Living ‘poor’ in USA and loving it

[The Straight Story]

Living ‘poor’ in USA and loving it

I DON'T consider myself deprived, although I can see why some people might think so. I don't own a laptop computer, television, DVD player, stereo, iPod, videogame system, BlackBerry or many of the other things marketed as necessities.

But I have food, shelter, family, friends, a radio, a bus pass, a library card and the chance to attend a respected university. How could I consider myself 'poor' when so many people have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep and no chance to improve their situations?

Yet there is another reason I hesitate to call myself poor --the cultural baggage associated with the word: Poor people are lazy, stupid, immoral, shameless and incapable of making smart decisions. Poor people are losers; our country loves winners. We want poor people to trade their rags for riches. We want them to embody the American dream. Most of all, we want to believe that poor people are shiftless and depraved and always to blame for their poverty.

Otherwise, we'd have to face the possibility that someday we, too, could wind up on the business end of the bread line.

I'm not naive enough to think that some people don't make bad choices. But I'm not mean-spirited enough to believe that poor people are poor only because they're pathologically incapable of wealth. Lots of them are where they are because of sickness, unemployment, a lack of education, a dearth of opportunities. More than a few of my relatives are among them. I joked to a cousin that our family has been practicing 'how to be poor' all our lives. She agreed. "Poor just is," she said, "and you don't question, 'How?' You just do it."

http://www.dailynews-tsn.com/page.php?id=5896

[babylonsister]

1. Great article and thank you for posting this. Reason rules. Nom! nt

[Jack Sprat]

2. I can identify with that

I don't care about stuff that serves no need and my needs are not great. Good lessons to live by and it makes me more carefree and contented.

[RB TexLa]

3. Poor and rich all depend on who you use for comparison n/t

[razors edge]

4. I spent eight months

homeless in Florida after I left the Marines in 85.

I had a full time job, as a small engine mechanic, paying $5.00/hour, My own tools required of course. Not much call for fighter aircraft mechanics in the real world.

It's amazing what you can pack into the back of a 78 Toyota Celica hatchback while living in a tent at the cheapest available Tampa campground.

Life is better now, but that experience will never leave a person.

I was lucky enough to have a vehicle and resources to, as they say, pick my ass up...

I did it as at 22 years old, and it was fucking hard, I don't think I could do it now at 43. Going to Wendy's for the all you can eat buffet and filling the lid, instead of the plate every day to feed myself and my wife our one meal a day. After a time or two you get used to the looks.

[eridani]

5. Middle class social capital can often stand in for lack of money

You know, teeth, adequately corrected vision, freezers to hold cheapie sale-bought stuff, and most of all connections. Not being intimidated by caseworkers or cops. Having regular bank accounts and being able to shun usurious check-cashing services. I've gone through periods of real financial stress, but middle class social capital always pulled me out of it.

[LaPera]

6. And more and we will see the smugness trip on by.

[hfojvt]

7. except that a poor college student

has a light at the end of the tunnel that an average poor person may not have. It's a little bit like a Muslim student told me that the fasting during Ramadan helped people experience poverty. Sure, you don't eat after that big breakfast and you get hungry, but many hungry people do not have the assurance of another big meal after the sun goes down. That writer is either paying for tuition (a luxury most poor people cannot afford) or getting student loans or some type of grants. In the latter case, the free tuition is another type of income that they get and many poor people do not.

Also, for much of the post, until the link, it seemed like YOU were writing the article, not quoting from an article.

[Greyhound]

8. Don't forget the inverse, the equally wrong preconceptions about wealth.

We also fervently believe that the wealthy are industrious, intelligent, moral, and overall superior, when in fact their wealth is due, almost exclusively, to inheritance and luck. Arbusto_® is a prime example, a life-long failure and blatant idiot, yet he is President.

"Behind every great fortune, is a crime" - Honore de Balzac

[sweetheart]

9. how romantic

i agree, everyone in the US should spend a month homeless to find out what its like,
if they don't already know. But when you're poor and you can't afford that root canal,
can't afford that medical treatment; and as you die younger than your rich neighbor,
ya can't be the least bit upset that the military has stolen your life by sucking
50% of the taxes for our entire lifetimes at the very minimum to involve us all in
war crimes. Not only do we get to be poor, but everyone gets to be poor as we
share it generously.

[formercia]

10. The boys want you to spend.

You don't get rich by buying 'stuff' and 'stuff is what it's all about. Money makes the world go round and by not being successful and spending your money, you're keeping the boys from getting their cut.

You get rich by having some poor sot pay interest on his credit card, buy that gas guzzling SUV that drinks gas from your pump and goes bankrupt so you can forclose on him and own everything he worked so hard to get but really didn't need.

[VP505]

11. Great outlook on life article,

reminds me of a local character who is very proud of the fact that he lives well, below the Federal Poverty Level. He is a 60 yr old openly gay man, anti-war and refuses to pay for "war" with personal income tax, so rather than risk legal problems with the IRS he only allows himself to earn what he needs for rent, food and some bus fare as he prefers to walk. He is obsessed with exercise, nude sunbathing and is also a Vegan, claims to mostly eat raw organic foods, no refined sugar, no processed foods. He believes that people are only entitled to consume what they need for basic survival, he has a Public TV Program where he rants weekly about how the USA is "hogging" the world resources while many of the world's people go without. He walks around town with only shoes and cut-off jeans during the warmer months and can be seen with his sign, protesting (war,nukes,human rights abuse, specifically discrimination of gay people and genocide in Darfur) in front of the local University and at the Gates to the military Base. He is quite a well read character, educated as a Mennonite Pastor, although he no longer affiliates with his church for a variety of reasons he is someone who's self-discipline is to be admired. Kind of one of those characters that add local color to a city.

[greendog]

12. We need to make a distinction between "simplicity" and "poverty".

Simplicity is liberating. Poverty isn't.

Anyone who's spent any time living by the seat of their pants without a backup isn't likely to romanticize poverty. Especially as they get older.

[earth mom]

13. This sounds more like voluntary simplicity than poverty to me.

When you are the working poor, struggling to pay the rent, the electricity, and to have food on the table...you are living on the edge and don't know from one day to the next what's going to topple your house of cards that may put you and your family out on the street. There is hardly any "liberation" in the situation whatsoever, but rather, it's like a prison.

CHOOSING the lifestyle and having NO CHOICE are two very different things.