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‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

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Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#101

Post by Mezzie »

lelanthran wrote: post #91
phkahler wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 hous…

> 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. The author grew up poor and has a Phd? Sounds like all the arguments here about how it is impossible to escape poverty are at odds with that fact. -- someone who grew up poor

I have an advanced degree (not PhD, Master's) and I ended up poor again.

Disability! If you grow up poor, you can make it out as long as nothing goes wrong. You have no grace. The clock's ticking.

Oh, and you'd best be prepared to leave your family, friends, and anyone who has helped you to drown.

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#102

Post by majormajor »

troupe wrote: post #42
pflenker wrote: post #12

One 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…

It is a similar situation with buying a car for $500 that will require lots of repairs vs. a more expensive car that will give you a lower cost per mile. While this does add some drag, in most of the situations I've actually seen, it isn't the main barrier to getting out of poverty. The main barrier seems to be a culture or mindset that prioritizes short term benefit/feelings over long term benefits even when there a…

> For example, things like getting a dog, signing up for cable TV, getting an unnecessarily expensive new phone, spending money on going out to eat, etc.

How much money do you think it takes to get out of poverty? Is not buying an iPhone and having an extra $1k, even - let's say they went big on the phone - "out of poverty"? That may not even be a month's rent, depending on location... to have security, you need many multiples of that.

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#103

Post by Mezzie »

Eleison23 wrote: post #88
1attice wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's important in understanding falsehoods like the above post is the work they do. It's patently clear to any of us who have experienced poverty that Eleison23 hasn't actually looked into any of this. Ignore that part for now, and instead ask: Why does he need to believe & say these things? What fear does this false view assuage? What feelings, what thoughts, are throttled? It's really hard being alive during a co…

Well, you know, I've been homeless and poor. I've spent most of my adult life unemployed. I lost everything I owned. I had to learn adulting under duress. Many poor people don't know (or they fear) basic things like how to prepare meals, wash clothes, pay bills, clean the house. Many people choose the freedom of homelessness over the burdens of operating a household. SNAP is a supplement, of course, and totally unnec…

There are 12 million people under 65 living on social security benefits due to being disabled. ~38 million people are in poverty in the US right now. You can't just dismiss almost a third of people in poverty to make your argument work. And that's just the people too disabled to work at all. Plenty of people can only work part time.

And elderly poverty is also a thing.

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#104

Post by mhuffman »

troupe wrote: post #46
monero-xmr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm… junk food is generally more expensive than rice, beans, canned veggies, frozen veggies. Look at the prices for a bag of chips and it’s pretty expensive.

I sat down with someone who said their family was starving because they couldn't get enough food from their snap benefits. We went through how much they had and put together a healthy basic menu (rice, beans, etc.) that would make sure no one was starving and they still had about 50% left over to use for buying whatever nice to haves they wanted. I suggested the look for items that were on sale to add to their basic…

>They looked at what we had put together and said, "My kids won't eat that."

This is very common for people I know these days (including my own kids, sadly). It is interesting that when I was young (and we were very, very poor) we (the kids) never had an option. We could eat what we were given or not eat at all, that was the choice we got. And we mostly ate what we were given.

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#105

Post by s3000 »

What 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/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33688913

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#106

Post by CobaltFire »

EliRivers wrote: post #65
bluedino wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, things like getting a dog, signing up for cable TV, getting an unnecessarily expensive new phone, spending money on going out to eat, etc. In a way, people without a lot of money need to "learn how to be poor" When you're low on money, you eat sandwiches and ramen and beans and potatoes. You don't eat McDonald's or get Starbucks.

Life with no money and the perpetual fear of being evicted and living in a car with your children until they're taken away, or being fired for taking a day off sick because you work a bad job with no protections, or not being able to pay the electric and making a game of huddling together with your children at night for fear that they'll freeze, this is being poor. Learn to live poor? Learn to live this life? People…

Happy Meals toys were my ONLY toys for the first decade of my life.

I remember every single one I had; I didn’t have many.

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#107

Post by plsbenice34 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #81
automatic6131 wrote: post #76

A 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 an…

Seems like you’re saying that one of the worst parts of being poor is living around other poor people.

It is.

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#108

Post by mhuffman »

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #59
bluedino wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The excuse for this is they either don't know how to cook, or don't have the staples to cook, or they don't have the time to cook.

You sound out of touch with society. Many poor people don't have time to cook. They might have multiple jobs that take up all of their time. Transportation is a big issue as well. And any disability they may have. Most of America has horrible public transit. I don't know if it would even be possible for me to get onto a bus from my house to the nearest grocery store without first walking a mile. Some of the bus route…

>You sound out of touch with society. Many poor people don't have time to cook. They might have multiple jobs that take up all of their time. Transportation is a big issue as well. And any disability they may have.

This is not been my experience. Poor people having too many jobs to cook just isn't a thing that I saw growing up as a migrant worker (and with, very, very unstable housing, no hot water, abject poverty, etc.) If anything, most of the poor people I knew had no job or a side hustle under the table for cash because any income would reduce their benefits. Regarding transportation, again, people usually go with someone that has a car and pay in foodstamps or buy them somthing at the store or give a little for gas. Or walked if it was close enough. Granted, I did not grow up in giant metropolises, so it might be different there. Regarding disability, nearly every poor person I knew was trying to get disability classification, because it meant constant stable income. If you are disable and can't cook for yourself, in the US, you can get people that will come to your house and help you for free (paid by the government, I know many people that do this as a job).

Re: ‘Some things never leave you’: Poverty’s indelible marks

#109

Post by monero-xmr »

steele wrote: post #97
monero-xmr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard for me to feel bad when everything possible is in front of you and you still make a poor life decision. You can be poor and still be willfully unhealthy, same as the rich.

How many cancer treatments poor life decisions are you away from homelessness?

I think that is a specious argument that is unrelated to the larger point - in 2022 SNAP benefits provide poor people with enough free food to eat healthy, if they choose to.
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