Are you arguing that an average house costs the same as it did back in the 1970s? If the average house has increased in square footage, then I don’t see how this changes my point.
I don’t know what this has to do with my point, or the point of the article I referenced. It doesn’t matter to a Walmart employee if the housing prices have gone up because of the government or because of tea shortages in China. The point is that it’s harder to live on base pay now compared to 30 years ago.
Right. But when poor people use their hard-earned pennies on TVs rather than on mortgages they can’t afford, they are ridiculed big-time by middle-class Americans. Because FAIR WORLD. “If only people would do X, Y, and Z like I did, they wouldn’t be poor.”
Illegal immigrants are not a new problem, though. Illegals have always competed with the “bottom rung”. Something else besides illegal immigrants has to be at play.
I have been looking for that fucking article for months and months. It profoundly affected me, and I keep wanting to use it as an example/background in various debates. And I lost it.
So, THANK YOU.
As someone who was recently working three jobs to make ends meet, I have some contempt for those who don’t work three jobs to make ends meet.
But Broomstick’s experience is my worst nightmare. To find myself an older woman with antiquated skills, unwanted, unhireable. It would be even worse if I was in crushing debt from student loans, which can’t be forgiven.
I don’t know where I stand morally. But I know that I am grateful for what I have, and willing to have less of it so that people less off can have more, like food stamps, health care, free educations.
My workplace offers free remedial education to anyone who wants it. Learning to read, write, speak English, and do math. You’d all be amazed at how many older adults can’t even do that. What do you do with the people who can’t get a McJob because they lack the skills to fill out a job application online? Or understand POS? Dunning-Kruger hypothesizes that we who are intelligent just assume everyone is as intelligent as us. But lots of people are dumb as shit.
It’s really easy to get discouraged about the whole world. Which is what that Slate article drives home. I cope by sending pet food to anyone who needs it. A little comfort is all people can hope for.
Some people cope using cynicism. Some people cope by turning a blind eye. Some people cope by getting very angry. But I wouldn’t accuse anyone of lacking true compassion.
I’m not inclined to provide a lesson in basic economics, but market forces “work” in the same sense that the winds and the tides work. It’s not always “fair”. But being unemployed doesn’t make someone “lazy” any more than getting your house knocked down by a tornado does.
No one is asking you to feel “guilty”, but it’s pretty shitty to not have any empathy for someone just because they made some bad choices.
I agree the influence goes both ways, but believe the influence by the public on “for-profit” media is much greater than the other way around.
People hunt down the view point they want to read and the most successful media sources are good at providing it. When the media looks for a point of view that sells articles, there really is no influence on public behavior except solidifying the beliefs the public already wants to have.
The question really is if the New York Times can get away with portraying the working poor in a sympathetic light even if they wanted to. They would lose too many readers.
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.
This might not always be the case, but in general, the solution to poverty in America is to become rich. 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.
The most popular financial planning books are called “I Will Teach You to Be Rich.” Again, there is no book about how to increase your salary to middle class and be happy.
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:
How to find a job making $40k-50k that I can be happy with.
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.)
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.
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.
I think people should be comfortable with a certain level of income inequality. If your guy on a moped was not slowly dying off exhaust fumes, I think he should be learn to accept the guy flying above him.
But they are poor people issues because the poor become truly hopeless without them.
I really don’t know what to make of this. It seems like you’re saying that going from abject poverty to lower middle class isn’t something an individual should strive for because no one is going to make a movie about it. I know that can’t be what you mean (because it would be insane), but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what else you could be saying.
Are you really equating a $40K-50K job with poverty?
I agree that high school students could really benefit from a class on personal finance, survival skills, and frugal living. But I’m not at all interested in a class about how to be poor.
If 2500 years of Buddhism hasn’t successfully cured humanity of all desire and ambition, I don’t think “shoulding” from the internet will accomplish anything.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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?
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!
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.
You think $50k is poverty?
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.
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.
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.
There’s income inequality and then there is stacking the deck against people.
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.
Of course no one is immune to poverty if one becomes mentally or physically disabled. One of my neighbors was a six figure IT engineer. Then around 35 he had a brain anyeurism and can barely remember how to put his clothes on.
Every situation is different. Working in fast food is a bit like being in jail in that you look around you and you know that sure, a couple of these guys got railroaded but most are here for a reason. It’s very rare that you work in fast food and look at someone and say, “Wow, how’d you end up here?” And you also tend to know within a few days who has a future and who doesn’t among your co-workers.
And then there’s always THAT guy, that guy who has a nice house and a family despite no skills other than a great attitude and a willingness to work hard. Helps not to waste your already low wages on vices too.
Well it skews the statistic used to make your point so I think it changes your point about disproportionately higher costs.
A great deal of consumer goods have declined in cost because of places like Walmart. Food, clothing and luxury items have gone down.
Isn’t that true? While I was underemployed I worked repairing rental houses. I’ve seen first hand how foolishly money is spent.
Illegal immigrants are not a new problem, though. Illegals have always competed with the “bottom rung”. Something else besides illegal immigrants has to be at play.
[/QUOTE]
true befut we had a recession that got swept under the rug. 1 in 5 people are on food stamps. It’s still going on.
This bears repeating because it perfectly distills the problem.
Luck plays an incredibly important role in a person’s success; more so than aptitude or base intelligence, or even something meritorious like education.
I lost a job recently and while it could be argued that certain choices I made could have avoided or delayed my dismissal, at the end of the day it came down to the dice roll of being stuck with a couple poisonous co-workers. The exact same work I did in a parallel company would have awarded me a fat raise and a promotion. Sadly, so much outcome is determined by the perceptions and ambitions of those around you… and you don’t usually get to choose those factors.
Luck is overwhelmingly important from day to day. Throughout a lifetime, not so much. Anyone can lose a job. But if you have skills the market wants, you’ll continue to find employment. It’s kinda like the stock market, there’s no way to predict which way a stock will go on a given day. Your life is the same way. No way to predict if you’ll have a good day or bad day. But over the long term, it doesn’t take a genius to find a successful stock, or a successful person. If a person lives a healthy lifestyle, avoids sleeping with anything that walks, and puts a decent effort into what they do, they are unlikely to spend much, if any, time in poverty.
Sorry - see, this is yet another illustration that most people just don’t understand how threadbare the safety net really is.
Point one: The waiting list for Section 8 in my county is TEN YEARS LONG. If I had signed up the day I was laid off from my last corporate job I would be in the exact same situation today because it hasn’t been ten years yet since I fell out of the middle class. I have no idea how the hell people on that list are supposed to get by while waiting.
Point two: The waiting list for Section 8 in my county is CLOSED. And has been for years. Meaning, they are not adding anyone to that list. Maybe there is a waiting list to get on the waiting list, I’m not sure about that.
Section 8 is fucking useless you’re already on the list.
Come spring I’ll be on the roof, trying to help the landlord find and seal up the leaks, that’s a far more productive step towards sound housing for us than Section 8.
Broomstick’s situation is why I am grateful to come from a big extended family that all lives nearby.
I would never want to be in that situation. While I can’t guarantee it would never happen, by fostering a good relationship with my siblings, parents, and other relatives we all look out for each other. Since there’s so many of us, one person falling on hard times isn’t treated like a burden.
But I understand not everybody is humble enough to ask or offer help from relatives. White people in particular seem rather FYGM about it.
Somewhere down the line capitaism stopped working for the people and people started working for capitalism. How about Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ smoke and mirrors bullshit?
There is plenty of wealth in society - really, plenty.
Relying on family is a great strategy as long as your family don’t become millstones and you don’t get sucked into the abyss of Neediness.
A lot of times, people are held back by caring so much for family. How can I say “no” to Uncle Fester’s request for money so he can get his motorcycle fixed, when last year he let me crash on his couch? And it’s too bad I have to babysit Cousin Oliver again this weekend in hopes that Aunt Edith can finally get a job and pay me back that $1000 I loaned her…because I sure would like to pick up an extra shift at work.
One way to optimize one’s earnings is to be geographically flexible. That’s really hard to do when the family unit’s survival depends on you being there.
So it’s…complicated. I would definitely tell someone to try to maintain family ties and connections. But I wouldn’t advise them to always live in proximity to family. Sometimes being far away is exactly what a person needs to do to escape poverty (see the fascinating documentary “The Wonderful Whites of West Virginia”).
When I said “The solution to poverty in America is to become rich” I meant “America’s solution to poverty is to teach poor people how to become rich.” And I do not agree with that solution. That was a poorly worded phrase on my part that you and Broomstick misinterpreted.
I think our policy for poverty should be to teach poor people how to handle poverty, and how to strive for the lower middle class instead of the upper classes. Go for $40,000, and not salaries over $200k. And like I said earlier, the government should guarantee some basic necessities in case things get rough.
No. I think under $20K is poverty. Keep in mind my regional bias because I’m from NYC.
I think you should be. I’m going to try an analogy here. It would be like having a class on what to do should you get a flat tire. What if you become homeless? What should you do?
The reason I think this is a good idea is because I’ve seen few people who did not know their child was eligible for free healthcare.
We do not need to be absolute here. A small decline in envy and jealousy would do the trick.
Well sure, it’s no guarantee just like anything else, be it health, stable job, stable home, etc. But I have also observed people who had loving, supportive families pretty much ditch them to go live far away, and never really consider their family could have helped them in a genuine and non exploitative manner.
I guess that is along the lines of your financial disacuity thread- people that refuse help that is offered. But when your poor, it can be embarrassing to admit, and asking for help makes it hard to delude yourself into thinking things aren’t so bad.
But all that is why I’m glad I have the family I do. I’m not in Broomstick’s situation, and I am so glad for that. I mean, who would willingly want that life? And if I was in that situation, I certainly wouldn’t be talking about it on the internet. Because that would be pretty humiliating. More than being poor in the first place.
I’m sure Broomstick doesn’t need or appreciate your pity.
And I for one am grateful for Brookstick’s presence in threads like this. To let the SD denizens tell it, only stupid, lazy people are poor and life is universally swell for everyone. It can be quite echo-chamberish sometimes here. Her tales of woe (and triumph, too) help to provide a much-needed balance, even though we don’t always agree on everything.
You don’t know the family resources she has access to, or how many she’s already exploited. As a outsider, it seems like family loyalty (her disabled husband) is the thing that’s really holding her back. In terms of pure dollars and cents, she’d be better off cutting loose and going her own way. And yet, I wouldn’t dare suggest to her that my life is better than hers just because she has made a choice (marital loyalty) that I haven’t. It’s great that you have made a choice to use family to buffer you from the cold, harsh realities of the world. But this could just as easy be a “poor choice” for Broomstick or another person. It often is.
Maybe figure out what’s going on behind the scenes before you say someone’s life is “humiliating”.