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This. When you cut down or eliminate prepared foods, frozen foods, etc., you eat healthier (less sodium, less artificial crap in general) and you save money. Eating simpler, whole grains, lean chicken, vegies is the best way to go, but some people just don't get that. I saw someone the other day checking out with like 6 6-packs of soda,, boxes of donuts, whatever. Not my business. Or, my teeth or waistline!
I've recently found out that Food Stamps are not geared towards allowing the purchase of grains, chicken, etc and are instead leaning towards being forced to buy less healthy foods.
My SIL has two. She paid $25 at a pawn shop for the first one. It doesn't work. Her mother-in-law, who is not poor, bought her kids a new one for Christmas two years ago.
Anything expensive for her kids has either been purchased by her in-laws or by my DH and me.
Now let's talk air conditioning. Here in the midwest, summers can be oppressive, as they can be on the east coast and the deep south. I never heard so many ambulance sirens as I did this summer during times when temps exceeded 90 degrees. We had many neighbors, most of them elderly or chronically ill, who were taken to the hospital for heat-related illness. Our next door neighbor also took ill one night around midnight...I watched EMTs work to try and resuscitate him. I watched him die. His widow explained that their central air had stopped working that day.
Air conditioning is not so much a luxury as it is a necessity for some people. We managed to find used window units for less than $100 each last year, the cheapest one for $50 IIRC. If a poor family purchased the same units, are they somehow undeserving?? I do not understand the logic here.
I don't understand why it is expected (by some) that the poor must be constantly miserable...punished for being poor in the first place. I first realized that twisted mindset back in the mid-90s when Gingrich was Speaker. Worship the wealthy, denigrate the poor.
You seem to be confusing technology with privilege. Not the same thing. Plenty of poor people do not have such things, however, the fact that they do means little.
To the OP......Read the Stats and you will find your answer!
Three years after the onset of the financial and economic crisis, hunger remains high in the United States. The financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2008 caused a dramatic increase in hunger in the United States. This high level of hunger continues in 2010, according to the latest government report (with the most recent statistics) released in September 2011 (Coleman-Jensen 2011).
In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of households (approximately one in seven), were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United States [SIZE=1]1 [/SIZE](Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v.)
In 2010, about one-third of food-insecure households (6.7 million households, or 5.4 percent of all U.S. households) had very low food security (compared with 4.7 million households (4.1 percent) in 2007. In households with very low food security, the food intake of some household members was reduced, and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because of the household’s food insecurity (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. v., Nord 2009, p. iii.) .
In 2010, children were food insecure at times during the year in 9.8 percent of households with children (3.9 million households.) In one percent of households with children,one or more of the children experienced the most severe food-insecure condition measured by USDA, very low food security, in which meals were irregular and food intake was below levels considered adequate by caregivers (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. vi).
The median [a type of average] food-secure household spent 27 percent more on food than the median food-insecure household of the same size and household composition (Coleman-Jensen 2011, p. vi)..
Background: The United States changed the name of its definitions in 2006 that eliminated references to hunger, keeping various categories of food insecurity. This did not represent a change in what was measured. Very low food insecurity (described as food insecurity with hunger prior to 2006) means that, at times during the year, the food intake of household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because the household lacked money and other resources for food. This means that people were hungry ( in the sense of "the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food" [Oxford English Dictionary 1971] for days each year (Nord 2009 p. iii-iv.).
Read this -- one thing you don't notice are illegals complaining about lack of work here. Apparently unemployed Americans are unwilling to work even $12 an hour jobs in furniture factories. I think we all have to admit there's a problem with the work ethic.
Obviously there must be jobs -- but too many would rather lay around and demand more welfare handouts like food stamps than to have to work for a living.
Instead, he planned to stay in Nogales a couple months before trying to cross the border again, hoping to reach Atlanta, where his cousin promised a $12-an-hour job at a furniture factory. He dismissed the prospect of more jail time if he is arrested again.
I don't know a single place where people won't work for $12 an hour. Hell, I had no problem hiring a manager for $10 base a week. This all took place this week.
Where are you getting your assessments of the job market?
I don't need an article to tell me what its like to be poor in this country. I'm friends with poor people, work with poor people, and very recently, have been poor myself. I know what its like to be poor in this country.
Do you care to mention all of the ills that take place in poor communities in this country?? Do you think its a cake walk being poor in this country??
My SIL has two. She paid $25 at a pawn shop for the first one. It doesn't work. Her mother-in-law, who is not poor, bought her kids a new one for Christmas two years ago.
Anything expensive for her kids has either been purchased by her in-laws or by my DH and me.
Now let's talk air conditioning. Here in the midwest, summers can be oppressive, as they can be on the east coast and the deep south. I never heard so many ambulance sirens as I did this summer during times when temps exceeded 90 degrees. We had many neighbors, most of them elderly or chronically ill, who were taken to the hospital for heat-related illness. Our next door neighbor also took ill one night around midnight...I watched EMTs work to try and resuscitate him. I watched him die. His widow explained that their central air had stopped working that day.
Air conditioning is not so much a luxury as it is a necessity for some people. We managed to find used window units for less than $100 each last year, the cheapest one for $50 IIRC. If a poor family purchased the same units, are they somehow undeserving?? I do not understand the logic here.
I don't understand why it is expected (by some) that the poor must be constantly miserable...punished for being poor in the first place. I first realized that twisted mindset back in the mid-90s when Gingrich was Speaker. Worship the wealthy, denigrate the poor.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,166,733 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by malamute
Read this -- one thing you don't notice are illegals complaining about lack of work here. Apparently unemployed Americans are unwilling to work even $12 an hour jobs in furniture factories. I think we all have to admit there's a problem with the work ethic.
Obviously there must be jobs -- but too many would rather lay around and demand more welfare handouts like food stamps than to have to work for a living.
Instead, he planned to stay in Nogales a couple months before trying to cross the border again, hoping to reach Atlanta, where his cousin promised a $12-an-hour job at a furniture factory. He dismissed the prospect of more jail time if he is arrested again.
There have been times when I went around looking for minimum wage jobs, which I couldn't get. All of those places (mainly restaurants) had many Hispanics speaking only Spanish working in the kitchen (guess who actually cooks your Kung Pao Chicken or Bouillabaisse?). The same employers who whine about how US citizens won't do the work are also the ones who won't hire anyone BUT illegals, not to mention that when illegals become managers they hire friends and family.
Welfare isn't something you can get just because you "prefer" it. There has to be a reason, such as disability or being a single mom. That brings us to the point that the children have to be brought up by someone, and it's more economically efficient to give the mother welfare than to send the kids to child care while she works at a minimum wage job, for which she'd still need food stamps to survive.
I have been paying income taxes for 67 years. Now to be serious, I will say that I am sorry you have that problem but then some in DC want just that to happen as often as it can to get people dependent on the government for food.
Hey, you are a bit more responsible than most here so I will suggest that you read that link in the OP. So much there that damned few of us know about. I might add that what happens in Iowa isn't much different than any state or city.
I am not kidding. I am dead serious. The cost of food and everything else just keeps going up and up. Salaries are stagnated and raises are virtually either so small that you feel insulted or non existent. At the rate things are going the handfull of us that still have jobs (unless you're making 6 figures +) will need some kind of subsidy to survive this economical collapse.
Last edited by PurpleRain_1; 09-11-2012 at 02:21 PM..
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