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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe poor "do ok". (for anyone who volunteers or works in human services)
I'm sorry but this is a bit of a rant.
Just a little while ago in a discussion on this board I was told that "the poor in fact do ok".
I took a step back (mentally) and a deep breath. Sometimes I'm guilty of going overboard when I read something offensive on the internet, something I want to change (e-anger issues)
I just can't help but wonder how sheltered and protected some of us are to the hardships going on in our very own country right now. Every time a politician is on TV they're talking about the "middle class" nothing ever about the poor or the lower middle class. Any other DU'ers that happen to work one on one with families, volunteer at shelters, soup kitchens, Catholic social services, etc, know that there is a large contingent of people in this country who are not "doing ok". Sure you can say "well look at these people in this third world country they certainly have it better than them", sure...fine, but that's not the point. Take some time out of your schedule to unload a truck or serve food and talk to people. Listen to the stories about how they're missing all their teeth because they couldn't afford dental care, listen to stories from kids about how they go to bed hungry and listen to stories about how their mom or dad died in their 40's from a chronic illness that could have easily been managed had they had access to health care.
A lot of these people work full time jobs, some barely get by each month wondering if they should pay the rent or pay for food. This isn't as rare as some people would like to think in America, its real, and its not "ok".
I'm sorry to use "emotion" as a technique to get my point across, but it's an emotional issue.
Peace/Love.
/end rant.
P.S. 17 million children will go to bed hungry tonight in the United States. I find that offensive, I hope you do to.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)People need to be made aware of what's happening to our fellow citizens.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)cvoogt
(949 posts)needs to talk to real people going through it. Even if the poor in the West fare slightly better than those elsewhere, that is no excuse for not caring or doing something about poverty right in our own neighborhoods and our country. I think that is where RWers and progressives diverge. A progressive might recognize or believe poverty to be more extreme outside the US, but doesn't dream of using that as some excuse to say poverty in the US is remotely OK. A RWer might proclaim the US to be the greatest country on earth / land of opportunity. I agree on it being a land of opportunity but think a country that doesn't take care of its poor doesn't deserve to be called great let alone greatest. So much of the right seems to believe the poor are just lazy and should work harder. I came across that attitude on some CNN story's comments the other day.. dude was proposing a flat 30k /yr tax and jailing anyone who couldn't pay it... what dense people there are out there, who can't even imagine anyone earning less than 30k. Some people are so clueless.
love_katz
(2,562 posts)A 30k per year tax...that would rob me of ALL of my before-tax income, and leave me in debt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am speechless before such arrogance and ignorance. I would be ever so please to earn 30k per year.
Wow. Just, freaking wow. I have been down so long, I can't even imagine what it would be like to be ABLE TO AFFORD to pay a flat 30k in taxes per year, and still have money to live on.
And just for the record, I work as close to full time as I can get. My employer, like many, deliberately keeps our working hours at less than 40 per week, while the executives and office staff all get 40+.
cvoogt
(949 posts)is maybe those folks aren't clueless, but just cruel / callous.
Warpy
(110,913 posts)I might have looked like I was doing OK when my illness flared up severely, pushing me back into poverty, but I wasn't. I was clean and clothed but I was neither fed well nor cared for adequately.
People never saw me because I couldn't afford gas to go anywhere.
Rex
(65,616 posts)in some of these posters. They don't give two shits about the poor.
justhanginon
(3,287 posts)Until they're poor and the harsh reality becomes the life they could not relate to.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)a Wall St agenda, which includes privatizing SS eventually. They knew this would be hard, but no one can ever accuse them of letting that get in their way.
Democrats need to mobilize now and remove this 'third party' from our own party before it's too late and they have accomplished their goal of transforming this party completely.
Cal Carpenter
(4,959 posts)Despite the statistics, despite the anecdotes, there are still some who insist that there is a functioning 'safety net' in this country. That the truly poor and destitute, and even the working poor, have access to enough 'help' to get by (as long as they make 'good decisions', of course).
But that 'net' is really just a few strands of ratty old rope. Especially when compared with the rest of the world. Especially when considered in light of huge corporate profits, mass accumulation of wealth and obscene growth in inequality.
We need systemic change to deal with this systemic problem.
And I will second this:
Support your local hunger relief program!! Most of them are pretty darn good programs.
And read this:
http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/hunger-study-2010.aspx
and this:
http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/child-food-insecurity-econ-impact.aspx
I think these hunger studies that Feeding America does are very, very helpful. They give us important insight into the REAL CONDITIONS in which people live. Not just some number of theoretical people a piece of legislation will allegedly help based on some absurd definition of 'poverty', but what the real day-to-day realities are for people who basically have no voice and are invisible to far too many of their neighbors.
Wow, guess I really piggy-backed on your rant. I share your emotion on this. I was deeply involved in this kind of work for quite a few years. Still volunteer sometimes.
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)I agree with you 100%.
timdog44
(1,388 posts)ForgoTheConsequence first, but I wanted to thank you for yours also. Piggy-backing is good for the added information on how to help those less fortunate. I find it a sin that hunger is a word we even have to mention in America. And like I said to ForgoTheConsequence, I feel guilty for not doing more. I have bookmarked your sites for further perusal and action. Thanks.
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)Thanks for this post.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Half of the San Diego county population, that is 1.5 million, are food insecure.
So no, we are not ok, nor are people doing ok.
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)It really helps people put things in perspective.
timdog44
(1,388 posts)And don't excuse emotion. It is a sign of being invested in what you believe. It is good to see people like you. You make me ashamed for not doing more than I do. And guilty for as good as I have it. I will do better. Tim Smith
Boomerproud
(7,890 posts)If there were more people that "got "it this wouldn't be such a big problem. It's so I can barely get through watching the news anymore. I'm sick of conservatives clucking their tongues about liberal "emotions" and corporate CEOs complaining how stooopid the American worker is. For three decades they let schools rot and look at the consequences! Their fault-not ours.
spinbaby
(15,073 posts)...all those slackers and illegals are raking in free government goodies and living high on the hog.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)prole_for_peace
(2,064 posts)what more could they need?
Skittles
(152,967 posts)YES INDEED
Cleita
(75,480 posts)bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)THIS IS A RICH COUNTRY! THERE SHOULD BE NO "POOR!"
I am not sure I've ever typed a sentence all in caps on DU before ... but this issue is very important and I, too, am sometimes not "calm" about those who are both ignorant of the actual conditions people are living in and dealing with and who are, to boot, profoundly un-progressive in any sense of the word.
namaste,
b&r
wickerwoman
(5,662 posts)Our entire economy is built around creating want where there doesn't need to be any on the assumption that we have infinite resources to burn through subsidising useless shit for the rich.
One of my facebook buddies is always posting interesting building and architectural designs and the other day posted this picture:
of a $360 million dollar penthouse in Monaco with a fucking waterslide on the roof.
It's not a question of the poor "doing OK". As you say, it's a question of there being any poor when there are people doing so OK, they can waste money on crap like this.
KitSileya
(4,035 posts)Honestly, I get heart palpitations just looking at the picture. Everyone knows that somehow, at some time, someone is going to manage to slip over the side of that slide.
And it is an obscene picture of wealth in a world where we're backsliding on redistributing it - for some years there, it seemed like we were going the right way, but not anymore.
lbrtbell
(2,389 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)Thank you for trying to educate them, so many here are comfortable and this place of comfort has made them cold to the reality that is daily life for a great many people.
They make many assumptions from ivory towers of middle class or wealth with little awareness it would seem of those that are lower middle class (quickly falling into poverty even tho they work harder with multiple McJobs than they did when even lower middle class didn't mean poverty).
As to the poor - they seem completely oblivious to them and convince themselves that welfare reform didn't harm anybody, it did and does to this day I assure you, it was not a pragmatic solution to a "welfare queen" problem handled well because a Democrat helped to all but destroy it. It will not be a brave pragmatic solution to "earned benefit queens" as they collude yet again with republicans to begin to shred these last vestiges of the new deal and great society.
They cause the poor to become poorer still while applauding the politicians responsible. Their applause and support are what make them just as responsible as their political idols.
They think this is a game, or a sport with my team and their team, not realizing or caring that the ball that is tossed around in this sport is a child that only gets to eat at school and will soon lose that food, or the ball is an elderly widow or widower that can only afford to take their medicine every other day or maybe will freeze to death in a small flat during a winter they could not pay their gas bill (this happens ALREADY).
There are many other balls tossed around for their sport and amusement, too many to list them all here, some are dead or dying, some are living under a tarp in a vacant lot hoping the cops don't roust them or the suburban teanagers don't decide to slum it and amuse themselves by assaulting them while laughing and taunting the "bum" for cell phone footage. Some of these comfortable people give advice to "the poor that in fact do ok". One of them suggested dumpster diving as a viable and reasonable option.
Too many of them applaud policies and politicians that make all these problems worse, they need to get it through their heads, many are dying and more will die of poverty, this is no game and the poor aren't doing ok, they are doing worse all the time with less help available all the time.
I is not serious, pragmatic, or brave to cause more people to suffer and die in poverty because it is referred to flippantly as "eating peas" or "being adult". It was not pragmatic even when the ones shipping away the jobs or destroying welfare "feel you pain". It never was bravery, but cowardice, it is not balanced when an increasing number of people fall into poverty and die while others become wealthier at an exponential rate.
The punditry, politicians, and comfortable may think it is a fun sport full of serious brave adults that make hard decisions.
Cowards all really, making easy decisions, easy because their decisions don't harm them, but rather the poor they barely acknowledge exist for the profit of the wealthy.
Sometimes they even have the gaul to pat themselves on the back and reassure each other "the poor in fact do ok".
ForgoTheConsequence - It is a good thing I read about that comment here or I wouldn't have been able to take a step back or a deep breath, I would have lost my temper, wouldn't be the first time for me on this board.
love_katz
(2,562 posts)Word. Absolutely all of what you said.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
jopacaco
(133 posts)I am a teacher in rural Maine. The teachers in my school bring in non-perishable food for the nurse to fill backpacks to send home with many of the students over vacations so that they will be able to eat something. Boxes of cereal, pasta, canned foods - stuff that is inexpensive but filling and (somewhat) nutritious.
My school has a 90% free and reduced lunch count (an indicator of poverty). We used to have a large shoe manufacturing company that employed many in the town. When that went south, the decline began. These families heat their homes during the cold Maine winters with portable heaters (dangerous) and kitchen ovens propped open (even more dangerous). We have students who haven't had a pair of shoes or boots or coat that actually fits (they buy their thrift shop/yard sale clothes large so they can wear them longer) in as long as they can remember. Sadly, I could go on.
This is not the way that it should be in America.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Your story reminds me so much of the town we have started our small business in. Just decimated when the major factory moved out. So many middle-to-upper class progressives have no idea how bad it is and so can dismiss social programs such as SS as "unimportant."
I'm so glad to see someone like Elizabeth Warren going after the banks. That's her field of expertise and she's great at it. But I wish we also had a champion for economic justice, someone who screamed on tv every night asking "Where are the jobs?" Why is the administration pushing yet another free trade agreement and no jobs program? Where are the tariffs and tax incentives for hiring American workers? Without jobs, it is inevitable that more people will slide into poverty.
And everyone is right, it shouldn't be like this. Someone said, that millionaires were a sign of a booming economy but billionaires are a sign of decay. Hoarding all that wealth means it's not flowing through the economy and doing nobody good. How anyone can feel good about obscene luxuries when people are starving is just beyond me.
Major Nikon
(36,814 posts)SammyWinstonJack
(44,129 posts)RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)Just like the rich want it to.
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)I was talking with man at school the other day visiting from Denmark and he commented that the infrastructure in my town looked 3rd World. Pot holes, crumbling sidewalks, etc. Our lack of investment in our own people is going to bite us in the ass, it already has.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)wars but God forbid a penny to be spent here at home.
Absolutely amazing times we are witnessing and at the end of the day, those that thought they were so wise and rich...will discover otherwise.
The history books are filled with our pending fate.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)It's a very small fraction of what we give to large corporations who send money offshore to tax havens.
Why do you folks harp on foreign aid, when the real culprit is big business?
PD Turk
(1,289 posts)This kind of mindset is the result of decades of right wing propaganda going back past Reagan, but the "our poor have it too good" meme really kicked into high gear during St Ronnie's reign. It's an extension of the "welfare queen" bullshit that was bandied about and it has seeped into the collective consciousness in this country until it's not even questioned by very may people anymore.
It is of course bullshit, it's reprehensible and it's high time this myth was roundly discredited in a very loud and very public way. You keep ranting and raving, you're doing all the good!
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)Everyday for the last week I've turned on the news to see that the DOW is at an all time high, which is fantastic I guess, I don't know.
Something doesn't seem right when certain people are making record profits and record numbers are on (insufficient) public assistance.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)OneGrassRoot
(22,917 posts)It's currently only available on HBO, but I'm hoping via screenings and eventual free DVD outreach campaigns that it will be more widely seen.
It IS appalling when anyone who is allegedly part of this community says such ignorant things.
Makes me nauseated.
Utopian Leftist
(534 posts)I went to Tijuana last week for an emergency root canal on an abscessed tooth.
There is NOTHING in California to help adults who have tooth problems. Nothing. I looked everywhere. The root canal and crown will be over $500, which I have no idea how I will pay, as I already live below the poverty level on Social Security. If I go to an emergency room, Medicare will pull the tooth for free. Gee, how kind. I'd rather save the tooth because you know, I MIGHT NEED IT TO FUCKING EAT WITH!
Worse yet, even if I end up toothless, I know there are millions of people right here in this country who have it worse than I do.
Yes, we are closer to a third-world country than many realize.
locks
(2,012 posts)Thanks for the post. I am tired, too, of hearing, even from Democrats "I worked hard for everything I have." It's not that you didn't; it's that so many work so hard for so long and have so little. Also, you probably were born into a family who cared about you, you probably have a good education provided by all our taxes, and you found work that paid a living wage and enough benefits for you to live comfortably. So many have never had those benefits and are now trying to live on what low-wage work or two and three jobs pay. Home health aides were paid about $6 an hour with few benefits in 1975; they now are paid about $8 an hour with few benefits and retire after many years of hard work. They may receive Social Security which is below the poverty level and does not pay for dental care, eye care, hearing aids. What kind of life do the poor have in the richest country on earth?
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)I heard a young person at a family gathering make one of those throwaway snarks about seeing a person receiving aid wearing nice shoes (!) or carrying a cell phone not long ago. I was so sad and angry at the same time I had to swallow and take a breath to not verbally take her head off right there.
The new rightwing example seems to be that anyone with a refrigerator doesn't have it that bad. A refrigerator. Because, you know, nothing short of a filthy hut perched on an open sewer is real poverty, or something.
The poor in America do not have it too good. Hell, the middle class does not have it too good. The people making up these memes from the comfort of their gold-plated mansions have it too good. They're the only ones, and yet somehow half the country is nodding with their batshit crazy propaganda to the contrary.
Beautiful post.
adamuu
(2,099 posts)Now imagine having to make that decision every day.
indepat
(20,899 posts)growth in corporate profits, with a goodly bit of profit growth coming at the expense of squeezing labor. You see, America was founded upon the principle that government exists almost solely for the purpose of aiding and abetting vulture capitalization to run amok, free of any governmental interference or regulation. This is so simple to see, it's easy.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)ForgoTheConsequence
(4,846 posts)That's a cute way to look at it though.
A 10 year old with clothes that don't fit and no food doesn't have class aspirations he/she is just trying to get by until the next day. Someone with a mental disability long forgotten by the system doesn't necessarily have aspirations of 3 bedroom home in the suburbs with DVR and a new SUV, they just long for a comfortable existence and someone to take the time to treat them like a person.
Poor is real, poverty is real.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)That's because they know they're idiots and they managed to do it.
valerief
(53,235 posts)love_katz
(2,562 posts)for the OP and every single reply here. All of you get it.
99Forever
(14,524 posts)Any jerk insensitive enough to say that sort of crap isn't a Democrat in any world I live in.
hue
(4,949 posts)southernyankeebelle
(11,304 posts)covering these kinds of issues like years ago and that's because corporations own the media. I remember when the priests, nuns and other pastors and communities marching in the streets to find afordable housing and help people get health issues and food issues taken care of. Now the priests and pastors are to busy worrying about abortions and gays and guns. I have to say I expected more from Obama and Biden and even the dems fighting for the working poor. Now all they do is lip service. I remember when cameras were put in poor neighborhoods to show where the help is needed. Now no so much. Your right that people are going to bed hunger.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth