Over thirty-six million people in the US live in poverty.
The administration is trying to spin this as good news, by saying that income is rising in all economic classes. Problem is, it’s not keeping up with the cost of living. It also ignores the fact that the raise in income for African-Americans was tiny.
Children and African-Americans are the hardest hit by poverty, as well as single mothers. Over twelve percent of the poor are children. Over 24 percent of Black people are poor; poor Whites come in at a little over eight percent.
Granted, I’m sure some folks, who know they can’t say that the obvious solution would be to stop being Black, will tout personal responsibility, while ignoring the fact that it’s actually very expensive to be poor. (We already saw this with Katrina.) This is a self-perpetuating system, and it’s not because the poor person is so lazy. It’s because when you’re poor, you’re less likely to have reliable transportation to get to a decent paying job or a grocery store (grocery stores don’t tend to be located in poor cities or neighborhoods). If you have to rely on a convenience store or fast food place for your food, you’re not going to be healthy (but it’ll be your fault for not buying healthful food from the grocery store that’s far away and inaccessible to you). You likely won’t live in a safe area, so going out for a walk or a jog could be dangerous. Your kids won’t have a place to play if this is the case, and even if it’s not, your kids will be more likely to get asthma (thanks to environmental racism/classism–we aren’t likely to see a medical waste incinerator in affluent areas any time soon). Lack of exercise plus crappy food equals more health problems. And if you don’t have health insurance, well, then, you can go to the ER of the county hospital that is already overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded and hope that you’ll get care. Oh, and don’t miss any work, as you’ll get docked or fired.
Some pundits, like those at the Heritage Foundation, repeat the myth of the Marriage/Money Fairy. It goes like this: if these poor single mothers would only marry the fathers of their children, they would cease to be poor. The Marriage/Money fairy would come on their wedding night and shower them with good paying jobs, health benefits, decent schools for the kids, safe and affordable housing, and access (either by car or very convenient public transportation) to their jobs and the grocery store.
Problem is, if the father of your child is as poor as you are, marrying him isn’t going to solve your problems. Marriage as a cure all is bogus. Unless the kid’s father is running a private equity firm and is going to marry the mother of his child, I’d say this is about as useful as chilipepper toothpaste.
You know that actually helps the poor? Livable wages; healthcare; well-funded, staffed and maintained schools; safe and affordable housing; safe neighborhoods; access to things like jobs and grocery stores; clean air and water; and decent public transportation.
You can be married and oh-so-responsible and still be poor.
The other day I read an interview with an academic who has done extensive sociological studies of women trying to get off welfare. She said that not only does the Marriage Fairy not exist, but that in a disheartening number of cases, the presence of a man in their lives makes it harder for these women to get out of poverty. In many cases, the man is insecure and jealous about “his” woman becoming less dependent on him, so he sabotages her efforts at education and/or employment, either aggressively (through abuse) or passively (by, say, refusing to watch the kids).
You know what else would help the poor? If you can’t afford kids, don’t have them in the first place. Abstinence until marriage and birth control after marriage would make such a policy 99% successful, and kids could be had after the financial position is secure.
There are, of course, external factors. But many of the poor also engage in self-destructive behaviors; in addition to the aforementioned premature parenthood, there’s drug use, alcoholism, patronizing payday loan establishments, being irresponsible with credit, etc.
People often act like marriage is magically transforming: closeted gay men who think marriage will change them, conservatives who believe it will make people “responsible,” couples who think it will suddenly make their relationships healthy, women who think it will fulfill them as women, et cetera. It’s an institution that only works as well as the two people in it, I don’t understand why that’s so hard for everyone to grasp.
Sorry for the extremely long post.
Watch what happens when you get your phone disconnected or your power shut off: look at the deposits you are forced to pay.
There are bottom feeders who prey on the powerless–the rent-to-own places that offer computers and TVs at rates that stagger the imagination–the payday loan places. You can avoid them if you’re smart–but then there’s the stuff you can’t: deposits, late fees, rising charges.
They prey on the poor because the poor have been trained by repeated blows to feel helpless against corporations, governments, and anybody with a letterhead, even when they’re not.
Beiong poor is not just being naked among people with clothes–it’s also being surrounded by predators.
Observer, is sex now something that only the wealthy can engage in?
sigh…hate to feed the troll, but…
because telling people “just don’t have sex” has worked so well throughout history, we have so many great examples of that, huh?
But why base social policy on reality after all?
And one is supposed to afford this birth control how? And get it where? And, for that matter, even really know about it how, when the only sex ed one ever got consisted of the message: “don’t”?
Of course, the things that really DO result in fewer unwanted or un-afforded children are those that people like “observer” typically oppose: good sex-ed, available and affordable birth control (REGARDLESS of marital status, sheesh, do you REALLY want fewer unwanted babies and abortions, or do you just want people who have sex to be “punished” with babies), and greater education and job opportunities for women.
Observer:
Research shows that often for low-income women, childbearing is the most tangible accomplishment within their reach. Without models for, or access to, quality education, especially higher ed, or the upwardly mobile job opportunities that now only come with higher ed, in fact basically only graduate ed (see the recent findings on urban and gender wage differentials by A. Beveridge at CUNY), low-income women see a whole bunch of dead ends in front of them. What they also see, is their kin and their neighborhood and the ability to reproduce and raise a child as a legitimate transition into adulthood. It’s not such a conscious decision, but, lack of information about or access to affordable contraception that women can control (i.e., oral contracetives) combined with the pressure or violence to submit to men and sex, leaves women at risk for being pregnant, and once that happens, well, having and raising a kid can seem much more achievable than all the options you assume are spread out before them.
Research from sociologists M. Kefalas and K. Edin, as well as M. Patillo-McCoy, and A. Geronimo all examine from different angles reproduction in low-income populations and what that means in terms of adulthood, responsibility, etc. for low-income women.
This is the first year, I believe, that poverty has not risen under Bush.
Don’t worry, Beth–I’m sure Observer plans to have a good long chat with all the ‘pro-life’ organizations working to shut down access to birth control and gut Griswold V. Connecticut.
Oh cool, sounds like Observer borrowed straight from Coulter’s quote about “Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage,” which we’re supposed to believe Coulter has followed for 46 years (she hasn’t, by her own admission as if one would be needed.)
Regarding the Heritage (and other) Foundation’s claim that if poor single mothers would marry the fathers that their lives would improve, read this:
Myth — Unwed mothers would improve their chances for their family’s economic and long-term viability if they would just get married.
Fact: Not according to the mothers. A study of mostly single women on workfare indicated that women believed that “they themselves had to take primary responsibility for making ends meet and for child rearing… Marriage as a mode of support was not a preferred option. Virtually no woman believed she should marry for the sake of her children. In fact, they saw marriage as undermining their ability to care for their children. Men were simply another demand on their time… Many women had suffered stormy relationships. Domestic abuse, cheating, substance abuse, and inability of the men to hold a job were common complaints. They also felt that men contributed little to the household and, instead, competed with their children for their attention. Other concerns included the safety of their children. Many women believed that men who were not the fathers of their children posed a risk of abuse, both physical and sexual. [Welfare Reform and the Work-Family Tradeoff, research by Ellen K. Scott, Kathryn Edin, Andrew S. London, and Joan Maya Mazelis, working paper “My Children Come First.” http://www.jcpr.org/wp/WPprofile.cfm?ID=11]
Fact: “The negative consequences of a parent change, especially a mother change and especially for young children, are greater than the deficits incurred by living without both parents in adolescence, if in a stable family. Recent policy initiatives that encourage single parents to marry overlook the negative effect of family instability. Simply marrying to provide children with a twoparent family, particularly if the spouse is not the child’s biological parent, will not eliminate the disadvantages children face (Lichter, 2001). In contrast, policymakers should focus on preserving the long-term stability of families, regardless of their structure. Doing so is particularly important for new families with young children; given recent patterns of nonmarital childbearing and cohabitation, young children are most likely to be exposed to family instability (Osborne, Manning, & Smock, 2004). Finally, the importance of parent gender is dependent on the timing of parent presence and transitions. Parenting is still a gendered activity…” [Holly E. Heard (2007) Fathers, Mothers, and Family Structure: Family Trajectories, Parent Gender, and Adolescent Schooling Journal of Marriage and Family 69 (2), 435-450.]
I meant A. Geronimus
One thing that has always driven me crazy about the “blame the poor” contigent is those who point out that poor people in the US usually have TVs, VCRs, and other electronic goods. Gotta tell you, I never bought a new television until I was nearly 35. I usually had more than one, too. Bought at garage sales for 10 bucks, gifted by friends or family, or in one memorable case, rescued from a fire in a neighborhood house. I usually had video game systems and vcr’s too — again, usually secondhand, often gifted, and the games often “second tier” cheap.
Those same people never think to cut back on their lattes to put money in the bank for retirement, and yet magically think they’ll have money in their golden years. Bleah.
“This is the first year, I believe, that poverty has not risen under Bush.”
Apparently, somebody’s favorite little Commander in Chief hasn’t been doing his job correctly, else poverty would rise EVERY year of his presidency. Cheney been slacking off or something?…
I can’t help but think of the Dead Kennedys songs “Kill the Poor” and “Soup is Good Food”. ‘Bout sums the whole thing up for me…
‘You know what else would help the poor? If you can’t afford kids, don’t have them in the first place. Abstinence until marriage and birth control after marriage would make such a policy 99% successful, and kids could be had after the financial position is secure.’
Hey, Observer- FUCK YOU!
Got married at age 27. On birth control. Had savings and no college debts; 3 degrees between us.
At age 30, decided as we both had great jobs, health insurance, our own home, and more savings, to start a family.
About 3 months into my pregnancy, my husband was disabled with a broken neck. He was unable to work for 2 years. He lost his job and I ended up having to take lessened hours after my maternity leave. Went from 40 to 24 hrs a week.
By age 33, we had lost that house to foreclosure, had vehicle repossessed, pawned everything we could, were on food stamps and assistance, and having family help provide food.
By age 35, had saved up enough to go through bankruptcy.
By age 40, finally had a savings account.
I hope they bunny the shit out of your smug, sanctimonious ass.
And I’ll take whatever hits I get:
Ann Coulter is a cunt.
Recent studies are finding links between capsaicin and dental health. In other words, such advice is far, far less useful than chilipepper toothpaste.
odanu–
It’s all a variation on the “welfare queen” stuff Reagan ran on, which led to Thomas Sowell, Joe Perkins, Walter Williams, etc. embracing him with open arms and using misleading statistics to show how great Reagan was for black businesses.
“Those same people never think to cut back on their lattes to put money in the bank for retirement, and yet magically think they’ll have money in their golden years. Bleah. ”
Those same people are the kind who’d spend $2000 in order to save $20 in taxes, too.
If you can’t afford kids, don’t have them in the first place. Abstinence until marriage and birth control after marriage would make such a policy 99% successful,
Why not birth control before marriage, too? Why is birth control only effective in the presence of a wedding ring?
kids could be had after the financial position is secure
Sheeyah, right! Apparently you don’t know that many young couples who agonize about when is “the right time” to have kids: do we wait until we are out of grad school, how much of our debt needs to be paid off, should we try to buy a house first, etc. etc. The overarching advice they hear again and again and again is “If you wait until ‘it’s a good time’ or until ‘you can afford them’, then you will never have kids.”
And what happens to those of us who were financially secure until we both got laid off at the same time?
Until one of us got laid off five times in 2 years?
Until we had to accept a 30% pay cut to find a new job?
Until we had to go back to having two cars because the transit system didn’t go to where the new job was?
Until we had to replace the roof on the new house just because it was four years old and no insurance company would write a policy on any roof more than three years old (because they were dodging black mold liability claims, which came about because they dodged payments to clean black mold out of the houses they insured)?
Until the real estate market in our area tanked three weeks after we got our old house on the market (thank you, 9-11), and we were forced to sell the old house at barely more than we owed on it and lost at least 6 years of our equity?
We never should have had that kid two scant years before our financial situation went to shit like that. That was pretty damned irresponsible of us, I know.
We just thank god that we don’t live on the Gulf Coast!
there’s drug use, alcoholism,
I suspect that poverty causes drug use and alcoholism far more than the other way around. In the first place, wine is a hell of a lot cheaper than anti-depressants, and you don’t need a perscription: that’s got to account for at least 15-20% of your “poor alcoholics” right there. I don’t know the stats on the other psychiatric disorders, but I know several bipolar and schizophrenic people who self medicated with alcohol before they were properly diagnosed. I imagine that situation is much, much more common in the lower income levels.
Louise, we’re all one accident away from poverty.
I’m so rich I’m self-employed and can afford health insurance, which means that I spent the morning working with the insurance company and 5 vendors to clean up the bills after my acciden. Since we’re fully insured I only need to write checks for $1100. Imagine if I couldn’t–the damage to my credit would make my interest rate on my ARM and my credit cards accelerate and I’d never catch up til bankruptcy court.
I like to comfort myself with the knowledge that eventually, the smug assholes who believe that poverty is caused by poor choices will have an accident themselves. And when they do, they will lack the confidence and experience that you and I have now…poor idiots, being broke will just destroy them emotionally. So I’m compassionate, knowing that ignorance is their only foil against a dangerous reality, which is that if you believe you are your net worth, it’s true.
Ace, yeah I know. But it bugs the hell out of me that these freepers blame poverty stricken Americans for being able to scrounge a better class of garbage from their upper class than poverty stricken people in the third world. How dare they benefit in any way from the wealth of their neighbors!! (Again, bleah)
patronizing payday loan establishments, being irresponsible with credit, etc.
I’m watching my words very carefully, because I could easily see a response passing from “protected free speech of calling you the worthless sack of shit you are” to “not-so-protected speech of threatening to stab you in your fucking face, as you would so fucking deserve it.”
But not doing that. What I am doing is telling you, with polite, and measured language, that no one “patronizes payday loan establishments” because they think it’s fun, or they’re going on an impulse buying spree. I don’t know anyone who has debt issues who was “irresponsible with credit.” the rule is, they were responsible, VERY responsible, and something happened that fucked them over.
Now please, go kill yourself. Nothing of value would be lost.
[Why not birth control before marriage, too? Why is birth control only effective in the presence of a wedding ring?]
Good point, Dorothy- forgot to say that I was on birth control for 6 years before marriage. Because I didn’t want to raise a kid before I was ready emotionally or we were ready financially.
But in my mind, waiting to have sex until after getting married is as stupid as waiting to take driving lessons after you buy a car. A dumb and simplistic cliche, but it works for me.
Poverty is too major and complex a problem that can happen to ANYONE. That it is happening so often, in a country as rich as America, is a disgrace. Then to throw the shaming aspects on top of it, as idiots like Observer are fond of doing, further compounds the problems.
Get off your high horse and HELP people in need instead!
While the lack of access to healthy food in urban communities is certainly an issue that I’d like to see addressed, that’s probably a minor factor overall in determining people’s health. Simply Americans have unhealthy diets and from what I can tell generally it’s even worse among black people including those with access to healthy food. I’d say educating people is a bigger issue than access.
I’m glad this post also brought up the safety issue. I live in Oakland, taking a walk in a lot of neighborhoods after work in the evening is simply dangerous. It’s interesting how little progressive bloggers (particularly white “allies”) blog on the violence/crime issue plaguing urban areas. The number 1 killer black men 16-35 is homicide. Do we have to wait until we have a democrat or an utopian economy to start doing something? It’s the #1 city level issue where I live, yet I haven’t really heard the democrats or republicans address it in any significant way.
The study you linked to doesn’t tell the whole story. Among blacks poverty rates have dropped sharply since the 1980’s and among non-Hispanic whites poverty has also fallen.
Poverty in America isn’t going away because there will always folks who just can’t seem to get it together, for whatever reason, and because we have been allowing millions of low-skilled, barely educated workers into the country.
In 2006, there were 36.5 million people in poverty. That’s the figure that translates into the 12.3 percent poverty rate. In 1990, the population was smaller, and there were 33.6 million people in poverty, a rate of 13.5 percent. The increase from 1990 to 2006 was 2.9 million people (36.5 million minus 33.6 million). Hispanics accounted for all of the gain.
Consider: From 1990 to 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased 3.2 million, from 6 million to 9.2 million. Meanwhile, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty fell from 16.6 million (poverty rate: 8.8 percent) in 1990 to 16 million (8.2 percent) in 2006. Among blacks, there was a decline from 9.8 million in 1990 (poverty rate: 31.9 percent) to 9 million (24.3 percent) in 2006. White and black poverty has risen somewhat since 2000 but is down over longer periods.LINK
I meant to say democrat or republican presidential candidates.
No, poverty will not go away because it’s a feature, not a bug, of capitalism.
I could even give those greedy bastards that, yes, some people do end up in poverty because of their own bad choices, I’m one of them.
So how do you get out?
I had an unplanned pregnancy, and “punished” myself for that dirty sex, and am now raising the most amazing and incredible child in the world(I’m biased:). My credit has been shot ever since, I drive cheap POS cars that I don’t have to make payments on, rent a home in the bad part of town. No cable bills, no cell phones, no luxuries whatsoever. Just utilities, rent, and groceries.
I also work 40-50 hrs a week, and my partner works the same. I have since my daughter was born. I recieved state assistance for 1 year. I am no longer eligible for food stamps, housing or daycare assistance, because I am not married.
We work hard to try to get ahead, but we can’t. Why? Because the system is slanted against poor people. If our fridge broke tomorrow, I would have to pay almost twice as much for a new one, as someone with good credit. If my car took a shit, and I had to have a new one on credit, I would pay twice as much.
If, because of poor choices, we cannot have a checking account, we have to pay fees just to have access to our own money.
What if you have stopped making bad choices, and are just trying to create the best life you can for yourself and your loved ones?
The answer, from people like Observer, is too bad. This has to change.
Observer: Seriously, fuck the hell off. And before repeating such idiocy somewhere else, why don’t you read Nickel & Dimed so you can actually understand what Sheelzebub means when she talks about the “cost of being poor.”
Where’s Sharon to tell us that the wingnuts don’t think of children (which causes the poverty according to Observer) as a punishment for sex.
Capitalism in the US has been particularly effective at destroying community (with mobility required for most jobs, jobs that allow no time at home, and so forth). Which in turn helps keep the poor poor. One of the things that has made microlending so effective in other countries is communities that ensure low risk for small loans. If you could get effective interest rates for the poor down in the US, there would be that much more money available for investing in the future.
No, poverty will not go away because it’s a feature, not a bug, of capitalism.
Poverty will not go away because the very definition of poverty is relative. As long as anyone is allowed to have more than anyone else then there will be people defined as poor.
The vast majority of people defined as poor aren’t exactly rotting in the streets:
Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.
The numbers that Jamila cites shows just how intractable poverty is as a function of our current economic structure. First of all, as many of these unfortunately-all-too-knowledgable commenters have pointed out, living in poverty is a fate that can befall most residents in the U.S. It’s important to keep in mind that most of the individuals living below the official poverty line at any moment in time are only there for a relatively short period in their lives.
Looking at those #s above, in 16 years, there were 600k fewer white people and 800k fewer black people living in poverty. Excuse me if I’m less than impressed, given our population is over 300M. What we’re left with is the fact that we can count on at least 10% of our entire population living below the poverty line at any given time, and that within certain racial, geographic, and other populations (single mothers, the elderly, disabled, and children, anyone?) that percentage will be much higher, and disproportionately high, given their overall group size in the general population.
Another problem is that income inequality is rising, social mobility is stagnating or falling, and so we can count on this kind of inequality - our differential risks for falling into and/or getting trapped in cycles of poverty - to stay the same or get worse.
Hope I’m not getting too cerebral here, but championing the notion that less than 2M whites and African-Americans are no longer poor in the last 16 years when the overall structure has barely budged - and actually gotten worse - seems hardly worth celebrating (though I’m certainly happy for them).
Let’s also not forget that the poverty line is arbitrarily designed (conceived in the 1940s or 1950s as a crude estimate by one female government statistican) and very low. Numbers of people who are considered “working poor” or living just above the poverty line are much more useful.
One of my favorite recent stats on measures of wealth - the growth of housing costs v. real wages - is this:
“Housing costs have risen while real incomes have stagnated, and between 1980 and 2005 the percentage of households paying in excess of HUD’s affordability threshold of 30% of their incomes on rent grew from 34% to 49%. From 2000-2005, this percentage grew from 40% to 49%.”
- Keith Wardrip and Danilo Pelletiere, Recent Data Shows Continuation, Acceleration of Housing Affordability Crisis, Research Note #06-05, December 11, 2006. Washington, D.C.: National Low-Income Housing Coalition.
The poor homeowners of Port Arthur, TX, who got their asses kicked by Hurricane Rita last year certainly weren’t living in any structures I’d call stable. Many of them were uninsured, and/or were leaded. Such homeowners - about 40% - are now either ineligible for govt. rebuilding funds (insurance required) or would have to spend the funds on bringing their homes up to code.
We can splice and dice and anecdote the hell out of the data all we want, but again, as Ma Jeff said, and Jamila points out, poverty is both a structural feature of capitalism and relative. Whether we’re interested in doing anything about this structural problem or alleviating inequality is another thing entirely.
I mean Rita two years ago!
I thought we were supposed to encourage the poor to have lots of babies so that we don’t need to send our own precious offspring off to fight the wars we need to keep our Excursions gassed up?
Someone needs to start reading those memos that the Cato institute sends out.
Between 1990 and 2005, the US economy grew (in real terms) by about 55%. Population went up by only 17%. This kinda strongly suggests that we could have reduced the number of americans in poverty by a really serious amount without crimping the styles of the rest of us.
Mathmatically, that makes sense, Paul- until you factor in how many jobs were lost to outsourcing overseas or cut in general. The job market is in terrible shape!
In our so-called Christian America, being poor is not only shameful, it’s practically a sin.
argghh. Damned html errors. I lose at html.
Also, my comment should have been directed to Jamila, not Louise. Second apologies.
“I thought we were supposed to encourage the poor to have lots of babies so that we don’t need to send our own precious offspring off to fight the wars we need to keep our Excursions gassed up?”
While that is indeed true, there are some problems: One, we have to feed and house them until they are old enough to “volunteer” for military service. Two, some of those babies are not boys - what then? Three, not all of them are killed by the end of their military service - now what?
“Terminal” military service to the Fatherland is one of the few reasons to encourage the maintenance of a poor population (the two reasons are to clean hotel rooms and work in restaurants), but as you can see, it’s not without its drawbacks…
Maybe poor people could get jobs rewriting Heritage Foundation “studies” into smug, self-satisfied newspaper columns. I’ll bet the pay is pretty good, and it seems like hardly any work at all.
Try this on for size: Again, the poor in a wealthy society get “better” cast offs than the poor in a poor society.
I remember reading somewhere that people in developing countries are very wary of receiving donated clothes from the US and Europe because the idea of giving anything away while it still has some utility is so foreign to them that they assume there must be something wrong with the clothes, like maybe they were stolen from dead people. if you live in that kind of poverty, the idea of getting rid of a shirt before it falls apart is completely insane.
Which of course means that the poor in the US have nothing to complain about — they have clothes, don’t they? That proves that they’re not “really” poor since someone who lives in another country 10,000 miles away is poorer than they are.
your kids will be more likely to get asthma (thanks to environmental racism/classism–we aren’t likely to see a medical waste incinerator in affluent areas any time soon).
There’s another factor causing poor respiratory health in lower-income children: cockroaches and rats. Until these damn slum lords can be forced to bring lower-income housing up to a minimum health code, it’s just not going to improve.
I’ve heard some scary statistics about lead in water pipes, too, primarily in DC, but I can’t hunt for them right now.
You know, social Calvinists can argue all they want that the poor “deserve” their poverty, but I fail to see how that implies that they “deserve” lead poisoning and unsanitary living conditions.
Well, damn, Jamila. You’re right, we should all just shut the fuck up then as there is nothing we can do about this whole poverty thing. As long as someone, somewhere has it worse we simply have no right to suggest something is wrong or should be changed.
While we’re talking about relative suffering, I guess us Western feminists should also STFU because women in Afghanistan can be stoned for not being fully covered. And I guess we should stop trying to enact any environmental policies that might improve our ground water supplies because somewhere there are rivers more polluted than our own. And Western gay people should be quiet because in the Middle East they can be put to death. Etc. ad nauseum.
Fucking wanker.
I used to work in an urban medical clinic and I confess to having been on the “get married!” bandwagon. But I fell off. For one thing, I waited to get married and all that before trying to have kids. Now I’m old and infertile, so that was stupid. Also, while marriage has certainly helped ME out economically, I’m outnumbered by friends whose husbands just slow them down and hold them back.
If anyone works in a medical clinic serving the poor, there are a few subversive things we found we could do to help. Give out stacks of medical excuse notes so people won’t lose their jobs when they (or their kids) are sick but can’t afford the doctor. Fax notes to the utilities declaring medical necessity so the power/water/gas company won’t cut off service (you can’t do a damn thing AFTER service is cut). Keep bus tokens in the desk so patients can get HOME after the visit. Threaten landlords so they’ll fix air conditioners, window screens, and appliances. It’s all legal (says me), and it felt completely ethical. As well as totally awesome.
Louise —
Exactly my point. There’s plenty of money in our economy to help people out of poverty. But the folks with the money and power have made choices (like outsourcing and downsizing and tax cuts and welfare and bankruptcy “reform”) to keep more of that money for themselves. There’s not something intrinsic about the nature of the job market that makes it lousy at a time when the economic-growth numbers have been booming, that keeps wages flat during half a decade of some of the highest productivity growth the country has ever seen.
Well, damn, Jamila. You’re right, we should all just shut the fuck up then as there is nothing we can do about this whole poverty thing. As long as someone, somewhere has it worse we simply have no right to suggest something is wrong or should be changed.
Maybe you should call yourself “drama_mom,” instead?
That is not what I was implying so please refrain from putting words in my mouth. I am saying that we have to be very careful about talking about “poverty” as if everybody who is considered poor in America is living in abject poverty or as if poor people in America are one homogenous group.
Furthermore, if you don’t understand economics then might not understand that what is considered poor and what is considered poverty changes over time and is relative to economic position of others in society; it is not just a blanket term that will mean the exact same thing today as what it mean’t during the Great Depression of what it might mean in another 50 years.
If you want to suggest something should be changed, then make some suggestions that have a basis in sound economic reasoning. (Saying something ridiculously simplistic like “everybody should just be given a minimum salary of $50,000 a year” would demonstrate that you either failed Econ 101 or never took the class.) I’d love to hear your suggestions on how to eliminate “poverty”.
Jamila, nobody suggested that poverty is not relative and that what defines “poverty” doesn’t change with historical context. Yet you seem to think this is some revelation that would change this discussion we’re having. It doesn’t because the relativity of poverty means exactly squat when YOU are currently defined as poor in the context YOU live in (and I AM one of those poor, uninsured idiots).
I happen to believe that many of the problems of poverty could be resolved with, among other things, universal health care and adequate support for public education & job training. I know there is much more that can be done. Note, though, that I never made any simplistic (and implicitly communistic) suggestions, yet you immediately accuse me of not knowing anything about economics. I guess you read my moniker and decided I was one of those “Ivory Tower Liberals” divorced from reality.
I also note that you have not made any suggestions about how to mitigate the problems of poverty in this country. You just decided to pronounce poverty relative…to what purpose, again? Oh yeah, to tell us to quit our bitching. If that’s not what you meant maybe you need to spend a little less time trying to pretend you have some secret knowledge of economics to share with the hippies and give more attention to how you come off– at least my prickishness is intentional.
history_mom
Jamila, nobody suggested that poverty is not relative and that what defines “poverty” doesn’t change with historical context. Yet you seem to think this is some revelation that would change this discussion we’re having.
What discussion are we having? I am saying poverty in America is mainly the result of bad choices and the influx of low-skilled immigrants who are a net drain on the US economy. We can’t completely stop people from making bad choices and few people are in favor of mass deportations of immigrants so how can we end poverty?
And I’m not exactly sure of what you are saying. One moment your complaining about poverty as if there is some magic wand that can be waved to get rid of it and then the next moment you are saying that you understand poverty is relative.
It doesn’t because the relativity of poverty means exactly squat when YOU are currently defined as poor in the context YOU live in (and I AM one of those poor, uninsured idiots).
I am defined as poor. So please don’t assume that you have some unique perspective about what poverty is that I can’t quite comprehend. I am a single parent. I haven’t worked in 3 years ( because I haven’t been looking for a job until recently). I have went without health insurance.
I also live with my parents in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, with a refrigerator full of food, and less than a month ago my Mom gave me a car.
Sure, I’m not living high on the hog, but I’m not exactly deprived either.
I happen to believe that many of the problems of poverty could be resolved with, among other things, universal health care and adequate support for public education & job training.
I disagree. I oppose the creation of a UHC in America and I believe that the federal government should get out of the job training business and leave the education of children to the state and local governments (if you absolutely have to have government involved at all).
I know there is much more that can be done. Note, though, that I never made any simplistic (and implicitly communistic) suggestions, yet you immediately accuse me of not knowing anything about economics.
I still don’t think you know too much about economics since you continue to complain about poverty in a country in which poor people are actually doing pretty well when compared to what is considered poor in other places.
There are incredibly few poor people in America who are going without the necessities of life. Cars, tv’s, health insurance ( when you can use emergency rooms, low cost clinics in public hospitals, Medicaid) are nice extras but it would be ludicrous to that all poor people who are going without these things constitute some major problem that has to be solved.
I guess you read my moniker and decided I was one of those “Ivory Tower Liberals” divorced from reality.
Yes, I did.
I also note that you have not made any suggestions about how to mitigate the problems of poverty in this country.
I don’t see a big problem to begin with, thus I don’t believe that there need to be any new programs created to alleviate poverty. If you ( or anyone else) doesn’t want to live in poverty the answer is simple:graduate from high school, preferably college too, get married before having kids, if you choose to have children at all, and don’t have kids until you are over 20 years old. If you do those things you have about a 5-6 percent chance of living in poverty as defined by the government.
The problem of poverty is really a result of other problems in America such as out of wedlock childbearing, not graduating from high school and/or college, reducing drug usage etc. Tackle those issues and you’ll reduce poverty by default.
You just decided to pronounce poverty relative…to what purpose, again? Oh yeah, to tell us to quit our bitching.
That was my main purpose, but also to point out that poverty as defined by the government, and poverty of the type that is complained about by progressives and liberals is not much of a problem at all. I’ve already provided stats showing that poverty among blacks and non-Hispanics whites has been decreasing for some time now.
history_mom
Jamila, nobody suggested that poverty is not relative and that what defines “poverty” doesn’t change with historical context. Yet you seem to think this is some revelation that would change this discussion we’re having.
What discussion are we having? I am saying poverty in America is mainly the result of bad choices and the influx of low-skilled immigrants who are a net drain on the US economy. We can’t completely stop people from making bad choices and few people are in favor of mass deportations of immigrants so how can we end poverty?
And I’m not exactly sure of what you are saying. One moment your complaining about poverty as if there is some magic wand that can be waved to get rid of it and then the next moment you are saying that you understand poverty is relative.
It doesn’t because the relativity of poverty means exactly squat when YOU are currently defined as poor in the context YOU live in (and I AM one of those poor, uninsured idiots).
I am defined as poor. So please don’t assume that you have some unique perspective about what poverty is that I can’t quite comprehend. I am a single parent. I haven’t worked in 3 years ( because I haven’t been looking for a job until recently). I have went without health insurance.
I also live with my parents in a nice home, in a nice neighborhood, with a refrigerator full of food, and less than a month ago my Mom gave me a car.
Sure, I’m not living high on the hog, but I’m not exactly deprived either.
I happen to believe that many of the problems of poverty could be resolved with, among other things, universal health care and adequate support for public education & job training.
I disagree. I oppose the creation of a UHC in America and I believe that the federal government should get out of the job training business and leave the education of children to the state and local governments (if you absolutely have to have government involved at all).
I know there is much more that can be done. Note, though, that I never made any simplistic (and implicitly communistic) suggestions, yet you immediately accuse me of not knowing anything about economics.
I still don’t think you know too much about economics since you continue to complain about poverty in a country in which poor people are actually doing pretty well when compared to what is considered poor in other places.
There are incredibly few poor people in America who are going without the necessities of life. Cars, tv’s, health insurance ( when you can use emergency rooms, low cost clinics in public hospitals, Medicaid) are nice extras but it would be ludicrous to that all poor people who are going without these things constitute some major problem that has to be solved.
I guess you read my moniker and decided I was one of those “Ivory Tower Liberals” divorced from reality.
Yes, I did.
I also note that you have not made any suggestions about how to mitigate the problems of poverty in this country.
I don’t see a big problem to begin with, thus I don’t believe that there need to be any new programs created to alleviate poverty. If you ( or anyone else) doesn’t want to live in poverty the answer is simple:graduate from high school, preferably college too, get married before having kids, if you choose to have children at all, and don’t have kids until you are over 20 years old. If you do those things you have about a 5-6 percent chance of living in poverty as defined by the government.
The problem of poverty is really a result of other problems in America such as out of wedlock childbearing, not graduating from high school and/or college, reducing drug usage etc. Tackle those issues and you’ll reduce poverty by default.
You just decided to pronounce poverty relative…to what purpose, again? Oh yeah, to tell us to quit our bitching.
That was my main purpose, but also to point out that poverty as defined by the government, and poverty of the type that is complained about by progressives and liberals is not much of a problem at all. I’ve already provided stats showing that poverty among blacks and non-Hispanics whites has been decreasing for some time now.
Jamila:
your argument is, as you probably know, specious. The small decreases in the numbers of black and non-hispanic whites in poverty over the past 15 years or so simply do not square with the fact that the economy as a whole has roughly half again as much money available per person. If that money were merely distributed as evenly as it was in 1990, you’d see decreases of 25-35% in the numbers of the impoverished, not the measly few percent you’re claiming constitute significant gains.
(Another way to think of it, of course, is that for the annual cost of the Iraq war, we could eliminate involuntary poverty in the US and then some.)
I guess you must have missed the whole “we’re all just one accident away from poverty” discussion upthread. My “accident” was divorce. Luckily for me, my credit was excellent, so my crawl up from the cellar has been quicker than most. What a fabulous system of chronic insecurity!
Oh- BTW- poverty being relative REALLY means this:
American-level poor in America= struggle
Third-world level poor in America= dead.
What a resounding endorsement of our system.
Furthermore, if you don’t understand economics then might not understand that what is considered poor and what is considered poverty changes over time and is relative to economic position of others in society; it is not just a blanket term that will mean the exact same thing today as what it mean’t during the Great Depression of what it might mean in another 50 years.
Tell me, Jamila - does pulling out your own teeth with pliars because you can’t afford a dentist count as poor to you or not?
I haven’t run into this in my own country, but perhaps it’s a particularly American way of expressing overwhelming self-reliance while basking in the general prosperity…
Pray please enlighten us heathen as to what we’re missing.
Jamila:
If you’re living with your folks in a reasonable house, I suggest that you really don’t have much of an idea of what it means to be poor in the USA.
No, it’s not as bad as starving to death in a famine-riven country or as bad as committing suicide because of crop failure. But you’re deluding yourself if you think being poor here is anything like easy or enjoyable. And the suggestion that people “do it to themselves” is contemptible.
Like hell there isn’t third world poverty in the US. http://www.sos.state.tx.us/border/colonias/faqs.shtml
ahh, I messed up my blockquote. Sigh.
Anyway, go to the link and learn about colonias. It’s very eye-opening.
Awwww, it’s such a cute little libertarian troll. Can we quit making this thread all about Jamila and possibly get back to the interesting discussion that was shaping up just before the derailment. Funny how that’s always when the derailment comes. Although Jamila has come in somewhat useful, since several commenters have made very interesting points while refuting him/her. However, I highly doubt any further posts by Jamila on this thread will be of any use to anybody, even unintentionally.
I don’t think there’s much point in attempting to have a debate with someone who can simultaneously announce that if poor people would just pick themselves up by their bootstraps, they’d be just dandy, and admit to living with their relatives who have enough disposable income to support them and their child, and to give th is person a nice car. I mean, the disconnect between rhetoric and practice is so overwhelming that I’m starting to think Jamila may not even be a sincere troll, but an Onion-style parody. If so, well done.
BTW, Jamila, people who don’t have relatives with that kind of disposable income are called poor. Their privilege allows them to subsidise you, not because you or they are shiny sparkly smart people, but because they can. There are plenty of poor people with even poorer relatives who would love to have the means to support those relatives in a lavish or even comfortable fashion. Everybody has one or more relatives who can’t support themselves because they’re ill or some similar reason. But if you’re poor and everybody you know is poor, not a whole lot of resources available for when bad shit happens.
Oh, and context: I am a middle-class university-educated White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with a chronic illness which requires expensive medication. If it weren’t for living in Canada with our universal healthcare system, I wouldn’t currently be able to work fulltime, pay taxes, donate to charity, etc. See, the system subsidised me when I was really, really sick, and that allowed me to get less sick. Funny how that works.
Incidentally, I’m a homeowner, not because of bootstraps, but because, despite growing up situationally broke (messy divorce thing), I got an inheritance from my WASP grandfather which allowed me to pay off my student loans and put a good-sized downpayment on a condo. Were it not for that lucky accident of birth, I’d probably be living paycheque to paycheque. And if I lived in the States, I likely wouldn’t have a paycheque. Because I never would’ve gotten the ongoing medical treatment and medication I received for free back when I had no income because I was too sick to work and too old to be covered on my mom’s health plan.
There were several years of recovery, by the way. I daresay I’ve taken a lot more out of the Canadian welfare state in services over the past 12 years, but i have 35 years before retirement. Whole lotta opportunity to pay taxes there. But I got one hell of a big boost by being lucky enough to continue receiving services when I was too sick to work. The welfare state stopped me from becoming yet another indigent mentally ill street person. And then I got another big boost from working poor back into the middle classes because someone I happen to be related to happened to die and leave me some money. In neither case were there any bootstraps present. Just like how you didn’t bootstrap yourself into being lucky enough to have relatives who were both willing and ABLE to financially support both you and your child on a longterm basis.
paul
September 5, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Paul:
your argument is, as you probably know, specious.
There is nothing specious about anything I wrote. I said poverty has been decreasing among blacks and non-Hispanic whites and it has been. Whether the decreases were small or large isn’t the point, the point is that poverty has in fact decreased.
The small decreases in the numbers of black and non-hispanic whites in poverty over the past 15 years or so simply do not square with the fact that the economy as a whole has roughly half again as much money available per person.
I’m not understanding what you mean by the above. The exact dollar amount of what is considered poverty for a family is readjusted by the government to take into account the change in the economic condition of America over time ( which goes back to the relativity of poverty that I’ve been talking about).
If that money were merely distributed as evenly as it was in 1990, you’d see decreases of 25-35% in the numbers of the impoverished, not the measly few percent you’re claiming constitute significant gains.
Are you agreeing that there would still be a decrease in poverty rates, just a larger decrease if the money hadn’t changed?
PhoenicianRomans
Tell me, Jamila - does pulling out your own teeth with pliars because you can’t afford a dentist count as poor to you or not?
It depends. Those folks just might not know about the resources available to them at no cost or a low cost. I have no dental insurance and had never had my teeth cleaned until the age of 24, thus I had about 11 cavities and it hurt to chew food at times. I went to the public teaching hospital in the major city nearest me and over a period of 2-3 months they repaired my teeth for a couple hundred bucks.
I would have to know the particulars of the person who pulled out their teeth with pliars to know whether or not the person really had no other other option, had options they didn’t know about, or was just crazy.
Jamila: Your Libertarian bootstraps schtick is horseshit. You aren’t even living up to that ideal. While your lack of income may technically mean you are cash poor, if you haven’t worked in three years and live in a nice house and were given a car by your parents, you are not poor. I find it highly amusing that you are spouting libertarian nonsense and telling me that I know nothing about economics.
You really are a fool aren’t you? Let’s see, I have a post-graduate degree, got married at 23 but didn’t have my son until I was 30, I’ve worked full-time nearly continuously since I was 18 and the only thing I own is my 11-year old car, which I can’t afford to replace. We don’t own a house, we don’t have a landline (because it’s cheaper to use cell phones), we have basic cable for our cable modem so I can continue my work from home, we rarely eat out, our power bill is out of control because the local power
monopolycompany keeps raising rates and our climate means that living without a/c is not an option, we have only three credit cards between us– but they are maxed because that is how we’ve had to pay for our son’s birth and medical bills because we can’t afford insurance. In the past six years, medical debt from a car accident, an emergency surgery, and our son’s birth have put us in debt we have no foreseeable hope of paying off. I had to let my life insurance policy lapse because we could no longer afford the monthly payments, which means that if I die my son is left with nothing except my debts.See, this is how the cycle of poverty perpetuates itself from one generation to the next. Education, marriage, and later childbearing are hardly accurate indicators of future financial prosperity in this economy. And I am not unique among my peers. Nearly everyone I know is either poor or mortgaged to their eye balls, one paycheck away from losing everything (and it’s not because they lead extravagant lives or made bad decisions). And those who aren’t poor aren’t necessarily better decision-makers (I love how you’ve added this moral dimension to poverty– how Calvinist of you).
And relative to many other Americans, I am actually doing pretty well financially. If you think there isn’t severe deprivation in this country, I think you need to spend some time outside your parents’ house and actually open your eyes a bit.
PR: You probably shouldn’t mention to Jamila the child who died from an abscessed tooth either. Nope, that was just irresponsible parenting I’m sure.
history_mom
PR: You probably shouldn’t mention to Jamila the child who died from an abscessed tooth either. Nope, that was just irresponsible parenting I’m sure.
I remember that story and I did place the majority of the blame on his mother and father–any mention of whom was conspicuously absent from every news report I read.
I acknowledge that the woman had a hard life but the primary responsibility for the general health and well-being of children rests with their parents.
Amen to Phoenixrising.
My husband and I are getting ready to file for bankruptcy. We’ve tapped every resource we have to try to stay afloat with him working commissions and me being virtually homebound by asthma. He’s applying for a salaried job in an area where I’ll be able to breathe, but if that doesn’t come through, I don’t know how we will survive.
I’ve made a store on etsy for our art and my handicrafts (It’s under our name, Krummenacker, if any of you want to look). I’m hoping it will cover our medical copays and maybe some gas money once our credit gets cut off.
We weren’t irresponsible. We were disabled by what we believe was toxic mold in the ventilation system at our former employers; we had doctors who don’t like putting people on disability so we never got any income from that. We’ve made it through 5 years of really bad unemployment/underemployment by careful spending, tapping home equity (now no longer a possibility) and paying out from our retirement funds we had carefully saved.
While your lack of income may technically mean you are cash poor, if you haven’t worked in three years and live in a nice house and were given a car by your parents, you are not poor.
Tell that to the government that includes millions of folks just like me in the definition of who is considered to be living in poverty.
I find it highly amusing that you are spouting libertarian nonsense and telling me that I know nothing about economics.
Well I don’t find it amusing at all. I’m tired of folks who barely understand libertarianism or even economics in general complaining about poverty in America as the ranks of America’s poor are just one homogenous group who are all struggling for dear life. Millions of poor folks in this country are indeed living very comfortable lives; worry at the people who don’t have enough food to eat or who live in overcrowded unsafe housing, these people are a minority among those living in poverty.
You really are a fool aren’t you?
From the way that you are describing yourself you sound like one of those folks in the 5-6 percent of poor people who have done mostly everything right.
My suggestion to you for not being poor is to get a full-time job because from your description is sounds as if you don’t work full time outside the home currently. I would also like to know what field you degrees are in: if you majored in humanities or some other “soft” major you can’t be surprised that your not living as well a mechanical engineer.
If there are two of you working full-time and you both have a college degree, the chance that you will be poor is minuscule. So something sounds amiss about your story….
See, this is how the cycle of poverty perpetuates itself from one generation to the next. Education, marriage, and later childbearing are hardly accurate indicators of future financial prosperity in this economy.
Completely not true. If you are fiscally responsible i.e. don’t get yourself into a mountain of credit card debt, put money down on your home instead of getting a 30 year morgage with 100% financing, drive older cars etc. and you get educated, and marry before having children the likelyhood is very slim that you will be poor. I should also add working full-time to the requirement for avoiding poverty.
And I am not unique among my peers. Nearly everyone I know is either poor or mortgaged to their eye balls, one paycheck away from losing everything (and it’s not because they lead extravagant lives or made bad decisions).
Your friends problem is that they are living beyond their means. If everyone you know is morgaged up to their eyeballs then you need some friends that are more fiscally responsible.
As an accounting major, I have little tolerance for folks with a morgage when they need to be in a small apartment ( and 9 times out of 10 they are living beyond their means) and then complain about the hardship of a morgage they never should have taken on in the first place.
I’m not saying all people are like this, but from my experience most people struggling financially while they have jobs are people living beyong their means.
And those who aren’t poor aren’t necessarily better decision-makers (I love how you’ve added this moral dimension to poverty– how Calvinist of you).
Not necessarily, but I would say it’s more than likely that they are.
And relative to many other Americans, I am actually doing pretty well financially.
America is a nation full of people who are living beyond their means, driving cars they can’t afford, taking on morgages when they need to rent instead, not saving for retirement, and swimming in credit card debt.
This entire nation needs to seriously get their financial house in order.
Uh, hi again, Jamila (waves)
Feel like demolishing some of my points? You’ve kind of ignored them. Please, enlighten me as to how terribly wrong I am.
*fetches popcorn*
“Over twelve percent of the poor are children. ”
How is that possible? 24% of the general population is children. Is it true that the poor have children at half the rate of the general population? I would have to revise my ideas about what causes poverty, if this turns out to be true.
Samantha Vines, all good wishes for the future to you both- I have been there/done that, as they say. Hang in there…
And to some others on this thread:
Until you have run down a snowy road in January in stocking feet, 6 months’ pregnant, hysterically crying and uselessly throwing pinecones after the car whose occupants just stole your entire months’ allotment of food stamps out of your mailbox- you don’t know poor and scared.
“You know that actually helps the poor?”
Sure. Things like housing vouchers, the EITC, Medicaid, food stamps. They all help the poor, just as they’re designed to.
The only problem is that the number calculated as “being in poverty” is done before we count those things. We should instead be counting the number “after” the help given.
Like every other country does.
The poverty line is just a line. It isn’t a stamp that says ‘poor’.
There are poor people in America. They do not live comfortable lives. They do not have safe housing, adequate food or clothing. They do not have access to healthy food. They do not have a public education system that most people would envy, because of the neighborhood they were born in. They will not all get scholarships to go to college. They will be denied a student loan. They may not get a loan to start a housepainting business. They often work for less than a living wage. Public transportation does not go anywhere near their job. If it does, it’s usually at the wrong time. They don’t have relatives who let them live rent free, give them cars, nor do they have the financial support to not work for 3 years while they attend college/take care of a child.
And the flying spaghetti monster only knows if they have access to credit counseling, nutritional education, job training, birth control education. Or if it’s offered when they aren’t working.
A wedding ring won’t help any of that. Two low income workers are not much better off than one. A college degree is not protection against getting laid off because your job has been outsourced. Waiting to have a kid will not prevent the car accident and subsequent medical bill that was only partially covered by your insurance.
I’d love to see Drydock stay healthy while eating the food available from the corner store. Oh, and do it on the cheap, and pay for most of it with food stamps. Knowing you should eat your vegetables does not help the fact that the store does not have them or they’re too expensive.
I’d love to see Jamila try to get an appointment for the low income dental clinic that wouldn’t conflict with the schedule of a single mom that works and attends college. Or explain to her boss that she needs time off for the dentist without being afraid of being fired. Or choose between the textbook she needs and having cavities filled. Or choose between having her cavities filled and paying for childcare. After all, poor people should learn to be better at making choices, right?
I’d love to see the people who say ‘Get educated’ try to pay off student loans and pay rent and pay for medical insurance. Or live at home and find a job located somewhere near their parents. Never mind having a child or paying for daycare. Hell, my college now has a food bank for students who can’t afford to eat.
Even for the supposedly middle class, cutting out coffee, magazines, eating out, vacations, and living in a cheap apartment is not going to be enough for juniors college fund, retirement, and saving for the downpayment on a house. Is it just me, or has the thought turned form “anyone can get rich here”, to “anyone can be poor here”?
Will somebody please start bunnying that heartless, souless {censored}??? He’s never going to understand that “I got mine, all y’all can go fuck yourselves” is an immoral and evil position. Because of that, he’s an immoral and evil person. Proud about it, to boot. Thus, the little evil Libertarian troll is a waste of space and a distraction from what could be a useful, compassionate exchange of ideas.
Y’know, I don’t envy libertarian karma. They’re such selfish shits, it’s going to be ugly when it comes back around to them. I’m just human enough to hope that, when it does, most of the people they run into treat them in exactly the same cold and rotten way they want to treat others.
As for poverty, I sometimes wonder if maybe reserving individual human rights for, y’know, actual breathing humans, as opposed to made-up entities who serve nothing but the equally made-up idea of Mannon, and working hard to make sure each and every human gets their idividual human rights, might not help a lot. But then, I’m an idealist who actually has a heart, and a conscience, and a faint grasp of compassion, unlike our desperately-in-need-of-bunnying evil, selfish Libertarian freak.
As an aside, numbers are inherently amoral. Basing morality on them, and not people, tends to lead to Bad Things.
Bast
Thank you, Louise.
Grey
Y’know, I don’t envy libertarian karma. They’re such selfish shits, it’s going to be ugly when it comes back around to them. I’m just human enough to hope that, when it does, most of the people they run into treat them in exactly the same cold and rotten way they want to treat others.
OK, I’m ready to match my charity work against yours. Put up or shut up. Whadda ya got?
Sorry if this is a double post
The poverty line is just a line. It isn’t a stamp that says ‘poor’.
There are poor people in America. They do not live comfortable lives. They do not have safe housing, adequate food or clothing. They do not have access to healthy food. They do not have a public education system that most people would envy, because of the neighborhood they were born in. They will not all get scholarships to go to college. They will be denied a student loan. They may not get a loan to start a housepainting business. They often work for less than a living wage. Public transportation does not go anywhere near their job. If it does, it’s usually at the wrong time. They don’t have relatives who let them live rent free, give them cars, nor do they have the financial support to not work for 3 years while they attend college/take care of a child.
And the flying spaghetti monster only knows if they have access to credit counseling, nutritional education, job training, birth control education. Or if it’s offered when they aren’t working.
A wedding ring won’t help any of that. Two low income workers are not much better off than one. A college degree is not protection against getting laid off because your job has been outsourced. Waiting to have a kid will not prevent the car accident and subsequent medical bill that was only partially covered by your insurance.
I’d love to see Drydock stay healthy while eating the food available from the corner store. Oh, and do it on the cheap, and pay for most of it with food stamps. Knowing you should eat your vegetables does not help the fact that the store does not have them or they’re too expensive.
I’d love to see Jamila try to get an appointment for the low income dental clinic that wouldn’t conflict with the schedule of a single mom that works and attends college. Or explain to her boss that she needs time off for the dentist without being afraid of being fired. Or choose between the textbook she needs and having cavities filled. Or choose between having her cavities filled and paying for childcare. After all, poor people should learn to be better at making choices, right?
I’d love to see the people who say ‘Get educated’ try to pay off student loans and pay rent and pay for medical insurance. Or live at home and find a job located somewhere near their parents. Never mind having a child or paying for daycare. Hell, my college now has a food bank for students who can’t afford to eat.
Even for the supposedly middle class, cutting out coffee, magazines, eating out, vacations, and living in a cheap apartment is not going to be enough for junior’s college fund, retirement, and saving for the downpayment on a house. Is it just me, or has the thought turned form “anyone can get rich here”, to “anyone can be poor here”?
Again, sitting from the comfort of your parent’s home, driving the car they paid for, and probably using their money to pay for your education, you are hardly in a position to lecture anybody about fiscal responsibility. Despite your accounting degree, you lack a huge real world education in how the cost of living works. So yes, you are a fool, especially because you are assuming a lot about people’s situations that you have no proof of– just your prejudice and being a libertarian asshole.
Most of my family/friends lives in the Western states– y’know, places where the cost of living is very high and getting together the down payment for a $500,000-$1,000,000 is nearly impossible (did you know that houses in Watts are selling for almost $400,000 and that’s a “poor” neighborhood). Many of the people I know have mortgage rates that are barely higher than rental rates in their area so renting isn’t actually a better deal. Heck, I live in one of those areas where mortgage and rental rates are nearly identical.
Even if one keeps their housing cost to below 30% of their take-home income they will often be one paycheck away from defaulting on their mortgage. Not to mention, in the Western states you have little public transportation and the distances between things are much greater than in the East– you pretty much have to drive. Then, if you add kids it influences the type of car you drive because of carseat requirements (which I don’t disagree with). So if you have three kids under 6 you will have to have a car that seats 7, which is not cheap. Then there is the cost of healthcare, food, clothing, schooling, etc.
Here in the real world, Jamila, many of us are not living outside our means but happen to live in areas where the cost of living has completely outstripped our incomes. To be employed it is really not an option to move elsewhere. Also, many people are paying for mistakes they made when they were 18-21, when all those credit card companies started offering them free stuff to sign up for credit cards and, being cash poor, they used them. Even if you learn from your past mistakes, the cycle of debt is vicious and nearly impossible to break out from. Why, Jamila, do you want to enforce lifetime punishment on people who made a few mistakes as young adults?
And what would your life be like if your parents weren’t there to support you (like my husband)? At 18, with no support would you be where you are today? I know, I know, you’re both uniquely gifted and an everywoman– if you can do it anyone can, but they’re lazy & irresponsible which is why they failed and you succeeded. But you won’t listen to actual people’s experiences. Nope, you will continue to blame them for their poverty.
Okay, I’m done with the troll. It’s like banging my head against a wall and I’m not that masochistic.
Ah, our nation’s future cannon fodder.
I’d just like to pimp out the Greasemonkey script ‘killfile’. It’s the best for thread derailers - just kill the comment and continue on.
Observer: No one (except maybe the upper classes) can actually afford kids. Reducing your family income by, what is it, 30 or 40 per cent just when you have another mouth to feed? Forget it.
Well that’s nice. I have $9.60 in my bank account, and have been looking for a job for 6 months. It’s a tough labour market at the moment, and since I’m not on unemployment benefits, job agencies can’t help me. Though I got 100% on my exam today, I can’t afford to go back to uni next term.
The worst decision I have made recently was to buy a big jar of honey last weekend. I like to have a spoonful sometimes, as a treat or celebration. But I could have used the $4 for a train ticket.
I’m right on the edge of destitution. I rejoice at finding change on the ground. If I wanted to move back with my parents, I’d have to walk 2000km, as plane tickets are expensive. My partner has diabetes. If he slips up and has to go to hospital, we’re ruined.
Though I’ve graduated from uni, never taken drugs, don’t drink or smoke, don’t own a car, eat mainly fruit and vegetables and homemade bread (how did that become an indicator of morality?), can use big words, use birth control and am nice to stray animals, I am still unemployed.
The point is, even if someone did all these thing son an hourly basis, no one deserves to be hungry.
I think this is poverty. It’s very depressing.
jamilla, having a college degree is not an instant ticket to success. you know why? because EVERYONE is told that a college degree is an instant ticket to success, and everyone tries to get one. which is why it’s now nearly impossible to find entry-level office jobs which require a BA at minimum and don’t pay enough to allow people to pay off the student loans they took out to get that BA.
i know IT majors and CS majors and business majors who work entry-level office jobs, making perhaps 20K/yr working full-time, as there were no better prospects. hell, i have friends with masters degrees who work in grocery stores, who struggle to pay off their loan debt, because they haven’t been able to land better jobs and they need to eat somehow.
i know people who did everything right, and made all the ‘right choices’, and they’re still uninsured and struggling. often, they’re in the catagory of the working poor, not making enough money to afford health insurance, but making too much money to qualify for medicaid or low-cost healthcare designed for those in abject poverty.
the very fact that you make reference to “failing Econ 101″ suggests to me that you don’t know what you’re talking about. life does not in any way resemble what you learn about in Econ 101.
As an aside, numbers are inherently amoral. Basing morality on them, and not people, tends to lead to Bad Things.
As a side note, I loathe people who eschew numbers while talking about morality. Numbers are a necessary part of dealing with reality, and morality which does not deal with reality tends to lead to Bad Things.
No kidding, A Gold. No kidding. I got chills when I heard about the 20k sign-up bonus being given out now because the recruiters aren’t getting their quota. And how it’s WORKING.
Our government, harvesting our desperate and poor to fight their damned war.
Makes me hope I’m wrong and there is a Hell for these sick bastards.
What have I got, Libertarian? Neither the time nor the interest in a pissing contest, for one thing. For another, I’ve got the idea that you do your charity so you can have something to feel smug and superior about, which is why you’re oh-so-ready to brag about it, while I do mine because people need it and it feels good to help, and I don’t like to talk about it because bragging cheapens the whole thing.
That’s what I got. I’ll weight it against any feather or long, long list, any day of the week. Nice try, though.
Bast
Let’s see, the number one indicator of what your class position will be as an adult is the class position into which you were born. We sociologists have been aware of that for a long time. Maybe it’s you who should study up a bit.
Way to read into things, Phoenician. The only person mentioning eschewing the numbers is you. I said they’re inherently amoral, so don’t base your morality on something intrinsically amoral. What’s so tough to understand about that? People trump numbers, when the choice must be forced, or at least, they should. Failing to do so leads to Bad Things like companies refusing to make repairs because insurance payouts for dead or injured workers is cheaper.
The numbers to need to be dealt with, yes, since they’re obviously there and powerful (see Physics, frex), but they’re not a suitable basis of right and wrong, being, y’know, amoral and all. Would you base your entire morality over gravity? Actually, maybe you would, but still….shouldn’t be above people. As a MORALITY, not as a science, before you go off on that smug tangent.
Also, any system that outright admits important parts of it are irrational or imaginary, doesn’t get to be the Whole Of Reality That Must Be Dealth With, WH000000000!!! This is why fiction and mythology fail that test, too. Important? Well, duh, yeah! Be-all, end-all? Not so much.
In short, get over yourself, and consider reading twice before posting. I’ve been seeing your name for a while now, and it looks to me like you’re susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease. Not sure I really want to talk to you further, actually, given what I’ve seen out of you in the past. You can be a jerk when you’re up on your high horse.
Tsk! Tsk! MAJeff, that’s a soft science and therefore worthless, Ivory Tower liberal talk. Unlike Economics.
[…if you majored in humanities or some other “soft” major you can’t be surprised that your not living as well a mechanical engineer.
If there are two of you working full-time and you both have a college degree, the chance that you will be poor is minuscule. So something sounds amiss about your story….]
What a horse’s ass you are.
My husband had a degree in business with a minor in economics, as well as 15+ years in sales. I had a degree in a medical field and 10+ years in hospitals. We easily could afford our home, owned older vehicles, and had savings and investments.
STFU, now. Really. Lecturing from Mommy’s basement is really not good for your credibility. Grow the fuck up.
“Over twelve percent of the poor are children.”
Grr. I wish people would read the statistics properly. It’s 12% of children who are in poor families, not that 12% of the poor are children.
Surely there are some nice bunnies that would be more edifying and make more sense than anything Jamila has to say.
“Tell me, Jamila - does pulling out your own teeth with pliars because you can’t afford a dentist count as poor to you or not?”
It depends. Those folks just might not know about the resources available to them at no cost or a low cost.
Riiiight. They go around pulling their teeth out because they’re too ignorant to look for alternatives.
GreyLadyBast: Way to read into things, Phoenician. The only person mentioning eschewing the numbers is you. I said they’re inherently amoral, so don’t base your morality on something intrinsically amoral.
Gravity is inherently amoral. Attempting to plan a trip to the shops without taking it into account can lead to problems, no matter how much you may complain that it has nothing to do with consumer choices.
The point is not that people are “basing” their moraility on something inherently amoral. The problem is that people don’t take reality into account when m