Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

longreads.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 227 posts

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

#81

Post by xyzzyz »

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.

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

#82

Post by Mezzie »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #75
fbdab103 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are poor, you have to be frugal in all things. Even "free money" needs to be spent judiciously. Junk foods will extend your dollar further and are typically faster to prepare than alternatives.

>Junk foods will extend your dollar further That's just not true. People who live in actually impovrished countries don't eat junk food; they eat rice and eggs. The US has a %40 obesity rate. That doesn't come from "extending your dollar." Poorer people have an even higher obesity rate on average in the US. That doesn't suddenly mean that "junk food will extend your dollar further." What we really need is to limit fo…

> What we really need is to limit food stamps (or SNAP, EBT, whatever name) to healthier options.

That'd be super fun for me, as a person with MS. I literally don't have the energy to cook a lot of the time, and am often only awake for 1-2 hours when I'm not at work, during which time I already have to shower, do chores, pay bills, etc.

Oh, and I'm hypotensive and on medication that often means I don't feel hungry. Junk food is great because it's so easy to eat even when you don't feel hungry. Eating healthy foods often results in me severely undereating calorie wise which causes more problems. Junk food is also easy to snack on at work because I don't get sit down breaks some days. A little salt every few hours keeps me from fainting.

And RIP anybody with any kind of dietary restrictions.

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

#83

Post by Scoundreller »

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…

The cookbook and other guides here are excellent:

https://efficiencyiseverything.com/food/

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

#84

Post by TeaDrunk »

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…

The main barrier to poverty is that there is a statistically almost no way to meaningfully save up enough money to get out of poverty, by onesself, just by forgoing anything that doesn't contribute directly to food and shelter.

Literally: what is the point of saving up 5$/wk? That's less than 300$ by the year. What can you realistically do to get yourself out of poverty for a one-time payment of 300$? You can't even afford therapy to help you get yourself out of immense, soul-crushing burnout because you've been doing nothing to enrich yourself psychologically such as companionship, entertainment, or gifting yourself a nice meal all year.

10$/wk is $520. You can't even start a business selling soap on etsy for 520$. You can maybe get a loan to do so, but now you're on the hook for even more debt for entrepreneurship and the majority of businesses fail.

This is assuming you never have a health problem, you never need medical care, you never have someone you love need medical care, and you have superhuman discipline to go without love, joy, and little pleasures in life for a year.

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

#85

Post by Mezzie »

m348e912 wrote: post #35
photochemsyn wrote: post #2

The architects of the economic system in the United States don't want to eliminate poverty - it's kept around as a threat, something to point to - see, grunts, that's where you'll end up if you're not an obedient drone. This is also a main reason why there's no reliable public health care system, instead it's tied to employment. The general concept is "discipline of the labor force."

One thing that confuses me is that people talk about lack of healthcare for the poor like Medicaid is not a thing. I have a friend getting a hip replacement in three weeks, after getting an appt with a specialist in one week, and it's getting covered under Medicaid. Will she have co-pays and out of pocket costs? I don't know. But I can't imagine it will be worse than with the shitty insurance I have.

You have to be really poor for Medicaid. Back when I relied on it via income qualification (before I qualified through an obscure loophole that I found via figuring out the website page structure of MDHHS and manually searching every single posted BEM manual (social work manual) - totally a normal and cool thing that most people would think of and know how to do /s), I had to make under 1100/mo.

GROSS income.

So basically I had to choose between healthcare for MS and the other basics in my life.

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

#86

Post by Mezzie »

Eleison23 wrote: post #11
photochemsyn wrote: post #2

The architects of the economic system in the United States don't want to eliminate poverty - it's kept around as a threat, something to point to - see, grunts, that's where you'll end up if you're not an obedient drone. This is also a main reason why there's no reliable public health care system, instead it's tied to employment. The general concept is "discipline of the labor force."

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. There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions…

> If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently.

raises an eyebrow in disabled

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

#87

Post by CobaltFire »

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…

See “The Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness”:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

-Sir Terry Pratchett

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

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

#88

Post by Eleison23 »

1attice wrote: post #31
Eleison23 wrote: post #11

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. There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions…

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 unnecessary even if you're dirt-poor. You can get by on food boxes and other donated food, free meals in parks and at churches, etc. SNAP does have a lot of hurdles in place.

Once again, there's no poverty in these United States for those who are determined and not overly impaired. Perhaps we're into "No True Scotsman" territory but I wouldn't even label as poverty someone's life in a shelter, where they can access 3 squares a day and comfortable hygienic bathroom facilities and usually a spot to try and land a job and increase their opportunity.

I've seen poor people living in garbage, like literally they scour garbage pits and they live among them. Poor people with children who have distended bellies and they're stretching bowls full of rice with dirty water because there's just nothing else to be had. Abject poverty such as that is just unheard of in our borders, because there's too much subsidy and programs and infrastructure that exists.

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

#89

Post by steele »

monero-xmr wrote: post #36
hilom wrote: post #3

That was a long read, but very much worth reading. This part really stuck out to me: > A few years ago, a friend of mine, in a well-meaning attempt to understand the impoverished diets of poor people, ate a Food Stamp diet for a week. On the last day of the diet, he talked about what he had learned and spoke philosophically about his renewed appreciation of healthy food as he prepared to end his restricted diet with…

Is that a historical thing? In the US you get a SNAP card and can buy fresh produce at the store. I shop at a low-income focused grocery store (because it’s the same stuff but cheaper) and most people are using SNAP benefits and carts are always a mix of healthy stuff to unhealthy frozen junk.

Google food desert

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

#90

Post by monero-xmr »

Mezzie wrote: post #82
Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Junk foods will extend your dollar further That's just not true. People who live in actually impovrished countries don't eat junk food; they eat rice and eggs. The US has a %40 obesity rate. That doesn't come from "extending your dollar." Poorer people have an even higher obesity rate on average in the US. That doesn't suddenly mean that "junk food will extend your dollar further." What we really need is to limit fo…

> What we really need is to limit food stamps (or SNAP, EBT, whatever name) to healthier options. That'd be super fun for me, as a person with MS. I literally don't have the energy to cook a lot of the time, and am often only awake for 1-2 hours when I'm not at work, during which time I already have to shower, do chores, pay bills, etc. Oh, and I'm hypotensive and on medication that often means I don't feel hungry. J…

The grocery store has food for all manner of diets and it takes SNAP. I don’t think your story negates the crux of the matter. It’s great junk food is healthy for you.
Post reply on HN