# Do we have less compassion for the poor? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 15, 2015, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-less-compassion-for-the-poor/712707 "2015-02-15T06:33:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 47
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-less-compassion-for-the-poor/712707/47 "2015-02-16T04:04:22Z")
> [@Lakai](#): > > Right now though, what sort of compassion am I supposed to have? I’m aware that some people like Broomstick exist that fall on hard times, but what I am supposed to do about it? Broomstick seems OK to me. I’m not, really, though - I mean, yes, I have a roof over my head, heat in the winter, and food on the table but the roof leaks every time it rains and there’s no getting rid of the mold in the walls anymore. The bar next door had three people shot last week but I can’t afford to move - there’s no way in hell I can come up with a security deposit on a new place, I can barely make the rent where I am now much less save up for a month’s worth extra for security. Instead, I wake up to gunfire at 2 am and dive under the bed. I have a truck that _could_ be helping us make money (it has in the past) but I had a choice between buying toilet paper and paying the co-pays for my spouse’s medication this week and fixing the broken fuel pump. I need new glasses desperately but can’t afford new lenses. I really need to bring in about $300-500 more a month but on the current advancement track at work that will be at least 3 years if all goes well. My spouse is disabled and trying to compete with the able-bodied in the job market is just not working. They cut our food by stamps $150 when I got a $0.25/hour raise at work because somehow by making an extra $42 a month means I can somehow stretch that $42 over what it took $150 to buy the month before. No, I’m not doing well at all. I’m not constantly whining about it either, in part because getting on line to a place like this is an escape of sorts for me. > [@](#): > > And I do not think people who are poor need help. I think starving, homeless, or sick people need help, but not poor people. My disabled spouse needs a job - would you hire him? Otherwise, under our current system he is entitled to NOTHING other than food stamps. I live in a house where the back porch literally fell off the building two years ago, the roof leaks, we have mold, we have raccoons nesting in the attic… and I can barely afford the rent on this dump as it is. It’s a damn shame because when we moved in 16 years ago the place was kept up. So while I’m not homeless the housing sucks. As I noted, our monthly food benefit was cut $150/month because I earn $42 more a month at work. Apparently this is to “encourage” me to improve my situation. > [@](#): > > Being poor sucks terribly, but I do not think we should help by trying to get people out of poverty. How about enabling people to _survive_ poverty? How about affordable housing, meaning someone can live in a safe, intact, and decent place at minimum wage? > [@](#): > > What I would do is focus on teaching people how to be poor, rather than teaching them how to escape poverty. What the hell do you think you can teach me about “how to be poor”? Have YOU ever lived on an income below the poverty line? Please, give me some details on your plan here. > [@Flyer](#): > > Those of you who claim that we have no compassion for the poor have an “inconvenient truth” of your own to face–the remarkable level of charitable giving in this country. > > Considering the fact that Americans give billions of dollars to charity every year, I would say that your premise is fatally flawed. > > Furthermore–although many people on this board will hate to hear this–religious people are more likely to give to charity than non-religious people, and Republicans are more likely to give to charity than Democrats. I have been turned away from more than one soup kitchen/food pantry because I wasn’t Christian. Which is the problem with religious charity - they ARE allowed to discriminate. Government benefits have to be given to all without discrimination - which no doubt pisses the hell out of the bigots. Charitable giving means nothing if you aren’t in one of the groups that can access it. > [@Deeg](#): > > I’m not sure I agree with the original premise. Is there less compassion for the poor? According to this site we’re spending roughly as [much on welfare](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending) (as a %GDP) as ever. What evidence are we using to say that there is less compassion for the poor? Maybe it’s about more than money? When I’m working a cash register and some woman hands over a WIC voucher and someone two customers back mutters “why are my taxes paying for that slutty whore’s bastards?” that’s sort of the opposite of compassion, don’t you think? (How said person determines the marital status of a woman with two toddlers I haven’t a clue, I assumed that ring on her left hand was for marriage but I’m just a dumb poor person myself.) When the state will pay for insurance coverage of children but refuses to give one dime to the medical needs of the kid’s parents that’s not compassion. Do I really need to keep going? > [@Stringbean](#): > > Most people who are really poor are the ones having babies when they are 17 and have no skills and will likely never even finish high school. > > There are outliers, but the stereotypes are not entirely unfounded. I can’t bring myself to feel guilty for the single mother of 3 kids. There’s no bad luck in that. She knowingly set her fate in motion. Yes, it just sucked if, instead of being 17 and unmarried she was in fact 25 when she had her first and her husband was killed or died or something, right? Tell me, HOW do you know which sort of single-woman-with-kids is which? How about single fathers with kids, do they deserve help or not? The truth is you ASSUME that a poor woman was a young slut when you _don’t know_ whether or not she was. Hell, I’ve seen a lot of people assume a poor woman was a single mother when in fact she was married and had been years before having a family. I’ve known quite a few middle-class people who used to despise the poor and repeat all the stereotypes suddenly find themselves poor and subject to the same scorn they used to heap on others. > [@Lakai](#): > > I don’t think my line was arbitrary. In any case, a line has to be drawn somewhere. I don’t think having good schools or public transportation are poverty issues. If the government is spending money on these things then they should work well, regardless of who uses them. Yes, good schools ARE a poverty issue because lack of education enormously increases the risk of poverty continuing another generation. What kids to escape poverty, or avoid it entirely? You need to educate them. That costs money. Problem is, we fund schools based on local geography so poor areas have less funding for schools than wealthy areas, further perpetuating unequal opportunities and greatly increasing the risk that poor children will be poor all their lives. If you don’t have public transportation that is reliable and useful for commuters then in order to have any job at all you will need a reliable car… which is an additional expense for the poor. If people in such an area lose their car they lose their job, followed rapidly by losing their home. In such places the disabled who are unable to drive can not find jobs at all, even if they’re capable of work. You don’t think that’s a poverty issue? > [@](#): > > This might not always be the case, but in general, the solution to poverty in America is to become rich. Oh, THANK YOU, I’ve been wondering _all this time_ how the hell I cure my poverty. ALL I HAVE TO DO IS BECOME RICH!!! Hallelujah! Now, why isn’t everyone a billionaire already? > [@](#): > > There is no movie about a poor person who triumphantly becomes comfortable with a living wage of $20,000 per year. Or where he goes from $20,000 to $40,000 and becomes happy. Although, oddly enough, a LOT of people living on $10k or $15k a year WOULD be happy with those wages. Holy crap, I’d be deliriously happy to be making $20k a year! > [@](#): > > In school I was taught how to put money into my IRA to become a millionaire when I retire. I was taught how to network and get a six figure job. Here is what I was not taught: So… what were you taught if, 20 or 30 years into your career your job is made obsolete by new technology and you lose that 6 figure job? What do you do when the choice is between cashing out some or all of that IRA _right now_ so you have a place to live or being homeless? You ASSUME that you are magically protected from misfortune. You are not. > [@](#): > > 1. How to find a job making $40k-50k that I can be happy with. You think $50k is poverty? > [@](#): > > 1. How to understand financial products such as credit cards, mutual funds, and IRAs (“I Will Teach You to Be Rich” is actually a good resource if you want to learn.) Yeah, I know about those things. Problem is when you have to choose between keeping those savings for a future two decades away or putting a roof over your head RIGHT NOW. > [@](#): > > 1. How to apply for food stamps and other welfare programs. Seriously here, can you imagine a class on this? Even if you are not poor it would be helpful because you can help out others who fall on hard times. Right now the best method of figuring out social programs is reading the government’s incompressible website and waiting 45 minutes on hold during your lunch hour for someone at their information line. See, this is proof you are not poor. That is NOT the best way to “figure out” social programs. What you do is go down to the welfare office and, while you’re sitting on those broken down cheap-ass folding chairs in the big room waiting for your “counselor” to get around to you, you turn to those scary-looking “ghetto” people sitting around you, the ones whose small talk makes it clear they’ve been in the system for years, and you say “Hey, I’m new here, got any pointers?” In addition to how to work the system you are also likely to learn which local junkyard pays most for aluminum cans, where the best soup kitchens are, which food pantries also provide things like toiletries and winter clothing, and how to strip the padding off a mattress so you can sell the bedspring as scrap steel. In other words, stop assuming those other folks are as stupid as you’ve been told as these years and TALK TO THEM, you know, the people who actually survive day to day as poor people. > [@](#): > > 1. How to not buy an iphone. Everyone needs to learn how to not want an iphone. You can pull off being poor if you can keep sane with a flip phone. The iphone here can be a metaphor for any other expensive product that people only need psychologically. Yeah, the iPhone thing does bother me - although most folks I know at my income level are not using iPhones, they’re using a cheaper knockoff, or bought a _used_ phone from a couple of versions ago cheap off eBay or Craigslist, and the like. > [@](#): > > I think people should be comfortable with a certain level of income inequality. There’s income inequality and then there is stacking the deck against people. > [@Terr](#): > > Anyone who “used to clear 7 digits a year in profit” and is now “poor” is a wastrel idiot and is solely responsible for his current condition. Or maybe he’s become disabled… but of course, that NEVER happens to “good” people who do the right things, correct? And then he tried to keep up his properties despite bleeding money because he felt, I dunno, _compassion_ for his tenants or something. When he couldn’t work and therefore had _no income_. While dealing with medical bills. Because - SURPRISE! - insurance doesn’t cover everything. Then he sold off property to pay the bills on what was left. He’s down to 5 buildings and 6 or 7 tenants (some buildings are duplexes). I suppose he could sell Mrs. H’s building… but she’s on the transplant list waiting for a lung, even if she could afford to move she is _unable_ to do so. He could sell my building off… but then I’d be homeless, wouldn’t I? Rinse and repeat. Well, he didn’t have to throw Mr. and Mrs. J out - they died at home, elderly folks and all that. Then sold that house to pay the bills on the rest. Funny, _no one_ ever seems to consider they might become disabled and wind up poor because of it. When the person that happens to is a business owner or a landlord it just spreads it out further and affects more people. It really sucks when you are essentially forced to retire 20 years early, cash out those accounts to survive, and faced with six digit bills you in no way anticipated. That’s why I said _no one_ is immune. Well, maybe Bill Gates - if you have a billion dollars you’re probably safe. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-have-less-compassion-for-the-poor/712707)._