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Being Poor by John Scalzi

• pistoriusp 16y ago
  It's often good to remind yourself of just how fortunate you really are... Those lines are so easily blurred.
  • GFischer 16y ago
    Or not... actually I - AM - fortunate, and I've never been poor, but I can identify with many of the points in the article (many are too US-centric as someone pointed out), and U$ 8 an hour sounds like a good deal even today for me. Of course, I live in Uruguay, South America, and mostly by choice (I was born here, but I've had my opportunities to emigrate). It's funny, but many of the "being poor" points, would not be considered "being poor" here in Uruguay (I should write a similar article about "being poor" from the Uruguay point of view - let's say it would be much worse in several parts, a bit better on the healthcare bit.
    • marcofloriano 16y ago
      Same thing here, Brazil ... $8 an hour is like R$16 here, most part of population here get around R$10 per hour ... i guess the truth about being poor is ... "knowing the price of everything, but knowing the value of nothing"
• die_sekte 16y ago
  Surprisingly, this is the first time this article was submitted to HN. It's quite interesting. Some of these things happen in all developed nations, but quite a significant number of them only happen in the US. For example, it did not realize just how fucked up health care is in the US prior to reading this article.
  • ido 16y ago
    Or the couple of mentions about poor people having shitty cars. Where I'm from poor people take the bus, as they could afford neither a car nor the gas.
    • zephyrfalcon 16y ago
      Not all places in the US are reachable by bus, especially smaller towns.
      • die_sekte 16y ago
        The geographical disadvantage of the US is probably to blame for this. I don't think that there's a substantial number of rural poor in western Europe. I don't think that there is any town in Germany that is not reachable by bus, and our inner cities have at least adequate public transit. Apart from free health care, good public transit could turn some things in the US.
        • zephyrfalcon 16y ago
          Agreed; I'm originally from the Netherlands myself, and the situation there is the same as in Germany. Over here in the US, it's a different story. If you live in a rural area (like I do) you really need a car, because there is no public transportation anywhere around.
    • RyanMcGreal 16y ago
      In most industrialized cities, the bus service is good enough to use as a primary transportation mode.
      • _delirium 16y ago
        Depends on the city and the job imo. Many cities have very bad late-night bus services (often non-existent), which is a problem if you're a janitor or fast-food worker who gets off at 2am. And many of the better-paying jobs available to the poor are in wealthy suburban areas with bad bus services as well, so with no car you're cutting out a bunch of employment options, like cleaning houses or waiting tables in upscale suburbs. Atlanta has interesting rush-hour traffic along those lines, with a large group of poor people from southern Atlanta driving to jobs in the suburban/exurban counties to the north.
  • yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure he is not talking about the US. Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere. This is definitely not the US. Most of our poor don't work at all (and are not trying to work), and about 90% don't work full time. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you. In the US, 67% of poor households have 2 rooms per person (compared to 70.2% of non-poor households). http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understanding-poverty-in-america http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi... Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn’t have make dinner tonight because you’re not hungry anyway. In the US, being poor is eating the meat, the potato chips, the bacon and the ice cream. But it might be a quart of Krasdale rather than a pint of Ben & Jerry's. [Edit: I'm speculating that the poor get fat off a broad sampling of typical American fatty foods. I could be getting specific food items wrong. Thanks krschultz for pointing out that my comment was unclear.] http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February06/Features/feature4.htm http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February06/Features/featu... I really don't know what part of the world he is talking about. [edit: changed secondary source to original source on obesity. ]
    • krschultz 16y ago
      I recently found out how much money WIC pays out for "supplemental" nutrition. $50 a MONTH. In vouchers. For only certain foods. Ice cream would definitely not be one of them. White bread is not one of them. Soda is not one of them. Get your facts straight.
      • yummyfajitas 16y ago
        Could you remind me where I claimed the poor were getting fat off WIC supplemental nutrition, rather than other sources of food? I've edited my comment to reflect the fact that I'm only speculating about specific food items making the poor fat. But make no mistake, the poor are fat - their average BMI is 29, only one point short of obesity. If you ever live in a poor neighborhood, all you need to do is open your eyes to see that everyone has plenty to eat.
  • bd 16y ago
    Surprisingly, this is the first time this article was submitted to HN. It was already discussed here before (with many comments), but it was submitted as a comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619197 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619197
• tome 16y ago
  Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you. Most of them are about being financially poor, but this one is about emotional poverty and can happen to the richest of us.
  • baddspellar 16y ago
    "We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty." - Mother Teresa
    • dantheman 16y ago
      Mother Teresa was no saint: http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/ http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/
      • joshuacc 16y ago
        Christopher Hitchens isn't exactly an impartial source when it comes to Mother Teresa.
        • mahmud 16y ago
          Specially given his propensity for excessive self-promotion. That piece might have been written to spread his name around. Just like that dipshit in Florida who gained international recognition by threatening to burn a book.
        • deleted 16y ago
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        • isleyaardvark 16y ago
          He has an opinion, and he states it. It's not like he has some sort of conflict of interest.
          • 16y ago
• fsipie 16y ago
  What can we do to help people who are this kind of poor? Having given a decent bit to charities in the past, I somtimes feel a bit odd not knowing where it really went, or even if it really helped anyone. Or is this just me?
  • marquis 16y ago
    give directly to local charities, like your food bank or library. you could ask around at your civic center or library for groups who don't have a lot of overhead - i personally try to only donate to groups who are very local and don't have high administration costs, e.g. run by volunteers. if you aren't bothered by church groups they also can do a lot of good. if you have children at school, as your local school if you can help out by donating books or music instruments for those who can't otherwise afford these things. you can make a difference in someone's life, believe me.
    • fsipie 16y ago
      I'm going to try this donating to the local school, thanks for the constructive ideas.
    • Encosia 16y ago
      This. My better half is director at a small non-profit here that is part of an ecosystem focusing on helping people get out of this cycle. Her non-profit is the last step in this local ecosystem, taking people who are at about 75% of the local median household income and helping them with more affordable housing while they get back on their feet (or find their feet for the first time). However, it's no free ride. They require that the participants go through financial education, require that they continue making forward progress in bettering themselves, and monitor/mentor them all along the way. They've taken nearly destitute families and guided them to the point of sustainable, unsubsidized home ownership, requiring far less monetary assistance along the way than comparable (less effective) government programs. I'm generally jaded by the waste, fraud, and ineffectiveness that we so often hear about regarding charities, but the work that her charity has done is amazing. It's depressing to watch her smaller, deserving organization have to fight a desperately uphill battle against huge, inefficient organizations when it comes to funding and donations. So, I strongly second the notion of finding good, local charities to donate to.
• deleted 16y ago
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• dkarl 16y ago
  Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old. Plus knowing that your kids are likely to ignore your guidance and follow your example, making the same mistakes you did, no matter how much they know it's a bad idea, and that it will be your influence at fault when they do. I mean, everybody deals with this, but I imagine the worse off your situation, the worse the fear is.
• kingofspain 16y ago
  Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs. I still have this now! Of course I was never poor for any real hardcore definition of the word, Third World-style, but I spent a good few years totally flat broke. Money coming in only occasionally covering the rent, utility payments never paid as I couldn't justify spending that much money when I couldn't afford to eat, living off dry bread and instant mash etc etc. It was an experience for sure, and one I never, ever want to repeat! It's only relatively recently that I've stopped dreading the arriving of mail or jumping when there's a knock at the door, or even keeping the curtains closed so no one can see I'm in. But yeah, I still buy the cheap brands if they are there out of habit. I'll walk down the road to save 10p on a bottle of milk and so on.
• wallflower 16y ago
  Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle" is a memoir of her poor, nomadic childhood that is at times shocking and heartbreaking.
• DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  People wondering why you didn't leave You can always leave. They're called feet: use them. I have been very, very poor. And I've made a million bucks in a short amount of time. In fact, I've flopped back and forth about as many times as anybody I know, so I know both sides of this. I would not idolize poverty as some kind of state of nobility, and I would't spend a lot of time agonizing over it either. It is a thing that happens to you, like cancer. You get to make choices in life, no matter where you are or what your situation. The last day of your life, if you were lying in a ditch somewhere, you can still choose how to confront the end of your existence. These choices are all we own. The only person that can stop you making choices is yourself. It is extremely possible to dwell on all the bad things in life and despair. If you are poor and reading this, whatever you do, please don't despair. Make some different choices. The only way you're not making a difference in the world is if you've decided that you're not. Don't let others -- no matter how well meaning -- give that to you.
  • lionhearted 16y ago
    > I have been very, very poor. Me too, man. That's a very compassionate and honest comment you just wrote. I tend to be shorter and less patient with people who self-pity, and especially people who come from more who treat poor people like helpless children. But I should be friendlier, more compassionate, less short tempered, more steadfastly guiding. Very nice comment by you - you managed to be patient and kind while still being strong and emphasizing responsibility and choice. I should emulate this, this was a great comment.
  • Tichy 16y ago
    How have you made a million bucks in a short amount of time? I agree there are always options, the problem is knowing them. For example, I suppose at any time there is a stock I could buy for little money that would make me a millionaire over night. The problem is I don't know which one. Of course other options are maybe simpler to judge than stock prospects, but the general problem still holds. In fact, if markets are efficient, wouldn't it imply that choosing anything in life is as difficult as picking the right stocks? Because making a choice (on actions) is an economical decision, hence it is subject to the efficient markets theorem.
• deleted 16y ago
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• te_platt 16y ago
  Being poor is wanting as much stuff as the people around you. The article came across to me as a whiny. Being poor is having a car (but not a nice one), having toys (but not nice ones), having shoes, shelter, food (but...).
  • elblanco 16y ago
    If I have one complaint about the article, it's that his idea of poor, and my idea of poor seem very far apart. My idea of poor makes his idea of poor look like a lavish paradise.
  • pfedor 16y ago
    This guy's suffering was real -- it's just that, contrary to what the article implies, it was not caused by the lack of material comforts, but by the low social position relative to others he compared himself against. If he time-traveled to Eastern Europe thirty years ago he would be the coolest kid on the block owning a car, American clothes and high quality toys and he wouldn't consider himself poor or deprived. On the other hand, in the future, when everyone has their own planet, some people will still have planets with designer ice caps and others will have to contend themselves with off brand ice caps and the latter will feel underprivileged and unhappy.
• nlavezzo 16y ago
  >Being poor is off-brand toys. >Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house. No... this is being "poor", i.e. still in the top third or more of humanity as far as living standards. Being poor is what the people I visited in barrios in Ecuador do - living in huts made of corrugated aluminum and scraps of wood, with a dirt floor, no plumbing or electricity, access to education, healthcare or clean water. Oh, and also having almost no way of changing your situation, no matter how hard you try. Surprisingly, these people were in general happier than well-off people in America, because they had a strong faith, strong families, strong relationships with others in their community, and were just plain tough. I guess after visiting a third world country and seeing how hard the truly poor work every day, how much they care for what little they have, and how thankful they are for everything, I feel a little less sympathy for the "poor" in America. I wish they could spend a few weeks in a truly poor country, and then realize what an amazing land of opportunity they live in.
  • pavel_lishin 16y ago
    There's always someone worse off than you. There are people living in sub-saharan africa that would probably trade places with anyone in Ecuador given half a chance. Being poor is miserable because you look around you, and see how other people have it better. Poor people in America don't see Ecuadorians living in shacks, they see people driving to their big house in a Lexus, and relaxing by taking a dip in the pool.
    • nlavezzo 16y ago
      There is a huge difference. Poor people in America have a much greater ability to change their circumstances - public education, needs based financial aid for education, job placement programs, military service, etc. Poor people in third world countries generally have almost no way of doing so.
      • pavel_lishin 16y ago
        True, but it seems to me that Scalzi's article was focused on what it feels like to be poor, not on the actual objective reality, etc., etc.
• dpavlenkov 16y ago
  I had grass growing in my first car.
• hcho 16y ago
  Why have kids when poor? Haven't the humanity progressed from "increase the reproduction rate when circumstances are dire" mechanism?
  • die_sekte 16y ago
    (a) Sex is cheap, good entertainment. (b) If you are already poor, children aren't going to make it any worse. (c) For some reason, most people really want to have children. (d) Humans aren't exactly rational creatures. Free birth control, as well as better sex education (which is, from what I've read, hilariously bad in the US) would probably help quite a bit.
    • hcho 16y ago
      >If you are already poor, children aren't going to make it any worse. And yet considerable of his pain points are about not being able to cater for his child(ren)
      • mahmud 16y ago
        People don't plan to remain poor forever. Some of them become poor after they have kids, while others hope things might improve in the future, since the life of the poor always fluctuates from bad to relatively better off. Besides, who are you to tell someone they couldn't have children of their own just because they're poor? It's their right to conceive and adopt children, just as it's yours. In fact, they could easily afford to feed their children and lead a happy life, wasn't it for the rest of the well off society that's making their lot worse than it is, by comparison. Being poor in a rich town is worse, both materially and psychologically, than being one of a larger poor community.
        • hcho 16y ago
          Well, if a person complains about being poor and still have kids, I find the right to point out to that person the obvious planning mistakes in his life, It's not like I am shouting at random poor people now, is it?
• wallflower 16y ago
  From the comments: > Being poor is discovering that that letter from Duke University, naming you as one of three advanced students in your class invited to test out of HS early into their scholarship program, is just so much firestarter because the $300 it costs to take the test may as well be $3 million. Despair is finally realizing, at nearly 36 and with a barely-afforded AA in English from a community college, just where you could have been by now had you had $300, and what that missed opportunity has truly cost you.
  • inboulder 16y ago
    $300 is 15 lawns mowed, or 2k cans collected, or probably one post on your facebook page asking for donations.
    • tomjen3 16y ago
      But you and I know that it isn't the $300 that is preventing her from getting it. It is the belief that she can't.
    • muhfuhkuh 16y ago
      "or probably one post on your facebook page asking for donations" I seriously doubt facebook was around back when this person was in school. And, how do you mow 15 lawns with no transport, and the people around you are too poor to even have a lawn, let alone have people mow their lawns for them? Hell, where could he even get the lawnmower in the first place? And, 2000 cans collected is a noble (and green!) act, but there are states where they'll give a big fat nothing for recycling; in fact, the home state of Duke University (NC, USA) doesn't offer money for aluminum like up North, unless you're willing to collect a pound of it and sell it for 20 cents. I guess he could move to another state to get better recycling prices, but then there's moving costs. Sometimes being poor sucks, and there's NOTHING you can do. Not saying his case was completely hopeless, but it's easy to find solutions when there are zero consequences.
      • patrickgzill 16y ago
        There are scrapyards all over the country. See http://realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71 http://realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71 for example.
• sabat 16y ago
  Being poor means having to constantly worry about money to the point where you're not sure where your next meal is coming from.
• jw84 16y ago
  Every item on the list applied to my upbringing I had to stop half way through to avoid depressing myself too much this morning. There's two reactions to this. One will be people saying these problems aren't like what's compared to "real" poverty in third world countries. Well, perspective doesn't feed you, pay bills, or support a roof over your head. Because there are people living in situations that is really fucked up doesn't invalidate you. Suffering is not a zero-sum game. Second, the common thread of being poor is the inherent limitations. You do and behave certain ways because you have no other choice, stuck on a treadmill. Some will never get an opportunity to learn the skills to make better choices. It will take an overwhelming amount of energy and effort to change the momentum of where a life goes. Being full on dollar meals and drunk on two dollar wines doesn't help with that situation. In all these years I have not been a god-believing man but I have become a faithful man. I have kept hope that things will always be better down the road. That it's up to me given the hand I've been dealt to play it as best as I could. And at the end to let go the bitterness or the awkwardness. There's no choice to be made when you're blinded by your own madness of being hopeless.
• iamwil 16y ago
  Don't have kids before you're ready to and can afford to. It seems like a lot of these are related to kids.
  • albemuth 16y ago
    Funny this is being upvoted, seems to me as a completely blind to reality thing to say, telling poor people not to have kids. Sure, that'll work.
    • GFischer 16y ago
      How about doing public education along those lines? Government campaigns? Monetary help contingent on doing that? I hope there's something that can be done, knowing (or believing) this to be the case.
    • iamwil 16y ago
      I meant it more as a mental note for personal behavior, not as a public policy to implement.
  • GFischer 16y ago
    Daniel Markham here said you're never ready to have kids ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474454 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1474454 ), but I strongly agree with the statement that you should be able to afford kids before having them.
    • iamwil 16y ago
      In the sense that yeah, just like there's no good time to get married, there's no good time to have kids, since life just gets in the way. That said, I think at a young age, like in your teens (and nowadays in your early 20's), there's still a lot of things that you need to do in order to make your childrearing easier. If you don't get to that point, you're always trying to do short-term gains to raise your kid, while not being able to invest (either financially, educationally, or situationally) in long-term gains.
  • 16y ago
• paolomaffei 16y ago
  I've never been anything near poor. I was wondering how really hard it is to get out of poverty in today's society, and if people really wants it (i'm NOT implying that they don't want, i'm really just asking myself). This is more for homeless-poor than just poor: I would really like to try taking someone homeless, let him shave and dress him nicely, get him to an interview even for a shitty manual job, that'd make me feel really useful in this society, I could probably host him in small building we own in the city (no heating but still it's a shelter and it's not that cold here) UNTIL he finds something else. "Unfortunately" I can't find any homeless guy in my city (smallish northern italy town), let alone the ones that truly wants to change their situation which i suppose are a % of the homeless people
• edw519 16y ago
  Being truly poor is not being able to imagine anything else. Both of my parents grew up with absolutely nothing. My mother shared a bed with her sisters and wore nothing but hand-me-downs until she got married. My father never had 3 meals in the same day until he joined the army. They both tried to explain what life was like to us many times, but every story ended with, "Never mind. You just wouldn't understand." They were so determined to escape their situations, almost every decision they made as adults was shaped by growing up with nothing. They worked hard almost every day of their lives so that none of us would ever have to experience what they went through. There was never any discussion or debate about what life would be like in our house: we were all going to finish high school, go to college, and build lives of our own. None of us has ever missed a meal or gone without anything essential. I realize many people are just as determined as my parents were, but still don't escape poverty. There are no guarantees. I just don't know how anyone can reverse the cycle without imagining that they can. Having no money is bad. Having no hope is worse.
  • poppysan 16y ago
    This is so very true. I grew up sleeping 3 to a bed, no food, no clothing, and no utilities more often than not. I'd never wish it on my worst enemy's kids. But I would not trade my upbringing at all. Thankfully that was long ago, but those memories give me the determination, and humility,that i need to advance myself each day.
  • electromagnetic 16y ago
    This is similar to how my parents grew up. My mother shared a bed with all her sisters at one point, but as they got older I think they were forced to be 2 to one bed and 3 to another until the eldest married. My dad didn't graduate highschool, he dropped out at 15 to start work and move out of his home (because they had more problems than a lack of money), literally at the first chance he got. He worked around to become a mechanic and eventually opened his own shop. He got into fuel injector programming, which got him a job at Ford, which when me and my brother were little meant we had 3 meals a day (literally sometimes 4), got almost everything we wanted but already had everything we needed. We had family vacations to places even my friends didn't get to go to. I think what he taught me most was to not give up and just keep trying. He said he had over a dozen jobs in a half-dozen years while paying his way to get qualified as a mechanic. He's had 3 companies, all successful in their time before he moved on to bigger and better to get solidly middle-class from not even a working class upbringing.
• patrickgzill 16y ago
  I do understand this article; however I would point out that among the "poor" (in America hardly anyone is poor like in the 3rd world) I have met, TV is present and books are not.
  • jerf 16y ago
    TVs are much cheaper per hour, so what's the surprise? I mean, yes, I know what you're getting at, but a $50 used 25-inch CRT that you use for several thousand hours is going to beat out a book on the price front any day. Even just the effort of going to the library and back adds up to more human capital per book/hour than watching TV. I'm not endorsing it, just observing it.
    • WalterBright 16y ago
      Just a quick comment; most books one cannot even give away. A lot of used books are sold on Amazon for $.01. The local used bookstore won't even take boxes of nearly mint books for free, because they can't give them away either. I read thousands of books as a kid and paid for nearly none of them.
      • three14 16y ago
        http://www.bookthing.org/ http://www.bookthing.org/ for instance will generally take those books.
    • patrickgzill 16y ago
      It is not about cost per hour, but about improving yourself vs. entertainment. TV's information density, even for good shows (however defined), is very low; you can learn far more in 1 hour of reading than in 1 hour of TV watching. And TV is a passive activity while reading a book requires mental involvement. What people, even poor people, choose to spend their time on has an effect on what they are able to do later.
    • pcestrada 16y ago
      Library?
• abcxyz 16y ago
  I don't know when this was written, but some of the "facts" listed are simply not true. "Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime." The minimum wage in California is $8/hr, so $0.1 is equal to only 0.75 minutes of labor. "Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor." A burger at McDonalds costs around $1, or only 7.5 minutes of labor.
  • elblanco 16y ago
    There's only so many hours in a week one can work to earn this money. Once it's spent, it's gone. You can't just add a few more hours onto the day to make up the difference.
• deecy 16y ago
  Being poor is not being lucky enough to have the opportunities others had. Check out the collaborative list on Listiki.
• robryan 16y ago
  Interesting looking at the Australian minimum wage of $15/hr ($14.21 USD atm). Whereas from what I have seen of the US one it seems really hard to get by at all with the Australian one you could rent out a nice 2 or 3 bedroom house in an outer suburb but nice area which would only take up about half your weekly wage.
  • bhjodokast 16y ago
    Wow, in America it's $5 and they don't blink an eye if you work this type of job and live in a shelter. The business owners in America have no respect for the poor of America. It's 'not their problem', since 'everyone does it'.
  • elblanco 16y ago
    I believe the U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr before taxes are taken out (and it can be less than that if you work in a job that expects to collect tips, like waiting tables), or about $15k/yr for a full-timer. In my area, which is a suburban area, 600 sq ft. single bedroom apartments go for around $900-$1200/mo. Significantly more if you live closer into the city. For reasons of transportation, many poor people live in the city. Keep in mind most apartment complexes won't let you have the apartment if your credit is bad, or the rent is more than 1/3 monthly income. You can rent bedrooms or basements though for $500-700/mo. Supposing you got the $900/mo apartment. That leaves you with around $100/wk to feed yourself and cover all other expenses. Once taxes are taken out, that can leave you with significantly less. No amount of budgeting can turn that into night school + transport + clothes + utilities + anything else you need like furniture or medical insurance or dental care. Most people trying to get a leg up work two full-time jobs which, while getting you more money (and enough money to qualify for the cheapest apartment possible), it doesn't leave any time for life advancement plans like night school. So it's a vicious cycle and you can only break out of it by being lucky in many areas simultaneously. You have to find the job that pays more than minimum wage, and compete with all the other poor people trying to get that same slot...so you can work only one job...so you can have time to take one class a semester at community college (so long as they happen to offer the classes you need at time that don't interfere with your work schedule and your work schedule doesn't change during the semester to interfere with your classes)...so in 5 or 6 years you can get an Associates degree, which isn't really worth much, but can be transfered to many state schools in lieu of the first two years of a 4-year degree (at much less cost). Of course many people stop at this point because they can't afford the last two years of school, and the A.A. or A.S. didn't really help them get a better job. So they feel like they've just wasted 5 or 6 years of their life scraping for every penny they had to put themselves through school. Escaping this kind of life requires so much luck and so many people in so many places to turn a blind eye, or offer a meaningful helping hand, that a person simply can't do it on their own. It's numerically impossible in the U.S. Most immigrants who come here with nothing never escape it themselves, but end up in a better life through their children.
• fady 16y ago
  being poor is not having a blog.
• shaunfs 16y ago
  Being poor is buying only Oatmeal and Mac & Cheese because they don't require electric refrigeration, can be purchased in bulk inexpensively, and you just add water to eat. That brings back bad memories. Granted, compared to many parts of the world it's a walk in the park.
  • piguy314 16y ago
    Peanut butter, honey, bread, powdered milk, canned foods, dried fruit I actually buy many of these products anyway because I have a bad habit of buying food, forgetting about it, and then throwing it out when it spoils. Solution: Dried fruit doesn't spoil nearly as fast so if I forget about my raisins for 2 weeks chances are they will still be edible. Grapes on the other hand would have spoiled in that time. Also most of the discussion around food in America is totally moot. Food stamps are available in all 50 states, and at least one territory because there are 51 state food stamp programs in America. The only group of the poor for whom food should be a serious concern are the homeless because they lack the ability to cook the food they can buy with food stamps, and even then some states allow you to buy 1 hot meal per day with food stamps because of this. All of this is to say nothing of food pantries and private charities and other government programs (cheese) that provide food for the poor. So can we please stop harping on the food issue? Most of that is all just argument from emotion fantastical progressive rhetoric and has no basis in reality; the poor in America are NOT going hungry (as has been evidenced by the obesity-poverty statistics posted earlier).
• deleted 16y ago
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• known 16y ago
  Instead check how rich are you http://www.globalrichlist.com/ http://www.globalrichlist.com/
• erikstarck 16y ago
  I'm sorry, I know this is a serious subject but this thread reminds me of this Monty Python sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo
• ergo98 16y ago
  Great list. I grew up in a very poor family (although Canadian poor is global rich by some measure, that didn't comfort me). It's an experience that I seldom comment on because I've discovered that many people simply cannot understand. They really can't. Being really poor is more about a lack of hope, opportunity and options than the more obvious lack of resources. It's impossible to play poor -- you can't cut your budget as an exercise in restraint and then assume that you've experienced what it's like to be desperately poor. The few luxuries we did have were grossly irresponsible luxuries. I remember a period shortly after our dog died of malnutrition -- when the infrequent bath was facilitated by my older brother using a blow torch on the hot water heater, and boiled hot dogs comprised about 80% of our diet -- and my father blew the few dollars he got on a laser disc player. Here we were living miserably, living in a toxic environment as our only indoor heat was a kerosene heater (that we didn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning was courtesy of the gale force winds that would blow through the uninsulated house), and yet we had a very rare laser disc player for our shitty little second-hand television. I don't begrudge my father it, though. Life had become such a trial that it was simply an escape and gave him something to feel pride about providing. It was irrational, but it gave me perspective that judging the poor is a fool's game unless you can empathize with the situation. Being poor was thinking "what's the point" about almost everything, because fate had a way of conspiring against you. Or at least that's what it felt like when every initiative or enterprise relied upon layers of fragile proppings. Where a flat tire was economic destruction. Now I sit in the top 1% of earners. Though that is purely a result of natural interests and natural abilities (thank you genetics), and was no herculean motivation to escape the situation of my parents.
• deleted 16y ago
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• tjic 16y ago
  I attacked this Scalzi post almost five years ago. http://tjic.com/?p=1386 http://tjic.com/?p=1386 Leftist propaganda on how we comfortable middle class folks have no idea of what money management is, and no idea how hard the poor are oppressed by The Man, with some observations sprinkled in between: > http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.ht.. http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.ht... > > Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs. Being middle class is knowing how much things cost; being low-class is not knowing and just spending money. > Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for > all the crap they see on TV. Being low-class is letting your kids watch TV all day long, when there are free libraries, parks, playgrounds, Boy scout, Girl scout, and church organizations. > Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but > never has friends over to yours. Being a low-class is keeping your home, no matter how large or small, in a manner that is embarrassing to you. > Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in > the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just > bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids > understand that the box has to last. Being low-class is buying expensive name-brand cereal, instead of bulk oatmeal, at a fraction of the price. > Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying > when he says he doesn't mind when you ask for help. Being low-class is getting yourself in a situation where you need to ask folks for loans you won't pay back. > Being poor is off-brand toys. Being low-class is caring about the brand of toys. > Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee > table when your friends are around. Being low-class is considering people who would steal money from you your "friends". > Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up > before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn't > have make dinner tonight because you're not hungry anyway. Being low-class is stealing. Being low-class is choosing meat over pasta when you can't afford it. > Being poor is Goodwill underwear. Being low-class is not shopping sales at Sears. > Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you. Being low-class is having more kids than space. > Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you. Being low-class is worrying what other people think about you, instead of just living your life. > Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your > dad, begging him for the child support. Being low-class is leaving your spouse, or settling for the kind of person who might run off. > Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach > skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if > your kid saw. Being low-class is leaving garbage around enough that cock-roaches breed. > Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall. Being low-class is shopping at the mall, when your money would go much further at other places. > Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find > someone you trust to watch your kids. Being low-class is having kids with out the spouse or means to support them. > Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it. Being low-class is discarding garbage on sidewalks. > Being poor is people thinking they know something about > you by the way you talk. Being low-class is walking in a way that demonstrates attitude. > Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have > any books in your home. Being low-class is not having books in your home. Being low-class is acting such that people would assume that you don't have book in your home. > Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap. Being low-class is not budgeting. > Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know > you made when you were 14 years old. Being low-class is letting your children make bad choices then they are 14. > Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a > relationship on shelter. Being low-class is whoring. > Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck > on a Lotto ticket. Being low-class is wasting money on lotto tickets, then stealing meat for dinner (see way above). > Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the > same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them > against doing so. Being low-class is not having an intact family to set a good example for your children. > Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, > just in case you have to give it back before the lease is > up. Being low-class is eating and drinking in the living room. > Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that > takes $250 when the paycheck comes in. Being low-class is living beyond your means. > Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave. Being low-class is refusing to listen to advice. I feel bad for the poor, but in a rich, capitalist, free-market place like America, ALMOST ANYONE can become middle-class or better, if they just act like responsible adults. Yeah, by the time you've pumped out four kids by three different fathers, and picked up $10k in credit card debt, you're reasonably screwed…but the fact that bad choices have consequences doesn't negate the fact that every day people come to this country with nothing but a shirt on their backs, a set of morals, and a work ethic, and end up retiring to a nice air-conditioned three-bedroom in Florida a few decades later. Enjoy this article about how a 37 year old manual laborer who came to the country at 21 just bought a condo in NYC for $1.4 million. If you want to work two shifts, and save your money, and eat oatmeal, you can become a millionaire. If you want to label yourself as a victim, rent furniture you can't afford, buy name brand crap food you can't afford, and watch TV all day, you can live like the white (or other colored) trash that you are. What this society needs is more accountability, not less. Poor people shouldn't be spoon-fed aggrieved resentment sauce by middle class leftists; they should be reminded that they wake up every day and face a set of choices, just like the rest of us.
• deleted 16y ago
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• elblanco 16y ago
  My grandmother grew up during the great depression. She still hoards food in nooks and crannies throughout the house and when let loose on a piece of chicken will eat every last scrap of digestible item on the bone. She habitually makes soup with boiled beef bones to get every last ounce of nutrition. My father grew up just post-depression in a very rural area. While he never missed a meal, many meals consisted of only a few slices of bread as a filler and maybe some soup and not much else. I've never seen him eat a meal without eating some bread with it, he said it makes him feel uncomfortable. My family was pretty low-end middle class growing up, and a couple of unlucky business decisions set us homeless for the better part of a year, with my entire family of 4 living in a single room subsidized motel room (rent 5 days, get the weekends for free) followed by two years of living out of two rented rooms in somebody's basement. We also never missed a meal, but I can tell you that I, to this day, cannot eat a cup of noodles meal without thinking about drug addicts banging at our motel room door thinking we were the room down the hall. We did better after that, and then later in life, as an adult, I found myself in not-quite-so-bad-but-not-great circumstances. A time when I used to decide if I could buy lunch at McDonald's or Taco Bell by counting how many hours extra I would have to work to pay for McDonald's. Some of the things Scalzi mentions, would have been luxuries at certain moments in my life...like having toys. I've spent time as a child with no toys at all. People who have never been poor, have absolutely no understanding, cannot fathom, why people are poor and why they stay poor. Being poor is not about having a lack of money, it's about having a lack of wealth. It's a way of life. A person who has never been poor cannot understand why you can't "just go to night school" to improve your lot in life because they don't understand that between two 40 hour a week jobs, and 2 or 3 hours a day of walking between jobs, home, the day-old-baked goods store and the salvation army, you have maybe 4 or 5 hours that night for sleep...every night. And what intense sleep deprivation coupled with intense, dangerous and stressful jobs can do to a person after decades. We worry about soldiers deployed for 18 months, imagine that type of life for 18 years solid. "Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar." This is the type of calculation one has to make all day every day when one is poor. It's very easy to be critical when you see a poor person buy a pack of cigs or a 6-pack of beer instead of a head of lettuce or that month's electricity bill. But I dare anybody to live that kind of life and not be so stressed and so damaged from the constancy of it, that you seek any kind of escape possible and that desire for escape infects all of your decisions. When your eating decisions are down to decisions about pennies, there's really not much worse things can get. Having the lights turned off because you didn't pay the bill does not really make things all that much worse in your day to day. "Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree." The prime question asked by those who have never been poor, and are unable to empathize with those who are, is this..."why don't you just go to school and make your lot in life better?" There are lots of reasons to be poor in the first place. If you are lucky like I was, it's not because you have a mental disease or a severe learning disability, or are crippled or in some other way handicapped or not raised in a generational environment of poverty where you honestly don't understand that going to class can translate into a house in the suburbs because you have absolutely no life experience for you to understand that. Just in the same way some people don't understand what it's like to be poor, poor people can't understand what life is like to be not poor. I was able to spend the 6 years in night school to get my 2 year A.S., which brought me up a step in life so that I could spend another 3 years getting the last two years of my B.S. which brought up a step in life so I could spend another 4 years getting my M.S. But at each step, if I hadn't had a person at that time to help me up that step, and give me an opportunity, I'd still be comparing Ramen prices, or figuring out how many meals a 10-pack of tacos from Taco Bell would last. And if I hadn't had the emotional support from good friends, or people who believed in me...well, 10 years is a terribly long time to keep motivated to change your lot in life while also doing all the other things people do in their day-to-day, like keeping down full-time jobs, career advancement, marriage, etc. Basically, being poor is a full-time job on top of your other full-time jobs. But I don't think that every poor peer I knew while I was poor could do the same. I got lucky and had great opportunity, and I worked hard to seize those opportunities when they came along. If nobody ever opens the door for you, you can't ever go through it and nobody is strong enough to carve their path in life to success all on their own. My friend, who was born with the after-effects of an alcoholic and drug addicted mother, was unable to keep passing grades in his 6 year quest for a 2 year associate's degree and has never held a salaried position. That means he's never had health insurance, which means he's lost 3 jobs because he spent 14 hours in an ER getting basic medical care. It means he's had cars repossessed because somebody hit him and he had no auto-insurance and couldn't pay the repair bill out of pocket. It means that sometimes, to escape the shitty life he has to live every day, he sometimes buys a used book to escape into instead of a head of lettuce. It also means that sometimes, at the beginning of the month, he's just paid his rent, and he has $12 left in his bank account to stretch out till his next paycheck. And then, after you've been poor for a long time, it shows. There's an aura about a poor person that no amount of hair product and tailored suits can shake. It sits on them in how they walk, how they talk, how they sit, how their skin hangs, what their build looks like, how the hold themselves, where they look in a room, how they behave at a meal. Because of this, no matter how hard they've worked to "make it", they'll always have that stigma attached to them, even by people that never knew they were poor. They'll present like a poor person so they'll interview worse, they'll get promoted less frequently, they'll get scored lower on yearly reviews. Going from poor to not poor, is not about climbing a ladder. It's about being on the front of a seige engine attacking a fortress while arrows and bullets and hot oil rains down on you.
• Dove 16y ago
  I don't deny the reality of poverty, but this discussion leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The world is full of pain and nastiness, but this particular list accentuates and celebrates it. Can you imagine a similar piece writing about the woes of Terminal Cancer or Business Failure or Having An Autistic Child? Everyone's got problems, but people who are actually suffering don't write this way. Nobody defines themselves by their problems; ask a poor person if he's poor, and he'll probably say, "Oh no, I'm not that poor, I have an X." Or maybe, "Oh, I'm poor all right, but I'm not unhappy." Or perhaps even, "Yeah, I'm poor, and it is kind of miserable, but X makes it okay." What you won't get is, "Oh, I'm so poor and miserable, and you have no idea what poverty is like, let me list the ways I suffer, and let me drive home how very impossible it is for you, from your life of privelege, to ever comprehend how much I suffer every minute." Well, unless you ask an angsty teenager. ;) Just about everybody has problems, but nobody defines themselves by their troubles. Everyone thinks of himself as a complex person, with some miseries and some joys, some problems and some opportunities, some strengths and some weaknesses. Think over your own life; you could almost certainly write a piece like this about some problem you've had. Something has been miserable and unjust for you, in a way people who haven't been there would have a hard time identifying with. But do you define yourself by it? Neither do The Poor. That gets at the heart of what I find troubling about this piece. This is not about a particular person's or a particular community's experience of poverty. This is about The Poor, as a monolithic, mythical entity. And anytime you see someone cast a community of people, who are inherently diverse and complex by virtue of being people, as a simple, mythical stereotype, you're seeing intellectual dishonesty in action. Leftists are socialists, Christians are stupid or evil, Hacker News readers are well off, Iraqis approve the occupation, Americans are arrogant. These things can only be said from a distance; those who have spent time with these communities up close and personal would be hard pressed to say anything was true of all of them. People are diverse. Let me call these sentiments what they are: bigotry. They divide the population into "us" and "them", and say we are this way, and they are that way. (That's not to say you can't make useful generalizations. You can. But an honest generalization acknowledges that it is a simplification of a complex reality, and welcomes statistics and counterexamples that heighten the clarity of the image. Bigotry says reality is simple, and don't argue with me, dammit.) Step back a moment and you know that poverty is complex, and poverty is relative. There are transient homeless and chronic homeless. There are ambitious immigrants without a dollar to their names, there are musicians living the bohemian life, there are barely-profitable-but-proud startup founders living on ramen, there are third generation prostitutes who will never know their fathers, there are children sold into sexual slavery before they're even teens, there are women trapped in polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon communities, there are parents who helplessly watch their children starve to death. So what "is poverty"? By what authority does this author say, "Poverty is..."? This is not a rational attempt to characterize poverty. This is not a reference to studies which say "67% of households in XX neighborhood in 2008 had to go without a meal at least once a week for lack of funds." This is a series of emotional statements. This says, "Poverty is having to hunt squirrels in the park for food and being so hungry that you'll even eat the nasty bits." And if someone comes back and says, "Actually, poverty isn't that bad," is their diverse viewpoint into a complex problem welcomed? No, the response is, "Clearly you've never experienced true poverty, you insensitive bastard." What's going on here? Emotional, self-serving bigotry. These are not poor people talking about contemporary problems, looking for practical solutions. These are people who know what Poverty Is one-upping those who Don't Know What Poverty Is with their superior Social Awareness. It's a race to see who can be the most heartbroken by this emotional Reality of Poverty, criticizing nothing, adding to the tales of woe, acknowledging that yes, by God, it's true, it's all true. I have no doubt that the anecdotes are true, that they have roots in real experience. People really do suffer despair, hunger, and degrading treatment. But an emotional characterization without any roots in reason, a construction of a mythology of The Poor as objects of pity? I think that's actually destructive. Impersonal pity is degrading and infuriating. You see it in some of the experiences recounted in the original post and comments. People would anonymously leave us food or presents, one commenter says, and even though we needed them it provoked us to white-hot rage. We were not that poor. Kindness and compassion are encouraging and uplifting, whether you are going out to lunch with a poor friend or complimenting a rich friend on his poetry. It doesn't matter how miserable or happy a person is; he can be made happier by love, by personal kindness. But depersonalized pity is always degrading. If you do not think of yourself as The Poor, how insulting is it that your neighbor does, that he thinks your life is so unbearable that you would rather have a few crumbs from his table than keep your sense of dignity? There is a subtle art to being kind. It's all about treating people with dignity, respecting their personhood. Kindness is your friend, the rich professor, treating you to an extravagent dinner at the best club in town as a thank you for your hard work helping him grade papers. Pity is an anonymous millionaire giving you $200 for the same dinner just so you can "feel like a human being for a night." Kindness is your neighbor, the fit, poor, stay at home mom, offering to help her elderly and disabled neighbor with some chores after chatting over lunch. Pity is $50 in an envelope taped to your door with a note that says, "I can see your living room from the street and feel sorry for you; this is to hire a housekeeper for a day." The original post provokes pity, and I find that degrading. Here, for comparison, is what compassion sounds like: http://jmchoul.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F04579021E6249A3!1431.entry#comment http://jmchoul.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F04579021E6249A3!143... http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/grads.php http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/grads.php Poverty is real, complex, and generally miserable, but even the poor are human. Treat them with human dignity and kindness, not with self-righteous pity.