I had a big long response but suffice to say in the grand scheme of things it doesnt matter. You have your view and life experience, I have mine. I am where I am and you are where you are. I will keep on my path to survival and you on yours.

Not a lot of big box stores or fast food restaurants in inner cities or poor, rural areas; it's pretty much a suburban, middle class thing. Best Buy isn't exactly known for staffing up with middle-aged black ladies, and can you imagine trying to get any sort of retail or customer service job with a couple of teeth visibly missing? Dental care is hideously expensive, and it is not covered by public assistance. It's a catch-22. Things aren't always as easy, simple, or clear-cut as they seem.




Usually, you're forced to rent because you have no hope of buying, and thereby building equity. No choice is involved.




Many poor people have made and continue to make very bad choices that keep them in poverty, it's true. But for every one who finds it "easier to get $X from the government check" than get a job, there's another who will immediately will lose medicaid for a chronically ill child if they earn too much, or will lose the public assistance they depend on if they enroll in college. It's a stacked deck.

Some use payday (vampire) loans irresponsibly, it's true, but others use them simply to forestall eviction or buy needed medicine and basic groceries. The fees alone are staggering, and the APR can be 500-1000%. Yet the default rate isn't much higher than on credit cards, with APRs of 18-22%. In either case, It's just another example of predation on the poor.

I guess Walmart would never consider hiring the people you described, or the local grocery store?

Building equity at a high risk of default, that is a good plan?

So permanent and multi-generational social assistant is good and acceptable?

Payday loans: At that rate how does anyone who enters into that agreement ever expect to get out, looking at it with any level of reasoning they wouldnt use the service.

On the contrary, WalMart employs lots of these people, often not full-time, or with any benefits, but it's a start.

Home ownership carries risks, but it helps build personal financial and community stability, the current popped housing bubble notwithstanding.

If I wanted to design a system to destroy lives, families and communities, and perpetuate poverty, I doubt I could do better than the current welfare system.

Payday lenders are predatory, but some form of credit is often essential. Even if a $200 car repair ends up costing you $500, it often beats losing your job or having to drop out of school. The better alternative for low-income people is a pawn shop; the rates, while still high, are better than vampire loans, and the downside risk is worlds better.

My larger points are:

I'm not willing to blame the poor for being poor. Sometimes they're blameworthy, but sometimes they're not, so don't make sweeping judgments.

Escaping poverty is not as simple and easy as it seems to some. Often the deck is stacked against the poor in many ways that are not so obvious.

Being responsible, intelligent, willing to work hard and having good character is not always enough to lift you out of poverty. Also, not being poor is not proof of being responsible, intelligent, willing to work hard and having good character.

Social mobility works both ways. Almost anyone can unexpectedly fall on hard times, so don't judge too harshly. It could be you who is getting judged one day.

OK. I guess it's time for me to chime in with the life story that leads me to think that poverty is almost never a choice.

I will compress hy hard luck story as much as i can. I had a great job in manhattan, i had a cool apartment in TriBeCa I had a lot of money and spent a lot of money. I got fired. I started a business. I got involved with a crazy woman. The business failed. I was broke beyond broke, in debt for tens of thousands of dollars. Ended up moving into my grandmothers basement. I lived there for a while - I turned 30 living in grandmas basement with no car, no money, no job, no work.
I borrowed money from my parents and went into new york city every week and visited people who i thought would hire me. My grandmother cooked me meals. Eventually i found work, I met my future wife while still living in the basement, I saved my money, we got married, we moved into a tiny cottage, we saved our money, my job got better, I ended up at a dot com, it went public, i cashed out, we bought a small house and a minivan, I started my own company, the dot com craze crashed, we lived off of savings for two years, i did construction work, i shoveled mud, I put on a tie and did internet consulting and took off the tie at night and hauled rocks out of a hole at a construction site, i got a job lead in cyprus, worked there and the bills rolled in at home and we were down to our last few dollars and i came home and managed to land a job, and another, and a better one and now i am a director level here and that's the short version.

Never, once in that story was i ever up against the hardships that lead people to poverty. Never. I had family with money. They could afford to give me some. I had access to my mom's car. I had a telephone so i could at least pretend to my consulting clients i was in an office. I had decent clothes that were clean. I had a community network of friends in various industries and i had people willing to hire me to shovel mud, lift rocks, whatever and i was able to get to those jobs even though they were far from home. Even though we didn't have health insurance, and we had a baby born and surgery on my son and various other stuff we had savings to pay the bills. When the savings ran out, we had a house to live in that we could have sold. The "see how hard i worked for what i have" story is - in my case - total bs. I had every advantage crawing out of the holes i found myself in in life. I don't know what it means to be poor and to live in a place where there are no jobs to be had, where a $20 bus ticket is too much to spend, and to be in a situation where nobody you know can help you find work.

Now, I am not a mush-head love and granola type. I encounter poor folks who aren't really poor. Whenever i encounter someone in new York city asking me for money for food, my response is ALWAYS the same - I point to the nearest food place (in new York, that's never far) and I tell them I will buy them ANYTHING they want to eat, in any quantity. 7 times out of 10 they reject my offer. I'm no fool, i know that many are hustling money for nonfood purchases, but until you look into the eyes of someone who accepts your offer of food, and you watch them eat, you don't know poverty. The last guy who took me up on my offer of food got an egg salad sandwich, chips, and bag after bag of trail mix and nuts and four jars of peanut butter. He kept asking if it was ok for him to take so much. I could see he was picking correct foods for storage and energy. He asked me if I needed an assistant if i needed anything done at all. I didn't but he said that it was ok and he was going to find something. That was February. He was living on the streets, trying to stay clean, and trying to find a job. He had a cell phone and gave me his number in case i ever had anything for him. That's poverty.

Jeff and Martin,

I dont have issue with the legitimate hard luck cases that are trying to improve themselves the problem is they are the deep deep exception. As I said before, those that disagree are the few that worked hard, made good decisions, and still got dinged. Just as Martin said 7/10 reject the offer for intelligent assistance.

At this point I am not even sure what we are going back and fourth over.

My contention is the ongoing support system for those that see no purpose in trying to excel in life OR those that perpetually make bad decisions and fall back into the social safety net. It's like telling someone they need to lose weight while I bring them a whopper value meal. I fully agree with your dislike for the welfare system not because I feel like we need more but because I feel like it is being used in a shotgun approach instead of sniper rifle approach.

A huge theme of this discussion has been the ability to get a job. Imagine for a minute if the fedgov didnt have to spend all the money it does on widespread safety nets and could reduce the tax rate. More people like me, a small business owner, could hire employees with what I spend in taxes and consumer would have more money to save and spend. Yeah, I just jumped two feet first into the political realm, feel free to delete but I cant help to believe that the majority of our issues could be resolved by teaching more personal responsibility and conceptual preparedness for life and reduce the burden on the economy of social entitlement funding.

These are very true words of wisdom, Jeff. I won't pretend to know all the many ways that poverty--which unfortunately is intimately intertwined with racism in many cases--keep people down, but I'm smart enough to know that poverty is complicated.

It's unusual to have so much personal disclosure here on ETS, but I think it reflects both a sense of trust that many of us feel with other members we've known for a while now, and also a reflection of the severity of the times we are living in and how polarizing that hard times can be. Heaven help us all.

A trick WalMart does to keep its prices low is to pay low wages. WalMart knows the slack will be picked up by welfare and other public assistance from taxpayer dollars.

In effect, the taxpayer is subsidizing WalMart's low wages. Meanwhile, your corner hardware store may be paying an almost livable wage to its employees - that is until WalMarts lower prices drive them out of business.

Ah, capitalism at its finest.

I've noticed that they don't really have lower prices. They will have a few loss leaders at the door but the rest of the stuff is the same as other stores. We actually ended up spending more at walmart because of all the other stuff we didn't need. They have the occasional exclusive product but thats it.

I had heard somewhere that the products large chains, such as Walmart, put on their shelves, although may have the same name as the product in another, smaller store-they are, in fact, seconds. To the average consumer, we wouldnt know-it could be simply that the dye used to color cereal was a little off. This allows them to sell it cheaper. Now, I havent confirmed this-in fact, it doesnt really matter to me one way or the other, as I shop where its convenient-but, it is something else to think about.