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shel
@shel
ckie
@ckie asked:

hi! how do you feel about lifestyles and money as this very region-dependent number. that alice in CA, US can get a Normal Living Salary that could fund a lot of people's lives in a place that's farther from the imperial core? capitalism keeping housing,etc hostage is at its core upheld by that individualist mindset of "every person for themselves"; "don't talk about your salary", etc..

it needs to be subverted with a community-oriented mindset but money amongst friends is such taboo and i feel like the social model for this is extremely underdeveloped..? do you have anything i could read? thx

Things are a bit different now with remote work but I think it's important to think about what you're saying beyond numbers.

Why is the median salary in California worth so much in another country? Because fewer people in that country can earn that salary. That job isn't there. Why does it cost less to live there? Because those salaries aren't there. Value is relative not fixed. If you're visiting as a tourist then your money has insane purchasing power but it's not like you can just move to some random village with all your money still earn your salary and you'd somehow be able to live the same and also support ten random families. If you wanna be one of those wealthy expats in Thailand like, imho that's hardly a radical left wing action.

And think through what you're talking about and the implications. Realistically what are you talking about doing? What are the power dynamics? Are you just going to move to some village with $250,000 American dollars and, what, throw money around to random people? Adopt ten families and be their patron American? Sure you could support ten families on a tech income but which ten families and for how long and how much? To what extent will you give them whatever they ask for? How will having their power over their livelihoods affect their relationships with you and how they'll treat you? What if they use your money to hurt or oppress other families who don't have a patron American techie supporting them? Will you cut them off if you don't like how they behave? Does that put you in a huge position of power over these random people? What are they your pet third worlders who you pay to make you less guilty?

This is one of those white guilt driven fantasies that I think just doesn't make practical sense. Yes you could support ten families in the third world with your tech salary but you might as well wire $5000 to a Nigerian prince who emailed you asking for help reclaiming his fortune like this is not something you're going to do or that would go particularly well. The impracticality of picking ten random families (how do you know if they're deserving? What country are you picking? Are you picking people who speak English and have more access to education and infrastructure to communicate online? How do you communicate your limits and that you don't have infinite money even if it feels like that? How are you impacting the local economy and ecosystem? Will things stay cheap in the area with you funnel money into ten random families? What if someone decides to just murder you and take all your money because they're sick of you waving it around and giving it to your favorite ten families and disrupting their local community? Why do you think you'd be safe and everyone will just love you and think this is normal? A lot of people would find it humiliating to dance for your money)

You'd be better off giving your money to PCRF or MSR because then you know that a trustworthy responsible organization is making good use of your money to sustainably help as money people as possible. NGOs have problems but I assure you it's a lot more smart than trying to fund ten families in the third world. Dropping random cargo of supplies on poor communities in the third world very infamously doesn't go well.

That last paragraph of your ask makes it sound like maybe what you're actually thinking about is just evoking imperialism and the third world to guilt trip some random individual into sharing their money with you and it makes you sound like the Portland Polycule From Hell tumblr post it's weird and culty. I think that rich trans techies absolutely should be sharing their money with others and supporting people in their community but nobody is a bottomless well and a lot of these people are burning themselves to the wick being the pet exploited autistic workers of evil tech giants and I think it's absurd to expect them to choose to live at lower standards of living just so they can stave off white guilt by giving money to some random probably also a white trans person who just wants their money. And even if they do earnestly just want to like, adopt you as their dependent, it will create a very dangerous power dynamic that will make it difficult for you to behave without it affecting your relationship even if you don't think you're letting it happen. And you also shouldn't trust this will work forever I know too many stories of people whose generous techie partners cut them off financially because they wanted to break up. My exes never did that B"H but I also kept myself more separate just in case given all the cautionary tales I've seen. Being a rich person's pet they use to alleviate their guilt about the money burning the hole in their pocket is no way to live (EXES IF YOU ARE READING THIS I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU I AM LEGITIMATELY TALKING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE I KNOW AND ALSO THAT ONE CIS GUY I DATED YOU KNOW WHICH ONE)

Alice should be giving to gofundmes but there's also scammers and grifters and con artists and scams and manipulative people and like, personal expenses and sustainability. Making yourself a mark is naïve. Things are complicated. Guilt tripping people is shitty and manipulative. You don't even need to be earning ten those world families level money for this to backfire. When I moved to Philly I was earning $1000/month and on SNAP and Medicaid and closing the gap with student debt and techie benefactors. I was initially generous with trying to help neighbors and panhandlers even though I was living off $12k/year just because it felt like the right thing to do and I could modulate my lifestyle to make it work (and I started dating a rich tech bro who took me out to dinner a lot so like, I was doing fine even tho I didn't have a lot of disposable income). When I say generous I mean giving $20 to a neighbor when they asked for money. Not big life changing money. It backfired so hard. I ended up being seen as a mark and I ended up with stalkers and I ended up with people coming up with elaborate transparent lies trying to get me to give them even more money and when I genuinely and honestly said No I always gave you $20 last week and I only earn $1k/month and I can't afford to give you $200 that you're asking for they didn't believe me! they didn't see me as a principaled communist doing what everyone should do they saw me as a gullible stupid cash cow and it escalated to the point of people calling me slurs, following me around stores harsssing me, and threatening me. I had two people get into a physical fight in front of me begging me for twenty dollars because I said I only had $20... It was so... dehumanizing.... I kept telling them to stop and it was unnecessary and it didn't matter I wasn't human to them I was just the angel of cash and I only had an income of $12k!! I just was throwing money around in a way that everyone saw as being stupid for anyone to do if they weren't a millionaire. And this was inside the imperial core!! Nobody saw me as righteous they saw me as stupid. It didn't matter that I showed them my SNAP card and was telling the truth about not having money at the time. I was being stupid and naïve. And I don't think those people felt good about it either. I think they felt humiliated and like they had no dignity and they probably hated that they were resorting to this to please some white fork enough for her $20. They didn't believe it was about if I had been paid that week or if I had money left they just saw it as being if I personally felt like it no matter how many times I said otherwise. Desperate people will take desperate actions to get what they need and I guarantee you that no individual can just solve someone else's problems like that. Poverty is deep and complicated and unless you're just picking your one favorite person and adopting them as your pet you just aren't going to fix anything.

I budget 10% of my salary for supporting other people and given how expensive it is to live that is a Lot. I'm hardly a rich techie I earn less than half the typical techie. But it's solidly a middle class income and yeah if I lived in Thailand it would stretch pretty far but I don't live in Thailand and I can't earn this income in Thailand because my job isn't in Thailand and I can't work it remote. If I just dropped down in Thailand throwing money around it would just be replicating dynamics of colonialism. Since I don't live in Thailand, 33% of my income goes to housing. 24% goes to taxes, 10% goes to medical expenses, etc etc it all adds up and in the end I can afford to give 10% towards helping others and I really don't think 10% of my middle class salary can or should support ten random third world families I think it's better spent on people in my community when they have a crisis or to organizations doing good work I can't tackle as an individual.

I don't have any articles about how people should moderate their lifestyles more so they can share their incomes more because the articles I've read like that were written by cults.

If you feel like you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you don't want to be living a lavish imperial lifestyle then here is an easy formula.

  1. Budget out all of your mandatory expenses that you must meet. Bills, etc.
  2. Budget out everything you can anticipate needing to spend money on like various kinds of emergencies. Try to work towards having at least a year of your salary in savings.
  3. Budget for retirement savings, buying a house, etc don't ruin your future because of your guilt
  4. Take half of the remaining money and put that in a Fun/Misc budget for you.
  5. Put the other half in a GoFundMe Or Whatever budget. You don't have to spend it to 0 all the time because sometimes it's good to be able to bail someone out of an even bigger crisis if you can.

Honestly I doubt by the time you get to 5 that you will actually have enough money to support ten families in the third world, even if you earn five times more than I do. I do not think it's healthy to deny yourself retirement, medical expenses, emergency fund etc. just because it's not something everyone can afford to do. Live your damn life and be happy. My Guilt Alleviation Fund from the above equation comes out to like $300/month-ish and sometimes I go over and sometimes I go under but that's the general target to put in the fund. and I'm not even saving up to buy a house because I don't think my salary can ever afford that as a single income in the place I live which is one of the more affordable places to live in the country.

Yes on the global scale all Americans are doing Great but we still live in America and I think it's dumb to be like "Wow! I'm living it up in luxury with my Flush Toilet!!! I don't deserve that because I'm sinful filth so I should pay the rent of a random person every month to make up for it." Yes millions of people don't have flush toilets and you're fortunate enough to have a flush toilet. Don't beat yourself up for it just appreciate it and then budget to see what you can afford to share ideally via like, Normal Methods.


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in reply to @shel's post:

I can relate so much to the bits about how bad things actually go in practice if you try to help out of guilt after you get out of the pit yourself. Even family members you've known your whole life, who knew you before you got even a paltry amount of money, can flip and behave weirdly or aggressively when they find out that you're willing to give some of it away.

I feel like a lot of efforts to shame anyone not redistributing whatever they have are more about building an inverted hierarchy of goodness based on how poor you are rather than about actually improving outcomes for people.

to preface: i'm not an american, i'm disabled, i don't have a well-paying job and i'm not seriously thinking of Thailand.. i just wanted to be generic so it'd be a Chostable Ask and not hyperspecific.

but i could get a better job and extract more money for fellow trans people.. and that would push me to actually bother.

obviously Rich Tech Polycule With Some Unemployed Partners has horrible power dynamics.. but the default is to just leave it up to the state to not support them?

maybe i'm just overly naive (im 18 goshdarnit) but, realistically some people are always going to hold power over you.. wouldn't you rather it's your acquaintances instead of the capitalist megaorganism?

the little 5item list is great practical advice also, thanks (:
i hope your day is ok.

While not exactly the same situation reading this kinda helped me sort out some thoughts I've been having as someone who's young and from a "third world country" who very very recently got some temp work paying a good american salary. I guess I've been just worried about the implicit power dynamics and weird stuff that could come up with friends after making 1.5 years worth of a standard salary in 2-ish months

This is one of those evil genie wishes where you get something amazing that has the power to transform your life and the life of your loved ones and also might destroy all of your relationships. I don't envy you.

Thank you for your thoughts. I seriously think about what is the most moral way to spend money at least once a week. It's refreshing to see someone lay out their thought process so comprehensively.

I have disabled friends that I wish I can support more heavily financially, but my hesitation comes mainly from issues of power dynamics. I usually end up with the conclusion that we need to build stronger communities, both to share the burden, and also to spread the power any one individual has over another.

There's something unsatisfying/ incomplete about that conclusion that I can't quite put my finger on though. Maybe it's just me. 🤷

If you want to marry one (1) friend and take them on as a Dependent you can do so but it's going to take on all of the weight and commitment of marrying someone and making them your live at home spouse. Unless you're Very Rich supporting this one person would become your entire budget for supporting other people and more. It's not an easy thing to support someone who realistically needs broad systematic support from the state or at least an entire community of people and not just one friend group. I have a local friend who is disabled and absolutely needs a part time if not full time caregiver and that can't be replaced with haphazard Mutual Aid it was only achievable by getting an insurance company to hire another but differently disabled community member to be her caregiver. For someone to be well it needs to be organized and consistent.

The way I handle this is everyone in my life knows that if they need to be bailed out of a large expense they can't afford that i consistently have shown up when asked. I offer in a crisis sometimes too. They know I'm not a bottomless well and that my limit is around $3,600 in a year but it's something I can do. Limiting it to resolving a crisis is never a boundary I've had to enforce and more often I have to push people to accept smaller kinds of help when I'm the one offering. People don't like accepting financial help.

If you do want to be consistently contributing to supporting someone who is too disabled to live on their own, I think 1. This person should be applying to SSDI I know SSDI has a lot of downsides and even just applying for it can be like a full time job but supporting them in applying for it probably more realistic than depending entirely on friends and 2. Try picking up a consistent expense that you can budget for. Like adding them to a phone line family plan so that their phone and access to the internet never gets cut off. If your version of $300/month ends up entirely being adding all your disabled friends to your family plan for phones or something it's something you can very consistently budget for which is a big help and alleviates a lot of stress. But then you do have to have that boundary of "This is the main thing I can do financially" because if you don't have that boundary it's stressful on both sides.

When I was dating that tech bro, who always wanted to spoil me with nice dinners, it was stressful not knowing how much I could ask for financial help before it would affect the relationship and result in him leaving me and losing his support. Having a very clear line makes it more comfortable asking for help knowing that you're safely within the limit before it'll impact your relationship (and therefore the future ability to access that help)

I didn't know it was a naïve 18 year old and my read was that they probably weren't actually saying that people with middle class incomes in California should be supporting multiple people's livelihoods in the third world but they evoked the Imperial Core and if they do that I'm going to call them on their bluff essentially.

great post !! as someone who grew up working class and now has more money than my parents ever made (only by a bit), it's Relevant.

I think this is where I go and say the state is Good, Actually, as a theoretical construct. you absolutely do not want a single rich person to be in charge of social welfare for other people. that is an insane state of affairs.

the more people that are involved in something, the less that thing becomes Personal. you do not want your source of food and shelter to be Personal. people piss each other off. people get on each other's nerves. people break up. people get sick and die.

Organizations are slow and plodding and largely heartless, but they are predictable -- they are colossal ships on the horizon with turning arcs so great they have to be inputted far in advance, but for the most part they're gonna go where they're gonna go. yeah they can be sabotaged and collapse but that's way less likely than just Some Person losing their job or getting mad at you or having to move across the country.

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