
Being Poor by John Scalzi - skmurphy
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
======
edw519
Being truly poor is not being able to imagine anything else.

Both of my parents grew up with absolutely nothing.

My mother shared a bed with her sisters and wore nothing but hand-me-downs
until she got married.

My father never had 3 meals in the same day until he joined the army.

They both tried to explain what life was like to us many times, but every
story ended with, "Never mind. You just wouldn't understand."

They were so determined to escape their situations, almost every decision they
made as adults was shaped by growing up with nothing. They worked hard almost
every day of their lives so that none of us would ever have to experience what
they went through. There was never any discussion or debate about what life
would be like in our house: we were all going to finish high school, go to
college, and build lives of our own. None of us has ever missed a meal or gone
without anything essential.

I realize many people are just as determined as my parents were, but still
don't escape poverty. There are no guarantees.

I just don't know how anyone can reverse the cycle without imagining that they
can. Having no money is bad. Having no hope is worse.

~~~
poppysan
This is so very true. I grew up sleeping 3 to a bed, no food, no clothing, and
no utilities more often than not. I'd never wish it on my worst enemy's kids.
But I would not trade my upbringing at all.

Thankfully that was long ago, but those memories give me the determination,
and humility,that i need to advance myself each day.

------
DanielBMarkham
_People wondering why you didn't leave_

You can always leave. They're called feet: use them.

I have been very, very poor. And I've made a million bucks in a short amount
of time. In fact, I've flopped back and forth about as many times as anybody I
know, so I know both sides of this.

I would not idolize poverty as some kind of state of nobility, and I would't
spend a lot of time agonizing over it either. It is a thing that happens to
you, like cancer. You get to make choices in life, no matter where you are or
what your situation. The last day of your life, if you were lying in a ditch
somewhere, you can still choose how to confront the end of your existence.
These choices are all we own. The only person that can stop you making choices
is yourself. It is extremely possible to dwell on all the bad things in life
and despair.

If you are poor and reading this, whatever you do, please don't despair. Make
some different choices. The only way you're not making a difference in the
world is if you've decided that you're not. Don't let others -- no matter how
well meaning -- give that to you.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"I have been very, very poor."

The key question, then, is whether you were _born and raised_ poor, or did you
become poor in your later life. There is a ingrained mental barrier of
hopelessness being born into poverty, especially in America where the cycle of
poverty consumes communities and perpetuates all manner of things that are
easily contested by people on the outside looking in, but is palpable to those
trapped within it.

The difference, interestingly enough, can be found in a line in the song
"Common People" by the English band Pulp, which follows the story of a rich
girl who "slums it" with the poor narrator:

"But still you'll never get it right

cos when you're laid in bed at night

watching roaches climb the wall

if you just called your Dad, he could stop it all

You'll never live like common people"

I was born and raised poor. Like, picking cockroaches out of my cereal box
poor. Like, magic block of cheese appearing on the doorstep poor. Like
qualifying for free lunch at school poor. Like pink bicycle with sissy bar
bought from the thrift shop and handed down from eldest daughter to two
youngest sons poor (I broke the cycle of shame with black electrical and
silver duct tape).

I never blamed my parents; they were immigrants fleeing an oppressive regime
with nothing but a suitcase of hastily gathered clothes, papers, and photos.
But, to say it's "just a thing that happens to you, like cancer" doesn't
really speak to how stifling poverty can truly be.

My family pulled themselves out of the cycle, but millions don't. MOST don't.
Getting out has less to do with "using your feet" and more like pulling an
entire base of people out of a mindset that they can't succeed even if they
tried their damndest. It's not only cultural, it's systemic.

"The only person that can stop you making choices is yourself.

Not always the case. My wife's family came to this country in 1978. Her
father's job for the first five years was to mop the floors and clean toilets
at schools, for which he was (legally) paid less than minimum wage because of
his immigrant status. Then, the church that promised the family free
admittance to their school in exchange for Dad's reduced salary rescinded it
upon his offer to take ESL classes by day and cleaning the schools by night.
So, he pulled them from that school and into public school, which, because of
redistricting and rezoning, was among the poorest and most dangerous in their
state. I guess it is about choices, but don't think there aren't people out
there who disincentivize you from making them.

Hell, it wasn't that long ago that some people couldn't eat at the same
counter equally as others. I mean, could you even make a clear-headed choice
in that scenario?

Choices to pull oneself up from a cycle of poverty is as risky as
entrepreneurship, perhaps even more so. If you fail at business, you have your
firm footing of educational background and network of employees, peers,
investors, and family to watch over you and give support. If you fail at
pulling yourself from the ghetto, the next stop could be homelessness and the
soup kitchen. And, if you have a family, they'll suffer doubly so.

It's almost never cut and dry.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thank you for sharing that. I enjoyed reading it.

I think you misunderstood, however. Nothing is cut and dry. Did I say it was?
When I say that you own your choices, I am not promising some kind of magic
future if you just get Positive Mental Attitude. This is not a Tony Robbins
seminar, and I am not trying to just throw out slogans. I believe most of your
reply was based on this premise, and that was not the intent of my comment at
all. I am also not trying to get into a "who's the poorest" contest. There are
lots of ways these conversations can go off the rails.

As an example, and to specifically counter this idea of quick-fixes, I used
the scenario of the person dying from cancer in the ditch. Will proper choices
make them any less dead in a day's time? I seriously doubt it, and that's
completely not the point.

Any life in any situation can be celebrated and you can use your mind to make
choices about your attitudes. People in concentration camps awaiting death can
be cheerful. Perhaps you would stop by the ditch an lecture the dying person
on the futility of it all, how you knew many people who also died this way,
and how painful it was. Perhaps you would go on about the pointlessness of
action, and how tens of millions are in the same place and we must do
something to begin " pulling an entire base of people out of a mindset" About
how few ever make it out.

I would not do this. In fact, I would go so far as to say that those who do
this to someone are not their friend.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"Perhaps you would stop by the ditch an lecture the dying person on the
futility of it all, how you knew many people who also died this way, and how
painful it was"

I happily pay my taxes, try to vote with my conscience for those engaged in
healthcare reform, and contribute freely to causes to help prevent people
dying of cancer in a ditch. It's not self-righteousness or soliciting thanks
from poor, sick people or anything else that drives me to do that; it's my
belief that we're more than just the successes we've made in this life -- the
actions we've managed to perform to get a positive result. There is community
outside of the self.

Sometimes people are frozen into a rut because they've never seen what it's
like at the top (except for watching those that succeed in nearly impossible
scenarios, like sports athletes or heiresses-turned-celebrities), and they
likely never will. So, platitudes that "there is a there there" is cold
comfort for them. Working hard and still not being able to pass the "first-
month rent + last-month rent + security deposit + credit/background check"
gauntlet put forth for anyone wanting to break that cycle is oppressive to the
psyche.

And, before anyone in this thread ever decides to veer off into blaming
"degenerate cultures", I'll cut it off at the pass and say there is about a
nickel's worth of difference between being poor in W. Virginia and being poor
in Harlem, NYC. It's the same down, with very little upside (aside from
working for the mines or for the state, respectively). Makes the sentiment
"been down so long, it looks like up to me" even more resonant.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm not trying to argue, but I believe you don't understand.

My point was that you seem very happy with explaining the systemic reasons for
problems, even being very proud of your progressive social attitudes and
willingness to pay taxes, but none of that money, explanation, or
enlightenment does the actual poor one bit of lasting good. They deal with
despair as a primary obstacle. Explaining sociology to them and the systemic
nature of poverty does not help them despair less. In fact, and this is
critical, for many it may have the effect of making their lives substantially
worse. There's a very fine line between explaining a complex problem that you
don't currently have the solution to and telling people their life is
pointless. In fact they can look and sound like the same thing to an outside
observer.

I have no qualm with you -- the things you have said are most likely true --
but there is a difference in talking about a thing from an external clinical
standpoint and living the thing, as you know so well.

As a sidebar, why would you even mention that you weren't angry with your
parents? It seemed such an odd thing to say. Why would anyone think of being
angry with their parents for something like wealth?

I'm done here. Sorry to take the thread so far down. Just sounded like we were
talking past each other. Thanks again for the conversation.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"none of that money, explanation, or enlightenment does the actual poor one
bit of lasting good."

Tell that to Joe the Plumber, who went from growing up on welfare to being the
everyman who just wants to run his own plumbing business if it weren't for a
then-Presidential candidate taking his money. Ditto Sarah Palin and Craig T.
Nelson (who once famously said on the Glenn Beck show, "I've been on food
stamps and welfare, did anyone help me out? No!")

I figured you were a "supply-side" kinda guy, so we'll truly never see things
eye-to-eye. Fair enough.

Just know that poor people actually _do_ want to know why they're poor, as
that kind of sets expectations, pacing, and gives them some wiggle room to
strategize solutions to their problem. State support helps them with
essentials, education helps ameliorate their thinking, and charitable causes
and people give them the helping hand to see through the hardship.

"There's a very fine line between explaining a complex problem that you don't
currently have the solution to and telling people their life is pointless."

That's why you give them cold facts and then real solutions based on what you
and others have experienced. If you don't want to talk publicly about success,
you're essentially telling them, "I'm a millionaire and so can you!" and then
leaving. In other words, show don't tell.

"Why would anyone think of being angry with their parents for something like
wealth?"

I would be positively _ecstatic_ if I were born into a wealthy family. It
would bring no end of awesome, warm feelings. I will never know what that
feeling is like, unfortunately, as they were the poorest of immigrants. I was
just implying that I didn't begrudge them being poor, as I still had a decent
childhood, even in the ghetto.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Please don't put me in a box. You don't know me.

Yeah I think there is a deep infection here, but it has nothing to do with
poverty. It begins with the idea that if you take social assistance then
social assistance must be a good thing. Or that somehow you must support it.
As you are demonstrating by your words, this isn't any good at all. For Joe,
Sarah, you, or anybody else. This same logic holds that if you don't send your
kids into the military, you can't support a war. One supposes that everybody
must volunteer at the local fire station or go without emergency support, or
that those who took a pencil in second grade must somehow support armed
robbery as a way of life. Give a man a fish, and he must support government
sanctioned fish distribution for his entire life. It's the one-size-fits-all,
if-you-were-touched-by-it-you-must-endorse-it thinking. Not good. Not good for
anybody. Let's move past such rhetorical nonsense.

Here's the thing: it's one thing to explain something that you understand and
know how to fix. It's quite another to simply cite statistics and general
correlations. There are a lot of folks who think that positive mental attitude
can lift you out of poverty -- I am one of them. And there are folks that
think it is mostly luck. (I also think luck has quite a bit to do with it as
well) But I can guarantee you that anybody who thinks that life is pointless
will never make it. I also observe that after trillions spent on LBJ's War on
Poverty (one hopes it did not involve shooting poor people) we are no further
along than when we started. So for all the bluster, we do not have the answer.
We have a lot of complex ideas and theories, but we have no answer.

We do not know how to lift people out of poverty. We DO know that hopelessness
and despair will prevent folks from succeeding. You can either sit around and
dress up correlation as "giving them cold facts" or you can help with
attitudes. That's just what every poor person with a poor education needs --
some rich college guy with a $50 vocabulary going on and on about how the
system is against them and how they'll never make it.

When I was poor, I knew people like this. Oddly enough, many of them were
college educated. It was always pointless, the system was always corrupt, the
rich guys always got richer and the poor guys always got the shaft. It's
mental disease masquerading as wisdom. Guys who felt that way are either still
there, dead, or in prison. You can be in a hopeless situation and still have
joy and hope. Unless you listen to some people.

Like I said, you sound more part of the problem than the solution.

------
wallflower
From the comments:

> Being poor is discovering that that letter from Duke University, naming you
> as one of three advanced students in your class invited to test out of HS
> early into their scholarship program, is just so much firestarter because
> the $300 it costs to take the test may as well be $3 million.

Despair is finally realizing, at nearly 36 and with a barely-afforded AA in
English from a community college, just where you could have been by now had
you had $300, and what that missed opportunity has truly cost you.

~~~
inboulder
$300 is 15 lawns mowed, or 2k cans collected, or probably one post on your
facebook page asking for donations.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"or probably one post on your facebook page asking for donations"

I seriously doubt facebook was around back when this person was in school.

And, how do you mow 15 lawns with no transport, and the people around you are
too poor to even have a lawn, let alone have people mow their lawns for them?
Hell, where could he even get the lawnmower in the first place?

And, 2000 cans collected is a noble (and green!) act, but there are states
where they'll give a big fat nothing for recycling; in fact, the home state of
Duke University (NC, USA) doesn't offer money for aluminum like up North,
unless you're willing to collect a pound of it and sell it for 20 cents. I
guess he could move to another state to get better recycling prices, but then
there's moving costs.

Sometimes being poor sucks, and there's NOTHING you can do. Not saying his
case was completely hopeless, but it's easy to find solutions when there are
zero consequences.

~~~
patrickgzill
There are scrapyards all over the country. See
[http://realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71](http://realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71)
for example.

------
nlavezzo
>Being poor is off-brand toys.

>Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

No... this is being "poor", i.e. still in the top third or more of humanity as
far as living standards.

Being poor is what the people I visited in barrios in Ecuador do - living in
huts made of corrugated aluminum and scraps of wood, with a dirt floor, no
plumbing or electricity, access to education, healthcare or clean water. Oh,
and also having almost no way of changing your situation, no matter how hard
you try. Surprisingly, these people were in general happier than well-off
people in America, because they had a strong faith, strong families, strong
relationships with others in their community, and were just plain tough.

I guess after visiting a third world country and seeing how hard the truly
poor work every day, how much they care for what little they have, and how
thankful they are for everything, I feel a little less sympathy for the "poor"
in America. I wish they could spend a few weeks in a truly poor country, and
then realize what an amazing land of opportunity they live in.

~~~
kingofspain
It's an easy argument to make but it isn't quite that simple. I'm sure the
poor of the US would _love_ to take a trip abroad, then come back and realise
things aren't so bad & make a start on getting themselves out of their
situation.

Telling someone to be grateful that they have a roof over their head since
most of the world doesn't won't make them any happier about shivering under a
blanket because they can't pay the gas bill for heating. Yes, it could be
worse, but it could also be a lot effing _better_ , From my own experience,
the whole thing tends to dull the mind to an extent where opportunities are no
longer so obvious - or so easy to pursue (£5 for a domain name that may not
pay off, or £5 to eat for a week and I'm bloody hungry).

True, absolute poverty is horrific and all efforts should be made to ensure
that no one has to endure this through no fault of their own, but that doesn't
make relative poverty a non-issue where people need to man-up. Of course, you
weren't so extreme as to say that, but it gets side quite a lot and I don't
really think it helps much tbh.

~~~
nlavezzo
I'm sorry but I can't help but think that my ancestors (5 brothers that came
over from Italy with almost nothing) who were poor from the start, had few if
any social programs (other than help from other poor people in the community)
to rely on, and were openly discriminated against as "Dirty WOPs" in the late
1800's / early 1900's, made it out of poverty and in the process helped make
this country great. Generation 1 - low wage factory worker, Generation 2 -
post man then small grocery owner, Generation 3 - first college educated one
who started a body shop and then a neon sign business, Generation 4 - my dad,
partner at a top CPA firm, Generation 5 - successful tech entrepreneur.

It just feels to me that the poor in first world countries have a victim
mentality that keeps them from working with the kind of hard determination
that not only gets people out of poverty, but builds up the nation in the
process.

Do they need more help to develop that work ethic? Probably. Do they need more
handouts? I think that is what's keeping them where they are.

~~~
neild
Being poor is having the child of a partner at a top CPA firm tell you that
you don't need more handouts.

~~~
jgwynn2901
I think there's something to not giving handouts. I'd prefer a hand. The
strange thing is that we look at the poor as if we are a meritocracy. the
general distribution of talent, intelligence and ability is likely to be
statistically the same for all classes. And since there are more poor people
there should be more success stories. Under a meritocracy there would me more
processes in place that reached out to the "underprivileged." But what we see
is a war on drugs...

------
die_sekte
Surprisingly, this is the first time this article was submitted to HN.

It's quite interesting. Some of these things happen in all developed nations,
but quite a significant number of them only happen in the US. For example, it
did not realize just how fucked up health care is in the US prior to reading
this article.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm pretty sure he is not talking about the US.

 _Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere._

This is definitely not the US. Most of our poor don't work at all (and are not
trying to work), and about 90% don't work full time.

<http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2008.pdf>

 _Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you._

In the US, 67% of poor households have 2 rooms per person (compared to 70.2%
of non-poor households).

[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understanding-
poverty-in-america)

 _Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom
gets home and then telling her she doesn’t have make dinner tonight because
you’re not hungry anyway._

In the US, being poor is eating the meat, the potato chips, the bacon _and_
the ice cream. But it might be a quart of Krasdale rather than a pint of Ben &
Jerry's.

[Edit: I'm speculating that the poor get fat off a broad sampling of typical
American fatty foods. I could be getting specific food items wrong. Thanks
krschultz for pointing out that my comment was unclear.]

[http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February06/Features/featu...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February06/Features/feature4.htm)

I really don't know what part of the world he is talking about.

[edit: changed secondary source to original source on obesity. ]

~~~
krschultz
I recently found out how much money WIC pays out for "supplemental" nutrition.

$50 a MONTH. In vouchers. For only certain foods. Ice cream would definitely
not be one of them. White bread is not one of them. Soda is not one of them.

Get your facts straight.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Could you remind me where I claimed the poor were getting fat off WIC
supplemental nutrition, rather than other sources of food?

I've edited my comment to reflect the fact that I'm only speculating about
specific food items making the poor fat. But make no mistake, the poor are fat
- their _average_ BMI is 29, only one point short of obesity. If you ever live
in a poor neighborhood, all you need to do is open your eyes to see that
everyone has plenty to eat.

~~~
tomjen3
Ever seen footage from a famine in Africa? All the people appear to have huge
bellies, but that is because they don't get a specific vitamin, not because
they are fat.

Maybe something like that is the case here?

~~~
yummyfajitas
No. Clearly you aren't American. The situation we have in the US is so
ridiculous, it needs to be seen to be believed.

Early on during the recession, NPR, an American radio station did a report on
people going hungry as a result of the recesssion. Go look at the picture.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9259254...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92592545)

No starving person in Africa or anywhere else had a BMI of 29.

------
dkarl
_Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you
were 14 years old._

Plus knowing that your kids are likely to ignore your guidance and follow your
example, making the same mistakes you did, no matter how much they know it's a
bad idea, and that it will be your influence at fault when they do. I mean,
everybody deals with this, but I imagine the worse off your situation, the
worse the fear is.

------
kingofspain
_Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs._

I still have this now!

Of course I was never poor for any real hardcore definition of the word, Third
World-style, but I spent a good few years totally flat broke. Money coming in
only occasionally covering the rent, utility payments never paid as I couldn't
justify spending that much money when I couldn't afford to eat, living off dry
bread and instant mash etc etc. It was an experience for sure, and one I
never, ever want to repeat! It's only relatively recently that I've stopped
dreading the arriving of mail or jumping when there's a knock at the door, or
even keeping the curtains closed so no one can see I'm in.

But yeah, I still buy the cheap brands if they are there out of habit. I'll
walk down the road to save 10p on a bottle of milk and so on.

------
tome
_Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you._

Most of them are about being financially poor, but this one is about emotional
poverty and can happen to the richest of us.

~~~
baddspellar
"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The
poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We
must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty." \- Mother Teresa

~~~
dantheman
Mother Teresa was no saint: <http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/>

~~~
joshuacc
Christopher Hitchens isn't exactly an impartial source when it comes to Mother
Teresa.

~~~
isleyaardvark
He has an opinion, and he states it. It's not like he has some sort of
conflict of interest.

~~~
joshuacc
My point was that Hitchens has an axe to grind. It makes entertaining reading,
but should be taken with a hefty dose of salt.

------
fsipie
What can we do to help people who are this kind of poor? Having given a decent
bit to charities in the past, I somtimes feel a bit odd not knowing where it
really went, or even if it really helped anyone. Or is this just me?

~~~
samd
Enforce minimum wages that people can actually live on. Most poor people work
significantly harder than your typical white collar office worker. The only
thing that separates most of the middle class from the poor is that the middle
class had a solid foundation from their family on which to build their future.

~~~
te_platt
What if minimum wage laws actually perpetuate the problem by preventing low
skill workers from getting hired in the first place?

~~~
samd
I don't think minimum wage laws are a significant cause of unemployment, but
there is plenty of dispute about that. Even if you're right, what good is
having a job if it gives you nothing more than the ability to spin your wheels
and never progress in life or provide your children with some good
opportunity? It seems preferable to have a system where workers are paid well
and there is higher unemployment, but also stronger safety nets as opposed to
a system with lower unemployment, few safety nets, and swathes of working poor
that will never make progress.

Also, there is reason to believe that higher minimum wages encourage your
workforce to become better skilled in order to compete on the world market at
their higher price, as is the case in Germany.

------
iamwil
Don't have kids before you're ready to and can afford to. It seems like a lot
of these are related to kids.

~~~
albemuth
Funny this is being upvoted, seems to me as a completely blind to reality
thing to say, telling poor people not to have kids. Sure, that'll work.

~~~
iamwil
I meant it more as a mental note for personal behavior, not as a public policy
to implement.

------
paolomaffei
I've never been anything near poor. I was wondering how really hard it is to
get out of poverty in today's society, and if people really wants it (i'm NOT
implying that they don't want, i'm really just asking myself).

This is more for homeless-poor than just poor: I would really like to try
taking someone homeless, let him shave and dress him nicely, get him to an
interview even for a shitty manual job, that'd make me feel really useful in
this society, I could probably host him in small building we own in the city
(no heating but still it's a shelter and it's not that cold here) UNTIL he
finds something else.

"Unfortunately" I can't find any homeless guy in my city (smallish northern
italy town), let alone the ones that truly wants to change their situation
which i suppose are a % of the homeless people

------
Dove
I don't deny the reality of poverty, but this discussion leaves a bad taste in
my mouth.

The world is full of pain and nastiness, but this particular list accentuates
and celebrates it. Can you imagine a similar piece writing about the woes of
Terminal Cancer or Business Failure or Having An Autistic Child?

Everyone's got problems, but people who are actually suffering don't write
this way. Nobody defines themselves by their problems; ask a poor person if
he's poor, and he'll probably say, "Oh no, I'm not _that_ poor, I have an X."
Or maybe, "Oh, I'm poor all right, but I'm not unhappy." Or perhaps even,
"Yeah, I'm poor, and it _is_ kind of miserable, but X makes it okay."

What you won't get is, "Oh, I'm so poor and miserable, and you have no idea
what poverty is like, let me list the ways I suffer, and let me drive home how
very impossible it is for you, from your life of privelege, to ever comprehend
how much I suffer every minute."

Well, unless you ask an angsty teenager. ;)

Just about everybody has problems, but nobody defines themselves by their
troubles. Everyone thinks of himself as a complex person, with some miseries
and some joys, some problems and some opportunities, some strengths and some
weaknesses.

Think over your own life; you could almost certainly write a piece like this
about some problem you've had. Something has been miserable and unjust for
you, in a way people who haven't been there would have a hard time identifying
with.

But do you define yourself by it? Neither do The Poor.

That gets at the heart of what I find troubling about this piece.

This is not about a particular person's or a particular community's experience
of poverty. This is about The Poor, as a monolithic, mythical entity. And
anytime you see someone cast a community of people, who are inherently diverse
and complex by virtue of _being people_ , as a simple, mythical stereotype,
you're seeing intellectual dishonesty in action. Leftists are socialists,
Christians are stupid or evil, Hacker News readers are well off, Iraqis
approve the occupation, Americans are arrogant. These things can only be said
from a distance; those who have spent time with these communities up close and
personal would be hard pressed to say anything was true of all of them. People
are diverse.

Let me call these sentiments what they are: bigotry. They divide the
population into "us" and "them", and say we are this way, and they are that
way.

(That's not to say you can't make useful generalizations. You can. But an
honest generalization acknowledges that it is a simplification of a complex
reality, and welcomes statistics and counterexamples that heighten the clarity
of the image. Bigotry says reality is simple, and don't argue with me,
dammit.)

Step back a moment and you know that poverty is complex, and poverty is
relative. There are transient homeless and chronic homeless. There are
ambitious immigrants without a dollar to their names, there are musicians
living the bohemian life, there are barely-profitable-but-proud startup
founders living on ramen, there are third generation prostitutes who will
never know their fathers, there are children sold into sexual slavery before
they're even teens, there are women trapped in polygamous, fundamentalist
Mormon communities, there are parents who helplessly watch their children
starve to death. So what "is poverty"? By what authority does this author say,
"Poverty is..."?

This is not a rational attempt to characterize poverty. This is not a
reference to studies which say "67% of households in XX neighborhood in 2008
had to go without a meal at least once a week for lack of funds." This is a
series of emotional statements. This says, "Poverty is having to hunt
squirrels in the park for food and being so hungry that you'll even eat the
nasty bits."

And if someone comes back and says, "Actually, poverty isn't that bad," is
their diverse viewpoint into a complex problem welcomed? No, the response is,
"Clearly you've never experienced _true_ poverty, you insensitive bastard."

What's going on here?

Emotional, self-serving bigotry. These are not poor people talking about
contemporary problems, looking for practical solutions. These are people who
know what Poverty Is one-upping those who Don't Know What Poverty Is with
their superior Social Awareness. It's a race to see who can be the most
heartbroken by this emotional Reality of Poverty, criticizing nothing, adding
to the tales of woe, acknowledging that yes, by God, it's true, it's all true.

I have no doubt that the anecdotes are true, that they have roots in real
experience. People really do suffer despair, hunger, and degrading treatment.
But an emotional characterization without any roots in reason, a construction
of a mythology of The Poor as objects of pity? I think that's actually
destructive.

Impersonal pity is degrading and infuriating. You see it in some of the
experiences recounted in the original post and comments. People would
anonymously leave us food or presents, one commenter says, and even though we
needed them it provoked us to white-hot rage. We were not _that_ poor.

Kindness and compassion are encouraging and uplifting, whether you are going
out to lunch with a poor friend or complimenting a rich friend on his poetry.
It doesn't matter how miserable or happy a person is; he can be made happier
by love, by personal kindness. But depersonalized pity is always degrading. If
you do not think of yourself as The Poor, how insulting is it that your
neighbor does, that he thinks your life is so unbearable that you would rather
have a few crumbs from his table than keep your sense of dignity?

There is a subtle art to being kind. It's all about treating people with
dignity, respecting their personhood.

Kindness is your friend, the rich professor, treating you to an extravagent
dinner at the best club in town as a thank you for your hard work helping him
grade papers. Pity is an anonymous millionaire giving you $200 for the same
dinner just so you can "feel like a human being for a night." Kindness is your
neighbor, the fit, poor, stay at home mom, offering to help her elderly and
disabled neighbor with some chores after chatting over lunch. Pity is $50 in
an envelope taped to your door with a note that says, "I can see your living
room from the street and feel sorry for you; this is to hire a housekeeper for
a day."

The original post provokes pity, and I find that degrading. Here, for
comparison, is what compassion sounds like:

[http://jmchoul.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F04579021E6249A3!143...](http://jmchoul.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F04579021E6249A3!1431.entry#comment)
<http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/grads.php>

Poverty is real, complex, and generally miserable, but even the poor are
human. Treat them with human dignity and kindness, not with self-righteous
pity.

~~~
Confusion

      this particular list accentuates and celebrates it.
    

It doesn't do that in any objective way: that's your interpretation, which you
use as a stool to easily climb on a hobbyhorse.

    
    
      Can you imagine a similar piece writing about the woes of
      Terminal Cancer or Business Failure or Having An Autistic
      Child?
    

Yes I can. Actually, I think I've read those and they were equally inspiring
as a reminder of my wealth and health and how small my problems really are.
What of it?

    
    
      people who are actually suffering don't write this way.
    

But people who _have_ suffered may. Survivors of any traumatic experience can
reflect on their experiences in a wide variety of ways. Your typification of
the author in this way is not supported by any evidence.

As to the rest of this piece: I find several of the viewpoints commendable,
but you're conflating them by interpreting this list as 'self-serving
bigotry'. The problems of generalisations, pity and lack of understanding
really don't need to have anything to do with this list. Only the author can
tell.

~~~
Dove
_Survivors of any traumatic experience can reflect on their experiences in a
wide variety of ways._

John Scalzi is not reflecting on his own experiences. He is just as privileged
as you or I; he is merely claiming to be so much more _aware_ of poverty that
he has the authority to emotionally _define_ it.

[http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/a-brief-biography-of-
john-s...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/a-brief-biography-of-john-scalzi/)

~~~
ajdecon
I believe that Scalzi grew up in a household which was "poor", at least for
some years, and that he was simply hard-working and lucky enough to be able to
get out of it. See his comment on the OP here:
[http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-
poor/#comment-64...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-
poor/#comment-64682)

Which is not to say that he isn't doing well for himself now, and it's hardly
surprising that this wouldn't feature prominently in his "brief bio".

~~~
Dove
I dunno. In that comment, he describes being the first in his family to
graduate from high school or college, and his mom sending him away to live
with an aunt so she could work.

In the original post, he described not being able to scrape together $300 for
a test to go to college at all, and "not taking the job because you can’t find
someone you trust to watch your kids". Sounds like exaggeration to me.

I still don't think he's writing from experience. He went to a high school he
liked, a nice out of state college, and got a nice job. Just like the rest of
us. He hasn't had to "try to think of a way to make the kids understand that
the box [of Raisin Bran] has to last." Maybe his parents or friends did. Or
maybe it's exaggerated and mythologized.

Who knows?

I'd rather access the reality of poverty through reason than emotion.
Practical compassion for the people I know personally (and he is not the only
one with friends and family who are poor!); statistics for communities and
definitions and trends.

~~~
ajdecon
_In the original post, he described not being able to scrape together $300 for
a test to go to college at all, and "not taking the job because you can’t find
someone you trust to watch your kids". Sounds like exaggeration to me._

Minor correction: the $300 for college story is from a person called Soni in
the comments, not in the original blog post. The bit about not taking a job, I
can easily see being observation of his parents; that's how I interpreted a
lot of the items in the list, as things he saw his family go through as he
grew up. He himself has obviously done pretty good, but that's not to say he
couldn't have shared at least parts of these experiences.

In general I agree with the superiority of reason over emotion; but there are
a lot of people out there who can't be reached easily through reason, for whom
statistics just sit there, meaningless. I think it's useful to have these
emotional appeals out there, as it hits at a different level.

------
te_platt
Being poor is wanting as much stuff as the people around you.

The article came across to me as a whiny. Being poor is having a car (but not
a nice one), having toys (but not nice ones), having shoes, shelter, food
(but...).

~~~
elblanco
If I have one complaint about the article, it's that his idea of poor, and my
idea of poor seem very far apart. My idea of poor makes his idea of poor look
like a lavish paradise.

------
robryan
Interesting looking at the Australian minimum wage of $15/hr ($14.21 USD atm).
Whereas from what I have seen of the US one it seems really hard to get by at
all with the Australian one you could rent out a nice 2 or 3 bedroom house in
an outer suburb but nice area which would only take up about half your weekly
wage.

~~~
elblanco
I believe the U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr before taxes are taken out
(and it can be less than that if you work in a job that expects to collect
tips, like waiting tables), or about $15k/yr for a full-timer. In my area,
which is a suburban area, 600 sq ft. single bedroom apartments go for around
$900-$1200/mo. Significantly more if you live closer into the city. For
reasons of transportation, many poor people live in the city.

Keep in mind most apartment complexes won't let you have the apartment if your
credit is bad, or the rent is more than 1/3 monthly income.

You can rent bedrooms or basements though for $500-700/mo.

Supposing you got the $900/mo apartment. That leaves you with around $100/wk
to feed yourself and cover _all_ other expenses. Once taxes are taken out,
that can leave you with significantly less. No amount of budgeting can turn
that into night school + transport + clothes + utilities + anything else you
need like furniture or medical insurance or dental care.

Most people trying to get a leg up work two full-time jobs which, while
getting you more money (and enough money to qualify for the cheapest apartment
possible), it doesn't leave any _time_ for life advancement plans like night
school. So it's a vicious cycle and you can only break out of it by being
lucky in many areas simultaneously. You have to find the job that pays more
than minimum wage, and compete with all the other poor people trying to get
that same slot...so you can work only one job...so you can have time to take
one class a semester at community college (so long as they happen to offer the
classes you need at time that don't interfere with your work schedule and your
work schedule doesn't change during the semester to interfere with your
classes)...so in 5 or 6 years you can get an Associates degree, which isn't
really worth much, but can be transfered to many state schools in lieu of the
first two years of a 4-year degree (at much less cost).

Of course many people stop at this point because they can't afford the last
two years of school, and the A.A. or A.S. didn't really help them get a better
job. So they feel like they've just wasted 5 or 6 years of their life scraping
for every penny they had to put themselves through school.

Escaping this kind of life requires so much luck and so many people in so many
places to turn a blind eye, or offer a meaningful helping hand, that a person
simply can't do it on their own. It's numerically impossible in the U.S. Most
immigrants who come here with nothing never escape it themselves, but end up
in a better life through their children.

------
elblanco
My grandmother grew up during the great depression. She still hoards food in
nooks and crannies throughout the house and when let loose on a piece of
chicken will eat every last scrap of digestible item on the bone. She
habitually makes soup with boiled beef bones to get every last ounce of
nutrition.

My father grew up just post-depression in a very rural area. While he never
missed a meal, many meals consisted of only a few slices of bread as a filler
and maybe some soup and not much else. I've never seen him eat a meal without
eating some bread with it, he said it makes him feel uncomfortable.

My family was pretty low-end middle class growing up, and a couple of unlucky
business decisions set us homeless for the better part of a year, with my
entire family of 4 living in a single room subsidized motel room (rent 5 days,
get the weekends for free) followed by two years of living out of two rented
rooms in somebody's basement. We also never missed a meal, but I can tell you
that I, to this day, cannot eat a cup of noodles meal without thinking about
drug addicts banging at our motel room door thinking we were the room down the
hall. We did better after that, and then later in life, as an adult, I found
myself in not-quite-so-bad-but-not-great circumstances. A time when I used to
decide if I could buy lunch at McDonald's or Taco Bell by counting how many
hours extra I would have to work to pay for McDonald's.

Some of the things Scalzi mentions, would have been luxuries at certain
moments in my life...like _having_ toys. I've spent time as a child with no
toys at all.

People who have never been poor, have absolutely no understanding, cannot
fathom, why people are poor and why they stay poor. Being poor is not about
having a lack of money, it's about having a lack of wealth. It's a way of
life. A person who has never been poor cannot understand why you can't "just
go to night school" to improve your lot in life because they don't understand
that between two 40 hour a week jobs, and 2 or 3 hours a day of walking
between jobs, home, the day-old-baked goods store and the salvation army, you
have maybe 4 or 5 hours that night for sleep...every night. And what intense
sleep deprivation coupled with intense, dangerous and stressful jobs can do to
a person after decades. We worry about soldiers deployed for 18 months,
imagine that type of life for 18 years solid.

"Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because
that’s two extra packages for every dollar." This is the type of calculation
one has to make all day every day when one is poor. It's very easy to be
critical when you see a poor person buy a pack of cigs or a 6-pack of beer
instead of a head of lettuce or that month's electricity bill. But I dare
anybody to live that kind of life and not be so stressed and so damaged from
the constancy of it, that you seek any kind of escape possible and that desire
for escape infects all of your decisions. When your eating decisions are down
to decisions about pennies, there's really not much worse things can get.
Having the lights turned off because you didn't pay the bill does not really
make things all that much worse in your day to day.

"Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree."
The prime question asked by those who have never been poor, and are unable to
empathize with those who are, is this..."why don't you just go to school and
make your lot in life better?" There are lots of reasons to be poor in the
first place. If you are _lucky_ like I was, it's not because you have a mental
disease or a severe learning disability, or are crippled or in some other way
handicapped or not raised in a generational environment of poverty where you
honestly don't understand that going to class can translate into a house in
the suburbs because you have absolutely no life experience for you to
understand that. Just in the same way some people don't understand what it's
like to be poor, poor people can't understand what life is like to be not
poor.

I _was_ able to spend the 6 years in night school to get my 2 year A.S., which
brought me up a step in life so that I could spend another 3 years getting the
last two years of my B.S. which brought up a step in life so I could spend
another 4 years getting my M.S. But at each step, if I hadn't had a person at
that time to help me up that step, and give me an opportunity, I'd still be
comparing Ramen prices, or figuring out how many meals a 10-pack of tacos from
Taco Bell would last. And if I hadn't had the emotional support from good
friends, or people who believed in me...well, 10 years is a terribly long time
to keep motivated to change your lot in life while also doing all the other
things people do in their day-to-day, like keeping down full-time jobs, career
advancement, marriage, etc. Basically, being poor _is_ a full-time job on top
of your other full-time jobs. But I don't think that every poor peer I knew
while I was poor could do the same. I got lucky and had great opportunity, and
I worked hard to seize those opportunities when they came along. If nobody
ever opens the door for you, you can't ever go through it and _nobody_ is
strong enough to carve their path in life to success all on their own.

My friend, who was born with the after-effects of an alcoholic and drug
addicted mother, was unable to keep passing grades in his 6 year quest for a 2
year associate's degree and has never held a salaried position. That means
he's never had health insurance, which means he's lost 3 jobs because he spent
14 hours in an ER getting basic medical care. It means he's had cars
repossessed because somebody hit him and he had no auto-insurance and couldn't
pay the repair bill out of pocket. It means that sometimes, to escape the
shitty life he has to live every day, he sometimes buys a used book to escape
into instead of a head of lettuce. It also means that sometimes, at the
beginning of the month, he's just paid his rent, and he has $12 left in his
bank account to stretch out till his next paycheck.

And then, after you've been poor for a long time, it shows. There's an aura
about a poor person that no amount of hair product and tailored suits can
shake. It sits on them in how they walk, how they talk, how they sit, how
their skin hangs, what their build looks like, how the hold themselves, where
they look in a room, how they behave at a meal. Because of this, no matter how
hard they've worked to "make it", they'll always have that stigma attached to
them, even by people that never knew they were poor. They'll present like a
poor person so they'll interview worse, they'll get promoted less frequently,
they'll get scored lower on yearly reviews.

Going from poor to not poor, is not about climbing a ladder. It's about being
on the front of a seige engine attacking a fortress while arrows and bullets
and hot oil rains down on you.

~~~
haberman
> People who have never been poor, have absolutely no understanding, cannot
> fathom, why people are poor and why they stay poor.

It's amazing to me how many of the comments on this thread remind me of how I
would describe depression.

I'm not poor and never have been. But I have felt hopeless despair that I
don't think people can understand unless they've experienced it. It is an
emotional response that is radically disproportionate to the actual
circumstances that triggered it.

I won't argue that depression has any of the long-term effects you describe
though.

~~~
elblanco
Depression is often a result of feeling trapped by life's circumstances. Being
poor can often feel like one is trapped. It's not a stretch to say that many
poor people are also highly depressed people.

I agree though, it's like describing what color is to a person blind from
birth. In some cases (as are represented on this thread) it's like describing
it to a blind person who thinks they already know how all the senses work, and
a person can just get over the "seeing thing" if they just sniff hard enough.

~~~
wazoox
Reminds me of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness> ...

------
wallflower
Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle" is a memoir of her poor, nomadic childhood
that is at times shocking and heartbreaking.

------
pistoriusp
It's often good to remind yourself of just how fortunate you really are...
Those lines are so easily blurred.

~~~
GFischer
Or not... actually I - AM - fortunate, and I've never been poor, but I can
identify with many of the points in the article (many are too US-centric as
someone pointed out), and U$ 8 an hour sounds like a good deal even today for
me.

Of course, I live in Uruguay, South America, and mostly by choice (I was born
here, but I've had my opportunities to emigrate).

It's funny, but many of the "being poor" points, would not be considered
"being poor" here in Uruguay (I should write a similar article about "being
poor" from the Uruguay point of view - let's say it would be much worse in
several parts, a bit better on the healthcare bit.

------
shaunfs
Being poor is buying only Oatmeal and Mac & Cheese because they don't require
electric refrigeration, can be purchased in bulk inexpensively, and you just
add water to eat.

That brings back bad memories. Granted, compared to many parts of the world
it's a walk in the park.

------
erikstarck
I'm sorry, I know this is a serious subject but this thread reminds me of this
Monty Python sketch: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo>

------
known
Instead check _how rich are you_ <http://www.globalrichlist.com/>

------
dpavlenkov
I had grass growing in my first car.

------
patrickgzill
I do understand this article; however I would point out that among the "poor"
(in America hardly anyone is poor like in the 3rd world) I have met, TV is
present and books are not.

~~~
jerf
TVs are much cheaper per hour, so what's the surprise?

I mean, yes, I know what you're getting at, but a $50 used 25-inch CRT that
you use for several thousand hours is going to beat out a book on the price
front any day. Even just the effort of going to the library and back adds up
to more human capital per book/hour than watching TV. I'm not endorsing it,
just observing it.

~~~
WalterBright
Just a quick comment; most books one cannot even give away. A lot of used
books are sold on Amazon for $.01. The local used bookstore won't even take
boxes of nearly mint books for free, because they can't give them away either.

I read thousands of books as a kid and paid for nearly none of them.

~~~
three14
<http://www.bookthing.org/> for instance will generally take those books.

------
fady
being poor is not having a blog.

------
ergo98
Great list.

I grew up in a very poor family (although Canadian poor is global rich by some
measure, that didn't comfort me). It's an experience that I seldom comment on
because I've discovered that many people simply cannot understand. They really
can't.

Being _really_ poor is more about a lack of hope, opportunity and options than
the more obvious lack of resources. It's impossible to _play_ poor -- you
can't cut your budget as an exercise in restraint and then assume that you've
experienced what it's like to be desperately poor.

The few luxuries we did have were grossly irresponsible luxuries.

I remember a period shortly after our dog died of malnutrition -- when the
infrequent bath was facilitated by my older brother using a blow torch on the
hot water heater, and boiled hot dogs comprised about 80% of our diet -- and
my father blew the few dollars he got on a laser disc player.

Here we were living miserably, living in a toxic environment as our only
indoor heat was a kerosene heater (that we didn't die of carbon monoxide
poisoning was courtesy of the gale force winds that would blow through the
uninsulated house), and yet we had a very rare laser disc player for our
shitty little second-hand television.

I don't begrudge my father it, though. Life had become such a trial that it
was simply an escape and gave him something to feel pride about providing. It
was irrational, but it gave me perspective that judging the poor is a fool's
game unless you can empathize with the situation.

Being poor was thinking "what's the point" about almost everything, because
fate had a way of conspiring against you. Or at least that's what it felt like
when every initiative or enterprise relied upon layers of fragile proppings.

Where a flat tire was economic destruction.

Now I sit in the top 1% of earners. Though that is purely a result of natural
interests and natural abilities (thank you genetics), and was no herculean
motivation to escape the situation of my parents.

------
jw84
Every item on the list applied to my upbringing I had to stop half way through
to avoid depressing myself too much this morning.

There's two reactions to this. One will be people saying these problems aren't
like what's compared to "real" poverty in third world countries. Well,
perspective doesn't feed you, pay bills, or support a roof over your head.
Because there are people living in situations that is really fucked up doesn't
invalidate you. Suffering is not a zero-sum game.

Second, the common thread of being poor is the inherent limitations. You do
and behave certain ways because you have no other choice, stuck on a
treadmill. Some will never get an opportunity to learn the skills to make
better choices. It will take an overwhelming amount of energy and effort to
change the momentum of where a life goes. Being full on dollar meals and drunk
on two dollar wines doesn't help with that situation.

In all these years I have not been a god-believing man but I have become a
faithful man. I have kept hope that things will always be better down the
road. That it's up to me given the hand I've been dealt to play it as best as
I could. And at the end to let go the bitterness or the awkwardness. There's
no choice to be made when you're blinded by your own madness of being
hopeless.

------
sabat
Being poor means having to constantly worry about money to the point where
you're not sure where your next meal is coming from.

------
tjic
I attacked this Scalzi post almost five years ago.

<http://tjic.com/?p=1386>

Leftist propaganda on how we comfortable middle class folks have no idea of
what money management is, and no idea how hard the poor are oppressed by The
Man, with some observations sprinkled in between:

> <http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/003704.ht..>. > > Being poor is knowing
> exactly how much everything costs.

Being middle class is knowing how much things cost; being low-class is not
knowing and just spending money.

> Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for > all the crap they
> see on TV.

Being low-class is letting your kids watch TV all day long, when there are
free libraries, parks, playgrounds, Boy scout, Girl scout, and church
organizations.

> Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but > never has
> friends over to yours.

Being a low-class is keeping your home, no matter how large or small, in a
manner that is embarrassing to you.

> Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in > the back seat,
> clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just > bought and trying to think of a
> way to make the kids > understand that the box has to last.

Being low-class is buying expensive name-brand cereal, instead of bulk
oatmeal, at a fraction of the price.

> Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying > when he says he
> doesn't mind when you ask for help.

Being low-class is getting yourself in a situation where you need to ask folks
for loans you won't pay back.

> Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being low-class is caring about the brand of toys.

> Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee > table when your
> friends are around.

Being low-class is considering people who would steal money from you your
"friends".

> Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up > before your mom
> gets home and then telling her she doesn't > have make dinner tonight
> because you're not hungry anyway.

Being low-class is stealing.

Being low-class is choosing meat over pasta when you can't afford it.

> Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being low-class is not shopping sales at Sears.

> Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being low-class is having more kids than space.

> Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you.

Being low-class is worrying what other people think about you, instead of just
living your life.

> Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your > dad, begging him
> for the child support.

Being low-class is leaving your spouse, or settling for the kind of person who
might run off.

> Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach > skitters over the
> bread, and you looking over to see if > your kid saw.

Being low-class is leaving garbage around enough that cock-roaches breed.

> Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being low-class is shopping at the mall, when your money would go much further
at other places.

> Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find > someone you trust
> to watch your kids.

Being low-class is having kids with out the spouse or means to support them.

> Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being low-class is discarding garbage on sidewalks.

> Being poor is people thinking they know something about > you by the way you
> talk.

Being low-class is walking in a way that demonstrates attitude.

> Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have > any books in your
> home.

Being low-class is not having books in your home.

Being low-class is acting such that people would assume that you don't have
book in your home.

> Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the
> gap.

Being low-class is not budgeting.

> Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know > you made when
> you were 14 years old.

Being low-class is letting your children make bad choices then they are 14.

> Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a > relationship on
> shelter.

Being low-class is whoring.

> Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck > on a Lotto
> ticket.

Being low-class is wasting money on lotto tickets, then stealing meat for
dinner (see way above).

> Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the > same mistakes you
> did, and won't listen to you beg them > against doing so.

Being low-class is not having an intact family to set a good example for your
children.

> Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, > just in case you
> have to give it back before the lease is > up.

Being low-class is eating and drinking in the living room.

> Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that > takes $250 when
> the paycheck comes in.

Being low-class is living beyond your means.

> Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

Being low-class is refusing to listen to advice.

I feel bad for the poor, but in a rich, capitalist, free-market place like
America, ALMOST ANYONE can become middle-class or better, if they just act
like responsible adults.

Yeah, by the time you've pumped out four kids by three different fathers, and
picked up $10k in credit card debt, you're reasonably screwed…but the fact
that bad choices have consequences doesn't negate the fact that every day
people come to this country with nothing but a shirt on their backs, a set of
morals, and a work ethic, and end up retiring to a nice air-conditioned three-
bedroom in Florida a few decades later.

Enjoy this article about how a 37 year old manual laborer who came to the
country at 21 just bought a condo in NYC for $1.4 million.

If you want to work two shifts, and save your money, and eat oatmeal, you can
become a millionaire.

If you want to label yourself as a victim, rent furniture you can't afford,
buy name brand crap food you can't afford, and watch TV all day, you can live
like the white (or other colored) trash that you are.

What this society needs is more accountability, not less.

Poor people shouldn't be spoon-fed aggrieved resentment sauce by middle class
leftists; they should be reminded that they wake up every day and face a set
of choices, just like the rest of us.

~~~
kenjackson
"I feel bad for the poor, but in a rich, capitalist, free-market place like
America, ALMOST ANYONE can become middle-class or better, if they just act
like responsible adults."

"If you want to work two shifts, and save your money, and eat oatmeal, you can
become a millionaire."

So let me get this straight -- being a responsible adult is working 16 hours
per day, living off of oatmeal, having no disposable income?

I'll be perfectly honest with you. Morals aside, I'd be much more inclined to
just rob you. In the off chance I go to jail, my life wouldn't be much worse.

I know in your idealized world people just do as their told. I think I'd make
more calculated decisions... and I don't think they're likely to be decisions
that you're a fan of.

~~~
tjic
> I'll be perfectly honest with you. Morals aside, I'd be much more inclined
> to just rob you. In the off chance I go to jail

As I sit here typing I've got my Sigpro 2340 and 10 rounds of Federal
hollowpoint in a concealed holster under my t-shirt.

Poor decision making is another hallmark of people who opt into the low class.

~~~
noonespecial
I support the second amendment and all; I think its a more important part of
the American psyche than most people realize.

Sorry to riff on your meme, but _dude_ , typing at your computer with your gun
in your belt, that's seriously low-class. Almost as much as telling everyone
about it.

------
hcho
Why have kids when poor? Haven't the humanity progressed from "increase the
reproduction rate when circumstances are dire" mechanism?

~~~
die_sekte
(a) Sex is cheap, good entertainment. (b) If you are already poor, children
aren't going to make it any worse. (c) For some reason, most people really
want to have children. (d) Humans aren't exactly rational creatures.

Free birth control, as well as better sex education (which is, from what I've
read, hilariously bad in the US) would probably help quite a bit.

~~~
hcho
>If you are already poor, children aren't going to make it any worse.

And yet considerable of his pain points are about not being able to cater for
his child(ren)

~~~
mahmud
People don't plan to remain poor forever. Some of them become poor _after_
they have kids, while others hope things might improve in the future, since
the life of the poor always fluctuates from bad to relatively better off.

Besides, who are you to tell someone they couldn't have children of their own
just because they're poor? It's their right to conceive and adopt children,
just as it's yours.

In fact, they could easily afford to feed their children and lead a happy
life, wasn't it for the rest of the well off society that's making their lot
worse than it is, by comparison. Being poor in a rich town is worse, both
materially and psychologically, than being one of a larger poor community.

~~~
hcho
Well, if a person complains about being poor and still have kids, I find the
right to point out to that person the obvious planning mistakes in his life,
It's not like I am shouting at random poor people now, is it?

------
abcxyz
I don't know when this was written, but some of the "facts" listed are simply
not true.

"Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime." The minimum
wage in California is $8/hr, so $0.1 is equal to only 0.75 minutes of labor.

"Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor." A burger
at McDonalds costs around $1, or only 7.5 minutes of labor.

~~~
elblanco
There's only so many hours in a week one can work to earn this money. Once
it's spent, it's gone. You can't just add a few more hours onto the day to
make up the difference.

