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I know I will get a lot of attacks for this. But here goes.
I own an investment company. We do a lot of home renovations. I employ several full time guys and several part-time. The full time guys I pay them well. $15-20/hour. I think that's pretty fair considering wages around this part of the country is around $12-15/hour for the same types of work. They all live out in the country, so very low standards of living.
They always complain that they are broke. And on many occasions, they have asked me to get paid early because they were in the negative.
This past week, I decided to figure out why they are always broke. I kept track of one guy. Very hard worker. He starts working at 6:30 AM every day. Puts in his 8 hours and then goes home and work on his house. His uncle gave him the house so he is fixing it up. He gets paid $18/hour. That is pretty decent especially for someone who lives out in the country. I began to notice something about him. He doesn't stop smoking. He smokes and smokes and smokes. I asked him how much he smokes and he said 4-5 packs a day. That's about $35/day. Work out the math. That's about $1000/month. $12,000/year.
And on top of that, his wife also smokes. Not as much as he does. He says she smokes 3 packs a day. That's about $25/day, or $750/month, or $9000/year. And she doesn't work. So, out of the $2800/month or so that he gets paid, $1700 goes to cigarettes alone!
He also has an adult son that doesn't work and always asking for money.
Look, I am not naïve enough to claim that if we get the poor to stop smoking that everything will be fine. But you gotta admit smoking is a HUGE contributor to why poor people remain poor no matter how hard they work.
It is just a fact that lower class people have much higher rate of tobacco use than everyone else. Please don't come in here with your political correctness and say it ain't so. We all have eyes. We all can see how much they smoke cigarettes.
If we hope to solve the problem of poverty, we can't just keep throwing money at the poor via social programs and more welfare. We need to tackle where the money they earn are going.
It'd be good if we could find a cure for addiction. Nicotine is highly addictive and it can be tough to quit. My respect goes to those who managed to do so.
Unpopular opinion here, but there are a lot of "working poor" in the suburbs and inner cities surrounding NYC. One thing I have observed of them is they all have tattoos, the latest iPhone, rims for their car, dogs, plenty of kids. All expenses right there, can't be that bad...
I quit at age of 24 and I am no spring chicken. Never went back. I have no bills,Paid cash for my second house and sold my other house and that house was also paid for. I had two homes all paid for and put every dollar of the sale of that house in the bank. Haven't touched a dollar of that money. That money is making money.
I have seen a lot of poor people run down to the local mart and buy a small jar of mayo and pay two to three times more for it than what it sells for in the grocery store.
I watch every dollar and get my moneys worth.
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