Are poor people poor because they're lazy?

Great Debates
1

OK. I intended the title to be inflammatory, and don’t necessarily believe it to be true. But I’ll relate a true story.

I’m painting contractor. Summers especially can be very busy, and house & yard-work get ignored. A student friend of mine was cleaning my house (mostly just vaccuuming & cleaning floors. I would NEVER ask anyone to clean my toilet.) However she graduated & got a job, so I wanted to find someone else & thought it would be nice to offer the work to someone who could really use it, rather than one of the big commercial services. I have a couple of times hired people standing at street corners with signs looking for work - I like thinking I’m paying someone who can really use it!

So, one of my contracts is a large apartment complex. All subsidised housing, AFDC & so on. Roughly 800 tenants. The housekeeper suggested I put up a sign in the central mail room area looking for a housecleaner. I did, words to this effect: Light housecleaning once a week needed. Flexible hours, close by, on bus route. Good money, CASH paid. Also the same in Spanish, and I left my home & cell phone numbers. I’m thinking these are very poor people, and I would have paid $20 an hour (the going rate), which I assume would have been a nice little monthly under-the-table amount of money for someone.

The signs were up for over a month and I did not get ONE freaking call. NOT ONE.

Why? I can understand there may be some mistrust, or childcare issues (although the apartments did have a free onsite childcare facility). But not one single call, even to ask how much I would pay, out of about 800 adult residents? Was I being elitist? I’ve been poor too, slept in my car & lived in a roach motel for 6 months in the mid-80’s. I grew up very poor. Never went on any kind of assistance, and even cleaned houses for a couple of months. I would have jumped at the chance for some extra money, especially untaxed (that’s why I specified CASH paid. Most people understand what that means.)

So why on earth did I not get one fucking phone call?

2

I don’t know why you didn’t get a call. Some people may have had difficulty with daycare, and sometimes literacy is a problem. Or maybe nobody really reads the notices. Do you think someone may have taken them down?

In our state, Minnesota, the AFDC recipients (it’s called something else now since the reform) are in classes and seminars eight hours a day. They offer typing tutorials, interviewing skills training, portfolio building (references and certificates, not financial), parenting classes, stress fighting classes, computer program training (Word, Excel, Access, etc.) and lots of other stuff. I found this out because as a dislocated worker, all of these things were made available to me through the Dislocated Worker Program and I took advantage of as many as I could.

I did notice that a lot of the people who were in the (formerly) AFDC program were young single mothers who seemed stressed/and or depressed.

I think words like “lazy” are cognitive short-cuts: they describe a set of actions but really don’t explain any of the conditions behind the actions. I feel blessed for the advantages I had growing up, and for my family of origin. A lot of people weren’t as lucky and have done better in life than I have, but others have had really terrible life circumstances and not seemed to be able to overcome them.

It is really kind of you Carina42, to offer work to disadvantaged people. I hope someone will see it and take you up on your offer. I think it would be cheering to be around someone such as yourself, who grew up poor and became successful.

-----:slight_smile:
—////\\

3

In reply to your OP (just what is an OP by the way?),
I think poor people are poor because they lack the knowledge of how to motivate themselves to earn a salary. And even when they have this motivation, they may come up across some obstacle which they will not know how to deal with, which will also stop them flat dead.

Generally they don´t have the life coping skills. Others too, are just plain lazy. Others choose to be poor…well, specifically, everyone chooses to life their life however they want. But you know what I mean…i hope.

WHy did you not get one reply to your ad? I suspect people in that neighbourhood either choose to be poor, thought the job would already be gone, the ads WERE pulled down for some reason, or the ppl thought they lacked the skills to get the job. BEing poor can be a sure fire confidence and esteem killer I am sure, and when applying for a job those things are pretty important, and poor ppl know that I think.

Benno

4

Benno: OP = Original Post. I agree, general life coping skills, plus the stress of being poor, a single mother, illiterate & so on likely leads to a form of depression & inertia.

And I agree with SpiderWoman, “lazy” is a perjorative short-cut term. I did use that term for effect, not because I think it’s so in all cases. But it’s difficult not to be judgemental. We paint empty apartments there several times a month. Most people -men and women- are home during the day, many drinking, smoking, and there are colour televisions in every apartment. Surely not all of these folks are so depressed, sozzled or encumbered they can’t work a few hours a week. I chat with the tenants, many seem quite able and pleasant. “light housecleaning”? It’s not like I was requiring a PhD for Chrissakes.

The sign was up for over a month (And EVERYBODY goes to the mailroom to get welfare checks!) But not one single call out of that many people, even assuming some couldn’t read it? I bet if the sign read “$20.00 free for every resident, check at office,” there would have been some response! I’m thinking pure-D lazieness is a big component. I’m just trying not to be too snotty and ditto-head about it.

5

I was poor because i was on my own with no reserves, no driver’s license, no car, and no connections. My fiancee was going to school but had a tiny stipend that covered not even rent where he lived.

We move to the midwest and were poor together for many years. Where we moved to had a low enough cost of living that we were able to get through with $500 a month. This mony was from a stipend, work study and disability. I did not get a job because i could not find one within walking distance or one that was strictly daytime hours so i could take the pathetic local bus. I had plenty of motivation to earn money and get a job but it simply was not a possibility early on. My safety was more important than trying to earn money and the only job i could have gotten was one where I had to walk alone at night a few miles to get there and back.

Instead, I tutored my husband through school and econmized. I made food from scratch and did our laundry, including the towels, by hand. Wringing out clothes by hand to line dry sucks, especially in winter. When he graduated, he could not find a job in that town that used his degree so he worked as a hotel night auditor. Minimum wage, 40 hours a week. I went to school then mostly on grants and scholarships. I also had work study and our income was a bit more, nearly $11,000 one year, then a record for us. He has health problems and was sick a few times, resulting in time off work and having to change jobs. We both worked as hard as we could and still ended charging some stuff, like clothing. In my final semester, we had to go on food stamps as we could no longer afford enough food.

I graduated after 5 years with 2 degrees, a bachelor of science in Mathematics and bachelor of science in Computer Science. I graduated Magna cum laude. I now have $200 a month to pay in student loans, which is no problem on my income. We moved just after graduation to a suburb of a big city because jobs were ore plentiful there. We do quite well, but are paying off a lot of credicard debt. Debt not run up foolishly, but debt that allowed us to live to get our degrees and find decent work.

One more illness, one more unexpected set back, one less scholarship, we would still be poor. We are not any lazier than most people, but we were poor for a long while. I have done well at my jobs, as has my husband. We have received promotions, bonuses and praise.

Laziness does not cause poverty. My husband walked to and from his job everyday, a mile and a half each way for years. The jobs available to us paid parely enough to live. Toward the end, they did not cover that. Better jobs were not to be had for us until we moved after receiving degrees.

6

Carina, I don’t know why there were no responses. Inertia, maybe?

Did the sign say how much you’re paying? If not, most folks probably thought it was minimum wage.

A scrupulously honest welfare recipient might not respond, because I think money earned must be reported, and some of it is deducted from your grant. That’s how it was in the old days, anyway.

Maybe they just didn’t need it. A few hours of work isn’t going to make a big difference to someone who has what they need to survive. If your sign had asked for full-time work, there might have been more interest.

I’d try again – Christmas is coming. Tell them what you’re paying and where the job is (so they don’t need to fret over transportation). Give more details about what they’ll be doing, so the guy with the bad back will know if he can handle it. If it could work into a full-time job, tell them that too.

As for the rest of the OP, I don’t know why some folks don’t want to work. We have a big problem where I work with steady attendance. It’s a union factory, good pay and benefits, and we pay enough so that you don’t really have to put in 40 hours to get by. Especially the younger kids, still living at home, no obligations except maybe a car payment.

So with us, it’s not that people don’t want to work, they just don’t want to work as much as we need them to. :slight_smile:

7

Lee> You should be proud (and probably are) of you ability to deal consistently with shitty quality of life, knowing that it was for signifigant long term gain ie:graduating and increasing quality of life with higher income.

Laziness may not cause poverty, but it can be a signifigant contributing factor, and probably determines quite a few ppls position in life.

I was most lazy when I was 18/19/20. I went on the dole (welfare in Australia) and had a high enough quality of life to have absolutely no need to find work. It just wasn´t a priority. This is probably the same reason a lot of ppl on welfare don´t get a job. THey just don´t see how it will improve their quality of life, and sometimes it doesn´t.

People have to improve the quality of their minds first before anything in their life can change.

Benno

8

Back in college, my classmates and I conducted an exercise wherein every student was given a certain number of playing cards – some of them more “rare” than others. Our objective was to trade cards with one another in an attempt to acquire more of the elusive “rare” cards.

After a few initial trades, most of the students – the ones who didn’t have the rare cards – just sat at their desks, doing nothing. They realized that the effort involved in trading far outstripped the likelihood that they would get a winning card.

When the exercise was over, the instructor looked at the class – the majority of whom had been sitting around idly – and said, “Think about that, the next time you say that people are poor because they’re lazy.”

9

WOW! $20 an hour?!

I was a manager for a company for years and never made $20 an hour! The work was far harder than cleaning a home!

Here abouts, I do know that the going rate for a house keeper, independent of a company, is only about $8 an hour. The cost of living might be cheaper here also.

I know quite a few poor people and they’re not lazy. Most work two jobs at minimum wage each, with no benefits, just to get to about $15000 a year. A couple do odd jobs between jobs. Stores are hiring around here, but they offer minimum, or just barely above, wage, mostly under 40 hours so they don’t have to pay over time or benefits.

Good high paying jobs locally are often beyond these people’s reach because they’re all technical or require degrees. I know one guy who put himself through college to become a draftsman and hopefully get a job with one of many good local firms. Well, every place he went, they were not hiring anyone but people with ‘experience.’ He got a job at one at $10 an hour, worked in the office for a week then was put to work on construction sites because ‘they decided they did not need another draftsman just yet,’ so he quit. He’s now working in a totally different field, making slightly better money, his drafting degree gathering dust.

10

I believe that’s the old name for what is now called TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and most of the recipients are single mothers with young children so childcare may have been the major obstacle. Even if, as in Carina’s example, there is free childcare available, many mothers will not want to use it and to some extent you can’t blame them for being choosy about who they leave their children with.

I’m not sure whether the question in the OP is “are poor people lazy” or “are unemployed people lazy”. There are large numbers of working poor who work extremely hard for very little reward. This is particularly true in the USA, where the combination of the “Work First” approach and limited duration of state benefits (e.g. TANF) combine to force some people into very low paid jobs.

I’ve done some research into unemployment (in the UK so YMMV); the principal reasons why people remain unemployed seem to be (in no particular order):

  1. Health: mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, other chronic illness (e.g. back pain), all of which are highly correlated with long-term unemployment

  2. Lack of skills: basic skills (literacy and numeracy); job-related skills and “soft” skills such as being able to speak to a customer politely (you’d be surprised how many people have genuine difficulty expressing themselves politely!)

  3. Family/personal circumstances: people caring for children, elderly relatives or a disabled spouse. As I said, people are very selective about whether or not to use a particular childcare facility and if they don’t like the ones that are available to them they may choose not to work rather than leave their children there.

  4. Motivation: As others have pointed out, it’s more complicated than simple lazyness. People who might have grown up in households where nobody worked and live in areas where very few people work don’t necessarily see full-time employment as the normal state of things. People who are made redundant (I think this is what Americans call “dislocated”) from declining industries after many years of work who have never had to go out and look for a job before. And people in areas of high unemployment who might have spent many months trying unsuccessfully to get and retain a job who eventually give up

  5. Transport: I don’t know if this is a problem in the US but many people in the UK live in areas where public transport provision is poor, can’t afford a car and don’t have the resources to relocate.

On to Carina’s advert, I can think of a few reasons why it didn’t get a response:

If it isn’t in a place where people are used to seeing job adverts, it might just not register with them or they might think that it’s not above board.

One day’s work a week isn’t enough to live on but it might affect TANF or other benefit payments. In other words, if they declare their income honestly they might be no better off.

No indication of the hourly rate might have made people suspicious that it would be less than the going rate and “flexible hours” might imply that you wanted them to be flexible to suit you, not vice-versa.

11

Maybe they were just all honest?:0

12

Not OP, just a ramble.

Motivation might be the most important factor in “bettering” ourselves, speaking just financially or materially.

I don’t have much by some standards, but I’m content. I have the time and money and could return to school and possibly find a better-paying job, but I’m okay with where I am. Or I could take a part-time job, save a bit more for retirement, longer vacations.

There are people where I work who work full-time and go to school, many have a part-time job or small business on the side. A few are working past retirement age, and one guy (who volunteers for all the overtime) came out of retirement and back to work because his wife was driving him bonkers.

They’re all more motivated than I am. All for different reasons. Some of them are supporting extra family members, a few have expensive drug habits. One woman works two jobs because she refuses to let her kids apply for student loans. Doesn’t want them to start off with all that debt.

Another woman works an extra job because she’s a jewelry nut – sees something she wants and clerks at K-Mart until she has enough money to buy a new ring or bracelet. Another guy restores classic cars, and one guy works extra to pay for his yearly fishing trip to Canada.

I wouldn’t mind doing any of those things, but I don’t want them as badly as they do. I could quit work and live on what my husband makes, but then I wouldn’t be able to have a new car, or buy the books I want. I guess I’m as motivated as I need to be, to get what I want.

13

I used to believe that poor people were poor because of health problems/mental problems, self esteem problems, all sorts of problems that people have mentioned. I still think this is mostly true but I never in my life have met someone that shook my beliefs in human nature like my step son and his father.
This is a guy (step son and father are the same type of person) who told me that he didn’t want to work, wanted to spend as much time watching tv and playing on the computer as he could and that work was a waste of time. He told me that he thought I was nuts for working as much as I do. He looks at life to be enjoyed and to let society support him and at people who work as wasting their life. Maybe he has a point. His dad and him live in a trailor together and work enough to pay for electricity, food and computer games (no car is needed, though father has one). I never even considered that there would be people that would VOLUNTARILY be poor! It was a shock.
I’d do light cleaning for a few hours a month for $20 an hour!

14

While there are, perhaps, good reason why some people are poor I still feel that there is no reason one cannot work as this situation bears testament to.

Mentioned in another post, I spent over three months working in Cleveland’s Housing Projects (when I lived there, but no longer) and I met quite a few interesting people. Only one of them (and I had to enter almost every apartment) was motivated to finding a job. He even gave me his resume to turn in for him where I worked, which I did. I’d HATE to live in that condition.

The projects’ required my company, which was contracted for the work, to hire a percentage of the labor force from the projects themselves. This was one full time person at $10 an hour. To give some light, I normally only made $8.50 (but this paid union wages, so I actually was making an absurd $26).
I primarily worked with this fellow because my coworkers couldn’t stand him. I had the opportunity to ask him how long he had lived there.
20 years.
Needless to say I was shocked. “God,” I said, “Do you like it here?!?” ; “Hell no,” he replied. But he found an hour every day to work out, an hour every day to drink a 40 with the other lazies, and only took this job to tide him over for a few months (to buy said alcohol and other…nicities).

So you can’t tell me poeple aren’t poor because they’re lazy. Out of every housing unit I was in, as well, I saw able-bodied men and women who didn’t work because they didn’t need to. Only twice did I find a tenent that had some factor which would impede employment. Though I am not a huge fan of generalizations, I find that at least here, in this location, the stereotype was true.

My two cents.

15

Since I’m not to sure of the area you live in, this is a WAG, but 20$ an hour is a damn good offer for housecleaning, maybe too good. If the building is full of people who usually make minimum wage or less, then they may have been suspicious that the offer was too good to be true, and afraid of what else the job might entail. But on the other hand, you’d think at least one person would call just to check it out.

16

I’m not sure lazy is the word. My experience in this area is almost non-existent, being a child of the relatively affluent suburbs, but from what I’ve read, I think there’s a small segment of the population that is just basically cynical and opportunistic. They think working is basically for suckers. Part of this comes from simply never having been socialized to work. Part of it is due to the fact that the marginal value of holding an unskilled job is not all that much of an improvement over a welfare stipend.

17

I guess I thought that if people thought the way I would in a similar situation, they would think thus: “Here’s
somebody offering cash for fairly mindless work; I should call & see how much I can make. If it seems like I can do this without affecting my dole, that could be “X” extra I can make a month for a few hours work.”

Bear in mind, I didn’t specify an amount. But I would have paid $40-60 for 2-3 hours of mainly cleaning floors. That’s what I had been paying.

Being an entreprenurial type, I would have thought further: “Wow. If I can clean one person’s house for $X, maybe I can clean 5 houses a week and make $X…and so on.” I guess that’s how I DO think, which is why I have worked my way up from nothing, own a house, have employees, some security, and a relatively good life. And all I do is paint houses.

So, maybe I’m being arrogant. But I grew up so poor that toilet paper was often a luxury, I remember my mother often making us casseroles out of rice and chicken food (I’m not making this up), and I had to work for any pocket money I had. And I, and my three siblings, are all very self-sufficient and quite successful. So I see people sitting around watching TV, (something I never had growing up) smoking, breeding, and waiting for a weekly check from the Big Titty, and I get a bit resentful. I pay taxes so some fat teenager can have babies, drink beer all day & watch Jerry Springer?

I’m trying to have some compassion (really.) I think of the inertia & the depression & the hopelessness that someone in that situation must feel. I’m not talking about people like Lee; I admire her perseverance, and those like her. I just can’t imagine the kind of inertia that leads someone to only be able to imagine a life of government subsidised, roach infested housing, no work, and no hope for improvement. I’m not talking about the working poor, the mentally ill, or the chronically addicted. I think it’s very sad that there seems to be a segment of the population that has so little hope, and so little pride, that nothing seems worth working towards.

OK, I’m sure I’ve pissed at least someone off out there!

18

I’ve been a public defender for almost 14 years and so I deal with truly indigent and largely hopeless people every day. Most of them are what I would call victims of circumstance- they grew up in poverty and just haven’t been able, for whatever reason, to escape it. Others could do something with their lives with a little effort, and it frustrates the hell out of me to see this. By the time they get to me, they’re not only broke but charged with a crime, and an awfully lot of the folks I represent are charged with drug offenses (don’t get me started on decriminalization).
I try not to be judgemental because it doesn’t seem fair- I was fortunate enough to have middle-class parents who encouraged me to go to college and law school and made sacrifices to see that I got there. I do think that s small minority of the people that I deal with are “just lazy”. Every once in a while I wind up with clinets who actually quit their jobs so they’ll qualify for representation by me rather than have to hire an attorney.
My $0.02.

19

I went through a year of coding school about four years ago through a federal job-training assistance program. The gummint paid for my tuition, books, supplies, and helped cover emergency expenses like car repairs, utility bills, and so forth. The only requirement is that I keep a job in this field for 5 years. At the time, it was that or welfare.

Most of the other people I went through school with were in the same fix I was in, who were looking for better jobs than grocery-store checkout clerk.

Some of the others, OTOH, were there because the state of Texas told them to get jobs or get kicked off the dole. (This was in the earliest days of welfare reform.) So, they stayed in school for as long as humanly possible. When the caseworker got wise to one of them, the student was forced to look for work. She deliberately botched every job she interviewed for, and took a minimum-wage job in a fast-food restaurant so she could claim she couldn’t find a job in her field to be able to stay in school. Another went through the program, then refused to get a job because she didn’t think it was right for a woman to work outside the home.

I’m not saying that these people are representative of all welfare recipients, or even poor people. Some are poor (as I was) because of circumstances outside their control; others are poor by choice, as these two people are. I guess it’s just where your priorities are.

Robin

20

I think we can probably agree that there is no one reason for poverty in this country. There is a different story to be heard for almost anyone in a bad way. The ‘lazy’ group exists (know many of them personally), but so do quite a few others as we’ve heard here.

The reasons for poverty in the US are quite different than those world-wide. I think many people who are at poverty level in other countries would do much better here (ie - the motivation would be there). I’m refering to those who currently have no choices where they live, but here would be able to go after many jobs (even what have been referred to in this thread as undesirable) and make a good life for themselves. What bugs me is that many citizens of the US believe they are above that. Too bad. I remember cleaning toilets as well as floors, and anythign else (legal) to make a dollar. No regrets. Things are very good now, but if I ever had to pull myself out from under again I’d look for any kind of work before a hand out.