What constitues 'poor'?

Published on October 9, 2004 By dharmagrl In Current Events

There's been a lot of talk about 'the poor' around here lately...actually, it's been an on-going thing.

I'd like to know what people's opinion of 'poor' is.

Are you 'poor' if you don't have a big screen TV? How about a car that's less than 5 years old? Cable? Internet service? Are you 'poor' if you buy your clothes at Goodwill or thrift stores as opposed to JC Penny's and Sears? Does 'poor' mean that you eat macaroni and cheese every night instead of steak or chicken?

What is your definition of 'poor'?

Comments (Page 2)

cactoblasta

on Oct 09, 2004

Personally I consider poor to be the level where you can afford the absolute basics - low quality food, low quality clothing (scavenged or homemade from scavenged materials), low quality shelter - but cannot afford to either save for the future or spend money on anything else. Anything below this is dying (lack of food - lack of water - lack of shelter will all lead to an early grave). Above this is:

* struggling - can afford the basics and some cheap luxuries (basic tv, occasional non-sausage red meat, possibly a phone, extremely cheap clothing). Might also be able to save a minimal amount.

* lower-middle-class - can afford basics and cheap luxuries. Can afford some moderate luxuries (occasional steak. smoking, internet, legal alcohol, acceptable clothing). With discipline could easily save a minimal amount and probably a bit more. Travelling overseas might be a once-in-a-lifetime luxury.

* middle class - can afford basics, cheap luxuries and moderate luxuries. Can also have a few expensive luxuries like designer clothes, big TVs or new computers/cars. Saving is simple willpower rather than a sacrifice. Overseas travel rare but not as rare as for the lower middle class.

That's basically how I split the groups often called poor or disadvantaged. I'm not going to put dollar figures on poverty or percentages because I don't know them. But that's my basic view of the lower economic classes (ugh. No option but to use Marxist phrases for this one.) By the way I consider consumption of cigarettes and legal alcohol to be middle class vices. Anyone who can afford them is not poor, simply because they are so damn expensive. A pack a day smoker in Australia will spend about $35 dollars a week on them - probably more. For that price they could buy enough fresh fruit, vegetables and meat to feed themselves for a week with ease.

dharmagrl

on Oct 09, 2004

I think that the definition closest to my own comes from Little Whip. I've been there too. Right after my youngest child was born we were so broke that by the time we had paid bills , got the kids what they needed and bought food we had pennies left in the bank. We qualified for food stamps, but we chose not to take them...because that, to us, would have been akin to stealing. The money we would have spent on food would have gone wither to savings or would have been spent on something non-necessary...and that, to both my and my husband's mind, wasn't right. It seemed dishonest. If we could make it on our own, if we could survive on our own, than that's what we thought we should do. So we did. And we were happy doing it.

If you look at statistics, we're poor now. We could qualify for free lunches at the kids' school. We could qualify for WIC, we could probably qualify for some other kind of government assistance. It leaves me asking - if our family, with everything that we have, is considered 'poor' and eligible for aid, how many families in similar circumstances to us are claiming assistance they don't really need? Claiming it just because they can, because it's 'free'?

dharmagrl

on Oct 09, 2004

A pack a day smoker in Australia will spend about $35 dollars a week on them - probably more. For that price they could buy enough fresh fruit, vegetables and meat to feed themselves for a week with ease.

That's another thing that annoys me slightly. I see people with EBT cards (food stamps) buying cartons of cigarettes at $35 a pop (not with the cards, with their own cash), while their children are running around with holes in their shoes and coats 3 sizes too small.

It all comes down to priorities, I guess. If you want to get right down to it, chosing to remain 'poor' has a lot of do with priorities as well.

Texas Wahine

on Oct 09, 2004

dharma: One thing about the school lunches . . . the schools encourage everyone who will qualify to apply because the amount of children signed up for free and reduced lunches affects the school's funding; more = better funding. I always fill out and turn in the paperwork for that. My son always eats sacklunches that I pack for him, but since I filled out the paperwork, he is counted in the school's figures, which is helpful to the school.

Texas Wahine

on Oct 09, 2004

I do have a BIG problem with this. The first priority in any family, wealthy or poor, should be meeting the needs of the children. If a family is going to spend money on cigarettes, their children better damn well be dressed in clean clothes that are without holes and they better have good shoes on their feet and a dolly in their hands. It's disgusting that parents would rather fill their own selfish desires than provide for their children. I support government assistance for those in need, but I do not think that anyone on government assistance should be buying cigarettes or alcohol. Grrr. That crap makes me angry.

dharmagrl

on Oct 09, 2004

I support government assistance for those in need,

I want to clarify that I too am fully in support of assitance programs as a helping hand for those with a real need.

Tex, you share my sentiments about smoking parents. If you want to spend your money on tobacco then that's your beeswax, but at least make sure your kids have their needs filled before you feed your addiction. Same goes for alcohol, and for evenings and dinners out. I understand that parents need a break, but does a break from your kids have to involve getting drunk and blowing money that could have been spent on your kids?

Shovelheat

on Oct 09, 2004

It all comes down to priorities, I guess. If you want to get right down to it, chosing to remain 'poor' has a lot of do with priorities as well.

Oh hell yes! My son works in a grocery store and sees people buy food with food stamps but pay CASH for smokes, beer, and lottery tickets.

crimson

on Oct 09, 2004

I think back more than 5 months ago when I couldn't afford milk and fresh vegetables for Kole. We had dried pasta and canned things like tuna fish and peas. We never had enough to buy new clothes, even if it was from Wal-Mart. We had housing, but things were worse before when we were living in a 635.00 apartment all incl, but only had 100.00 a month after rent to live on. We hardly ever had phone service, which is considered a necessity in our province, and we never had tv or internet. We lived across the road from the public library and there is a lot of free entertainment in town. But, how poor were we in comparison to some of our relatives on the rez? Not poor at all. We had a two bedroom apartment for the two of us. We did eat three meals a day every day. We even managed to go to the movies once in a while. I saved up to go out for a few pints occasionally. I did save up to buy smokes. The thing is, if we budgeted properly, we could also afford fresh milk and vegetables. But there were so many things that might have come up during the month that prohibited us from doing so at the end. Kole got an ear infection? There goes a week's worth of fresh stuff and eating canned soup, peas and carrots.

It's the lack of affordable daycare that forced me to stay at home for a year, rather than immediately get a job once graduating from university. The week that Kole began going to school full-time was the week that I really started applying for full-time jobs. I managed to find one fairly quickly for a small-town like this. It's not my dream job, but it's work. And I could have been working a lot sooner if affordable daycare was made a higher priority.

EmperorofIceCream

on Oct 09, 2004

I disagree with you all.

Poverty, to me, means powerlessness, the absence of choice, the inability to effect one's environment (understood in the broadest sense) in any way which accords with desire.

I don't deny the existence of lives which are materially lacking in the senses made perfectly clear in other comments, just as I don't deny the existence of lives lived with access to material resources that I can barely dream of.

There have always been those who have more and those who have less. And then, of course, there have also always been those who have least of all, whose lives are a nightmare of material deprivation that doesn't bear contemplation.

C'est la vie. C'est la guerre.

You can be wealthy even as you starve to death in a street gutter in Bombay, rich in peace of mind and spirit, and as utterly destitute as the 'wealthy' who spend decades in therapy because it's the only way they can feel the validation of another's attention.

But to me, the wealth of the ascetic reconciled to fate is no more true wealth than the pathetic situation of some Hollywood starlet reduced to shoplifting is true poverty; no more than access to material resources is true wealth, and the non-availibility of such resources is true poverty.

If you were to be forced into poring through city dumps for scrap metal, and on a given day found some, sold it and ate, then you'd be richer than the guy poring over the same trash heap who found nothing and went hungry. In his eyes you'd be rich as Croesus, and the object of possibly murderous envy. You'd be rich, not poor - and who gives a fuck for 'statistical measures' and government pronouncements as to what 'poverty' is when the belly is trying to eat itself because it's had nothing else for days?

Material circumstance is what you make of it; your wealth, your poverty, is what you say it is.

But there is a real poverty, just as there is a real wealth, in my opinion.

Poverty is what happens to you when, irrespective of your material possessions and irrespective of any emotional reconciliation with fate you may have achieved, the world gets up on its hind legs and, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, thwarts you

Wealth, on the other hand, is that state that encompasses you when, for whatever reason, the world gets up on its hind legs and collaborates actively in your every purpose. When, mysteriously, everything falls pat into your hand. Like today, when a bill for work on the Mercury contracted from $250 to less than $40. When the mechanic had a key that let him unlock the car wheels when I had none, and no idea of how to find one.

In short, true wealth is seeing your will manifested in the world, becoming real, seeing obstacles fall away as though made of mist, because your determination that they shall is fixed, unwavering, and certain.

True poverty is that state in which the will is so debilitated that, even when imagination retains the faculty of conceiving change, no move toward effecting that change can be made.

Anything else, all material circumstance, is just that - material circumstance. And anyone who finds his poverty, or his wealth, in material circumstance is always going to be short-changed by life.

charles poore

on Oct 09, 2004

Being unable to show progress in any way,shape,form or fashion...........Or my next of kin

Shovelheat

on Oct 09, 2004

I disagree with you all

Not with me you don't...

dharmagrl

on Oct 09, 2004

The Emp got an insightful for that response...and I agree with much of what he said too.

Shovelheat

on Oct 09, 2004

The Emp got an insightful for that response...and I agree with much of what he said too.

Yes---- and an insightful to you, too Dharma...

dharmagrl

on Oct 09, 2004

Yes---- and an insightful to you, too Dharma

Why thank you, my love! I'll be over to your blog in a second...

on Oct 09, 2004

I remember that little RV that had roach populations that outnumber entire state we lived in then. We were at the low point then.

About 2 years I had serious problems with paying rent ( my mom's income stopped for 2 months ) I had all of 5 bucks for eating for that entire month. Ramen was too pricy for me. I had to live on the bread rolls. One tube is enough for one meal, and they are just 23 cents each. I was sooo F*ing sick of bread rolls by time my mom got income back.

After that I caught up on some bills since I wasn't paying for that 2 months other then rent and very little food.

That is my defination of poor.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!