Posted on 10/08/2015 8:25:57 AM PDT by ctdonath2
Do you discern a different definition of “poverty” from “being poor”?
I’d like to quantify how much of that you need.
Think: if I gave you a box full of it daily, you would no longer be “poor”.
Shelter in a box?
“Poor,” is a mind set over time, while “broke,” is a temporary condition.
Do I get an “A?”
5.56mm
That’s one interesting tangent from this thread: productize “solving poverty” by quantifying it and fulfilling need efficiently. Insofar as government is understandably he11-bent on “solving poverty” and handing out $gazillions to do so (the alleged solution being less understandable), I’d like to meet the Leftist perpetual demand for more taxpayer money with “if we give such people a box of X/Y/Z weekly, they are objectively no longer ‘poor’ and have no more excuse to dip into taxpayer pockets”. Since the Left seems to insist recipients need do nothing to receive aid (contrary to “if you do not work, neither shall you eat” and directives to help the poor by leaving fields for them to glean), then what can be given so as to fulfill the alleged need? I don’t care for “guaranteed minimum income” as that can be grossly abused; instead something like a recurring package of staples - and if one wants more than that, get up and do something about it.
If you have a subscription service (cable TV, internet, cell phone, newspaper/magazines) you are not poor enough.
I would make an exception for a basic cell phone. Something like a $30 phone on a monthly plan (like Virgin/Trac/Boost etc). You can get basic cell service for something like $10 a month on those.
If you have a nice car, and haven't considered selling it, you are not poor enough.
That kind of thing. You can be poor and living in a nicer house or having a nicer car if you accumulated them before becoming poor. But if you are poor because you have tens of thousands in credit card debt, but have lots of nice toys, then you really are not poor.
There was a time early in my marriage where we were so poor we held our poop until we got to work to save money on TP.
Now that is poor.
Courtesy of John Smith, Jamestown Virginia
I define poor as regularly not having or not knowing if you are going to have basic things like food, shelter, clothing.
Most people considered us poor when I was growing up but I never did. We always had a home, never missed a meal, and always had decent clothes to wear.
My dad worked hard but didn’t make much money. My mother grew a huge garden, canned food, and made most of our clothes. We had darn few material things but I did not miss them. I had a horse, dog, good knife, and rifle just like my brothers and I thought I was doing great!
I am sure we would be considered poverty stricken by today’s standards; indeed I once had a teacher tell me we were poor even back then but my mother educated her for saying that to me!
I look back on it now and I had a wonderful childhood and would not change a thing if I could. We all worked really hard, but we were a very close family and I don’t even remember realizing how hard we worked until I thought back on it as an adult. I did bring a girl home one weekend that lived in town and she thought I was being worked to death- like Cinderella. I just thought she was a spoiled city slicker.
I have seen darn few people in this country in my lifetime that I would consider poor, but have seen a few. Have seen many more in Mexico when I still went down there, but even most of them had the basics.
We are pretty unrealistic as a society as to what we really need, or as my mother used to say that people needed to know the difference between want and need.
A Special Forces soldier told me after a career in the Army and seeing everything he had seen that people don’t realize all you can really own in this world is what you can carry with you afoot.
Yes exactly. My brother-in-law was raised a sharecropper’s son during the depression and said as a kid his whole family including his mother packing a baby would work in the fields all day and then come home and night and sometimes his mother would just tell them there was nothing to eat and they missed a lot of meals. He said they were eating good if they had corn meal mush or beans. If they had a chicken even without fixin’s it was a feast.
At the local campground I see bikers with $1k bicycles, trailers, other camping gear, all very high tech and compact, and wonder why something can’t be put together for genuinely homeless people. Or maybe a trailer behind a three-wheel cycle.
It’s mostly a logistics problem.
I think a lot of people here are older and on fixed income. I used to be a monthly donor until I needed to financially help my adult children and another relative for a while, my husband had some health issues (even though his medical was paid it cost a lot for me to stay in town with him) add in a few other things and I had to stop. I am just about where I can afford to go back to monthly. So no we are not cheap Remington Raiders, just imagine many are not doing so well financially in this economy. Even though hubby and I are ok financially I feel an obligation to myself to help others close to me when they are in need. FR is important to me but my grand kids needed to eat and we are not ones to run to the government for everything.
Poor is when you can’t afford the rent, when your car is repossessed, when you don’t know how you’re going to feed yourself or your children. That’s poor.
...who got it from 2 Thessalonians 3:10.
That’s one of the things inspiring me to start this thread. One can do very well with very little, and many of the well-off aspire precisely to get by on as little as possible; sure they’re spending $1000 on a bicycle and $30000 on a camper etc, but there’s little reason why the poor can’t make do just fine on 1% of that.
Methinks the biggest problem is knowledge: given the best of tools & resources, some people just wouldn’t know what to do with it. Anecdote: a friend grew up in Arizona; in some discussion she opined to wit “I don’t understand what people’s problem with deserts is...there’s food EVERYWHERE.”
Gee. And the Sears & Roebuck catalogs were free back then. I’m outta luck; when I gotta go, I gotta go! We were poor, too. In the military & shopping at the commissary, living in the housing projects in Columbus, MS. Long time ago!
So it must be kept simple. A bicycle, a sturdy trailer, a tent that uses the bicycle and trailer as its main support. Then the daily needs; portable toilet, water, hand sanitizer, mouthwash, toothbrush, non-perishable food.
You would be amazed how warm bubble core insulation can be when used in lieu of an admittedly softer but bulky sleeping bag.
Would all that fit in a box?
Honestly, I’ve been trying to come up with something, because there really is a need.
Poor is looking in garbage cans or dumpsters for something to eat.
A good book is wealth and freedom. With a library card you can travel the whole world, be anything you want to be.
People who don’t feed their minds and spirits will be “poor” regardless of material comforts.
Cloth seats in the sedan.
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