Shaming the poor ignores the reality of poverty

[gollygee]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/10/30/shaming-poor-ignores-reality-poverty/OK7lKw6nHZIZptM00aB0GO/story.html

Contrary to the criticism that the poor are just lazy, Edin and Shaefer found people who don’t want a government handout. They just wanted to work. And many do.

“Yet even when working full time, these jobs often fail to lift a family above the poverty line,” the authors write.

The narratives give context to the complexity of how people end up living on almost nothing. They often come from situations of sexual or physical abuse, addiction, or parental abandonment. And yes, their stories are also rife with bad decisions that keep them down.

Nonetheless, Edin and Shaefer provide a perspective that should stop us from telling poor folks that all they have to do is pull themselves up by their bootstraps. What if you don’t even have a boot?

[Kalidurga]

1. And yes, their stories are also rife with bad decisions that keep them down.

It's funny though, but in that way that isn't really funny. The so called bad decisions let me guess, drug use, getting pregnant at a youngish age, and not going to some kind of trade school or college straight away out of high school? Those decisions the ones that rich and middle class people make that don't keep them down?

I am not going to pretend that poor people can't make bad decisions. I am going to contend it's not the decision that hurts as much as not having a cushion to fall back on and that society judges poor people much more harshly than it judges middle class people that do the same thing. In fact a lot of rich people won't be judged as being morally bankrupt at all if they do some drugs, have an affair and get pregnant or even delay higher education. It's only the poor that get the label of being lazy and irresponsible for those things.

I should say I do love this excerpt and think it looks like a good read, I just hate how some people are judged differently just because they aren't at a certain income level.

[gollygee]

2. You're absolutely right

There is no group that is free from making bad decisions. Bad decisions keep people who are all ready poor from escaping poverty. Bad decisions don't always put people into poverty who didn't start out there, and the more money people start out with, the less likely bad decisions will cause them to live in poverty.

[passiveporcupine]

9. Especially when their bad decisions

would put them in jail if they did not come from money...but if they do, it's just bought off...excused away. "Suffers from affluence"

[Igel]

4. It's both.

That's the problem with binary thinking: "It has to be one or the other."

A lot of poor kids I know make piss-poor decisions. Do they get a job for 30 hours a week or one that is for 15, but then they don't have the time or energy for school. Moreover, they see the money they get now and present money is always worth more than future money. This turns up time and time again in studies--$1 today is worth more than $10 next week, as far as most people are concerned. (We can debate whether it's because of trust issues in the permanence of the rules or of the promise or whether it's simply biasing the present over the future, or whether there's a difference.)

It starts early, in middle school or before.

Identity gets mixed in. If most of your peers do X, do you do X and not get counted as one of those in whose group you feel you belong or not? It works in weird ways, too: Orchestra in middle school can be color-blind, but at some point quickly it doesn't reflect some kids' cultures. But, seriously--there aren't many black, white, or Latino kids with N. German Baroque culture, now are there? This process repeats all through middle and high school, to the point that I've had kids pretend to be stupid or uninterested in stuff. "So-and-so got an A!" might be his last in my class.

Same with drugs, dress, dating.

Resilience is the word you probably want. Some is a kind of social safety net that families provide. Poor families have small ones. Middle class families have larger ones. There's also a difference in the kind of financial safety net that's available, and while it's tempting to say they're the same because there's overlap there isn't. Some is social skills, some's just knowing people who know people. A lot of it is knowing the system, but that becomes a redundant statement.

Resilience is also part training. A lot of poor people are already set to believe that the world's against them. This closes their eyes to opportunities they might have. "Why should I even apply to that college? They don't want people like me!" How do they know? Their cousin said so, after dropping out of school. He played CYA and provided a rationalization for the easy way out, one that made sense given what the kid already believed. Where did he get his beliefs? Media, family, and friends. People and things he trusted. But lack of resilience means that any set-back is not only more likely to be permanent, but is taken to be permanent with little resistance (unless it's one that others have modelled overcoming).

Part of the harsher judgment is the halo effect. If somebody has a good trait, you minimize bad things they do to a certain extent. if they have a bad trait, what bad things they do are worsened--and good things they do are minimized. Group affiliation brings with it an instant positive halo effect. It's not just income level. It's also race, ethnicity, and anything else that can be taken as identifying a group. Just look at any discussion involving race if you want to see it in spades.

[killbotfactory]

5. And drug and alcohol abuse are often a way to cope with the abusive conditions the poor live in

Poor people are basically experiencing traumatic economic circumstances. When you scrimp and save and still have to juggle bills and get fees tacked onto everything, and have bill collectors harassing you every month it's hard to not justify a few bucks a day on the cheapest strongest nastiest beer you can find. Even if you saved those few bucks you'll never get ahead. Extra money gets spent as soon as you get it because if you are responsible and save, sooner or later you'll be nickel and dimed out of it anyway, and you won't be any better off financially in the long run.

Hard work and frugality are not a substitute for a decent living wage.

[Kalidurga]

6. That is so true.

I have seen poor people who save and those who don't over a long period of time the savers aren't a lot better off. They might have a newer tv or something like that, but basically they have't made their lives a whole lot better than the non savers.

[Recursion]

7. Poverty pushes bad decisions on you

Look at those predatory check cashing places. Well, if you don't have a bank account, you're stuck with them and the 8% cut they take.

Poor people make lots of bad decisions because the alternatives are even worse decisions.

There's also a mindset it gives you, that money is perishable. It's going to be hoovered up one way or another by the "sub-prime banking" cartel, so you should probably spend it now so you'll at least have the stuff, which you can then sell later. When I was off the grid I would buy a cheap smartphone with a prepaid plan (those, incidentally, are actually a pretty good deal, just about the only thing specifically marketed to poor people that is), use it for whatever odd jobs I was getting, and sell it on Craigslist if I needed money. It was a useful tool for a while but also a store of value if I needed cash later.

That's a horrible decision from a "normal" standpoint, but it was the best I could manage at the time.

[Kalidurga]

8. Yes I know this well.

There was a time I was buying a tv to watch now and I would sell it later if food money was tight. I would buy books and sell those later too usually for a very small profit. My SO did the same thing with cars he would get one for 50 bucks sell it for 200. We also played pay this bill this month, pay another bill next month, so we were never more than two months behind and in danger of getting our heat or phone (landline it was a long long time ago), and check cashing fees are outrageous, but bank fees are worse if you have a disaster and one of those is always around the corner. Yeah good times and now I am older and pretty much back in the same spot because of my health.

[Hydra]

3. Shaming the poor is a national pastime

The problem is that our system REQUIRES poor people for various reasons. It's not a strange condition to find yourself in, it's a feature.

For some the feature becomes lifelong.

I have a problem with a system that requires people to abuse.

[dlk]

10. The Distraction of Blaming the Poor

Blaming the poor for their situation is not only cruel, it is a distraction from taking responsibility for the problem and finding solutions. It's an effective tool for doing nothing.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, gollygee.

[Phlem]

12. K&R! For exposure!

[Yupster]

13. I was talking to a volunteer from St Vincent DePaul Society

which is a catholic charity.

They pay people's electric bills or rent on a short-term basis.

I asked him what he sees in the people he helps.

He said it was overwhelmingly bad sexual decisions. People have babies too young before they are educated with partners who are unwilling or unable to help them.

That was his views from the trenches.

[jtuck004]

14. Shaming the poor deflects the responsibility from those in office. They should be ashamed.

Their bad decisions moved tens of millions into poverty, and this administration has decided to leave them there, so as to enrich their bank$ter/donors.

(It's detailed in Timothy "Killer" Geithner's book "StressTest", and laughed at by voters here. Even though it's not really funny, if they thought about it.

Yes, a bad decision by Joe may cost him his truck. But the decisions by this and other administrations have cost the lives and spirits of tens of millions of us.

We should be shaming whoever let them do that.

[Live and Learn]

16. +1 nt

[stage left]

18. +1

[forest444]

15. But it makes the best political cudgel doesn't it!

And not just here in the U.S. either. If you've followed the upcoming runoff election in Argentina at all, basically what you have is a corrupt, right-wing, neocon endorsed, laissez-faire racist (Macri) that may well be swept into office over that single issue: middle-class resentment over welfare programs for the (mostly-dark skinned) underclass.

In other words, a lot of voters are perfectly willing to plunge the country back into this:



Just to deprive the poor of their miserable $100-a-month welfare checks.

Qué será.

[XemaSab]

17. If you come from a poor family and you don't have a degree

That doesn't make you worse than anyone else.

It makes you poor.

The kid next door to me, his mom died and his dad's a wastrel.

He doesn't have a car. He lives with his grandma.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's never once been to San Francisco, which is 170 miles away.

He's 20 and he's working at Carl's Jr.

His friends are in the same boat, and their idea of a good time is probably getting drunk and smoking weed because it's cheap. There might be meth or something else involved, because why not?

Smart kid, but what are his options? What's his future?

Unless a sack of money falls out of the sky, I'll tell you what his future is:

Being poor.

[stage left]

19. K&R

[DFW]

20. The Republican view:

"If you're rich, you deserve it. If you're poor, you deserve it."

That should NEVER be our view.

[treestar]

21. I hate it when middle class people do that

Like they can't feel good about themselves without someone else to put down.

[ladyVet]

22. Plenty enough people on DU do it. nt