By John Scalzi
Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
(Really being poor is not caring how much anything costs because you have no money anyway)
Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
(Really being poor is not having a TV, or a cell phone, a computer, an iPod, a washing machine, a toaster...)
Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.
(Really being poor is dreaming of having a 10th-hand rusty bicycle with flat tires)
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.
(Really being poor is not having any teeth)
Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.
(Really being poor is not having a house)
Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.
(Really being poor is not eating during the school lunch time)
Being poor is living next to the freeway.
(Really being poor is living UNDER the freeway)
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.
(Really being poor is having no idea that food comes in a neatly packaged sanitary box)
Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn’t mind when you ask for help.
(Really being poor is not having any siblings that survived into adulthood.)
Being poor is off-brand toys.
(Oh, the unendurable Hell that is living in America!)
Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.
(Really being poor is burning ox dung for heat in your tar-paper one room shack)
Being poor is knowing you can’t leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.
(Really being poor is never having $5 to leave around)
Being poor is hoping your kids don’t have a growth spurt.
(Really being poor is knowing your kids are so malnurished they will ever have a growth spurt.)
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.
(Really being poor is being where there are no stores to steal meat from)
Being poor is Goodwill underwear.
(Really being poor is NO underwear)
Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.
(Really being poor is not enough FOOD for everyone who lives with you)
Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.
(Really being poor is having NO shoes.)
Being poor is your kid’s school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.
(Really being poor is when your school has no textbooks, lights or roof)
Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.
(Really being poor is thinking 10 cents an hour is a really good deal.)
Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.
(Really being poor is ALWAYS having to rely on people who don't give a damn about your)
Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.
(Really being poor is having to walk a treadmill 10 hours a day in the equatorial sun to pump water into your rice paddy.)
Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.
(Really being poor is having no dad to even beg for child support)
Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.
(Really being poor is when your bathtub is also your toilet.)
Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash.
(Really being poor is taking your dinner from a stranger's trash)
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.
(Really being poor is watching your kid eat the cockroach with his bread for that extra bit of protein.)
Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.
(Really being poor is having no idea what a GED is.)
Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.
(Really being poor is people beating you for walking around where you don't belong.)
Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.
(Being poor is doing nothing but watch your kids suffer because there are NO jobs.)
Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.
(Being poor is the police burting into YOUR apartment because you didn't have "protection" money.)
Being poor is not talking to that girl because she’ll probably just laugh at your clothes.
(Really being poor is having no clothes to laugh at.)
Being poor is hoping you’ll be invited for dinner.
(Really being poor is knowing NOBODY gets invited to dinner.)
Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.
(Really being poor is when your sidewalks are paved with nothing but brown glass.)
Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.
(Being poor is people knowing everything about you by the way you dress.)
Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.
(Really being poor is having to let your boss have sex with your children for that 35-cent a day raise.)
Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.
(Really being poor is your kid's teacher having no books in HIS home.)
Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.
(Really being poor is never being short on the utility bill because you have NO utilities.)
Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
(Really beig poor is EATING the mac and cheese you dropped on the floor.)
Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.
(Really being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere -- and ALWAYS WILL!)
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
(Really being poor is living hwere noboday cares whether you're stupid or intelligent.)
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
(Really being poor is living where it makes NO DIFFERENCE whether you're lazy or not.)
Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.
(Really being poor is watching FOR DAYS the sick child in your lap DIE because there is no emergency room, no doctor, no medicine.)
Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.
(Oh the Hell that is being poor in America!)
Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar.
(Oh the Hell that is being poor in America!)
Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.
(Really being poor is being sold into prostitution by your parents when you're SEVEN years old.)
Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.
(A expectation of thanks by those who provide you with an unearned standard of living beyond the dreams of 90 percent of humanity -- Those lousy bastards!)
Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.
(I grow tired of Mr. Scalzi's whining now)
Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.
(Make you wanna cry, doesn't it?)
Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.
(The daily assault on one's dignity never ends.)
Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.
(Ah, finally the lib's rejection of moral volition!)
Being poor is knowing you really shouldn’t spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.
(Why not? It goes for your own "free" school lunch!)
Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.
(Scalzi is really getting tiresome.)
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.
(Yawn....)
Being poor is a cough that doesn’t go away.
(Persistant coughs ever happens to rich people. It's against the law in Amerika!)
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.
(Scalzi had a couch? Rich kid!)
Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.
(Whose fault for mishandling his finances?)
Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.
(And forget Scalzi being grateful to the taxpayers who paid for those night classes! After all, he made the supreme effort to ATTEND!)
Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.
(Beats sharing a dirt floor with the pigs.)
Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.
(Being grateful is thanking those who run the %$#!@!shelter!)
Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.
(No, John, we wonder why you're such a sniveling ingrate for not appreciating how lucky you were to be "poor" in 20th century America.)
Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.
(Yeah, right up there with fighting for survival in a gang-ruled Rio slum.)
Being poor is seeing how few options you have.
(That Scalzi says this about living in America shows him to be the educated idiot he is.)
Being poor is running in place.
(I may vomit.)
Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.
(Here's hoping Scalzi does leave this American hell on earth - soon!)
Being poor is having to wear the hand me downs of your sister.....when you're a boy!
Being poor is having to watch an old t.v. but not having electricity.
Being poor is following homeless people down the street asking them for money.
Being really poor is not having anything else to do but this!
There is a difference between being poor and being broke.
I have been so broke I would quite literally sit by the phone hoping it would ring so my business would get a job and I could buy something for my kids to eat that night.
Being poor is a state of mind in which you expect to be broke tomorrow, next week and next year.
I’ve been totally broke, but I was never poor.
Somebody signed up today to waste bandwidth on FR.
How original.
Expect more of this tonight and most likely tomorrow.
Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War” series was excellent - the movie rights were recently bought and I look forward to seeing it. He was also creative consultant on SGU - StarGate Universe. I would have liked to have seen a third season.
I wouldn’t characterize Scalzi as a “minor sci-fi writer”. I think he is becoming a major one. None of that speaks to his politics, however.
HERE is MY rebuttal:
“A Matter of Choice”
Here are a few hard truths. First, poverty is a choice. Second, the government’s attempt to address poverty has only made it worse; it would be better, more compassionate, if the government curbed its domestic aid then it would be to continue or expand upon our fifty year legacy of entitlement failure.
There is a concerted notion afoot to declare poverty as a value neutral station. It is a simple matter of fortune, of being ‘more fortunate’ or ‘less fortunate’. There but by the grace of God go I. Except. It’s not true. Poverty is a state of mind, and a choice. Hard work and just a smattering of ethics do lead the way out of poverty.
The two most reliable indicators of rising above poverty are full-time employment, and marriage. In the poorest twenty percent of households, the average number of wage earners is one and the average number of hours worked per week is part-time. Even one full-time wage earner is enough, in most cases, to raise a household out of poverty. When two parents work, hard, and together to provide for their children, poverty is defeated. According to the Proverbs, “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”
Hard work and marriage, as a vehicle for raising children, are both strong Christian values. Why would that be? Perhaps because both are actions, separately and in tandem, that go far to abate poverty. They are choices.
More to the point, they are ethical choices. We used to teach these values. We used to treat, not poverty itself, but acts that LEAD to poverty, as shameful. Now, being a single parent is a valid, alternative life choice. Now, we dismiss the choice of laziness as a state of being ‘less fortunate’. In truth, these SHOULD BE shameful choices. Why? Because they are actions that lead to poverty. Because shame is a powerful motivator to discourage unhealthy choices.
Instead of stigmatizing poverty-inducing behaviors, we have created an entire government bureaucracy to validate such choices. The problem with government-sponsored charity is that values have been declared persona non grata by government; if the government is given the responsibility to care for everyone, then values can have no place in responsibility.
The results of attempting government branded ‘value-free charity’ are and should be all too foreseeable. In the name of defeating poverty, we have validated the pathways TO poverty. Knowing that having or raising a child out of wedlock is a consistent shackle to poverty, how is removing the penalties for such behavior corrective to address poverty? Knowing that hard work leads the way out of poverty, how does penalizing work aid in reducing poverty? In the name of helping the children, we have fostered environments that allow ever more children to be born into poverty. This is what we call progress?
For the entirety of human history, families and communities have bent to the task of raising healthy children. As should be. Poverty is unhealthy. In tandem with admonitions against poverty-inducing behaviors, the Bible is a strong advocate of charity to aid in defeating poverty. It is a symmetrical relationship in which poverty is simultaneously discouraged and its victims are aided with both community sufferance and moral correction in order to rise above. Reducing poverty is not just about giving; it’s about encouraging pathways proven to lead OUT of poverty. Unfortunately, that involves a morality our government cannot or will not endorse.
While poverty is a choice, so is giving. The essential element of giving is the nature of a gift as a non-compulsory act.
2 Corinthians Chapter 9: “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he had decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. . . men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.”
To believe that it is possible to satisfy a creed of Christian giving within the structure of compulsory taxation completely misses the point of giving. More important, to create an expectation of entitlement completely misses the point of incurring the gratitude – and goodwill, that results in giving. The benefit, on both ends of the equation, is utterly lost. As a result, government induced giving simply cannot be focused in poverty-reducing ways. It cannot be thusly focused because it lacks the moral clarity, wisdom, and forbearance that come with such an act. “Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?” THAT is why government aid is a failure. It misses the fundamental morality of charity, and does so entirely.
At issue are the real ideals of charity and community. Government simply cannot be a proxy for such things. The result of a prolonged effort to do so is that we have lost our sense of community, and of family. Our nation is not a better place for the effort. The poor are not better off by systematically devastating the values that accompany family and community supports that can weather difficult times. “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Government money, absent morality, is just such an evil in our poor communities.
Make no mistake. Government ‘aid’ is neither charity nor compassion. Poverty is a matter of choice. Lost to a deaf crowd that advocates defining community and charity through government is the fundamental observation that community and charity are choices that cannot be compelled, as well. The government has never been moral enough or charitable enough to make up the difference for what it has traded in the name of so-called compassion. And never will be.
Being poor is what you are after voting for Obama, and “cash for clunkers” destroying perfectly good used cars, and “electricity prices must necessarily skyrocket”, and “the evening call to [muslim] prayers is one of the loveliest sounds on earth” - and it is more than financial poverty, it is a poverty of the soul.