Prosperity tithing? Trusting God for manna? If it’s in my belly, they can’t take it away from me?
I’m sure there are other possibilities.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like everyone is arguing over the type of food she bought and missing that she spent all of the money. I have $50 in my pocket. I won’t spend it all on lunch because the money will serve me later.
Is there some reason she couldn’t have saved the money for later? That’s easily transportable and non perishable.
It was not said that she spent all of the money, in fact, totaling up her purchases does probably leave her with some left over.
As far as why she spent what she did, she was not just feeding herself, she was feeding several other people as well. You also may not consider eating a big lunch, because you had a big breakfast, and a big dinner the night before. She and her children have likely not had a full meal in several days or longer.
She was also in a situation where she had not lockbox or safe or savings account in which to deposit the money, so had to keep it on her person. She may have been concerned that it could be stolen from her.
I get some of that, but immediate gratification is often a hallmark of the poor. Maybe it’s just the way the OP put it, but it seemed that way. I’m a but surprised that everyone seems so defensive of her, not that anyone should want to pile on, but I’ll just say I hope she makes better decisions in the future because poor decisions often result in a poor life. I grew up that way and watched it even as a kid.
I wish them all well, particularly the kids.
I think the point here is that “poor” is different than “homeless refugee”. There’s not much to save FOR at this point: everything in her future is uncertain. She could see her kids happy and satisfied right now. If she passed on the opportunity, who knows if that $50 will be stolen, or what? And when you are very, very poor, there’s a weird perverse incentive not to save–because when emergencies happen, you have to use up all your money before you can get help–but at that point people will help you. So no matter how much money you save, at the first emergency you’ll lose it all and then people will get you to the exact place you would have been if you hadn’t had any savings to burn through in the first place. She could buy small amounts of crappy food for her kids for a week, maybe, and then when it was gone, others would buy them small amounts of crappy food. Or, she could let them gorge right now on something that made them happy and excited, and then tomorrow, someone else will buy them small amounts of crappy food. From that point of view, do you see why seizing the chance to be a hero to her kids and see them satisfied–for perhaps the first time in months–would have a powerful allure? $50 is gonna be gone soon enough anyway, and where ever it goes, she won’t have anything to show for it.
And again, as earlier in the thread, what makes you think that you have the right to tell someone how to spend the money? You weren’t there, you weren’t involved, it wasn’t your money. All this crap in the thread about ‘poor people’s choices’ is just that. Crap.
I think you’re conflating observations from justanothermike and I with “think[ing] that [we] have the right to tell someone how to spend their money”. I can observe “that was not a smart thing to do” without thinking that I have the right to tell someone how to spend their money. If she wants to blow $50 on pizza or drugs or whatever else, she’s certainly free to do it. I haven’t lifted a finger to try to stop her. OTOH, I don’t think it was the most prudent financial decision, and it’s a pattern I’ve noticed that poor people often make a whole string of poor financial decisions which contribute mightily to their poverty-stricken circumstances.
And do you think that that is what has caused this particular woman to end up as she has? Solely due to poor financial decisions?
I know almost nothing about the particulars of this woman’s circumstances, so I don’t know what caused her to end up as she has. I don’t believe I’ve used the word “solely” at all in this thread and have, in fact, expressed quite the opposite idea.
You know enough to make a judgment about her spending decisions.
After leaving behind everything that she knows to escape poverty and violence with her children, she for possibly the first time in her and her children’s lives have a chance to be full on what is really fairly cheap frood for us, but an amazing buffet of ambrosia for her and her children.
If she is admitted to the US as an asylum, then that $50 won’t make much of a difference in the long, or even the short term.
If she is not admitted to the US, then she used the money for a once in a lifetime opportunity to be full on american food with her kids. If she is sent back, there is a good chance that she and her kids will be dead in a month or so. Even if not, she will be going hungry on a regular basis, entirely due to the policies of a government she does not control. Nothing that $50 would have to do with that.
Given that, it was one of the most prudent financial decisions imaginable.
What’s your source for this claim?
We disagree, but that’s fine. I don’t think her decision was horrendous or anything, I just wouldn’t label it “one of the most prudent”.
Who did that? Can you cite a reference to back up your statement?
Her.
In a situation like hers, I cannot think of a more useful way to use the money than to feed yourself and your family.
If you had $50 in your pocket, and a very high chance that you and your family will be dead in a few weeks, how would you use the money more prudently?
You did make the statement:
Which implies that her poverty is due to her own poor choices, and that her poor choices are somehow reflective of what contributes to her poverty stricken circumstances.
Earlier you called it “a good chance” and the timeframe was “a month or so”. Now you’ve turned the hyperbole up to 11 and claim:
I’ll hazard a guess that the vast majority of death threats are never acted upon. Given that, I think the “chance that she and her kids will be dead in a month or so” is actually quite small. It’s not zero, and I don’t blame her for reacting to it, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “a very high chance”. I think your claim here is fairly ridiculous, and that you’re exaggerating risks as a tactic to build sympathy for her. It seem fairly transparent to me.
If there was actually “a high chance” that something was going to kill me in a few weeks, I’d spend the money towards avoiding that thing, rather than blowing it on a last meal of pizza.
My general observation, which I think is often (but - and this bit is important - not always) true, is not a claim of specific fact in her case. This could be the only time in her life she’s splurged a bit to have a nice meal, or it could be that she’s consistently wasteful with the money that she does come across and this is a driving factor in her poverty. I simply don’t know enough about her back story / choices to come to a logical conclusion in her specific case.
I can think of a more useful way to feed yourself and family. Pizza is both an expensive source of food and a poor source of nutrition. She could have purchased shelf stable food that would have fed her kids for days and provided a higher level of nutrition.
I never said anything about her rights to make a bad decision or my right to dictate her life, I just feel that she made one. It’s an opinion, kind of the nature of this section. Nobody has to agree. I’m okay with that.
If she was so concerned about being shipped back and killed, perhaps she should have saved the money for the “war tax”. Intimating that this was necessarily the last supper seems a bit over the top. It seems like a lot of emotion is at play in the conversation, thus the defensiveness for this person. So much seems to be read into this. I don’t particularly care one way or the other, I just think it probably wasn’t the best idea and others seem to practically deify this person like they’re about to be martyred. If they are, then live it up!
People make choices. I don’t necessarily agree with hers. My guess is that she doesn’t care. I’m fine with that. I do hope her kids don’t learn a lesson that I learned which was that money should always be spent while you have it. It was a poor lesson taught to me.
What she and her cgildren need, nutritionally, are calories. Pizza is pretty good at that.
If she buys a bunch of peanut butter (literally the only shelf stable thing I can think if that she could lug around and that is cheaper than pizza), her kids will eat peanut butter for days. If she feeds thw pizza today, some homeless shelter will feed them peanut butter or such tomorrow. It’s not like she can horde 20lbs of peanut butter until such a tine as she is deported.
And $5/large pizza is NOT expensive.
Cite from a credible source for the bolded part, please.
that’s pure dietary bullshit.
pretty much all your canned goods are shelf stable and many vegetables last for days.
You might as well eat the cardboard box.
Oh good grief. I’ll cite my life growing up. I could give you story after story. It doesn’t sound like you’d be open to hearing the realities that I observed anyway. Make better decisions though, and things can change. I’m an example of that as well. Would you like to move in so you can observe. I’m sorry that I don’t have any studies but I can give you a lot of information if you’d like to conduct a survey.