Slashdot Mirror
Owning an iPhone is the Number-One Way To Guess if You're Rich or Not, Research Finds (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In the United States, if you have an Apple iPhone or iPad, it's a strong sign that you make a lot of money. That's one of the takeaways from a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper from University of Chicago economists Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica. "Across all years in our data, no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016," the researchers wrote. There are details and caveats to the research, but the economists found that owning an iPhone gave them a 69% chance to correctly infer that the owner was "high-income," which they defined as being in the top quartile of income for households of that type -- like single adult or couple with dependents, for example.
I know a better way: owning a Ferrari is definitely even more precise! I am pretty sure the correlation for Ferrari -> rich is close to 100%.
And on my one person sample (me), it's 100% more accurate since I don't own an iPhone (yuck!) but do have a Ferrari (albeit an old one.)
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
"no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016,"
Seriously? Owning a Bentley is a worse predictor of being high-income than owning an Apple iPhone? Are we sure there are no further qualifications here?
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
It seems to me that owning an iPhone shows that you are more concerned about image over function/capability. Which is also a pretty strong indicator of being rich
... got skewed again and taken out of context. Click bait again :(
If you're shopping online with your user agent set as
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A5376e Safari/8536.25
You might pay more than someone coming from Firefox or Chrome. This wont impact IE or Edge users as they prefer to shop in person for the most flavorful brand of crayon.
Good people go to bed earlier.
you're poor unless you have two
peasant
All the waitresses are richer than me then. // An Android phone owner.
Ferrari may have a lower false positive rate, but they have a stratospheric false negative rate. You need to find a proxy for wealth sold by the hundred millions so that someone merely in the top quartile (not really that wealthy, 75k qualifies?) has a reasonable chance of owning one.
People don't "own" an iphone. They pay a small monthly fee to lease it from the carrier, which pays a monthly fee to Apple for letting people lease their iphones.
People carrying an iPhone don't necessarilly "own" it. Most Americans don't own anything, some don't even own the clothes they are wearing. Most are $400 away from serious financial problems.
They don't own anything, they rent everything, appearances are everything.
I have a Tesla Model S and I bet I have more money than you.
The top 25% of the country does not own a Ferrari although probably most of the Ferrari's in the country are owned by the top 25%. So even though it might be a predictor for the top 1%, it fails miserably as a predictor for the top 25% since you're unable to properly categorize the other 24%.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If everyone with an iphone is rich, this is the richest country of fucking retards imaginable
Professional Narcissist and Attention Whore are now paid professions. The 21st Century has doubled down on the fact that wealth has never been a guarantee of intelligence.
In Europe, it's mainly a sign that you're an obnoxious douche that wants others to think that you earn a lot of money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Rich people create jobs? How? By buying lots of junk?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some Android phones cost about the same and they are more open
Over here they're called basement dwellers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Both iphones and Ferraris sometimes only predict that your parents are high income.
This space intentionally left blank
Having money is one attribute common to the purchasers. However, it also shows they are gullible enough to buy from Apple. That I believe was the real take-away.
The survey is based on HOUSEHOLD income. So kids living with their parents count as "rich" if the parents are "rich". Since all income counts, if the kids are employed, even in low wage jobs, they likely push their household over the threshold.
The main difference between households in the top quartile and bottom quartile is not wage or salary level, but NUMBER OF PEOPLE WORKING. In the bottom quartile, an average of 0.4 people are in full time employment. In the top quartile, an average of 2.1 people are employed full time.
So just rent a big house and live with lots of other employed people under one roof, and *POOF* you are rich. At least statistically.
From the article: "The research also suggests that owning an Android phone or using Verizon are a strong indicators of being high-income as well. ".
So there you go. If you own an iPhone or Android, you could be high income. Useful.
Well that is pretty obvious, those with more money than sense buy overpriced products for the 'prestige'. Those with more sense than money are more careful with their money.
Dude, no offense but you're definitely approaching wealthy. I don't even make half what you do, but consider myself comfortable. If I can survive with my salary without economic anxiety, you're doing EXTREMELY well at $140K a year.
Try not to lose perspective. It's perfectly okay to be successful, but remember that many make do with far less than what you have and at least be willing to admit that you're wealthy.
Gotta do something to encourage more people to buy iPhones in light of their dropping market share. I mean, if new colors won't do it - maybe trying to hype up the "you look rich if you carry one!" vanity will work?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It is true but it is publically visually harder to spot also. There are people making money on car rental business. So, how do you publically visually tell the difference between own/rent.
Here is one better:
Owning an Android phone with CFW is the number one way to guess if you are more intelligent or not.
Maybe the researcher should do that next
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- If picture worth a thousand words, how many megapixels is it? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
You could've taken a few years off and traveled the world at your leisure, but you decided to buy an airplane and new car and iphone instead. You're simply a rich person choosing financial struggle.
This space intentionally left blank
You could also be a 13 year old girl. Kind of goes without saying that richer people pay higher prices for subpar specs
Look at the charts in TFA... why is there always a disparity between having a dishwasher and using dishwasher detergent?? The detergent is horrifically caustic so who is using it not in a machine? Either that or what genius is using a machine without detergent? Messed up....
Ferraris, feh. Owning a senator is how to tell if you're rich or not.
Wealthier people more likely to be able to afford expensive product than non-wealthy ones, hence more likely to buy it.
Film at 11...
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
I can't afford to keep upgrading to the next version because Apple fucking bricked my current one with their fucking updates.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, right, and if we dig deeper who are we going to discover funded this "study"?
A while back some "study" found that it was healthier drinking coca cola than water - guess who funded that one?
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
With the dead tree books that never get read, the accumulated dust bunnies and the monster that lives under the bed? I don't think so.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
Owning a Ferrari is a sign that you are going bald and have a small dick.
It has been that forever.
Is this a correlation that people who own iPhones have money to burn, or more of a correlation that iPhones are solidly in the over priced category, like many other luxury items?
The article is about "it's a strong sign that you make a lot of money". So what? A lot of people that have fancy toys are up to their eyeballs in debt. That's not rich. There is no prize for being on the hamster wheel of wage slavery and consumerism. In fact, it pretty much sucks unless you're a large corporation. That's America for you. This culture is only concerned about status or appearance. They couldn't care less about the founding principles of the country like oh I don't know, Liberty? You know that personal freedom we fought so hard for that England wouldn't give us? Look what we did with it. We pissed it away. That's why I'm eventually leaving. Shine your bling on your way to the 80 hour a week hell hole. I'll choose freedom tyvm.
We'll make great pets
Owning a Bentley is a worse predictor of being high-income than owning an Apple iPhone?
Yup, because you might be seeing a 25%-er that owns a Ferrari instead. Or one who own a Maseratti. Or one who owns a Tesla Roadster with all the stupid options like SpaceX rockets. Or a Porsche. etc.
But all of them happen to own an iPhone, just like a significant chunk of all the other 25%ers (including that 25%ers who doesn't own any car and entirely relies on professional driver services (you know the services that UberBlack drivers actually do for a living when they're not moonlighting on Uber) )
--
More seriously : we're speaking about the to 25%ers here, not the trop 1%ers.
Given the way income inequality goes in the US (..or at least how it seems to us, when we read news in northern Europe...), that basically covers most of the people who aren't completely broke.
Not all of them happen to own super-car, and some of them aren't rich enough to afford one.
But all of the people in that range happen to have enough disposable income to afford an overpriced smartphone just because they like its design and the model is trendy. (So lots of people in that income bracket will pick an iPhone).
Below this range, people have less disposable income and will more thoroughly think benefits-vs-costs when picking up a smartphone. If they can afford one, they'll go with something surely less expensive and sometimes perhaps even with more features.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I live in Europe. I can roam the whole continent and probably a lot further too with the same SIM card.
-- Cheers!
Let's compare our senator-wallets, maybe we could exchange a few.
They're talking about wealth - not income. And thanks to the low class mobility in the U.S., the number one way to become rich is to be born to rich parents.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Owning an iPhone is the Number-One Way To Guess if You're Rich" ... through no fault of your own ...
Apparently Bill Gates is an outlying point in their data:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/...
No you can't. You can rent-to-own an iPhone at a substantial markup by including the rental price in your monthly phone service bill.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
As usual the detective method you want to employ is determined by the type of error you can most tolerate.
IPhone Owner - Higher false positive rate. Lots people who are not rich manage to get their hands on one. So you mistake them for money because they have a phone. Clearly there are still false negatives, even though Apple is considered the luxury brand in the space Samsung for one makes some very nice high end phones as well and some rich people no doubt prefer them.
Ferrari ownership - Higher false negative rate. Lots of very wealthy people don't buy one. They may choose one of many other luxuary auto brands, they may prefer a larger vehicle well appointed by a couch builder and having someone else do the driving. Now I am sure there are some false positives. There are lots Italian car enthusiasts out there and there are some "affordable" 70/80's vintage Ferraris the owners most likely have some means but maybe are not in the top 25%. My Alfa Spider shares some power mirror stuff with them, I just paid $160 for a new power mirror switch. Owning these things isn't cheap, I can only imagine what engine parts must run for them given the limited production; I have not really looked. The cars themselves though show up on bring-a-trailer from time to time in with integer 5 digit price tags.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Insofar as it's an indicator of whether people are careless with their money, sure.
// This is not a sig.
Obviously you don't know the difference between being rich and being wealthy :)
love is just extroverted narcissism
Look at the rent they can afford to pay.
Find the zip code. Take in the average of a city and its rent say in Springfield MO, Akron OH, Tuscon AZ, Rochester NY, Asheville NC, Irvine CA, San Jose CA.
Factor in rent control, Section 8 housing social experiments in the same part of the city and see what the wage, trust fund covers per month.
Rent needs a real double working income? Thats not poverty.
A big brand has to offer millions in real convertible cash to get professional workers able to move to an area just to cover the rent?
A very small dwelling that costs millions just for land.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There are a lot of things I would infer about a person with the ownership of an iphone. Wealth is not necessarily one of them.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
First you are right, conspicuous consumption like a Ferrari is a status symbol of the wealthy. The Iphone can be that too of course but that would not really account for it's ubiquity. Instead the greater your income the more you are aware that time/money substitutions. The greater you pay rate the more it makes sense to Rather than use your own time to do something you purchase a product that does it. With iphones there's no big surprises and they work well and if they don't apple has great service centers and there's even lots of other people who can service it too, parts are widely available, and whatever problem you have is probably been seen before since there's a wide userbase. So it's a wise choice if you prefer no hassles in your life.
Consider that almost nothing else in your life gets handles 50 times a day or engages your attention in so many ways. a 700 phone is $1 per day over 2 years . $1 per day for a hassle free phone ithat uses a lot of your time is a no-brainier. Besides that you probably have a $90 a month cell bill which means the cost of the phone is only 25% of the cost of cellular communications for you, so not a big factor. Incrementally, it's even less since you probably were going to get at least $350 phone.
One the otherhand if you earn minimum wage, you probably don't have that big cell bill, and if you have a cell it's going to be a cheap one.
So iphones make sense not as a status symbol (is it a status symbol if everyone around you also has one?) but as the right tool for the lifestyle of the upper income brackets.
thus same correlation but different logical path
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Unvelievable how the phone company's advertising has persuaded a lot of customers that 70$/month extra for a capped service means "free unlimited usage abroad!"
It seems to me that owning an iPhone shows that you are more concerned about image over function/capability.
No that's just your confirmation bias talking. The primary attraction of most Android phones is simply price. (which is very reasonable) The features are a secondary concern at best for most users. If you are arguing that iPhones aren't functional you are crazy. Most buyers of these devices aren't worried about using every last feature and just want something that works. For most users iPhones are primarily about function (they mostly work great), reliability, and not image at all. My parent's are a perfect example. They don't give a shit about what phone they own, they just want one that works and that lets them get pictures of the grandkids with minimal hassle. They use a last generation iPhone which they got at a reasonable price. As a bonus they can use an iPad too and not have to learn anything new. Could they use an Android device? Sure, but it wouldn't have any benefit to them over an iPhone - certainly not from any features or capability.
Fact is that the difference in capabilities between similar market tier Android phones versus iPhones is pretty much negligible for most people, even those who are highly geeky. Maybe you need/want some particular feature of a particular phone and that's cool (you be you), but for most users the differences are more a matter of taste than capability. I've used current generation Android phones too and they have no must-have advantages for me or most people over current generation iPhones. Both would work fine for me and probably for most people reading this. People buy them because they have a particular preference or because of price. The only ones fussing over feature lists are the sorts of people who read slashdot.
Your average THOT owns an iPhone.
Counting on something so fragile is a risky proposition for anyone who gets serious shit done.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Owning an iPhone is the Number-One Way To Guess if You're Upper Class or Not, Research Finds
Top 25% != Rich
Just another day in Paradise
With that UID I'm surprised that you're even allowed outside.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You think sports cars and yachts just look good and aren't actually a pleasure to use too?
In a lot of cases they are only good to look at and definitely not a pleasure to use. Have you ever actually driven a Lamborghini Countach? I have and it SUCKED. Looks pretty as hell and is fast in a straight line but James May said it far more eloquently than I could about why it's a terrible car.
Just because something looks good and has a high price tag doesn't necessarily mean it is something you'll enjoy owning.
Ferraris, feh. Owning a senator is how to tell if you're rich or not.
In Russia, owning a President is how to tell if you're super-rich or not.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I have a friend who makes minimum wage in Silicon Valley ($12/hr). He owns an iPhone 7 (256GB), iPad Pro, and two older iPads. No one is going to mistake him for being rich.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
Depends what you think the function of a phone is
Not really. The device in my pocket is called a "smartphone" but the fact that it makes phone calls is fairly incidental to its utility for myself and most people. It's really just a small personal computer with the ability to make phone calls added in. I probably use the phone capability less than 5% of the time I'm using the device and I think I'm pretty typical these days. If you use yours primarily to make calls that makes you something of an outlier.
You won't catch me gaming on my phone or doing other things the screen is just too small.
And why do we care? You be you. If gaming isn't your brand of vodka that's fine but lots of people who own smartphones find it to be a very significant feature for them. I don't do a lot of gaming on mine either but I don't think that fact in any way defines what a smartphone is or how it should be used.
Honestly, from what I've gathered, owning a Senator is cheaper than a Ferrari.
Iphones are not a status symbol, the only people who think they are status symbols are hopeless Apple fanboys.
Actually I'd say the only people who think (or hope) they are status symbols are people who are Apple haters. Given that each and every one of my grand parents (and yours too I'm betting) owns an iPhone or an iPad or both, I think we can pretty safely dispense with the myth that they are some sort of status symbol. There's nothing exclusive about them when my grandmother whose only income is Social Security has one.
Meanwhile I can spend $7/month for unlimited data at home and spend CNY 100 for a SIM card with a week of data for when I visit China. And even if I travel to China once a month, I come out $50 cheaper than your $70/month...
Owning a Ferrari is a sign that you are going bald and have a small dick. It has been that forever.
Can confirm: Thick hair, big dick, no Ferrari.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
So when my iPhone having temporary warehouse workers call in and say they can't make it to work because they don't have gas money...they're lying>?!?!?
If you can afford to pay $1000 for a cell phone- you're either not hurting for money. (Or you're an idiot with no priority on what matters in regards to how you spend your money)
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Every deadbeat I knw has an iPhone. iPhone ownership predicts that you live in the USA, it says *nothing* about your income except relative to the rest of the world.
Owning an iPhone it is a good sign that you "pretend" to be rich.
I own a small airplane that I paid $300k and an iPhone 6.
Many people in my part of the country live in homes that cost less than $100k- they're not the best homes... but they're homes.. A decent average family home is $150k.
With your house and your airplane- consider that you own the equivalent of three or four homes for a significant percentage of the country's population. Now tell me again you are not "rich".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I own a country, this counts? :-)
(and four helicopters, a dozen figther-jets, two nuclear-capable bombers (three soon), a lot of tanks and support vehicles. Ah, and two battleships)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The iPhone was just the best single product from a very narrow list of products, not the best indicator.
Owning a passport was one of several better indicators.
And an Android phone is a 59% indicator. Come on /.
funny, everyone i know who owns an iphone is poor as dirt.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Eh, 70% or so of families lose their wealth in a single generation link. This narrative that there is no churn or mobility in the US seems like nonsense to me. Sure if you want to be middle class it is probably more of a struggle than in the past but it isn't like the rich are some separate species.
Somehow I think the Lamborghini phone likely a better indicator of wealth. http://www.businessinsider.com...
Ferrari may have a lower false positive rate, but they have a stratospheric false negative rate. You need to find a proxy for wealth sold by the hundred millions so that someone merely in the top quartile (not really that wealthy, 75k qualifies?) has a reasonable chance of owning one.
Money's not worth what it used to. In 1985 my dad supported himself, my mom, and 7 children on $25k. Today I'm making $75k+ with a wife and two young children and I consider my situation more financially precarious than my father's back then. I've heard that a million dollars in the bank is considered upper-middle-class these days.
And how much will you pay for using it abroad? How much do u pay a month? I guess much more than our European friend
AT&T charges US$3/minute for using voice outside of the country.
Because they are designed as burner phones. You wouldn't want to take your main phone into a foreign country like Russia because you will be hacked the moment your plane lands. Instead you leave your main phone at home and buy a burner phone with dual SIM so you can put your main SIM and an international roaming SIM into your phone. When you get back home you wipe the burner phone back to factory defaults.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
I would do a second correlation to the amount of memory in the phone or the extras purchased eg case etc. I find people with just enough money will buy the base model or bare minimum to get by. because physically you can't really tell until you use it it doesn't have the extra memory or extra features This works with cars and other items.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Are they new iPhones? Mine's an iPhone 6, and I bought it when they were still subsidized, and IIRC, it was in the $200-300 range out of my pocket.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Tell us about the investments you made and the amount of credit card debt you have carried through it all?
You're the asshat who told me to wait until after 7/6 for the tariffs to go into effect before buying Funko stock. Funny thing about that. I paid $11.00/share a few weeks ago. It's now trading at $14.50/share. Maybe you need to educate yourself on how tariffs work? Paul Krugman has an article that you migh find informative.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
It's 2018. Nobody cares what kind of phone you have...unless it's a feature phone.
Geez -- I thought the skinny jeans people were all "post-iPhone" and back to the flip !!
iPhone is wanna be rich. Flip is "somebody else reads my email for me" rich.
Owning an iPhone in the UK is an indicator that you are either a hipster, a model, a manager, spoilt schoolkid or up to your eyes in credit card debt. In other words - the iPhone is expensive but still cheap enough for poor people to buy on credit.
I live in Europe. I can roam the whole continent and probably a lot further too with the same SIM card.
The whole Europe continent area is less than 10% bigger than the U.S. country alone. Your statement doesn't really mean anything when you are specifically talking about areas because it works somewhat similar to States in the US...
Just 59% vs 69% for Apple... so really, if you just own a smartphone it seems to indicate you might be wealthier than average.
And they're more reliable.
The claim is just marketing, and the literal details are no more important that the implied promises that the right beer will get gorgeous bikini-clad women to dance with you.
What Apple sells are computers that are less difficult for non-techies to feel comfortable on, while messaging it as a luxury item for the common man. Clever that.
Mind you, that does not mean techies do not like Apple products for good (or bad) reasons, too.
Hahahaha... I just woke up, got to my computer to begin my day of work and read this article. I can't start a good day any way better than this. I have an iPhone X and my wife has an iPhone 7+. My wife doesn't work, just takes care of the kids. I'm the only income in the family. I must make a lotttttt of money!!!
On other notes... I take Uber/Lyft all the times, lots of those drivers got an iPhone and claim that driving was their only income. Do Uber/Lyft drivers make a lot of money like I do? I also happen to know quite many low income folks you arm their entire family with iPhones... they must be dealing something other than their jobs.
That would give you high precision, but low recall.
The maintenance and fees on those golems is indeed expensive...
I mean, a total household income of $78,000 qualifies you as in the "top quantile"? I know this gets a bit off-topic of how good an iPhone is as an indicator of being part of that group.... but I find it a bit depressing that our collective incomes have dropped enough to make this a reality.
This isn't talking about individual incomes, mind you - but total household income. 2 parent families with kids and so forth.
That means a husband and wife could each have jobs paying less than $40,000/yr. and yet they're among the "richest" in America that these marketing people are interested in zeroing in on?
I know ..... differences in cost of living by geography and all that. But STILL? My very first "career job" in the early 2000's was doing computer support/helpdesk type work for a small to mid-sized family owned business and I was earning $40,000-ish/yr. pay back then, in the midwest where cost of living was low.
If you're married and the two of you, together, aren't earning at least this "top quantile" of income or darn close to it? It's not even realistic to imagine you can handle paying the typical mortgage for a small home, a couple of car payments so the two of you have vehicles to get to/from work, and paying everything else while saving the minimum recommended amount towards retirement. (If I'm way off base, please explain! I keep reading the economic advice from the people telling us we shouldn't be putting down more than X% of our income on a car payment, and Y% on a mortgage payment, and yet should be putting Z% into a 401K or IRA ... and none of that adds up as possible with a $78K household income, from what I've seen.)
So just rent a big house and live with lots of other employed people under one roof, and *POOF* you are rich. At least statistically.
You're saving a lot on rent, which if maintained over many years can make you rich.
They're certainly not a sign you're rich here. In the UK thanks to the way the mobile phone market works they're widely owned by Chavs (think Rednecks) and those who are long term unemployed or may not have ever worked in their lives.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
If you own an iPhone, you are in dept or spent all your pocket money for the year.
No they donÃ(TM)t
donÃ(TM)t.+'${`%&_NO CARRIER
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Making the computer for the rest of us died with the Apple IIgs and Woz leaving the company.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My point is that I don't need two SIMcards for that, unlike the person I replied to.
-- Cheers!
You sank my battleship!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Spending On Frivolous Things is the Number-One Way To Guess if You'll Stay Rich or Not, Research Finds
You're good for 5 years or so with a new iPhone before an OS comes along that it can't use. If you cant afford to update your phone at lease every 5 years, you're nowhere near wealthy. So you fit the correlation nicely.
My mom made it on 15K, but she just had one obnoxious brat to deal with. I make more than 5X that, and I'm reasonably comfortable, but far from rich, and I still live in a bad part of town.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
FNKO hasn't traded at $11.00 since june before I sold mine, you could have at least saved face saying 11 instead of 11.00
Let me logged into my brokerage account. I paid $11.60 per share on 06/25/2018. Does that satisify your need to needlessly nitpick?
Goodbye, Slashdot!
I paid 40K for my house, and it's a decent house. The neighborhood isn't exactly great, but I haven't got shot yet, so it's livable.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The phone was six months old.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Citation needed that Apple bricked the phone?
Are you posting shit just because you are OCD?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Well, that claim was never about price, but ease of use. The Mac was for "the rest of us" who didn't want to deal with MS-DOS.
Circumcision is child abuse.
A 40k house is not going to be an 'average suburban home' nor can it conceivably be a significant pain point mortgage wise if you are making $140k/year.
Unless you are saying you 'paid' in terms of a downpayment and ignoring the remaining value of the house.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You're too lazy to pull those numbers out of your ass? Typical.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
Actually, to help make it easier to afford them, a couple of organizations have been set up allowing a form of joint or collective ownership, helping defray the cost of having to buy several dozen congressmen. These are called the Republican and Democratic (hahaha) Parties. They are kind of like timeshares, in that you jointly own a bunch of senators, (and also members of the House of so-called Representatives (hahaha) which are also needed,) and whenever you need them for something, you tell them what to do, they do it, and the rest of the time they do the bidding of the other members of the group of Owners.
For example, suppose in order to finish hoarding your second billion dollars, you need the Pentagon to buy a bunch of tanks they know they will NEVER need, that they desperately do NOT WANT, and that fail to work right most of the time anyway... you give your instructions to a lobbyist who takes your order like a waiter, and conveys it to the appropriate bought-and-paid-for pile of dogshit... er... congressman. He then obeys you and fucks over his constituents and the country, often just cutting and pasting the text of the law you want him to propose and see pass VERBATIM, (this has really happened,) and proceeds to laugh all the way to the bank, which his puppet masters also own.
I have made light of this but frankly, my dears, this is fucking sickening.
Rich people create jobs? How? By buying lots of junk?
Oddly enough, yes. Take Bill Gates or Zuck for example. Rich people create jobs by (a) spending their dough and (b) investing their dough.
Spending: let's say Gates buys (yet another) Porsche. The Porsche sales person makes a commission. All the people who transported the car from the factory to Gates get paid. All the people who were involved in building the car get paid. All the people who designed the car get paid. All the parts and raw materials providers get paid. And so on and so forth. They all make money because Gates spent his money. If he didn't buy that car, Porsche would be down one sale and everyone who would've benefited from that sale would be out that portion. If you extrapolate this for *everything* Gates spends his billions on it works out to thousands of people benefiting from his spending, from dry cleaning to yachts. Everybody wins!
Investing: let's say Zuck invests $100 million (chump change for him) in a particular business. That business now has $100 million to spend on new employees, new infrastructure, advertising, product development, you name it. That creates jobs directly as well as indirectly, the latter being jobs for the people who make the desks, chairs, pens, servers, switches, routers, etc. required to support the business and its expansion. Assuming the investment was a wise one, Zuck makes his $100 million back plus a nice profit either through selling the stock later or via dividends. Everybody wins!
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Correct since perception == reality
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
After that your whole life will be much better!
That's because you perceive a problem where one doesn't exist. You're like all the "helpful" people in this essay, giving advice to a single, childless 42-year-old woman because she is enjoying life.
Not sure if they're any good or not but they're under 15 dollars and they might help you speak and look your best when you need to.
One of the reasons why I get in front of the camera and make videos every week is to learn how to speak properly. I don't need a $15 "appliance" to do that. If people think I'm making a fool out of myself, so what?
Goodbye, Slashdot!
"I know a better way: owning a Ferrari is definitely even more precise!"
Yes, your status is greatly improved in the daily traffic stop.
I would just use a Ferrari-Key, at least you take take that one _into_ the club as a conversation-starter. Much cheaper.
Just as signing all your messages and emails on your Android with 'sent from my iPhone'
Really. So why don't they create more jobs? They still got plenty of dough, why don't they open another shop and produce something?
Because they can't sell it. What produces jobs is the ability to sell. No chance to sell, no job created.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
last I heard, the Jeep Grand Cherokee was the most popular vehicle among millionaires
That seriously surprises me. Even American ones have so many better options available.
It's not that the Grand Cherokee is a shit car, it's just fucking awful.
Old enough to realize a good design when I see it- and realize bullshit flash when I see it. Mac was bullshit flash. Even Woz admitted that it was Steve Jobs who killed the Apple III- insisting on a fanless design with no air vents for aesthetic purposes, leading to the infamous "Pick it up and drop it" advice from tech support (to reseat all the chips).
In a time when IBMs had EGA and were headed for VGA, Jobs released the Mac I- with a black and white screen.
And yes- Woz doesn't know me. Never met him.
And I haven't purchased *anything* Apple since 1985. Too damn expensive.
Now if we switched topics to how suddenly, in 2018, a 1mhz 16 bit computer is suddenly relevant due to replacing all of its peripherals with a raspberry pi, that would be interesting (TI99/4A & the TI-PI 32k expansion sidecar)
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Who is giving you feedback when you're doing this by yourself?
Myself when I'm editing my video. I'm painfully aware of every retake that I did, every intake of breath before speaking and every mistake that I can't edit out.
Do you read the comments to find out how you're supposed to talk???
I don't pay attention to the Beavis and Butthead comments.
No, just a few thousand dollars of electronics....
I'm not quite ready to own a Panasonic DMC-GH4R at $2K.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
Mostly it depends on what area of the country where you live. If you live in Omaha, you can do quite well on 75K - and yes, it's not that hard with professional credentials to get a 75K job in Omaha. In the bay area, I'd say if you make 300K you're still merely middle class.
I don't know about that. It depends. If you have a lot of money in your 20s, likely yes, you were born to wealth. If you have a lot of money in your sixties it's more likely you saved money all your life.
You're hearing the meme that folks are spewing so that we become a socialist and/or a communist country (and YES, I DO know the difference between them, thanks). I grew up...extremely poor. Not *quite* dirt floor shack poor, but I could see it from where I grew up. Now? I'm comfortably middle class, maybe could do more, but I'm happy in my life. No, I didn't inherit money, I merely...worked.
You're probably counting all the square miles of Alaskan wasteland so your numbers are skewed.
Like with any other valuable device, if I owned an iPhone I'd be constantly worried about losing or damaging it or drowning it in sweat at the gym. With my 5 years old Nexus 5 I don't have that problem. Should the worst happen, I can replace it at almost no cost.
I lead kind of a minimalistic life and I follow the same principles with regards to other electronics. If someone burgled my house, I could probably replace all my possessions from a single monthly salary. This doesn't mean that I live like a hermit. I own a number of computers, TVs, consoles and what not but they are no more expensive than what they should cost for their purpose. I find very little sense in buying supposedly high-end devices because someone simply tells me they are worth the price.
All in all, not having much too lose lets me lead a joyous life and focus on really important things instead of worrying.
I know a better way: owning a Ferrari is definitely even more precise! I am pretty sure the correlation for Ferrari -> rich is close to 100%. And on my one person sample (me), it's 100% more accurate since I don't own an iPhone (yuck!) but do have a Ferrari (albeit an old one.)
Where I live an iPhone on a plan is less than $20/week, hardly a good marker for wealth. My teenage kids have them which I make them pay for themselves and they make less than $100 week and all of their friends are in the same boat.
My marker for wealth/income which is a little more accurate is owning multiple properties, or a luxury vehicle ($100k+). There is no way to fake owning a house...
No 6 month old iPhone has ever been bricked by an update.
iPhones are for people with more money than brains.
I would be more interested in a correlation with intelligence. Or with tech skills.
At 75k you should be pretty well off. Compare your lifestyle with that of your fathers. How much debt did they get into, how nice was the car they drove in, how often did they go out to eat, did they have 2 laptops, tablets, cable, Internet and cell phones (all of which existed in 1985).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Disarm the plebs! Bow down before the Owners!
Cheap plastic junk from China (iPhones) and pretty websites are irrelevant. The cost of food, housing, and fuel remain paramount.
Dude, no offense but you're definitely approaching wealthy. I don't even make half what you do, but consider myself comfortable. If I can survive with my salary without economic anxiety, you're doing EXTREMELY well at $140K a year.
Try not to lose perspective. It's perfectly okay to be successful, but remember that many make do with far less than what you have and at least be willing to admit that you're wealthy.
Depends where you live. In the Bay Area, for example, he’d be barely above poor.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
Like a 4S from someone else in early 2015 even though it was released in the end of 2011? Am I really rich? I have been unemployed for over 1 year 6 months 23 days 20 hours 46 minutes 26 seconds! :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Obviously healthcare costs are out of control. Their crazy skyrocketing seems to have begun around the same time the big insurers were demutualized. So yes, corporate profit- and rent-seeking seem to be the big causes.
On the other hand, despite what the well-meaning propagandists at Pravda.. er, NPR.. have to say, I frankly don't believe their bullshit line about the cost of food decreasing. I know some folks implicitly trust all official statistics.. but c'mon, sometimes they are so far removed from lived experience that they beggar belief.
I pay the same as in my own country in every EU country I am in,
-- Cheers!
Broham, you're a hired troll. Presumably funded by a Democrat party affiliate, given the lame political line you push. Not a Stasi agent like in your fantasies. NSA & friends know *exactly* who I am.
It's the #1 way to guess if someone is ostentatious or not.
They are talking statistics. Every predictor has specificity and sensitivity. Specificity of Bentley ownership is indeed 100%, but it has very low sensitivity as only few own it in the upper 25% income population
This is actually a serious philosophical question - the Raven paradox.
Let's say you want to prove a statement like "All ravens are black". This statement is logically equivalent to saying "If something is not black, it's not a raven."
Now let's say you find an apple, and it's green. That is a non-black object, which is not a raven. So the existence of a green apple is evidence in favor of the second statement ("If something is not black, it's not a raven"), which in turn supports the first statement.
But how can finding a green apple teach you something about ravens?
See above link for attempted resolutions.
Just because "everyone" has one (it's not anywhere near) doesn't mean it's not a status symbol.
It also doesn't mean it is one so you'd not really off to a good start.
>People on Social security SHOULD be budget conscious... yet they constantly select the brand that's known to overcharge for everything and have no easy way to get "free stuff" / pirate?
Overcharge is a matter of perspective. It's not overcharging if you regard it as good value for money. What might be overcharging to you might not be overcharging from my perspective or vice-versa. Apple's perception of charging a lot is more perception than reality. In actuality if you purchase a device with similar specification from one of their competitors you're going to pay a similar amount of money most of the time. People like yourself confuse or conflate the market segment with how it is priced within that segment. Apple's prices are reasonable for the segment they compete in but they don't compete in segments where price is the overriding consideration.
As for why folks on a fixed budget often pick Apple, they pick it because it has a well deserved reputation for being reliable, easy to use, and "just working" which is what they care about more than anything else. They aren't interested in tweaking settings or configuring things or any device that requires a lot of fiddling and maintenance.
As for pirating, why the f*** would my grandparents care about that? They want to see pics of the grand kids, make a few facetime calls, play solitaire, maybe send an email or two. They also want to do this with minimal hassle. They're not going to be pirating software or music or worried about fancy apps. The sure as hell don't care about "easy" ways to get free stuff or pirating software/media. YOU care about that and that's fine but don't project your needs on others.
So I ask you: why did your grantparents buy what they did?I bet it's to fit in, because they think "everyone has one" and they'd be stupid to not have one.
Nope. They bought one because they asked our generation what they should get for what they wanted to do (pics, video calls, email) and wanted something easier than a PC and we told them an iPad/iPhone. Had nothing to do with status because they would have bought whatever we told them to. Minimal hassle for everyone involved, works great, and does exactly what they want for reasonable amounts of money. If they have a problem the Apple store nearby can help them fix it if we aren't around. It cuts down on the problems we have to fix too. Android and Windows tend to require a lot more tech support and I've got years of experience backing that assertion up. (some of the best money I ever spent was getting my dad a Mac with an Applecare warranty and giving him my old iPhone - cut my tech support calls down to close to zero) Has nothing at all to do with status or the indication thereof.
That's the definition of a status symbol - it has nothing to do with actual exclusivity
See you are the one not understanding what a status symbol is. To be clear, my grandparents never take their iPad out in public so it certainly never serves any purpose for indicating social status. They purchased what was recommended to them for a specific purpose. It's a tool and a means to an end. The only people who give a shit about its utility as a social status indicator are people like yourself who seem overly concerned about such things or who are looking for a path to bash Apple. The rest of us are just busy doing the things we actually care about instead of worrying about other people's social status.
AT&T charges US$3/minute for using voice outside of the country.
Is that a lot? That sounds like a lot.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
What about albino ravens?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Apple hasn't come up with anything better since Woz. And that is why I *have* moved on, and do not consider Apple to be a viable computer company or consumer product company.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No they donâ(TM)t
When I went to Brazil to propose to my wife, AT&T charged me US$3 per minute to call home to the US; my phone was still under contract so they wouldn't unlock it for a SIM from a different carrier. AT&T may charge less when traveling to Canada or Mexico.
Money's not worth what it used to. In 1985 my dad supported himself, my mom, and 7 children on $25k. Today I'm making $75k+ with a wife and two young children and I consider my situation more financially precarious than my father's back then. I've heard that a million dollars in the bank is considered upper-middle-class these days.
Well, back then did children have luxurious toys (e.g. smartphone)? Did your parent have 2 cars (for both)? Did your parent's car(s) have all luxurious stuff like today? Did they have online shopping so that people can easily spend their money? If you cut those unnecessary stuff I mentioned, $75k for a family of 2 kids should do quite OK.
My sons don't have a cell phone of any type (much less a smart phone). I only have one car. My parents had a 9-passenger van and a sedan. If any of us kids wanted a luxurious toy we had to get a job and buy it ourselves. Shopping from a catalog was a thing back then, but stores hadn't made their way to the internet.
With average mortgage of over $3k per month for a 3 bedroom home over here, $75k is by no means luxurious (rent for a 2 bedroom apartment can reach 1800).
Obviously healthcare costs are out of control. Their crazy skyrocketing seems to have begun around the same time the big insurers were demutualized. So yes, corporate profit- and rent-seeking seem to be the big causes.
Premiums for health insurance for my family is $425 / month.
On the other hand, despite what the well-meaning propagandists at Pravda.. er, NPR.. have to say, I frankly don't believe their bullshit line about the cost of food decreasing. I know some folks implicitly trust all official statistics.. but c'mon, sometimes they are so far removed from lived experience that they beggar belief.
I've seen the cost of eggs go from 80 cents a dozen to over $2 a dozen. Other foods have also skyrocketed (green bell peppers went from 20 cents to $1.50 for example).
"the Jeep Grand Cherokee was the most popular vehicle among millionaires."
They can afford to throw away $50k.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
...but I got a Glock in my 'rari.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
At 75k you should be pretty well off. Compare your lifestyle with that of your fathers.
OK, let's compare 1985 Hawaii with 2018 Mountain West.
How much debt did they get into,
My parents rented a house on the North Shore; I am working on a 30-year mortgage. My parents' home had more square footage. In 1985 my siblings' ages ranged from 19 to 4. I have a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old. My mom paid off the last of their debt last year; I'm 2 years out for medical debt (I don't carry a credit-card balance)
how nice was the car they drove in,
My parents had a full-sized van and a sedan. Neither was super new at the time. I have an older minivan.
how often did they go out to eat,
About once a week my parents took us kids to a restaurant with 5 cent sliders. I take my wife and kids out to eat once a month.
did they have 2 laptops, tablets, cable, Internet and cell phones (all of which existed in 1985).
My parents had a desktop computer (1 MB RAM, 20MB hd) and cable tv (OTA was non-existent in that town). Dialup internet only reached my town in 1992. My parents had a landline. Currently I have a family laptop, cable tv, cell phone for myself and another for my wife, no tablet, no landline, and basic broadband internet. In 1985 we had a single tv in the house; the same is true with my current family.
Growing up, I got hand-me-downs from my brother who got it from a brother who got it from a brother, etc. As my sister was the youngest and the only girl she got new clothes and toys. As both my boys are young I'm constantly buying new clothes for the older son; when he outgrows something it goes to his younger brother. As we're potty-training both boys diapers are still a major expense (almost $100 / month) - an expense my parents didn't have in 1985 (at 4 years of age my sister had already transitioned to panties). As my younger son is extremely small for his age he is on a special diet ($65 / month).
Who would keep a million dollars in the bank if they had it? Interest rates are so low you may as well buy a ferrari.
Maybe not a million, but it would be wise to keep at least one year's salary as liquid assets for the unforeseen. I've been laid off 3 times in the last 20 years. My wife had a hard pregnancy where she went to the ER on a weekly basis (this was $150 per visit). The eventual miscarriage brought on postpartum depression and weekly counseling sessions ($45 per session) for a while. My mother-in-law passed away in Brazil and I had to get my wife there. Life happens, so you need a reserve.
I know others have posted, incorrectly presuming that ownership of a fancy house or a fancy car means you're rich, but in actual practice, most people who own fancy houses are not wealthy, but spend too much on flashy stuff, and the same goes for cars.
Rich people care about things they care about, and that means an iPhone.
Mine is nice.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sorry, the metric equivalent is about 3 euro. Is 'Murica a great country or what??
I know a better way: owning a Ferrari is definitely even more precise!
No, it isn't. There are a lot of people in the top quartile who don't own a luxury car, jet, or yacht. You would get a lot of false negatives from your suggestion.
The misinterpretation of this article is rampant in this discussion. Yeah, I know, I must be new here.
My Ipads are about 5 years old now, my Iphone slightly older. I got them when I had a work contract that made decent money, and since then I've had crap for pay. I'm basically one step away from being out in the street. So...I'm rich?
only dumb people need the iPhone
It's an intelligent test. If you buy one you fail.
Too much people that owns an iPhone and is not rich to consider this accurate enough, the counter positive is too high to take this seriously.
Owning a luxury car is a more clear indicator of wealth. (Though not foolproof; some are bought used at more reasonable prices, given to non-rich people by wealthier family members, or inherited.) But a relatively small number of people own luxury cars; many rich people do not own one.
Smartphone ownership, in contrast, is becoming nearly universal. But the TYPE of smartphone that people own correlates with wealth. That makes it a more useful metric in some ways than the Ferrari, because there are fewer rich people who don't own a smartphone at all.
Let me just say that if your Dad supported your house and 7 kids on 25K in 1985, ask him how he did it. He has to be one smart guy. I remember those days. Any place to stay was at least $400. A house that would sleep 7 I would think would easily be 1 grand. Then there's food, taxes, gas, etc... I don't know how he did it.
Stalker troll uses Russian adjectives (hmmmm), makes vague threats (creepy!), and openly admires the Stasi (not surprising)... Hey, wait a minute... is this all part of President Trump's reelection campaign? Are you just trying to make people think Democrat Party activists are deranged, sociopathic nutcases? Good job, it's working!
You really do spend a *lot* of time thinking about pedophilia, don't you?
I go through US customs frequently. Visit the consulate a fair bit too. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear - as stasi apologists like you are fond of repeating. =)
I guess it just blows your mind that a deplorable redneck like me might enjoy living in a prosperous, socially conservative, family-oriented Communist country. With great weather and delicious food.
So you get lost in an elaborate autistic fantasy of what *you* would do if you lived in a version of Phnom Penh you read about once in a book and somehow imagine is located in Vietnam.
I have an even cheaper solution:
Few years back there where a lot of people in a club I went to walking around with Ferrari keys or other expensive cars. Yes, they actually had them. When one asked where my keys where I explained that I came with a driver and not drove myself, so I could drink a lot and not risk anything.
They where impressed. Nobody asked what kind of car I came in. It was a public transport bus.
I learned early on that it is pretty easy to impress people who try to impress people. I personally do not care for such things, although I could probably afford it financially.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Unfortunately there still are limitations that prevent me from taking a number in a different country where it would be cheaper. International rates is still a thing.
On the other positive side, I can also easily change providers and keep the same number. I think I am at provider 6 or 7 in 10-12 years or so and still have the same number. They even warn me to be sure that I do not have any credits as those will be gone. (I always use pre-paid). And if people call me it is not deducted from my minutes.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.