most Americans are one costly emergency away from abject poverty.
But there's a lot of people who think poverty is the worst thing that can happen to you when its not .
Lmao I live in a 600$ a month apartment and like a few hundred bucks a month for food and everything else ....college students kind of live in poverty lmao..yes its scary to be in poverty if u have a family but for many ppl in their twenties who plan on living by themselves and domt habe a family to support, not having a lot of $$ is not scary .
i'd be more concerned if all I wanted to do was play video games everyday and had no drive for anything else.
Sorry. Scratch that last comment. ^^ Was irrelvant nd came out totally wrong
What I meant to say was that poverty isnt scary for anyone who is content with being poor, ajd that contentent with poverty is scarier than poverty itself.
What I meant to say was that poverty isnt scary for anyone who is content with being poor, ajd that contentent with poverty is scarier than poverty itself.
Yahtzee74, sleeping on the streets, shitting on the side walk and eating out of garbage cans is the same in the US as it is in Cambodia. Difference is, they're a poor non-industrialized nation recovering from war and isolation. What's our excuse?
Nicole, Its relative deprivation. A person gets used to things and deals with them. Doesn't really think about them much. I agree with you about even the middle and even lower upper classes being vulnerable in this country.
I have worked in really bad areas, I know TONS of people living on the streets that the government gives $500+ plus a month. I know one guy that went to jail for 3 months and when he got out had over $3,500 from his government money, claimed he was going to get an apartment but a week later he had spent it all on drugs and alcohol. He would send people in the store 10-15 times a day to get a single beer giving them a $20 and was to drunk to get his change. Poverty in America is different than any other country, we have Section 8 housing, homeless shelters, churches giving out free meals and clothes, free health clinics, government assistance, temp agencies that will literally get anyone a job in 5 min, we have more warehouse jobs paying $15+ an hour with benefits than people wanting them, my old job entry level was $33,000 a year starting and the easiest job in the world, average time anyone stayed was 2 weeks, within a month or 2 you could be making $45,000 because no one stayed. They hired 10-15 people a week per shift around 40 in week on average between the 6 shifts, maybe 2 or 3 stayed. If you want a job you can get one. It's just to easy to live in poverty in this country.
Look at CDL jobs just in KC there are over 500 jobs, nation wide over a 50,000 job shortage, that the average pay is over $40,000. That's 50,000 people that would prefer to live in poverty than get a job that pays well, fyi $42,000 is the average but you can easily make over $60,000 without experience. That's just one industry, lmskilled laborer jobs have an increased demand as well. Just get trained and months later out of poverty.
But let say you are right, man or woman no experience cdl job can only ever make 39,000, never anymore, okay that's still alot more than loving in poverty, which is my point.
KCMember85, The limited social safety nets in this country are not sufficient to address the problem. Other nations are much more efficient at handling it. I'm talking first world nations but I understand people in the US love comparing it to Haiti or Zimbabwe so we can feel better about ourselves.
The homeless don't get $500 a month nation wide. In CA its around $200 and the lower EBT limit if they even qualify. In NV its nothing. For the sake of argument, can you live off of $500 a month? I'd also like to see all these $15 + an hour jobs that can't be filled...
Can you live off of $39,000 a year with say 2 kids and a wife, in Los Angeles and not live in poverty?
If my choice is to live in a city like LA or move somewhere affordable, I move somewhere affordable. I never get why people want to live in NY, LA, San Francisco, if they cant afford to live there and can get jobs in other more affordable cities. I grew up in DC I dint do work for the government or law firms so I moved. I have family and friends there but I can buy a $600,000 house in DC for $150,000 in KC. I made $35,000 in DC right out of high school and couldn't afford to live there, I made $40,000 in KC after a few years and did just fine. I have been here for 10 years now and if I wanted I could move back to DC and do just fine, but why? DC is fun and cheap vacation now, I dont want to deal with the the expensive life style to say I live in DC when I could be just fine making less but having a better life here.
I would imagine not knowing how you're going to feed your kids, pay your light bill, or keep a roof over your head is scarier than someone being told the obvious fact that they are living in poverty.
A friend of mine, single mom, lives well below the poverty line. Every penny she makes she spends on her kids trying to give them the best life she can. she complains a lot about how she gets screwed over, but a lot of it is her fault. signing up for promotional stuff, and then forgetting to cancel 3 months later, and getting billed at the full amount. Late fees, overdrafts are quite common. Lots of ways she could save money, but she'd just spend it on other stuff anyway, so it's not like canceling a $20 monthly membership would ever make it to a bank account. Baby daddy x 2 only pays child support when he's working which seems like almost never.
minus the child support issues, 99% of her financial problems are ultimately her fault, though she'd maybe admit to 10% of it being her fault. Kids certainly complicate the financial equation. I have an extra hundred bucks this month after expenses, what should I do with it, save it, or the kids want to go to a movie, with 2 of their friends and can they get popcorn and candy...$100 gone and bank account back to zero, if not negative.
it's sad to watch, and seems so easy to correct, but this will probably be her life until her kids move out. Hopefully they see the struggles mom went through and try to give their kids a better life than they had.
How would you consider moving from an expensive area struggling to find work to an area you can find a job paying a similar amount of money that will allow you to live a better life not an option.
Are you suggesting that poor Americans act like poor Central Americans fleeing abject poverty and illegally start hopping on chains and marching along highways to red states, living off the charity of strangers along the way?
28 comments
most Americans are one costly emergency away from abject poverty.
But there's a lot of people who think poverty is the worst thing that can happen to you when its not .
Lmao I live in a 600$ a month apartment and like a few hundred bucks a month for food and everything else ....college students kind of live in poverty lmao..yes its scary to be in poverty if u have a family but for many ppl in their twenties who plan on living by themselves and domt habe a family to support, not having a lot of $$ is not scary .
i'd be more concerned if all I wanted to do was play video games everyday and had no drive for anything else.
Middle class is more vulnerble to that but poverty isn't the most scary thing for many people.sorry.
What I meant to say was that poverty isnt scary for anyone who is content with being poor, ajd that contentent with poverty is scarier than poverty itself.
Nicole, Its relative deprivation. A person gets used to things and deals with them. Doesn't really think about them much. I agree with you about even the middle and even lower upper classes being vulnerable in this country.
Um.the avg salary for men is 49k..and that is with experience
For women its 39 k...
Plz don't tell me its easy to make over 50k.
My dad went back to technical school amf makes over 50 but ised to make like 42k forever...even dping trade school work like he doesn't isnt easy.
He works like 11 plus hrs a day
The homeless don't get $500 a month nation wide. In CA its around $200 and the lower EBT limit if they even qualify. In NV its nothing. For the sake of argument, can you live off of $500 a month? I'd also like to see all these $15 + an hour jobs that can't be filled...
Can you live off of $39,000 a year with say 2 kids and a wife, in Los Angeles and not live in poverty?
minus the child support issues, 99% of her financial problems are ultimately her fault, though she'd maybe admit to 10% of it being her fault. Kids certainly complicate the financial equation. I have an extra hundred bucks this month after expenses, what should I do with it, save it, or the kids want to go to a movie, with 2 of their friends and can they get popcorn and candy...$100 gone and bank account back to zero, if not negative.
it's sad to watch, and seems so easy to correct, but this will probably be her life until her kids move out. Hopefully they see the struggles mom went through and try to give their kids a better life than they had.
SJG