There was a thread a couple years ago about 'what do you spend on groceries?". One thing that was really interesting is that people that estimated had MUCH lower numbers than people who keep itemized records. It seems to be almost reflexive to underestimate how much food costs, and only strict record keeping belays that.
There are assumptions here.
First, I have a lot of nice, expensive things which I acquired before I was poor. While I agree there is some generational poverty not all people who are poor started out that way. Possession of quality items does not mean there is cheating or poor decision-making going on.
Second, different people have different priorities. It may be that the TV is the ONLY entertainment a person has, in which case it becomes far more important to them than it would be to someone with other options.
Third, not all of those high-ticket items were purchased at retail. There are second hand TV’s out there. There are occasional special deals where something like a big-screen TV might become available at a great reduced price. A boat might have been obtained in poor condition and repaired/restored. When I initially started buying from Goodwill and the like I was astounded at just how much designer stuff is available. Some of those fancy leather coats, designer handbags, and high fashion shoes you see were purchased second-hand and at bargain prices.
Yes, I, too, get irritated at people making bad decisions but I’ve become far less judgmental over time and with experience. Yes, there are people genuinely over-paying for cable, phones, and other things. There are other people who choose one luxury and forgo the rest. I try to find the context before I engage enragement.
Right. The difference is that making repeated $1,000 mistakes is going to have more impact on someone with a poverty level income than someone with a $500,000 income. Poor people are penalized severely and immediately for bad decision making. Wealthier people can get away with it for years before the consequences catch up to them.
Yes, I am, however what you said was
(Emphasis added). The wording implies that while it is not guaranteed it’s much more likely you’ll have a good outcome than if you don’t take those steps. Also, what miss elizabeth said in posts #76 and #79. Again, while that might have been true a couple decades ago the Great Recession changed the equation. There are a LOT of long-term unemployed who are college-educated, stably married, and so forth but simply can not find anything above rock-bottom wages right now.
Pretty close, with a few caveats:
We’ll probably get ten servings out of the tub of feta, the parmesan and butter will last six months, and the vinaigrette was literally red wine vinegar and olive oil whisked together, so those are all semi-staples. On the other hand, the linguine was the second half of a $4/pound box, and the cherry (not grape… ew) tomatoes were more like $2 for the half carton I used. I’m in Cincinnati, fwiw.
I’m not arguing with you, other than maybe the “quick” part. It took a solid 40 minutes of me keeping an eye on the stove, which is a lot if you’re also trying to keep an eye on a pack of kids or just spent nine or ten hours on your feet serving meals to other people.
Also, I got plenty of protein from the Bacon Cheese Quarter Pounder I had for lunch. 
OK, you got me on the tomatoes. I estimated that one, because I think tomatoes are teh ick, and I never buy them. 
A word on smartphones:
They’re not an entirely unreasonable choice for somebody on a budget. You can get a third-tier Kyocera Android or something for less than fifty bucks, and an unlimited data plan from Virgin Mobile for $35/month. Even less if you go with a third-hand Blackberry and a bargain-basement leased capacity carrier.
Around here, 1Mbit Internet + a land line is going be $40/month for the first year, excluding the bullshit modem rental fees. And you’ll need to beg, borrow, or steal a computer, and deal with all the headaches of operating a machine when you may be distinctly tech-unsavvy. And both the phone company and the cable company require credit checks. And none of it will be mobile.
That’s all fine and dandy, but my point was that “food deserts” are largely a concept generated to take responsibility away from the people who live near them, IMO.
It’s a lot easier and politically correct to say “But they live in a food desert!” than to say “They choose not to eat produce and healthy food.” If there was a market for it, someone would serve it, ergo there’s not a market for it, and blaming the “food desert” is deflecting the issue.
That summary is at least as oversimplistic as “just blaming the food desert”. Poor people can be willing to buy fresh healthy food but remain unable to buy enough of it to meet a supermarket’s profitability criteria. Moreover, sometimes zoning regulations make it easier for convenience stores to operate in poor neighborhoods than supermarkets or other fresh-food sources.
Imagining the market as some kind of omniscient benevolent god that will inevitably provide for all genuine consumer needs, so that if a seller for some good isn’t available to some buyers then the buyers must not actually want that good, is naive. Markets aren’t perfectly efficient and not all consumers have convenient access to everything they genuinely would like to buy.
I’ve written on this topic, and for periods of my life, I’ve been in extremely dire financial straits. So I think I can understand some of what is happening here.
First, as many have stated, lots of chronically poor people are born into families and networks where their fates are linked to others who are a huge financial drain. Whether it’s someone addicted to a substance, someone with a large number of dependents, health issues, etc. Further, in many cultural groups highly represented among the poor, collective identity trumps individual. At some point, you might realize that a family member’s poor decisions or ill health is weighing you down - and you will have to cut them off, or basically run the capitalist race with a huge weight on your back. The social and emotional cost of the former may be impossible for you to pay.
Robert Merton’s theory of anomie also suggests that there are rational decisions made by people in different socioeconomic strata. Take the two poles of his typology: conformists and rebels. Conformists agree with the dominant cultural ideology regarding the ends and means of social mobility. In the US, it’s some variant of work hard and get an education (means) which leads to economic stability (job, property, goods) (ends).
For rebels, they reject both the means and the ends, because they have compelling evidence that this doesn’t work out for people in their situation. They will know people that worked hard and tried to educate themselves, but they ended up in worse shape regarding the ends. If you’ve ever been around extreme poverty, you’ll know for every example of someone who “made it” there are twenty that for whatever reason, did not. It could be that the aforementioned obstacles were too difficult to overcome, racism, classism, bad luck, misapplied effort - or some combination. A rebellious mindset will also reject the trappings of success - so they may not desire a well paying job, or property - given that they are so elusive, those are things for “other people.” Such a mindset colors how people make decisions and their attitudes toward life.
I come from a family where money was never discussed. We had enough to get by, but not a lot of frills. When I was filling out the FAFSA for college, that’s when I learned how much my parents made. Even then, I didn’t know if it was a lot or a little. (I qualified for a Pell Grant.) Five years later I’m a successful honors grad teaching for $22K, paying $350/month for rent, as well as a number of deductions for certification classes, a computer, and other life expenses (insurance, car maintenance, etc.) By November I’m broke, living in a dining room in a house with three other people. I can’t pay my bills, and worse, when I do pay I’m late and paying the minimum amount.
I finally admit I’m in over my head and go to the consumer credit center. That’s where I learn that I’m essentially in financial bondage. They show me that the 27% APR I’m paying to Sears means I will never pay them off at the minimum payment. They taught me to pay the high interest debt first, regardless of the amount… essentially through this trial, and my parents’ own financial struggles, I learn more about personal finance in three months than I did in my previous 20 odd years. Compounding interest, predatory loans, etc.
That’s an education that most people in poverty never get. In the community around my son’s school, there are easily five payday loan stores. One is right across from the school. The store is clean and well lit, and they have toys in the lobby area (my son used to want to go in there and play). There are no banks, but a plethora of fast food places. There is one supermarket that carries most produce, but I notice their liquor section and processed food selection is larger than the same supermarket in far west (affluent) Austin.
I say this to point out that there are tons of structural, attitudinal, and self-esteem barriers that tie people down and keeps them in poverty. That’s not to say that personal responsibility doesn’t play a role. But for a lot of folks it’s like running a race with lead shoes.
Even today, where my parents are doing relatively well as they own their house and have great retirement income from their years of government and military service, I still hear my mom discussing tax refunds. I’m always trying to get a refund of $0, or even pay the Feds a little - I refuse to overpay Uncle Sam where I can have that money earnings interest, or even just use it day to day. My mom still wants that refund! Old habits die hard I guess.
And a schedule that very often is just absurd, it can be impossible to get all your classes scheduled in a single block. At the HS level, if there aren’t afternoon/night classes available, or if you’re in a rotating schedule and the school requires you to always attend at the same hours you just can’t.
I am currently working poor, I guess. I used to be a homeless heroin addict (and most of that time, I had a part time job!) so this is a step up. I make around $10 an hour, my fiance makes 16, but he was unemployed and working day labor until very recently. My food stamps got cut off a while ago because I was a bit over the cut off for them. I have a little bit of savings, for a car, but every so often an emergency happens and I have to cut into that. I live in a food desert, too. We recently got a Dollar General with a grocery section, before that I would have to ride my bike for 2 miles to get groceries and only take home what I could fit in the basket. No fancy feta cheese or red wine vinegar. I have a hard time getting salami, or tomatoes and peppers that aren’t wilted and gross. If I didn’t get a meal at work I’d probably starve, because I’m just too exhausted to cook anymore when I get home. We have two dogs, they don’t cost all that much for upkeep, and they keep burglars away from the house. One of them was thrust upon us when her owner died. We have a lucky enough arrangement where we don’t have to pay rent, but utilities and upkeep on the house take a chunk, even with roommates.
I do go to the bar more often than I would like to, but when I get off work at 2 am, that’s what’s open. I still need some socialization outside of work. Other than that, I spend no money for entertainment, except pitching on the internet bill (which was enormously helpful when I was unemployed and looking for a job).
Back when I was homeless, I had a major drug habit, but I honestly couldn’t have clawed my way out of poverty without that either. I won’t defend that, but it kept me warm, sane, and not in pain from walking hours a day.
This is a false conclusion. Capitalism does run on competition but the result is that some people do better than others. That doesn’t make the latter group losers.
Actually, for a lot of people not being among the top 10% (or 1%) DOES make you a loser.
I’m sure this brilliant analysis was based on copious market research-- interviews and focus groups on buying habits, talking with supermarket execs about how they choose sites, analytical mapping, etc. You do realize the food desert people didn’t pull this stuff out of their butts, right? There is research behind it, and there is research behind the ways to mitigate it.
I lived in a food desert. Sucked. I was about 1.5 miles from a (largely unaffordable) Whole Foods and 2 miles from a regular supermarket- not a trivial distance in a city where car ownership is not the norm. Four miles roundtrip in the snow with groceries isn’t sustainable. I had enough money to get groceries delivered to me and make last minute purchases a the gentrification-mart that sold a small selection of healthy foods at a a spectacular markup (I’d pay $2.00 for a banana, $6.50 for pasta sauce).
There have actually been some studies recently that indicate that the food desert may not actually be as widespread as the media made it seem at first and some studies that also show that even if the area is an actual food desert, it may not impact obesity as much as first reported.
The NY Times had an article last year regarding a couple of studies.
ETA: That article gives a pretty interesting link that includes an interactive map to check different areas of the country. USDA ERS - Food Access Research Atlas
This isn’t the Pit, so I’m not going to say exactly what I think about the posters who have been giving us their supposedly enlightened views about how the poor should just go and fuck themselves.
Suffice it to say that I will always well remember the warmth of a mere packet of fish and chips on my lap as my single mother who worked 70 hour weeks as a nurse just to keep us marginally above the poverty line drove us back from the take away. I remember the warmth of the fireplace that she bought.
If you weren’t born poor you probably don’t have similar kinds of memories of your parent’s sacrifice. Because your parents never sacrificed anything.
I don’t have to “Explain the “poor” mentality” to you, OP. You would never understand it anyway.
But by all means, you should feel entirely free to play the victim card, OP. I’m really happy for you that your parents were able to leverage their exalted socioeconomic status to fuck the rest of us and give you a “good” upbringing.
It’s not about an occasional sacrifice to create a cherished memory. It’s about bad decisions.
Making minimum wage, then spending $7 a day for lunch, you’re blowing 15% of your take home pay on 5 meals a week.
You don’t have “enough” money to buy a TV, so you take this deal from Rent a Center
You can buy these TVs today for $1150, so you’re paying 3.5x the retail price for luxury items. I guarantee you, people take these deals, and not one of them are financially secure.
Well, we ate cheap yesterday: Kielbasi (1/2 link, link bought on sale so 50 cents), an onion (from a two pound bag, about 30 cents), and a bag of dry small white beans (60 cents, also bought on sale) and some pepper and other spices which don’t cost enough per use to count. Makes a huge pot of tasty beans, easily fed three people with enough left over for a lunch or two. Also a stewed apples/oranges side dish – 79 cents (since I got the ingredients off the reduced cart.)
Call it $2.20 for three adults. Cheap and tasty.
OTOH, not at all fast. I started the beans soaking the night before, and the total cooking time was just shy of two hours. Not that I had to stand over it for that time, but that’s the elapsed time from starting to boil the beans to eating them.
Not to mention that the only reason this was so cheap is because I have a huge pantry and a freezer so I can scoop up multiples when I come across a real sale and save partial quantities so there’s no waste AND I have a fully equipped kitchen AND I had a mother who taught me how to cook frugally.
This bean dish is something she learned at her mother’s knee, during the Depression, when you ate cheap or starved. For my generation, it’s just something we eat now and then as an old family favorite.
But even if a poor family lives next door to a good grocery store, that still doesn’t help them with the other issues I mentioned- a place to store and cook the food, tools to prepare it, knowledge of how to cook well, and time and energy to cook the meals. Also what even sven mentioned, about having the staples of spices and flour and such already in your pantry. There’s plenty of reasons people might be buying TV dinners instead of healthy produce, and it’s not just because they’re poor decision makers.
IOW miss elizabeth’s bluster is stupid, wrong and false. That the poor mostly do not work full-time year-round is not a conclusion, it is a fact. Therefore, this statement -
[QUOTE=Shodan]
…the idea that poor people cannot cook or go to school because they are exhausted from their twelve-hour shifts is typically not the case.
[/QUOTE]
is true and has been documented.
miss elizabeth’s knee jerked, and she is trying to claim that I made some other statement besides
As often happens, I made a statement and backed it up with a cite, she didn’t like it, so she is trying (without much success) to find a strawman she can attack.
[QUOTE=Broomstick]
The wording implies that while it is not guaranteed it’s much more likely you’ll have a good outcome than if you don’t take those steps.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, that’s correct.
After six years, you seem to be climbing your way up out of poverty (congratulations!). That is a bit longer than five years, but not significantly longer. Even with higher unemployment than we have had for the time previous to the last recession, you are employed and improving your situation. If you had dropped out of high school, had children you could not support, been divorced or never married, it is likely that your situation would be much worse.
As I said earlier, this is GQ. We are supposed to be talking about facts. I cannot believe anyone really does not know that recent high school dropouts have a much higher poverty rate than graduates, or that single parents are more likely to be poor than married ones, etc.
In other news, water is wet and the Pope appears to show a tendency towards Catholicism.
Regards,
Shodan