16 million Americans

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo cites a statistic that knocked me back on my heels:

Sixteen million Americans live in "severe poverty," defined as individuals making less than $5,080 annually and families of four making less than $9,903.

DK links to this Bradford Plumer post which in turn links back to Tony Pugh of McClatchy's article, "U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty." Here's Pugh:

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975. ...

The Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that, in a given month, only 10 percent of severely poor Americans received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in 2003 - the latest year available - and that only 36 percent received food stamps.

Try to imagine how you might make ends meet on $5,080 a year. That's $424 a month for rent, food, health care, clothing, utilities, transportation. On $424 a month, the ends cannot be made to meet. Try to imagine how you might make ends meet raising two children on $9,903 a year. That's about $825 a month. The ends cannot be made to meet.

There are 16 million Americans living like this.

That's the combined population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Plumer points to the Bush administration's most notable response to this situation: eliminating the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation. Ignoring these 16 million Americans is, for Bush, a matter of official policy.

(Edit: Not the point, of course, but I fixed the comparative arithmetic.)

Comments

[Ray Baxter]

Bush interprets "The poor will be with you always," as a command.

[KnightHawk]

Heh. Makes sense to me. My wife's disabled and can't work--between caring for her and working every hour I can spare from making sure she doesn't die on me, I make like $10k a year. Even with assistance, our ends rarely meet.

There are times of the day I wish *I* could ignore these problems. In a way, I can understand how someone who's responsible, in part, for 16million and rising Americans being in this position would make it policy to pretend it doesn't exist, if they're as bankrupt of morals as these people have proven themselves to be. It's an overwhelming problem for someone who honestly wishes to fix it, and stands to lose nothing by finding measures to hike wages, benefits, and job availibitly, much less men who stand to lose a percentage of their net profit at the end of the year. For them, it's not just easier, it's good buissness.

Love. Peace. Metallica.

[e. nonee moose]

Bush interprets "The poor will be with you always," as a command.

I know someone who claims to be a Christian quoting this verse in that context. It boggles the mind.

[Alison]

There are 16 million Americans living like this.

That's the combined population of Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, New Hampshire and Vermont.

I'm not sure how you came up with that. I've just added up the populations (2003 estimates US census quickfacts site) for the first four cities and I'm already up to 16,293,625. I only started because I'd always been under the impression that Los Angeles had a larger population than Australia (which I think may be right if you include Santa Monica and the Greater LA area or something.)

At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries.

Which never ceases to amaze me. Surely it'd be better long term business to spread it around - people buy more when they're able to, they make better employees when they're happy and the society as a whole is better off.

[animus]

A rising tide lifts all boats. Of course, if you can't afford a boat... how long can you tread water?

[Daniel]

Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, New Hampshire and Vermont

I count 18 million.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_cities_by_population
2 Los Angeles California 3,845,541
3 Chicago Illinois 2,842,518
4 Houston Texas 2,016,582
5 Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1,463,281
6 Phoenix Arizona 1,461,575
7 San Diego California 1,263,756
8 San Antonio Texas 1,236,249
9 Dallas Texas 1,213,825
10 San Jose California 912,332
(2005)

New Hampshire is at 1,235,786 (2000 census), and Vermont is 608,827 (2000 census).

Certainly close enough to make your point, but don't you know that your readers are pedants?

[Zzyzx]

That's more than one out of every 5 Americans...

[Zzyzx]

Excuse me, I was thinking 5%, more than one out of every 20.

[toxicfur]

Just wow. In the early 1980s, my mom stayed at home with her four small kids, since it would cost more to put us in daycare than she would make in the town where we lived. My dad worked in a furniture factory, making approximately $8/hour, when he was able to hang onto a job. That's less than $17,000 a year before taxes for a family of 6. I've asked my mom how they managed, and the answer was gardening, moving as soon as they got behind in rent, and help (including housing, from time to time) from my grandparents. By my calculations, we wouldn't have been among the poorest. Just...wow.

[Todd Larason]

So, what do we do?

When I saw this on TPM, I went to Modest Needs' and gave again (sadly, it had been more than a year, I think). They seem to do good work, but they're decidedly a retail-help outfit. There's political involvement, llllllllllllllllbut that's slow going and just can't make a difference for years. There's volunteering, but I'm honest enough about my flaws to know that that's not going to happen, not in any amount which will make a difference; what I can do is give some money, but I'm not sure to whom.

[Spherical Time]

I've never read the book, but I saw a stage production of Nickel & Dimed, a book by Barbara Ehrenreich.

The play was so powerful that it left me crying, and my eyes are watering just thinking about it.

[Erick Oppeen]

Part of the problem with _Nickled and Dimed_ was that Ehrenreich didn't know _how_ to be poor...IIRC, she rented furnished apartments, lived alone, and was in some of the most expensive parts of the country. She also smoked...and took a lot of space in the book to defend the habit.

The thing to do when you're as poor as that is to remember that in numbers, there is strength. Finding three reasonably-compatible roomies and joining forces means that you can do things like, forex, rent a fairly-nice _unfurnished_ apartment (two in a bedroom) and still have enough to get along with, at least in most parts of the country. Also, not buying pre-cooked food helps a lot; in the poor households I've been in, I've noticed a lot of pre-cooked stuff that I knew cost a lot more than the equivalents would have if purchased unprepared.

[Jesurgislac]

Erick, that seems to be the default right-wing reaction to Nickled and Dimed. I am fairly certain that this reading of it comes from reviews in right-wing media, since anyone who read Nickled and Dimed would notice that Ehrenrich was not only giving an account of how she herself managed, but of how the people she worked with managed - or failed to. (Sebastian Holsclaw, on Obsidian Wings, won my rather impatient respect by claiming that it was in fact all about Ehrenrich not knowing to buy a rice cooker... that was more original than the repetitive meme of "oh she should have got a room-mate".)

Obvious things wrong with this claim that spring to mind immediately:

A single mother involuntarily has at least one room-mate who eats as much as an adult - or more, if an adolescent - and has exactly all the other expenses, while contributing nothing to the rent. Further, with this expensive room-mate, a responsible single mother can't just go out and pick a room-mate or three to share the rent at random - the room-mate has got to be someone the single mother will trust her child (children) alone with. In 2001 (figures for wikipedia) 14.1% of American children were living below the poverty line.

Picking a room-mate or three at random also means trusting that they won't abscond with your possessions or depart without paying their share of the rent or the bills.

Pick friends? Relatives? What if you've just moved to a part of the country where you don't know anyone and you have no relatives? That happens.

You comment that she picked "the most expensive parts of the country" - yes, she did: but poor people live there too, that was her point.

Ehrenreich's book was horrifyingly realistic about the problems faced by people trying to live in the US on minimum wage jobs. As far as I can see, people on the right deal with this horror by denying that her account was realistic - usually by claiming that a real poor person would have known better how to "cope". Would have got room-mates, given up smoking, bought a rice-cooker... all fantasies about how life isn't so bad for the deserving poor.

[Ray]

Ehrenreich also makes the point that, in many ways, she was better off than the people she worked with. She had no dependents, no debt hanging over her (on the contrary, she had a float), she could be mobile, she had no health problems... Sure, she had no support network of people to live with and share expenses, but she had compensating advantages.

Bait and Switch, is a similar book, except this time she's trying to get a white-collar job. As she points out herself, it's unrealistic in that she doesn't have a network of contacts that she can use, but her failure to even get an interview in six months is scary and, as in Nickle and Dimed, she also reports on people who are in the same situation as her (without the artificiality).

[Scott]

Sixteen million Americans live in "severe poverty," defined as individuals making less than $5,080 annually and families of four making less than $9,903.

Man, that's an Iraq war level of poor results in the War on Poverty we've been fighting since LBJ. Is this where the left pushes for a Bush-esque 'surge' to get us over the hump?

[wintermute]

Nah, it's where the right suggests we just let them starve, if they're not smart enough to invest in Google, or IBM, so some other sure-fire stock.

[twig]

Part of the problem with _Nickled and Dimed_ was that Ehrenreich didn't know _how_ to be poor

ROFL yeah because then it's all sunshine and rainbows.

[the opoponax]

she rented furnished apartments... and was in some of the most expensive parts of the country. She also smoked...

i'm going to try not to just repeat everything Jesu just said here but.

1. do you know how expensive furniture is? where did you get your furniture? how much did you pay for it? did you ever have to furnish a whole apartment at the same time? when you were young and just starting out, were your parents able to help you out with their old but still functional stuff? how much do you think they spent replacing it? many poor people (especially newly single women with children starting over again in a new place) don't just have extra cash lying around to completely furnish an apartment. thus, yeah, a good number of poor people are in the same place Ehrenreich was in terms of needing a furnished place, at least until they could save money (yeah right) to buy their own things.

2. do you think there are no poor people in "expensive" parts of the country? though i should also say that it didn't seem to me that she lived in overly expensive areas. she didn't flock to major metro areas where things are much more expensive than the rest of the US. she didn't try to live in middle class areas or rent nicer digs than she could really afford.

3. hate to break it to ya, but poor people often smoke. in fact, back home in Louisiana, nice middle class people don't smoke -- it's considered "trashy". it's true that smoking is a huge waste of money and obviously if you don't have a lot to spare you shouldn't be doing it. but the bottom line is that choosing not to smoke doesn't seem to be an important "coping" strategy for poverty. in fact, i think her defense of smoking was that people who don't have much money need to have some part of their day that they're in control of, some easily accessible discretionary spending, etc. cigarrettes fill a lot of those sorts of niches for the poor. which isn't a defense of smoking, but a way of understanding why poor people smoke when they ideally shouldn't be "wasting" their money on that.

[Grey Duck]

Wait wait wait wait wait... Minneapolis is one of the most expensive parts of the country? As a St. Paul college student and wage slave, I call foul. The way I hear it, the overall cost of living in Minneapolis is 12 % below the national average.

And then you have to bear in mind that the neighborhoods in the Twin Cities range from the Old Money parts of St. Paul like Highland and Summit, to urban the death trap that is North Minneapolis. Mind you, it is a city, and a pretty big one by midwest standards, so costs are higher than in, say, Brainerd, MN. But I'd hardly call the area "one of the most expensive in the country."

[Ray]

This whole "oh, the poor would be fine if they boiled their own rice and stopped smoking" was addressed 70 years ago by George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier. This chapter is especially apposite, especially

"When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread."

[Ray]

sorry, messed up the link
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/5.html

[the opoponax]

the prepared/processed foods vs. raw ingredients to be cooked is a whole nother can of worms.

first, i don't remember in the book that she necessarily ate out more than is usual, or bought fancy pre-prepared things from supermarkets. in fact i remember a passage where she hits rock bottom and goes to a food bank where they give her a voucher for a nearby supermarket. with this voucher she gets, like, a CHOICE of either one package of dried pasta and one can of pasta sauce OR one box of Hamburger Helper and one package of ground beef. and i don't know many people in the US nowadays who make their own pasta and tomato sauce from scratch. i can't think of a more basic raw ingredient that ground beef. of course the hamburger helper is a beast of its own, but for that see below.

secondly, go to a supermarket and look around. in many cases, processed and pre-prepared foods, especially frozen foods, are either cheaper than or in the same price range as all the ingredients one needs to cook a meal from scratch. it's just not true anymore that plain wholesome foods are cheap, whereas processed foods are expensive novelties. in the wake of the middle class foodie movement, the tables have turned.

thirdly, go to a supermarket in a poor neighborhood (good luck finding one, btw). take a look at the produce, if there even is any. i can guarantee you that you will NOT want to eat that. especially as the prices they're charging. when i first moved to new york, i realized that due to the inflated prices and dearth of good produce in the one crappy supermarket in my working class neighborhood, it would actually be cheaper to eat pizza and takeout chinese every day than to try to put together a nutritious meal from groceries purchased in my neighborhood.

fourthly, many poor and working class people have to work multiple jobs to get by. in families, both parents usually work; sometimes both of them work multiple jobs. you try to cook a healthy meal entirely from scratch after working a 15 hour day. yeah, right, i thought you'd go for the hamburger helper.

[A. Kennedy]

I agree with you completely, Opopnax, about preparing food. Let's take me as an example: because of various life changes, I have found myself without a home of my own, and am currently living in my parents' basement until I take posession of my new house. I am extremely priveleged, and not poor at all; I only work 11 hours a day, and even that is not a fair judgement because I have a "break" between when teaching in the day ends (3:30) and when teaching in the evening (5:30)... though I usually have to spend that time doing preparation work (but at least I'm sitting down for that part of the day). I have almost no hardship. Yet, when I come home from work, I rarely, if ever, have the energy to cook a good, decent meal.

Think how much harder it is for a genuine poor person, who probably needs to be on his or her feet at least 12 hours a day, who makes at most half of what I do, who gets considerably less respect and more abuse in a day, and who can't drive their own car to and from work. The idea that these people can just "make their own meals" is absolutely laughable. Making your own meals is a luxury of the rich with free time.

[ericblair]

This whole "oh, the poor would be fine if they boiled their own rice and stopped smoking" was addressed 70 years ago by George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier.

I highly, highly recommend this book by my nom-de-plume namesake; also, do read "Down and Out in Paris and London." Orwell had a lot of insight into this by personal experience (he was sort of slumming it, but it still counts).

He had several interesting insights, like the reliance on cheap luxuries above: who's more likely to have dry multigrain toast and lowfat yogurt for breakfast, the rich person or the poor one? The rich person has many more luxuries and opportunities for luxuries than the poor.

Also, a middle class upbringing and education gives you a lot of mental resources to deal with the hassle and boredom of poverty. The middle class person knows that you don't have to tolerate a lot of the crap that the poor person has learned to helplessly accept.

[A. Kennedy]

Exactly... I remember telling some top lawyers about how hard it was for some people to work at a particular service-industry job I was in, and having them say "but don't these people know that what their employer is doing is wrong?"

Me: "Yes, they do, but their employer will fire them if they act up!"

others: "But if they don't act up, this will keep on going on!"

Me: "If they do act up, it will also keep going on, and they will have no money for food."

others: "They'll win a court case"

Me: "After several months or years of fighting it, yes. In the meanwhile, they'll have to live off of nothing and pay legal fees."

others: "We just don't get it, because we've never lived in a society where we had no money and there's no assistance for the poor." (well, they didn't actually say that, but...)

[LL]

RE "Ignoring these 16 million Americans is, for Bush, a matter of official policy." - ignoring any unpleasant or inconvenient fact seems to be official policy. Plus, these 16 million people don't have money, so of course Bush and the RNC have little use for them.Yeah, and thinking about how people live on the minimum wage is pretty depressing. Most of the time, I prefer not to think about it, either. Which sorta makes me not any better than Bush. Which is even more depressing.

[the opoponax]

i'd also like to echo the praise of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. immensely illuminating book. i haven't read The Road to Wigan Pier, though i think i have it around the house somewhere...

[Ray]

both are excellent, yes.

[alsafi]

the opoponax, A. Kennedy, and ericblair have all addressed this earlier and better, but I'd like to chime in on the food issue. High quality, nutritious food prepared from scratch, using a variety of un- or minimally-processed ingredients is a luxury the poor generally cannot indulge in. In poor neighborhoods, fresh groceries are often very difficult to come by--and even if they can be found, time and energy are at a premium. When you're exhausted and tapped out, those empty-calorie foods are even more tempting--they offer a burst of quick energy, and nevermind that you'll pay for it later. Food that tastes good (fast food and convenience food) is like cigarettes in that way; both become ways of giving yourself something "nice"--something you want.

My partner and I have never been desperately poor, for which I'm very thankful. But when we started out--12 years ago, and not making much--we lived on pizza and coke and fast food. But as we've moved up economically, we've started eating a lot more foods made from scratch, and buying fresher, better quality ingredients. For one thing, now that I'm working an office job (and can afford healthcare for chronic anemia--poverty is often accompanied by exhausting and untreated illness), I have the time and energy to cook more often. For another, we can afford to buy more groceries if one of the dishes we make doesn't turn out edibly. That may seem like a small thing, but for people who are food insecure, it can be a scary prospect--and the time it takes to learn to cook, so that ingredient-ruining disasters are rare, is also a luxury for many in poverty.

So poverty isn't all that bad for those who can learn to "do it right"? Give me a break. Voluntary simplicity =/= poverty--we're not talking about an informed choice to do more with less, here. Even the "dumb", "bad" poor (and I use those quotes advisedly) still have a right to expect more of their fellow citizens than the shaft that they're getting.

[Amanda]

I grew up this way. My mother raised me alone. We were on welfare and food stamps for a time (and no, we didn't buy lobster with them), and another time we were on a direct food assistance program -- lots of peanut butter, evaporated milk and rubbery cheese. I ate peanut butter for lunch every day of my life til I graduated high school. I can't stand the stuff now.

It's true, the mindset that takes over when you hit true poverty is a difficult one to fight. You're working insane hours, dealing with insufferable people, going home to a stressful family life. You have no outlets. None of the basics in life are anything you enjoy. You're exhausted. You're probably in debt up to your ass just trying to subsist -- yes, even boiling rice.

People who have never been stuck in these situations don't seem to realize how difficult it is to pull out of them. You don't have the time to do extensive job searching when you work 15 hours a day. You don't have the money to up and move from inner city Manhattan or Los Angeles to Podunk, Iowa, just to pursue a cheaper cost of living. Besides, Podunk probably doesn't have many jobs available, and how are you going to land one anyway? Fly out there for an interview at Wal-Mart? Quit your job and move, hoping someone will hire you and you won't end up homeless after two weeks of no callbacks?

I've never read Nickel and Dimed, mostly because I honestly don't feel I need to, and it would just make me despair anyway. I've been there. And it always frustrates me to read people with perhaps well intentioned (but not always) advice, who obviously don't identify. Experience isn't a perfect predictor of belief even in this case, but it usually comes pretty close.

[Amanda]

Also, a lot of people seem to miss the point of an experiment like "Nickel and Dimed." The experiment isn't "try to live on as little as money as possible" -- in which case the rice cooker, lower-COL city criticisms might be valid. But as far as I can tell, that's not what the author is trying to do. She's trying to live like the poor have to, and explain it to people who haven't been there -- not just what it's like to live that way, but how there really aren't many ways to improve one's life. It's not as easy as some seem to believe.

[LL]

Yeah, poor people need to move to somewhere where they won't be quite so poor, 'cause that's easy to do, especially when you have school-age kids and maybe a spouse with a job he or she would like to keep, etc. Nothin' to it, just pick up and move.

[inge]

Erik, you might just want to re-read "Nickel & Dimed", because most of what you remember is either not in the book or has been explained when describing the experiment's setup. Probably a mix-up between source and reception.

[Wakboth]

Scott, surely you do realize that things *got better* for the poor for quite a good while, starting with New Deal and continuing with the War on Poverty? And that it's your beloved right wing which keeps undercutting the poor and the middle class in order to pour even more money into the wallets of the extremely rich?

[inge]

ericblair,

I second the recommendations. It's amazing how much things stay the same.

[Orwell] was sort of slumming it, but it still counts.

Well, it likely killed him, so it has to count...

[Nick Kiddle]

A Kennedy: That conversation reminds me of an argument I had with a co-worker half a dozen jobs back. She'd just got off the phone to a client who had been threatened by one of her creditors.

CW: I don't know how anyone can threaten old ladies like that.
Me: Well, it pretty much sucks for the person at the other end of the phone as well. If they're not threatening enough, their bosses will come down on them.
CW: I would never do a job like that.
Me: Maybe you should be grateful you get a choice.
CW: No, even if it meant starving on the streets, I would never do a job where I had to threaten old ladies.

I don't know, that just strikes me as a very easy thing to say when you know you'll never have to make that choice.

[A. Kennedy]

Uh-oh, we're getting dangerously close to "take the plank out of your eye before you remove the speck in someone else's" and "love everyone nonjudgementally" territory :P

[Nick Kiddle]

do you know how expensive furniture is? where did you get your furniture? how much did you pay for it? did you ever have to furnish a whole apartment at the same time?

Oh, so much word. I'm still trying to scrape together enough furniture for my new flat, over a year after I took possession. I pick things up as I find them at the secondhand furniture shops (for which thank goodness) and meanwhile my books, papers etc are either in cardboard boxes or piled up on the floor. And then the well-meaning middle-class nitwits from social services tell me I need to put everything away so my daughter can't get into it, and much headdesking takes place.

No one has even touched the lack of reliable health care and if someone does have a job making that little there are no benefits, so the person has choice of going to work sick or missing because s/he is sick and losing that money.

I worked as a cashier at a grocery store once and I had a co worker who came into work in constant pain because of ovarian cysts. She knew she had them but she didn't work enough hours to qualify for any benefits (days off much less health insurance) and she had kids she was worried about. This was in a small town of only a few thousand. One day she was at work, doubled over in pain refusing to leave work because she was so worried about money. Finally someone called a relative to make her go to the hospital. I was young and naive and asked stupid questions like "Why didn't she get this taken care of before it got so bad?" That's when I was told -- no days off, no insurance, worried about who will take care of her kids, not being able to pay medical bills, not being able to pay her bills and getting behind/evicted, being out and losing her job for absenteism, stuff like that.

[Brandi]

Part of the problem with _Nickled and Dimed_ was that Ehrenreich didn't know _how_ to be poor...

I wonder what Mr. Oppeen thinks of this study?

[Amanda]

Yeah, poor people need to move to somewhere where they won't be quite so poor, 'cause that's easy to do, especially when you have school-age kids and maybe a spouse with a job he or she would like to keep, etc. Nothin' to it, just pick up and move.

Yep. I've seen people "suggest" it, or admonish people "Well, why do you live somewhere so expensive anyway?" A lot of people are under delusions that social mobility -- and flat out geographical mobility -- are completely unimpeded in modern American society.

[forestwalker]

Damned macroeconomics.

[Spherical Time]

Sorry, to the person above that mentioned health care, I should have mentioned health care.

About five months ago, I was in a very bad car accident and I broke my neck (specifically, I have a fracture of my C-2 vertebra). The health insurance that I had through my mother had expired seven days earlier, and the minimum wage job that I had didn't offer any health insurance.

I cried all the way to the hospital because I was so worried about money. I'm lucky that I have my parents to take care of me, and a brother that has been able to help me with my bills.

If I hadn't had family support, I don't know how I would have survived. I couldn't walk for a month after the accident, and five months later I still can't work. My medical bills are in the tens of thousands of dollars, and I sometimes get 28 letters from my insurance per day about the money that I owe them.

I just got out of college. I have no savings or ability to pay for this on my own, and when you make minimum wage and are in your twenties, health insurance is a luxury, not a priority. I've been doing odd jobs online for work, but trust me, it's hard to make ends meet when you can't even leave the house for an interview.

I can't imagine what it would have been like if this had happened to a single mother with a kid without a family or to a family that doesn't at least have some savings. If someone had depended on me, it would have meant that we would have had to have lived for six months without a stable income.

[Todd Larason]

So...is there just nothing we can do?

[inge]

On lack of health insurance: For want of a dentist

[Drocket]

I've been thinking about this story all day, and especially some of the comments here about buying rice, smoking, etc., and the thing that I keep coming back to is 'pleasure'. When I was a kid, we were pretty poor, and one of the things that I can tell you about being poor is that it SUCKS. Seriously, majorly sucks. Every single little pleasure that you can think of, all the minor little things that you do every day when you have money, simply don't exist when you're poor. Forget a nice enjoyable meal because you're eating boxed mac and cheese, the same thing you've eaten every night for the past week. Forget sitting down and watching TV because all you've got is a 20 year old blurry small piece of crap that barely picks up the local network. Forget a nice hot cup of coffee - you're buying the generic stuff that tastes like shit, and you're watering it down so it lasts longer. Forget even taking a nice hot relaxing bath because all you've got is a decomposing shower stall and a hot water heater that barely gets up to lukewarm on a good day.

All you've got to look forward to in life is 8+ hours of a minimum wage job, dealing with people who think you should get down on your hand and knees to kiss their feet for the pleasure of serving them, and then you get to come home to your dumpy apartment, sit down on your cruddy second-hand furniture, and try to watch some blurry TV. It's a life that wears you down through sheer deprivation. Is it really any wonder that so many poor people wind up drinking or smoking? That tiny little burst of chemically-produce happiness may not be much, but when its all you've got, it winds up meaning a lot.

As I said, my time being poor was back when I was a kid, and I now look back at it through adult eyes, and realize just have POINTLESS life felt. My family's guilty pleasure was a trip to McDonalds every other week or so. Quite frankly, we couldn't really afford it - at the time we were slowly sinking further and further into credit card debt. We could have saved a few bucks by eating our standard generic fare at home like we did the other 13/14 days, but to an amazing degree, it was quite literally *the only thing in our lives that was worth looking forward to.* Everything else was a monotonous sameness, where there simply didn't seem to be any hope of getting ahead.

That there are people who think that poor people don't deserve even those tiny little pleasures... It makes me feel a weird combination of anger and sadness that I really can't describe.

[CaptainBooshi]

I don't know if everyone's seen this before (I don't remember if it was linked to from the main page when it was first posted), but John Scalzi's post Being Poor is incredibly poignant and relevant here, I think. I would especially suggest to Erick Opeen that he give this a read, if at all possible.

[Gravity]

When my girlfriend and I got our first (one-room) apartment, we were both working at a grocery store. because we were making so little, we literally had a food budget of $20 a week. We ended up eating a LOT of ramen. We spent whatever leftover fun money we had on frozen veggies and multivitimins. Even still, we were sick ALL the time. About every other week or so, we'd buy a bag of chips and rent a $0.99 movie. It sucked bigtime. I've been very lucky in my career moves, and now make more than twice what I did then - about $35,000 a year instead of $16,000 - but my standard of living has gone up so, so much since then. The difference can barely be believed, much less described.

[the opoponax]

oh, yeah. there's a critical point somewhere between say $10K and $25K where suddenly, you start being able to exist.

i think this is quite literally what they mean by "the poverty line" and "a living wage". back when i made $8-10K a year, yeah, it was ramen or mac & cheese, walking the 2 miles to work when i ran out of money and couldn't buy a metrocard, stealing glasses of milk from starbucks to keep my strength up, selling off my books to pay the utility bill. now i have more what could be considered an "entry level" job, and my life has changed soooo much for the better. mostly because i can actually afford to pay the bills, get around, eat, have a little fun, and have a security cushion just in case.

[Jeff]

fourthly, many poor and working class people have to work multiple jobs to get by. in families, both parents usually work; sometimes both of them work multiple jobs. you try to cook a healthy meal entirely from scratch after working a 15 hour day. yeah, right, i thought you'd go for the hamburger helper.

I saw an ep of "Emeril Live" or whatever his latest crap-fest is called where he was answering questions from viewers. When he asked why would you buy Betty Crocker Instant Potatoes or Tuna in a Can when you could make your own, I saw that he wasn't going to answer any questions at all. (He did show how to put veggies in baggies for a make-at-work salad, but that was it.)

Hamburger Helper has definitely improved over the years (or I've completely lost my sense of taste).

One of the stupider criticisms I've seen of "Nickled and Dimed" (see my last post on "People of Faith" is that "She had a car. If she didn't have a car to fuel and maintain, she would have had so much more money for living." Riiiiiiiight. I could, in theory, take the bus to work. I'd save less than $1 per day. On the other hand, I'd lose about 3 hours -- of sleep and being with my sweetie. A working mom would have to arrange 3 more hours of someone looking after her children. Gotta go to the bank, or the hospital? Too bad!