
The difference between ‘broke’ and ‘poor’ - wallflower
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/mar/12/poor-broke-difference-poverty-inequality-society
======
xeromal
Poverty especially sucks when you're all alone like it seems this person was.
Where I grew up, most of the people were poor, but we had rich lives for the
most part. Lots of family dinners and outings. The people with more would let
you take the leftovers home. You can't really train this and we all definitely
need a social safety net, but I do think our closed off society prevents us
from helping each other too.

~~~
agumonkey
I think the recent decades turned us away from ~natural gathering/solidarity
mindset. Consumerism drugs you thinking the best thing is to satisfy envy with
things, and without a context of cultural sharing habits, many people end up
alone struggling thinking people are selfish because today's mainstream is
selfish and so it's hard to connect.

~~~
sametmax
Not that simple.

Social connections require work, they also are slow and unreliable.

Before the information age, to get to know something, talking was the main
way.

But now with books, panels, displays, packaging, signs, internet, GPS, etc.,
we have access to a huge quantity of information without having to talk to
each others.

And we choose to do so because on average it's faster, more accurate, and
avoid to deal with annoying people. After all, human relations also include a
part of risk.

I lived 2 years in Africa, and there, you don't have that much information
immediately available. You are back to talking, creating a social network and
playing the game. People are way more friendly there, there is greater
solidarity. But things are also way slower, unreliable, and you are a lot more
at the mercy of popularity games even in the most simple activities.

This century we have been mutating our lives in deep ways, very fast. And it's
not all bad. But we will need some time to reconcile the efficiency of our new
life styles with the social needs we have at the primitive level. A few
decades is way too short for that to have happened already, especially since
we are not done with technical progress.

~~~
agumonkey
I think you're pushing it too far, even my parent's generation is confused how
culture changed from a lot of social interactions to barely nothing. They had
radio/phone/tv (a lot lot less of course) but the social quality was still
present.

I agree with your conclusion though.

~~~
crumpets
Radio and tv are worthless for information on demand. The phone is still
talking to other people.

I can now travel into a city I’ve never been to, find directions to and make
reservations at a popular restaurant, follow it up with directions to a nice
scenic spot, and finally find a last minute nice hotel to stay in all without
ever interacting with another person.

None of that was possible with radio/tv.

------
rdiddly
I've been where this author has: selling off stuff and wondering how to pay
rent, waiting in line for free food, donating blood plasma for $15, walking
everywhere because it's cheaper than the bus, getting arrested for not paying
child support. Nonetheless apparently I had it ass-backwards in my head:
rather than "poor" I mostly still considered myself what this author would
call "broke" the whole time. Maybe it was denial, maybe I was just another
"temporarily embarrassed millionaire." But I adhered to the thought that I
didn't belong in that situation, that it was temporary.

Regardless, poor and rich are relative terms; it's a continuum. You can never
be "poor" and you can never be "rich." You can only be poorER, or richER, than
somebody else. But there will still always be someone else poorER or richER
than you. Ask Steve McQueen if he's rich, and he'll say well I'm not as rich
as Paul Newman. Both dead now of course, but they once squabbled over who
would get top billing in The Towering Inferno.

I think what I'm saying is that in some way, "poor" is in your mind, and as
soon as you consider yourself poor, you are poor. I still wouldn't fault the
author's friends for saying they're "too poor" to afford something; it is
literally true. They're "rich" enough to afford food, sure, and I guess that
offends the writer's sense of victimhood. The whole drama of this piece takes
place in the writer's mind. It's a story of falling tragically from a place of
privilege. People are "poor" every day and don't feel the need to write an
article about it and nobody asks them to.

~~~
cableshaft
Your last paragraph is spot on. I definitely had a "I'm too poor" mentality
for most of my 20s (I did some similar things to the author of the piece, but
without the kids), and that mindset was definitely a limiting factor in my
life. I was always too poor to do anything I wanted to do. I even considered
myself too poor to date anyone, so I just didn't. Now that I'm in my 30s
looking back, and even though I'm more financially secure now it seems like I
had a lot more freedom then and could have done a lot more then, possibly more
than I can afford to do now (because now what I'm poor in is time and energy,
not so much cash).

I still managed to do a few interesting things in my 20s, but not as much as I
would have if I could reverse time but with the knowledge I have now.

~~~
ddebernardy
Tip if I may: don't get too comfy.

Life can come crashing down on you sometimes, and it can do so very fast. My
own life lesson has been that you're poor and broke (whether aware of it or
not) until you're financially retired.

~~~
cableshaft
I definitely don't consider myself financially secure, not by a long shot. I'm
still a lot closer to the poor end of things than I feel comfortable with,
especially since I know bad things could be right around the corner.

It's easy to not have it at the forefront of your mind though, and be a little
too easy with money. My girlfriend is pretty bad about it also, and I've been
a lot more loose with my money since dating her than I was when I was single.
But I'm also to blame, we just enable each other to have bad behavior.

I do save a decent amount and don't touch that, though, we just could be doing
better. I'm not saving quite as much as recommended, and nowhere near the
almost 50% of wages that some people here claim to do.

------
zimablue
I thought that the article was going to make the more relevant distinction
between "transient low income/wealth" and "reasonable expectation of
permanently low income/wealth". If we're going to specify a useful word, I
think that's more interesting than what she's saying about "so little income
it impacts your life stability" vs "low disposable income". I don't think it's
useful for this woman to call herself poor, she had an explicitly transient
state of unusually high outgoings and low income. She never looked down the
barrel of 20 years of the same situation.

------
ryanmarsh
In my early 20's I had a girlfriend who was raised in Colombia and immigrated
to the US in her teens. I remember one day recounting some bullshit middle-
class slogan about how "it's better to be poor and happy, than rich and sad".
She slapped me across the face and yelled at me. Passionate as she was she'd
never done anything like that before. She told me what it was like growing up
so poor you can't afford toothpaste. She basically gave me the whole "you know
nothing John Snow". She described what a hard life it was. She'd take anything
over that life.

She also wasn't poor in a 1st world country with community pools and
libraries. Being poor in a 3rd world country is a whole other level.

~~~
cm2012
You're both right. Research shows that more money doesn't make you happier -
_after_ around 80k a year in family income. Before 80k a year (depending on
location, etc, I think that was the average for the USA), every dollar
absolutely makes you happier with a linear line graph.

This is also a great argument for more marginal taxation.

~~~
yyyymmddhhmmss
If 80k/yr is considered poor, then sure, but that’s absurd. She was right. He
was wrong.

~~~
cm2012
Totally agree, I should have phrased it better.

------
0xcde4c3db
> I often hear my friends say, “I’m too poor” when they’re frustrated about
> what they can’t have. Maybe it’s a trip they can’t afford, a renovation they
> want to start right now or a pretty pair of shoes they spotted in a shop
> window.

I'm pretty sure I've literally never heard someone describe that as being
"poor". Maybe this is some regional language thing?

~~~
tgb
I think this article (and I've seen another before just like it about the
poor/broke distinction that had a really powerful piece about mental math
while buying groceries) do a disservice to themselves by focusing on the usage
of two very common, widely used words. It's fine for words to have multiple
meanings in different contexts and those meanings are defined by usage. If
people say "I'm too poor to get a pool membership" then that's what poor
means, at least in some contexts. Prescriptivism of common, mundane words is a
terrible way to make a point. The author is hiding their real point, which
would be still more powerful without this unnecessary baggage. See what we're
discussing instead of what the author probably wanted us to discuss? If she
wants a distinction, then there are other words or phrases (chronically poor,
perhaps?) with more specific meanings. But it is fruitless to get
"heartbroken" that people don't understand a distinction that isn't common
use.

~~~
freewilly1040
Seems like these kinds of articles always need to have a scold or a guilt trip
associated, though I’m not sure it’s irrational of the author. We are
discussing it, aren’t we?

------
tyingq
I have noticed there's been some progress on reducing the stigma when you're
poor and are surrounded by those that aren't.

When I was young, free and/or reduced school lunch paper punch cards were a
different color than normal paid ones. Similar for food stamps, WIC, etc. Now
they are all plastic cards that don't look obviously different from the cards
the people with money use.

~~~
jstarfish
EBT moved to discreet debit cards more for ease of accounting and disbursement
than recipient dignity, but WIC still uses stacks of paper checks that have to
be run as a series of discrete transactions. They're embarrassing to use,
almost more trouble than they're worth.

It's obvious when people are paying with it-- the conveyor belt is lined with
bunched groceries and paper slips while the line behind the customer backs up
into the aisles.

~~~
tyingq
As with many things in the US, varies by state. Many states do have WIC cards
that work like a debit card and many grocers have support for a single
checkout process with two swipes.

------
Buldak
My impression from the author's description of her friends is that they aren't
broke either.

>I often hear my friends say, “I’m too poor” when they’re frustrated about
what they can’t have. Maybe it’s a trip they can’t afford, a renovation they
want to start right now or a pretty pair of shoes they spotted in a shop
window.

------
entwife
The author didn't talk about the difference between wealth and income. That,
to me is a key distinction in understanding people's choices and
possibilities. I'd call someone who lacks income, broke, and one who lacks
access to resources, poor. The article merely talked about different degrees
of lack of income.

------
rfugger
And this is in Canada, where the author's surgery and other medical care was
covered in full by universal health care. Without that, her situation likely
would have been far worse, and yet we can still do so much better.

~~~
malvosenior
If you are poor in the US your healthcare costs will mostly or entirely be
covered. This includes major surgery.

~~~
chimi
Which I never understood. USA provides free healthcare for people who are poor
because they don't work and healthcare for people who are retired and don't
work.

But the USA does not provide healthcare for people who work and keep machine
turning.

Hmm... I wonder if it's a political lobbying by healthcare industry to get
more money for people who wouldn't provide it on their own by extracting it
from the tax payers who do work and can (barely) afford insurance, etc.

~~~
malvosenior
This is why the ACA (Obamacare) was extra bad (for me and others in my
situation). Not only do I have to subsidize the poor through taxes but now I
have to subsidize higher risk individuals through my own increased premiums. I
also make enough money to get zero tax breaks on any of it and the
"marketplace" has removed all competition and downward price pressure.

EDIT:

People seem to think I'm being flippant or cruel but here's more background. I
_am not_ rich. I struggle to stay in the middle class. It doesn't take much to
stop getting tax breaks but it takes a ton of money to survive. Paying $1,000
a month for health insurance on top of my already high taxes is a meaningful
amount of money that greatly impacts where I can live, if I can retire and
many other major life properties.

~~~
coldtea
You're so well paid that you don't get tax breaks, and you are forced to help
poor people through taxes and insurance premiums?

Sounds like a good situation to be in...

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
It's not helping the poor per se that makes many people uncomfortable: no sane
person will share the "poor must die of hunger" attitude.

It's that we help _only_ the poor. Look, I pay taxes. Poor people don't. Fine.
I get it. But they do get free medical insurance, I don't. They get free
college, I don't. All I get back are reminders about "straight white men
privilege". That's not fair.

Nobody likes paying taxes. But if it's "guys, let's all cough up what we can
and build a greater society for all of us", I'm for it. If it's "let's build a
greater society for the poor" \- that's a much more bitter pill to swallow.

~~~
alwillis
_It 's that we help only the poor. Look, I pay taxes. Poor people don’t._

Poor people pay just as much as everyone else in sales tax, excise tax, tolls,
meal tax, etc. And because they are poor, they pay disproportionately more of
their income in taxes than the wealthy.

I live in the Boston area—even though there are 70 colleges and universities
here, none of them are free for poor people.

~~~
malvosenior
_> And because they are poor, they pay disproportionately more of their income
in taxes than the wealthy._

That's incorrect. The tax rate is lower for lower income thus they pay less
proportionally.

 _> I live in the Boston area—even though there are 70 colleges and
universities here, none of them are free for poor people._

Every ivy league school has income adjustment and will offer free ride based
on need:

[https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-
works/harv...](https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-
works/harvard-financial-aid-initiative)

~~~
alwillis
_That 's incorrect. The tax rate is lower for lower income thus they pay less
proportionally._

If you look at what I listed—sales tax, excise tax, meal taxes—those are the
same whether you’re rich or poor, except they have a disproportionate impact
on the poor.

Poor people do get most of what they pay in income tax back once they file but
that’s not the case for these other taxes.

------
xtiansimon
I agree words matter. I'm working as a bookkeeper and broke is when you're
spending more than you make wether you're making < 22k$/year or > 500k/year.
Poverty is a completely different animal.

"Sometimes I splurge and make homemade hot cocoa. [...] every week we give to
the food bank..."

?? Land-o-Lakes hot cocoa mix is $1 at my local grocery store. What kind of
hot cocoa are you making lady?

~~~
wutbrodo
It says "homemade hot cocoa", so it might mean from chocolate or something?
Not really sure

------
sudhirj
Leaving aside the politics of a universal basic income, would a UBI have
helped or hindered this person? Do most UBI schemes assume that healthcare
subsidies would stop for instance, and the money be redirected to the UBI? Or
would the income be on top of whatever healthcare subsidies already exist?

~~~
rfugger
I think the article is a good example of why universal healthcare would have
to remain in place when UBI is implemented. UBI is unlikely to be enough to
afford quality healthcare.

~~~
_bxg1
Agreed. There are two types of healthcare expenses that insurance is important
for:

1) massive, unexpected ones, which $1000 a month would be useless towards, and
where the word "insurance" actually makes sense

2) recurring costs like doctor appointments, prescriptions, and teeth
cleaning, which could arguably (but still probably shouldn't) be lumped in
with UBI

#2 can still wreck someone who's truly poor, to be clear, but the author's
case sounded more like #1

~~~
majewsky
#2 should not be lumped in with UBI since the costs wildly fluctuate between
people. A 25-year-old person will have fewer preventive checkups than a
retiree or a small child. And people with chronic diseases have way higher
recurring medical expenses than people without. My bookkeeping shows that I
spend two weeks' worth of salary per year on medications, most of which is for
keeping my chronic ailments in check.

------
cperciva
As tragic as this story is, let's not pretend that it's commonplace. A
disabled single mother of a disabled child? She won the reverse lottery.

------
johnminter
This is an important distinction. CBS reports [1] that a $500 emergency
expense would put most Americans in debt. Our consumer-focused economy with
easy credit lures people into purchases that they cannot afford. Many spend
without careful thought and purchase homes, electronic devices, automobiles,
and college educations that they cannot afford to repay.

My wife and I had little savings when I got out of graduate school. Neither of
our parents had taught us about budgeting. I found books that taught us how to
make a monthly budget. The authors stressed the importance of working together
to plan a budget and setting a goal of saving for an emergency fund that would
eventually cover six months expenses. We drove our old car until it was too
expensive to repair. Eating out was a rare treat. I carried a bag lunch to
work. We bought a used tent and camping supplies for a vacation. We had a used
B&W TV for years. We were able to purchase a modest house. We never upgraded
to a bigger one. A careful lifestyle helped us get our kids though state
universities with no debt.

In time we could add more "fun" items because we had a buffer. We were still
careful. My employer had perennial layoffs. We knew I could be laid off at any
time. Happily, I was ready to retire when my time came (My company went from
65,000 employees in our city to less than 1,700 when I was laid off).

I have a friend who ran his own computer business and counseled (free of
charge)many families with money problems. His conclusion was that lack of
money was not the biggest problem these families had. He concluded that poor
management of what they had was a bigger problem.

[1] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-
afford-a-50...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-
afford-a-500-emergency-expense/)

~~~
thow16161
Any unexpected expense can knock you down when you're on the edge. Unexpected
expenses are how people become homeless.

I am friends with a camgirl who is a prime example of this. In her case, she
made a go of full-time camming, and thought she was doing well. What she
didn't understand is that the site she worked for paid her as a contractor and
withheld nothing. She never thought much about taxes, and all her previous
jobs had withheld taxes, so she didn't pay quarterly estimated taxes. Last
month, when she went to file her taxes, she realized she owed thousands. She
has been struggling to pay this while other unexpected expenses mount (car
repairs). She's struggling with the decision on whether to pay her taxes or
her rent, and is about to become homeless.

The super irritating thing to me is that she had a gofundme setup for her
friends and family to donate to help with her tax issue. The campaign was
going well (close to 50% complete) but gofundme took it down and refunded all
the donations. This was likely because they don't want to be associated with
sex workers, and she apparently had a link to it from her cam-site page.

~~~
thow16161
That reminds me: Does anybody know of any US crowdfunding sites that are not
hostile to sex workers? That seems unlikely after FOSTA, but it does not hurt
to ask, and I figure this would be the place to do it.

~~~
siggen
Probably best to talk to a tax advisor-- and I am not one. I think the first
time you owe a lot in taxes you are not assessed a penalty (if you keep owing
every year, you are). This filing season is also exceptional due to tax
bracket changes last year.

She can pay in installments vs the entire sum at once:
[https://www.irs.gov/payments/payment-plans-installment-
agree...](https://www.irs.gov/payments/payment-plans-installment-agreements)

~~~
thow16161
I've been trying to encourage her to do just this, but she does not always
take my advice. She had her mind set on putting this behind her. She does not
always make the best decisions.

------
vondur
I grew up poor. I don’t know how my dad managed it. I’m thankful every day
that I don’t have to worry like my parents did.

~~~
jmkni
Likewise. My parents raised myself and my siblings well, and somehow managed
to give us all a good education and life despite both being on minimum wage.

As an adult, I'm angry at my younger self for being annoyed at the things I
used to be annoyed at, now I realise I couldn't have done it any better
(probably a lot worse).

Luckily, we are all doing well now, and we have a good relationship with them,
and get to pay it back via buying them gadgets, sending them on holidays etc,
and just being there for them.

------
leg100
Seems increasingly the marginalised , feel it necessary to take it out on the
not so marginalised, to police their language, to compel them to appreciate
their lot, even to make them feel shitty, for wanting a pair of shoes, as if
this would make their lot in life better, to make the world "more equitable".

How about the old fashioned approach of targeting the rich and powerful? Or is
that considered too difficult now.

I couldn't give a damn about the difference between broke and poor. Changing
their use isn't going to change a damn thing, just as changing how words are
used has never changed a damn thing in the whole of history.

------
pmorici
This article would have been stronger if it simply addressed the issue of
poverty directly and dispensed with the nit picking over the words broke and
poor. I also disagree with the assertion that her middle class friends were
using the word wrong or that broke was an apt description of their financial
situation.

Broke is a a synonym for bankrupt or being in bad debt. If someone says they
can't afford something which is what was being expressed when someone says
"I'm too poor" that doesn't mean they are broke.

------
stillbourne
I came up from poverty and its a trap. I grew up in a trailer park with
parents that didn't care how well I did in school, who I hung out with, what I
did away from home, where I was most of the time or when I came back. They
treated me like a burden not a part of the family. At least not the TV
families I saw growing up. Started smoking with the neighbor kids when I was
15, started drinking shortly after. There were no examples to me of life
outside of that, I couldn't comprehend what life was outside of being a fuck
up. Until I met my uncle. He was a former cop turned SysAdmin @ TCI he
introduced me to a side of computers I didn't know existed. I envied what he
had, I daresay I coveted his gear and his lab and his stuff. I had been a run-
away about 4 or 5 times from the time I was 10 well when I saw that life could
be different I decided to run away one last time. I moved in to his house and
he taught me a lot of what I learned, not about computers specifically but
about learning how to learn. How to teach myself.

I eventually got fed up with him being a bit of a strict hardass about
everything. I mean, dude was a cop. Everything I did had to be by the book in
terms of life outside the house. I ended up just kind of traveling around the
country with my gypsy blooded estranged mother, started a pretty serious drug
habit for a bit. But all the time I kept thinking about computer stuff. I kept
learning, and eventually I got fed up with my situation. I took a look at my
mom's boyfriend and at the time I thought he was pretty cool but one day I was
smoking pot with him and I looked at him, like really for the first time. I
saw a dude that paid child support to 3 different women, who, if he wasn't
dating my mom, basically lived on other peoples couches. He worked at a winery
and made less than I made @ McD's. I looked at him and then I asked myself, do
want to be this dude when I'm 45? I stopped all drug use except the occasional
drink, spent all my free time learning the stuff that my uncle had been trying
to teach me and moved back to my old home town. These days I'm actually a
Developer which I never thought I could be. I'm content that I made it out,
but I know that my case is unusual.

I've driven through that trailer park occasionally and I still see familiar
faces more than 20 years out. The truth is we're all poor. If your not making
$300k a year you are no better than a generation away from trailer trash. I
mean look, here they were, two brothers, grew up in the same house with the
same opportunities and I was born to the crappy one. I made it out basically
on accident. The difference between being rich and being poor these days is
generational, not situational. I disagree with this article, its not that you
are broke, it is that you are poor, unless you're filthy stinking rich, you
are still one generation away from trailer trash.

~~~
FiddlyPack
Easier to go down than up, and the people on your level will often try to make
you feel bad for trying to move up and out. Good on you for escaping the trap.
Props to your uncle for giving you tools to do it, hardass though he was.

------
helsinki
I lost interest after she states that she donated to charity.

~~~
ali-tny
Why? If you disagree with giving to charity, does that invalidate the rest of
the article? Or are you suggesting that it was financially irresponsible to
give to charity?

If the second, I think that this is wrong. She had a 6 month emergency fund -
the (presumably) relatively little she gave to charity is unlikely to extend
that runway very much. I think (some of) the point of the article is that true
poverty is living a life in which your _needs_ are greater than your means. A
little extra runway isn't going to help you in the long run there. Once you're
in this position, often through no fault of your own, you become stuck in a
cycle of poverty.

Rhetoric about poverty that implies that the poor are financially
irresponsible I think is very damaging. No amount of fiscal responsibility
could have shielded her from not being able to earn once she became sick, and
having her costs drastically increased due to having a disabled child. I don't
think it should be possible to find yourself in a situation where you cannot
provide for your families needs (ie, food, rent etc) and we should be working
towards creating a society where this is the case, rather than labelling poor
people as financially irresponsible.

~~~
helsinki
Nothing to do with charity, poverty, socioeconomics, etc. I simply lost
interest in her article after it began to read as a self-serving 'look at me,
I donated to charity!' post.

------
purplezooey
The way this guy lives sounds extremely stressful.

------
scarejunba
The prevalence of charity is evidence of the failure of society to provide
equity of opportunity.

That's okay. I prefer proportionality to equity, personally. But the ideas
that everyone must be given a chance to make it are incompatible with the
absence of the welfare state.

------
chimi
With all the hands out on that web page, I think it's The Guardian that's
broke.

~~~
mhh__
The Guardian isn't run like most newspapers

~~~
chimi
Clearly. A full page piece on a semantic argument. Most newspapers don't waste
our time like that. There's nothing of value in that article.

~~~
mhh__
Ignoring that (in the UK) the Guardian is probably influential newspaper of
the last few years (Breaking large stories), most do.

Newspapers can't just sell news anymore, it's not profitable.

Besides, do you not try and expose yourself to opposing views? Maybe not
applicable here, but opinion pieces are important.

