I posted actual data from USCB and BLS. If you have better data or an actual analysis, let’s see them.
As I mentioned, plain bottled water is not as heavily promoted, advertised, or featured as sodas are. There are bottled waters available… in the soda section… at wildly inflated prices.
There are people who have worked in my store for years who not only do not know where the tap is for people to fill their own containers with clean water for a modest price, they do not even know we offer that. Instead, everyone knows where the huge, mid-aisle displays of soft drinks are located.
But why should poor people be any more immune to advertising and promotion than anyone else?
I wish my company would do more to promote drinking just plain water, but they don’t.
I’m sorry, but I’m fairly sure I haven’t misrepresented what other people are saying.
Here’s one quote from this thread: “impoverished people often are working long hours at low-wage job(s), and don’t have time or energy to prepare good meals”
And another: “Whoever compiled it somehow missed the millions of people who work two or even three part-time jobs”
And one more: -" lack of time due to working multiple jobs"
And I resent that fact that you slyly called me a child in General Questions. Or I would if I actually cared what you think.
Grown-ups have conversations that require people to take responsibility for their actions. Not simply shove personal choices off to “poor advertising” or “don’t know how to cook” or even more ludicrous reasons like “work 2-3 jobs” or “don’t have a stove” when I’ve seen the same stats linked time and time again that show that it just isn’t true.
Do you personally know someone who is poor who is working 3 jobs for more than 60 hours a week? Does anyone on this message board? If you do, let me know. I will personally pay their rent for a month so they have time to look for a better job, or cook a few meals, or even learn how to cook. Or I’ll buy them a stove if they don’t have one.
Anyone?
Oh, the “grown ups” are having a discussion. I see. Grown ups are apparently allowed to present absurd and unsupported opinions with no questions asked. I’ll keep that in mind in the future.
I think we don’t have the same definition of short-term. I’ve known companies which did things such as fire people for vacation periods to avoid having to pay them benefits, and people who worked two months, then spent six weeks unemployed, then got another three months job… Heck, I’ve been in the second group, and I wasn’t considered “employed full-time, year-round”.
At least in San Jose area, in CA, I tried to live on “aid” for food. Of course I didnt get food stamps or anything. But I lived within the parameters for a month.
The food stamps dont go very far, but you wont starve. However, added to those I found:
Several parks where you could get a meal- bean burritos, cold sandwiches, a milk or juice box or water, and fresh fruit. The Diocese handed out a box with rice, beans, government cheese and some other stuff. Another local church handed out day old bread from Trader Joes* and large bags of onions and potatoes. Plenty of food, should you have a way to cook it. (it wasnt uncommon to find bags of rice and beans discarded nearby).
- the church insisted I take a bunch of loaves with me, otherwise they’d have to toss them. I left a donation, of course. (and thus i try to shop at trader Joes, since that was a nice gesture)
So, at least in a area like that you will not starve, nor get hungry and yes, you can put on weight.
And many people these days have cell phones only, no land line. It’s cheaper that way unless you have a relatively high-end smartphone, especially if you don’t also have cable or home internet. It’s been rare for me to do a new client consultation in years for anyone with a landline.
If we assume it’s true that poor men typically stay trim while poor women gain weight, it could be due to the types of jobs available to each. A poor man will likely be doing strenuous physical labor, while a woman would likely have a less physical job. That would typically mean that the man is burning more calories on a regular basis than the woman was.
BLS considers workers year-round if they worked 50 to 52 weeks
I think it’s the same definition.
The statistic is that 74% of all poor households in the US do not have a full-time, year-round worker. Households in the US with people who work two- or three-month gigs may or may not be poor, but they are households with people who do not work full-time, year-round. Also keep in mind that the statistic is NOT that 74% of all households without a full-time, year-round worker are poor. My parents’ household, for instance, does not have anyone who works full-time year-round, and they certainly aren’t poor.
Regards,
Shodan
How active people are or how physically strenuous their jobs are has little to do with putting on or losing weight. This study which has been cited here before on other threads indicates that whether a person is active all day or sits in an office chair all day they burn about the same number of calories. You can’t actually jog off an extra slice of pizza nor do you require more food to be able to unload trucks all day rather than read documents.
But there’s no way to torture the statistics to confess to some people’s preferred myth that poor people in the US typically work a lot of hours. That’s just not so in general. Obviously some do, most don’t, and fewer do than people at higher levels of the socio-econ chain.
The problem is often when moralizing and counter-moralizing get in the way of examining basic facts. For example, another factual problem is how SS Disability Benefits has tended to morph into a long term unemployment program. If we hold off on moralizing about that for a bit, we can recognize that saying ‘disabled’ people shouldn’t count when saying the poor are underemployed is partly just semantics.
Again, recognizing that some people are truly disabled, just like some poor people work 2 or 3 jobs. Just a significant % of ‘disabled’ people are really people with poor employability and the same ailments people used to work despite. And a small % of poor people (or anyone else) actually work multiple jobs adding to up to more than full time. Higher paid people often work more than ‘full time’ at a single job. Hours worked is an increasing function of pay per hour in general in today’s economy.
Which again aside from moralizing is not a shocking outcome. Low pay, less marginal income per extra hour to begin with, public support programs which tend to cut out when you make more money often resulting in relative effective high marginal tax rates for working poor when counting the impact on ‘means testing’, often regulatory driven stuff which tends to make employers not want paid per hour people working more than full time, and the fact that actually having separate employers in separate part time jobs adding up to lots of hours is a bunch of balls to juggle. It’s not that common, though not freakishly rare. Whereas if stats are missing people who have a near full time job and work for a few bucks off the books here and there… that doesn’t really bolster the argument of ‘not enough time’ as explanation for pretty pervasive self-harming behavior by poor people. And does anybody really believe to begin with ‘not enough time’ is much of the reason? Again without it being who is the good guy and the bad guy, but just being realistic.
We also have a ripped dude who’s sort of locally famous. He’s homeless but he does a lot of day labor; he’s always dancing and rockin’ them Daisy Dukes and gives exactly zero fucks. Oddly, I found a picture of him on Reddit. He goes by Dog West. One day I aspire to be as confident.
This is a perfect example of garbage results. How do I know it’s garbage? Because it contradicts reality.
There are numerous studies that show that not only do certain types of exercise increase metabolism rate, but also that the rate remains elevated for a length of time afterwards.
Take any reasonably-typical office worker, put that person in a job where he’s moving around all day long, and as long as he doesn’t change his eating habits, he WILL lose weight. It’s that simple.
Something about this seems wrong. What if his normal eating habit is 4000 calories a day? He may gain weight at a lower rate, but he won’t be losing weight.
I can’t get to the whole article, but it seems it’s more about comparing light activity to being sedentary. Typical light office work may not really make a difference. The few extra calories you burn by walking around can easily be mitigated by your body lowering your metabolism at a later time. But a job where you’re climbing around a roof or hauling around cement bags is essentially like real exercise. Many day labor jobs will be doing that sort of grunt work which burns a lot of calories.
I seem to recall reading it was also the ‘war on poverty’ under Johnson some 1964-era times.
Moderating
Let’s avoid making the argument personal.
[QUOTE=manson1972]
And I resent that fact that you slyly called me a child in General Questions. Or I would if I actually cared what you think.
[/QUOTE]
If you believe someone has insulted you, you should report it rather than responding to it.
No warnings issued, but everybody needs to dial it back and not engage in personal remarks about other posters. If you want to do that, the Pit is the place for it.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
In these threads, it is often asserted that many poor people in the U.S. are obese because “they can’t afford healthy food.” I do not believe this is true for two reasons:
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Generic staples such as poultry, beans, rice, and potatoes are healthy and cheap.
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Lots of middle class people are also obese. Why is that the case? Since they have money, are they obese for a different reason vs. poor people?
The cold, hard truth is that poor obese people are fat for the same reason as middle class obese people… they love to eat high-calorie foods. You can give them healthy food for free, and they’ll just throw it in the trash.
Many poor people work very few hours, or no hours at all. They have an incredible amount of time on their hands.
Some of us look back fondly to the era of No Frills branded foods.