This is what the Poors look like (the ones that aren't supposed to vote)

Sorry you are poor. My condolences.

 

You have to put in terms that conservatives will understand my friend. Here ya go.

Luke 16:19-25

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.

23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.

24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.

 

Nope sorry poverty is a choice you lazy bum. You should have never chosen journalism as a major because every person in the country should choose a math or science degree because you know there would somehow still be demand for a million annual graduating engineers.

You should have also anticipated the destruction of the newspaper industry, the impending housing crisis and the great recession. You should have only bought a house cash and should not have had kids much less twins (what were you thinking there!) unless you had at least enough saved up to pay for every need they could ever have until age 18.

--Outraged Conservative Douchebag

 

He said LAW ABIDING, and INCOME TAX PAYING. How do you pull poor people out of that. Even poor people obey laws right? Even poor people pay Income tax right?

I forgot conservatives are waging war on everybody.

WAR ON...

Women
Minorities
Homosexuals
Muslims
Poor people


Am I missing a stereotype? Stop drinking the kool-aid and open your eyes.

 

Years of unemployment from the husband?!?!?


He could easily have gotten a blue collar job while he searched for work, sold the merc, used uber to get around. poor people had a right to stare at this entitled, pompous ass of a writer. oh.... but i was raised with a certain lifestyle, well.... if you can't deal with reality, then no one wants to sympathize. more obama programs to help out the lazy and entitled, please.

 

depends, what are your positions on:

-building a mosque in lower Manhattan,
-same sex marriage,
-mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients

-surely you don't define a tax paying citizen as someone who writes a check to Uncle Sam on April 15th, versus someone who gets a refund, right?

because that's what some of the posters in this forum ACTUALLY believe, and advocate voting limitations for.

 

Keep electing Democrats and we'll all be poor.

 

You don't seriously believe that. Good joke, though.

 

I have been poor... been rich compared to most.

Should have sold the Mercedes, not terribly reliable and very expensive to fix. Could have bought a car easy to fix. Not sure why your husband managed to buy it new and pay it off in full when your total income together was 120K and he apparently paid it off before your marriage. Regardless, you will get looks and people will judge your financial decisions when you are asking for financial help.

Your husband was unemployed for years with children? At some point he should have tended bar or waited tables. It is hard work, but you can make 50-55K a year at a place like Pappadeaux. The hours are also such that you could still interview during the day.

I understand that the point of the article was not to judge people for being poor, but the "model" used is not going to garner much sympathy.

 

To be honest, by the time they bought their house, we were into the recession. She knew she wasn't going to be making as much and have the added expense of 2 children. They actually did make poor decisions.

She greatly exaggerates the WIC/Medicaid process.

She views herself as the center of everyone's attention, like most people actually give a damn, which they don't.

They should not have traded in the car for a crappier car with a payment, but they could have sold it and bought a trustworthy Toyota/Honda for cash and had money to spend to help them make it trough the tough times.

She seems to have a different idea from me about what good money is.

 

I think most people here are missing the point of her writing any of what she wrote. Of course she made bad economic decisions - most people do. Nowhere does she claim they they did everything perfectly - it's just the story of their experience, and likely one that is repeated over and over by people of all backgrounds. Anyone who thinks they always make the rational economic choices is deluding themselves. And when you try to evaluate those decisions from the outside, you can easily go wrong because the value of things to someone else is not the simply value perceived from the outside. Being poor has costs outside of just the economic ones - stress, depression, etc. How those are managed is important to determining if and how someone will come out the other end of a crisis.

Talk to any good financial counselor and they will tell you that it's not necessarily bad to have a few less-than-ideal spending patterns (as long as they are not excessive) if they can lower stress levels or bring a modicum of happiness, because that makes it much more likely that the person will ultimately extract themselves from poverty. The Mercedes in this article seems to be an example of that - whether it would have made more sense to sell it from a pure financial standpoint, it seems that this was a source of stability for them. That's critical to someone's well-being, and clearly they managed well enough to ultimately extract themselves from the mess they got into, so it wasn't necessarily the wrong one.

You can't fix poverty if you assume everyone is or should make perfectly rational economic choices - it's simply not how human nature works. You have to account for the whole of the situation rather than just looking at money.

 

You * do* realize you just started a thread based off the biggest troll in here right? the next time FV Santiago responds to something in a manner that shows he actually wants discussion will be the first time.

There are certain folks in here that just post to inflame, that poster should NEVER be taken seriously

 

sorry, but one anecdote is not compelling

 

But disenfranchising people who don't pay just one of the many different taxes levied in this country is?

Clown show continues.

 

You could always quit that placeholder job, once you found the type of employment you were really after.

A factor to consider about finding a lower job, once you realize your job just isn't available, is that you may knock yourself out of those government support programs and ultimately not be better off for working. If you lose unemployment, WIC, Food Stamps, & have more in taxes, you may not be gaining enough to offset it? There should never be government incentive not to work, which can be an unattended consequence.

My biggest question would be could she not get back into the positions she was in, and he potentially stay home with the kids? I don't recall her addressing her attempts to find better employment, just his.

 

Agreed - the mess of an eligibility system we have in place for social services is a disaster. A lot of the incentive problems could be fixed fairly easily by just overhauling that.

Another thing to consider is whether taking a placeholder job reduces your chances of getting a good job later or not. If your white collar industry looks at your resume and sees your most recent job as burger flipper, it may be a detriment to your hiring prospects in a very competitive job market (you could certainly not list it, but what you've been doing the last several months very likely comes up in an interview, putting you in a position of having to lie to your employer).