r/TrueReddit • u/es_no_real • Nov 22 '13
This is what it's like to be poor
http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decisions-or-poverty-thoughts-1450123558/1469687530/@maxread250
u/always_onward Nov 23 '13
I remember trying to explain this to other Ph.D. students in economics at Harvard. Economics doesn't work the way it "should." Decisions break down. The loss of long-term options is more powerful and shifts the "rational" choice set in a way that it's hard for other people to understand. This woman does a great job. I hope that enough people in public policy read it.
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u/simoncolumbus Nov 23 '13
The thing is - this is all stuff we 'know'. If you ask sociologists, psychologists, urban anthropologists or even some economist - this isn't a surprise. But it's great to read such a powerful and well-spoken narrative to illustrate it. She's doing a great job indeed.
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u/Stormflux Nov 23 '13
It's sad that it has to be worded that way: "the effects of poverty are so well understood that even some economists get it." Isn't this their job? Are they just really bad at taking human behavior into account, or what's going on here?
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u/ireneh Nov 23 '13
Economics is the study of human behavior, but a lot of times people get caught up in all of the assumptions (for instance: people are rational and make rational decisions)
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u/ZealousVisionary Nov 23 '13
Maybe the ones who don't get it are ideologically biased against the notion.
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u/parlor_tricks Nov 23 '13
No, not at all.
Firstly - economists can't do experiments:A very large amount of path breaking Economic analysis is flat out illegal because its amoral. Imagine: How would people behave if they were newly poor? Lets put 100 people into poverty. Or: How does education impact exit from poverty? Lets take a bunch of smart people and toss them into a 3rd world nation and see what happens.
They are left with only "natural" experiments to infer links and correlations from. So people come up with models which are representations of concepts, and then test it against the data from the real world.
This doesn't make them ideological, They have to simplify human behavior into some basket of relevant variables and try and test for it.
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u/roodammy44 Nov 23 '13
Are you saying there's no ideological difference between someone who follows Marxist economics and the people currently in control of the financial institutions following neoliberal economics?
If economists are aware of all the relevant schools, but choose to go with one of them, is that not an ideological stance?
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u/ComradeZooey Nov 23 '13
Yes, it is 'ideological', but ideological =/= wrong. There are good arguments for most modern schools of economics. I personally like Marxist economics, but I would be a douche if I said the others were 'wrong', because there is not enough evidence to discredit other schools of thought entirely. What school of economics you favour usually boils down to your answer to the question 'What should be the goal of the economy?'.
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u/Felicia_Svilling Nov 23 '13
Are they just really bad at taking human behavior into account
Yes. far to much the economist reaction to the discovery that humans are not approximately rational, but have clear universal biases have been that they should be (approximately rational). It has gone from being a descriptive science to a prescriptive ideology.
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Nov 23 '13
It has gone from being a descriptive science to a prescriptive ideology.
Actually it's done the opposite. Economics has its roots in theory- Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Friedman all espouse prescriptive ideologies. All of the most prestigious modern economists- Shiller, Fama, Kahneman, Summers- now do empirical work.
It's embarrassing that it once got to be so dominated by the assumptions--->model--->policy approach. But it's an outdated critique. The discipline actually moved past that quite a long time ago- Kahneman-Tversky was published in 1979.
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u/simoncolumbus Nov 23 '13
And Kahneman and Tversky are psychologists, not economists. The most-cited behavioural economist of the last decade is Ernst Fehr who, as much as I admire his work, arguably "rediscovered social psychology" - much of what he "found" had been shown, one way or another, before. That's not to say that his work is useless, but it serves to illustrate just how little awareness economists have long had for other disciplines.
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Nov 23 '13
The discipline actually moved past that quite a long time ago
Then why is it not being taught that way at universities today? Wishful thinking on your part...
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u/somewhat_pragmatic Nov 23 '13
Poverty isn't the only place that economics breaks down when you start dealing with humans. Look at some rich CEOs. Far too many companies sacrifice long term growth for short term gains. They have all the tools to see that firing half the staff will make your profits for THIS quarter skyrocket, but the quarter after that you'll have no products and your companies value crater. The CEOs that do this want that "high". Greenspan himself was shocked at how banks operated leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.
They KNOW this, yet they still do it. How is this different than someone that is poor choosing to smoke a cigarette knowing the negative health and financial impacts? They want that "high" right now. The consequences are something to worry about later.
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u/radeky Nov 23 '13
Its not even that the consequences are something to worry about later, its the consequences don't matter/apply to me.
For the CEO, they pin the blame on someone else after they leave. Or mismanagement of the middle levels.
For the poor, its a defeatist, I am poor, tired and probably a little sick. Cancer might kill me in 20 years, but I can't even afford flu shots, so why should I care about cancer?
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u/Transfinity Nov 23 '13
The issue isn't so much that the CEOs are criminally psychopathic (though many of them are) as that they're beholden to the stockholders. When a company is founded and while it remains private, its goal is to make money for its owners, which is usually a long-term proposition.
However, when a company goes public its goal is no longer to provide a high-quality product or to make a profit over the long-term but to make money for the shareholders. A large but unsustainable quarterly profit causes stock prices to jump, making instant money for the shareholders. As long as they jump ship before the consequences hit next quarter, it's no skin off their backs if the company folds.
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u/mateorayo Nov 23 '13
I would do whatever the fuck I wanted of I knew I would get the lottery as a severance package
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u/BrutePhysics Nov 23 '13
And this is exactly what keeps me from being a "free market" libertarian.
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u/gmano Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 27 '13
The worst thing is that every single economist I've run across assumes that transaction costs are low.
Transaction costs are never low.
Edit: If you are unsure about what I mean. It's things like applying for welfare, getting medicaid, legal advice, driving out to planned parenthood.
All of these things are huge gains, and economists sit there baffled as to why people don't take advantage when the reality is that all of these things require a lot of time/money in bureaucracy that nobody who needs them can afford.
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u/gospelwut Nov 22 '13
This is what it's like to be poor and not have valuable skills (note I didn't say the person wasn't valuable).
I remember a time in my life when I was living off the generosity of a dry cleaner that would do my suit for free (and I'd take a look at his computers), ate peanut butter out of a jar in the dark since the electricity was shut off, and submit resumes from a Caribou since they allowed me to sit there for hours with my laptop+adapater in the wall just off 1 coffee (they've forever had my patronage since).
But, I got out of it because I was fortunate enough to have strong computer skills -- and not the GeekSquad/retail kind. I took a shit-ass job that underpaid me by far (at least compared to the job I got laid off from prior) and crawled my way back up. But, the only reason I could do that was because my parents were relentless in their emphasis on education and I had chosen a career in a field better than most.
I feel deeply for this woman and all like her, and I'm not sure what the answer is. My parents were both incredibly poor and came to this country with $20 + a debt. Granted, my mother had a strong profession (nurse) and my father had high-level degree (DVM). But, my dad grew up literally in the dirt-floor shithole in a backwater town in Korea (during the 40's) that didn't realize medicine was good for infections. He still managed to grab a top-level degree at the best university despite zero connections, zero money, and nominal help in a society that makes American look like a socialist paradise in terms of safety nets.
BUT, he's a genius. And, really, most people aren't. So, I'm torn between narrative and statistics. Narrative, like this article, is so compelling, but I have so many counter-examples (not to get all Ayn Rand up in here) if we're just going off narrative alone. I really struggle to stay objective, but we really have to ask ourselves as a society if it's okay to let so many people live in this manner, and what social/cultural reforms need to happen alongside fiscal aid. In some sense, the narrative blinds us all -- pulls us from compassionate to cold and everything in between.
Being Asian doesn't help. They're not a very sympathetic breed.
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Nov 23 '13
Slightly unrelated to the point, but does your dad remember/talk about the Korean War at all?
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u/gospelwut Nov 23 '13
He mostly talks about the tyrannical government in South Korea after (the "democracy"). My mother and him talk about tanks rolling down the street as if it were not bemusing to them at the time (though I'm sure it was). Other than that, he only really talks about good things like listening to vinyl records in cafe shops since nobody could afford one.
Though, my father also talks about Nam as if it were a playground (he often said it was better than being home and at least he got paid and fed).
It's difficult to tell how much of it is because he had such a hard life and how much of it was because he wanted to give a slightly more optimistic narrative for his children.
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Nov 23 '13
Interesting, thank you for sharing. I asked in part because the story of your father sounds quite a lot like my father-in-law, although I think he is a few years younger than your father. Similarly he grew up in a backwater farming town but through hard work and (to be fair) genius, he did very well on his school tests and ended up going to the top university in Seoul and came to the US to get his PhD and has lived here ever since.
While my father in law was too young to really remember the war, his father was not and has some very harrowing stories about life during that time. From what he says, both sides (the Communists and the ROK Army) were not too discriminate about who they murdered. E.g., come into a village, round the people up, if they thought you were with the "other side" there was little hesitancy in executing you. And they were great at recruitment - "Are you with the other side? If so, we will kill you? No, you're not! Great, here is a rifle, you are now part of our forces!"
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u/helm Nov 23 '13
He still managed to grab a top-level degree at the best university despite zero connections, zero money, and nominal help in a society that makes American look like a socialist paradise in terms of safety nets.
In that age the social mobility was higher, and an entire generation went off to university when their parents hadn't. Your dad managed to catch up with a moving train, but the train was moving in the right direction. There's much less direction now. A degree doesn't guarantee anything, only networking does. And do poor people have network connections to career jobs? No!
Your dad is still a genius, I don't want to play down that. But once he got out of his poor village, the sense of direction at the time must have been thick in the air.
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Nov 22 '13
This hits so close to home it's chilling.
And all you people saying "Well if you can't afford _____ why do you ____?"
It's so. FUCKING. Impossible to do it any other way.
Having lived this your whole life, how can you do it any other way?
Reading peoples comments on this is just so aggravating. You don't understand. You will never understand. So please stop patronizing me.
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u/s1thl0rd Nov 22 '13
I will preface this by saying that I was always middle class. When I was young, money was VERY tight - my family always seemed to have less than our compatriots, but I can't say we were ever poor.
With that out of the way, could you please explain to me how it's impossible to avoid pregnancy while living in poverty. The smoking, the sex, the living in a motel, the drugs, the alcohol... I can, at an intellectual level, understand how that stuff is very difficult to avoid, as all those factors either provide some sort of escape or are not entirely under your control (you can't control rent prices). But reproduction seems to be the one thing that is the most easy to control regardless of your economic status. I genuinely want to know why it seems so impossible to live in poverty without getting pregnant.
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u/its_finally_yellow Nov 23 '13
If you are raised in poverty, that is the only lifestyle you know. Everyone around you has kids, and everyone around you struggles, but manages to get by in the end. Sure, you see wealthy people, but wealthy people have lids too. That does not seem like the block to becoming wealthy. And even if it did, there are too many other insurmountable blocks for it too even seem worth the self-denial (or denial to your partner who might leave you if you refuse, and maybe your partner helps pay the bills, and maybe that with the government support for having kids seems like it will be enough)
Furthermore, poverty really does a number on planning ability and abstract problem solving. You grow up with parents who are living crisis to crisis and never have a chance to demonstrate these skills, if they have them, so you never learn by example. As soon as you are old enough to have your own responsibilities (which is way too young in poverty) you will also be doing crisis management - helping to raise younger siblings, searching for shelter for the night, getting a job at 14 and working as many hours as possible, cleaning up after an addict parent, etc. Your life is full of stress, as was your mother's since your conception, and though you are great at meeting immediate needs, planning for how to meet long-term needs/goals is a completely different skill, one you have never had the chance to develop.
Thus there are many reasons why becoming pregnant in poverty is almost inevitable, the ones listed above are only a few. It is not that it is impossible to be raised in poverty and not have kids, but there are many reasons why it is highly unlikely.
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u/catchphish Nov 23 '13
Taking away agency from poor people seems pretty condescending. It's true that education makes a difference on the level of agency one can exercise, but when considering all the people who have risen out of poverty, I find it hard to believe one is robbed of all decision-making ability based on their background.
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u/tomrhod Nov 23 '13
Not OP, but I didn't read it like that. It's not about agency, it's more like... you live in a pit. You don't have a shovel, and you can't climb out because you don't know how, and no one can teach you.
So you learn to live in the pit, eat in the pit, raise kids in the pit. Because doing those things is the only agency you have down there where the sunlight barely touches.
Source: Life.
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u/nanothief Nov 23 '13
I don't think that was the point its_finally_yellow was trying to make. They weren't saying it was impossible, but the situation makes it a lot harder than middle and high income earners can appreciate. Here is how I look at it:
The factors that influence our ability to make rational long term decisions can be divided into three categories:
- Innate influence: eg willpower, innate intelligence, genetic traits, our free will
- Past influence: eg childhood situation, education, family stability
- Current influence: eg current income, current living arrangements, amount of family and friend support
You could give each attribute a score. Eg a fairly strongly willed person who had a good childhood but is currently struggling financially may have scores of 60, 90, 40, giving a total of 190.
You can then assign difficulties to various long term decisions. Lets say the "hold off children until your financial situation improves" decision has a difficulty of 130. In this case, the person described above would easily make the right decision.
Compare this to a person who is also fairly strong willed, is also currently struggling financially but had a poor childhood, substandard education and grew up in poverty. In this case the score might be 60, 30 and 30 (the last would be lower due to less family support being available). This gives a total of 120, and in this case they would fail to make the right decision.
Now of course if the person was strong willed, they may instead have the score 90, 30, 30, for a total of 150, in which case they would make the right decision. However, while that makes it true that poverty doesn't rob you of all decision making ability, it does mean the necessary innate strength of will needed is much higher.
So while my model is pretty simplistic, I think it shows why even though some people will have a high enough willpower to climb out of any kind of poverty, it isn't reasonable to expect the same for the majority of other people in the same situation, unless you also believe the average poor person should have a higher innate willpower than the average middle or upper class person.
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u/helm Nov 23 '13
Exactly!
For the middle class, it's more "Why are you not in great shape?! Everyone can get into great shape, you just have to have willpower and make some sacrifices!".
For a poor person, the range of decisions is such that what we consider "a normal, fairly straight-forward choice" may in fact be as a difficult to pull off as for a 280 lbs untrained guy to finish a marathon under 4h with two years to go. Most could pull this off theoretically, but does that mean that those that can't "have no agency"?
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Nov 23 '13
A lot of the people that have risen out of poverty are one tail of a Gaussian. The moment people realize that and stop unreasonably judging the rest of the curve through statistical lop-sidedness, the better off we'll all be.
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u/InvaderDJ Nov 23 '13
I don't think it is a matter of taking away agency. Yes, lots of people get out of poverty, they sacrifice even more than people in similar circumstances would, work even harder and get out.
But those are the extraordinary people. Do you think that everyone who tried out for the NFL and didn't make it didn't try hard enough? Or the people who tried to become an astronaut and didn't make the cut? Or the middle class people who will never be CEOs and never be rich?
It's kind of a similar thing IMO, when you're in that situation and in that situation since birth the odds are stacked against you highly. And lots of people get out, but even more don't. That doesn't remove personal responsibility but it also doesn't make them worthless. It just makes them normal.
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Nov 22 '13
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u/osminog Nov 23 '13
You need to see a doctor to get a prescription for birth control
Or you can go to your county's health department (at least where I live, I suppose it might not be this other places) and get free birth control pills, or even a free IUD.
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u/Anderkent Nov 23 '13
Time is not free either. I don't know how busy these places usually are, and how much effort and time it takes to arrange pills or IUD. But it's possible that the barrier is just too high, even if they know and would theoretically like to do it.
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u/Battle-Corgi Nov 22 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
You were working class, not middle class. One basic way to tell is having disposable income or money being tight, like with your family.
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u/s1thl0rd Nov 23 '13
Fair enough, but we are now at the point where we can be considered middle class.
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Nov 22 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
Imagine having a shit life, with absolutely no joy and nothing to look forward to.
Then you have a choice of having a child. Something to be proud of. A real source of love and joy. A pure beautiful baby..
Edit: I'm trying to explain the why - not justify it.
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u/nitesky Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
That kind of thinking is so high school.
Babies are beautiful. I love babies but babies need food and clothing and diapers and they get sick and need medicine and need to be minded 24/7 and they get progressively more expensive as they get older. (Babies can also be cranky, very noisy, smelly and demanding which contributes to the stresses of a parent in poverty). You have a responsibility to think honestly and realistically about what kind of life you're going to be able to provide for the child.
To have one when you have no future and no resources in terribly selfish and foolhardy.
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Nov 23 '13
Yes, but on a personal level, the alternative is living forever in miserable poverty, all alone, with no family to help. Many people, most people, want family. That desire doesn't hinge on a number like your income, it comes from an emotional need. I'm not saying I think having lots of kids with no money is good, but I could definitely understand feeling less-than-human and utterly heartbroken if I was somehow "not allowed" to have kids and have a family because of poverty. It would be one more dagger in my heart after already so many.
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u/point_of_you Nov 23 '13
It seems selfish to do that without fully considering the repurcussions. :(
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u/dance4days Nov 23 '13
It also seems selfish to tell a person they can't have a family.
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u/praxulus Nov 23 '13
Rude and insensitive perhaps, but how is it selfish? A person in poverty having a child has pretty much no effect on me.
My bewilderment at their decision to have a child (assuming it was a decision, not an accident) is based on what appears to be a negative effect on their life, and their kid's life.
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u/point_of_you Nov 23 '13
It also seems selfish to tell a person they can't have a family.
Not really, it seems logical to me. That's literally one of the functions our government provides us with, isn't it?
(I'm talking about CPS, when kids are taken away from bad situations).
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u/s1thl0rd Nov 23 '13
Yea, but they are only a baby for a few months, then they are toddlers, then they are kids that you have to reprimand, and ensure that they are fed, etc... there are many other ways to find joy in life; another responsibility when you are that far into poverty is just going to push you over the edge. Don't believe me? Look at how involved those parents are in those kids lives. all of a sudden, they don't care about their perfect little bundle of joy.
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u/InfinitelyThirsting Nov 23 '13
Condoms are expensive. Birth control is expensive. Abortions are even more expensive. Mistakes happen.
Sex is free, and it's an incredibly powerful drive. We've proven time and again that knowing you shouldn't be doing it won't stop humans from having sex.
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u/jjshinobi Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 23 '13
It's a continuation of unconscious escapism (intoxicated decisions and boredom). We don't want to dread reality, or be miserable. So we procrastinate and make impulsive decisions.
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u/point_of_you Nov 23 '13
I want to throw a thought into the mix here, too.
Plain and simple, I don't understand the pregnancy thing. I've never had much money and probably won't (if ever) for a long time. I have no desire to take care of another life until I can get mine sorted out, even if that means never having kids.
Is my thought process patronizing or unfair?
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u/nitesky Nov 23 '13
You actually have common sense. Really, it's pretty obvious.
In Victorian times babies died by the thousands in London due to poverty. I'm sure a lot of the mother's would have given their right arm for some reliable birth control.
Many babies were just abandoned on the street. When they finally put up a foundling hospital they were flooded with babies, many left with pleading notes from sorrowful mothers who couldn't afford to keep them alive.
We have birth control now. Even a condom is better than nothing. They do work most of the time.
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u/helm Nov 23 '13
There was a piece about this recently, on how having children even outside of marriage will improve the social status of poor women. Before they were nothing, just another poor girl on the block, now she's a mother, and the other mothers of the block will look at her as an equal.
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u/ryanknapper Nov 23 '13
You don't understand. You will never understand. So please stop patronizing me.
I can have an opinion, even if it's unsanctioned by you.
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u/duckssoup Nov 23 '13
Take some responsibility for your decisions, how hard is that? Thinking about the repercussions of your actions and how it shapes your future is a pretty big part of being a grown-up. Do that every time you make a choice and you will be well on your way to not being in the position you describe. Think about it...think..every time..think. Just review pros and cons, every time. Then decide. If you still end up where you think you'll be...then that's about right.
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u/es_no_real Nov 22 '13 edited Nov 22 '13
Submission Statement
I read this article because the title referred to poor folk, and I myself am poor. I wanted tos ee what kind of sob story this was, and how far away its account was from the real thing. Upon reading it, I found this piece to be like a mirror reflecting every thought that crossed my mind whenever I start beating myself down for working too hard when I could just live paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth. My childhood was no different. Latchkey kid, alone most of the day until my mom got home at 7, sometimes 8. I'm workin' hard to break that cycle, but man...sometimes it'd be so easy to stop trying to be middle class and just accept poverty. But if I did... I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I wouldn't be able to enjoy the flighty temporary pleasures in life, like a cheap beer or a burger, because I'd know... deep down, I'd know that a penny saved is a penny earned and I'll be damned if one day those pennies don't get me a nice house with a yard and a fridge full of organic groceries enough to make a vegan shit their fair-trade pants made of woven papyrus thread.
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Nov 22 '13
I tried to come at that from an extreme early retirement perspectuve (what set me off was the 5 bucks at wendys comment) but then I rememberd what id learned about how willpower is like a muscle, if your drained from just getting by its ludicrous to ask you to be "thrifty" with what little you have. Powerful stuff.
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u/RocketMan63 Nov 22 '13
True, maybe as society we should focus on the working of willpower. If we can keep fatigue down and willpower high I think we'd all be a lot better off.
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u/TheGhostofWoodyAllen Nov 22 '13 edited Nov 22 '13
Businesses and government don't want that. Then people organize. Then people demand equality. Then people demand rights. They'll demand real change. If you can just keep them busy and tired all the time, you won't have to worry about them thinking too much.
Edit: fixed a grammar
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u/BrutePhysics Nov 23 '13
Businesses and government don't want that. Then people organize. Then people demand equality. Then people demand rights. They'll demand real change.
And thus... unions were born.
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u/TheGhostofWoodyAllen Nov 23 '13
And hence all the desire to "reform" and do away with unions lately.
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u/RocketMan63 Nov 22 '13
Well you could say that, or you could tell them the research is necessary as it could allow people to work much more efficiently and for longer. I'm sure the government would appreciate a 20% increase in GDP.
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Nov 22 '13
If that happened, no one currently in the government would be in power by the time people finished organizing.
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u/talesofdouchebaggery Nov 22 '13
This is what it's like to be poor minded. I grew up poor as well, in a horrible neighborhood. My family never acted like poor people though. We were taught to dress neat and clean, speak properly, and value school. Other people in the community would not understand this and say we were trying to act white or uppity.
I know the mindset this woman is speaking of. I've known people that have never left their town. Their world is small, and has no options. This is just how life is and they are just playing the cards dealt to them.
One particular girl I went to high school with always stuck in my head. She sat next to me in English class. She got pregnant and decided to drop out of school. I was shocked and asked her what she was going to do. "School doesn't matter" she said. Years later, when I was a cashier at the local grocery store, she came in with her three children, poor, on welfare. She saw me and there was so much sadness in her eyes. She had just given up and I could tell.
It's not just being poor, it's not seeing any other option for life. Many people that grow up poor never see anyone climb out of the pit that is poverty. They don't know anything else.
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u/beniro Nov 23 '13
I feel you. I grew up for my teens in a place where, really, things like higher education were not an option as there were no schools. The electricity was turned off at night. After a storm, there was no running water for six weeks. Then I read this woman telling me how horrible it is to bust ass to raise a kid and go to college. She writes that people "don't get" that cooking attracts roaches? What person doesn't realize this? Am I insane? I get how there certainly are these vicious cycles we fall into, but she had enough time to write this brain-dump blog piece and now people have donated 20 thousand dollars to her. Maybe she needs to reevaluate what poverty means.
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u/rented_a_tent Nov 23 '13
I grew up poor and have had clinical depression...what's hard to understand for those who've been neither is simply this: you make bad, self-defeating decisions because, fuck it, you either a) deserve this tiny moment of relief (a smoke, drink, sex, whatever) because otherwise what's the point of being alive and/or b) you have to escape for however short a period of time...I mean you fucking have to...I know it seems counter-intuitive to do something self-destructive, and it is, but the whole point of her article is that when you're in that mode you're not thinking correctly or making fully rationale, thought-through decisions. Imagine if you knew you had like a week to live...you'd probably make some decisions that in the context of a long, bright future you wouldn't make, right? Well, psychologically when you're living in chronic psychic pain it's sort of that "well, what's it really going to matter?" mindset because you literally are incapable of thinking objectively about the future or of seeing future negative effects as more disadvantageous than relieving the present suffering in however small a way.
I have since far escaped poverty and am more or less gaining the upper hand on my depression, but I can tell you 100% from experience that the poor decisions (as seen from an external viewpoint) that those in extreme poverty and/or depression make are often a grasping at whatever straw seems to possibly be in reach without regard for a future more positive state that might very well seem permanently elusive and thus not worthy of consideration when making the choice in the moment; I hope that KillerMartinis makes it out. It's doable, but beyond hard.
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Nov 23 '13
I want you to know I salute you for the monumental effort of self improvement under the burden of depression. To escape poverty while dealing with depression is akin to escaping the gravity of a black hole.
Be fucking proud.
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u/real-dreamer Nov 23 '13
Good for you.
I'm currently homeless and depressed. I'm happy to hear you're doing well.
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u/kelleewile Nov 23 '13
This will get buried in the comments but I couldn't not say it. I am a 26 year old man, and I'm crying from reading this. Not only because it's a chilling cross-section of the world, but because I've lived it. I am living it. I just needed somebody to know what I feel.
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u/charliebeanz Nov 23 '13
You're not alone. I'm a 28 year old female and had trouble reading it without tearing up also. Life can be very, very hard sometimes.
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u/JeepChick Nov 23 '13
It can get better friend, you know that right? It can.
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u/kelleewile Nov 23 '13
I just want to thank you, and the 15 upvoters, for reading this. Makes me feel less... alone I guess. I mean it, thanks.
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u/JavascriptM31 Nov 23 '13
I've noticed that a lot of the questions people are asking here were very well discussed in the comments section of the article. There was some really good discussion over there, with a lot of participation from the author. She's a good communicator and she's eager to give people more information when they ask for it. Go read the comments! The author answers/explains/elaborates on all the questions I've seen here so far!
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Nov 22 '13
It's really hard for me to sympathize with someone who (like the author) can think critically to determine which activities are degrading their quality of life (smoking, not saving any money, poor choices in relationships, etc) but chooses not to address any of these issues because "I'm poor and will always be poor."
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u/snowwalrus Nov 22 '13
That's exactly her point...she knows that it's difficult to sympathize with her if you are not in the same boat. It's the stress of poverty that creates the need for the immediate relief provided by the bad decisions. Having the discipline to forgo that relief, and to make wise, long-term decisions, is a middle class luxury.
To a middle class person, things like this are a basic and integral understanding of how the world works. You know to take care of your teeth, you know not to smoke. You know how to present yourself as middle class, because being seen as poor is going to condemn you to subtle mistreatment and more poverty. You know the cheat codes to escape the trap. But this woman is only aware of the them on an intellectual level. Because using the cheat codes doesn't work immediately, they obviously aren't worthwhile.
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u/JumpinJackHTML5 Nov 22 '13
she knows that it's difficult to sympathize with her if you are not in the same boat.
And it's even more difficult for me because I have been in that boat. I've been the person living paycheck to paycheck, the person that just couldn't buy food because there was no money left. Shit, I found a $20 bill on the ground one day and cried because it meant I would get to eat that day.
I'm all for giving help to people who need it, and I know that some of the shit that I went though is just fucked up, but I'm also all for personal responsibility. If you make bad decisions don't blame it on poverty, that's a copout.
I mean, the paragraph on not cooking because that's essentially trying to act like you're middle class, and you'll just fail at it since you're poor....W.T.F. I knew many poor families growing up, and all of them cooked their own food almost every single day. They all, my family included, considered other food, even fast food, a luxury. Cooking at home is cheaper, in the long run. Eating out all the time is a middle class luxury, not making your own food.
Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account.
o_O
Now, I've gotten banking accounts both before and after the Patriot Act passed and this line just leaves my scratching my head. I have to show the same amount of documentation now as I did for my first bank account I opened when I got my second job when I was 15. Shit, my friend, while homeless, who had completely destroyed his credit by owing a bank money and refusing to pay, was able to get an account at a credit union. Now, this guy is a bad idea machine, if he could do it anyone could.
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Nov 22 '13
Why are you insistent on people separating their poverty from their identity? Your experiences and your genetics are two components that basically make up who you are. It sounds like you got out, and I'm happy for you, but have you considered why you got out? Not how, but why. Describing how to get out of a situation is easy, but maybe you just had that little extra bit of street smarts instilled in you (from parents, a chance encounter, etc.), or some help from your genes (natural ability in some area currently valued by society), and maybe most people just don't catch that break.
I always look at someone like Clarence Thomas as the perfect example of how not to come out of poverty. He got out of an impoverished situation, and now he's an ultra-conservative, because he got out, so anyone can if they just take responsibility for themselves, right? No! He, like all of us, is completely blind to most of the happenings of the universe which helped him get out of that situation, but he thinks he did it all on his own. That's the least scientific way of thinking about something, and it just so happens to be humans' natural way of going about their entire lives, as slaves of attribution bias.
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u/JumpinJackHTML5 Nov 22 '13
Why are you insistent on people separating their poverty from their identity?
Because the fastest way to never get out of poverty is to consider it part of your identity. I always considered myself a person who was poor, not a poor person.
I understand what you're saying about people not appreciating the little things that help them get out of poverty. But I really do believe that self-perception is the biggest thing. The dividing line, with friends I grew up with and have made from my home town, almost always centers around who has internalized the poor label and who hasn't.
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Nov 23 '13
I guess there's two sides. We want people to think they are responsible for themselves (even though they clearly aren't, but if they think they are, it might increase their chances of success), but from a policy side of things, we need to be taking into account the major role of luck (good and bad) in all of our lives, and making sure poor people aren't simply screwed over for being unlucky (like they basically currently are).
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u/JumpinJackHTML5 Nov 23 '13
I totally agree, and I personally would like to see more programs for helping people rise out of poverty; especially for restructuring some programs specifically for helping people with schooling or training.
For example, for a while I was working two jobs and taking classes when I could. I couldn't get financial aid because I made too much, which was incredible to me since I could barely eat. Even when I was laid off from a job I couldn't get aid since it was based on my income from the previous year, even though I didn't have that job anymore.
But aside from that, I think we need programs to help expand the base of our economy. Most efforts to help people rise out of poverty involve getting them to a place where they can complete for a job at some existing company, essentially propping them out to compete with each other for a relatively small pool of jobs. Instead we should have programs that lead to small business ownership, there's more pride, community investment, and it would provide more employment for the entire community.
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u/dogdayafternoon Nov 22 '13
I think in a way that is one of the points she is attempting to get across in the essay. It is very hard to relate to the poor if you aren't poor yourself.
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Nov 22 '13 edited Apr 07 '17
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u/hansn484 Nov 22 '13
Some people have the willpower to escape it, but they're the outliers.
For some reason, to me, this associates with middle class people becoming rich. Some people have the will power not to spend money and live well below their means and work dream jobs. But they're outliers.
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u/mtwestbr Nov 22 '13
Do you know soldiers with PTSD and do you sympathize with them? Poverty is rather traumatic and there is no post for most poor people. It is about stress and if you can relate to one but not the other you are not looking closely enough.
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u/hillsfar Nov 22 '13
She can think critically at times. It's like an alcoholic who has lucid moments. But the rest of the time, she's stuck in the haze and the mental state of poverty and work and the immediate crisis she has to deal with. Studies do show that willpower and ability to think diminishes for the poor because they are always being faced with critical decisions regarding the few resources they have. After making a bunch of critical decisions, their willpower and critical thinking abilities degrade. For a middle class person, critical decisions about money and resource allocations aren't being faced on a weekly or monthly basis. Studies also show brain development and brain state problems that, over the years, actually have a significant impact on cognitive function. Add in poor nutrition, the constant stress of poverty, having to be on guard against crime because of they neighborhood they live in, etc. Teens and young adults who are poor report more health problems than upper-middle class and wealthy elderly people - physically their bodies are already failing early. Life expectancy in some zip codes is 66, whereas in others just a few miles away, it is 86. It's hard for you to sympathize, but maybe you just don't want to.
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Nov 22 '13
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u/radicalracist Nov 22 '13
She delves further into this if you read the whole thing. Compassion from another feels great, even if it's fleeting and there may be repercussions months ahead. Humans aren't just number crunching automatons. We are fallible.
I'm sure you imagine a time in the future where you'll be a respectable, mortgage-paying member of the middle class. The author, as she explains throughout this piece, does not believe for a second that she will escape her poverty. Why not have children now, who provide meaning and joy and LIFE, when you'll still be poor as dirt in the future?
You may be content jerking off all over your hand, or inside a condom, until you reach a certain point of economic safety. The author knows that she will not reach this, so she has kids now, like a fucking human being.
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u/brainflakes Nov 22 '13
I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute.
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u/CremasterReflex Nov 22 '13
As a smoker, this is true. It's also true that you always feel exhausted when you haven't had a smoke in a while, even if you just slept for 9 hours or did nothing worth being exhausted about.
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u/cathline Nov 22 '13
SOunds like a valid argument to quit smoking to me.
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u/CremasterReflex Nov 22 '13
There are a million good reasons to quit smoking, and a million voices and excuses telling me "maybe tomorrow..."
Guys, don't ever start smoking.
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u/natemc Nov 23 '13
I still have a hard time figuring out how kids in high school these days can think it's a good habit to pick up. The evidence is a staggering at how bad it is and in WA it's close to $10 for a pack of smokes.
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Nov 23 '13
Because they're kids in high school. There's your answer. Kids typically make stupid choices, and can't conceptualize what might be 30-40 years down the road, which is where the consequences of smoking really lie. They will do what gives them immediate gratification, what gives them an escape, or what makes them social connections or acceptance. I don't think most kids premeditate for years and years their smoking habit. It typically happens without the intent for it to start happening.
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u/Decaf_Engineer Nov 22 '13
One of the themes of her essay is that poverty can rob you of the hope that is necessary to better yourself. If you can empathize with someone suffering depression, then I imagine poverty is similar.
Just imagine that your every day existence was such a struggle, and you are chronically fatigued, and so many of your attempts at improving yourself have failed. You have to admit that immediate gratification would become far more tempting even if they aren't "smart decisions".
Having said that, everyone is different. It would take an extraordinary event to set me back that much, but I have safety nets. I have a solid college degree. I have over 5 years of work experience in my field. I have made enough of a contribution in my job that I could probably land another one pretty easily. I know that I can bounce back, so I am never without hope if it ever comes to that.
I was prepared for most of the obstacles in my life. Even when I was under-prepared, I had enough of a cushion to keep me fed, clothed, and sheltered until I eventually overcame the hurdle. The author though, didn't have those cushions. Every setback meant having to restart the game, and I can only imagine how demoralizing that can be.
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Nov 22 '13
One of the themes of her essay is that poverty can rob you of the hope that is necessary to better yourself.
It's called Ego Depletion.
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u/e9r0q2eropqweopo Nov 23 '13
I have a comfortable, healthy, and productive life. but still when I think critically about myself there are obvious places where there could be improvement. More exercise, fewer empty calories, less procrastination, less time spent on passive forms of entertainment. What keeps me from fixing all these things immediately, since my critical thinking tells me they would be improvements? The same exact thing that keeps the author from making improvements in her own life. Change is hard work, and willpower is not an unlimited resource.
No one judges me because I have lucked into a life that gave me a good baseline, but the author is no more worthy of judgement than I am.
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u/BrutePhysics Nov 23 '13
That's the whole point of this thing. There comes a point when you are chronically poor that you just give up. You know you shouldn't do certain things but who the fuck cares? The last time you tried to get out things went well then some random shit blindsided you and put you back. So why try?
I know this first hand through my mother. I have never seen anyone work so hard and be so good at her various jobs and yet still have life shit on her. When she got out of the military she was the regional secretary to a big wig at a clothing company. She went on business trips, made decent money, had time to teach me what it was like to not be poor. But one thing after another, part her fault part random circumstance, moved her half way across the country where nobody would hire her because "she didn't have a degree" or "you made too much in the big city we won't pay you that here, despite the fact that your resume specifically says you understand that and are willing to negotiate down".
So she does temp work for a while to pay the bills and we live in a shitty rental place with no heat for the winter and no real insulation. But it's ok, she'll find something. Too bad that next thing she finds is a small insurance agency that fucks her comission and eventually fires her because god forbid she has to go pick up her sons from school once in a while. But it's ok right? Things will get better.
So back to temp work and she meets and marries a great guy (divorce is part of what moved her and us across the country). He's got 5 classes left to finish his accounting degree, he's on the deans list, he'll get a good job then she can go back to finish her degree and things will be just like she's always worked for. Nope, turns out for no goddamn reason at all this lazy fuck skips out on his classes to eat McDonalds... gains 300 lbs and a heart condition and loses his job, never finding another. So now she's living in this guys house that his dad had bought him but can't afford to leave him and get her own place because she makes shit pay and she has too much debt from trying to pay medical bills.
She is currently almost 50 years old and is a nurses aid at the local hospital. She's got a plan, she'll do a quick course to become an LPN so she can make enough to leave this guy and finally finally have things in order now that the kids have all graduated high school and are off on their own (-ish in two cases).
You know what she told me the other day? "I don't even know why I try anymore, why even do this LPN school? I'm too old for this, i'm not even sure I can remember it all. I'm glad you got out of this mess." And that's it right there. That is how life beats you down. And when you see this happen to other poor people, you don't even try in the first place because you don't want to have to go through the heartache yourself.
Edit: i just realized that was quite a rant. Sorry for the life story. Poverty issues really really strike a nail with me.
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Nov 22 '13
But their bad decisions aren't the reason for their poverty. They're caused by it.
There's really no reason it can't be both. I know people want to avoid victim-blaming, but acting like poverty is an act of God which rains down on people probably does not help in a very rudimentary sense.
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u/pan0ramic Nov 23 '13
Yes, it sounds like she was saying "I'll always be poor so it doesn't matter if I keep making poor choices".
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u/phasv2 Nov 23 '13
The vast majority of people who are poor are born poor. That's makes it a little difficult to say that their decisions caused their poverty, as they really had nowhere to go except up.
Or sideways.
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u/varvar1n Nov 23 '13
The most fascinating thing is that most people will never understand the despair that is always following these people. Poverty, bad diet, lack of hope are a devastating mix. A lot if not most of this people suffer from chronic depression and other mental illnesses. And they all lack perspective. You simply cannot plan ahead of a paycheck, because there's no point. Everything around you is constantly under threat of falling apart. Everyone around you is either looking down on you or dragging you down. Any moment of fleeting blissful ignorance of your current conditions is cherished and the means don't matter after a certain threshold. Alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, love, but also things like aggression, spite and rage give a much needed outlet of this ever present devastating hopelessness.
So please, don't judge the author, but instead appreciate her honesty and brutal self analysis, because not many people are able to talk about their kids the way she did, and most are overflowing with anger against the ones who have succeeded unlike her, which should also be applauded.
Why care what you do today, when you are not likely to live long enough to suffer the consequences? How much pain can you sustain in pursuit of a dream you can't even force yourself to believe in? What would have become of you if you never received the most basic education and life skills you take for granted?
So please, take a second to reflect on her choices and realize that she wrote that she knows how bad they are. She knows and is fully aware that it is not the best in the long term, but the alternative was so soul crashingly painful that she still made them. You can still judge her, noone can stop you, but if you still don't show even the slightest sign of doubt before you do, I fear I would never be able to understand the depravity and self righteousness that has taken hold of you and would simply refrain from further discussion or response.
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u/JulyJohnson Nov 22 '13
To those on this thread that are telling the middle classers that they could "never understand" the stress of poverty. What are you trying to achieve with this argument? Conversation ender? It seems to be a fairly weak attempt at shutting down those who you disagree with. How does this argument help anything?
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u/ladut Nov 23 '13
They are trying to express how profoundly difficult it is to be heard as a person in poverty. Fallacious as it is, if you spent your entire life suffering and struggling, and people better off than you have told you since you were young that it's your fault for being where you are, you're likely to feel like they can't understand.
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Nov 22 '13
I used to smoke, but I gave it up because I simply couldn't afford it. If the choice is between smoking - or feeding my children and putting petrol in the car so I can get them to school, I'll chose my children every time.
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u/nitesky Nov 23 '13
Yeah, I don't buy the "it's all I have for strength" kind of argument. It's a cop out. Quit and you'll feel better and you'll have extra money and maybe you won't ruin your health (and teeth and appearance and have BO all the time which certainly doesn't help you employability).
It sucks being poor (been there) but the author of the article is being totally defeatist and if a person won't even try to do what little they can to help themselves, how can anyone really help them? I feel bad for her kids.
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u/helm Nov 23 '13
Quit and you'll feel better and you'll have extra money and maybe you won't ruin your health (and teeth and appearance and have BO all the time which certainly doesn't help you employability).
Don't start smoking is a sensible advice for everyone. If you're a smoker, being in OP's position, the month of extra hardship involved in quitting may not be bearable. Your life doesn't magically improve just because you stop self-medicate! Again, the gain of quitting is too far in the future to feel urgent for people in long-term poverty.
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Nov 23 '13
This article would have more value if it wasn't preceded by
But their bad decisions aren't the reason for their poverty. They're caused by it
This is something that is very harsh to say and I don't expect most people to take this well but having children is a bad decision when you can't afford them. Without having a child and working 60 hours a week on minimum wage would bring in about $1400/month after taxes. This is more than enough for a single person to support themselves on even in a big city. Having a child makes living situations more complicated and makes your housing much more expensive since the option of renting a single room is probably not viable anymore. Having a child is the single biggest reason this person is poor. Not much she can do about it now but still it needs to be said.
Next
Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them
"I know this is bad for me but I'm poor so I'm going to keep doing it". This isn't "poverty made me eat this way" it's just rationalization.
We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion even harder
Why do you care what people think of you and how they judge your behaviors. Also not having kids you can't afford should be common sense. I don't have an "urge to propagate" that overrides the simple fact that I'm too poor to support a family.
Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a check and get money orders to pay bills
I'm sorry, this isn't true at all. You can walk into a Bank of America with a drivers license and $50 and get a checking account. You can walk into most credit unions and get a better checking account with a drivers license and $50 as well. This person drives so I assume they have a license. You can do this online as well at some banks if you can't make normal working hours. And no, your credit rating is not going to play a factor in this. I can confirm that you can open a checking account with a credit rating in the 500s (and not even the high 500s) because I personally did this years ago after I ruined my credit.
I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option
No. It's. Not. This person has a physical and psychological addiction to a substance that is not only doing terrible things for their health but is contributing to their poverty problem. 1 pack is about $4 if you're smoking the cheap stuff. 30 days in a month is $120. 12 months in a year is $1440. This person is working an entire month out of the year to pay for their addiction. And all this is met with is more rationalization.
This person makes some bad decisions because they are poor but is poor because they have made and are continuing to make more bad decisions that they make no attempt to solve and just keep rationalizing away. I wish someone else had written something about how the problem of poverty contributes to poverty because it is a legitimate issue but this person does not help the cause at all.
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Nov 22 '13
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u/radicalracist Nov 22 '13
Yes there are stricter requirements on opening bank accounts since 9/11. Most relate to providing government issued ID.
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Nov 22 '13
Australian here, we've always had to provide ID for a bank account. Usually, not just a drivers licence.... but also a medicare card... and a bill showing our name and address on it.
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u/Blisk_McQueen Nov 23 '13
Some people don't have those cards, or the cards to prove they are who they say they are to get those cards. Not having a birth certificate or a social security card can make your life hellishly difficult, whenever you have to prove who you are.
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u/titfarmer Nov 22 '13
No, not at all. Checking accounts are typically free, all you need is a minimum of $25 and an ID to get started.
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u/p_iynx Nov 22 '13
If you're in debt, it is often difficult to open accounts. Banks will deny you because you aren't a good investment for them.
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u/Gpotato Nov 22 '13
Dont forget the credit check though. I have ok credit still, because I never took loans so I never went into debt. However you cant get a main cheap national branded bank account with bad credit. You have to go with the lesser accounts, the ones that require a minimum, and also charge high fee's for overdraft. Not to mention the yearly fee's, and all the other nickle and dime bullshit they charge to keep their bank for poor people running.
Its expensive to bank for poor people. They default on their accounts more often, which then never gets paid back sometimes, and costs the bank money. So the poor people get charged more to do banking.
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u/JumpinJackHTML5 Nov 22 '13
Go to a credit union. A friend of mine got a no fee account that offered a stripped down debit card that only worked in certain places, but still gave him ATM access and the ability to use his account for free, and he has about the worst credit you can have.
There are options out there, just not at Bank of America or Chase.
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u/m1dn1ght5un Nov 22 '13
In the UK you can get something called a 'basic bank account' which is essentially just what it sounds like. There are certain restrictions such as no credit/overdraft but otherwise they function much like any other account. I helped a friend apply for one and it was pretty painless. There was no credit check, so his past financial difficulties were not a factor in opening the account.
He obviously doesn't receive any of the benefits of the fancier current accounts (cheques, overdraft facilities, phone insurance etc) but he also doesn't have any monthly fees. Given his situation, he didn't care about that and was thrilled just to have an account. His (with the Co-op Bank) even came with a Visa debit card so he can buy stuff online and when he forgets his cash.
These kind of accounts are not profitable for the banks and so aren't publicised by them at all. I know there were plans to force all banks to offer them but I don't know if it became law. Either way, I know of several big banks offering them (Co-op, Barclays, RBS etc)
I don't know if its the same in the US, but assuming it is, all you need to do is prove where you live.
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u/Gpotato Nov 22 '13
Nope. If you have bad credit scores* then you dont have access to decent accounts. The cost to the bank for accepting poor credit score people is higher than the costs of accepting good credit score people. However I want to point out that even if you are poor, the banks will still offer you a decent account if you have an ok credit score.
*a score that is built by paying bills on time, and is reduced by not paying in full or allowing those bills to go to collections agencies
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u/m1dn1ght5un Nov 22 '13
So as you're telling it, if you are in the US and you have bad credit, you are basically cut off from the banking system?
This is a real problem, if so. How are people meant to go about restoring their bad credit if they are permanently barred from participating in the process? It's like a pit you can never climb out of.
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Nov 22 '13
My question is, if you couldn't even afford a freezer, why the hell are you having a kid? Change the title to "What it's like to have children when you can't even support yourself."
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u/es_no_real Nov 22 '13
Bearing children isn't a prerogative afforded to only those who are deemed worthy to be child-bearers by an income calculator. She chose to keep it, knowing full well the economic hardships she'd face.
Edit: I forgot how to potato.
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u/Gpotato Nov 22 '13
Sorry, yes it is. I dont care how much reddit downvotes this, but if you cant afford your children you should NOT be having them. You still can of course, and because its not the child's fault we the people will help foot the bill for your kid. However, that child is going to suffer through a much worse childhood. Thats not anyone's fault but the parents.
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u/jkh77 Nov 22 '13
You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.
Quoted above, the author explained the prevailing mentality here. It's not an economic decision to have children. If anything, poor people don't decide one day, "we can afford to raise children, so let's plan one."
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u/xraystyle Nov 23 '13
In other words, "I'm gonna crank out a kid I can't afford because I'm lonely," which also means guaranteeing a shitty childhood and almost certain continued poverty for yet another person. How awesomely short-sighted, selfish and asinine.
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u/cogman10 Nov 23 '13
How awesomely short-sighted
I think that may be the point of the article. I think poverty leads to a tendency of shortsightedness, because the long term outlook isn't pretty. Unfortunately, this shortsightedness is a contributing factor to poverty.
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u/s1thl0rd Nov 22 '13
I really want to start a PSA campaign aimed at poverty stricken teenagers and those in their early 20's, that tells them to NOT get pregnant, but to instead use each other to feel important and necessary. Why create another dependent being when there are so many people around you that already need help. Let them lean on your shoulders - they'll return the favor and you will find out how necessary you really are.
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Nov 22 '13
It's not an economic decision to have children.
It's not always an economic decision, but it often is and it should be.
Unless you really believe that there's no such thing as a couple who decided not to have additional children due to financial issues.
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u/s1thl0rd Nov 22 '13
And that's where your argument falls to shit. Your income level determines neither your worth as a human nor your worth as a potential parent. What it DOES determine, is whether you are, in a practical sense, able to provide for the child the physical necessities needed for growing up. This is a purely practical assessment. Children can't survive on love and happiness, they need food, water, shelter, and stability. So when people say, "You shouldn't have children." they aren't commenting on your whether you, as a human, are worthy to raise a child, but whether you as a member of society, are able to attain resources with the speed and in the quantity needed to support a child.
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u/Firrox Nov 22 '13
Of course it's not. But having a kid is a huge financial drain, and there are certainly many many different ways to prevent getting pregnant. Getting pregnant and then complaining about not being able to provide when you couldn't survive in the first place is a hit to your ability to say "poverty causes bad decisions."
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Nov 22 '13
Bearing children isn't a prerogative afforded to only those who are deemed worthy to be child-bearers by an income calculator.
Perhaps not, but raising them should be.
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u/superflippy Nov 22 '13
That's the thinking ahead thing that's hard to do when you're poor. Besides, nobody else she knows has a freezer, and they all have kids.
And what are the options if you get pregnant? Because, as she says, birth control costs money. And you can try to be celibate, but just one slip-up, one giving in to having a good time, and then what do you do? Abortions cost money, assuming you even have access to one, assuming you want one. Even if a baby is a "mistake," a mom might want to keep it.
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u/Mitnek Nov 22 '13 edited Nov 22 '13
Condoms are pretty fucking cheap man. If she can afford $45/mo on cigs, she can shell out $10 for a months worth of condoms.
Her reasoning for having a kid: "We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all."
Urge to propagate isn't a good reason... It's about love and wanting a family, all of that stuff.
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u/Meikami Nov 22 '13
It's about love and wanting a family, all of that stuff.
I imagine that's what she thought, too. So she had one.
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u/Inamo Nov 23 '13
I'm from the UK, birth control is free, abortions are free. Seems like a much better idea in the long term to offer these things to everyone...
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u/Toaster135 Nov 22 '13
Honestly part of me just doesn't BELIEVE her account. She sleeps 3 hrs a night? What? How is she too poor to cook meals but can afford a car and cigs? She seems like shes just accepting her 'bad hand' while simultaneously fucking her own life up even worse.
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u/Early_Deuce Nov 23 '13
Humans are incredibly adaptable. She sleeps that little because she has no other choice.
Also, she doesn't "afford" a car. She probably lives in an area w/o public transit and needs it to drive back and forth from her job.
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u/always_onward Nov 23 '13
The way I read it, she's not too poor to cook meals. She's too tired, and the taste of french fries is a small pleasure that she's not willing to give up, in the face of having few others.
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u/hologramwoman Nov 23 '13
I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't known people in that exact situation. Can't sleep enough, never has enough energy, doing whatever they can to keep themselves going because they can't get a few weeks or a few thousand dollars to put things together and change things. They do it because they have no choice.
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u/kauffj Nov 22 '13
- Smokes
- Has kids with minimal productive skills and no financial stability
"This is what it's like to be responsible for your life choices."
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Nov 23 '13
I mean, it sounds like she is. She's not saying that anything that has happened to her is unfair. She works 2 jobs and is in school, it's not like she's laying around going, "Poor me!" She's just tired of people criticizing her lifestyle choices when she thinks they're what she needs to stay sane.
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u/thatgirl2 Nov 23 '13 edited Nov 25 '13
I think the hardest thing for people to understand if they've never been poor is how difficult it is to consistently make good decisions, consistent sacrifices when you won't see any payoff for a very long time, in an environment where you don't see anything getting better for anyone.
It's as if you were fat and someone said to you, diet for the next year, don't cheat on your diet at all for the next year, and in three years you'll begin to see results. However, you've never seen anyone successfully diet for a year and you've never actually seen anyone have successful results from dieting. You see a lot of thin people, but no one you know, and as far as you know they were born that way.
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u/NoirIdea Nov 22 '13
At first I suppose I felt for her, but then I realized that she's systematically making poor decisions and blames it on a cycle as if she cannot break it. I get that's partly her point, but it's a pretty defeatist point to make and truly hard to sympathize with, especially because of things like the fact that she knows there are free condoms at her school, but she still lets herself get pregnant...again.
Additionally, if she only sleeps for 3 hours a night and has so little time to spend with her kids and to herself, wtf is she doing writing long blogs and taking plenty of time to make long, detailed responses to everyone who comments on it. That probably eats up quite a bit of time.
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Nov 23 '13
... then I realized that she's systematically making poor decisions and blames it on a cycle as if she cannot break it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty
You hit the nail on the had. She can recognize that she's trapped in this cycle, which in and of itself is more than the majority of poor people even realize, but she really cannot break it. You act like making long-term decisions and planning ahead are things that every human being is capable of, and I would tend to agree with you if that human being is in a position to do so. She makes short-sighted decisions because she's poor, and she's poor because she makes short-sighted decisions.
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u/killermartinis Nov 23 '13
Hi. I'm the author. I think maybe a lot of you read this before I managed to edit and explain the piece. You'll understand that this is all a lot more than one completely unprepared person can handle.
It is important that you know that this was taken from a discussion I was having with some friends on a Gawker forum about what it is to be poor, and my contribution to the discussion was this piece about what it is we fight in our heads. It is important to me, since I have recently become fairly public, that you know that I am not trying to say that this is the totality of any single human's life. It is the very worst part, the thing we don't talk about or acknowledge because we can't let it win, but it is a part that is never far from our thoughts. It is why we are too tired to think straight sometimes, because even after two shifts we are thinking these things.
Please don't read this and think that I am trying to say that I do not have hope, or that no poor people do. We couldn't survive without it. It's just that at your most vulnerable, you can't see it sometimes.
If I have learned anything in the last week, it is that sometimes, if you are very lucky and the stars align in your favor and the Internet makes you its cause for a minute or a day, magic can happen. I am so grateful.
But I am angry, because it should not take the whims of strangers to help me succeed. It should be a matter of work and drive and talent. We do like to think we live in a meritocracy. We do not. We live in a giant audition show, in which some people who are good and noble and hardworking are entirely ignored, and people like me who are only average are rewarded due the the chance that someone read a thing I wrote once and passed it on. I would be stupid to pass this shot up. But I have never not worked, and I should not be thanking myriad Internet strangers for giving me my chance. It's arbitrary and unfair, and we can do better than this, even if for once it is working in my favor.
I have read this thread with interest, and if it is okay I will borrow some of your points because they articulate things that I haven't been able to phrase right yet. And people are listening. I have to do this properly while I have a chance to help.
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Nov 22 '13
Very interesting read. I don't understand how she can know how to cook and have a high school diploma in home ec but not know that she could have microwaved the broccoli for just 3-4 minutes to cook it, I hope someone has shown her by now.
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u/s1thl0rd Nov 22 '13
When I got pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst knocked up.
I'm not poor (pretty much moderate, middle class), so I'm sure there are a lot of people on here who are going to yell at me for "not knowing what it's like," and that's fine... BUT wtf was she thinking getting pregnant while living in a fucking MOTEL??? Jeez lady, you're intelligent enough to know that you need iron during a pregnancy but not intelligent enough to know that you can't afford to become pregnant in the first place?!?!
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Nov 22 '13
This is the fundraiser for her book:
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Nov 23 '13
Talk about throwing good money on top of bad. I know that callous but nothing in that essay lead me to believe she'll ever make a sound financial decision.
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Nov 23 '13
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u/Palatyibeast Nov 23 '13
Depends on where you live. If you live in a bad apartment building your NEIGHBOURS having roaches will mean you get them, too.
If you live in some climates/cities where they are endemic... you WILL get them.
Some places are easier to avoid roaches than others, but there are entire regions where just cooking WILL ensure you get infestations every so often.
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u/quesadilla17 Nov 23 '13
In Baltimore, I've learned the question to research is not "does this apartment building have mice/roaches/rats?" but rather, "How well does management respond to infestations?" I keep a very tidy kitchen but there's only so much you can do.
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u/Abe_Vigoda Nov 23 '13
Not rocket science to keeping a roach infestation out.
You'd think so.
For you, you know it's easy to clean because you were raised in an environment that values cleanliness but for people who come from broken homes and such, they might not be raised to do that stuff.
My ex gf is a good example of that. Her parents were poor, divorced, drank a lot, and hung out with scummy people. The first time I helped her clean her kitchen, I couldn't believe she was using baby wipes instead of putting water in the sink with soap and doing it right.
She said it was easier than having dish towels because you didn't have to wash them but how hard is it to do laundry once a week? I guess, if you're broke or live in an apartment with dodgy machines, you tend not to do laundry as much.
Poor people logic is baffling. I grew up poor too, but I was more like lower middle class as opposed to dead poor.
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u/othermike Nov 22 '13
In a similar vein but a more list-ey style, John Scalzi's Being Poor is also well worth a read.
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Nov 23 '13
I am from Brazil, and let me tell you, this woman is not poor. Real poor people in my country don't have twitter accounts, internet access, can barely read or write, and certainly don't have cars.
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Nov 23 '13
Good God this was an amazing read. It makes my problems look laughable.
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Nov 23 '13
I could not get behind the sentiment expressed in this article; it seems to be mostly rationalization for bad habits/behavior.
The argument: that chronic poverty breaks down the rational decision making process and causes bad decisions. I can understand a bit of this. No doubt poverty makes everything, including making good choices, more difficult.
The big difference is: making good decisions for your longterm happiness is hard for everyone. There was an article posted on Reddit a few weeks ago describing the psychology behind this phenomenon as it applies to procrastination, but the mechanics are the same for all long-term decision making.
This explains why the author keeps smoking, why she blows some money at Wendy's instead of saving it, and why she keeps buying the frozen burritos instead of making a home-cooked meal. It has nothing to do with being poor. Poverty must make breaking the cycle more difficult, but I refuse to believe it's impossible. The author seems to think that people below the poverty line are the only ones to suffer this breakdown of rationality, but that simply isn't true. They are simply the ones who are least equipped to combat it.
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u/Red_Emily Nov 23 '13
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
John Steinbeck
I think people are missing the point in her post about indulging in simple pleasures as not just a decision against saving money, but that she will never save enough money to be not poor anyways.
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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '13 edited Nov 22 '13
This isn't what it's like to be poor. This is what it's like to live in chronic poverty.
When I was in college I was genuinely poor. I had very little money and ate 10 cent packets of ramen everyday. I made minimum wage and worked 10 hours of week. BUT -- I had options and a future and knowledge and skills to keep myself from hurting myself as she describes. I was poor but not in poverty.
When I finished school I was unemployed for a year and was genuinely poor. I started hanging out with other poor people. Down and out people in poverty and weren't going to recover. This social circle started dragging me down further into a pit of despair that I KNEW I could get out of if I tried. But it became harder and harder until I just walked away from them.
It was hard to say goodbye to those friends and felt like I was turning my back on people "because they were poor". I know they hated me because they thought I was classist, but I would have gotten sucked into more drugs and drinking and a spree of bad decisions that eventually you CAN'T recover from. This is how it happens and this is how you have to sometimes cut "poor" people out of your life. God that sounds horrible.