Stories of Surviving Dire Poverty—in a Reddit Thread
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/25461-stories-of-surviving-dire-poverty-in-a-reddit-thread.html?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=15623369&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8fMMnigAZ7xeiX-eDqYdU
WRITTEN BY RICK COHEN CREATED ON FRIDAY, 16 JANUARY 2015 14:59
Max Ehrenfreund, a young blogger with the Washington Post,
has compiled comments posted on a Reddit thread about how people survive in these United States while being poor, and the picture is amazing and distressing.
The poor pay more for everything, from rolls of toilet paper to furniture. Its not because theyre spendthrifts, either, Ehrenfreund writes about the story painted by the Reddit posts. If youre denied a checking account, theres no way for you to avoid paying a fee to cash a paycheck. If you need to buy a car to get to work, youll have to accept whatever higher interest rate youre offered. If you dont have a car, the bus fare might eat up the change youd save shopping at a larger grocery store as opposed to the local corner store.
According to one Reddit user, When you are poor, the system is set up to keep you that way. Another wrote, Growing up really poor means realizing in your twenties that Mommy was lying when she said she already ate.
I buy fish antibiotics online because I cant afford health care
amoxicillin and such, yet another Reddit user wrote. Mostly for husband who has Lymes disease. We cant afford our monthly health care rates. We are 30somethings in the US. Really feel like a bottom feeder.
Ehrenfreund references the ghetto tax, the economists concept of poor people having to pay higher costs associated with daily living. Examples include the expense of cashing checks, the higher rates of homeowners insurance in poor neighborhoods, higher costs associated with buying and insuring a car, the costs of installment plans for purchasing appliances, and more.
The many additional examples in Ehrenfreunds article are simply heartwrenching. The quotes from the Reddit users sound like stories from the Great Depression, as though they were retold by James Agee and photographed by Walker Evans, but they are stories of todayin a society that purportedly has recovered from a recession, is making some people extraordinarily wealthy, and producing record stock market returns. Nonprofits know this narrative all too well, but the American public generally doesnt. That makes Ehrenfreunds articleand the entire Reddit threadimportant reality reading.Rick Cohen
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