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Usually when you're really poor, the discretion in your personal finances involves cutting back on food quality and healthcare, assuming you've already cut back everywhere else that you can.
There was a point when my husband was making $12/hour for a family of four. Our rent was $750, car payment $265, car insurance $125, utilities $200, gas $180, phone $60. So he made $2080/month and his take home pay was about $1800/month. Bills were $1580 a month which left $220 for food, clothes, cleaning supplies, etc. His employer paid for his health insurance. I didn't have any, and the kids were on the state insurance. The only thing we really could have cut back on was the phone, but once you have kids in school, you have got to have a phone number. If he missed a day of work, we ate rice and beans all month.
Usually when you're really poor, the discretion in your personal finances involves cutting back on food quality and healthcare, assuming you've already cut back everywhere else that you can.
There was a point when my husband was making $12/hour for a family of four. Our rent was $750, car payment $265, car insurance $125, utilities $200, gas $180, phone $60. So he made $2080/month and his take home pay was about $1800/month. Bills were $1580 a month which left $220 for food, clothes, cleaning supplies, etc. His employer paid for his health insurance. I didn't have any, and the kids were on the state insurance. The only thing we really could have cut back on was the phone, but once you have kids in school, you have got to have a phone number. If he missed a day of work, we ate rice and beans all month.
I was bummed when my local Kroger stpped carrying 99 cent hot dogs, until a surplus discount store carried 79 cent hot dogs.
It's $55. If you don't have a car, how do you even survive if you don't live in a major city with easy public transit?
I do have good transit here, with easy access to some reasonably priced supermarkets. There is a Costco way across town, and I live in a house with four other adults - one of the 'extended' memberships where I can bring others with me (in their car so we can stock up) might make sense.
Low wage jobs are taxpayer subsidizes corporate socialism, because we have to supplement their income with food stamps, and Medicaid. Later, when they become too old to work they'll become dependent on more financial assistance to survive. This ideal that says anyone can do that job, and the current lack of respect for labor in favor of immense wealth will leave a fraction of the population paying for this eventually unless we have death camps for the poor.
Low wage jobs are taxpayer subsidized corporate socialism,
because we have to supplement their income with food stamps, and Medicaid.
...when they become too old to work they'll become dependent on more financial assistance to survive.
This idea that says anyone can do that job and the current lack of respect for labor
...will leave (an even smaller) fraction of the population paying for this eventually unless we...
Unless we start doing something constructive about the problem.
The first step being general recognition of what/where the problem IS (many still deny it).
The second step is to stop digging the hole of creating surplus population any deeper.
The third step is to revamp HOW we manage support for those who w/don't do for themselves.
The fourth step is to taper the raw number of the population as a whole...
but especially so at the low/no skilled end of the demographic spectrum.
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