http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html
"Nearly 51 million households don't earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone, according to a study released Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project. That's 43% of households in the United States."
The figure includes the 16.1 million households living in poverty, as well as the 34.7 million families that the United Way has dubbed ALICE -- Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. This group makes less than what's needed "to survive in the modern economy."
"Despite seemingly positive economic signs, the ALICE data shows that financial hardship is still a pervasive problem," said Stephanie Hoopes, the project's director.
California, New Mexico and Hawaii have the largest share of struggling families, at 49% each. North Dakota has the lowest at 32%.
Many of these folks are the nation's child care workers, home health aides, office assistants and store clerks, who work low-paying jobs and have little savings, the study noted. Some 66% of jobs in the US pay less than $20 an hour.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 21 2018, @05:21PM (1 child)
Another poster already addressed the cheap ways to have a cell phone. I'll just mention that for a single person, the "break-even" point to lose the landline and have a cell phone because it was cheaper happened around 2002. That's assuming (like me) you may have family and friends in other states so long-distance calls were common. Mind you, I wasn't making a lot of them, but the cost added up, and landlines weren't cheap even back then. So, in 2002, I could get unlimited night and weekend minutes for around $35/month with taxes (as I recall). And the phone was "free" with a contract -- all I needed was a pretty basic model with decent battery life. And I got a new "free" one every 2 years. At some point I got off that plan and went to cheaper and cheaper plans with no contracts, and now it's cheaper to buy my own phones (which I never pay more than ~$100 for, even reasonably decent "smart" models... if you just want a phone, there are a lot of real cheap options).
So, it's been over 15 years that the math made sense for a single person to have a cell phone instead of a landline. The math for a couple to both have cell phones has shifted maybe in the past 5 years or so, though it depends on your market and how much you pay for long-distance.
Of course, I assume your post is directed mostly at people with excessive data plans, iPhones, etc. And yes, the costs can add up exorbitantly. It's very easy to pay over $100/month for a cell phone with a lot of data, especially when that cell phone is a particularly expensive model that "comes free" with a long contract.
I'd say about 2 or 3 years ago. If it was 3 years ago, I'd probably have agreed with you and called out that bit from the summary about cell phones. I actually dislike cell phones and only switched to one because it was cheaper than a landline initially. I avoided carrying mine with me (except in special circumstances) until my then-wife forced me to. Although I have a "smart phone" because they've become relatively cheap, I rarely make use of features other than the phone except for long trips (with maps) and occasionally when I need to check email or texts and am not near wi-fi.
So, yeah, you mostly can deal without one if you really want to. Though for most people, it is a hardship, since so much socialization now happens through social media and online. Not participating continuously makes one a relative "hermit" in this era.
And yet, I still wouldn't call that a "necessity." But in the past few years, cell phones have become so integrated that it's starting to become tough to deal without them. For example, just a few days ago, my septuagenarian mother presented me with a new tablet she had bought for herself to replace an ancient iPad that she mostly uses to do jigsaw puzzle apps and a few other silly things like that. It was a much cheaper Android tablet, and she somehow managed to find a decent model even though she knows nothing about technology.
Anyhow, point is that I went to setup the darn thing for her, and the first thing Android of course prompts you for is a Google account. She didn't have a Google account. So I went to set one up for her. It said, "Prove you're not a robot." How? The ONLY option given was to enter a phone number to text her a verification code. My parents have a pay-as-you-go very cheap cell phone they only use for emergencies, but it was in the car. And they've never texted in their lives.
Now, you could skip that step, but then she wouldn't be able to access the Google Play store and download jigsaw puzzle apps, which is pretty much mostly what she's going to do with the stupid tablet. And if you try to do setup later, it does the same stuff. IF I went through Chrome and set up a Google account that way, I got other options beyond the cell phone option, but how would an older person know to try that?
That sort of thing has started to become more common in the past 5 years, and so I'd say in the past 2-3 years it has become increasingly difficult to deal without a cell phone. Lots of banks and other essential services are instituting 2-factor authentication, and many of those services prefer to use texting (and I've occasionally seen ones which basically make it very difficult to use options other than a text-message verification). Of course, you CAN set up other apps to receive texts in ways, but you have to know how. And if you use a phone authentication method and only have a landline, it means you won't be able to access your accounts and such unless you're at home.
For security alone, given the number of breaches that are common these days, a cell phone has become really helpful. And increasingly (as with the Google Play setup I mentioned), companies and devices and apps assume you have a cell phone in order to provide basic functionality.
Yes, it's possible to live without a cell phone, just like it's possible to live without a credit card. But the amount of inconvenience it can cause is increasing -- and one thing poor people often don't have is a lot of spare time to deal with unnecessary inconveniences like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 21 2018, @05:58PM
Easy to say, "cut the cord" for land line. But we both work from home and live near the edge of the 'burbs where cell phone reception is crap. We have one smart phone and use it as a second line. The audio quality of the land line is much superior and, while expensive, it seems that we get what we pay for.
At least for now, the land line also works when power is out (we are in an area with ice storms) and the cell network doesn't stay up all that long...(assuming we keep the cell phone itself charged with a car adapter).