Why Poor People Stay Poor

[ashling]

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/12/linda_tirado_on_the_realities_of_living_in_bootstrap_america_daily_annoyances.html



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/the-eviction-economy.


America stands alone among wealthy democracies in the depth and expanse of its poverty. Ask most politicians what we should do about this, and they will answer by calling for more and better jobs. Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House, thinks we need to do more to “incentivize work.” Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, thinks we should raise the minimum wage. But jobs are only part of the solution because poverty is not just a product of joblessness and low wages. It is also a product of exploitation.

Throughout our history, wage gains won by workers through organized protest were quickly absorbed by rising rents. As industrial capitalists tried to put down the strikes, landlords cheered workers on. It is no different today. When incomes rise, the housing market takes its cut, which is why a two-bedroom apartment in the oil boomtown Williston, N.D., was going last year for $2,800 a month and why entire capital-rich cities like San Francisco are becoming unaffordable to the middle class. If rents rise alongside incomes, what progress is made?

Poverty is no accident, an unintended consequence from which no one benefits

[romanic]

1. Been saying this for the longest.

Throughout our history, wage gains won by workers through organized protest were quickly absorbed by rising rents. As industrial capitalists tried to put down the strikes, landlords cheered workers on. It is no different today. When incomes rise, the housing market takes its cut, which is why a two-bedroom apartment in the oil boomtown Williston, N.D., was going last year for $2,800 a month and why entire capital-rich cities like San Francisco are becoming unaffordable to the middle class. If rents rise alongside incomes, what progress is made?

This right here. Raising wages alone won't help anyone in the long run. Minimum wage can go up to $30 an hour, it won't stop rents, food, and other expenses from rising tenfold to absorb and take up that "risen" income. We have to stop inflation and the cost of living to rise across the country, doing so will make wages a moot point.

[Skittles]

2. that evection economy link not working

I'll see if it works here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/the-eviction-economy.html

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. K&R. nt

[marions ghost]

4. This is a song about poverty

[mountain grammy]

12. Beautiful..

and sad, but true.

[marions ghost]

14. and timely

Anais Mitchell wrote it a few years ago but it speaks volumes about life in 2016.

Depressing that a lot of the commenters on youtube hear this song and write "Trump 2016--Build that wall"--I don't think they're trying to spam it--I just don't think they get it. They don't do irony--they think it's a song for them!

[underahedgerow]

5. Poverty is a terrible thing, we all agree, but one reality not factored into the matter is this,

and while it's not a popular idea, it's genuine.

Some people just aren't as smart as other people. They lack intellect and intelligence, and often, along with that, just common sense. Now, I do absolutely know less intelligent people with common sense, but more often, the lack of intelligence, lack of more than 2 digits in the IQ is a real occurence within people living in lower socio-economic conditions.

For some people, working in menial jobs really is the best they can do, and that's ok. Not everyone is capable of being a manager, of learning more things, of functioning at higher levels. For those reasons, there must be more benefits, better wages, better conditions, access to education and health care and housing subsidies to make up for those inescapable deficiencies.

[marions ghost]

6. A civilized society

takes care of its menial workers and does not let them sink into poverty and homelessness.

I am also worried about the lower job prospects for those who are capable of more than that, and may even have a college degree or trade skills.

The wastage of human potential in this culture is pretty astounding when you think about it.

Worse than ever.

[gratuitous]

7. The other side of that coin

Not everyone is a Type A pursuer of the almighty dollar. A lot of people would be happy to put in their time at work in exchange for a living wage, benefits, paid time off, and that be the end of it. They'd prefer to invest the best of their energy in other pursuits (family, hobbies, something else). But our society is constantly telling people that if you're not moving up, if you're not hustling and going as fast as you can each and every day, you're falling behind, you're a moocher or worthless, you're not really deserving of that living wage or those benefits or paid time off.

[PasadenaTrudy]

29. Exactly

Such a sick way of living, if you are more of a Type B....

[jwirr]

21. And some of those less intelligent people are not able to do

any type of work. My daughter cannot talk, cannot walk, cannot even turn over on her own. She is severely developmentally disabled and will never be able to rise in the work place.

But for a while MN went along with the Clinton idea that everyone needs to work. So what they did is that they hired a one-to-one to help her work. She pushed buttons - well her hand was placed on the button and the one-to-one pushed it down on the button. My daughter was paid a few cents an hour while the taxpayer was paying a whole lot more for the pca. I went along with it because she did get a lot of benefit from just being in the program with other people. But it was not the work that did it.

Talk about exploitation - at the same time I took care of her in the home maintained by welfare. About $.60 cents an hour because I was her mother and that was even after she was an adult. Today the foster home gets $3000 a month to do what I did. I an another mother talked about trading children. Then we could be paid for the job we were doing.

There is nothing that can change what happened to me. But while we are on the subject - nothing has changed - there are still mothers or fathers out there who are not considered working if the work is done for their own adult child.

And there are a lot of ways that keep the poor down as much as they can. Thank you for the post.

[dembotoz]

8. Being poor is hard work

I took in a friend who has been evicted
She has to deal with all kinds of stress I do not have to
Pay the storage with no money
Phone bill no money
Food no. Money
Interview for job no gas

Last Friday my washer died
I just went and got a new one
She could not do this. It would mean off to the !audermat again with no money

Eye opening for me

[mountain grammy]

10. Been there..

nothing worse. A never ending cycle of debt. It's demeaning and depressing. I was lucky and managed to move up.. I don't work any harder than anyone else in my situation, I was just a little luckier and had some help.

[Major Nikon]

9. When the free market controls housing and other necessities....

Those things will always be as expensive as the average person can afford. Couple that to a highly regressive tax system and the only way the vast majority are ever going to make it out of poverty is in some horse and sparrow fantasy world.

[marions ghost]

13. Right --the hardest thing is realizing that this is the intent

That people are deliberately kept on the treadmill permanently.

It really COULD be different if this country invested in its people and worked FOR them.

You get so tired and feel so powerless. And that's what they want.

[mountain grammy]

11. Excellent post.. so very true. Rents are through the roof..

even as Denver takes more steps to criminalize homelessness.

[marions ghost]

15. from the article--

"Because our lives seem so unstable, poor people are often seen as being basically incompetent at managing their lives. That is, it’s assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, we’re poor because we’re unstable. So let’s just talk about how impossible it is to keep your life from spiraling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever. And let’s also talk about the ways in which money advice is geared only toward people who actually have money in the first place."

[dembotoz]

19. yes yes yes a thousand times yes

i agree

[ladyVet]

16. It used to drive me crazy when in the USAF that the minute we got our COL raises,

the prices of everything on base had risen the exact same amount. You could never get ahead, never have a few extra dollars to pay other bills, or gods help you, splurge a little.

[kevinbgoode1]

17. I have increasingly noticed that in the rest of society as well. . . . .

As much as the GOP screams about tax cuts putting "money back into your pocket" it is seriously nothing but a bad joke. The same people who scream about the big government and poor people picking their pockets don't seem to utter a single word when large corporations fleece them right and left - often before they even get that con-artist Republican "money back into your pocket" crap.

Every single time I get a little raise (and I do mean little), it is immediately (if not before) absorbed (and often moreso) by a double-digit hike in insurance premiums (either auto or medical, take your pick), a double-digit raise in utility rates (either water, electricity, or phone/internet - in any combination) and increased bogus fees (like the power company's "customer service charge&quot . The little income raise presents this illusion that you are getting ahead, but the reality is that you are still falling behind. . .I don't know anyone who doesn't constantly look for more to cut back on, whether their choice of food purchases, delayed medical/dental attention, hanging onto a car longer, etc. I think the reality is that the working "poor" should really be counted in the number of Americans who are one paycheck away from destitution, because I think that is a huge percentage of our population and the GOP will be more than happy to make it larger.

At some point, people are going to have to realize that being "poor" isn't the exclusive fault of the person, but always a combination of factors. The Republican illusion that everyone could be well-off (if they just work harder) is one of the biggest lies ever perpetrated on our society. Poor people work hard all of their lives and never see a reasonable gain, and it isn't always because they make poor choices or have no ambition. They often just don't have any access to opportunity for a number of reasons. . .one being they spend their lives playing "catch-up" as they deal with double-digit interest rates on credit or can finally afford the one set of decent "work clothes" required for an upwardly mobile job. Another reason is that everyone knows (and no one talks about) that opportunities are afforded first (and sometimes exclusively) to people who are already in the proper socio-economic class. Any human resources or employment professional will tell you that, first and foremost, people hire other people whom they KNOW (that godawful 80's networking stuff) and that usually means someone who already feels entitled to live a certain kind of way. While this doesn't completely shut out the poor from gaining opportunities, it severely limits their ability to know the right people, mingle in the right situations, or make significant gains without putting themselves into more debt (education costs, for example, or "free" internships). Getting into the door is much more difficult now than at any time I've noticed in my life, and our failure as a society to address this inequity is a more realistic problem than the bulls*it Republican line of simply working hard.

It is just as delusional to me to listen to conservatives go on and on about how hard they worked to get rich - not that a few haven't actually done that, but so many are well-off NOT because they've worked hard at producing anything, but because they live off of the labor of poorer people, who the rich "invest in" for a nice, entitled profit that can only exist if the poor remain that way and don't make any demands to increase their share.

I listen to the ones screaming about how every public employee, for example, is "overpaid" but the executive who lunches at the country club and makes business deals over a round of golf is "working hard and entitled to make a profit." It is the existence of these parallel worlds that keep the poor from achieving or realizing dreams - it becomes difficult for them to understand how that rich world functions. And those same people who whine about public employee salaries don't like to admit that they gave their own perks in the private sector away during the Reagan administration. Back then, the mantra was that businesses just couldn't afford to locate in American towns unless they got taxpayer funded infrastructure provided free, that business couldn't afford health insurance that, for most workers, was about a single $100 annual deductible and then almost all of the needed health care was paid, that the businesses couldn't afford pension plans, but will help create gambling accounts in the stock market. Private sector workers gave all of that crap away in return for longer hours, fewer benefits, etc. . . . .

[marions ghost]

20. "parallel worlds"

---that is it exactly.

[whatthehey]

18. The old truism really is true

It's expensive to be poor.

But it's that way because we demand it. Volume discounts, bulk pricing. Everyone who can afford it uses it, because it saves us money, and that means CPG companies do more of it. Entire huge companies including DU fave Costco exist because of that. If a dozen rolls of TP gets us a discount, by definition it must cost more for those who cannot spare that in one go.

Then access to money comes in. Here it is at least bad credit rather than being poor which is expensive, but it takes a very disciplined and forward thinking person in poverty to maintain good credit. It's doable, but not easy, but it's a fallacy that banks charge fees because you are poor. They charge them because you don't have a good enough FICO score to get free checking accounts. These are reserved not for the rich, but for people who have avoided stiffing creditors. Much much easier to do when not poor for sure, but not impossible when you are.

Housing. There are real reasons why this is expensive for the poor. I'm one of those evil landlords btw. You know, people who provide housing for those who cannot or do not want to secure mortgages. Not sure what you think such folks should do without landlords. I rent 2br houses, not apartments, in good repair and safe if blue collar areas. My MOST expensive is 600/mo. Haven't raised rents in 5 years. Ask for a security deposit and first month rent not last month too as people here assume. But do you know why others do that? Because in those 5 years with 4 houses I have NEVER received the last month's rent. I coun't myself lucky if I only get the last month skipped. I've never gone from one tenant to the next without having to pay for carpet cleaning at least and repair/painting normally. Why? My own house doesn't need these things every year, but every single renter has left something to fix. I'm sure there are many responsible, careful renters out there but I've seen far more renters than most of you (I worked at a large apartment complex for a while too) and I assure you they are a tiny minority. Landlords must recoup that, higher property taxes, and the upkeep of houses on top of their investments, and we assume renters will be irresponsible and costly because frankly that's the norm we experience. Homeowners tend not to call out repairmen at 10 o clock at night when the pilot light on their stove goes out. Landlords get that call routinely. Homeowners usually clean up spills on the carpets before they stain irrevocably, and keep their kids from gouging drywall. That's pretty much a baseline expectation from rental turnover. If you are a renter and feeling offended, if you ever got even part of your security deposit back, then a) it's not you I'm discussing and b) you are one of a select few.

After my recent move I turned mine over to a professional management company. His advice? Charge higher rents. It will elevate the socioeconomic echelon of the tenants which means better payment and less damage. This from a fellow of late middle age with a generation's experience in the trade and a Bernie bumper sticker. Ask yourself what that means for renters. If you rent a cheap place you are expected to be irresponsible and charged with that assumption in mind. If you're renting a higher priced place it is probably more expensive than it should be to get people who are irresponsible out of it. A vicious cycle. Do venal gouging landlords exist? Of course and they are legion, and in hot markets like SoCal they are tempted beyond even saintly restraint with soaring market prices to boot. But even in flyover country when renters can pick and choose modestly priced options, and even with no intent to gouge, it doesn't take too much experience of renting to strangers to show anyone the hidden expenses renters never think of, and seemingly never realize they caused in the first place.

Transportation is a real killer. Cheap cars abound, but are largely unreliable, uneconomical and even the bare minimum of insurance is high when you likely live in a high vandalism/theft area. It's likely cheaper to seek out a discounted $150/month lease on a new compact than it is to keep a succession of $1000 twenty year old rustbuckets going, and damned more pleasant, but you need that credit again. That's why the number one best thing you can do to get out of poverty is don't stiff people who have access to credit agencies. Pay them first and stiff the others.

But yes to again risk DU ire choice matters too. Poverty is not a moral failing but not trying to escape it is a moral choice. Yes you'll pay more for toiletries and insurance and dozens more through no fault of your own, but the way to stop doing that most effectively is to give yourself the best chance of affording a more cost-effective life, which means having the money to buy TP in bulk by having a smaller TV or generic sneakers, maintaining credit so you don't have to pay 3% to Western Union instead of mailing a check. Keeping your rented place clean and in good shape so you get a deposit back and a refernce that means you don't have to pay first and last. It seems so nice and liberal and fair to say that poor people deserve to have nice things and fun experiences too, but when the iPhone or the Nikes come at the expense of food or shelter or financial stability, the wisdom of those choices is supported only by the most vapidly naive.

It's expensive to be poor. It should not be. It really should not be by choice.

[KamaAina]

23. "Transportation is a real killer."

This is certainly true in California, where many working-class people have been pushed out of the Bay Area, either to its fringes (Fairfield, Antioch, etc.) or all the way to the Central Valley, yielding hour-plus commutes in old beaters that barely pass Smog Check.

[HughBeaumont]

25. Victim blaming . . .

Never applies to the well-to-do.

Suck it up and make more money. Stop buying Nikes and iPhones. Tchotchkes are for taxpayers.

Work harder and it's going to pay off. Really, it will.

Funny thing about "Class Warfare" - it's one of the things the wealthy hit us WITH and accuse us OF in the same breath.

[jwirr]

22. During the Eisenhower years a famous radio speaker Paul

Harvey talked about a new welfare program. He suggested that we have a guaranteed income for every poor family and get rid of the welfare program. The wages paid in the programs would go toward the guaranteed wage. Everyone just scuffed at that.

Now Harvey was not completely right about that because social workers do a lot more than hand out checks to the poor. Child abuse investigation, case management for people like my daughter and other things we would still want regardless. But I still think he that the guaranteed wage is a good idea. Unfortunately - they would never raise the wage to fit the needs. So we would still be poor.

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. Republicans say "incentivize work". Democrats say "better education to compete for jobs"

Neither acknowledge the problem. Too much labor available, not enough work for that labor to do.

"Creating jobs" is hard. Creating a labor shortage is easy; do a search and replace on the FLSA - replace "40 hours" with "32 hours"

[valerief]

26. As Bernie hammers home to us, money keeps flowing up and up.

People stay in poverty, because they have no money. The rich keep taking it.

[monicaangela]

27. So you think that's poverty....

In the richest nation on earth, poverty looks like this and worse:

[olddots]

28. I see people making 45.000 $ a year driving 70.000 $ cars

vulture capitalism will end capitalism .

[PasadenaTrudy]

30. Leases

I think they are all leases. All I see in my town are Audis and BMWs, new ones every couple of years.