It is all an affectation, the American middle class looking down on the global middle class.

We are in America. It isn't a race to the bottom you know.

We are rapidly being transformed into a Russian province.

In other developed countries, the American poor would still be considered poor.

Sure it's an affectation, but pointing that out is a smokescreen to protect the wealthy and the financially secure at the expense the local impoverished population. It's a convenient way to pretend that there isn't a problem, and it's essentially the same as scolding poor people for owning an iPhone.

Tell the single mother of two who's working three minimum wage jobs that she's middle class compared to Haiti, and see how long it takes for someone to rightly call you out for grotesque insensitivity.

It's not about what someone is earning in a fundamentally separate economic island; it's about the person who's suffering and struggling to survive in their own brutal economy that oppresses the poor at every turn.

What matters is the relative conditions of these people in THIS country.

...compared to the Local Group galaxy cluster and positively DEPRIVED compared to the Local Supercluster or even the Virgo Cluster.

Now don't you feel relevant?

helpfully,
Bright

You rationalize a creative pretense which allows the biased mind to justify dismissing the actual point of the article.

in most other deveoped countries is significantly higher and inxome inequality is lower, and of course, other developed countries have health care for all that is afdordable or free, and they have paid maternal leave.

Yeah, the poor here have it so much better.

See if you might like it

Been to Tanzania, Guatemala, Cambodia and Thailand recently, would count them too.

That was a good read

Some of that article was incredibly sad. #4 about considering people working menial jobs failures really hits close to home. People shouldn't be made to feel like failures no matter what their job. I think about this at work, with the janitors and cleaning people that are forced to clean up after us round the clock. Most of them are around my age, I can't imagine how it must be so tough for them to clean our offices and empty our trash while we sit here at out computer monitors all day knowing our bills are paid and we can take time off as we need.

Americans lost the capacity for empathy in large part. People just do not relate to not having it so easy. Everyone thinks they are self made and they worked so hard for all they have while totally discounting the massive advantages they were born with. If you went to college, there's a very high % chance that your parents are college grads. That is such a huge advantage people don't even consider.

The Republicans are going to go after disability payments with full vigor. They simply don't care about the disadvantaged and would prefer they just all die.

I took a lower paying job, mind you it's not menial, but it was nowhere near the pay and benefits of the job I had before my current one. In the short term to today, it paid off emotionally, psychologically, socially, and spiritually.

I'll be passing that around.

Maybe in other countries with stronger social safety nets, folks aren't consumed as much about money, but in the U.S. money is the difference between life and death. Having money eases the mind and allows you to focus on other things like being a better spouse or parent.

I've never lived in abject poverty, but I've been briefly homeless after a job loss and lived in public housing for about a year.

I'm not particularly acquisitive, and I don't want money for its own sake, but I'm palpably aware of just how hard life can be in this economy without a basic financial cushion. A great many Americans live shockingly close to destitution, separated only by a broken refrigerator or an unexpected trip to the ER.

I can't say what the solution is, but I can tell you that it absolutely won't be found in the ivory tower pronouncements of millionaire legislators.

But that's exactly what we're getting from the republicans.

They consistently vote these assholes into power, perhaps under the sad delusion that they themselves will be rich one day, too, so they want to make sure that ain't no gub'mint gonna take their riches when they get there.

When you have time, read the other postings linked in the article's intro paragraph.

Cracked is sometimes criticized for potty humor and over-reliance on boob-related jokes, but much of their social and political commentary is top notch.

to life below the poverty line when I became disabled and lost all my savings and everything else due to medical costs, etc.

The best way to invalidate the poor is to tell us that we would be considered wealthy if we lived in the third world. Try worrying every single month about if you're going to end up in the streets because you can't pay the rent. Try being in constant fear that the electricity will be turned off at any time. Try lying awake at night considering how you will feed yourself should SNAP be abolished. Do this for month after month and year after year and see just how wealthy you feel. The Middle class is clueless when it comes to those living in poverty.

And you've described the problem exactly.

I must disclaim that I'm a generic white male of currently livable income, so I don't speak from any immediate personal authority, though I lived in public housing just a few years ago.

One thing I noticed while living there, and which I frankly couldn't have imagined beforehand, is how invisible I was even to workers and staff charged with treating me like a human being. Maintenance workers would speak as though I wasn't in the room, so if I'd say "no, the cold water spigot is the problem," they'd simply ignore me. Groundskeepers likewise ignored anything I had to say, such as "no, that sidewalk drain is clogged."

It sounds trivial, and ultimately it didn't harm me because I'd had decades to build up a foundation of self-worth, but I can now sort of imagine what it would be like to grow up in that environment, which is what the poor must endure every day (as must most minorities and women, frankly).

So you're correct: the last thing someone needs to hear is that they're not poor compared to some other person suffering even greater destitution elsewhere in the world.


Thank you for sharing.

Being rendered invisible is just one more way of dis-empowering the poor and making sure they know who really is in charge and it's NOT us. When this first happened to me, I was amazed by how those in authority treated me as if I were non-existent. My favorite story in this regard is when I happened to be in a gondola in the wealthy resort town of Telluride on my way to see a friend in equally wealthy Mountain Village (Telluride's gondola system serves as a sort of public transport system as well as a way of hitting the slopes). At the time I was homeless and my friend worked as a care-taker for a wealthy family who had a vacation condo in the area. I was sitting in the gondola car alone, freshly showered and wearing clean if somewhat frayed clothing and I had a pair of old beat-up sneakers on. There were plenty of empty gondola cars coming down the line but two hot shot CEO's too impatient to wait 10 seconds hopped into the opposite seat on mine. Why not? One glance told them that I was as inconsequential as a pile of rags left behind by the cleaning crew. For the entire ride, they talked lucrative land deals and luxury condo building projects as if I didn't exist. I happen to be a well-educated, native Coloradan who was once on the faculty of one of Colorado's colleges. I did a slow burn as I listened to their plans to destroy Colorado's high country and its forests in the name of greed. As we all got off the gondola after it reached its destination, I politely asked them which development company they worked for. They glanced at me briefly in surprise, then walked off without a further word. And the US claims to have a classless society. Oh, please.

It was "trivial" in my particular case only in retrospect and only because I have had the luck to get out of that situation after just a short while, in sharp contrast with people who are stuck there through no fault of their own. Believe me--I ponder my good fortune daily, fully aware of how easily things could have gone very differently for me and my family.

Last edited Wed Mar 8, 2017, 11:31 PM - Edit history (1)

Information that is useful for surviving poverty:

Telephone book paper can substitute for toilet paper, but only for a few days at a time - it clogs the toilet.

Paper bags are not as good as plastic bags for carrying your belongings, as the paper will weaken if it gets even slightly damp or if you have anything with edges in the bag.

Raw peeled potatoes taste almost like like apples, and they also have vitamins.

Corn and beans eaten together form a complete protein, so they can substitute for animal products indefinitely.

Plastic-wrapped Granola bars are almost indestructible, and, if you are really hungry, they taste wonderful!

Athlete's foot can be combatted by soaking your feet in bleach water each night. Best to start at the first sign, as thee eventual cracks will render this treatment very painful.

Hair can be washed with bar soap, if you don't apply the bar directly to your hair but instead create soap foam between your hands. Best if done with warm water.

Salt can be substituted for toothpaste, if put on a wet brush.

One hot dog can feed five people, if you slice it very finely and mix it with rice.

A store is more likely to let you put ONE more carton of milk and ONE more loaf of bread on an already swollen bill if you send your small child in to do it. Also if they know you get paid the next day.

Cardboard boxes can be cut up to make new soles for shoes with holes in the bottom, thus extending the life of the shoe for months.

Cold nights are more survivable if you have a layer of waterproof material with two more layers of thick material under you.

Milk can be watered down. It is best to do this before the carton is half full.

A refrigerator can be created by sticking a strong box out the window and shutting the sash to hold it in place. In the winter, you do not even need to put a bowl of ice in there.

It is possible to live for most of the year on three plain slices of bread per day. By the way, many cafeterias throw out the end slices of bread loaves, so you can feed yourself by looking through their dumpsters when nobody is looking.

It is possible to live for most of the year on two plain baked potatoes per day. By the way, most stores will charge less for potatoes with large rotten spots, which you can then cut out and eat the rest of the potato safely.

I have to go now, but I bet there are many people who know even more such survival tricks.

You know those huge, jumbo sized rolls of TP in McDonald's bathrooms?

Well, it's free, isn't it? They don't charge for it and they don't check how much you use...

Their fact-checking is sometimes lax - like their claim that two Amerinds crossed the Atlantic to arrive in Europe in 60BC - but their 'opinion pieces' or editorials are usually good-to-great. This one in particular.

I had a VERY skewed view of life and economic realities until I lived on my own. I thought our family was fairly poor, and it was retrospect that made me realize that never EVER missing a meal, two cars and my mother never working outside the home wasn't actually poverty. We just happened to live in a school catchment area that encompassed some of the most prime land in Canada. (today, a starter home in that neighbourhood is $5M)

OTOH, I almost always lived my life according to precepts that the article's first paradigm seemed to criticize. I believed, and still do, that life is about the time you're given to live it, not the "things" you fill your house with. My last year of employment was 1988, and I made $70K that year. The next year, I made under $20K and was so much happier, I can't even tell you.

No matter how much money you make, it will never buy back one second of the time it took from your life to make it.

....strictly for my own life. It's not something I would ever go around telling people that were in dire straits. I find it akin to people telling someone that, yes, it's regrettable to have a chronic illness, but it should be heartening that it isn't something worse, and ESPECIALLY if another person is used as an example.

I find that insufferable. "Yes, you were just diagnosed with MS, but look at Lou Gehrig." The misery of someone else helps not at all, and just adds something you can feel bad about.

"Oh, you cut your finger off? Well Bob has stage 4 cancer, so why don't you suck it up?"

To an extent I agree with you, that time lost can't be bought off with money. I lost my job in the run-up to the financial crash, and we struggled until we ultimately lost our house (and had our only car repo'ed once). Terrible, stressful time of constant uncertainty.

However, my older son had just turned 4 and my younger son was 1, and I got to spend a great deal of time with them that I'd have missed if I'd been punching a clock. These are memories that I wouldn't trade for anything, even if it means that our retirement fund is negligible and my credit score is subzero.


I took the article's first point to be more about buying off the causes of unhappiness rather than buying happiness per se. For instance, money can reduce the constant anxiety about losing your house because of a high gas bill or losing your job because your car needs new brakes.

Due to an unexpected and once-in-a-lifetime windfall, we now own a modest home and two average vehicles free and clear. I simply can't convey how profound a difference this has made in my life. Before 2008, I went to work every day thinking "If I lose my job I will lose my house and my car," and it didn't help that my boss was an asshole who used to tell us every week that the company wanted to get rid of our department. Now that I'm not bound to a mortgage or car loan, though, that constant fear has vanished.


Every so often DU has a debate about whether $250K per year is "rich," and we get to see how this "hate the poor" mentality rears its ugly head even here on a generally progressive forum.

As a 60 year old white woman, I admit I was brought up this way, not to despise the poor, but to blame them for their own problems.

And now I'm poor.

No one told me that even with a college education, that I would face long periods of unemployment. Even when jobs ended as recently as 10 years ago, I could support myself with temp work until a good permanent position came along. Not anymore.

No one told me how hard it would be to find a new job after age 50.

No one told me I would be downwardly mobile since 2003, when I was in my mid 40s. That's when I made my highest salary, $42K, with benefits. Now I am lucky to get $10K less, without benefits, and that's IF I can find something full time.

But I can't work full time anymore at age 60, and no one told me that would happen either.

All of these things happen to poor people except they happen MORE, and it wasn't their fault any more than it was mine.

The killer is the repeated (and ubiquitous) mantra of "poor choices," with which we can conveniently dismiss every unlucky circumstance by blaming the victim for failing to plan ahead. It's another formulation of the cruel "bootstrap" myth so beloved at every level of our culture and politics.

I'm sorry for your circumstances, and I only wish that I could offer a solution.

The kids from the next farm are playing at your house and it's lunch time. The only thing you have to feed them is one can of beans. You pour the beans into an iron skillet on the back of the stove before realizing the skillet is covered in tiny red grease ants. Hungry kids or eat ants? What do you do?
Your child is desperately ill with strep throat and in such pain she is screaming. You have just enough money to pay for one doctor's visit but that money was for groceries. Child or food? What do you do?
Wage earner passed out on the bed with what's left of his wages in his pocket. If you try to get the money he might wake up and beat the hell out of you and your kids. The only way to protect yourself is hold a gun on him. What would you do?
You live in a house that lets snow in between cracks in the walls because public assistance does not cover rent. You are blind, 3rd grade education, five kids from men who raped you. The ceiling plaster upstairs falls down every time it rains or the wind blows. Finally you give up and let it lie where it falls. What would you do?
Simple fact: the poor don't have money. If you gave them the income from social workers and other professions involved in keeping them poor, they would not be and society would actually save money...bigly. There is enough cash out there to provide a basic income for everyone if you can pry it from the cold dead hands of those who have it. Other countries are considering basic income and Sweden recently rejected a proposal because it did not provide sufficient money. Poverty is a disgrace on everyone who is not in it.

Last edited Thu Mar 9, 2017, 10:49 AM - Edit history (1)

I support a basic minimum income for all, because everything shows us that this is cheaper in the long run than subsidized public assistance, housing & incarceration.

As you note--there's plenty of money wasted on giveaways to the rich, which promptly gets invested overseas and effectively stripped out of our economy, in yet another real-world refutation of the "trickle down" theory.

Give that money to people who need it and will use it, and the entire economy will benefit!

I know some people like that. Gov. Paul LePage is like that. He grew up poor and now he has some money and he works to make things harder for poor people. He seems to despise them. I think it might because he grew up in one of those scum bag poor families. He was abused by his parents and he ran away from home at like 12. Maybe he assumes all other poor families are like that. Not true though. There are plenty of poor people who are good parents and who are hard workers.

Bracing for the hide in three... two...

n/t.

The middle class for the most part doesn't realize that they are probably one bad event leaving them poor. Loss of a job, a bad car accident, a slip and fall. People don't appreciate how close most of the middle class is to losing everything. Obamacare helped reduce one cause of this, but now they want to get rid of those protections.

Personally. I've worked hard to get out of the lower middle class to the upper middle class, but the fact is that if I got sick in the wrong way I could easily lose everything I have.

Before obamacare it was not uncommon to go to a convenience store and see a fundraiser bin for a child or adult with a medical emergency. How do people avoid connecting those medical fundraisers with the reality that some people will die if they don't get enough donations?

Maybe the middle classers try everything they can do to be less poor, even if that means identifying less with them.

I was convicted on more than one point. Everyone should read it. Make your kids read it!

of about $100K per year. That lets them lie about what they'll do for the "Middle Class." If people really understood that, they'd not be in support of the GOP.

I truly think that you have to experience or understand poverty
firsthand to really get it.

You need to be around poor people, work with them, get to know
them, or be one yourself to really get it.