# Being Working Poor Sucks and So Does Hayward **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 8, 2005, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447 "2005-04-08T18:54:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/101 "2005-04-10T23:59:00Z")
> [@kung fu lola](#): > > **Natto** , your post was a complete non-sequitur. No one is suggesting that people who are irresponsible with their money, or have their priorities screwed up, are entitled to be let off the hook. Oh, and inkleberry’s stem-winder about how we should all kiss our local plumber’s ass **wasn’t** a non-sequitur? Pardon me, I thought I’d wandered into an episode of Bad Rhetoric Theatre and thus entitled to my own soliloquy. But apparently that’s reserved for the Impoverished Wounded Madonna. My mistake. Yes, I have a bit of anger. Glad you picked up on it. I’m angry at the fact that I worked 5 part-time jobs out of college to improve my life and now I get dismissed as a classist by some money-illiterate fuck who think it’s my fault that their own life choices aren’t as lucrative as they’d like. I cherish my financial well-being and ability to care for myself and my family far more than I would some meritocrat’s trophy degree or living in the Right Zip Code. I make my choices. You make your choices. It’s all good until you start whining about how you don’t like the outcome of your choices, then I get irritated. But thankfully I don’t run into these kinds of whiners in RL, so I’m more than happy to exit this thread and put it on the “don’t really give a fuck” pile. ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/102 "2005-04-11T00:11:56Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > I’m angry at the fact that I worked 5 part-time jobs out of college to improve my life and now I get dismissed as a classist by some money-illiterate fuck who think it’s my fault that their own life choices aren’t as lucrative as they’d like. I cherish my financial well-being and ability to care for myself and my family far more than I would some meritocrat’s trophy degree or living in the Right Zip Code. Well then that explains your anger. Guess what, Chico, there are people in this world who have worked **just as hard as you have** , or even harder, and they end up worse off than you, not because of some personal failing, or a choice they made, but because we live in a cold and indifferent Universe that randomly rains illness, disaster and destruction of property upon its inhabitants. You’re not a success because you’re superior to anyone else; you’re a success because you are lucky. It scares you that you could have just as easily been unlucky, and your reaction is anger. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/103 "2005-04-11T00:26:29Z")
> [@kung fu lola](#): > > You’re not a success because you’re superior to anyone else; Fair enough. > [@](#): > > you’re a success because you are lucky. You would know this how, exactly? Unmitigated bullshit. > [@](#): > > It scares you that you could have just as easily been unlucky, and your reaction is anger. It scares me that so many people are abjectly incapable of ever seeing any difference between luck and effort, and it angers me when this belief is stridently advertised. It scares me that so many people think that success is invariably an undeserved function of luck, and it angers me when people apply insipid armchair psychoanalysis to me. I’m glad we’ve been able to straighten this out. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/104 "2005-04-11T00:40:53Z")
Changed your mind about not giving a fuck, huh, **NattoGuy**? ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/105 "2005-04-11T00:41:09Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > I’m glad we’ve been able to straighten this out. Why are you still here, oh superior being? Didn’t you already crap out your “Screw you guys, I’m a going home” statement back in post [post #101](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6041632&postcount=101)? ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/106 "2005-04-11T00:50:28Z")
**inkleberry** , my sympathies are with you and your family. You have suffered some misfortunes that were unexpected, and not your fault at all. That said, I must disagree with your claim that the government does nothing for working parents, whose taxes are indeed lower than non-parents who make the same money. I’m more in agreement with you that the working class _in general_ gets shafted these days. I sincerely hope that you soon find yourself in better circumstances. Your insight on what it was like to work your way into them will be priceless. ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/107 "2005-04-11T00:56:18Z")
**Natto** , you still don’t get it. It’s not JUST luck or JUST effort. It’s both coming together. Why do you refuse to embrace the complexity of this? Actually, don’t answer that. I’d prefer if you shut up like you promised to back in post #101. ---
**Author:** ![milroyj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@milroyj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milroyj)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/108 "2005-04-11T01:01:14Z")
FMLA didn’t come into law until 1993. So what happened before then? Children were dying in the streets? **Paid** maternity leave is a benefit, not a right. That’s it in a nutshell. ---
**Author:** ![violacrane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c57346/32.png) [@violacrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/violacrane)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/109 "2005-04-11T01:19:47Z")
Well Jesus Fucking Christ, why do Americans hate each other so much? There is so much arrogant class hatred in this thread that I am truly gobsmacked, even though I have been on the internet for years. For the well to do to call on the poor to abort or give up their children is verging on the genocidal. And if all the lowly service workers in America did this, where would the next generation of workers come from – the children of the rich? Well only the slackers who failed all their exams, so that would be OK wouldn’t it. You have my sympathies Inkleberry. Ever thought about moving away altogether? There are tons of nice places in the EEC where you wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of crap. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Cymbeline](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_cymbeline/32/9244_2.png) [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/110 "2005-04-11T01:22:44Z")
> [@inkleberry](#): > > It’s very very simple when you aren’t facing it. It’s the simplest thing in the world to make decisions on situations you aren’t facing without actually having to live with the results. Honey, I have faced it before. I got an aborition and it was the best decision I ever made. If I hadn’t done it, I may have never finished college and I certainly wouldn’t have the awesome career I have now. And I still have plenty of time to have kids. And I will be able to support them comfortably. > [@inkleberry](#): > > And by the way, suggest my son would be better as an abortion again and I will hunt you down and beat the ever-living crap out of you. Well now, you started this pit thread, complaining up a storm about your situation. Well, you wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t had an unplanned child, now would you? There are only so many things in life we have real control over, and reproduction is one of them, thank goodness. Well you made your bed, now lie in it. Don’t threaten me with violence. Seems like that seedy place Hayward has started to influence you… ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/111 "2005-04-11T01:32:19Z")
> [@nyctea scandiaca](#): > > Well, you wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t had an unplanned child, now would you? There are only so many things in life we have real control over, and reproduction is one of them, thank goodness. If they’d planned to have the baby, the father wouldn’t have lost his job? The baby wouldn’t have racked up 50k in medical bills? One couple saying “Let’s have a baby” would have redeemed the neighborhood? Planning for the future is great and commendable and responsible, but how much would this have changed? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/112 "2005-04-11T01:48:13Z")
> [@kung fu lola](#): > > **Natto** , you still don’t get it. > > It’s not JUST luck or JUST effort. It’s both coming together. Why do you refuse to embrace the complexity of this? Actually, don’t answer that. I’d prefer if you shut up like you promised to back in post #101. OK, so I have to embrace this as a “complex situation,” but it’s OK for everyone else to reduce it to “The poor are shafted” and “The not-poor are just lucky.” Right fucking on. Yes, I’d planned to exit the thread, but it’s just so much fun to knock these bloopers out of the park… you’re welcome to keep tossing them if you like, though. ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/113 "2005-04-11T01:49:08Z")
> [@Fionn](#): > > One couple saying “Let’s have a baby” would have redeemed the neighborhood? > > Planning for the future is great and commendable and responsible, but how much would this have changed? It wouldn’t. **nyctea** is saying that if they **hadn’t** had an unplanned child **at all** , they wouldn’t be in this situation. Not that I agree with her. I’m just saying it’s not like she was trying to tell **inkle** that she could have said the magic words and made everything ok. What she actually said something much, much worse. ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/114 "2005-04-11T01:50:36Z")
> [@NattoGuy](#): > > OK, so I have to embrace this as a “complex situation,” but it’s OK for everyone else to reduce it to “The poor are shafted” and “The not-poor are just lucky.” And you can just keep on attributing asinine things to me that I didn’t actually say, and I’ll keep on telling you that you’re talking like a moron. ---
**Author:** ![davenportavenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f8ce5/32.png) [@davenportavenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davenportavenger)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/115 "2005-04-11T02:06:33Z")
> [@nyctea scandiaca](#): > > Well, you wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t had an unplanned child, now would you? Goddamn, you’re almost as bad as a pro-lifer. **inkleberry** made the decision to carry her child to term and keep him, just as someone else might make the decision not to carry a fetus to term, and yet another would give it up for adoption. It’s all about choice, and what gives you the right to tell another person they made the wrong one in such a withering tone? How do you feel when anti-abortion people criticize you for having one? You don’t like having your choice criticized, I’m sure; neither does someone who chose to carry to term even if they were in a sub-optimal situation. Despite being in “the same situation,” you have no idea whether or not ink made the right decision because you’re not her. Self-righteous pro-abortion (not pro-choice) people piss me off. And in general, re: the OP–isn’t she allowed to bitch a little? Isn’t that what the Pit is for, bitching? I know I feel pretty hesitant to post anything here about negative things going on in my life because I’ll get 200 rugged individualists telling me that my problems are all my fault and that I have no right to complain. Which they do while stealing man-hours from their employers, on the company computers. Sometimes people don’t want advice, they just want to vent. I thought the SDMB was a safe place to do that but I guess I was wrong. Back to LJ for me! ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/116 "2005-04-11T02:23:13Z")
> [@nyctea scandiaca](#): > > Honey, I have faced it before. I got an aborition and it was the best decision I ever made. If I hadn’t done it, I may have never finished college and I certainly wouldn’t have the awesome career I have now. And I still have plenty of time to have kids. And I will be able to support them comfortably. Well, aren’t you special? Hang on to that nice warm feeling of smugness you get when you see others in less-fortunate circumstances and think to yourself that you could never be like them, because you have made All The Right Decisions. That feeling and fifty cents will buy you a cup of coffee at McDonald’s. Your abortion was a great decision for you. It wasn’t a great decision for **inkleberry**. So get off her ass about it. ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/117 "2005-04-11T02:27:55Z")
> [@continuity eror](#): > > I know I feel pretty hesitant to post anything here about negative things going on in my life because I’ll get 200 rugged individualists telling me that my problems are all my fault and that I have no right to complain. Which they do while stealing man-hours from their employers, on the company computers. Sometimes people don’t want advice, they just want to vent. I thought the SDMB was a safe place to do that but I guess I was wrong. Back to LJ for me! OMG, everything I hate about the SDMB is coming up in this thread! I am so glad I’m not alone, I thought I was the only person who felt this way. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/118 "2005-04-11T02:35:11Z")
> [@kung fu lola](#): > > OMG, everything I hate about the SDMB is coming up in this thread! I am so glad I’m not alone, I thought I was the only person who felt this way. To be fair to the SDMB, it seems like far more people in this thread have been sympathetic to **inkleberry** then otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/119 "2005-04-11T02:42:12Z")
> [@nyctea scandiaca](#): > > Honey, I have faced it before. I got an aborition and it was the best decision I ever made. If I hadn’t done it, I may have never finished college and I certainly wouldn’t have the awesome career I have now. And I still have plenty of time to have kids. And I will be able to support them comfortably. > Well now, you started this pit thread, complaining up a storm about your situation. Well, you wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t had an unplanned child, now would you? There are only so many things in life we have real control over, and reproduction is one of them, thank goodness. Well you made your bed, now lie in it. Don’t threaten me with violence. Seems like that seedy place Hayward has started to influence you… Well, congrats on your abortion and all that, honey. Well, you might have considered birth control, you know. You would have avoided all that nasty expense and clinic visits and all, and your life would have been only God-knows-HOW much more incredibly awesome than it is. Well, smarmy smug vindictive shit-disguised-as-honey like “you made your bed now lie in it” is absolutely sickening. Inkleberry has as much right to have a baby as you did to have an abortion, for God’s sake, what the hell is wrong with you? Can people not be unhappy with their current circumstance without getting a lecture about how they shoulda done what you did? This is just nasty, bitchy bullshit, and if you’re as intelligent as I always thought you were, you should know better. I’m truly, truly sorry to realize that here’s yet another Doper who can’t be decent to someone in a tough situation. Congrats–it ain’t easy to make my shit list, but you’ve managed. Not that it’ll matter, 'cause your life is so, well, awesome. _Honey._ ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447/120 "2005-04-11T02:50:18Z")
Yes, an abortion, like a divorce, is–should be–a last resort. Certainly nothing to be proud of. Sheesh. **Inkleberry** could not have foreseen that the poor kid would have health problems and that hubby would lose his job. But those are all temporary setbacks. Five, ten, twenty years from now, that boy will still be loving his parents while this current financial distress is long forgotten. Best of luck to them all. And the OP has a right to be mad at how life is jerking them around. And this is the place to complain when life is jerking you around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/being-working-poor-sucks-and-so-does-hayward/298447.md?page=7)