I read her article.
Not all poor are like her. My parents were lower middle class as long as they were together, and when they divorced mom and I were poor. Mom didn’t eat junk food. Mom cooked. It was cheaper to cook than waste money on junk food. She didn’t take up drinking. She didn’t take up drugs. She didn’t take up smoking. She didn’t have babies with guys that wouldn’t be around a few days. She didn’t sit around letting depression stop her from living and finding little joys in life. Stressful, yes. Lots of pressure? yes. We had other stable family around so there was a pressure relief, just having family there. Shopping was not priority. Goodwill was where we were. We had food stamps. She found a decent job, that led her to another better decent job, that led her to a third, more fulfilling, decent job. She did get remarried and that guy was stable and had a decent job, and he went on to another decent job. They were married 20 years and their lives did get better. They had kid problems. They had financial issues. They had stress.
If there is one thing different about them than Linda’s explanation of the type of poor she is writing about, my mom and dad and stepdad were from a generation that learned from their parents the concept of delayed gratification. Also that you save whatever you can for rainy days, or for emergency funds. You don’t piss it away on drugs, or booze, or pills. They never developed a self-destructive lifestyle, and never developed the ability to rationalize shitty personal choices away because of their current socio-economic status.
In the past many more poor families lived poor, but lived with dignity. My own parents’ families are examples of it. To a lesser degree my family was an example of it. I remember seeing the way other people lived and being surprised at how much they just let themselves go. Like they had no respect for themselves and what (little) they had.
Linda is telling us how things are for her and those she knows. I am telling you that Linda doesn’t represent every poor person or their experiences. It is possible to get out of it. But it does require you doing things that are very difficult to do if you have not developed the ability to have higher personal standards and delay gratification, and possibly most importantly when you’re poor, not piss away what precious little money you earn on things that are very expensive, relatively speaking, but are not good for you and keep you from saving and building up money to help you move on and up as best you can, where you currently are.
You can’t get out of it if you aren’t trying to get out of it. My mom didn’t want to stay at that level. She did everythign she could to get out. So did the second husband she married, who was financially challenged with kids from his prior marriage too. They had self-control. They didn’t go on vacations for the first 16-17 years they were married. The money went to other priorities. Necessities. You have to have long-term goals. If you are in a crap job you can’t go higher in, you have to have a long term goal to get into a different job that you can have a career path with.
I did too, or tried. Stopped about halfway through out of disgust.
Truly, I think the author assumed that she's the only person who ever had to work before, or had it tough. I'm not sure if she was looking for pity, but all that she got from me was contempt.
Like you, I too have been poor. Dad got laid off - Thanks, Jimmy Carter!! - and, rather than sit around lamenting his fate, he went back to school to better his situation. Mom worked, and made $3.78/hour, or just a few cents above minimum wage. Contrary to Obama's demented rantings, you *can* get by on minimum wage, at least for a couple of years. I know, we did it. It wasn't easy, I remember eating a lot of PB Sandwiches (I was a kid, I didn't care), and Dad - when he wasn't in school, pulling a double load of classes so that he could finish quicker - put in a garden, which helped the food bills. There were *no* extras. I remember a couple of lean Christmases. When Dad got his 1st job, we went out to eat to celebrate. I remember, specifically, because 1) It was such a treat and 2) Mom and Dad had no idea where to go, because we'd not been out in years.
Vacations? Ha.
Unlike the author, they had credit cards. Didn't matter, because there wasn't any money to pay them off. They were "There for emergencies", though I don't remember Mom and Dad ever using them. I was just a kid, though, and I'm sure there were emergencies that I didn't know about. No idea what the author is talking about, not being able to get a CC. They're getting handed out like popsicles on a hot day...if you have a heartbeat, you get one. Though, as irresponsible as the author is, it's probably just as well that she doesn't have one.
Ditto bank accounts. If you have money, you can open one. I've done it a number of times in the past few years. Didn't take any more than some money and a signature. Unless she's transferring massive amounts of $100 bills from her secret accounts in Gstaad, I don't see how the Patriot Act even comes into play, here.
I never cease to be amazed at the hoops people jump through to PROVE that their circumstances aren't their fault. It does happen, but Occam's Razor states that you're usually the sumtotal of your decisions.
I’ve seen the same success story you have lived, and HOPE was what your folks had that is the result of responsibility and self discipline; delayed gratification.
I see, all day long, this woman’s story. I have a business on a busy boulevard that sits between the cheapest flophouse motel and the nearest minimart/gas station. The tenants get their beer, cigarettes, nachos, soda fountain drinks, etc. from the most expensive source while they beg, scam and steal. These poor people have come begging to me with an 18 pack of beer under one arm, and their current sperm receptacle under the other as though I was born yesterday. THEIR kind of poor is terminal, and is what the poor girl in this thread explained. They don’t have HOPE to experience better, so they take instant pleasure every time, regardless of what an hour from now will repay in consequences.