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This is true, people are close minded to how it really is to be poor. Garage sales as well allow for some stuff you couldn't afford otherwise. People want to live as normally as they can. They have kids and want these things for their kids like anyone else does. Being poor doesn't mean you won't strive to have what others have.
A lot of these parents have addiction issues and can't really grasp life like some would like them to. They can't function mentally or physically. They rely on assistance for life and then try and live it as normally as they can. We don't have good mental services for these people. Doctors load them up on prescription meds for pain and don't address the real issues.
We should all think outside the box because most of us don't live like it's 1950. Things are different now, dynamics of family are different, this is a very close minded one sided thread, IMO.
If you've never been poor, in a poor area or received assistance you really have no idea. They have a different mind set altogether. They are treated different, and you can't really understand it unless you've been there or have worked with them. It involves a lot of factors.
There are many lower middle class folks who don't make enough but don't qualify as well. Those I see suffer the most in a lot of cases. They are caught between the two ideals of American life. Not poor, not stable. Usually people on aid have parents that just cannot function without it. We give aid for their kids, so they can eat and have clothing for school. Yes, sometimes a game system, that money isn't enough to go off aid.
If my family was poor when I was a child--I would have never been allowed to know.
Today, I can tell my parents struggle(d) with money. They're forever in debt putting four kids through college, but when we were kids--they wouldn't let us deal with that stress. As the cracked article put it, adult problems for the adult world.
Location: Just transplanted to FL from the N GA mountains
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
Yes I do work with them. The nicest people you will ever meet and truly thankful and grateful for anything you do.
I worked with the poor in cities in the schools and food pantries. Their sense of entitlement and accumulation of stuff made me so angry that I nearly stopped doing the work I was doing.
I moved rural when I retired and again..back in the schools and food pantries. It is like night and day.
NOW I really feel like I'm helping.
Poor is NOT in the cities. Those are the poor you see in the MSM.
And I agree with you when you say the truly poor are silent. They are and they try to make due with what little they have. And what little they have they are more then willing to share with you.
Maybe instead of basing people as poor or rich, maybe we should base people on their priorities. Because that truly is what it's about. I've been helping raise funds and supplies with a local woman's group, for children. The joy in the eyes of the kids was amazing. The comment's from some of the mother's was atrocious. One woman had the audacity to get mad because there wasn't anything for her. And after receiving the box for her children, she went and crawled into a 500.00 car with 3000 dollars worth of rims and wheels. I know where her priorities lay, and it wasn't with those blessed children.
As much as I would like to see a ton of entitlements cut, it is absurd to think or believe that all poor live in a certain standard that is above what others think they, as the poor, should live in. Yes, there are scammers. Yes, there are people with things that I would argue they shouldn't have while on government assistance.
But there are dirt poor people who live in 3rd world poverty conditions in this country the likes of which most people can't wrap their heads around. Several years ago, we joined a program called Adopt-an-Elder. For the sake of full disclosure, it helps buy food and other basic things for the elderly on reservations.
After getting to know them we ended up buying them a small 19inch tv. They didn't have one and never had. This wasn't just any tv though, it was a battery powered tv because there was no running electricity in their home. (Neighbors take it down to the community center and recharge it for them.)
It's important for us as a people to remember that the issue of poor and entitlements isn't a simple one. It's not totally us vs them. All those that are poor are not stealing money out of the pockets of others anymore than all Republicans want to end abortion or all liberals want to shut down free speech for hate speech laws.
We already destroyed this nonsense months ago--but I'm seeing the same old drivel once again--people aren't really poor or in poverty unless their licking fungus off the walls and wiping their asses with dirt.
Please. Nobody here knows how these people obtained their wonderful "luxuries" like a refrigerator, washer\dryers, or entertainment devices. You can buy a VCR for $5 friggen dollars, an Xbox for $100--and for all you know, these things could have been purchased before people fell into poor-hood in the first place.
Keep hatin', Conservatives, it's worked brilliantly for you so far.
Stop labeling all conservatives the same. I AM a conservative...did you NOT see my post on this thread? I know EXACTLY what it's like to be poor! (Despite what some of these yahoos think.)
Exactly! Choices. We all know that the truly poor have no options. Those that are truly the most needy need help, and we conservatives (at least all the ones I know) are more than happy to oblige. But if someone tells me they are in need, yet they put their personal wants ahead of their needs... well...
You know, I'm sorry but this is such crap.
Do you know who helped me when I was poor?
MYSELF!
No conservative, no democrat, came and helped me out so put down the damn horns you're tootin'.
Heck, if you look hard enough, you can even see that horn blowing on these forums elsewhere. There is a guy who is HOMELESS but is trying really hard to get out of it and the majority of people just sit there and wish him luck, nothing more. Yes, some have stepped up and helped out but seriously, how is saying, "Oh I wish you the best of luck" helping a poor person?! What, it made you feel good to say it? Doesn't fill that person's belly, doesn't keep them warm at night.
Fact is, too many people just TALK, not many people actually WALK.
Exactly -- which still means the so-called poor today have everything they need and want. In the past poverty actually meant people didn't have heat, didn't have more than enough food, didn't have all the luxuries everyone else had. They aren't suffering today, they might whine because their car or truck is 10 years old, and they can't have a new lexus, or they envy those who travel and stay in 4 star hotels while they stay in affordable hotels. But they most definitely having to go without.
You are so out of touch with reality up there on your pedestal that your nose must bleed constantly.
People like you irritate the crap out of me because you spread false information around. You make an ASSUMPTION and then decide it's FACT and tell everyone, from your easy chair, how lazy they are, what drug addicts they are, what losers they are, how they aren't trying hard enough, on and on and on you go, smugly and arrogantly.
You don't have a DAMN CLUE what it's like to be poor and you have NO DAMN clue if they have what they "need and want". You don't know much about people at all, actually, to even say such a stupid thing.
They aren't suffering? STARVING is not suffering? I lost 30 pounds in one month when I was homeless. You think that wasn't suffering?! Don't you sit there with your arrogance and tell me or anyone else who has ever been poor, what they need and want and how they have not suffered.
You can go jump in a lake. (VERY nice version of what I really wish to say to you. Pompous ass.)
But I don't have cable or air conditioning --- and I'm not what you'd really call poor. I don't think cable or air conditioning are the yardsticks. Not when virtually everyone living off government handouts has them and many of those who don't are not what you'd call poor.
There are over 1.2 million public housing units in this country. Have you been inside any? Spent time with families, especially in the South living in these conditions? Air conditioning? Haha. I've conducted research in the South for the last four years, going into some of the poorest neighborhoods and public housing developments in this country. No one had AC. And I can vouch for it because I sweated my tush off when interviewing the families.
This quote really shows your level of ignorance regarding this topic. Do some research.
How many of you actually work with the poor? Across the country? In rural and/or urban areas?
How many of you actually study this as a profession? Provide care or some sort of service in which you interact with these folks on a daily basis? We have a LOT of experts here, but, ironically, you provide no real insight into the reality of what poverty really is or looks like. I question the value and purpose of spreading misinformation when you are truly uninformed. Why waste the time?
Stop labeling all conservatives the same. I AM a conservative...did you NOT see my post on this thread? I know EXACTLY what it's like to be poor! (Despite what some of these yahoos think.)
If you don't agree with the disdain for anyone making less than 100k in this country, you might want to think of choosing a new label.
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Maybe instead of basing people as poor or rich, maybe we should base people on their priorities. Because that truly is what it's about. I've been helping raise funds and supplies with a local woman's group, for children. The joy in the eyes of the kids was amazing. The comment's from some of the mother's was atrocious. One woman had the audacity to get mad because there wasn't anything for her. And after receiving the box for her children, she went and crawled into a 500.00 car with 3000 dollars worth of rims and wheels. I know where her priorities lay, and it wasn't with those blessed children.
