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I think several posters to this thread may not have the diversity of cultural experience to recognize how people could live with this lifestyle.
Especially when you factor in that they'd work a little part time or some cash jobs or sell pot on the side.
You'd see a surge in x-box playing time though.
Yes, nor can they multiply 1100 X 2.
Let me add that 55% of Americans get their healthcare insurance highly subsidized through their jobs. Reduce unemployment and further increase the taxpayers burden for the healthcare costs of others.
Well, gimme the $1100/month for a few years and call it an experiment.
I am lucky enough that my family left my family in a position that Neither my husband nor I have to work. We still went to college, hold jobs we take pleasure working in, actually two jobs for me, and thus I am always shocked by the number of people who think the only reason people work is to earn money.
Regardless, $1100 a month isn't enough to live comfortably, it might keep you from starving to death or living in a box, but it is not even remotely close to being above the poverty level in this country.
I am lucky enough that my family left my family in a position that Neither my husband nor I have to work. We still went to college, hold jobs we take pleasure working in, actually two jobs for me, and thus I am always shocked by the number of people who think the only reason people work is to earn money.
[Regardless, $1100 a month isn't enough to live comfortably, it might keep you from starving to death or living in a box, but it is not even remotely close to being above the poverty level in this country.
In 1993 I worked for less than 1000 a month take home.
Yes, I realize that that was over 20 years ago....
But I paid my rent, owned a car, had cable TV and a phone.
None of which was subsidized.
The point is that your not supposed to stay at that income level.
Edit:
Admittedly, the cost of living where I was then was pretty low
...but that's why any arbitrary "living wage" including minimum wage , doesn't make sense on a national level.
Even today you could live the way I did in 1993 in some parts of the country on 1100 a month.
Do people not understand the vast difference in cost of living across the United States?
From what I'm reading it seems like those struggling with the concept are from high cost of living areas and have likely never lived anywhere else at least not at an age when they were paying bills.
Well, gimme the $1100/month for a few years and call it an experiment.
Well....here is the thing. It all depends on what you are used to and your environment. If you have never had anything.....then you cannot miss having something. Learning to cope and find happiness while poor is a double edge sword. On one hand learning to cope and manage living in poverty is better for your health and sanity, on the other hand, not being able to cope with poverty is a powerful incentive to get out of it. Unfortunately alcohol, drugs and sex blunts the pain of poverty, but those things can further trap you in poverty.
Right now, after living an upper middle class existence for a couple of decades, I fear poverty. I don't know if I could cope with it.......so I do everything I can not fall back into it. Once you learn to cope with poverty you are almost doomed to remain in it. The irony is that I know a lot of poor people that seem happier than people I work with who are well off. Why? Many poor people have strong relationship with God. Many poor people have close family and friends. Many poor people grew up poor and their expectations of life are low to begin with.
The times I have been to Africa, walking around and traveling about.....despite abject poverty in many places.....people seemed happier than here in the USA. Money, to a large degree, does not equal happiness. However, an extreme deprivation of health, food, clothing or shelter can impact happiness and when such is tied to money then it can impact happiness. Here in the USA, most people have food, clothing and shelter, if not great health.
I am kind of rambling but I just think if poor people were exposed to a better life and better way of doing things.....they would get addicted to it and reproduce it on their own and would no longer be able to cope with poverty.
Well, you rent an old, used single wide in the sticks somewhere for maybe 500 a month. You have an old, beater truck that takes 120 a month to run. You pay 110 for electric. You buy Raman noodles, hamburger helper and cheese whiz for 200 a month and finally you have 170 for beer and pot.
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