Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Ken McIntyre at the National Review Online, using data from the U.S. Department of Energy, highlights an uncomfortable notion about today's poor in the U.S. They have a surprising amount of "things." The article doesn't express anger "because they shouldn't have things, damnit" or anything like that. It's just a conversation starter about how the media portrays what the Census Bureau defines as poor. Images of crumbling hovels and kids running around addicted to Mountain Dew in need of dental work are often what we see. One might wonder, how do they have money for all this Mountain Dew? But poke around back, according to the Dept. of Energy, 6% have jacuzzis.
My nephew Kyle had an interesting quote about this. "I've said this at Stanford and was essentially considered equal to a holocaust denier among the other students in my dorm."
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Mar '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
A number of the "poor" people in my area get housing assistance and free school meals. As a result they have more "things", more expensive clothes and nicer cars than I do. I pay my mortgage and pay for my children to eat.
I sometimes wonder if I would be better off without a job just taking the "free government money" that I currently supply through income and property taxes.
Dec '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
I remember last summer the person in the condo next to mine, who is on disability, noting that my air conditioner was on and complaining that she could not afford to run hers. She was smoking a cigarette at the time. I wanted to point out that my monthly A/C bill was less than her monthly cigarette habit.
It is about choices.
Edited on Jul 19, 2011 at 10:17amJul '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Look at a Medicaid filled waiting room and count the I phones held out for entertainment as the lines of the ungrateful wait for their chance to weasel an oxycontin script from some poor resident doc. Are we the only nation in history with a morbidly obese poor class?
Sep '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
I've never understood why honest taxpayers accept the ludicrous foodstamp program. There should be a list of no more than 25-30 "staples" that are eligible to be purchased with government vouchers. Don't like it? Tough. Grow up and feed yourself for a change.
The fact that they can purchase name brand snacks like Mountain Dew and Cheetos is totally offensive to me.
Jun '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
I agree with all the posters. There are so many examples of this that I've experienced that I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type. I've worked in clinics and know of families getting free care before heading off to DisneyWorld vacations. My daughter tutored in a low-income school for years and was always amazed at the little kids and their Timberland boots and expensive phones. One kid was teasing her when I picked her up in our old minivan.
Are any of you old enough to remember when a can of soda was a real, reare treat? As was a slice of pizza. And our first color TV was one my mom won in the church raffle when I was in high school. (I really did walk to school up hill in the snow, as well.)
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
If the poor were not always with us, we would have to invent them . . . and we do.
Jul '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
I'm in the restaurant business in Manhattan. I can't remember the last time I saw a busboy from south of the border who didn't have a smart phone, a $150 pair of sneakers, and some gold and diamond jewelry.
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
The poor are one of our paths to heaven as well, depending on how we treat them. The question is, "at what point are we doing them more harm than good with our compassionate government style assistance?"
My wife and I work for a no-nonsense food program at our church. To get food, they sit through one hour of catechism from a remarkable priest. Then they celebrate mass, and the parish knows who to pray for. My wife and a few other women visit them regularly to make sure they are really needy, and to see if they may need something else that isn't food. The men pack the food the night before the distribution. It's simple and effective and the # of bags we have to pack has decreased, not increased over the years. Free weddings are also offered for those cohabiting.
The government would laugh at us because we are helping people instead of creating more dependency.
Dec '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
I'd happily jump on the bandwagon dissing the notion of poverty in America, if this wasn't such a political loser for conservatives. It just feeds the meme that we're heartless.
I prefer to argue the topic by pointing to the damage done to the character of people who receive something for nothing. I just learned my nephew, who is interning in Chicago this summer, racked up $1,400 on my brother's credit card last month, including a party weekend costing $600. He's not a bad kid, but he needs to be taught he's not entitled. I expect my brother will make him pay it back.
That's the problem with government assistance. Bleeding heart types would make their kids work for what they get, but impose poverty of character on the materially poor in order to bolster their self-regard for their compassion and virtue.
Apr '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
I can understand your frustration to some degree, but I actually feel for the cost of the program the foodstamp system probably gives us a better return on investment then say education spending. At least food is easily quantifiable, thus we know that 200$ a month of food stamps can really help feed people very well. Were as 2000$ per child to a school gives us no idea how much better educated they would be without it. Also the food stamp program is rather cheap compared to other programs.
It's true people should consider buying better food with food stamps, but it defeats the purpose of charity if we make demands on our gifts. Soda and candy makes people happy.
What we need to do is change the perception of welfare from an entitlement to a gift given by a generous, affluent society because you need it not deserve it.
Jul '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Joe Escalante
The poor are one of our paths to heaven as well, depending on how we treat them. The question is, "at what point are we doing them more harm than good with our compassionate government style assistance?"
My wife and I work for a no-nonsense food program at our church. To get food, they sit through one hour of catechism from a remarkable priest. Then they celebrate mass, and the parish knows who to pray for. My wife and a few other women visit them regularly to make sure they are really needy, and to see if they may need something else that isn't food. The men pack the food the night before the distribution. It's simple and effective and the # of bags we have to pack has decreased, not increased over the years. Free weddings are also offered for those cohabiting.
The government would laugh at us because we are helping people instead of creating more dependency. · Jul 19 at 10:54am
Joe, you've touched on the problem. The government is trying to fulfill the role of churches and charitable organizations, and they're horrible at it. It's not their calling.
Jul '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Another irony about modern poverty is that the "poor" have to worry much less about regarding health and wellness. Seems to me that most health problems associated with poverty today are almost entirely due to do with personal choices and much less to do with environment. The biggest health problem for the poor is obesity (or obesity related conditions) which is entirely preventable in 98% of cases with a combination of proper diet and work. Microbial diseases, the most common of which less than a century ago could bring death and still wreak havoc in the rest of the world, are almost non-existent as a health threat due to public sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics, and cheap OTC drugs.
Accidents do happen and IMO are the biggest cause of legitimate poverty. However, even then it seems the system hurts more than helps them. Most of those I've seen made poor by accident or disability seem to be chronically apathetic due to the fact that they now have some blind government agency sending them a check every month. While not 100%, they could be gainfully employed or contributing in some way, but the system ravages their initiative.
-E of CandE
May '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
StickerShock, you were lucky. My walk to school in the snow was uphill both ways. ;)
Jun '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
When a wild animal grows up in a zoo--especially a predator--there comes a point, very soon in their life, when you can't place them back in the wild anymore. They'd starve. They wouldn't know what to do. That also describes a significant part of American society. They completely depend on their government zookeepers. And in turn, the "zookeepers" depend on the not-so-helpless...to pay the bills.
Jul '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Whiskey Sam
Joe, you've touched on the problem. The government is trying to fulfill the role of churches and charitable organizations, and they're horrible at it. It's not their calling. · Jul 19 at 12:07pm
I would go so far as to say we as a nation have lost something precious by abdicating this role to the feds. My charity helps not only define me as a human being from a values perspective but provides me with infinite joy as well.
Mar '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
If you look at the report it shows that the areas where the poor have the most problems with affordability are energy and healthcare. Those areas have shown the least improvement in productivity. Add Education to that list (and arguably financial services) and you quickly notice a pattern - - those are all the areas with the heaviest government involvement and regulation.
Aug '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
The government is trying to fulfill the role of churches and charitable organizations.
Brilliant. And the government does what they can to hobble the churches and charities. If the churches took over the welfare ,as in olden days, they will fill the pews and the collection plates. The quid pro quo would be physical and/or spiritual. The community would coalesce and the family would once again become the base unit of social organization.
Now tell me why all the hospitals have left their religious affiliations behind ?
Too bad religion was on the blacklist in the universities from 1968 to present. Marxism doesn't allow that opiate to the party.
Edited on Jul 19, 2011 at 1:26pmAug '10
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
"Unable to live without a messianic compensation of their own, the architects of the benevolent state subsituted the redeemer God for the redeemer statesman, for the inspired church an inspired state, for the priestly clerisy an administrative clerisy, for the kindly friar a benevolent social worker, for voluntary almsgiving...compulsory expropriations. The imitation has everything to recommend it except the spirit that made the original work."
That's the conclusion of Michael Knox Beran's book review of "What Wrong with Benevolence," by David Stowe (National Review, July 18).
He is pretty spot on, I think. I long for a lavishly generous church and a tightfisted government. We've got it backwards, I fear.
Jul '11
Re: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Songwriter, thank you for that quote from NR.
Something that gets missed so much in trying to get the government in the business of "doing good" (in lieu of religion) is the original motive for doing good.
Charity as taught by Jesus and his disciples was a part of a packaged deal in which the end goal was eternal life. Helping the poor and needy, the widows and orphans, was edifying to both the receiver AND the giver, and it was essential to his commandment that his followers become one.
By turning "charity" into a function of state, it has become devoid of any uplifting principle and merely a tool for redistribution of wealth, and the original intent (becoming one) has given way to the insistence that everyone be "equal".
-E
Edited on Jul 19, 2011 at 2:45pmRe: Modern Poverty Includes Air Conditioning and an Xbox
Great point flownover. Religion is trivialized and the churches are hobbled, to a large extent as persecution for strong held beliefs. The statist wants to force redistribution. The religious want want to give until it hurts. The churches in Europe are far emptier than ours in the U.S. but if the left have their way, ours will be right their Scandinavians in no time. We can turn them into senior centers...or Mosques.
flownover: The government is trying to fulfill the role of churches and charitable organizations.
Brilliant. And the government does what they can to hobble the churches and charities. If the churches took over the welfare ,as in olden days, they will fill the pews and the collection plates. The quid pro quo would be physical and/or spiritual. The community would coalesce and the family would once again become the base unit of social organization.
Now tell me why all the hospitals have left their religious affiliations behind ?
Too bad religion was on the blacklist in the universities from 1968 to present. Marxism doesn't allow that opiate to the party. · Jul 19 at 1:19pm
Edited on Jul 19 at 01:26 pm