Yet another schmuck thinks he understands poverty but doesn't.

[knitter4democracy]

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=4298321

This article was posted at a knitting board I hang out on (Ravelry's Big Issues Debate forum), and everyone was horrified by this guy's hubris.

The jist of it is, a young white guy right out of college decides to see if he can work himself up from being homeless, starting with only $25 and a few belongings. He declares it a success when he's got $5K and an apartment and decent job ten months later.

Here's the thing, though: he's healthy, he's got a college education and so has skills that come in handy (especially on kissing up to authority and critical thinking and listening skills), and he leaves after 10 months because of a family illness. If he really had wanted to learn what it was like, he would've kept going through the family illness.

There's so much wrong about what this guy did. One Raveler called him a poverty tourist, and I think it's about right.

[Deep13]

1. I remember poverty as a state of constant anxiety. nt

[cutlassmama]

29. it is

[superkia]

32. No safety net, you hit it dead on!

[Vincardog]

2. How many poor people can "leave after 10 months because of a family illness." Excuse me? I can't

be poor now because someone got sick?

[knitter4democracy]

13. He should've stuck through until the end.

Used that five grand to travel, dealt with missed work and no paycheck, and then see what happened to his hypothesis.

[slampoet]

33. Actually in the real world he would have only $5k to pay to save his family from that Illness!!

A hospital easily could have sucked that dry in two days.

[gizmonic]

3. I heard this guy on NPR touting his book

"Hubris"

That's exactly what I thought when I heard his interview.

You've put your finger on it, K4D.

btw, I'm on Ravelry, too! I'll look for ya!

Giz :)

[Kali]

5. that NPR would help shill this kind of crap says a lot about how far

NPR has fallen - :puke:

[Warpy]

4. College students living on Top Ramen always think they're poor

but they lack one major defining feature of true poverty: hopelessness. They're in college, ferkrissakes, a condition that promises them entry into the world of the adequate paycheck.

True poverty means so many doors have been slammed in your face that you no longer bother to knock. It means there is no way out. It means that you're just barely clinging to what you have and that even that can be taken away at any time. It means the future can only become more bleak. It usually means you're looking for a way to numb that pain for a while, and that generally leads to substance abuse.

"Poverty tourist" says it all. He knew he could just walk away from it at any time. He knew he was one of the people entitled to the good life. He knew doors would spring open for him.

Poor folks don't have any of that and that's the part this arrogant little man missed.

[gateley]

6. Excellent post!

Like anything - back pain, an abusive spouse, death of a loved one, addiction -- we have NO IDEA what a situation is REALLY like until we experience it for ourselves.

Nobody has the real right to speak for another as though they "get it" unless they've been there themselves.

[Warpy]

9. I always had a scrap of hope that I'd inherit something

besides a house in Florida. I had no idea how much it was until it actually happened, enough for me to live quite well on interest and dividends without getting near the principal.

That scrap of hope is what kept me away from drugs, I guess, even though I'd been through the 60s and never found a drug that was worth being on.

However, I know the hopelessness quite well. Chronic illness was what did it to me, preventing me from getting a staff job and benefits that came with it.

Funny how sickness prevents access to health care. This country is truly cruel to its people.

[gateley]

14. What a heartbreaking reality - sickness prevents access to health care. What

have we become?

I hope you're doing okay.

[Warpy]

15. Another eye surgery in March

to try to reshape the donor cornea. Ugh. At least now I can pay for it without risking losing my home.

[knitter4democracy]

16. Okay, that just squicks me out.

*shudder* Don't touch the eye! Don't touch! Uuuuurrrrgh! :scared:

You're totally right about chronic health being a block to health care. I think there's a lot of truth in that.

Keep us posted about the eye surgery (*shudder*). You're really brave to go in there and let them touch your eye. I can't even handle the blue round light thingy in the glaucoma test.

[Warpy]

18. Having to deal with stitches in my eyeball for six months

has pretty much gotten me over that phobia. I sat nice and still while the doc was picking those miserable things out.

However, I've warned him he might need to tie me to the chair for this next one.

[knitter4democracy]

19. Okay, the idea of stitches just made me squirm.

Valium? Something like it? I took half a Xanax for my breast core biopsy last fall, and that made me feel so out of it I wasn't entirely sure what was going on. If I'd taken a whole one, I would've been knocked right out, which is a bad idea for that kind of biopsy, but the half sure helped.

Can they give you something, anything? They'd have to tie me down for sure. I'd be shaking too much.

[bobbolink]

21. "*shudder* Don't touch the eye! Don't touch! Uuuuurrrrgh! "

You are SO right about that!

I've had both corneas do the chronic thing of not rebuilding cells, and .....it's a NIGHTMARE.

Nothing like the pain of that, and the emotional side is just awful.

When you're right, you're RIGHT!

[knitter4democracy]

23. Now, that just sounds painful and awful.

*shudder* I don't know why messing with the eyes bothers me so much, but I can't even wear contacts. I just can't deliberately put something in my eye. Nope, no way. A doctor coming in to check them makes me back up every time, and that blue light thingy really creeps me out (worse than the puff of air but probably more accurate since I used to close my eyes and jump at that).

Eye pain. That's bad. That's not easy to deal with (most pain meds don't touch it), and it sounds just awful. Are your eyes doing better now?

[bobbolink]

24. Recurrent corneal erosion *IS* the most painful ... at least, as I understand it.

I said to one corneal specialist that I couldn't understand how one body part that was so small as to be microscopic could be so damned painful. I said I felt like I was being abig baby over it. I said I'd much rather go through child birth, and he said he hears that a lot.

Well, he told me the story about going to a hospital to treat a patient recovering from brain surgery. During the surgery, he suffered a corneal erosion. When he got to his room, this poor man wasn't complaining about the pain from the surgery, he was losing his mind from the pain of the cornea!

As I understand it, and your hubby could probably describe it better, the cornea is just a mass of nerve endings. There is no blood supply, so the healing process is really tricky, which is what caught me.

The technical term for what I have is Epithelial Basement Membrane Dystrophy.

Isn't that cute? :hi:

:hug:

[knitter4democracy]

25. Nasty pain, then.

Urrrgh. That just sounds sooooo nasty and bad. I'm totally freaking out over here. Kidney surgery I can handle, ten years of appendicitis I can handle, anything with the eyes just freaks me the heck out. :scared:

[kickysnana]

10. Example I heard last night

62 year old upper middle class banker living in an outer ring suburb with some land around their house. Neighbors think things are normal for the family until the wife and 22 year old college son come home the first week in January and find him dead of a heart attack.

My friend grouses a little about the wife writing a $100 check for the family. Two weeks later the wife shows up to thank them for their kind donation. She sits down to talk. Her husband was in mortgages. He had moved between several banks in the previous 4 years and had been a light touch for any one who asked personally. Last year, working only on commission he closed 2 mortgages and had been laid off in December. During the last year and a half being optimists they continued their lifestyle by re mortgaging the house, the car, the life insurance, cashing in the retirement. She owed more on the house and their three cars then they were worth. There was no money to bury him. She had run out of heating oil the week before and could not afford to buy the minimum. (My friend put them in touch with someone in their church who told them how to get help from the Salvation Army) She had seen a lawyer who said that until she could prove that the value of her house had fallen she was ineligible to file bankrupts. She was not looking for help from the neighbors just trying to find out what to do next to try to get them through until her son graduated in June.

That same week he heard that his sister-in-law was two months behind on their mortgage, her husband a funeral director They had a number of kids the oldest 19 and he didn't say what put them over the edge but he was shocked because he thought they lived rather frugally.

My 52 year old brother has been unable to find a suitable job for the last 5 years. He has some income from his business he started during the dotcom but was unable to grow it without further capital. Has contracts for a couple big corporations here. He says there are entry level and 70 hour a week jobs. He has an autistic son and has been the caregiver and needs to have time to be with him. They wouldn't even consider him for entry level if he tried. My brother also was born with a heart condition and is un insurable but his wife was able to get a job that covered him because he doesn't generally use the system. He just is at risk for huge bills. His other seemingly "golden" son. Slipped into a depression after he was sidelined from an sports injury post season, encountered difficulty in the advanced writing he is required to do, his other grandmother was in the hospital for a month in November and my Mom passed away the first week in January. My brother had stopped bowling with my Dad to save money and illness opened up two spots on their team for a few weeks so I talked my Dad into talking him into filling in to get him out of the house.

Oh and the Chaplain who did my Mom's service had bowled with my Dad for years but had to drop out couldn't afford it. His wife lost her job last year and had been unable to find anything else. He was 59 she was 57 and his salary as a nursing home Chaplain was not covering their living expenses.

But now they say it is going to get bad. We all are wondering how many of us are going to be doubling up with multiple generations in order to survive and if that doubling up will include cardboard rooms.

[knitter4democracy]

17. There are so many who are just barely hanging on.

I keep wondering who's buying all the big flat-screen tvs. I don't know anyone with that kind of money right now, not even other doctor's families.

[knitter4democracy]

12. That's exactly it--he never lost hope.

He didn't have bad health, chronic pain, a kid to feed, anything like that. For him to look down on those in worse-off situations than he was in his "experiment" is just plain mean.

I also find it interesting he was so excited about the story he'd concocted to cover himself and was upset no one cared to listen. Maybe because he wasn't listening? He says no one wanted to talk about how they got there, and yet, in my experience, once you connect with someone, they'll tell the story. Does that mean he never connected?

[bobbolink]

20. "True poverty means so many doors have been slammed in your face that you no longer bother to knock.

Oh, that is PERFECT!

I've been trying to express that sense of just giving up..

You NAILED IT!

Thanks!

:yourock: :pals: :yourock:

[Naturyl]

37. Exactly

And what this tool did will be used to support the right-wing idea that poverty is a "voluntary condition" that anyone can escape at will through "hard work," bootstrap-yanking, and other empty slogans.

Most people, of course, will probably think this guy somehow empathizes with the poor, while in reality he has made a major contribution to their continual screwing. Hope he enjoys it during the rest of his cushy life.

[izquierdista]

7. Where were the slaps?

He didn't say anything about getting slapped back down. Nothing about promising job interviews suddenly going sour because they pulled a credit report on him. Oh that's right, he still had a credit card in his back pocket, it must not have had any late payments. Nothing about having what little he saved up and managed to stash in a secret place pilfered by some thief. Nothing about having that apartment suddenly become unavailable when they ran a background check on him. Oh that's right, his last landlord was when he was a student in college, he hadn't been evicted.

Wasn't there a line in a Dickens novel something like "what do you mean, they have no jobs, there are workhouses, aren't there?"

[knitter4democracy]

11. I wondered that, too.

When someone got sick, he was able to leave. What if he had to take care of that person and then lost his job because of it? You're right--no slaps. Not real.

[mrcheerful]

8. You know I'm getting so tired of this belief that people choose to have the lives they have

and not that they live their lives the best they can with what their lives bring their way. Being handi capped at the age of 5 I can tell you growing up in the 60's and 70's sucked. In the 70's I started seeing how better handi capped kids were treated then in the 60's. I remember from grade 3 to grade 12 how teachers felt educating the handi capped was a waste of their time and had a few tell me that to my face. Needless to say most of what I learned I basically stole from said teachers. I wonder how anyone would feel if they got an F on tests or other school work then compared it with someone who got an A on theirs only to find out that the answers were the same on tests and the other papers turned in were better wrote and had more information then the A students work. Try working with a condition where the first few days your able to do the work, then you start noticing that your falling behind on what you did the day before. Then after 3 or 6 months your so worn down you start falling or having accidents because your losing control over body functions and your reflexes slow. Yeah a person like that has the same opportunities as a healthy person with no or few limits. Being poor is not a choice, what the poor do have is the ability to squeak by on the little they have. Internet access? You give up something to have it. Cable TV, you give up something else. Why bitch and moan about what people have and look at the things they had to give up to get those things or how long it took them to get said things. Screw these elitist drips.

[bobbolink]

22. That's a muddleclass belief, to make themselves feel better for what they have.

LIke the Iraqis CHOSE to be bombed???

Yeah, riiiight...

[renate]

26. someone posted an interesting comment about that article

In order for him to get that initial job, he would have had to provide a social security number. The company could have run a credit and background check and found out his background, that he'd gone to a fancy college, that his credit history was (presumably) good, etc.

His "experiment" was phony from day one for that reason alone.

[Hannah Bell]

27. It's stories like that, though.

that get the publicity, & shape people's attitudes.

[knitter4democracy]

28. This is what bothers me the most about it.

He makes it sound so easy, like everyone can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps." He can't even see the privilege he comes from and still took with him when he started the experiment.

[sergeiAK]

35. Not quite

They couldn't have seen his college record, but they could see a clean criminal/credit history.

His experiment was flawed, but not for that reason.

[TexasBushwhacker]

30. The guy in the wheelchair ....

Amazing ....

"To meet that guy at the shelter, 'Can he get out and go to college and become a doctor?' Maybe, maybe not. I think he can set goals..... You can use your talents. That's why, from the beginning, I set very realistic goals: $2,500, a job, car. This isn't a "rags-to-riches million-dollar" story. This is very realistic. I truly believe, based on what I saw at the shelter ...that anyone can do that."

Just because he "truly believes" it, doesn't make it so!

[bobbolink]

31. Oh, wait jus' a dern minnit... we know now that "positive thinking" creates opportunites!

If we "truly believe", it DOES make it so!

:sarcasm:

[IrishForEdwards]

34. The Truth About Poverty

Many people really don't understand poverty, the reason being they have never had to live through it. I have... My family and I worked the fields in Ireland when the economy was under a bit of a depression in the early 1990's. Instead of complaining about the situation, we worked, did all we could and got politically involved in our community. We were able to grant more equality to factory and mill workers in Cork City, it was a wonderful victory for us and all our neighbors. Some good old fashioned communication was the key to succeeding for the greater good!


Erik Benjamin O Corcorain

[wellst0nev0ter]

36. One Glaring Fact That Most People Seem To Overlook

At the end of his "study" the guy was STILL POOR.

Having $5,000 in liquid and, ahem, vehicular assets does not make you anywhere close to middle class, it makes you a *dum dum-da-dum* a working poor. Sure, it's possible to scrimp and save $5,000 out of a McJob if you 1.) are healthy 2.) don't have a family to support 3.) yes only ate ramen and abstained from unnecessary expenses 4.) and above all, there are no financial emergencies.

Also missing from analyses is the fact that he wouldn't have been able to scrimp and save up to working poverty without all those public assistance programs, i.e. foodstamps, homeless shelters, and I predict subsidized public housing. Yep, that's some Horatio Alger story he
s got going there.