After having watched a young man who I've been a sort of mentor to for over a decade I think that expectations of what's normal raise the bar too high. Even though his parents are hard-working frugal folks, his peers seem to set him up for trouble.

My young friend has had his (too expensive for him) car repossessed, had his (constantly yakking) cell phone shut off and so forth.
He drives a truck when he has a job. (Rolled one truck at 0mph in a case of bad luck tipover).

He can't afford the lifestyle that he thinks is roughing it.
He's not a bad kid and isn't working the system - he just doesn't know that he has to set his living standard even lower because of his pay scale!

What has happened to writing a letter instead of yakking?
What has happened to sharing a place with a bunch of other guys?
What has happened to choosing a place to live so you can walk to work?
How about packing your lunch?

etc, etc

I'm sure my parents said the same stuff about my generation. And that was true too! Escalating expectations cause a lot of trouble.

You are thinking the old way, my friend! I said "Today, you can start a business with practically nothing."

Granted, you need to cover your living costs with a regular job or whatever. I assume that you've been eating since you were born and can manage to continue that for a little while longer. Now lessee...

"simple basic business operating costs such as transportation, communications, banking costs etc"
With the possible exception of communications so that you don't have to walk over to Starbucks, why would you bother with any of that?

"Most businesses will have credit and payment terms for their customers."
Again, soooo last century.

As for LLCs, Corporations, etc., in the US the only advantage is that you can shield your personal assets from your business debtors. You don't have any personal assets, and you probably can't get credit, and you aren't going to use debt anyhow.

You need a glossy business plan if you are trying to get investors. A mental one will do if you are investing $100 of your own money.

The risk of failure is you lose your $100 and keep your day job. If you don't make any money, what tax do you have to pay?


That sounds like way too much money tied up in capital equipment to me.

I should have noted that my examples above are urban poor. I also grew up in rural poor, hills of WV. Our church is doing a big outreach program there now, truckloads of food and supplies. I grew up with a lot of cousins, some of which were on welfare, always had the name brand clothes, went to every nascar race, the first in the area to get video games, etc. Now a couple of them are grown up as well, always in poverty but with 25 cars in their yard.
Life is about choices, if your in the inner city and can't find a job there, then get on the bus and ride to where there is a job, yea your going to have to get up early and get home late, you have to make the choice to sacrifice.
Same as rural, I had to make the choice to leave, would love to live there now but there are no jobs so I live in the city. I had to take out loans, get up early and go to school, get out of school and go to my job, get home late and get a couple hours of sleep and do it again the next day. I planned to drive home every couple weekends but had to work extra and maybe only made it once every couple months. I lived off $.19/loaf bread, $.69/dozen eggs and a $.99 gallon of orange juice, had to teach myself how to cook and eggs and toast were simple enough so I made myself that for breakfast everyday for 4 years. I bagged groceries, pushed shopping carts, cleaned bathrooms, was looked down on by mercedes owning people and cussed at by bmw owning snobs, had smoke blown at me by volvo driving jerks. I'd get paid every friday, top off my gas tank, buy my one bag of groceries for the week and store the rest for my 1/3 of the rent and utilities for the two bedroom apartment three of us in the school rented in the ghetto (we couldn't afford the school housing. I had to make sacrifices, make the choice to live like that. Again, I'd love to be back on the farm in WV but I make the choice to not live in poverty, sometimes thats what people have to do.
I was out on the edge of the parking lot of the big grocery store one day picking up trash when standing by the entrance was a man holding a sign that said "will work for food". I said "dude look" and pointed at the big sign on the front of the grocery store that said "now hiring, immediate start". He folded up his sign and walked away.
Thats how I know that the majority of people who live in poverty do so by choice.

now I should add that I'm not down on everyone, I've helped people out in the past, if people truly had a hard time I have no problem helping them out, if they are some who chooses and tries to help themselves. We've given away computers, we've fixed computers, we've made and printed resumes, we've helped people with broken down cars, we've offered people to stay in our home, given people food, etc.

Mostly, you have summed up my points as I wanted to say them. I am poor, I will not deny it. My mom is laid-off and has been since December 2008, My dad has notbeen able to find a job in his field of profession in the St.Louis area anymore. I am 16 as some of you know, and I am searching desperately to find a job, I cant anymore! I have applied at all fast food chains within 5 miles of my house, nothing! I have appied at car dealerships, forklift operating jobs, auto repair shops! Everywhere, I can think of! All turned up nothing! I have a laptop that cost $500, I share it with the entire family. I am using my polite neighbors wireless internet, He knows our situation. I have one 27" T.V., no cable. I have no games, game systems, or anything to that effect! I live in the worst part of Granite City, I have had 2 bikes stolen and several attempted break-ins. I have, in another thread, told you about my forms of self defense so, I have safety covered! I have had to work, Hard for what I have. I have had to push myself carrying 200 5 gallon buckets full of dirt, sand, concrete, clay you name it! I hated it, but it managed to get me money, a whopping $30. I have spent that money on stuff for my B.O.B. that would suffice to help us out if we become homeless. Our house is about to go into forclosure and we can do nothing! We have no money to do anything, I absolutely hate being poor, but believe me Everyone, being poor can also be the best thing that happens to you! I have a friend who is Middle-class, He doesnt pay the insurance on his H3, He didnt even pay for his H3, his parents did! He has never paid for a gallon of gas, His parents always have. He has been raised around money, when that money disappears, he is... well nothing but F'ed! His parents dont have a trust fund set up or even a will, they want there "hard earned" money now! I do, but I dont want to see him hit that bump in life that separates a fool and his money, In this case his parents. He doesnt work, never applied to work and he's 18! He thinks that minimum wage is over $17 an hour because his mom and dad make more than that! He is in for a hard road called "Life"!

I can't believe that I'm going to post this. I struggled with the idea of writing this because some of it is embarrassing while other parts aren't anyone else's business. However, I felt I might be able to help with some misconceptions and that is what overrode my apprehensions. I hope a few people will read it.

I grew up poor, the kind of poor that the blogger wrote about in the article linked in the post that started this alternate thread. My mother worked about 50 to 60 hours a week and my father worked even longer. Because both of my parents worked full time my sisters and I where what people today would call latchkey kids. In any case, I respect both of my parents because it wasn't a lack of effort that kept us poor. They worked very hard to make us feel anything but poor. Still, that's what we were, poor.

I managed to make it into a small regional college where I worked hard, made the Dean's List every semester and was able to then attend a fairly prestigious school; a school that was beyond my means. Several times during my years in that school several other students and I lived together in houses where we couldn't afford heating oil in the dead of a New England winter. There were times when I had eat Ramen every day if I ate and worse when I had to dumpster dive for something to eat. There were nights I turned in "overnight forms" for various classes and labs so that I could sleep in a warm school building instead of an old drafty below freezing house. In the end I couldn't keep up with the curriculum, do the expected out of class work, work a more than full time job, and live in one of the most expensive cities on the east coast. I ended up having to leave before I got a degree. That was my excursion with "living beyond my means", the dream that I could have ever afforded the college I attended.

After college I worked hard for 20 years, never living beyond my means, but never making enough to secure any kind of long term existence should things get bad. I've only ever had a loan for a car and that has been paid off. I only ever had one credit card that I charged $200 on, payed off and then dropped. I made plans, worked hard to accomplish goals and tried to climb the ladder of success over those years with varying successes and failures. Then things got really bad when the economy crashed. The crash took my business with it. I managed to get work here and there and was able to delay the inevitable as my savings dwindled over the course of the last few years. During those years I freelanced while trying to find a full time job in my field. When I failed to do so, I tried to find a job anywhere that would at least allow me to work even though it most likely wouldn't be enough to live on.

Before I secured a job I became sick. I thought I had contracted the the flu. Information on the hospital website informed the general public not to come in to the emergency room if anyone thought they had the flu because they were swamped. Heeding this advice I stayed at home. After being sick for at least a week with a temperature that progressively got higher, finally reaching 104º, and at a point where I fell in and out of wild hallucinations I thought in a moment of lucidity that I should go to the ER. It turned out that I had gotten a staph infection and had to spend days in ICU while they monitored me and pumped me full of heavy antibiotics. They later removed more than 2 liters of puss from my back in two bedside surgeries and more in an operating room surgery.

I'm poor again.

Currently I live with family, and if not for them I'd be on the street there is no doubt.

I'm working hard again to change my situation. Maybe it will work and maybe it won't.

Neither my family nor I have ever taken any form of public assistance as a matter of pride. However, I must admit that I recently had to go to a mission clinic just to get a doctor to write me some prescriptions. I hope that none of you never know how devastating it is to pride and ego to be in such a place.

I'm not sharing this story for any kind of pity for myself. Life happens, and that's just what happened in my life. I can't say that I've got it worse than everyone else in the world by any stretch of the imagination. I'm only sharing a brief history so that you may get the idea that I know a little of what I'm talking about when I share the following thoughts.

At three different times in my life I've been the level of poor that the writer described in that blog post from the original thread, not had brushes with that level, but lived it. In my youth it was in the country, in college it was in one large city and in the latest adventure in another. In each of these instances I've known good people who were in similar situations if not worse, people that were working as hard as a human possibly could just to survive, to keep families alive and trying to better their situations. A few of them were able to improve their lives through hard work, but others haven't managed no matter how hard they tried. Beyond these people I've known others that were mentally ill who were unable to find a normal steady job for obvious reasons. I also have to admit that during those times I also met the lazy and the scammers. They are out there, inhabiting the worst parts of town and the highest offices, but the thing that you should know is that these vile people were far outnumbered by good hardworking folks. The numbers weren't even close.

I guess that what I am saying is that while it's easy to hold the ideal that hard work always results in success, in reality equal amounts of hard work don't result in equal amounts of success. If it did, I know a lot of people who would be millionaires by the effort they've given and a few millionaires who would be destitute by the same measure. Even so, sometimes life just happens and all of the reward for effort can be gone in an instant if it ever came in the first place. From what I've seen, there's no vast conspiracy of scammers out there trying to get everything for nothing and I've lived in some of the worst areas imaginable. There's not a huge number of people out there trying to take what people who are better off have, just people trying to do the best that they can in circumstances that aren't always capable of being fixed by pulling on bootstraps. I'm just asking that you take it easy on your fellow human beings.

The harshest thing I'm going to say in this thread is that this country would crumble if the hardworking poor decided the effort wasn't worth their lot. The social safety nets currently in place would fail if so much as half of the people who were eligible to take full advantage of them decided to do so. This country would crash in days if all those people walked away from their pride, misplaced or not.

That's just my view from what I've witnessed, I could be wrong.

This is not true in the US. It is quite a bit easier, and much more common, to start a small business here than it seems to be in Europe. You do need some skill others seek in order to be successful, as well as a drive to succeed in the face of competition.

This is where plumbers, electricians, air-conditioning repairmen, garage door door installers, come from, to name a few "sole-proprietors" I've hired recently. I've also hired an independent as a helicopter pilot for aerial photography and (sigh) a tow truck driver. All of these areas also have the advantage that they can't be outsourced to the far east and are, to an extent, recession resistant.

These *do* require some training and effort to get started. You can't just decide one morning to start a plumbing business - you need training, licensing, etc, before going out on your own. But the path from nowhere to somewhere is well trod and need not go through a university or large multinational. But you do need an inner drive, an inner "go".

Agreed, and there are even businesses that require even less licensing and capital, like selling other people's junk on ebay. There are whole blogs dedicated to starting non-scam home businesses, but they do take a lot of hard work, drive, and yes, you need to be able to float yourself somehow while you attempt to turn to profit and cash flow.

A heck of a lot more people think they know something about the causes, cures and experiences of being poor than actually do. If you haven't been poor yourself, or at least lived and worked with the poor extensively, believe me, you have no clue.

I used to get so angry in law school, listening to silver-spoon frat boys and always-sheltered suburban girls pontificate on poverty and often condemn the poor, while having known only security and comfort themselves, with a secure social safety net of at least modestly wealthy families, good connections and privilege, and utterly oblivious to the fact that they had no experience of the deprivation, humiliation and fear that real poverty entails.

To me, perhaps the worst part of being poor is the continuous, soul-eating fear and worry. If anything, anything at all, goes wrong, a relatively minor illness, a broken down car, or any other unexpected emergency, you're toast, because you have no margin for error. Being poor means facing potential disaster every day.

Suffice it to say, the working poor have it very tough in this country, and it is extremely hard for them to work themselves up a socio-economic ladder when they keep getting knocked off. The young and healthy can withstand and maybe eventually overcome such setbacks, but add some years, a disability, a mental illness or other chronic health problem, a child, or any sort of criminal record, and their odds of ever making it into our shrinking middle class diminish rapidly. They'll likely stay poor for the remainder of their lives, no matter what they do.

For every person that claws their way up into the middle class, another one, or more, gets knocked down into the ranks of the poor, and many of them are darned surprised to find themselves there, let me tell you. It's a real eye opener. Divorce is a leading cause of poverty for middle-aged, middle class women, and medical expenses bankrupt and impoverish many formerly secure families including those with health insurance. We also seem to have forgotten that, before Medicare, MOST seniors were living in poverty. The poor are very much like us. It is psychologically comforting, but misleading, to think otherwise.

Alvin Lee from the Band -Ten years After sings this topic,Very Well,The song:I'd Love to Change The World! Eric Clapton said he Cried,When he first heard it!

The lower classes know their place...

Although it does seem that atitudes to the Working poor or class still haven't changed too much even after 80 years.