Reddit reviews Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

most of the time when we talk about how it is, we are told that we are part of the bourgeois that are destroying the country because we can understand some English and have access to an internet connection.

Anyways, I will try to explain how it is for a venezuelan in numbers, just numbers.

I will show you how screwed a Venezuelan was up to 2014, remember it was not state of emergency and they reported much lower inflation rates than now.



Month| basic food basket cost in BsF(Venezuelan currency) year 2014
---|---
January | 3,640.55
February | 3,730.48
March | 3,946.64
April | 4,189.54
May | 4,448.56
June| 4,741.50
July | 4,876.99
August | 5,391.35
September| 5,741.06
October | 5,978.76
November | 6,382.62
December| N/A


refer to this table for the basic basket value Also please note how there are no more statistics after 2014... this is the national institute of statistics of Venezuela, it is sort of their only job. Same thing happened with murder statistics when they got too high, it actually became a crime to talk too much about the issue. Some newspapers did post some gruesome pictures and stuff, anyhow.

This is the basic basket, this is calculated as the food you need for a month, 2000 calories a day... you will in theory eat alright with this.

From this article grab a year and its corresponding minimum wage.

Year | Mininum Wage
---|---
2014 December| 4,889.11


The figures are pretty close right? In some months they actually go above the minimum wage.

Any given time just buying food will take most of your budget, by most I mean way over 80% this was in 2014 the unreported years you can imagine how grim it is.

Not even Venezuelans know how can someone survive off that minimum wage, yes you can get 2000 calories a day, but that is it, no rent, no clothes, no going to the movies, nothing.

There was a time where the Venezuelan government even had an ad running that said we had the highest minimum wage in latin america.

source in spanish

they said in 2010 it was the highest at 370$ from the tables I gave you before you can get the government conversion rate or something close to it, apply it to this year it will you something like 2000$ US per month for minimum wage just to how full of crap they are. It is all bogus.

Some people like to go on how Venezuela was working so great in numbers under Chavez, but it is was not really true then and it isn't now.

just talking about this puts me in a bad mood, went ahead and ruined my own day, sigh.

Honestly a few days ago I read this book one of the points it makes is that being poor is mentally taxing, just as much as not sleeping, too much stress. The author suggests that you can take a vacation relax and recover... not so much with being poor "this being poor thing really sucks today I will take a break for a week and get back on the horse!"

Wonder if you could make a study like his on how much of a burden it is to be Venezuelan right now, because you cannot take a break from that either.

edit: the decimal values, sources are in Spanish so they will have thousands are periods and commas for decimals the data, I followed the English convention here. qpalz also pointed out to me that October had these switched around. Fixed that on the data here, cannot change the source.

>a good attorney can deal with it without it costing her more money.

And she currently has a good attorney. How does she ensure that she finds another one, who is also more sympathetic on fees?

>You don't know what you're talking about.

Sorry, just talking about the half-dozen or so pro-bono and sliding scale firms I've worked with around here. Maybe it's different outside of major metropolises or something.

>It's not obvious that she's working as hard as she can.

Oh, sorry, I guess

>Everything is... just really fucked. I have been bled dry and am living on credit cards. I will have to file for bankruptcy soon. This man gets to take everything from me.

...sounds like the words of someone who's doing a half-assed job at something she doesn't really care that much about.

>There are ways out of her immediate situation, saying "my attorney took all my money, I'm getting nowhere, and I refuse to look elsewhere for help," is not the way to do it.

Go read Scarcity and then you'll understand why all YOU can do is not the same as all SHE can do. Tunneling makes all the difference.

Two things -- state usury laws: that is why banks wrote the law that allowed them to base their credit card businesses in any state they want, to circumvent usury laws. [Someone smart once said that violence is the crime of the poor, white collar crime is the crime of the middle, and when you're rich, you don't need to commit crimes because you can write the laws to let you do what you want. I would love to know the source...]

Second, the psychology of scarcity (see the book https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebook/dp/B00BMKOO6S) makes it difficult to make good choices under conditions of scarcity. Not just money-wise, btw, but also affection (hence people behaving counter-productively needy when they're lonely, even though they may know on some level it is repellent).

I'm psychologist, and some of us are aware of all the consequences and burden associated to be poor.

I recommend this book about the issue, you will be find precisely accurate:

https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebook/dp/B00BMKOO6S

You should read Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. There has been quite a bit of research into the psychology of scarcity and the impact it has on people regardless of socioeconomic status. It has less to do with poor choices and more to do with the fundamental ways the brain copes with reduced executive function and working memory due to stress induced from scarcity.

First those interested, you can purchase this ebook on how depravation / scarcity alters one mindset.

https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much-ebook/dp/B00BMKOO6S

Note that scarcity refers to money - including time: for example, long hours of work / labour are known to be detrimental in the long run to actual productivity and human health.

I am not saying that the poor should abandon all personal responsibility, but to be honest, many underestimate how much resources are required to be invested to ensure that the poverty trap be broken. It is much less inexpensive to ensure that these people are not going into the bottom pit than trying to lift them up.