Why Poor People Stay Poor article

I would encourage people to try and understand the mindset of people living in poverty. When the possibility that you can be more, do more with your life than survive has never been present in your life it's awfully hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and accomplish what this man did. When you have been told both with words and actions your entire life that you will never become "somebody" believing that you can is near impossible. This guy had the advantage of education, higher education, an upbringing that told him that anything was possible... that is HUGE. 

And what of the people who aren't living on public assistance and are poor? What are we as a society doing for them, doing to help them? I was one of those people, we were one of those families, as little as 5 or 6 years ago. We lived paycheck to paycheck, a sick kid or god forbid a car repair was all it took to send us spiraling into a hole we didn't see anyway to dig ourselves out of. I had a panic attack everytime I slid my debit card at the grocery store, I left full grocery carts at the register because they wouldn't take my check this week, I hunted for bottles on the side of the road to get enough to buy milk. And when you are in that hole looking up at not even a pinpoint of light to give you hope you can overcome this, making bad decisions seem to be the only decisions you can make. Any tiny bit of extra money or hell windfall like your tax return is spent on fun new things to make the drudgery of your shitty rotten luck life seem a bit less shitty. Is that a bad decision? Yup. But it's totally understandable, when you haven't been out to eat in over a year and you're craving that delicious mexican restaurant you love and your kids all want the latest and greatest new toy that everyone else in their class has had since Christmas, and you all need new shoes and underwear, and well it would be nice for each kid to have a new outfit not one from Goodwill... you will probably pay off a few overdue bills(you always have overdue bills) and then that extra money is gone and you go back to paycheck to paycheck life wondering where the money for rent and food is going to come from. You could have saved that 1500.00 and used it to build a cushion but NO ONE tells you or shows you that there is a light the top of this hole and there is a way to NOT always be poor, you just assume that this is what life is, life is hard everyone says and you assume that is what they mean. You assume that you deserve to live like this, that regardless of the fact that you and your husband work opposite shifts so that someone is always home with the kids, that you never do end up buying that new underwear and use that money to put a little food in the freezer, that you have never been on a vacation, you don't leach off the government you are doing what you are supposed to do that somehow this is what you deserve. So you spend extra when you get it because you don't know when you might get extra again, and you feel guilty the whole time you're doing it. Being poor is expensive, there are fees for everything you need to do, need a car loan to buy that pos beater...18% interest, don't have a checking account because your credit is such shit you have to pay to cash your check every week, get behind on your bills because you don't actually make enough between your two jobs to actually afford to have heat, a roof over your head and food...get pulled over and fined because you couldn't afford to get your car registered on time, or you couldn't register your car because you need an inspection and it needs a thousand dollars worth of work to pass, rent is more expensive because you are high risk. Some people tell you to move so you don't have to drive, but where do you get the money to move? How do you move when you literally can't buy milk? And how do you get an apartment  when you have an eviction on your record, you were lucky to find the hovel of a place you are in. 
I would love to see people like that helped, shown how to make it. We finally were able to pull ourselves out of that horrible place by shear luck... literally had a year or so where nothing went wrong and we were able to get ahead of things and that allowed us to come out of survival mode and make a plan and that lead to more success, and husband got a raise and OT was reinstated and my business took off and things are looking up. But wouldn't it be grand if there was a way to reach those people living in that pit of poverty, working their butts off to get ahead but never moving forward to help them, to show them that baby steps forward really will get you there, that your past bad decisions do not have to define you. 

For those reasons, for those people(and there are lots of the working poor out there) I am unwilling to defund social nets, I am unwilling to judge the Mom in line at the grocery store using her SNAP card, I am unwilling to call poor people lazy or blame them for their place in life unless I am also willing to stand up and help show them how to make it better.  

Ack! We had a car stolen once--had to pay $429 to get it back. My husband was soooo ticked off about that.

I am a "bleeding heart" liberal, for sure! But I truly believe that people on welfare should have to work. In most cases, however, childcare will also have to be provided, which will probably make more expensive to taxpayers in the long run.

I believe being a SAHM should be considered a luxury. If you want to work your way out of poverty, you have to let go of that idea that you need to be the one and only caregiver for your child. I don't believe for a second that society needs to supplement a family that has made that choice.

I was a SAHM for years. I believe it would be the best for my family. Not necessarily society. For us. We waited for years to have our children until we could afford that option.

I've held numerous jobs. There is no way that being a SAHM came close to being "work" compared to being employed.

I believe being a SAHM should be considered a luxury. If you want to work your way out of poverty, you have to let go of that idea that you need to be the one and only caregiver for your child. I don't believe for a second that society needs to supplement a family that has made that choice.

I was a SAHM for years. I believe it would be the best for my family. Not necessarily society. For us. We waited for years to have our children until we could afford that option.

I've held numerous jobs. There is no way that being a SAHM came close to being "work" compared to being employed.

How is it considered a "luxury" when you have to PAY for childcare?  Your job has to pay more than a childcare provider, unless you are graced to have family care for your child/ren for no pay.

I guess I want to query the notion that staying home to look after children is not "work."

I mean, I dunno, having done the care of an infant/toddler/small child thing (for no pay, so it didn't count as "work"), it sure seemed like a lot of "work" to me, and much more demanding (o dear God! 24/7, and no rest, no respite in sight) than many a paid position of employment I have enjoyed.

Well, it's a funny old world, isn't it? And it's a funny thing about childcare and "work." I guess motherhood and childcare is feminism's final frontier, and we haven't even begun to breach the borders: we are still groping around in the dark in our attempts to solve this riddle.

Woman with children staying home to look after her own kids? What she does is not "work" (and in the popular imagination, she is perhaps sitting around on a comfy settee, watching soaps and eating bon bons). Woman with children entering the official economy of the paid workforce? She will have to find someone else (a nanny, a babysitter, a childcare center) to look after her children in exchange  for cash, at which point the childcare now becomes a species of "work." It's not the actual childcare duties that define whether or not this activity is defined as "work;" it's the monetary exchange, the reduction of all activities to the relentless logic of the cash nexus.

I'm all for a mother's allowance that would allow low-income mothers to stay home and do the, yes, "work," of looking after their own children. I honestly don't see how a mother working as a cashier at WalMart, while her kids are in the hands of God knows who, advances the cause of social justice, of economic development, or of utilitarian best-use-of-resources principles.

That said, long-term social assistance is obviously a soul-crushing dead end which saps the life out of any household or community. Can we at least acknowledge, though, women's/mother's (unpaid and unsung) contributions to the officially recorded economy, and maybe try to imagine some social-welfare policies that are more women- and child-friendly?


 

When I had my children, I don't think I ever would have trusted a childcare provider to watch other children along with my child.  My ex and I decided that I'd stay home and rear our own children.  I worked at night and whenever I could, but mostly I raised my children.  We went without a lot, but I don't consider that time to be a luxury, at all!!  It was more of a priority.

Nope, not true.  As a paralegal, I was earning well over $50,000/year during the time of my childrens' births.  I could have afforded childcare, but it was more important for me to stay home and rear them, 24/7; not someone else.  That did mean a lower combined salary and less "things" but it was more important to us both.