions about what the actual cause of rising housing prices or stagnating wages. “Greed” is a constant - landlords were greedy 10 years ago just as much as they are today, so we can’t possibly say that “greed” is the cause of inflated rents. Instead, we consider what policies or market forces led to this situation (and importantly, we gather evidence to determine what is causing them), and then we consider various proposals for courses of action to correct the matter. For example, rising housing costs may be driven by more people wanting to live alone, growing populations in in-demand cities, NIMBY policies which restrict the construction of new housing, localized housing monopolies, or any number of other things. From there, we might say that we should liberalize laws around housing construction, increase subsidies for poor people to afford housing or for developers to build affordable housing, investigate anticompetitive practices between large landlord corporations and throw their leaders in jail if we find they have been breaking the law, or tax vacant or underutilized land in urban areas to incentivize the owner to develop or sell the land rather than speculating.
The other reason I dislike this post is because it implies that good personal finance advice is irrelevant to people today. It isn’t. Obviously things are worse for people today than they were in previous decades, but being financially well off isn’t a discreet state that is either true or false. You can be better or worse off financially by every dollar you have access to. It is crazy to have someone argue that it makes good financial sense for them to order door dash 3 nights per week “because I’m broke either way, so why not enjoy myself?” Leaving aside for a second that whether or not someone delivers food to your front door isn’t a good metric for a happy and fulfilling life, being “broke” is not a static state. This person will discover this once they start trying to not be broke. The difference between being $5,000 and $15,000 in credit card debt isn’t nothing. In fact, it is something very specific - it is $10,000! Yeah, not eating fancy avocado toast might not be the difference between owning or not owning a house, but it could be the difference between being able to pay for a car repair out of pocket or having to take on debt to take care of it and then needing to dig yourself out of the debt hole.
This doesn’t diminish the need to create policy-level solutions to address wages or housing affordability. But jfc, yes, you should practice sensible personal finance. No average individual can really control what the billionaires or politicians do - but they can 100% take control of their personal financial descisions and end up way, way better off in 10 years time if they just make reasonable descisions.
You can’t budget your way out of poverty. I hope you appreciate the life that lets you not know that.
You seem to be trying to make this into some kind of moralistic gotcha. But, well, I’m going to ignore that because it isn’t related to my point, which is that regardless of your financial status, making good financial decisions results in better outcomes than making bad financial decisions.
For example, suppose you are living on minimum wage, renting an apartment for 50% of your monthly income. But then, because you are a strawman in an internet argument, you decide to set the other half of your money on fire each month, and meet the remainder of your monthy expenses by accruing debt. I don’t think it should be controversial to say that this is a bad idea. Setting your money on fire and not setting it on fire result in two very different, very tangible outcomes which will come to fruition in not too long. Note that I am not saying that the “don’t set your money on fire” option is going to lead to fabulous riches and a Lambo. Success here could simply be keeping your head above water, or slowing your slide into debt while you try to figure something else out - which doesn’t sound very appealing! But it sounds a heck of a lot more appealing than accumulating endless debt, tanking your credit score, losing your ability to take on more debt, losing your apartment when you fall behind on rent, not being able to find a new apartment anymore because you now have terrible credit, and moving back in with your abusive parents who smell like cabbage. Yeah, you are deciding between bad and worse, but the obvious choice is “bad” and the obvious way to get there is “don’t set your money on fire.”
50% on rent. 40% on food and utilities. 15% on a cell phone. You’re already going into debt.
So no phone then. All you do is work, eat meagerly, and sleep. Your clothes are aging but you can’t replace them. You have no friends, but that’s ok you can’t afford to do things with them anyway. You pray inflation stays at zero and you never get sick.
At this point, you choose debt or suicide because this isn’t a life.
So… you’re on team “set half your money on fire” then…? Because if your point is “I’m so poor, pity me!”, then you should know that I won’t, because I don’t like being emotionally manipulated.
As for your “choice” - you are describing being poor in a developed nation. As a resident of a developed nation, you are already richer than about half the world’s population, and are richer than pretty much every human who ever lived more than 100 years ago. Given that all those people weren’t/aren’t offing themselves at an astonishing rate, we can conclude that your financial situation is not the cause of your suicidal ideation. As someone who’s been there before, I can tell you that it is probably more about social isolation. Sorry you aren’t feeling great - the solution is to move in with some friends and make dinner together. At the very least you’ll save money on rent, even if you still want to kill yourself.
I’m not asking you to pity these people. I’m asking you to recognize that we’ve set up a system where some portion of the population absolutely is destined to fail and there’s nothing they can realistically do about it.
For some portion of the population, “man up and tough it out” is not a reasonable answer.
And I’m not sure why you’re thinking this is about me. I’ve got friends and family and money and health. I also have a realistic view of reality and numbers. And the reality is, for a lot of people, these numbers don’t line up.
I explicitly addressed this in my original post when I said:
My point is that “failure” is not a singular state. I have repeated this several times. If you are “destined to fail” then following good rules of personal finance is even more important to you than to someone who has some extra cash but is sad that they won’t be a homeowner. Every good financial descision that someone living with the budget you described makes is a decision that is keeping them housed and fed for longer. This is simple math.
I think you’re still not getting my point.
Some people are positioned to fail and no amount of good behavior or savings will stop that.
Do you agree with that statement?
I overall agree with what you’re saying, but I think this post might be referring more to advice coming from a place of ignorance of the current reality. If you’re trying to tell someone how to manage their life when you don’t actually have experience of what they are facing, it can be less than helpful and not very supportive. Also, at some point “here is how you can optimize your outcomes in a largely hopeless situation” isn’t very helpful either; if 90% of your income is going to pay rent, information about how to optimize the way you spend the remaining 10% is probably the wrong thing to be focused on.
I find everything you said absurd but it is constant with neoliberalism
Yeah I felt weird upvoting it lol. It’s like being in the unpopularopinion community