Posted on 09/30/2014 3:19:41 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Linda Tirado photographed by Scott Suchman near her home in Washington DC for the Observer New Review.
Why do so many poor people eat junk food, fail to budget properly, show no ambition? Linda Tirado knew exactly why… because she was one of them. Here, in an extract from her book, Hand to Mouth, she tells her story in her own words
•Q&A with Linda Tirado
In the autumn of 2013 I was in my first term of school in a decade. I had two jobs; my husband, Tom, was working full-time; and we were raising our two small girls. It was the first time in years that we felt like maybe things were looking like they’d be OK for a while.
After a gruelling shift at work, I was unwinding online when I saw a question from someone on a forum I frequented: Why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive? I thought I could at least explain what I’d seen and how I’d reacted to the pressures of being poor. I wrote my answer to the question, hit post, and didn’t think more about it for at least a few days. This is what it said:
Why I make terrible decisions, or, poverty thoughts
There’s no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it’s rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of....
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
I’ve known poor people personally who whine about not having enough money and a half hour after into the conversation talk about the new ink they got from the high class tattoo parlor down the street...
There was a woman in the local coffee shop I go to on occasion that would always whine how tough it was to make ends meet. She probably spent $1,000 a year on tattoos and cigarettes.
this is the most ridiculous thing i have read in a very long time... some of the comments following the article are a close second...
Poverty, for the most part, is as a result of bad decisions. Bad decisions, for the most part, are as a result of lack of planning. Lack of planning, for the most part, is as a result of lower intelligence. Lower intelligence, for the most part, is because of bad upbringing.
Thus, bad parenting is the root cause of poverty in a free, capitalist, society.
Poor people are poor because they have inadequate self-control and emotional maturity. Incidentally, the author of this piece has never been poor. She has gone through stages where her income was low, as most of us have at one time or another.
A huge, steaming load of “it’s not my fault, and it never works to try to advance myself, so why bother”.
The part where she tries to justify the expensive habit of smoking because it helps her “keep going a little longer” as if coffee wouldn’t do the same at a tenth of the cost, is particularly galling.
I’ve been poor enough that I had 0 money in the bank, no job, and selling possessions just to have a little cash for groceries. However, I never tried to hold anyone else responsible for that situation, and never gave up just because things seemed particularly hard.
This makes my blood boil. I know of countless stories of people who were dirt poor -- and I mean poor -- who worked their way up to middle if not upper middle class. People who lived in tents -- tents -- or whose parents were drug addicts and died before the kids were out of their teens. And they worked their way up. WORK. That is the answer. Stop the pissing and moaning and put some effort into it.
So your success in life highly depends on your parents’ actions. From good nutrition and care in formative years to access to good private education and taught morals... this is best termed as, sorry to say, Inter-Generational Karma.
Again I say it: I could teach her to make a six-figure income within 1-3 years. Many others here could too. It’s all attitude. She’s obviously more literate than many people. But being poor is more righteous and pious, I guess. If she’s really poor.
I’ve learned the hard way that there are two different mentalities in the world, on this subject.
There is the minimum wage mentality. These people are not interested in improving their lot in life and they just want to do just enough to get by. These people stay in minimum jobs for life.
Then there are those that do want to improve their lot in life. They almost always don’t stay minimum wage.
Well gee, Honey, how about not having any kids until you can afford them? And how much did you pay for the computer or other device you use to go online?
Quite a bit of truth here. But then she chooses to live in San Francisco, one of the most expensive places in the world to live.
Look at the difference between the responses here at FR and the responses after the article at the link. Here, people object to the idea that the poor can’t work their way up. After the article, most of the comments are about how the rich are holding the poor down, or how the poor need trade unions. There is no concept of personal responsibility and effort.
I really do believe that one of the unifying factors for people who post here at FR is that they come from middle class, working class or even poor backgrounds but their families taught them values and they used those values to get ahead in life. They (we) aren’t interested in a bunch of excuses from others about why they need a handout or other government help. And we see America destroying those values and work ethic.
This article shows where we will end up. With people who are convinced that the deck is stacked against them and that they need government help to support themselves.
Do you currently make a six-figure income?
Base on some of the posts that I read, the problem with long-term planning seems to be more a consequence of depression than actually being poor.
No, I didn’t claim to, I’m just getting back into sales because my wife may lose her job in November. But I have made mid six figures before and I know what it takes. My disabilities may hinder me somewhat this time, but I’m not going to let them stop me, even if I’m in a wheelchair or scooter. My mentor/manager right above me has become a millionaire many times over doing this and while I like her a lot, she’s no rocket scientist. She was a department store buyer before this.
It is a British newspaper, although many Americans and others read and comment there.
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