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‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks
- photochemsyn 4y agoThe architects of the economic system in the United States don't want to eliminate poverty - it's kept around as a threat, something to point to - see, grunts, that's where you'll end up if you're not an obedient drone. This is also a main reason why there's no reliable public health care system, instead it's tied to employment. The general concept is "discipline of the labor force."
- mistermann 4y agoArguably, if our culture didn't offload essentially all responsibility for running society off to "democracy" (a magical term that no one really considers the precise, real world manifestation of...another cultural norm/shortcoming, that is strongly culturally enforced, often using conveniently existent memes/psychological-exploits) people may be more interested in problems and insist that they are addressed one way or another. But alas, this seems to be the equilibrium we're satisfied with (or insist upon) for now.
- stevenwoo 4y agoAlso, any of the programs addressing the issues are often associated with the catchall terms "socialism" and "communism" pejoratively.
- mistermann 4y agoMagical words on top of magical words, yielding a magical reality. Strangely, it seems to be almost an unassailable phenomenon, like there is an intuition in people to defend the perspective. Granted, there is substantial propaganda in play, but one would think that at least some people would be able to transcend it.
- Aunche 4y agoCivics and government ought to be mandatory subjects in American schools. In school, we learn about the Civil Rights protests, and we learn about laws that made in response to these protests. What's completely neglected is are the lobbying and legislative process that lead to the creation of these laws. Nowadays, lobbying is a dirty word which for the average person means literal political bribery, which only leads to more political apathy.
- mistermann 4y agoThere is a massive and extremely wide variety of things that occur that people either do not know of, or have an incorrect understanding of (which they do not realize). I wonder if holding conversations haphazardly across various social media platforms with essentially zero coordination or teaching/enforcement of skilful thinking and speech is an optimal way to run a planet. I've never encountered it in a corporation (at least not to the same degree), which suggests that it is not optimal. Oh well, I guess we will never know!
- sokoloff 4y agoI’m not convinced that healthcare is a Machiavellian planned top-down threat. The origin was in employers competing for labor during a time of wage controls. The continuation is driven more by people who have good health coverage not wanting to lose that and the fear that their doctors visits will feel like DMV visits. That’s a powerful force.
- sdiacom 4y agoThe vast majority of people who have so-called "good" health coverage in the US are paying one to three orders of magnitude more for it, compared to the price of private health insurance in countries with a public health system. The best thing that could happen to people who currently have private health insurance and wish to keep it is that a public health system appears, forcing the private health insurance oligopoly to actually be competitive.
- sokoloff 4y ago> vast majority of people who have so-called "good" health coverage in the US are paying one to three orders of magnitude more for it, compared to the price of private health insurance in countries with a public health system. I pay (employer plus employee amounts) just under $20K/year for a family of four. I doubt anyone in the “vast majority” is paying over $50K/yr. Three orders of magnitude less than that is $50/yr. How can anyone, anywhere provide meaningful private health insurance for an individual (let alone a family of four) for $50/yr?!
- sdiacom 4y agoSix hundred euros a year gets you a no-copay plan for one person, all emergencies included. This is the top of the line, the most expensive individual plan available at this insurer. A regular no-frills, some-copay insurance plan would probably cost around one to two hundred euros a year. So, yeah, two-ish orders of magnitude.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoYou pay $20k per year in premiums for a family of four to avoid paying more than the out of pocket maximum in a calendar year, and to have to an agent negotiate prices and appropriate services with the healthcare seller. The likely amounts owed below your out of pocket maximum also have to be incorporated. Also, my gold metal level BCBS network PPO plan is near $30k per year for a family of 4, so $20k seems like it might be sacrificing quantity/quality of in network providers.
- Eleison23 4y agoPoverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently. There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions and mental health, so they don't really fit in anywhere. So you really only manage to be poor by becoming an utter social outcast first. If you can hold down the fort and navigate a bureaucracy, you can get on SNAP, Section 8, Voc. Rehab. and all sorts of programs that will get you back on your feet, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and that's not even counting the faith-based charities you could avail yourself of.
- squaredot 4y agoI agree on this. Poverty, in this sense has, more to do with being than with having. A friend of me recommended to me on this subject the book: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom).
- 11101010001100 4y agoWhat version of the US are you talking about? Perhaps the shame that the author discusses makes a sizeable amount of poverty not visible.
- stevenwoo 4y agoThe one that exists in libertarian's minds when arguing about capitalism. Just for one thing, Section 8 housing is not nearly as easy to get as that comment makes out, getting off the waiting list famously can take decades. SNAP also famously punishes you for making too much. https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff Famous is somewhat facetious because the poster is unaware of what they are talking about.
- phkahler 4y ago>> Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently. You have a lot to learn. Start by reading the article, and understand that the effects of growing up that way are hard to overcome - psychologically. The author has a Ph.D and still suffers from it. You may also want to look around at low cost of subsidized housing. It's often closer and more common than we think. I know a person living it, and I can look at the situation and think about how I might handle things better. But that ignores a huge part of the reality of what it's like to be that person, or live that life.
- m348e912 4y agoOne thing that confuses me is that people talk about lack of healthcare for the poor like Medicaid is not a thing. I have a friend getting a hip replacement in three weeks, after getting an appt with a specialist in one week, and it's getting covered under Medicaid. Will she have co-pays and out of pocket costs? I don't know. But I can't imagine it will be worse than with the shitty insurance I have.
- PopAlongKid 4y agoAnd also Affordable Care Act (U.S.) which is not tied to employment. It's been around for over 10 years.
- TeaDrunk 4y agoMultiple states have declined to expand medicaid that the affordable care act provides.
- Mezzie 4y agoYou have to be really poor for Medicaid. Back when I relied on it via income qualification (before I qualified through an obscure loophole that I found via figuring out the website page structure of MDHHS and manually searching every single posted BEM manual (social work manual) - totally a normal and cool thing that most people would think of and know how to do /s), I had to make under 1100/mo. GROSS income. So basically I had to choose between healthcare for MS and the other basics in my life.
- rolisz 4y agoWhat about all the other countries in the world, where poor still exist, even if there is a public health care system?
- hilom 4y agoThat was a long read, but very much worth reading. This part really stuck out to me: > A few years ago, a friend of mine, in a well-meaning attempt to understand the impoverished diets of poor people, ate a Food Stamp diet for a week. On the last day of the diet, he talked about what he had learned and spoke philosophically about his renewed appreciation of healthy food as he prepared to end his restricted diet with his first good meal of the week: homemade vegetable pizza. He thought about what he had learned as he kneaded the pizza dough. He had already sliced the vegetables, and they sat piled high on the cutting board. While he had the best of intentions, what he said made me sad. He had misunderstood. > In his week of eating like poor people, he had missed two crucial ingredients: fear and shame. While he was looking forward to breaking his fast that night, poor people don’t get to do that. They don’t get to look forward to the end of impoverishment, to a good meal. My friend would eat a healthy meal that night, and he had known throughout the week that he could stop whenever he wanted, that all he had to do if he missed healthy food was open his refrigerator. Poor people never know when their next good meal will come. They look in the refrigerator on the 25th and maybe they only have enough food for a couple more meals but they don’t get paid for a week. And vegetables are expensive. Most poor people can’t afford them. All of this causes great shame. Shame that they don’t make enough money, shame that they can’t give their kids decent food, shame that they must rely on government assistance, shame that they can’t afford the restaurant their friends want to go to on Saturday night. That shame never goes away. It is not my friend’s fault that he does not know this. He doesn’t know it because society does not talk about such things, does not want them talked about. The result is that my friend would never understand how poor people feel—never understand me—and I felt sad and alone. It's a doublet of suffering: not just the material burden of living in poverty and being unable to provide for yourself and family, but the ideological burden of being shamed into believing it was caused by your own personal failure.
- kjellsbells 4y agoPulp called this out in 1999. There's a william shatner cover which is...surprisingly good. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People
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- synu 4y agoI wish there were more founders and investors who came from a background of intense poverty. I know why there aren’t many, and I know why the ones who are don’t speak about it, but because nobody talks about it everyone has to figure out how to “pass” and how not to fall into certain traps on our own, and there isn’t any systemic support out there. Or if there is/there are people talking about it, I’m just not aware.
- gorbachev 4y agoWe also desperately need people like that as legislators. Cori Bush was once homeless. I guarantee she will work harder for people in need than Nancy Pelosi ever will.
- tjpnz 4y agoWhat I do find strange is how much systemic support already exists for other marginalised groups in society. But given how pervasive the idea of a meritocracy is in capitalist societies I've wondered whether extending that support would mean confronting some uncomfortable truths. Regardless of that there are benefits to be had here. Very few products (especially tech products) are targeted exclusively towards people from wealthy backgrounds.
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- Mezzie 4y agoThey can't talk about it. I'm a first generation college grad (both undergrad and grad school) raised by blue collar peeps (sort of - it's complicated). In professional environments, talking about your life or the impacts of poverty will get you pushed out. You're not a 'culture fit', you make people uncomfortable, the upper-middle class/PMC assume that if you have poverty problems you can't work as well, etc. It is 100% passing. I'm very good at it, because my mother was a defector from that life and passed on the social mores for us to use, but I hate it, and the energy it takes up is immense. I didn't even realize until I worked in my first 'non-professional' job in retail. I don't have to hide everything about my life and childhood, I don't have to watch my language so I don't give away I grew up poorish, etc. And I have it very, very good in my groups. (Poor-raised + disabled).
- rcarr 4y agoThis passage: > In his week of eating like poor people, he had missed two crucial ingredients: fear and shame. While he was looking forward to breaking his fast that night, poor people don’t get to do that. They don’t get to look forward to the end of impoverishment, to a good meal. My friend would eat a healthy meal that night, and he had known throughout the week that he could stop whenever he wanted, that all he had to do if he missed healthy food was open his refrigerator. Reminded me of Common People by Pulp: Rent a flat above a shop Cut your hair and get a job Smoke some fags and play some pool Pretend you never went to school But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah The entire song has some of the best lyrics I've ever heard. It pictures life in England's left behind towns perfectly and also the disconnect you experience when you have a rare encounter with one the bourgeoisie. Fun fact: Jarvis Cocker supposedly wrote that song about the wife of Yannis Varoufakis, the left wing Greek finance minister who was in charge during the EU bailouts.
- pflenker 4y agoOne of the things that suck most about being poor is that you need to have money in order to save money. You need to have enough money to buy a certain level of quality, and if you don't have it, you're forced to buy cheap stuff that breaks more easily (thus spending more money in total). I found this aspect hard to understand for others, the attitude often seems to be: "you don't have to be poor, you simply need to invest wisely!" This is true if you are free to choose to buy a new shirt now or save a bit and buy it later. But if you are running out of shirts now, you don't have that choice.
- kjellsbells 4y agoTerry Pratchett wrote about this, and apparently the concept has its own economic theory named for it now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
- fbdab103 4y agoMight as well quote the relevant blurb, > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
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- roflyear 4y agoIsn't just that either. When you're poor you don't have the proper clothes. You ruin good clothes doing hard work.
- teddyh 4y agoI often link to these articles: • 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, May 27, 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20221021114455/https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about-being-poor https://web.archive.org/web/20221021114455/https://www.crack... • The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, January 19, 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20220607063905/https://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor https://web.archive.org/web/20220607063905/https://www.crack... • 4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People, February 21, 2013: https://web.archive.org/web/20220904014612/https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never-understand-about-poor-people https://web.archive.org/web/20220904014612/https://www.crack...
- tpmoney 4y agoOverall a good read, but I would propose that if the author truly doesn't "know any poor person who is a Republican." then she might need to spend some time traveling outside of the north east.
- llaolleh 4y agoPeople who have not grown up poor can't really understand it. It's not only about the money. It's about the constant stress and fear whether or not you're going to make it. Just work hard in school to get out is actually pretty hard. Learning is like swimming through molasses because of the constant stress. It gives you a lifetime of trauma and damage.
- angarg12 4y agoI work in a big tech company making > 5 times the average salary. People think I'm really fortunate, rich, and that I got it easy. What they don't see is how I spent half of my career working for a poverty level wage. Making a top 5% income now doesn't erase years of dread every morning going to work, stress of choosing which bill you will and won't pay this month, or constant fear of having an unexpected expense.
- madaxe_again 4y agoIt’s also a trauma that gets handed down. My parents, when they had me, were by absolutely no means poor - in fact, they were relatively wealthy - but my mother, and her parents before her, grew up in absolutely grinding poverty, and she has been fundamentally shaped by her experiences to the extent that I inherited much of her mindset. My father came from a family that had been wealthy in the colonies, and suddenly found themselves penniless in Portsmouth. The shame, the fear, the what will people think, the make do and mend, the “oh that’s not for me, that’s for real people” attitude. They’d send me to boarding school with no pocket money, which was utterly quixotic to me as a kid - they could afford thousands a term on my schooling, but not £10 a term for me to not be a social outcast? I had to beg, borrow, or steal to pay for field trips, books, and uniform. It screwed them both up. It screwed me up, as while they’d gotten free of the financial poverty trap, they were still there in their minds. I worked out of school like I had the fires of hell on my heels, and kept grinding until, bar the apocalypse, I do not need to worry about money. I still make do and mend. I still feel like an imposter practically everywhere. I still see brown letters and feel the sweat prick down my spine. It took me a long time to understand where it came from in myself - until I spent time with folks who themselves grew up in actual poverty, and had similar experiences to mine.
- nathias 4y agopoverty is visceral it is the stench of mold and an unsatiable appetite for risk
- bluedino 4y agoThe holidays are always a good time to reflect on this. My father is one of ten children. They all grew up in a 900sq ft house. Most of them dropped out of high school, none of them went to college. Now that they are all grown up (the youngest is 48?) it's interesting to see how they all ended up. Some worked a factory job for years, and ended up with a nice house, retirement, etc. some worked the exact same job and are still paycheck to paycheck. None of them were really skilled workers, professionals, etc. My one aunt has never had much more than a minimum wage job, had five children with three different fathers, and she's probably in the worst position of them all. She's been given cars etc by the others but always screws up. Her children (and grandchildren) have carried on the tradition. Looking in from the outside, it seems like the big factors are your work ethic, who your friends are, and what you with your spare time. My dad has a great work ethic but he's an example of work smarter not harder. You seem to be an average of your friends, and my aunt for example, hangs out with some real winners. Spare time is related to your friends a bit, but spending all of your time and money at the casino doesn't get you anywhere, and neither does hanging out drinking until 2am.
- dionidium 4y agoI come from a family with a lot of poverty. Whenever I hear people who have never been poor talk about poverty it sounds like they're from Mars. I understand that there's a certain amount of this that's just manners/politeness, but if your position on poverty is that everybody's doing their best and lack of success is never the result of individual choices or effort, then I just assume you've never actually met any poor folks. And remember that I'm talking about my family here! These are the people I love the most in the world. I don't want them to starve. I'm glad there's a social safety net and I'd like to see it expanded. But these are not people who are giving it their all and coming up short in a society that's structurally in opposition to them. They're drug addicts and alcoholics and the ones who aren't watch 14 hours of TV every day. I never knew my grandparents to have even an ounce of ambition. My grandfather had a "nervous break down" in his 30s and never tried to work again. (He was by all appearances entirely capable of working.) I don't think my mother ever once made a plan for the future. Etc, etc.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoNon-white and urban here (NYC raised). This essay resonates with me as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043719#30047716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043719#30047716 Today, I never feel like I fit in with my colleagues or direct reports. The mindset itself is limiting and I fear I’ve passed along this same mindset to my children.
- lcuff 4y agoA really good book I read was "Bridges out of Poverty", aimed at social workers etc, but very informative to the lay reader. One of the several things I learned: If a poor person 'comes in' to some money, they are likely to give a decent portion away, because other people know about it and hit them up ("I need glasses and you just got some money"), and in order to be helped themselves by their community when they are in need down the road, they need to be responsive when they have 'extra'. A poverty mentality is about 'today'. Food, rent, clothes. So education and planning for the future get pushed down in the stack of what's important. Also had interesting stuff about humor among the impoverished, the middle class and the rich. A personal observation: The poor in my community don't know how to 'work' the system. There are free (used) computers available to school kids, but the parents don't make use of them. Super-low cost internet access is available, but I saw one family succumb to an 'up-sell' to TV and Cable access, which they couldn't afford (oh yeah, installation cost too, we didn't remember to tell you about that) and in the end, default on the payment, which disqualified them from the low-cost program for a year. Living with three families/12 people in a two bedroom apartment means the child qualifies for benefits for the homeless, but no-one knows, the benefits don't get used.
- woodruffw 4y agoIt’s a bummer to see many people on here not respond to the two phenomena that the author explicitly identifies: fear and shame. Nothing good comes from shaming struggling people for making short-term financial decisions. It only breeds more shame, makes people afraid to express their needs, and pushes the poor even further out of the public’s eye.
- treis 4y agoI kind of feel like this is a self selecting population. In that those that feel shame are going to do something about their situation and escape. Because I've definitely seen some shameful shit done by people that appeared quite shameless.
- woodruffw 4y agoThe author’s entire point is that shame is self-reinforcing, not constructive. You can’t shame gay people into being straight, and you can’t shame poor people into “escaping” poverty.
- automatic6131 4y agoA small rant about being poor* and food. Healthy, tasty food is cheap. It really, truly is. If you have a smartphone, you can learn how to make cheap, tasty and filling food. And you can afford it. Here's what you can't afford: the time, the equipment, the space. Can't buy frozen meats because the freezer is broken. Or it's small. Or it's already full of your flatmates shite that they've had in there for 15 months and never going to eat. Same with the fridge, you can't shop for a week (but you wouldn't anyway because you don't have a car) because it's already full of your f**ing flatmates rotting, half eaten yogurts, rancid meats and leftovers. So you buy what you have to eat for a day, today. Also you're tired because your commute was 80 minutes on two buses, each way. And your feet hurt anyway because you stand or walk for 7 hours every day. And your back hurts. But even if you weren't tired and in pain, you don't have a chopping board, or a knife that isn't blunt as a spoon, or pan that isn't rusty, or a large cast iron cooking pot. You have whatever random collection of burnt, greasy, mouse dropping covered (Yay London!) weird iron pots were in the cupboard when you moved in. And why buy anything nice? Your flatmates will use it, not wash it, scrape off sauces with metal cutlery on a non stick pan (really!) and generally mistreat anything there. And you have exactly one working hot plate left and even that's got dodgy heat. Rant over. The Capex (equipment, use of a large, working kitchen) for cooking healthy is expensive. The time Opex for cooking healthy is expensive. The human willpower for cooking healthy is expensive. The ingredients, however, are not. Neither, actually, are the skills and knowledge of how to do it. * minimum wage UK in London, no ability to get credit.
- hinkley 4y agoI don’t think my family would have made it through the 80’s without a chest freezer. I own a smaller one now that has occasionally been awkward to site when I was an apartment dweller but it’s still worth it. When bread was on sale, often 3 for 2 sales, we’d buy six loaves and stick them in the freezer. Meat was almost always whatever was on sale. They are not expensive, but they take planning or at least putting off some other big ticket item u til they pay for themselves. What the poor also can’t do is afford to experiment on things that may or may not pay off. That money could have been spent on something else. Including a little bit of fun. VCs aiming for a one in ten success rate sound like madmen. To this day I still scratch my head at that.
- s3000 4y agoWhat does it take to leave such a mindset behind? There was this submission 3 days ago: We are sorry to inform you that you are in a cult [1,2] If this were a honest approach, and depending on interpretation, not a way to lure somebody into another cult, what could such a rehabilitation program do to make somebody successful? [1] https://labskausleben.bearblog.dev/youre-in-a-cult/ https://labskausleben.bearblog.dev/youre-in-a-cult/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688913
- CobaltFire 4y agoReading this hit home for me. Today I’m thankful I’m not poor, and my family doesn’t know what it’s like. But I struggle every day with exactly the long term effects she talked about.
- Existenceblinks 4y agoBeing poor is that everything on daily basis is draining time resource. And that everything is likely to be needed. For example, watching stupid TV shows for entertainment, because after work it's already painful, don't have energy to study anything. Some of developers don't code on weekend and free time .. because they need to be chilled!
- JanisErdmanis 4y agoSometimes I wonder if decision to work such high-skill draining jobs is caused by an upbringing in poverty. Like they are bending on peer pressure to get the biggest wages to fit in with their spending habits because investment in yourself is not valued. It's as if poor people only see a community based on money. It's the thinking that still haunts them.
- Existenceblinks 4y agoI have a thought model that fits your explanation. That is a size of choices. Once they see peers have more choices to be happy, they know they have too small ways to be happy, and then trying to expand that choices. Ignorance is bliss is kinda stuck in local maximum is bliss.
- JanisErdmanis 4y agoAn interesting approach to a pleasure/pain maximising agent. It could also fit with a picture of shame touched a bit in the article leading to insecurities which are then compensated in competition.
- golemiprague 4y ago
- notacoward 4y agoHaving grown up poor myself and now moving in more affluent circles, I see these differences almost every day. Food is a big one. Most people remain forever attached to the kinds of foods they grew up with. A once-poor person might no longer like boxed macaroni and cheese or Taco Bell burritos, preferring more upscale versions of both, but a never-poor person will curl their lip in disgust at the very idea. How do you decorate (or not)? What kinds of vacations do you take (or not)? Are there any things that you hoard, even though there's no longer a point? How are your teeth? These little markers are everywhere, if you know what to look at. Even the fact that people don't talk about their childhood, especially what kind of schools they went to or what sports/activities (if any) they were involved in, can be a big tip-off. I can usually tell within ten minutes or so whether someone I'm talking to is once-poor or never-poor, even if they're both in the same economic stratum now. And I definitely feel more affinity for the first group. BTW, a lot of these markers - especially food and hoarding - are pretty well known for people who survived the Great Depression, too. Those habits die hard.
- Tade0 4y agoThis brought back some painful memories. The shame and fear is real, but the "passing" bit is no less important. Even if you get out of this, you can't relate to e.g. your current co-workers, because you didn't have the same upbringing. It's much like being an immigrant - I've been one too and it was a similar feeling.
- azalemeth 4y agoI was brought up primarily by a single parent on state benefits and her mother. At times, with both my parents unemployed and one of them not around much, I recall getting things like a pen for Christmas -- to be used at school in a few weeks time -- and being such a regular at the library that all the staff knew me by name. The first birthday party I had was when I was 21, on a relatively generous scholarship at Oxford. Meeting other students made me painting aware that many of their private schools had better facilities than the county where I grew up, and their parents didn't have long and painful arguments about shopping. This article, although American, really resonated more than I thought it would initially -- my mum was on benefits and we just made it through, a situation I think is rather rare in the states. I'm now much older, and my partner's family are lovely but, to my mind, rich. She spends so much money on frivolities that I continually have to bite my tongue and accept this is normal. Going shopping is a totally different experience with any of them. I love them all dearly and give my mother money per month to live on, but this feeling that I shouldn't spend money on myself, should be sure to always maximize value per unit in the strictest possible sense (including longevity) and repair rather than replace things lives on. I often wear clothes until they break, and then continue to wear them until they become literally unusable. My partner has two double wardrobes filled with clothes and many shoes and handbags. It's a very different path through the world.
- sh-zam 4y agoStarting out from a lower point is always a struggle and most attempts to get out of it leaves you with internal scars (like Frodo had in LOTR). And the internal scars always hurt and I don't know how long they continue to hurt. Sometimes I wonder if it is even worth to do anything about it on an individual level. As an atheist I can only say, may the unknown save us from the world of known.
- blackgirldev 4y agoAs someone who grew up solidly middle class and went to a near Ivy private university and dropped out, I thought I was under educated about "life" and felt the need to enlist in the military. There, I found out that people who grow up poor looked at me like I was a total idiot. There were daily reminders that I grew up privileged. That my brief stint as an enlisted scrub were not enough to understand what it meant when the military was your only option. That said, I benefited greatly by not having an actual war during my tenure, having access to distance learning education, and finishing a degree there. I learned that I could get a super low rate VA mortgage as well. These things made a lot of difference and saved me at least a decade of working shit jobs to catch up with my peers after getting out of the military. In contrast, my fellow enlisted from poverty never aspired to anything more than Chief (US Navy) (edit - nothing wrong with Chief Petty Officer - enlisted vs officer was a real class thing as I recall and it stays with me, sorry). That is, if they made it past the DUIs, economic/financial shame of buying expensive cars and crashing them, bad relationships with rampant abuse, etc. As someone who could "see hope" because I wasn't mired in poverty's terrible view, I could actually take advantage of what military life offered. I cannot adequately describe what it is like to be surrounded by people from poverty: to live with them, experience their pain vicariously, and not understand WHY they couldn't do what I was able to do. The mindset is a real handicap. Changing your mindset is the core of moving from one place in life to another. I will never forget that lesson. Come to think of it, I know wealthy people stuck in detrimental mindsets. But that is another discussion.
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- virtualwhys 4y agoPhenomenal, visceral lived experience -- great piece, well worth the read
- drekipus 4y agoMy sister and I both grew up poor. The stories in the OP resonates a lot with what we experience. The annoying thing for me, is that I got out and I can't seem to help get my sister out. I was using a shitty "hustle" / "self-improvement" mindset that eventually taught me about delayed gratification, skilling, fake-it-until-you-make it, eating and cleaning-up well (part of self-improvement was also tied with "I'm very lonely how do I attract girls" -- dealing with shame and self-value.) -- now I have a very good job, wife, kid, and working on savings myself. But what worked for me is polar opposite to what my sister needs. She already has a partner and 3 kids, and they're effectively re-living the story (after a long slog, partner does work now, so there's improvement there.) things can go sour quickly, and it'll be disruptive to her kids. I was thinking of sending her some of my paycheque automatically each week/month (ala UBI) mainly as I'm skeptical of the UBI model myself, so I would look at it like a sort of experiment in to how does it improve things. I've sent her "once-off" lump sums, which just get spent on "paying back [partner's] family members" or buying a mini quad-bike / latest xbox / massive TV, etc, for the good times. We live in Australia, so healthcare, education, etc, are all provided for us as long as she actually goes to it. There is a large mental barrier to everything, and sometimes even going to the doctor is just "a huge drama" that is not worth it. The kids have changed school maybe 3 times in the past 2 years.
- another_devy 4y agoThe experience I had while growing up and still today is very similar. I moved from India to Europe, my father was sole provider of the house. He earned just par what you would call minimum wage as there was no such concept in India, still not today. By no means you could term us under poverty but I never felt my situation better than that, in-fact I remember many times I wished we were poor so I will at least have close friends who will stand for me or understand how I felt. The school was government subsidised but we had lot of middle class or higher middle class kids. I cycled 6km in morning and after school, initially it felt more fun but eventually I realised with 2nd hand bicycle I was saving school bus money. I remember the day when I was 11 years old and 1st time went for 3 days school trip, my father gave me ₹100 ($1.20). It was not that small amount 2-3 kids also had around same but many of other brought ₹500 in fact there was a kid with ₹2000 and teachers were worried if he will lose it or someone might steal it. I only spent half of it cause I was saving for Nintendo Super Game Boy for both me and my 5 years younger brother. I got the Nintendo! but I was 15 then and wanted a PC. All my childhood was eventual despair of longing for anything. For my brother it was a bit better but he never got anything new or shiny, always whatever I had used. We never went out for food except for my, my brother’s and mother’s birthday, father never wanted to go out on his birthday citing he loves few select meals that mother makes which always infuriated me but after 12 or 14 I realised why he never wanted. Being older I got exposed to our situation very early and there was always this impatience and frustration I felt building in me, I use to express it on mother and brother but I never truly learned why it was there until I got my first job. I was grateful for my parents that I was able to graduate and can now live better financially, but my childhood shame never left me. Till today I secretly go to McDonalds, KFC without telling my wife or kids just to have that feeling that I can eat at those places whenever I want, not because these are fine dining or my wife will be upset but for me those are golf course sessions. Whenever I want to buy any electronics I first look for what is most expensive then reviews and finally decide what I should buy so I won’t look tech junky. Limited financial resources in my childhood limits me now in my life, work. So many time I truly can’t connect to lunch or coffee conversations between colleagues because those feels like two persons in car fighting or waiving to each other while I look through bus window on the roadside. I was financial limited then and because of that I’m cognitively restrained now.