lmao without obamacare, i would have died at 23, a month ago.
kidney stones are completely curable, but I never would have seen a doctor, because I never would have been diagnosed with them. I would have been in constant excruciating pain and never know why.
I would get an infection in february 2017, and I would die, at 23. I would never know why I died, or why I was in pain, because I would never have been afforded the luxury to ask a doctor about my pain.
I would have simply sucked it up, as not to fall further in debt, knowing I cannot afford medical attention, and therefore am undeserving of asking questions like “why am I feeling this pain?”
People say, the poor would go to the hospital in time if they thought they were going to die, and that they would deal with the debt they accrue from said visit. this is untrue. Many of us would rather die than be a financial burden.
Many of us feel we are never sick enough to deserve the expense of medical attention, to deserve the expense of seeing a doctor. Many of us die because of this.
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I tried to explain to a friend of mine who has never ever been poor in his life why it is that poverty is a cycle, and why it’s so difficult to escape poverty.
His response was, “just save money”. I kept trying to explain that when you are living paycheck to paycheck, there really is no saving money because most of your income is being spent on basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, transportation.
So, then he responded, “well, why can’t you just save $5 every week”. Well, a lot of poor people do try to save. I would manage to get a few hundred in my savings account, but then you get a flat tire, or you end up getting sick and missing a week of work, or you have an unexpected bill. And, that few hundred dollars suddenly disappears. I tried to explain to him that when you’re poor, unanticipated expenses can very quickly and easily blow through what little you have in your savings account and put you back at square one.
I also tried to explain that when you are that poor, you need to make purchases while you have the money. Like, if I needed a new pair of jeans and I had an extra $30 that week, I would buy myself a new pair of jeans that week because I didn’t know when I would have an extra $20 or $30 to spend. So, he countered that with, “You don’t need to buy clothes. You could have put that $30 in your savings.”
To which I responded, “Well, if it were socially acceptable to walk around without pants on, then maybe poor people could climb out of poverty, but until then, when your jeans have holes in them, or don’t fit you anymore, you need to get some new ones.”
Then it kind of clicked for him.. a little.
So, I went on to talk about the sociological aspects of poverty, like how growing up poor, or growing up as part of a marginalized demographic pushes your starting block 100 feet behind your peers.. how our educational systems are set up to fail impoverished children. The light bulb flickered, but never fully turned on.
And, then he said, “I still can’t believe you were ever on food stamps.”
Yes, my friend, poverty and I get a nice little reunion every few years. I know it intimately, which is why you should sit back, relax, and just listen.
I never understood how it was so difficult to see the realities of poverty. To me, it is sort of common sense. And, what is irksome is that poverty doesn’t always present itself as an old beat up car, and falling apart sneakers. People who grow up middle class and financially secure seem to think that poverty looks a lot like dirty children with dirty clothes, and no shoes. But, it doesn’t. It can be that, but it’s often not.
I grew up in a nice house in the suburbs, but we were poor. We were very poor for a long time, in part due to my medical issues. People assume that because we went to Catholic school, and had a nice house that we were well-off. We weren’t. My mother worked 2-3 jobs, and my parents took out loans to pay for our school tuition. My mother’s parents helped pay for some of our education, even though they were also incredibly poor. My parents sometimes struggled to put food on the table.
I never had clothes that were dirty or falling apart, but most of my clothes and shoes were hand-me-downs from my older cousins. In fact, a lot of my toys were, too.
Both of my parents grew up in poverty. My father, especially, grew up in complete and abject poverty. Their parents grew up in poverty, and so did their parents. My parents made immense sacrifices to set us up for financial success, but life always finds a way to intervene.
Personally, my health issues have been the driving factor behind my own financial issues. I have amassed thousands of dollars in medical debt. I work a job that doesn’t use my degree at all because I can work part time and still get benefits, and because I know I won’t get fired if I need to take extended absences due to my health.
So, when you say, “I still can’t believe you were ever on food stamps,” you are really saying, “I have this picture in my head of what poverty looks like, and you don’t fit that image.”
That idea we have about what poverty is supposed to look like is a big reason why people in the middle class are so content with cutting safety net programs, even though they are one medical problem, one car accident, or one lay-off away from complete financial ruin. What does poverty look like, then. How do you “just save money”, then.
poverty in the developed world doesn’t look like a refugee child with flies on their face.
it looks like a normal person in normal clothes, in a normal apartment, with their bills spread out on the kitchen table, crying.
That last sentence, bruh
A snippet from an article on Huffington Post about what it means to be working poor.
Pretty spot on…
I got into an argument today with someone who is a landlord, and they were outraged, outraged, to find that their evicted tenants owned an Xbox 360. Never mind that the console was ten years old and worth perhaps $50 on Craigslist, they were outraged that their evicted tenants did not sell it, along with the very clothes on their back, to pay their back rent. I tried to explain to him that when you are $1800 in back rent, $50 isn’t even a dent in that debt. Why bother? Why bother selling that $50 item if it isn’t going to get you any less evicted? If it’s not going to save you, you’ll hold on to it. Money becomes meaningless when you’ll never have enough to hold onto. You just let it flow like water through your hands. It’s all gone anyways, no matter what you do. It was gone before it ever touched you.
The other day I got very mad at someone because their justification of why a family didn’t deserve their council house was because they had decorated the front of their house with xmas lights. DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO LIVE WITH NO SMALL PLEASURES AT ALL?!?!? DO YOU REALLY?!?!
This is one of the great end results of capitalism: we treat people as if the only thing they should care about are their mechanical needs but without things to nourish the soul or the capacity to talk about same, we fall apart.
We aren’t meant to be things which sit in blank boxes waiting to be used by our employers. Nothing in nature acts that way. Nothing’s meant to.
The source article: ”This Is Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense”
#um this topic makes me fucking furious#i will do a murder immediately#don’t#not only are small pleasures necessary to keep from SPIRALING INTO DEPRESSION WHEN YOU ARE POOR but they are STATUS MARKERS#you NEED a fucking phone to get a job#you need a fucking SMARTPHONE to be accepted as a normal person#you need nice clothes to be treated like you’re worth something#especially if you’re a poor poc#everyone sit down#think about this if you haven’t before#smashes a vase#fuck capitalism
Your Latte Isn’t Why You’re in Debt, and the People Who Say It Is Are Lying to You
Behold the Starbucks latte. The delicious mix of espresso, steamed milk, foam, and add-ons to taste is ubiquitous in our culture.
Warren and Tyagi demonstrated that buying common luxury items wasn’t the issue for most Americans. The problem was the fixed costs, the things that are difficult to cut back on. Housing, health care, and education cost the average family 75 percent of their discretionary income in the 2000s. The comparable figure in 1973: 50 percent. Indeed, studies demonstrate that the quickest way to land in bankruptcy court was not by buying the latest Apple computer but through medical expenses, job loss, foreclosure, and divorce.
Giving up a latte or another such small extravagance in this environment wasn’t going to be enough. Yet the personal finance shills continued to tell people their problems were mostly of their own making.
This strikes me as being directly related to those jackholes who are enraged when someone poor has some small or relatively small luxury: they think this is how economics work.
I’m tired of feeling guilty for every tiny indulgence that makes me feel human.
This makes me remember a story a friend of mine told me.
He was in a college course for learning financial stuff, like how to invest wisely and shit like that because he was working for the local library system in their accounting department and had to be able to advise employees on how best to use the new investment options the library was offering.
So, the professor tells the class that they should ALWAYS be saving at least $25 per paycheck into a savings account even when it’s hard because that is the only way to get into the habit of saving and also the quickest way to having emergency cash, but it was better to do at least $50.
Not terrible advice, certainly, but… My friend said there was no way he could do that. The professor scoffed at him about high dollar luxuries like coffee shop drinks or name brand food or clothes or a computer or using the bus instead of a car.
Now, my friend did not own a car; he bike rode everywhere. His wife used the bus. Both he and his wife worked. He did not buy name brand food; he got cheap store brand food in bulk and only bought what he already knew would be used in his meal calendar planned for two months at a time. He brewed his own coffee at home. He kept his electricity usage to a minimum and taught his wife and children to do the same. His kids weren’t indulged with sweets or many toys. They didn’t buy candy or hobby items. They got the free local TV channels which they honestly only used to track weather on a salvaged TV they got from a friend. They only got new clothing when their kids grew out of the old or something of theirs was too worn to patch or repair and always from thrift shops. All their furniture was secondhand and usually picked cheap from garage sales. They made the agonizing decision to purchase a home instead of renting because the net savings over all were justifiable because the house payments were cheaper than renting. They budgeted for a total of ten dollars to be put in the savings account per month, not per paycheck.
My friend and his wife planned their expenditures down to the cent at least two months in advance to make sure they could make it. They constantly researched to find the absolute best value of every item they bought. Thankfully, my friend had the analytical mind for that kind of planning. No purchase ever went unremarked upon or without heavy consideration, no matter how small. They spent wisely and stretched every dollar as far as it could go.
My friend brought in a hand written copy of his budget (because he didn’t have a computer or printer and paper was an expense he built into the budget so he could do the planning) and showed it to the professor the next day in front of the class and asked, “Where do I squeeze out $25 per paycheck?”
The professor hemmed and hawed as he went through the budget. He kept starting to say something on one line or another and then would stop himself and go to the next. Sometimes he would say shit things like “where is your gas column?” “We don’t own a car.” He spent about twenty minutes staring at my friend’s carefully planned and managed budget and could not see a single place where it could be improved.
“I guess you can’t,” the professor said and was apparently so bitter about being wrong that my friend had to keep from laughing at him even though the entire experience had soured him something awful.
People who are not struggling do not understand how money works for poor people and just assume we are horrible at managing it instead of realizing we just don’t have any. Luxury items aren’t killing us; low wages and a shit economy are.
Saving 20 odd dollars a week by not going to Dunkin Donuts for coffee isn’t going to help when the working poor’s real problem is worrying about being able to still make rent if they miss work due to the flu, so let’s stop pretending like this “junior piggybank savers/guilt the poor out of simple comforts” technique is a viable solution to the problem of stagnating wages and skyrocketing living costs.
An Open Letter to the Aurora Colorado School District
I cannot imagine physically taking food away from any person, but children? Seriously? That is some kind of second level evil. It’s not the kids’ fault their parents can’t or won’t pay for lunch. Send the parents a bill! Call them up and talk to them about the situation. Help them to see if they qualify for free or reduced lunch. Do fucking anything other than throwing food away and shaming children for the shortcomings of their parents. Some parents are fucking shitfuckers who don’t care about their kids. Did you know that? So if they aren’t even getting hurt by this, they’ll just keep on not paying.
WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF THROWING OUT THE FOOD????
WHO THE FUCK BENEFITS FROM THAT?
Do you know how much shame and torture kids get in school for being poor? For having ‘ugly’ clothes and wearing the same ones over and over and not being able to afford to buy extra things on field trip or participate in extra curricular activities because that shit always costs extra? Having to get hot lunch instead of being able to pack something fancy from home is bad enough. Throwing away that lunch and giving them a piss poor excuse for a ‘cheese sandwich’ is enough to break a kid.
DO YOU KNOW THAT FOR SOME POOR KIDS, SCHOOL LUNCH IS THE ONLY FOOD THEY GET ALL DAY?
Sometimes kids are more poor than they look. Sometimes they’ve been fine previously, but their parents have hit a rough patch. They haven’t quite gotten past the stigma of asking for assistance, so they suffer. So their children suffer. And all you’re doing is making it fucking worse.
So congratulations. You’ve made your fucking point. Money money money money and to hell with the children. If I could, I take the money out of your fucking checks and force you to eat kraft cheese on a bun for a fucking week.
Let me elaborate on that last reblog, just to make it clear for people who haven’t worked at or near minimum wage.
My last retail job paid $10 an hour, one of the highest starting wages for a entry-level retail position in NYC at that time (and still higher than the current NYC minimum wage of $8.75). I had the occasional forty-hour week, but mostly, I worked thirty-two hours. If we assume that as the standard week, it’s $320 a week.
Between state, federal, and city taxes, at this level, you end up paying around 26% of your wages in taxes. If your paycheck for two weeks is $640, you actually take home $473.60. Your yearly pay after taxes is $12,313.60, or $1,026.13 a month.
You find an apartment to split with three roommates. Your individual rent is $700. That leaves you with $326.13 for the month. You collectively decide not to get cable and only get internet, so your bill is $75 split four ways–$18.75 for you. Your power bill is around $100 and your cooking gas bill is around $30–$32.50 between the two. That’s $51.25 for bills. That leaves $274.88. You get a cheapo phone plan and pay $50 a month. That leaves $224.88. You get an unlimited MetroCard because individual rides make no sense with you working nearly full time, especially if you go literally anywhere else in your week besides work and home. $116.50 per month. That leaves you $108.38 for the month.
You have $3.60 a day to feed yourself, clothe yourself, do anything for fun, deal with medical emergencies, and so on. And that’s at a full $1.25 above city minimum wage, or $2.75 above national minimum wage.