I am reading a fantastic book about this called "Nation of Moochers." Seriously, it is shocking how far we have fallen and how clueless so many are. i can't believe what is considered "underprivileged" today. i am only 40 years old and i grew up with a single mom raising 4 of us on a private school teacher's salary and a pittance from my deadbeat dad. my mom never once took any form of government help for the poor (even though we richly qualified). we had a great church and wonderful friends who did jump in on occasion to help us out, but overall my mom worked her butt off, pinched pennies and taught us what it meant to make it without help from the government. i am SO thankful that she did this. some months back i got into a debate with a woman i know who is working on her PhD in social work. she told me "horror stories" about poor Mexican families who have 6 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment. sort of made me laugh that this was her example of poverty in America. It caused me to go back and look at the history of house size in the US. if i am remembering correctly, in 1800, the average house size was about 450 square feet (and families were much bigger on average). by 1900 that had grown to about 800 square feet (probably about the average size of a 2 bedroom apartment today). However, my family was so "poor" (quotes added to make my point that i don't think we were very unfortunate at all!) that we went entire summers without even cranking up the Air Conditioner. i guess today that is considered a "right" but i assure you it wasn't for us and we managed just fine with box fans, open windows and lots of sweat. at any rate, i pointed out that those "poor" Mexicans she was telling me about probably used AC, never worried about where dinner was coming from, had electricity and refrigerators. In short, while our standards have risen, they are fine. I find it funny that poverty is an ever moving target. When you look at the numbers that we use to define "poverty" today it is ridiculous. heck, i am not too far above those numbers myself is my guess.
There doesn't seem to be a government definition of " poverty". there is a numerical definition In fact there are poverty " thresholds" used by the Census Bureau and poverty "guidelines" used by HHS but there is no definition as to what living conditions constitute poverty. It is also interesting to consider the statistic ' 1 out of 6 childen" goes hungry. apparently this figure was derived from a survey. But think about it. people receive WIC for Mothers and the children up to age 6, they get SNAP ( food stamps ) and they get school breakfasts lunches and in most cases an good snack to take home so how do they go hungry? and if so many really are hungry how are so many obese? Are the obese kids stealing schools meals from the skinny kids? What is their parent doing with the food assistance given to them? We need to investigate these hungry children and find out where the money and food we are providing them goes. There should never be a child going hungry and we have so many safety nets in place now, including private food banks this shouldn't happen IF it is happening I think we need to look to the parent first.
so you started this thread to continue a conversation you had with one person? I would add that we all think the next generation has it easier than we did.
I posted about this topic in another thread. Today's " poor" lives richly compared to my parents who grew up in blue collar middle class families in the 1950s. My parents both lived in two bedroom homes where the boy(s) lived in the basement, had one car, one house phone, one car garage, no AC, took trips to the state lake each summer, never flew on a plane, worked full time in the summers and part time during the year in order to buy some of what they wanted that ma and pa couldn't afford, rarely went out to eat...and no government help. Today's poor has EVERYTHING at their disposal
some comments... People today don't know how to live in their imagination and 'make do' with what they have. Back during my UT days I remember my girl friend accusing me of being able to sit in the floor and play with a paper clip. I do remember when we'd drive to visit and stay over at her parents ... up in East Texas off I-20 east of Dallas ... I took my extra clothes in a brown paper grocery bag. I recently reminded my wife about my first school year at UT in 1960. Follow this.... tuition, $50 plus fees... came in under $200 Room on 22nd street, $21 / month Board, 11 meals a week, over by old intramural field, $38 Total expenses for whole school year came in around $1,200 Gas was 25 cents a gallon, about 35 or so on the lake. Lucky Strikes... what, 20 cents a pack? So what happened? On August 15, 1971, President Nixon took the dollar off the Gold Standard. And along with the Fed's ability to print money, the rest is history. Only Ron Paul and a handful of others understand it.
Hu, Garage apts in west campus or Hyde Park for far less than $100 a month. 3 quarts of Old Milwaukee or Lone Star (I know, crappy beer) at the Posse West across from Cain and Abel's for a dollar. Pitchers of beer at the Armadillo for a buck fifty, concerts for 2 or 3 bucks. The best smoke in Texas $10 a lid.....or so they say.......
point is we were just as spoiled to our previous generation as the ones after us are to us. there are different levels of poverty and I just do not find one person's second hand comment to be of any significance or resembling the struggles that those in poverty today actually endure.
so hornpharmd, are you saying you agree with the estimates that 50 million live in poverty in the US? if so, what is YOUR definition of poverty? Where is all this happening? I live in a country with real poverty and having spent a lot of time around it for the past year, i am even more shocked at what we call "poverty" in the states. It's fine to want more for our lowest class (of which I have spent a good part of my life being) but to call it poverty and talk about them like they are so downtrodden and held back does damage to the dialogue because it cheapens actual poverty. I am not saying there is not some real poverty in the US, but it is just a fraction of the amount we are told.
well sure we should be thankful! having said that, my primary point is not that we should be thankful, it is that we should not call something "poverty" that is not poverty. poverty shouldn't be defined as having less than someone else. it should be defined by lack of basic resources. we tend to define it as a lack of "plenty" rather than a lack of basic resources. many people who are called "poor" in America, live better than royalty did 500 years ago. do we want better for them? sure! but let's stop calling it poverty. it cheapens real poverty around the world.
I'd be willing to make a bet that we have the highest obesity rate of people below the "poverty line" in the world. That in itself should tell us something.
A couple of points. Having a cell phone should mean you are not in poverty. Look at the cars on the road; until a few decades ago poor people did not drive newer cars. I am constantly surprised at the newer model cars and expensive ones that I see today.
mop makes an important point "poverty shouldn't be defined as having less than someone else" We know what is being called living in poverty does not result in starvation right now all the gov't is using is financial guidelines. we also know that our safety nets provide housing, medical, food and even cell phones. Poverty?
This is an interesting conversation that tap dances around the real political discussion, which is how much government largess should be deployed in the name of "fairness" and "compassion" to remedy our current version of poverty. How long should unemployment benefits last? How large should the food stamp disbursements be? I think these are all very legitimate conversations but there was an unfortunate explosion of hyperbole and emotional grievance the last few years any time someone questioned the increasing number of benefits being ladeled out by our federal government.
