Opinion, please. What is the difference between a deadbeat and a poor person?

[grasswire]

What is the difference? At what point do people generally consider a person unable to pay his/her obligations a deadbeat?

[skygazer]

1. When it is not themselves

[Texasgal]

2. Deadbeat:

A person NOT willing to pay his/her obligations.

Poor: A person not ABLE to pay his/her obligations.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. To differentiate,

a deadbeat is someone who just doesn't pay his or her debts, even if he/she has the money to do so.

A poor person is just a poor person.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. Deadbeats happen at all economic levels. Poor people only occur at the poor level.

[grasswire]

5. Why would someone avoid obligations if they had money ...

...to pay them off?

[KSinTX]

7. Lack of integrity or honesty?

In truth, most see it as sticking it to "the man" and fail to see that "he" is we.

[mike_c]

6. lots of folks missing the point, I think....

Somewhere along the continuum from being well off but a skinflint deadbeat and being too poor to meet one's obligations at all is a LONG gray zone where folks have to decide how to stretch limited resources. I think we can all agree that the family who lives in a McMansion and drives luxury cars but stiffs the wait-person at restaurants or skimps on the housekeeper's wages to save a couple of bucks is a deadbeat and someone who's broke can't be squeezed for resources they don't have. In between those extremes are a lot of folks with limited means who have to make decisions about what they can afford and what they can't. Folks who are juggling their obligations, trying to keep as many in the air at a time as they can, but ultimately not able to do it all. It gets a lot harder to judge them because their motives are not always unambiguous.