How do people end up so poor?

Great Debates
141

My answer is it’s not my place to tell people they can or can’t reproduce. Period. If you don’t like that answer, tough.

I don’t see gambling as inherently a problem. If all the bills are paid I don’t have a problem with someone budgeting $10 a week (or whatever sum) to play cards, whether that person is clearing $20 million a year or $12k a year. Do some people have a gambling problem? Yes, but it’s not connected to wealth or income. Playing a few round of cards is no different than a six pack of beer or going to a movie as far as I’m concerned. As I said – as long as all other bills are paid I don’t have a problem with it.

Are there some people shouldn’t put even as little a dollar into a game of chance? Sure – but that’s NOT all poor people, it’s a subset of poor people, and a small one.

Poor people should be able to have some pleasures, too. Because, you know, they’re human.

Let me put it another way: if my spouse and I were earning $15k a year we’d still be at the poverty line – but we’d be able to afford to go to the movies every month or two, or eat dinner out once every two weeks, AND pay our bills AND even save a little money (assuming we don’t have to suddenly replace car tires or something, but that’s what savings is for). If a two-person household decided they’d rather drop $25 at a monthly poker game or bingo instead of the movies why should I care about that?

Or are you suggesting that poor people live like monks who have sworn off all earthly comforts? That they do nothing but work, eat (a little bit), and sleep and have no pleasures in life whatsoever? Even effing prisoners are treated better than that!

The only time I give a damn about a poor person gambling is if they can’t pay their bills. That’s it. Ditto for booze, cigarettes, cable TV, whatever.

My monthly “entertainment” budget right now is $25. It’s none of your damn business what I spend that money on. My being poor does not suddenly make me your child, that you can dictate how I spend my “allowance”.

Yes – but what YOU consider wise and what I consider wise aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Well, we can agree on that much at least.

Or mangoes.

(Seriously – I’d rather people spend for mangoes if that’s what they’ll actually eat, rather than let oranges rot. And I checked the price of mangoes at Aldi today – right now, the mangoes are actually cheaper! Not by a lot, but whatever. Maybe they move so many they can get a bulk discount or something. Maybe mangoes are popular because, by some quirk, they sometimes cost less than oranges, in which case buying them might be the better deal at times.)

And yes, it sucks to do that calculation for every purchase, but it’s worth it. It’s a large part of why my family is currently debt-free, we still have some nice stuff, and we aren’t worse off than before.

Unfortunately, there are some people who are… shall we say… slightly less than average in smarts and intelligence. They make less than ideal choices. Which is why we need laws banning certain predatory lending practices and the like, because those people just aren’t going to get it, but do deserve some protection.

Even if the installment plan equals the cost of buying crap boots for 10 years you’re still ahead because you have dry, as opposed to wet, feet. It’s not just about money, even when money is a large slice of the problem. If you work outside, dry, warm feet that are protected are worth paying some extra for, because keeping your feet healthy means you are less likely to have to take time off work due to foot problems.

The problem is that dealing with real life can’t be broken down into a few simple rules and problem solved. You actually DO have to think about things, often think about them hard, in order to make the best decision. And even the smartest person won’t always make the best decision.

It seems to be that people often demand a level of perfection of behavior from the poor they don’t demand from anyone else. That is unfair, plain and simple.

142

Nao e desgrace ser pobre.

143

That’s lovely, but my Portuguese (?) is almost non-existent. Can you point me to an English translation of the lyrics?

144

We made the exact same amount. I’ve had a bank account of my own since I was 15. Many times I offered to teach her how to use a checking account. This was back in the day when it was easy to get no minimum checking account or an account that was free with direct deposit. She literally had to have that money in her hand to spend it minutes after she got it, and always would be completely broke 4 or 5 days later.

She literally could not get enough of a financial grip on herself to make her paycheck last a week or to have any sort of delayed financial gratification in her life. I’ve known a lot of people like that (at all income levels), and after a while, it gets old.

145

Kobal2, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Your ideas regarding the military have little basis in reality.

While I was an officer in the Navy (received my commission via NROTC, not the Naval Academy) who received specialty nuclear power training, I also worked with many enlisted personnel on submarines who received highly skilled technical training on electronics, electrical, and mechanical equipment that was easily transferable to to civilian life. My wife is a former Navy Nurse Corps officer who worked with medical technicians who all received in-depth medical training, all paid for by the military, and which was also easily transferable to the civilian sector.

Even non-rated Navy personnel get basic technical training, and all military personnel receive leadership training and experience that are valued by civilian employers.

As for pay, realize that all military personnel not only receive their basic pay, but also receive numerous nontaxable “allowances,” including allowances for housing, subsistence, uniforms, as well as sea pay, submarine pay, hazardous duty pay, etc. as applicable.

Just considering basic pay, BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing), and BAS (Basic Allowance for Subsistence) for a junior enlisted E-4 with 4 years in the military (assuming with dependents), annual pay is $40,808. (See tables here.) Not bad for a job that doesn’t require a degree. For the Navy, at that point in an enlisted career, probably half of that 4 years was spent in training and in schools.

As for “lifers,” as you put it, a senior enlisted E-9 with dependents, again only considering basic pay, BAH, and BAS, makes $82,618. Not exactly a life of poverty.

Military personnel also get free medical and dental care for themselves and their dependents, for life if they retire.

Also, not everyone in the military actually gets shot at, you know. Few Navy or Air Force personnel get shot at these days, nor are they eating MREs.

Finally, many people join the military out of a sense of patriotism, you know. The pay, benefits, and training are often just secondary considerations.

146

You know, this is what my husband’s recruiter told HIM. Turns out, though, that the care isn’t always available for dependents, and it’s certainly not always available on base. And on many bases, “dental care” means “gonna yank that sucker OUT”, not drill and fill. And I don’t know about nowadays, but a lot of doctors didn’t take whatever insurance we had.

My husband DID get a start because he joined the military. He got the training that allowed him to finally get a good paying civilian job. But for most of the time he was in, our family was below poverty level, even including all his allowances. Plus, for most of the time he was in, we were constantly moving, and incurring expenses for those moves.

An enlisted soldier’s experience will differ vastly from an officer’s, and especially a very low ranking enlisted person will not be making much at all.

147

I’m surprised that 11K is still considered the limit for the poverty level in the US: that’s what it was in 1997, when I made less that that and IRS sent me a check for something like $11.43 and instructions to apply for food stamps (I didn’t, because by then I already had a job).

When I left Miami to come back to Spain, I put up signs offering my furniture and my computer for “whatever you offer”, with the bed offered free as that’s how I’d got it. I’d rented one for a month, intending to have the bed be the first piece that I bought, but during that month got this one offered by a coworker: I was able to buy a table and a chair instead! When I helped the woman who’d got it move it in, I was stunned that she had something like 7 kids in a studio the same size as mine (550sq ft IIRC). Until then, they’d had one bed and the couch - my bed was only a wide twin, but it was enough for three of those kids. I suddenly felt filthy rich.

148

I can’t promise the translation is good:

"It’s no disgrace to be poor,
it’s no misery to be crazy,
sadness places fados
in your heart and in your mouth.

In this chaotic life
being happy isn’t so important.
If madwomen feel no pain
it’s no sorrow to be a mad woman.

You’re born under a star
which shows your destiny.
It is not a bad thing,
as it brings fado.

What’s to be sorry about is all these people
singing until their throats hurt
with stubborn fado
filling their hearts and their mouths."

Fado is this kind of songs. Portuguese and their cousins to the north have a reputation for turning sadness into both an art form and a way of life.

149

Was she borrowing money from you? If not, then how does it “get old” for you? What’s it to you?

This is what I don’t get. If someone isn’t taking money from you, then how they spend what they’ve got isn’t your business. If they’re complaining to you about their brokeness, tell them you don’t care to hear about their financial woes and move on.

As for the renting of television and furniture, unless we have some kind of statistics as to who’s renting and how much they’re spending to rent, it’s not really useful to talk about it as a prime mover of modern poverty. It’s just spitballing.

It’d also be nice to get beyond the inevitable appeal to rice and beans. Rice and beans require human capital. They take time to soak and to cook, require additional ingredients to give them palatable flavor, require knowledge to cook properly and require equipment that might not be available. And frankly, they get really boring really quickly.

Poor people need not be consigned to dull lives, huddled in sweaters and blankets on the floor, in the dark with light filtered through plastic-covered windows, bodies sore from walking everywhere, eating mush day after day in order to be virtuous and appropriately working themselves out of poverty. They are as entitled to comfort and entertainment and flavor and relaxation as anyone.

150

Um, I did critique the links, in the post you just quoted.

Why should I do my own research to back up what someone else has claimed? That’s not the way it usually works.

Read your own link. It got the maths wrong. It was very odd that they should make such a simple mistake, but they did. And it didn’t even say a subset of people, just poor people. It was really badly written, in other words.

I don’t need to refute that data; it already refutes what you claimed. None of those spending figures are anywhere near 9% or 10% a month. I’ve never disputed that poor people are somewhat more likely to spend a proportion of their income on the lottery - if you look back, you can see that what I find unlikely is that it’s such a high proportion of their income.

Your first cite was an extremely brief analysis which got basic maths wrong, the second cite was about families of gamblers, and these other cites don’t say anything like the rates you’re arguing for.

I now believe that some people do rent furniture (although, emack, 4 cites is not ‘dozens,’ - your maths is failing again); that seems like a very strange decision to make, especially these days with ebay, gumtree and freecycle. Renting appliances I can understand sometimes, if it comes with maintenance, but sofas? Strange. And no, it doesn’t seem sensible.

But, you know, I wasn’t saying NO-ONE EVER RENTS FURNITURE YOU’RE WRONG! PFFT! I askedif people really rent furniture because I’d never come across that before and I was surprised. I don’t know why you and amarone seem so annoyed at me asking that. Seriously, what on earth is wrong with asking a question on the Straight Dope? :confused:

As for what on that list poor people should do:

Having a TV (basic, at least) is actually quite sensible. There is a limit to how much time you can spend searching for jobs, especially when there aren’t many around; having some cheap entertainment can be very helpful for maintaining sanity. But then, round here it’s extremely easy to get an old CRT for free because everyone’s trading up and giving the big TVs away. Maybe it’s more difficult where you live, though I’d be surprised.

Having the internet is, these days, almost essential for finding jobs. If you live near a library or somewhere else with free internet access, you can use that, for a couple of hours during the day at least, but with the internet at home you can jobsearch when the kids are in bed and not have to pay for travel to somewhere to go online. Hell, if someone had to pay gas or bus fare to get to a library to go online, then not having the internet at home would be a false luxury.

The internet is also very helpful for keeping up those support networks which you agree are useful. I actually got the job I have now via someone I originally met on this very messageboard.

Of course, if you’re tied into a contract then getting rid of the internet isn’t possible till the contract’s up anyway. Not without paying a large fee for early cancellation or skipping out on the bill and getting into trouble for it.

Walking everywhere you can is sensible. Depends where you live, though - some places you can’t walk far, or can’t get to jobs without a car (and some people, of course, can’t walk very far anyway).

The money from selling a car - which might not be much given how quickly cars depreciate in value - might pay your rent for a month, but that’s no good if it means you can’t get to any of the jobs that are out there when that month is up. Getting rid of the car could be a false economy.

Trading down to a cheaper car or one with better mileage might be a good idea for some people with really nice cars.

Having extra kids when you’re poor is sometimes unwise, but contraception does fail, and people often have kids before they become poor (due to lay-offs or divorce), but the kids are still there when the money’s tight. ‘Don’t have kids’ is pointless advice to people who already have kids.

151

In the Navy, most jobs require technical training. While there are some jobs that don’t (like non-rated deck hands who spend their days chipping paint and painting), the vast majority of Navy ratings require a great deal of technical training. The Navy has advanced a bit beyond muzzle-loading guns, after all. The guys who do shoot weapons do so with sophisticated electronics.

But even if a military person receives no advanced technical training at all, the military also teaches people how to follow orders, how to work in teams, and leadership skills, all of which are valuable to civilian employers.

I remember a time that my civilian employer went around the office asking for a volunteer to work overtime for an emergency situation that had just come up. Most of my fellow engineers seemed completely incapable of wrapping their heads around working past 5 p.m. Having just came out of an environment where I was l always on duty, I had no problem volunteering. My work that night and weekend got me special recognition from the highest levels of my company, which helped me in my career.

When I was in, they didn’t always have dental care for dependents on base, but the military did pay for dental insurance for my family, and that insurance was far better than any of the dental coverage we’ve gotten since from civilian employers. As for medical, we generally used the care provided on base, but never had an issue with doctors taking TRICARE off base (such as for my wife’s pregnancy and delivery). My wife had a C-section, and our portion of the civilian hospital bill was exactly zero.

Granted, but realize that military pay has increased significantly in the last few years. Military personnel have continued to receive pay increases, year after year, even during recessions. The compound effect of these percentage increases has greatly raised military pay.

Even an E-1 with a few months in gets paid about $18K in basic pay, plus free housing and meals. If the E-1 lives off base with dependents, he gets paid $28,902. And nobody stays an E-1 for long. An E-2 with less than two years in, living off base with dependents, gets paid $31,030.

(Personally, I think we are paying military personnel too much, generally. While I think that hazardous duty pay should be increased for the people being shot at, I think that the country cannot afford the pay and benefits currently being given to military personnel. When I got out of the Navy, I took a huge pay CUT.)

152

Just wanted to add a few comments, with information based upon my own records:

Looking up my earnings records from last year, I earned over $870 over the internet last year via various means, which more than pays for the monthly connection cost and my domain name. In other words, having an internet connection for me is not a luxury, it’s an income source. After paying the fees associated with I had enough to pay a month’s rent with some left over. That alone makes it worthwhile to have.

^ This, too.

This is an issue with my spouse - he can’t physically walk very far, yet he needs to go to doctors’ appointments at the very least even if I do all the shopping and errand running. Which I don’t, because I’m either working or looking for work and he, being a decent human being, tries to contribute something to the household despite being disabled.

In addition to job hunting, last year I had a temp job that required the use of a car. Having a car enabled me to get that job, at which I earned over $3500. This more than paid for the cost of insurance, gas, and yes, new tires. The problem with the tires was I didn’t have $200 at the moment I needed it - but by taking out a loan I could replace the tires, keep the job, earn the money, and pay the loan back. And still make money. In which case taking out the loan was actually the more intelligent decision than sitting on a high horse declaiming about high interest rates. (By the way - we did NOT have to go to a payday advance place for that loan - we were able to get the money via another route for a lower rate than a payday place).

I also note that I earned $5000+ last year while utilizing my pick up truck. This more than paid for the costs of insurance, gas (yes, it does get worse mileage than my car. Well, duh, it’s a truck), and getting the brake line fixed (it’s a 12 year old vehicle, stuff happens especially when driving through a construction site). This doesn’t count all the scrap metal I hauled down to the recycling center on my own time.

So…having those two vehicles netted me over $8500 last year, making them hands down my most valuable assets. They more than paid for themselves, and without them I would have been even worse off. They aren’t luxuries, in my current life they’re necessities. They’re how I make about 3/4 of my income these days.

This, as opposed to when I lived in Chicago and didn’t own a car for 10+ years and did just fine with my $30k-50k jobs. This is an illustration of why vehicle ownership is a more complicated factor than just “vehicle X is worth Y and costs Z to run”.

153

As I was the one doing the payroll, I had to listen to her try and wheedle her check out of me on Thursday night instead of Friday mid-morning so she could run to the check cashing place because she had no money and had to pay for her furniture, etc. I would say “I’m sorry, Friday is payday. I cannot make any more exceptions. Please plan ahead.” until I was blue in the face. Then she started approaching my boss with her sob stories and he started making me loan her some money from petty cash because I wouldn’t budge on the early paycheck any more because of the flack I was getting from other employees. Since she didn’t have a grip on her finances, she would come up with excuses on why she couldn’t pay back the petty cash today and can I pretty please wait until next week; again with the furniture payments, her phone, you name it. I ended up making it his problem as he ok’d the petty cash advances to her. When the total hit a few hundred, he stopped.

As I am a mentally and emotionally stable adult, I really don’t need instructions on how to tell people to tell their troubles to Jesus and not to me. I have no problem asserting myself.

I wasn’t claiming statistics, just personal observation during my lifetime of a distinct trend.

154

So your claim is that people use check cashing services because they are not able to delay gratification? I sure do run into people on this board who harshly judge the poor for
their lack of self control. Must be right then. They are lesser people who do not know how to budget or how to cut back. They are living the high life and then run short. Sad little people.

155

You are deliberately misrepresenting yet another person’s post. While at the same time refusing to answer my question from post 125. Do you actually have anything to contribute here?

Like gonzomax you are intentionally dodging the question, but unlike him I suspect you know the answer. I was kind of hoping you’d rationalize it the way you did everything else, and tell us they’re better off with more kids because the incremental cost of another child is less than the additional benefits.

Why? I don’t see it in the constitution, I’m not even sure it’s the the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

I would like to agree with you here, but the reality is that by the time they can’t pay their bills it’s too late and becomes society’s problem. Society isn’t actually willing to throw them to the curb, and allow them to die from the choices they made. All of those unpaid bills get passed on to the people that can afford them. The “free medical care” at the ER isn’t actually free, the patient still gets a bill, and if it isn’t paid the hospital has to recoup those costs from the paying customers. Likewise, the credit card companies increase interest rates on everyone, to cover their losses.

This is what we’re all dealing with now, because suddenly a lot of people all at once couldn’t pay their mortgage. You lost your job (along with millions of others), and can’t find another because of all those people who suddenly couldn’t pay their bills. They ran up huge amounts of credit, and then dumped it on society.

I got a parking ticket a couple of weeks ago, and that $50 loss still stings. So you are wrong, because I demand that level of perfection from myself as well. For the people who are choosing between feeding or clothing their kids, how much slack should we grant? Is it too much to ask that they avoid parking tickets so that their kids can eat? Or do you think that the parents are entitled to entertainment, while the kids should have wet feet? Do you think it’s okay that their kids sleep on the floor in a cold dark room because their parents gambled/smoked/drank/pissed away the utility bill?

156

You have got to be kidding me. I put plastic up on my windows this weekend, the stuff is clear and saves me a ton on my utility bill. Of all the things to bitch about, this is the most laughable.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100353672/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

I got it 2 for $5 with an additional mail in rebate.

Unless you want to also tell me the poor are entitled to waste oil/electricity.

157

[Quote=emacknight]

Like gonzomax you are intentionally dodging the question, but unlike him I suspect you know the answer. I was kind of hoping you’d rationalize it the way you did everything else, and tell us they’re better off with more kids because the incremental cost of another child is less than the additional benefits.
[/quote]

I’m sorry you can’t accept reality, but I really do believe it’s not my place to tell people whether or not they can reproduce.

Here, let’s flip it around: I believe in vitro feritilization is bad thing for an overpopluated world. I don’t care if reach people pay out of their own pocket for it, we don’t need anymore more people than we’re already generating. Get over it and either adopt or realize having kids doesn’t have to be an essential part of a good life. One top of that, only a small fraction of couples getting that sort of infertility treatment ever conceive, much less get a child out of it, and the people providing that service happily bleed people of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a bad use of money even for the wealthy. However, I’d never tell a millionaire to NOT take that choice – because it’s their choice to do that, not mine.

So… Family of four making $21k a year? I don’t know if that is wise or not – where do they live? What’s the cost of living there? Would they be able to cover housing/food/other essentials? (Whether that includes government benefits or not) Being poor is not the problem, lacking the essential requirements of life is the problem.

Your kneejerk assumption is that an arbitrary number is the divide between a life of hell and living decently and the real world doesn’t work that way.

In any case – no, I absolutely oppose dictating reproductive decisions for people, especially when based on income. It just shows that you value poor lives less than wealthy lives, that you regard the poor as worth less as human beings.

[Quote=emacknight]

Why? I don’t see it in the constitution, I’m not even sure it’s the the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
[/quote]

It’s not in the constitution (I presume you mean the US one) that ANYONE is entitled to pleasure or recreation. Hell, goddamned slavery is in the US constitution, but it was later amended to get rid of that.

I will note that the third of the “four freedoms” in the UN Declaration of Human Rights is “Freedom from Want” - which the poor of the US do not in any way enjoy. That’s why we have people living in tent cities, many of whom were solidly middle class only a few short years ago.

[Quote=emacknight]

I would like to agree with you here, but the reality is that by the time they can’t pay their bills it’s too late and becomes society’s problem.
[/quote]

So because a minority of poor people have these problems you want to punish and constrain ALL poor people? That is inherently unfair.

By the time Bernie Maddoff couldn’t pay his bills it was also too late, but Og forbid we restrain the behavior of the wealthy!

[Quote=emacknight]
Society isn’t actually willing to throw them to the curb, and allow them to die from the choices they made.
[/quote]

Are you suggesting that is the proper response? If that’s the case, you won’t mind up piling the corpses on your doorstep, will you?

Which is why we should go to a single-payer system like every other civilized society, which over and over has been shown to give better results for less cost per person.

[Quote=emacknight]
This is what we’re all dealing with now, because suddenly a lot of people all at once couldn’t pay their mortgage. You lost your job (along with millions of others), and can’t find another because of all those people who suddenly couldn’t pay their bills. They ran up huge amounts of credit, and then dumped it on society.
[/quote]

But it was OK to bail out Wall Street but Og forbid we extend any help to the poor, right?

[Quote=emacknight]

I got a parking ticket a couple of weeks ago, and that $50 loss still stings.
[/quote]

Proportionally, $50 is a much higher percentage of my income than your income. $50 for someone making $100,000 a year is like $500 to me. 6,000 years ago the Code of Hammurabi prescribed fines on a sliding scale based on net worth because folks could figure that out millennia ago.

And what the hell is wrong with you anyway, violating parking laws? I’ve been driving over 30 years and have never yet gotten a parking ticket, so I guess that makes me better than you?

[Quote=emacknight]
For the people who are choosing between feeding or clothing their kids, how much slack should we grant?
[/quote]

I guess you ENTIRELY skipped over the part I said about “all bills being paid”? If the kids are clothed and fed, the rent paid, etc. no, I don’t effing care if someone drinks a beer, sees a movie, or plays in the local poker game.

I expect EVERYONE of every level of wealth to avoid parking tickets, whether they can pay them easily or not, whether it “stings” or not.

158

The statement I bolded statement is not true.

Per cycle success rates are as follows:

Using donor gametes can bring those percentages as high as 80% per cycle.

Fertility treatments aren’t all that expensive. A single round of IUI can be under $300. Only a small percentage of couples who are infertile resort to IVF. A round or two of IVF can also be far less expensive than adopting.

I would much rather see a middle class couple spend 10 or 20k on IVF for children they can afford rather than see a poor woman have five or six naturally conceived children she can barely afford to feed.

BTW, Broomstick, did you get the links about work at home jobs that I pm’ed you? I know a few companies that might be hiring.

159

The United States has greater income inequality than China, Nigeria, or Cameroon, and only very slightly less inequality than Uganda or Rwanda.

We aren’t even in the same ballpark with far more equal nations like Canada, Australia, India, or anywhere in the EU.

It is no wonder that we have abysmal economic mobility. The gap is so huge, how would you even have a conception of what “moving up” would mean? Where would you get it? I suppose the education system might be expected to help here, but unfortunately it does the opposite, usually grouping together the poor in bad schools where their sense of hopelessness and confusion is only reinforced further.

Without an example from your parents, or at least someone close to you, about what a good career looks like, you are probably not going to stumble into one.

160

LavenderBlue, the best stat you give for IVF is 35%. That’s only 1/3 of young women who conceive with IVF. The rates for older women are even worse. You seriously think think that’s a good use of money? Granted, that’s per cycle, but few people can afford very many cycles. If it’s my personal opinion they’d be better saving that money and looking into adoption, or just coming to grips with not have children, that’s my opinion.

And I specified in vitro fertilization for a reason - it’s effing expensive. So don’t come back and say “Oh, but IUI is so much cheaper!” I wasn’t talking about IUI. After all, asking a friend to contribute a turkey-baster worth of sperm is cheaper yet, right?

Your hypothetical middle-class couple won’t just be spending 10-20k on IVF, they’ll be spending much more once ALL the costs are added up, and they’ll be heavily, heavily in debt. If the parents lose their incomes due to layoffs then they’ll be worse off than a poor family that never went into debt to conceive. And then people will wag their fingers at them and condemn for the having children they can’t afford!

Again - the assumption is that the poor have always been poor. People continue to ignore the fact that NO ONE is insulated from the possibility of becoming poor. I don’t care how long you’ve been middle-class, lose your job and don’t get another soon enough you’ll be living in a tent, too.

As for your last question: no, I haven’t received any PM’s recently. I really am turned off by work at home schemes because the ones I’ve found are either outright scams or result in something like 10 to 20 cents for an hour’s effort. I can’t possibly survive on that. If you have a lead on a job that pays at least minimum wage that’s on line I’d be interested.