Posted on 07/30/2018 8:04:54 AM PDT by rktman
Already done that!
The experience inspired me to avoid subjecting my kids to a similar experience.
Been there, done that. Motivated me to improve myself and make more money.
Before then, I was making $3.50-$4.75/hr from age 20-26 in the late 80s and early 90s. That's $7,000-$9,500/yr.
I slept in shelters more than once as a child, and had to "get creative" to eat even into my 20s.
I don't need your insipid "punish the rich" classes to know that poverty sucks. It NEEDS to suck, to give people an incentive to work hard to escape it!!!
Giving the bleeding heart Liberal organizers the giddy thrill of humiliating the non-poor does nothing productive.
Making poverty less-uncomfortable simply guarantees that you'll have more poor people... which is either what they really want, or else they are supporting yet another program that does the exact opposite of what they say that they want. Stupid, or evil. Which are you, Lib?
My dad grew up in the 1930s on a farm, and would lecture on the idea that there are people at the low-end of poverty, and the high-end....and it only takes a little bit of effort to step up to the high-end (he classified as having a full plate of chicken every other day on the farm, and getting two or three baloney sandwiches for lunch each day).
It’s like you say....people don’t have any reality to poverty, and even some folks today would say they are in poverty....while having a 60-inch TV in the living room, and a monthly $44 cable bill.
With all the government handouts we now have, and all the obese “poor and malnourished” people making use of them, I cannot take poverty in the current USA too seriously. And yes, I’ve read/heard all the lame excuses as to why so many of our “poor” are obese. The excuses don’t wash. A lot of it is unwillingness/inability to acquire even basic cooking skills.
Poverty in the USA is only having 3 flat screen TVs, only buying $100 worth of scratch off lotto tickets a weekend, limiting your beer budget to $150 a week. limiting your cigarette budget to $75 a week and not worrying about running your air conditioning at 68 in the summer and your hear at 80 in the winter because someone else is going to pick up the tab.
One of the best experiences I had as a kid was a service project that my PUBLIC high-school made us undertake as a graduation requirement.
Ours involved delivering turkeys to the needy for Thanksgiving. They paired me up with a girl in my class (she was pretty hot, so I did enjoy the day driving around with her ;) We picked-up some frozen turkeys at a grocery store and drove around the neighborhood delivering them to “needy” families.
What we saw ran the entire gamut. Some families really were needy. We went to one house and were met by a kid from our school, whom we did not even recognize because he had been diagnosed with leukemia and his medications had made him massively swollen so that he looked nothing like his normal self. Thankfully he did recover and is still with us.
Then there were the families you mentioned. Big screen TV, lots of toys, mom lying on the couch being lazy, no dad in the picture, etc. They had a gimme gimme sense of entitlement, and didn’t really even seem to appreciate the free turkey that much.
It was a very valuable education for the two of us as teens to drive around and see those things. This girl now goes to my church, and when I see her we chat and reminisce often about that day.
After I took a few moments to catch my breath, I realized these fools are serious in what they’re doing. In their jaundiced view of the world, they are convinced the people in their area are so privileged and selfish that they need to learn about poverty by pretending to be poor.
Why is that insulting? Because it implies that you couldn't? Well, maybe they don't know you very well - so I suppose that it is correct to characterize the question as "presumptuous," to say the least. But "insulting?" It isn't a matter of moral rectitude - I would, indeed, be offended if someone asked me if I could survive a week without, e.g., sodomizing Skid Row bums.
But if someone "innocently" asked me if I don't suffer feelings of inferiority for being, e.g., monolingual (the questioner simply not knowing that I am, in fact, multilingual) - I wouldn't feel insulted or offended. I would, rather, smile condescendingly and "tutt-tutt" them for their ignorance.
Regards,
Exactly. I grew up in a family of 12 (10 children 2 parents), stay-at-home mother, working father, and though we were poor, my father would’ve died before taking handouts, and never allowed us to do so (even the Christmas toy give-aways, that kind of thing. He instilled shame in us for being leeches, and I thank him, R.I.P.). We actually ate quite well, nutritional but not fancy (ie, the big roast or seafood Sunday dinner after church, the rest of the week big pots of oatmeal, beans and rice, etc). We collected loose change to split sodas between each three/four of us, as a treat maybe three times a year, water, milk, and iced tea the rest of the time.
Try on $18,500 a year.
Or less, when I walked out on a abusive husband with a baby and a toddler, no car, HS education that was already outmoded, no money, my parents took us in. I went to work as a waitress making $1.50 hr + tips. Finally found a factory job $3.50 to start, took 7 yrs to get to $5.00. No welfare, we lived in a $65 shack, no phone, my dad co-signed for a used car and a fridge when their old one crashed I was using. Ins wasn’t what it is today.
We got all clothes out of rummage sales, ate what cheap with the help of coupons. If not for my mom keeping the boys till they were school age we’d not have made it. She even fed us 2 days a week. Lots of meatless meals, hot dogs, mac and cheese. Snacks 1 per week was rationed. No sodas, just coffee, water and milk. And I packed school lunches out of that. THAT IS POOR. NO CHILD SUPPORT either POS wouldn’t pay it. Didn’t lay eyes on his boys for 15 yrs, didn’t want to. Still doesn’t want to be found and they are adults with 1 child each.
Poverty to certain People is not being able to afford a a Vente Mocha double shot at Starbucks every day.
Better to take stock of what you do have, clean water by simply turning a Tap, Flushing Toilet’s and Toilet paper to wipe your unappreciative A$$.
Not having what is required to live day to day in a 3,000 sq foot house? Smart ass mode to OFF! Been there so I get it. Mixed powdered milk with real milk to make it stretch, hand me downs for the kids, donations from others for baby clothes. Collecting cans and bottle for deposits. You know the deal.
Nothing wrong with a Mayo sandwich. Just thinking about now has me craving for one...
No cooking skills are another part. Beans and rice are extremely nutrional and extremely cheap, and extremely easy to make. Even if you add a bit of meat for flavoring. And they can be made quite tasty in all kinds of ways, and there are all kinds of beans, and these days, all kinds of rice.
“So I hope they gain a few pounds after the simulation, or it isn’t very true to form.”
LOL, and so true.
Bingo. If you know how to cook from scratch with staple ingredients you can eat well for relatively little money.
It’s how my mom did it.
Or just do like my brothers and go get crawdads out of a nearby ditch.
LOL! Well, Mrs. rktman and a buddy of hers have decided to start searching goodwill(which I don’t support), Salvation Army, Animal Shelter etc. stores for stuff and it save a lot. A lot of the items are new with tags for whatever reason and no problem with them. Cheaper than walmart even.
I quit that lousy job after seeing a poster in the grocery store which informed me that I qualified for Food Stamps. It infuriated me and I determined to go out and earn more, which I did.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.