This is what it is like to grow up poor, to live poor, in a small town.

[TalkingDog]

These are the people you grow up with, go to school with. The people you still live with. The people you deal with every day.

Every. Day.

(to see a larger version: Right Click your mouse and select "View Image" It will have a magnifying glass)

[friendly_iconoclast]

1. K&R

[TalkingDog]

2. Let’s Talk About Poor Shaming, And Why It Isn’t Okay

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/20/lets-talk-about-poor-shaming-and-why-it-isnt-okay/

People might also argue that poor people should be innovative and start their own small business instead of working for other people. Well, again, have you tried being poor and getting a loan of any kind, much less a small business loan? It is very hard to do. Further, thanks to the corporate takeover of America, small businesses rarely make it; in fact many that have been around for decades are closing. There was a small convenience store that had been in my hometown of Rock Hill, SC for five decades that was bulldozed last year. A massive Quik Trip stands in its place now. Aside from the survival of the business itself, there is the survival of the people who want to start it while it gets off the ground. They live paycheck to paycheck as it is. So, how do they work to survive and get a business off the ground at the same time? That doesn’t work.

The thing is, the mantra that poor people are simply lazy, do not try hard enough, or want to freeload off the government is simply untrue. Poverty is a cycle, and it is a cycle that is nearly impossible to break. So, do what I have done over the years and thank your lucky stars if you aren’t poor, and, if you are, realize that it isn’t your fault, no matter how much classism you might experience. If you make judgments about people who don’t make a certain amount of money, try to remember that you don’t know their stories, and that it likely is something they would rectify if they could, but often they can’t. They are just trying to survive to see another day.

[TalkingDog]

3. 10 Poverty Myths, Busted

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/10-poverty-myths-busted


7. We're winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.

8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.

9. The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

[Tsiyu]

4. Fuck these assholes

30 year olds today, with college degrees and good work ethics, can't find jobs, will probably never own homes, have kids or even purchase a car.

You want an end to federal assistance? Demand corporations pay people a wage they can live on. Stop saying you hate federal spending and then support corporations that subsidize their low wages through food stamps and other assistance programs.

Stop blaming working people because they want to FEED THEIR KIDS.

Stop blaming disabled and elderly people because they want to merely exist.

I hate this kind of stupidity and it is so widespread.

Maybe someday they will have to eat their rotten words.

[TalkingDog]

5. Total Agreement. It's daily beatdown to have to live with them.

The thing about poverty is moving somewhere else would only put you deeper in debt. So you are stuck living with clueless, myopic, provincial Dick Cheney worshipers. Evil. But not black-hearted evil. A more banal evil. The evil of the small-minded and hateful.

[Tsiyu]

6. Yes

I know the same types.

Completely clueless and heartless.

But claim to be 'god-fearing.'

They cut the parts of their Bobbles out about "feeding my sheep" and visiting people in prison and clothing the naked.

Yet they claim to believe in this guy who said those actions were not suggestions but how you will be judged : sheep or goat. They proscribe and detest the very actions their professed lord and savior demands from them.

Their own written religious laws fly right over their narcissistic heads, don't they?

[ladyVet]

7. Poor shaming happens on this forum.

How many times have you seen someone be told to simply move where there are jobs? Like it's as easy as packing up a box or two and magically having the gas to drive hundreds or thousands of miles, and the money to rent a house or apartment, when you can't even pay rent where you are?

How many times are people told to "just eat better food" when they can barely afford rice and beans and a little cheap meat? Or to just get some job training, when they don't have a car to get them to classes? Oh, wait. They're supposed to have moved to the mythical land of public transportation and free housing and food. Duh.

It's not always the person's fault. Sometimes they are the victims of circumstance, or most likely corporations who are doing their best to beat us down until we beg for $2 an hour jobs with no safety laws and no benefits.

But poor people, people from the South, fat people and women are pretty much easy targets. There's no hope for you if you qualify for all four categories.

[TalkingDog]

8. Yep. Agree.

n/t