Even the "Poor" have a Computer
If you have ever thought that the "poor" in this country still live a fairly comfortable lifestyle, here is an interesting article confirming this:
I wonder about the Census report for the lower middle class--would this many respondents say they had no unmet needs for a doctor and no unpaid rent?
The Census report also compares, from 1992 through 1998, people's perceptions of whether basic needs were being met. More than 92% of Americans below the poverty line said they had enough food, as of 1998. Some 86% said they had no unmet need for a doctor, 89% had no roof leaks, and 87% said they had no unpaid rent or mortgage.
I wonder about the Census report for the lower middle class--would this many respondents say they had no unmet needs for a doctor and no unpaid rent?
posted by Helen at 7:53 AM
21 Comments:
Helen-
I really think that there are not as many "poor" as we think. There are folks that make unwise decisions, but, if all of the available goods and services are toted up I think that you will find that a person even on minimum wage can have an life. Combine that with making responsible decisions and many considered "poor" would start moving up the rungs of life. I have been all over the world and have seen poor. Being poor "over there" is alot different than being poor over here.
anonymous,
Yes, I think what we consider poor here would be more than adequate for much of the world's population.
I am concerned about how many of my patients get most of their meals at soup kitchens and charity pantries, and spend their disability checks on cell phones, computer games, software and computer components. One week the soup kitchen may be well stocked and one might get some good nutrition. But what if next week's charity offerings are slim? If you've planned your life around this strategy, you won't be eating a healthy diet consistently. I have one patient who tried to finance a computer with her disability check, and was trying to survive on a case of Slimfast that had been discarded.
I'm a human services worker in Oregon (posted before a couple of times) - I would be interested in seeing more current numbers falling after the cuts in state-augmented Medicaid programs. Due to a variety of reasons (state budgetary shortfalls, economy downturn, inaccurate eligibility determinations causing cost overruns, etc), Medicaid at least in Oregon has been cut back to the federal level, which essentially covers only pregnant women, children, and the disabled.
Nevertheless, I have to agree with the first poster on the role of choice - poverty in America isn't like poverty anywhere else in the world. There is opportunity here for anyone if they make the choice to reach out and take hold of it, but sadly, too many people watch it go by and do nothing.
--wg
Shrinkette,
People make unwise choices and you're concerned that they might face consequences. Oh well
Having been really poor... I don't have any sympathy for someone who chooses a cell phone... or ipod... or television... or any other material frivolous possession over food, clothing, and shelter.
Sorry to be so callous... but if you're too stupid to figure out that food might be a wee bit more important than a cell phone or computer game - then maybe it's time for Darwin to come into the picture.
And yes I've heard all the stupid excuses about how people "need" some sort of escapism... I call BS - what they want is someone to take care of them so they don't have to do a thing for themselves. Most of them are pretty self-righteous about it too.
The U.S. probably has the fattest poor people in the world. Food stamp recipients have higher obesity rates than the U.S. population as a whole.
An interesting aspect of SSI (disability) I saw when working in mental health was that if a person accumulated over a certain amount of wealth, which was fairly low about $1,500 or $2,000, they no longer qualified for SSI. Many patients were initially rejected when applying for SSI and by the time they filed appeals, which they always won by the second appeal, they had several thousand dollars coming in back benefits. The money from the back benefits would make them ineligible for SSI unless they spent it within 30 or 90 days. I can't remember which.
Such a system doesn't encourage financial responsibility not allows someone to build up a financial foundation to use to pull themselves out of the rut their in which usually takes a year or two at the least.
Certainly mental or physical health problems, and certain personal upheavals (ie death of a spouse or child), can render a person unable to work and result in poverty. But for most people, moving to an area where there are jobs, cutting back on drugs & alcohol, or just being willing to endure the indignities of work (ie getting yelled at by idiot bosses or customers), is all you need to live a reasonable lifestyle. For the most part, poverty is not caused by class conflict, but by personal issues.
testsubjectxp,
I agree about the cheap American food--I have quit going much to our local health food store as it is so expensive. I still think that one can get inexpensive good food at the grocery store--such as complete proteins like on-sale chicken or rice and beans etc. Not all that tasty but with some imagination--it might be okay. The main thing is education in health for those who are in poverty to help them eat a more nutritious diet--seems like the schools could help some with that in health class. And you don't need a gym to stay in shape--it is free to walk and do exercises on your own. One can be quite healthy even without any money.
"personal upheavals (ie death of a spouse or child), can render a person unable to work and result in poverty."
Gee, look at the upheaval wrought in our divorce courts, and, if the above statement were a valid assessment of reality, then 30% of the country would be unemployed.
Do I hear violins?
dweeb: I'm actually concerned about the unwise choices.
The obesity thing is easy to explain. Cheap, American food is trash. It's not even poor quality food. It's packaged trash, so of course your body's not going to do anything useful with it.
Nonsense. Calories are calories. If calories in are greater than calories out, your body has to store the difference as fat. Thermodynamics doesn't differentiate between a cheeseburger and caviar.
There are folks that make unwise decisions, but, if all of the available goods and services are toted up I think that you will find that a person even on minimum wage can have an life.
I think most people don't understand the first thing about how to manage money, and it usually comes down to having lots of "common sense" but no math sense.
Math sense tends to be a problem because even many people with advanced degrees have no understanding of what exponential growth is or what an expected value is. If you don't understand exponential growth, you're in the dark about saving and borrowing. If you don't understand an expected value, you're liable to spend $100 on the lottery rather than on better insurance.
Theodore Dalrymple wisely noted that poverty in the UK does not consist in not having food, clothing, and even some luxuries, but in having to live in unsafe places, and in having a chronic sense of defeat. I think it's about the same for the US. We built housing projects out of supposed kindness, and now the poor live in the dangerous areas. We make them dependent, so they can't move to someplace where life might be better. We mean so well and do such harm.
Great praises to those parents who can bring up their children with a sense of hope and efficacy even in difficult circumstances.
I think one of the things we could do, which would make a big difference in our North American problems, is to spend some money moving the poor out of the cities: Move them into the towns and villages; do not move them into projects in the towns & villages!
The New Orleans hurricane did just that, for many. My mom works with some of them in her small town. But I think any organized, government-sponsored effort to do that will be doomed. For one thing, most of the urban poor have no idea how to live differently, nor do they want to. Also, I live in a small city (under 100,000 people), and we've got plenty of poor here. And the even smaller towns around here have huge problems with teen pregnancy and hopeless young people, some major poverty-causing factors in my opinion.
shrinkette,
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose" - people are free to make wise or unwise choices - that's life in a free society.
jw,
The towns and villages exist largely because the productive members of society populated them in an effort to flee those who make unwise choices, and insulate their children from the bad example. Negate their ability to apply the results of their own productivity to this end, and they will no longer have a reason to be productive. These attempts have been made in the past - look at Chagrin Falls Park, OH, and they've just created rural slums.
Ronin1516 -- I don't disagree. At what point does allowing someone to be dependent indefinitely become essentially making them be dependent? We see it in pathological parents who desire to keep their children dependent. To ask whether they have allowed them to remain children or made them remain children eventually becomes no real question at all.
I have worked in acute psychiatric admissions for decades. By its very nature the hospital fosters dependence. If I do something myself and just deliver it to the patient, it gets done quickly and correctly. If I encourage the patient to do it, I am often involved in a protracted struggle, and if things don't go right in the end, I will be blamed for not doing "my job." It takes effort and determination to encourage independence.
i I think one of the things we could do, which would make a big difference in our North American problems, is to spend some money moving the poor out of the cities: Move them into the towns and villages; do not move them into projects in the towns & villages!
That's what France thought... and look what happened.
I live comfortably at way under the poverty line. Think grad school lifestyle, but permanant. Lots of computers, books, cultural events, but no new car or new clothes, lots of ramen and rice, no restaurant meals, etc. My time is my own, and nobody gives me orders.
One reality is that what for most of the world is a middle class lifestyle is illegal here. Build yourself a hut to live in, and they'll tear it down and put you in jail or a mental ward or a shelter. Don't even think of getting a couple of goats, or an unused acre for subsistance farming.
I expect to be burglarized at least once a year, and at least once a year to have some kind of conflict with cops. "Police and thieves, in the street, scaring the nation..."
My latest strategy for moving to a safer neighborhood fell through, and the next strategy is going to take a while to implement.
Another factor that complicates measuring poverty is that americans tend to be more involved in a cash economy, where the american poor and the world poor are less cash-based, and more immersed in informal networks of barter and kinship. A guy with an apple tree, or who knows where one is, has a source of apples and pie and cider* and hard cider, but may have as few dollars as the next guy who doesn't have an apple tree. (Real cider, not the stuff with sodium benzoate added.)
Liberals too often assume that they have perfect information, or the government has perfect information. Austrians know that information is scarce and costly. The problem of poverty is complicated by poverty being hard to measure by "poverty lines."
Being under the poverty line is an indication someone might be poor, but is not determinative.
Further complicating things is the open source post-scarcity economy. $50/mo fo my internet connection is a big part of my budget, but it gives me a world of millions of books, blogs, film clips, software, etc etc. Home is where my computer is, and it doesn't bother me that I don't have store-bought furniture or a lot of expensive toys that would attract more burglars.
gt, you sound like a resourceful individual, wealthy in some ways.
gt is indeed wealthy in some ways.
I would hope--against hope--however, that he/she is not being counted as one of the "poor" whose number requires even more government intervention.
If you think about it, the Ingalls family was poor.
But try asking anybody who read the Little House on The Prarie books--there are about six--ever thought the Ingalls were poor.
And then ask them why not?
It's a good place to start in discussing poverty.
JW mused "There must be a better way of getting people to see that there is more to life than welfare and crime."
Sure - leave the welfare function over to private charities that aren't constitutionally constrained from requiring a commitment to behavioral change from those they help, and make the crime prevention function about meaningful, and predictably certain consequences.
"their ability to think has been stunted. How do we fix that problem?"
It is not their ability that has been stunted, but rather their willingness. Fixing it involves society ceasing the practice of confiscating the resources of those who are willing to think and placing them in between those who choose not to think and the consequences of not thinking.
Stupidity should be an unpleasant way of life.
Post a Comment
<< Home