
The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More - gasull
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html
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oldgregg
Having been exceptionally poor most of my childhood, I can completely relate
to this. You can't absolve personal responsibility but poverty is a vindictive
cycle for a reason.

It's simple things like vehicle emissions testing -- if you have money you
don't think about it -- but if you drive an older car you fail emissions --
and it costs way too much to get it fixed -- so you drive without registration
-- and end up in court. Worrying about things like the environment or organic
food is a luxury only the gilded class an afford.

"Sophisticated" people love to shit on the big bad wal-mart empire as they
happily truck into target to buy shit from the martha stewart collection-- as
if there is any difference. The only difference is that poor people happen to
really love wal-mart-- so you can take your sociology degree and shove it.

The poor do get exploited, but Michael Moore style class warfare isn't the
answer either. The truth is that the poor exploit each other even more than
the wealthy do. Poor people are poor because they don't have the social
capital to get out of poverty. Most social programs do nothing to deal with
social capital so they don't create long term solutions.

Those people throw indulgence money at poor people all day so they can absolve
themselves of their materialism. Or they take vacations to Africa so they can
post self-righteous photos on facebook that shows how socially chic they are.
Is that a save darfur bumper sticker on your prius? But ask those people to
spend their TIME actually building into people's lives and befriending people
in a sacrificial way and you can forget it. When you're poor nobody wants to
be your friend.

And by those people I mean me. I was poor, so I should know better, right? But
MY time is too valuable. I would rather start a website to help the poor or
raise a couple hundred bucks for some suburban 5k fun run to support some
inner city whatever. This has to scale damnit! But be an actual friend? Take
someone to a job interview? Have them over for dinner? Let them hang out with
my cool friends? Don't bet on it, because I'm the problem.

~~~
cema
I mostly agree, and especially with the point about the social capital. But
it's more than that. In this country, education pays (which is not true in all
countries) but is expensive, and the best kind of education, self-education,
requires a personal discipline and a certain type of learning-loving culture
with which one should really be imbued in childhood. Poor families often lack
this.

This is only one point, and maybe not the most important one.

~~~
oldgregg
Yeah, that's spot on, it's a cultural issue. We've dumped increasing amounts
of money to traditional education model to almost nil effect. But how do you
change a culture that glorifies sports and celebrities and openly mocks
anything related to learning?

So it's an "education" issue but not in the programmatic way that most people
assume but in this broader systemic way can't be fixed with money alone.

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yummyfajitas
This article is nonsense.

 _You [a typical poor person] don't have a car to get to a supermarket...You
don't have three hours to take the bus._

80% of the poor work less than half time (20 hours/week), and therefore do
have 3 hours to take the bus. Also, 3/4 of the poor do have a car. The article
even describes a poor person driving her car to a big box store, something it
claims the poor can't do.

<http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2005.pdf>

<http://www.heritage.org/research/welfare/bg1713.cfm>

 _When you are poor, you don't have the luxury of throwing a load into the
washing machine and then taking your morning jog while it cycles._

Actually, 65% of the poor do have that luxury.

 _The poor pay for caller identification because it gives them peace of mind
to weed out calls from bill collectors._

The poor pay more money to avoid hearing people informing them of their
overdue bills?

 _...Harrison Blakeney, 67, ... uses the check-cashing store to pay his
telephone bill. The store charges 10 percent to take Blakeney's money and send
the payment to the phone company...Blakeney says: "I don't have time to mail
it..."_

What's his occupation? _Blakeney [is a] a retired auto mechanic..._ You know
those retirees, working their 80 hour weeks, don't have time to mail a letter.

 _"You pay rent that might be more than a mortgage," Reed says. "But you don't
have the credit or the down payment to buy a house..._

Yet somehow, 45% of poor households do manage to own their own home.

~~~
ajju
I was once poor (grad school) and I can attest that the first point is valid.
I didn't have a car, the grocery store was 3 miles away and the bus ran once a
hour on weekdays and much less frequently on weekends - making it hard. 9 out
of 10 times when I ran out of groceries, I ended up buying them at the gas
station nearby.

I did work only 20 hours a week but gradschool easily consumed most of the
remaining time (including weekends).

~~~
sho
But that was a while ago, right? Don't most supermarkets deliver these days?
Seems like that one, at least, should be a solved problem.

The biggest thing with groceries IMO is having the spare money to "stock up"
when the prices are low (eg on sale, large sizes, etc) and then getting into
the cycle of just replenishing that opportunistically, instead of constantly
running out of things and buying replacements on demand.

For example, if you notice your favourite brand of washing powder is half
price, don't buy one, buy _ten_. And then a few months later when you notice
it's getting low, keep your eyes open the next few times you go to the
supermarket, then buy up big again when you see a good deal. This is far
better than repeatedly buying small quantities at high prices because you
don't have any choice and need it that day, but it does require some spare
money to start.

~~~
oldgregg
Riiight, I mean can't everyone just FreshDirect to their UES studio?!

~~~
sho
Well, can't they?

For $5 I can get a load of groceries delivered to any suburb in Sydney, you
don't even need a credit card. I had assumed there was something similar
there. No need for the sarcasm.

~~~
cema
Available in some places.

------
motherwell
Wasn't this already discussed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=619110>

------
joez
Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little
changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. . . . Competition for the
best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries.
Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of
charge for its citizens, just like national defense. -Sam Seaborn, West Wing

~~~
cwan
Unfortunately Seaborn only got half of the picture right. The relationship
between per pupil spending and SAT scores or other metrics of quality is weak
to non-existent. Those like Seaborn, not unlike those currently holding
office, talk a great game of increasing funding to education 'in order to
compete' and fall short when it comes to accountability and then being too
afraid to stand up to teachers unions (unions who absolutely abhor the idea of
merit pay) when they actually get into office.

Education _is_ everything, but the way the system is currently run, the poor
are often hurt the most, ironically, by their most vociferous and supposed
advocates.

~~~
joez
I agree that the quote is only half the picture. But what I remember is,
"Education is the silver bullet." Not more money for education will cure all.
The level of conversation on education is not nearly enough just like the
amount of money. It shows a lack of care.

I don't know what the fix for education is; all I know is that education is
the fix for most of the world's problems.

I think that is a step in the right direction that plenty of people have not
taken.

~~~
cwan
I should have also qualified my response and thinking in saying that I think
that in the US and much of the west this holds true. In developing countries,
often the key barrier for the poor to becoming rich is the lack of strong
property rights systems. There are numerous studies that show the education
spending is largely useless or rather suboptimal relative to other
interventions in developing countries (see William Easterly's books - he was
an economist with the World Bank).

Unfortunately I think you're right in that most people don't think hard enough
about the issue - but the problem is that most people equate caring with
blindly spending money instead of delving into some of the more nuanced
issues. That they do so is often because this blind spending also happens to
cater to special interests like teachers unions. The research on charter and
voucher schools for instance is quite promising but just look at the spending
that teachers unions have done in those districts that have even considered
the ideas. Again, it's the poor who are the worst off given that the
wealth(ier) just send their kids to private schools.

------
ojbyrne
While I'm somewhat sympathetic to this, the line "When you're poor you wait"
(the very last line of the article) is bogus. Sorry, but lineups are a part of
just about every class's life.

~~~
jacquesm
That's so wrong it is not even funny. People with some money can easily afford
to have others take care of the drudgery of life for them, which means they
have more time.

You don't have to line up because you send someone else to do it for you. It
is only in very rare cases that you can't 'jump the line' if you have cash.
(airports ? business class. shopping ? have the maid do it etc.).

~~~
joez
I was really offended when I found out about things like flash passes or fast
passes (<http://www.sixflags.com/greatAmerica/tickets/flashpass.aspx>) that
let you either queue up for an additional price or just cut to the front of
the line while poorer people have to wait.

There was just something about having such a class segmentation at a public,
kid-oriented park that got to me.

~~~
cema
There is a reason the American project is an ongoing experiment. There must be
something in the human nature (hierarchical societal structure?) which leads
some (many?) people to behaving like hogs. Egalitarianism requires constant
work. If you stop, the experiment is over.

(Just one point where the American experiment may break.)

This whole thread is a side note, but I think it is relevant.

~~~
hvs
America wasn't founded on the concept of egalitarianism, that was an idea of
the French revolution. America was founded on the idea of equality before the
_law_ (something that we _are_ still working on).

~~~
cema
Equal rights were (and are) a fundamental idea for the US, egalitarianism less
so. However, the anti-aristocratic feelings were strong. Recall, for example,
that the titles were easily abolished.

~~~
hvs
Certainly monarchist ideas were easily eliminated and equal rights were a
fundamental idea, but aristocratic thought was not uncommon among the Founding
Fathers. The split between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists was often
worded in aristocratic language. The people were split pretty evenly between
pro, anti, and indifferent to the Revolution.

