How do the poor spend their money?

"Households making under $20,000 are around the same total spending as those making less than $5000"

How do the poor spend their money? A lot like everyone else

 

Sort of. Still never understand why poor people are so damn fat! If you're eating fast food every day, you're wasting a lot of money. You can only get fat by eating excessively. Eating a little food that's not the healthiest doesn't make you obese. You have to eat a lot, which is interesting considering a poor person shouldn't have the money to eat a lot of anything. They're supposed to be poor after all right?

The answer to the question actually is, "irresponsibly", which is how most of them got there in the first place.

 

The following are facts about persons defined as "poor" by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports:
◾Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
◾Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
◾Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
◾The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
◾Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
◾Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
◾Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
◾Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

http://www.heritage.org/research/re...or-examining-the-plague-of-poverty-in-america


the poor here in America would be middle class in most other industrialized nations

 

Typically irrelevant. Why do you hate Americans?

 

Eating healthy is much more expensive than eating unhealthy foods. But you are right about the effects of excessive eating. But poor people is a nebulous term... are people on disability and not able to work "irresponsible"? And can you look at a person and tell if they are disabled or not? Also what is your definition of poor?

 

So are hateful attacks against the nation's poor during a horrendous economy part of the new Republican platform?

Are you trying to never see the inside of the White House ever again, or get your heads put on spikes?

Or both?

 

Really? Because when I was poor my money went to crack, meth, coke, and insulin syringes. (Did you know you can melt a crack rock down with lemon juice and bang it?) I used to love when the food stamps would come in, I'd be tweaking out all night....

The overwhelming majority of poor people I have meet in my life were poor due to making poor decisions. So cite any study you like. Studies can be manipulated - I choose to believe my lying eyes. Also, I've been poor in numerous states, and still I see the same, so it's not like it was just poor people in one area.

Ever since I quit drugs and moved to a new state, I now have money and a place to live. Everytime you park your car and go into a gas station and some homeless dude who smells like alcohol asks your for a dollar, my point it proven. Every time you see a story on the news about a meth head burglarizing a house, my point is proven. And yes, everytime Micheal Moore makes a documentary blasting rich white people, and then gets paid for it and becomes an ever richer white dude, my point is proven. I'd post a link to my political satire site where michael moore opens his home to the homeless, but it's against the rules. For some reason you can post links to other peoples sites that you think people will find funny, but if you write satire and you think some viewers of this web site would like to read it, you can't post it if you wrote it. I really don't understand that rule. Still, I love this website, it's fun to explore different points of view, and watch as other posters get into a flame war, I always try to have the popcorn ready.

 

In other words, "Drop dead."
Maybe they'll tell you to drop dead right back and elect another Communist to the White House.

In fact, I think that's EXACTLY what is going to happen.

How did this happen? I guess you and your fellow conservatives made a lot of "poor decisions."

 

Who told you I was a conservative? Drop Dead? Where did that come from? Perhaps you'd like to rebut what I wrote instead of coming out of left field with a bunch of off the wall nonsense. If I disturbed your peaceful existence by forcing a little reality into your bubble of fantasy, I apologize. Whatever you do, don't let the facts get in the way of what you want to believe

 

What was your point? That you used to smoke methamphetamine and poor people are poor, in your opinion, from making bad decisions?
And that means what?

 

Ok, let me elaborate. Not all poor people are poor from making bad decisions. I want to clarify that, first and foremost. Some conservatives also can't wrap their head around the notion that sometimes there are more people in an area than there are jobs. I just took issue with people saying that poor people spend their money just like everyone else, when the vast majority of poor people I knew didn't. And no, it's not all drugs either. I knew a couple who didn't do drugs, or drink, or smoke, but every paycheck they'd buy all kinds of electronic games and gadgets, and they received food stamps. They could have easily bought 1 or 2 new ps2 games for their console every paycheck and not needed foodstamps, but instead they would buy like 10. I really can see it from your point of view, I'm just pointing out that some poor people will always be poor no matter how much money you give them, until they change their ways. Back when I did meth, I could have hit the lotto and been broke 6 months later. Now I make a decent wage, and am actually saving money. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

 

COFFEE ~ the Poor Man's "Tweak!" lol

 

Food stamps and in this case, not physically disabled. You know, obese mother with 3 obese kids, obese dad who may or may not live with them in a poorly maintained apt, trailer or small house. You know, poor. Yet, they eat like pigs, which seems strange considering they're so poor they can't take care of themselves, where they live or what they may or may not drive. So like I said, irresponsible.

 

Our culture is destroyed. That has plenty to do with it. Television and media conglomerates have intentionally targeted the youth in this nation with idiot cultures. It leads to bad decisions, and ultimately leads to bad parenting, and it continues to get worse with every passing decade. I've always voted Republican (until recently, and am now retired from it), but I have a problem with loud mouth conservative blow hards praising CEO's for their `ability to make money` on selling cultural destruction to impressionable teenagers who the very same conservatives then condemn for "making poor decisions."

It's one reason of a thousand that the Republican party is finished in this nation.

 

You make a valid point

 

Those are the only kinds of points I make

 

You have NO IDEA what you're talking about!

Have you even checked the price of food lately? Do you know that it takes twice as much to purchase "lean ground beef" than it does to purchase "regular" (that is, fat and "by product" and antibiotics" laden) ground beef?

Do you know that it is impossible to feed a family of 4 for 10.00 a day from a grocery store, but it is easy to get 4 (cheap and unhealthy) hamburger at McDonalds, that will at least allow a mother to put her kids to bed without hearing them say they are still hungry?

Have you compared the price of a candy bar and the price of an orange? Which do you think is cheaper? Which do you think will satisfy a hungry child more readily?

You have NO IDEA of how much more it costs to eat HEALTHY!

I suggest YOU try to live on food stamps for ONE WEEK. . .without digging into the "reserve" you may have in your pantry!" And then I might be able to debate with you based on some COMMON SENSE!

 

So. . . you often eat with those people? If you do, don't you feel sort of ashamed for calling them "PIGS?"
And if you don't . . .how do you know how and how much they eat. . .or why they choose to eat fatty food instead of lean, high quality food?

I believe YOUR STATEMENTS demonstrate that YOU have no idea of real life and you have no idea of what "responsible" means!

 

I don't know where you're from but a candy bar is more expensive than an orange.

And I live in New York City...

 

Are you saying that it costs LESS to eat "healthy" than to purchase bottom of the line and unhealthy food?

New York or not. . .you are wrong!

 

Excellent post.

There are a lot of people in America really struggling right now and to hear the Hannity parrots shower them with their hatred bothers me.
I know why they do it, or at least suspect I do, given that it's a rather new development. They're blaming the poor for the failures of their own incoherent ideology and its inability to win elections, when they should instead be blaming people like Bill Krystal, Karl Rove, and creatures like them in the neo-con establishment.

Instead they lash out at people trying to feed their children amid rising inflation and grocery costs. It's poor political strategy, and in poor taste, but nobody ever accused the Republican base of being political savvy, which is why they've had their political asses handed back to them on a silver platter for the last century by a tiny, seemingly insignificant minority of liberal activists.

Meanwhile, they're big supporters of the "free market" and outsourcing dignified work over seas, but want to complain about unemployment, the poor and food stamps in between cheering on wars over "weapons of mass destruction."

 

If the entire family is obese, describing their eating habits as piglike is 99.999999% accurate. An entire family of obese people is the complete opposite of responsible. If that offends you, tough. Reality disagrees with you.

And I have eaten with poor people when I work with Habitat for humanity and varius other charities. I've seen plenty. The only poor people that come off as responsible are those that had a family tragedy. However most were due to poor education and poorer work habits and drugs, and of wedlock children.

 

I don't know any fat poor people. I assume this is an invention of the media. I don't even know that many obese people. Either New Englanders simply take better care of themselves no matter their economic station in life, or it's all nonsense.

 

Your comments make me sick!
You have no idea if that family has a hormonal problem or not. . .and by the way, being obese doesn't mean that one eats too much.

And, are you ready to call Chris Christie and his family "pigs?" And God knows they have the means to SELECT HEALTHY FOOD!

I suggest that, if you go work for ANY charity with the attitude that you demonstrate in your posts, you should refrain from "HELPING" anyone. As a social worker, I know your kind of "charity," and I know the harm it can do! Trying to sooth the emptiness of one's heart, one's insensitivity toward other humans is, unfortunately, ONE reason why SOME people join "charities" like Habitat!

Self-righteousness is distasteful in any case. . .when it preys on the most disenfranchised. . .it is sick.