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Forums - Politics - What Makes Being Poor in The United States Suck?

DivinePaladin on 10 October 2015
sc94597 said:
DivinePaladin said:
sc94597 said:

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. 

It sounds like you lucked out honestly, as messed up as that sounds. Poor isn't just a static thing, and not very many poor people are "lucky" enough to have all the government benefits that you did growing up. I grew up poor but my mentally impaired mother and caring stepfather had to pay out the ass for rent, we went a couple different year long periods without Internet or cable, electricity was high, et alia. When my stepdad tore his rotator cuff(s) he lost his job within six months despite being there for 15 years and after months of struggling with it we finally got on food stamps. Not very many at all - something like $150 or so between two people (my mom briefly moved away). And my entire child support and a week of pay went to help rent. He maxed out everything he had in this period and my brother by chance had to come live with us because he's also poor and lost his apartment because he couldn't afford paying $400 a month for what was no more than a 30 square foot apartment, and that helped pay the bills. My mom was always lucky enough to have full insurance because she absolutely needed it (asthma, copd, etc.) and I was on my dad's insurance plan but I haven't had dental for a good decade. My stepdad is now dead, I didn't have the credit or a cosigner to help get the college loans I needed, and I'm living with a friend while I transfer to a community college where (thankfully) I'll likely be paying nothing. Most of this was last year, and I live in PA as well. 

Every person that i knew who fit the requirements got the same/similar benefits, so I don't see how my family was special in that regard. Now that isn't to say that people who didn't receive the benefits didn't struggle, just that they didn't fit the arbitrary, but strict, requirements. I had many lower-middle class friends whose parents pinched much more and struggled a lot more than my "impoverished" friends and my family. It is a shame, and it is one of the reasons why I support a negative income tax rather than the welfare system we have now that only rewards people who work just enough, but not too much. 

Did you not qualify for federal loans? The requirements for those are much more lenient than the requirements for welfare. There is no cosigner required either, and half of them are subsidized until graduation. Especially since you have certain circumstances involved, if you mention that to your school of interest and on the FAFSA they will work with you independent of the number that you got for your EFC (Expected Family Contribution.)

I went through every route I could with the FAFSA side of things. Tried the DirectPlus loan, tried working through my uncooperative college, everything. Explained every little issue. I even outright asked before I committed whether this would become an issue (I chose a fairly expensive college, but with what I was given through the aid I did get and scholarships, it was no more than a state school), and I was told it would not. Essentially my extensive research and inquiries during junior year lied to me about how that process worked, and now I technically owe five figures to that college because of it even though I had loaned ten grand from my grandmother to pay that off just to be able to do my second term. 

 

As for the first part of your reply, there are big caveats to those requirements. We didn't qualify for food stamps for so long because my mother being on medicare somehow interfered despite that not even being a real issue as far as I've researched. It depends on who you are and who you're working with even though it is supposed to be impartial; some sects will hold firm on "rules" like the one that screwed us above until you fight for a long enough time that they cave in. Hell for a while they even kicked her off medicare because there was an issue with our food stamps! I never followed that specifically enough to give better details honestly - I was more worried about being a teenager at the time and having fun while I could. Trust me by experience when I say it doesn't always work like it should.

 

And for the record, I'm white. No discrimination by race going on or anything with any of the above issues, just the state being inconsistent as all hell at times. 



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Azuren on 10 October 2015

Honestly, I find it more than a little upsetting that despite being impoverished, your mom wasted so much money on cigarettes. I feel that if you have to accept money from the government like that, you shouldn't be spending it on things like alcohol or cigarettes.



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johnsobas on 10 October 2015
sc94597 said:
AlfredoTurkey said:
Why does it suck? Because it's a country which says basically "float to the top or sink bitch". You're on your own. Either you are lucky and born into wealth or you are lucky and are born with the genetic makeup to go from rags to riches. If you don't belong to either of those two groups, you're fucked because the social services are GARBAGE. No health insurance, no funded education without debt... it's all non existent.

I've said this for the last 10 years. If you're rich, the US is heaven on earth. If you're poor? Pure hell. You might as well move away to some European country where the government actually takes CARE of you.

I think the bolded is insulting. People who come from poor families in the U.S who later are successful aren't solely successful because of their genetics. It is also how they learned to succeed from their environment. 

Also I already explained  that you do get health-insurance, funded education, housing and food  if you are poor enough. In Pennsylvania if you make less than $1,300/month (if single, more if you have children) you get medicaid. If you make less than $1,500/month you get food stamps, more if you have children. The federal and state government give just as many grants as they do loans, and if you go to a private school you are likely to get financial aid, because these schools want to compete with the cost of community colleges. 

I can tell you, I did not grow up in hell, nor did any of the other successful poor kids in my apartment building. Both are graduating from college this year, and the one almost failed a grade in high school, now he is graduating college with A's and B's. So he wasn't genetically special either. 

i just qualified for medicaid this year, i never thought i'd be on it but with the expansion of medicaid it's easy to qualify, honestly too easy.  I will say i'm surprised i qualify because i really don't consider myself poor.  If you make less than 39,500 you can qualify with 1 child.  The thing about that 39,500 number is you can deduct so many things to reach that number.  Do you know how much money i save by having to only pay $88 a month total premium for the 3 of us and $2 deductible?  It's insane, then i realized that i would also qualify for the earned income tax credit because they are about the same level.  Tax rate is generally lower and there are other deductions i can get because of it.  It saves me probably 10k+ in after tax money.  If you get near there just drop 10k into your retirement to qualify because it's better to pay the 10k to your future than the 10k to medical bills. I didn't realize how good it was to be in this income range until i happened to drop into it because my wife stopped working because of pregnancy, it's tempting to stay there but I don't want to be one of those guys that milks the system.



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Kotastic on 10 October 2015
AlfredoTurkey said:
sc94597 said:

I think the bolded is insulting. People who come from poor families in the U.S who later are successful aren't solely successful because of their genetics. It is also how they learned to succeed from their environment. 

 


Bullshit. Going from rags to riches is like winning the lotto... of DNA. The reason poor people stay poor has nothing to do with environment. They don't do drugs because they learned to do them. They don't drink all day, because they learned to drink all day. They do it because their parents were addicts, and their parents etc. People are poor because they flat out don't have what it takes mentally to go out there and succeed. You can give these people all the tools in the world, and almost all of them will just fuck it up and end up RIGHT back where they started.

 

Steve Job's and people of his ilk are born, not made. In the US, the problem is that we actually have this delusion that "all men are created equal". They're not. And the sooner we accept this, the sooner we can get to the business of taking care of those who can't take care of themselves and the sooner we can stop being an international disgrace. 

This is possibly one of the most presumptuous statement I've ever read.



Aeolus451 on 10 October 2015

Compared to how the poor live in other countries, the poor in the states have it made.



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sc94597 on 10 October 2015
Azuren said:
Honestly, I find it more than a little upsetting that despite being impoverished, your mom wasted so much money on cigarettes. I feel that if you have to accept money from the government like that, you shouldn't be spending it on things like alcohol or cigarettes.


Don't get me started about it. I would try to get her to quit, for her health, by telling her how much she spent a year and it wouldn't phase her. That is what addiction is. She has moved to New Jersey and without kids she doesn't qualify for most of these things. Cigarettes are $8/pack there. She really feels it now and has reduced her consumption signifcantly, albeit not entirely.



RadiantDanceMachine on 10 October 2015

I've never heard anyone insinuate or state this. Your situation seems to be aligned with anecdotal accounts from others in regard to how the poor live, only with less extortion involved.

It's really amusing to me to label any US citizen poor when they are granted so much by mere birth.



TheWPCTraveler on 10 October 2015

So, how much did your parents actually earn in a year? My bet is that if your family moved to the Philippines while retaining that income, you'd be comfortably in the middle class.



 
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sc94597 on 10 October 2015
RadiantDanceMachine said:
I've never heard anyone insinuate or state this. Your situation seems to be aligned with anecdotal accounts from others in regard to how the poor live, only with less extortion involved.

It's really amusing to me to label any US citizen poor when they are granted so much by mere birth.

The quote I posted was literally posted in a the thread "Americans and non Americans....?" So...



sc94597 on 10 October 2015
TheWPCTraveler said:
So, how much did your parents actually earn in a year? My bet is that if your family moved to the Philippines while retaining that income, you'd be comfortably in the middle class.


My mom made something like $10,000 before taxes, and a few more thousand under the table. Right now she lives in New Jersey and makes $15,000, but her expenses are significantly more there. My dad's income varied greatly over the years. At its peak before I was born he made $80,000. Right now he makes something like $20,000 in New York City, which isn't much at all there.