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Notes -
https://www.thecut.com/article/gambling-addiction-casino-world.html
I saw this article this morning, with the online headline "My $5,000 Bender in Casino World"
And my reaction was... Befuddled. $5k? That's it? I'd be modestly interested in hearing a friend tell me about losing $5k gambling. But as the subject of a whole article? Come on. With inflation the way it is, I think you have to lose at least $30,000 before it's interesting. Listing $5k might hurt a lot of people, but the real problem was their prior destitution/poor decision making, not the $5k lost gambling. Just, like, get a job?
I had a similar reaction to would-be academic Kierkegaard's changing his name and moving country to dodge a $10k judgment. Come on, what formidable person can't just pay that off? Tighten your belt for six months and you should be fine.
Maybe it's just seeing the world through privilege, but I feel weird being asked to respect these people. It's an ethos argument: if you don't have your life organized such that you can handle a minor financial setback, you're not a substantial person.
What do you think is, in 2023 first world countries, a large enough financial loss to be interesting, or to force a life change on someone, for a person you would respect?
Maybe I'm not a 'substantial person' but 5k would be a pretty painful loss for me. That said: I don't gamble, it's a mug's game.
Thinking about this has made me curious to what percentage of this forum isn't working in a high paying job/career path. I don't think of myself as stupid or even average intelligence but I've geared my life towards what I find rewarding and until I start my own business in this industry I most likely won't be hitting the big time anyone soon.
But it’s not about making a lot of money. You can just walk into a mcD’s, shuffle some fries around for a while, and they will give you the 5k. I don’t understand the drama 5k represents to these people , whether by losing it at the casino, or by having a debt. The only explanation is that their default is to always spend all their money, and therefore the sum represents a ‘deficit’, which they have to compensate by the extremely difficult and painful process of ‘saving’. Their leaky bucket is the problem, not the flow rate of the faucet.
Because of nondiscretionary expenses. If that $5k has to go to food, rent, utilities, healthcare, car insurance, gas, etc., then you're basically just working that McDonald's job to exist and not actually accumulating money you can use to pay off a $5k gambling debt (or, y'know, buy a laptop or a couch or something).
Very few common expenses are truly nondiscretionary. One can easily live on like 8k a year. Most students do it. It does not require one to compromise on health nor on time. Just a bit of superfluous comfort and convenience. People go camping for fun, and that’s way less comfortable. Even the middle class mostly spends money as a status signal. The explosion of the luxury goods industry in recent years reveals how hollow the reason for most purchases are. Just like cima’s million dollar handbags and gladrags, of course they’ll swear up and down that all the stuff makes a difference to their QoL, but it really doesn’t.
Yeah I live on less than 20k a year at the moment and I'm very comfortable. I even eat out occasionally. Frankly I could cut costs a bit more if I wanted too.
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