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John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

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Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#91

Post by DubiousPusher »

35bge57dtjku wrote: post #82
DubiousPusher wrote: post #80

I grew up in poverty and am legally blind. It was incredibly difficult to find any way of making any money at all. Seriously, it was very difficult just to get a $5.15/hr minimum wage job in Montana. The strongest emotion I have felt to this day is the feeling that I would never get out of being poor. To this day my nightmares are about losing my job, blowing through my emergency fund and not being able to find anoth…

Don't you get SSI or something for being blind?

Yes, $500/mo is quite difficult to live on, even in Montana. And as soon as you start making any money, the support is rapidly withdrawn.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#92

Post by sangnoir »

gragas wrote: post #53

Having lived in SF and Chicago, I now have near zero empathy for poor people. All I see is complacency and horrible decisions.

> All I see is complacency and horrible decisions

That's because they can't afford to make the consequences of their bad decisions go away! Bias against poor people runs deep: If a poor kid steals trinkets worth $30 they are going to juvie; a rich kid rapes a girl - "Oh, he is suffering from affluenza. Should we really ruin his promising young life?"

Drug using and poor = junkie vs. drug using and rich = "parties hard". The latter can use daddy's money to go into rehab, hire excellent lawyers to get the records sealed and viola - no horrible decisions for you to see. When you're poor, you can go from traffic ticket to arrest warrant unbelievably fast.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#93

Post by fencepost »

I don't see it mentioned and it may be a little dated by now, but Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickle and Dimed is a very good read on this topic.

One thing that I believe is on that list that may escape a lot of folks: "Being poor is knowing EXACTLY how much everything costs."

Edit: Wups, didn't remember that that was how it starts

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#94

Post by michaelmrose »

Mz wrote: post #77
gragas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very large portion of the population is poor without intractable personal problems. If you're suggesting that ~30% of people in the US have such problems, and if you're right, then you got me; the world is screwed.

If you are suggesting that 30% of people in the US are poor, you are talking about a systemic issue. However, I think you are in error. The figures I typically see are 12-14% and 2% or less are chronically poor.

I think people are just using different definitions of poor. The 2017 federal poverty line for a family of 4 is 24k. Some places this wouldn't pay for housing those people. Suggesting that people graduate from poverty at that point is therefore an interesting view.

Most people describing being poor are describing the state of barely scraping by based on current income and costs. Plenty of people are chronically poor by that definition and if support like foodstamps, subsidized housing, subsidized medical care, above the line tax deductions like the EIC were removed you would find that number rising dramatically.

It seems extremely likely that costs will continue to rise while such benefits are slashed and automation destroys a good chunk of employment that keeps people afloat.

More than 12% of people are poor now and more than 30% will be poor in the future.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#95

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #91
35bge57dtjku wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you get SSI or something for being blind?

Yes, $500/mo is quite difficult to live on, even in Montana. And as soon as you start making any money, the support is rapidly withdrawn.

> "as soon as you start making any money, the support is rapidly withdrawn"

This is a valid criticism of income-based charity...there is little incentive to get over that initial hump.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#96

Post by philovivero »

jachee wrote: post #23

I lived this. Being poor is growing up between the trailer park and the dump. Being poor is skipping homework to help repair the $600 car so dad can make it to work tomorrow. Being poor is your mother crying over a $100 invoice for the dental service you just received for the first time in living memory. Being poor is quitting junior college early, because your Pell Grant ran out, and a $12.15/hr opportunity is over…

Thank you for the inventory of my life. I remember those months as a kid when the cupboards were bare, and so I'd just shrug and go to bed without dinner. Thank goodness for government-sponsored low-income lunch program. That was my only meal many days.

Naturally I was surprised when recently I got informed I have white privilege by a bunch of spoiled children who've never known a day of hardship in their lives.

I'm not terribly enamoured with the Silicon Valley political atmosphere these days.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#97

Post by candiodari »

sidlls wrote: post #27
georgemcbay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the faction of the Republican party that has the gall to call Social Security and Medicare "entitlement" programs and then act like people who rely on them (after paying a lifetime of taxes in) should feel like they are taking advantage of everyone else?

Look, it ain't just the Republicans you identify that screw the poor. Democrats are in some ways worse because unlike Republicans they pretend to care (sometimes). The Democrats' candidate for president was offering Republican style market-based crap like tax breaks for profit sharing and work programs for low cost loans. She didn't even touch on poverty with anything concrete: just words. Their president from 2008-2…

You should think that the two are related.

If, for instance, most people here are interested not in helping the poor but in changing the balance of power ... that would result in exactly the behavior you're describing.

It has been a feature of the last 15 years or so that so-called "leftists" are electing laissez-faire leaders and

1) see no problem there

2) attack people who criticize this (usually, of course, because they are leftists)

I commend you calling out that neither the democrat party, nor any Clinton, can be called leftist by any reasonable measure. In fact, at least on rhetoric, I would argue that Trump was actually to the left of Clinton.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#98

Post by DubiousPusher »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #95
DubiousPusher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, $500/mo is quite difficult to live on, even in Montana. And as soon as you start making any money, the support is rapidly withdrawn.

> "as soon as you start making any money, the support is rapidly withdrawn" This is a valid criticism of income-based charity...there is little incentive to get over that initial hump.

It would be fine if the government could discover there's such a thing as continuous curves.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#99

Post by fweespeech »

micahbright wrote: post #48
peterburkimsher wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Basic income" would go a long way. People will try to work to make their lives better, whether they're "poor" and "rich". Not needing to worry about food and shelter would make life much easier. And I mean "basic income" for everybody. Not just citizens. Even immigrants. "For the widow, the orphan, the foreigner." - Deuteronomy 10:18, Zechariah 7:10, Matthew 25:31-46

I like how you turn a voluntary charitable contribution into forcing other people to pay. If you aren't poor, you should already be making contributions to the poor since you have such high moral standards.

We are all in this world together and some of us do make those contributions.

You are just angry we want you to contribute at all and I feel bad for you. It must hurt going through life thinking no one cares if you suffer or die.

Re: John Scalzi: Being Poor (2005)

#100

Post by jstewartmobile »

amagumori wrote: post #57

for anyone who has grown up poor or working class, how do i claw my way out of this? i come from a single parent household, my mom is an elementary school teacher with 4 kids in an expensive city. she barely makes ends meet and cannot support me. i was homeless and addicted to drugs for most of my teenage years, before getting sober and going to college, but dropping out after 2 years - my mom's child support put me…

Avoid debt like the plague. It already reared its ugly head twice in the first paragraph.

When you look at the crap out there that ruins people, most of it is finance (rent-a-center, subprime mtg, payday loans, easy-credit car loans, student loans, etc), and it's a death-spiral.

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