[rprasad]

Pardon my french, but the linked blog post is just a pile of santimonious bullplop. There are many, many people in the U.S. and outside of it for whom "I can't afford it" is not a choice.

There are plenty of people who cannot afford to live in a safe, or even reasonably safe neighborhood. There are people who cannot afford life-saving medicine or medical care. There are people who cannot afford to send their children to college, or even before that to buy them the iDevices and computers that would give them an edge in their education. There are plenty of families who have not bought new clothes in years because they simply can't afford it after the necessities have been paid for.

This is happening in the U.S.: in the East Bay, just a few miles from SV; in south-central LA, in most of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, in Detroit, in Cleveland, in south-west Chicago, in New York, in New Orleans...

Blog posts like this just reinforce the common perception outside of SV that Silicon Valley is now populated by a bunch of wealthy, out-of-touch individuals who have no understanding of how hard life is for people who didn't hit the jackpot in terms of family, upbringing, or education.

[dorkrawk]

You are absolutely right, but that's really not the point of this post. While real poverty is an issue worth talking about, that's not what this guy is trying to address.

The point seems to be that many people who have disposable income treat that money as disposable and then wonder why they don't have more money. There are many people who could afford more of what they really care about (be it time, travel, things, etc) if they didn't nickel and dime themselves on things that might not really be that important to them.