Alcohol for starters.
What I’m trying to say, and perhaps I’m saying it poorly, is that there are those who aren’t living from paycheck to paycheck because their paychecks don’t cover basic needs. They simply cannot stretch their paycheck far enough, even if every decision they make is good. The 24 hours they get in a week at WalMart just isn’t sufficient. Or only sufficient, the week they only get 18 hours, they are sunk. And woe if they have a serious issue - loose a week of work to illness, have someone who normally watches their kids for free say they can’t any longer…
Even if you eat rice and beans and live in a studio apartment in a lousy neighborhood - food, rent, laundry, buying new underwear every five years, and a bus pass are going to cost you something.
Those people are in a place where they don’t make financial decisions other than day to day survival. There aren’t good decisions, there aren’t bad decisions. There is simply “what do I need to do today to keep a roof over my head and enough food in me.”
This is a point that should be more obvious, but unfortunately it’s easy to forget in a thread harping about stupid poor people.
I’ve heard of people who will drive 10 or more miles out of the way just to get gas a little bit cheaper than the stuff down the street. The losing arithmetic doesn’t stop them from doing this.
Buying in bulk at Cosco makes sense, but if you don’t have a bunch of space to store bulk items, don’t have the means to haul bulk items home, and prefer certain brands and products that aren’t typically sold at Cosco, then signing up to be a member may not seem like a have-to-do thing.
Anedote alert:
Working at a big box store, I find that I can make no prediction based on either what’s in the cart or how hefty the customer is whether they’ll pay with food stamps or not.
Again - these food issues cut across all socio-economic lines. Why are the poor held to a higher standard than wealthier people?
Said co-worker doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t own a mobile phone. I am not aware of the status of the family’s TV or “gaming consoles”. Again, nice job stereotyping. Also, the coworker is mid-40’s, which is not outrageously young for that sort of problem and in fact about what you’d expect from a lifetime of spotting dental care.
there are tons of threads on this very subject. For our 2-person household, OTC drugs alone make the membership worth it, and take up almost no space. It was worth it even when I was a one-person household. Our typical grocery purchases:
Milk
Orange juice
Plain yogurt, cheaper than I could make it fromscratch, and we go through a LOT of yogurt
Dried fruits and nuts
Oatmeal
Canned tomatoes
Onions
Mushrooms
Apples
Cheese
Coffee beans
Toilet paper
Cat litter
Vitamins/supplements
prescription drugs are consistently the cheapest I’ve found in the U.S.
Meat is roughly comparable to other places where we buy it, but quality is often better for the price if they have the cuts we want - a two-person household would likely need to freeze at least part of each package
Flour, cooking oil, baking staples
Rice
Cleaning supplies and laundry detergent
Prepared foods are cheap and relatively high quality, too, but we mostly cook from scratch.
ETA: I should note that we live in a condo, not a house, and don’t have a ton of spare storage space. No garage, tiny basement storage locker. The perishable goods mentioned above are in quantities that a 2-person household can easily use up before they go bad. And even the huge case of toilet paper fits under our bathroom vanities. Coffee is. 2 lb. bags, onions are 10 lb. bags, so are flour and sugar (I bake most of our bread, etc.), yogurt is 2 qts. (We go through about 3 qts. A week and add our own fruit, nuts, etc.)
And… once again the poor are held to a higher standard. Because, I guess, they’re not under enough stress or something.
Or they have alternative means of saving on purchases - I get an employee discount where I work and usually know about sales in advance. On top of which, no additional transportation costs since I’m there already.
There’s more than one way to save money and deal with poverty. The fact still remains, though, that you need a certain minimal amount of resources to get by at all.
I can see myself going to Costco and depriving myself of any savings because the store offers so much more than a regular grocery store. Kind of like how when I run into Walmart to pick up a couple of items and then leave with half the store.
That’s because the basic message is, “they need to do it all on their own, because I don’t want to lift a finger or spend a dime on them.” That’s why.
I suspect that the purpose of the OP was not to harp about poor people, but to talk about exactly this - how nuts it drives him/her/you/me when people who do have the means make stupid decision after stupid decision.
A friend of mine had a grandmother with a family farm. The land was worth quite a bit of money and when grandma died, her uncle needed to get that farm sold as fast as possible. See, he had problems funding the life he wanted with his six figure a year job - and had gotten himself into a hole.
A relative managed to dodge bankruptcy due to a timely family loan, and then - still owing the family member money - went to Cabo for a week. “Its been so stressful, I deserve it.”
yeah, the Costco macadamia nut clusters are not very expensive for what they are - but they sure aren’t money anyone NEEDS to spend - yet somehow, they end up in my cart.
My last Costco trip was $361. Now, I did buy $160 worth of tax software for myself and my business. And a huge box of foodservice quality and quantity aluminum foil for $22.
But I also got organic grass fed hippy hamburger for $4.99 a pound (non organic was 3.40 - but you buy ten pounds of it at a time and have to wrap it yourself - not practical for someone living alone without a freezer or someone short on time). Pears at .99 a pound (of course, enough pears for a small army), a flat of San Pellegrino (nothing that someone looking to save money will buy) for $15. 36 cans of Coke for $9.50 (sometimes I get it cheaper on sale at the grocery store, but its a consistent $9.50 a flat at Costco).
If you have a dog, their grain free dog food is about half the price of anyone else’s grain free dog food.
But its $55 to join, they are often out of the way, the quantities are usually large and they do sell a lot of things you don’t need. It MIGHT be a good way for someone who was middle class to save some money - but it isn’t a given that you would - and without storage and enough money to invest in ten pounds of spaghetti at a time - it isn’t doing a lot of people any favors.
Nuance is tantamount to circumlocution in this instance. In my experience, immigrant families have more dedicated homemakers than native born American families. But it’s far from universal, or even common. A lot of it depends on the culture from which they came.
But that’s really besides the point. You’re essentially saying that without a dedicated homemaker poor people can’t help but to eat shitty food. That’s not true. However, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to disabuse you of your view, so I won’t beat this dead horse.
Except nobody’s saying what you suggest. If anything, you’re taking the opposite tact. All poor people everywhere for all time are heroically struggling against grim, impersonal forces they’re helpless against and their personal choices and the cultures from which they come have nothing to do with their circumstances.
Who’s not being nuanced here?
If you have saved $2,000, odds are you didn’t do it by not meeting the necessities of life. Most solidly middle class families don’t have $2,000 in the bank.
Look, if you’d rather stay in a system you yourself have called dysfunctional instead of building a nest egg, be my guest. I know which direction I’d go.
You asked for evidence that they were in fact groceries selling healthy food and not the Indian version of Burger King. I provided it. Let’s not move goalposts.
I work in a warehouse, 12 hours shifts. I routinely walk more than 4 miles a shift. A 4 mile roundtrip to get food wouldn’t stop me, nor should it stop any able-bodied person.
[QUOTE=Dangerosa;]
But its $55 to join, they are often out of the way, the quantities are usually large and they do sell a lot of things you don’t need. It MIGHT be a good way for someone who was middle class to save some money - but it isn’t a given that you would - and without storage and enough money to invest in ten pounds of spaghetti at a time - it isn’t doing a lot of people any favors.
[/QUOTE]
true, one does need to be able to avoid the temptation of macadamia clusters. And one does need to have $55 free for the membership (or $110 for an executive membership, which means ours ends up being free or nearly so with the 2% rebate). The one where we shop just added a gas station, which isn’t a huge draw for people like us who commute by public transit and fill the tank maybe once a month, but could be huge for households that spend hundreds a month on gas. For us, it’s a good chunk of change in savings, though, probably because we aren’t huge consumers of processed foods or gadgets. And there are definitely things we buy elsewhere (most produce, meat, and fish) because what they carry is in too-large quantities or simply isn’t what we use.
Been there done that :).
Yes. I walked to and from the grocery store with my mother all through my youth. I’m the son of a roofer. In middle and high school, on summer break, I’d tear off shingle roofs. If we couldn’t get the dumpster near the building, I’d load the shingles in a wheelbarrow, walk up a ramp and dump them.
I’m not a particularly tough person. It’s just that I made it to adulthood before I was introduced to the idea that walking with a load was excessive. It’s foreign to me.
Did you read the article by McWhorter I posted? How about the study that said poor neighborhoods had as many grocery stores as other neighborhoods?
I’m from Indiana too. Your example doesn’t do anything to undercut supply and demand. It points out the way governments interfere in markets.
If crime doesn’t stop people from selling fast food and alcohol, it won’t stop them from selling wholesome food.
I’ve posted other articles about other cities.
But there wasn’t a barrier to access before. There was no demand. There is now.
How would you explain the fact that studies have found that increasing access to healthy food for poor people doesn’t decrease obesity?
I think I can sum up the argument vis-à-vis food deserts and demand as follows.
Business goes on in poor neighborhoods. Part of the food desert concept is that poor people have to pass 5 fast food restaurants to get to a grocery store. Advocates for the poor also decry check cashing stores, paycheck advance services, liquor stores, rent-to-own business, et al, for taking advantage of the poor.
So, nobody denies that businesses are willing to meet the demands of poor people, at least in some instances.
Therefore, the question that needs to be answered is why is the demand for healthy food any different from the demand from the products listed above?
Any reason you could give for not selling fruits and vegetables in poor neighborhoods would also apply to Popeye’s Chicken or the liquor/check cashing store.
The only sensible conclusion is that if there were demand for healthy food, it would be met.
Poor people and people who are better off are being held to the same standard. The standard is not to make dumb decisions, especially if such a decision would strain or outstrip your resources.