I have seen many people from other countries say things like, "I would not want to live in the U.S if I were poor."
I grew up with a single parent and two half-brothers in the United States between 1993 and 2012. I live in a pretty average state in all ways, Pennsylvania. My mother's income was at or below the 10th percentile of all Americans.
This is what life was like growing up poor:
My mother got $600 /month in food stamps at times. She got so much that she would sell what she couldn't spend to her friends for 90 cents to the dollar. She'd use that money to pay bills and buy cigarettes.
We lived in subsidized housing, my mother's rent was $100-300 per month depending on how much she made. This was for a nice, newly built, three bedroom apartment.
My mother received $200 in child support from my father per month, and sporadically $100 per month for the father of my half brothers.
All of our health insurance was subsidized. I got hit by a car when I was ten years old. The bill came in for $3,000. We paid zero dollars of that three-thousand. Copays were either zero dollars or two dollars.
My mother owned a car at all times, we had cable, electricity, water, internet, video game consoles, computers and all necessities and plenty of other luxuries.
Every year she would receive $2,000 - $4,000 back in an income tax refund. She essentially didn't pay any income tax.
My mother would spend something like $1,500 - $2,000 on cigarettes per year.
I was a good student in school. I had a 3.9 GPA when I graduated high school. There was no incentive for my mother(or father) to save money for college because they figured the government would pay for it. My last year of high school, even though it was a mediocre public school, I spent my time applying to a dozen colleges. I got into a private university that ranks in the top 23rd in the United States, my financial aid reward from the university was 4/5ths of the tuition, government grants and loans covered the rest of my expenses. I chose to remove loans from the equation by working part time jobs.
I never was without food, housing (except living in a domestic violence shelter for 6 months), resources for school, medical attention, clothes, etc.
So what are the poor missing out on in the U.S that makes people from other countries so scared of being poor here? I find the poor live a life of luxury to be honest. The only thing I feel I missed out on was a real, cohesive, and intelligent upbringing. But I figured that out for myself.
