Warren and Tyagi demonstrated that buying common luxury items wasn’t the issue for most Americans. The problem was the fixed costs, the things that are difficult to cut back on. Housing, health care, and education cost the average family 75 percent of their discretionary income in the 2000s. The comparable figure in 1973: 50 percent. Indeed, studies demonstrate that the quickest way to land in bankruptcy court was not by buying the latest Apple computer but through medical expenses, job loss, foreclosure, and divorce.
Giving up a latte or another such small extravagance in this environment wasn’t going to be enough. Yet the personal finance shills continued to tell people their problems were mostly of their own making.
This strikes me as being directly related to those jackholes who are enraged when someone poor has some small or relatively small luxury: they think this is how economics work.
I’m tired of feeling guilty for every tiny indulgence that makes me feel human.
This makes me remember a story a friend of mine told me.
He was in a college course for learning financial stuff, like how to invest wisely and shit like that because he was working for the local library system in their accounting department and had to be able to advise employees on how best to use the new investment options the library was offering.
So, the professor tells the class that they should ALWAYS be saving at least $25 per paycheck into a savings account even when it’s hard because that is the only way to get into the habit of saving and also the quickest way to having emergency cash, but it was better to do at least $50.
Not terrible advice, certainly, but… My friend said there was no way he could do that. The professor scoffed at him about high dollar luxuries like coffee shop drinks or name brand food or clothes or a computer or using the bus instead of a car.
Now, my friend did not own a car; he bike rode everywhere. His wife used the bus. Both he and his wife worked. He did not buy name brand food; he got cheap store brand food in bulk and only bought what he already knew would be used in his meal calendar planned for two months at a time. He brewed his own coffee at home. He kept his electricity usage to a minimum and taught his wife and children to do the same. His kids weren’t indulged with sweets or many toys. They didn’t buy candy or hobby items. They got the free local TV channels which they honestly only used to track weather on a salvaged TV they got from a friend. They only got new clothing when their kids grew out of the old or something of theirs was too worn to patch or repair and always from thrift shops. All their furniture was secondhand and usually picked cheap from garage sales. They made the agonizing decision to purchase a home instead of renting because the net savings over all were justifiable because the house payments were cheaper than renting. They budgeted for a total of ten dollars to be put in the savings account per month, not per paycheck.
My friend and his wife planned their expenditures down to the cent at least two months in advance to make sure they could make it. They constantly researched to find the absolute best value of every item they bought. Thankfully, my friend had the analytical mind for that kind of planning. No purchase ever went unremarked upon or without heavy consideration, no matter how small. They spent wisely and stretched every dollar as far as it could go.
My friend brought in a hand written copy of his budget (because he didn’t have a computer or printer and paper was an expense he built into the budget so he could do the planning) and showed it to the professor the next day in front of the class and asked, “Where do I squeeze out $25 per paycheck?”
The professor hemmed and hawed as he went through the budget. He kept starting to say something on one line or another and then would stop himself and go to the next. Sometimes he would say shit things like “where is your gas column?” “We don’t own a car.” He spent about twenty minutes staring at my friend’s carefully planned and managed budget and could not see a single place where it could be improved.
“I guess you can’t,” the professor said and was apparently so bitter about being wrong that my friend had to keep from laughing at him even though the entire experience had soured him something awful.
People who are not struggling do not understand how money works for poor people and just assume we are horrible at managing it instead of realizing we just don’t have any. Luxury items aren’t killing us; low wages and a shit economy are.
You know what’s really fucked up, think about how many poor people with eating disorders or problems with food
How many poor mothers skip meals to feed their children
How many poor children only eat one mea a day (like free lunch at school)
How many poor teens and young adults just don’t make enough to eat and start internalizing that they’re unworthy of food
How many poor people do you know who can’t afford healthier food
How many poor people don’t have enough time/money/gas/ability to cook fresh meal
How many poor people do you see starving on their breaks their lunches just to save food
Capitalism creates these problems and i have never seen a post on here talking about how we struggle with eating disorders and food insecurity under capitalism.
Health measures in Eastern Kentucky and other parts of Appalachia were worse in recent years compared to the rest of the country, according to a report released Thursday. The years of life Appalachian Kentucky residents lose to health maladies such as heart disease and cancer is 63 percent higher than the national average.
The people at the hospital always say I’m lucky to be training here because we have the #1 sickest patients in the country. Not so sure that should be the selling point, but it’s for sure not arguable.
To some people, anything that isn’t “I can spend twenty hours a week foraging for organic, healthy, free local food, and then prepare and freeze it with the infrastructure I have because everyone has it, right?” is pure laziness, and hence a choice. It makes me furious.
…reasonably middle class, which is a miracle for a full-time author. …equipped of a fridge, a pantry, a chest freezer, and a working kitchen. …capable of cooking for myself and others.
I am also…
…the daughter of a woman who raised three daughters on welfare. …formerly homeless. …a fat woman who has to fight not to slip back into disordered eating habits because of items #1 and #2. …someone who goes to the grocery store multiple times a week. …regularly furious about food waste in my own home when people refuse to eat their leftovers/help eat communal leftovers.
So let’s go.
The specific post I reblogged worked from the base premise that it is easier to eat, where “eat” is defined as “get sufficient calories to not feel hungry,” when you are not making a concerted effort to “eat healthy.” It cited things like “a package of extremely filling oatmeal cookies for a dollar,” and “behold, ramen.” Interestingly, it did not cite anything to support the “false dichotomy” you’re accusing me of supporting: for reference, here’s the link http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/164447064675/heyatleastitsnotcancer-candygirl1997
(There is a cranky comment about non-GMO unicorn poop, but as hipsters don’t actually eat shit, that seems less “dichotomy,” and more “angry.”)
But hey, that seems suspiciously like people wanting other people to stop dictating their food choices and assuming they’re eating that way out of necessity, and not because they’re lazy. That can’t be right! We need someone who’s seen both sides!
And that’s why now, as someone who used to eat out of dumpsters, as someone who was lucky enough to be poor in farming country and hence have access to produce seconds (IE, bruised and ugly fruit that no one else wanted), as someone who is emotionally incapable of looking at meat before checking the discount meat bin at the grocery store, I am going to answer the question of whether it’s cheaper to eat healthy once and for all:
No.
No, it is not.
No, it is fucking not.
I live near an independently owned fruit market. They have, regularly, red and gold potatoes for $.99 a pound. They have big Idaho bakers for $.59 a pound. These are some of the best potato prices I have ever seen. Had we lived here when I was a kid, I would have eaten potatoes until I wept. Assuming that potatoes are now the bulk of our diet, and that we’re only eating the cheap ones, that’s a pound of potatoes per person, per day, for a total of $2.40. Call it $2.50, after tax. We are now spending $75 a month on potatoes. No butter or sour cream, because potatoes are already starchy as hell, and fuck taste, but we have potatoes!
Great. Do we have a kitchen? We didn’t, always. For approximately 1/3rd of my childhood, this plan has us eating raw potatoes. But let’s say sure. We can cook our plain potatoes. Say we cook them every night, and have hot potato for dinner, and then cold potato for breakfast. Can’t eat the school lunch–pretty sure that’s not healthy enough. So I guess we’ll buy and boil eggs. You can boil eggs and potatoes in the same pot.
How many eggs do you give the starving, miserable eight-year-old to fill her up? Ballpark figure? Is it the same number you give her fourteen-year-old sister? Is it the same number you take to your back-breaking physical labor job? We’re ignoring the emotional and social impacts here, and just focusing on the cost. So say three eggs each. Maybe everyone’s hungry, but hey, it’s health food.
A dozen eggs is $2.00. We are now spending $60 a month on eggs. That’s $135 a month for a diet that is probably not making anyone happy, but hey, at least it’s all easy on the digestion, right? And if you’re eating three eggs a day, even if you’re soloing this You Should Be Punished For Poverty diet, your eggs aren’t spoiling. Assuming you have a fridge.
Hope you have a fridge.
Your children have now started going home with friends in hopes of being fed, but that’s okay, because it means you have fewer mouths to feed, and if you don’t want them to be taken away, you need to make sure they don’t get scurvy. So we’re going to add milk ($3.50 a gallon, hope no one’s lactose intolerant, if you water it down and watch them like a hawk, you can survive on two gallons a week, which adds $28 to your grocery costs, good job) and apples. Red delicious, of course, which taste like shame, but they’re cheap when the store has them…assuming you’re not in a food desert, where the only apples are coming from the 7-11 at a dollar apiece.
There are so many things we could be buying to make this feel less like a Dickens novel. There’s baloney, and peanut butter, and generic mac and cheese. But they’re not healthy.
Eating healthy is a privilege. When I made a dedicated effort to change my eating habits, my grocery bills increased by 60%. I have the receipts. Not because I was buying “brand names”: because I was buying chicken breasts instead of whole chickens, because I was buying fresh instead of frozen, because I was learning to fill up on things other than chips. That’s just the way we’ve allowed this country to structure our food.
Yes: allowed. In England–which has its own problems, please don’t take this as me going YAY ENGLAND LAND OF PERFECTION–they have laws setting the prices that can be charged for “staples,” like chicken, and potatoes, and bread, and butter, and eggs, and milk. It’s much easier to eat healthy there than it is here.
But here, it is a privilege.
And it ought to be a right.
“get a fridge”
Jesus, has this person ever had to look at prices for anything?
This is one of the many examples of material deprivation of Indigenous communities in the US, who also suffer from high rates of lack of electricity, no or substandard housing, violence from non-Native communities, etc.
Things like this are why I don’t trust the UN, where the US, a racist Settler colonialist state that continues to perpetrate genocide against and deny the land rights of Native peoples, and which has broken every single treaty it has ever made with Native nations, has a permanent seat on the security council. The UN has also willingly come along with US genocides and colonialism abroad as well. I don’t think it will do anything effective, other than pointing out problems to the public it is totally toothless when it comes to actual enforcement due to its very structure.
We know that the USA is becoming more inequitable in socioeconomic terms, but the graph above by a team of inequality researchers — Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman — sums up the trends succinctly.
The graph shows the change in annual income between 1980 and 2014 for every point on the income distribution, ranging from the lowest to the highest. In 1980, the lower incomes grew the most in percentage terms, while in 2014 only the rich receive significant raises.
The red line on the chart, which represents 2014, resembles a classic hockey-stick graph. It’s mostly flat and close to zero, before spiking upward at the end. That spike shows that income growth is soaring for the super-rich, while stagnating for others.
A reasonable observer would conclude that inequality is out of control, but the President and leaders in Congress promote policies on health care, education, and tax reform that would serve to increase the disparities even more.
basically anyone who really shames people for buying their kids shoes or for buying themselves a manicure while poor doesnt understand poverty
poor people often have a lot of disposable income, more than you think, cause they live on cash
they often do not have any means of transforming that cash into assets or into longterm wealth
so yes i had a lot of toys and nice things as a poor kid because you can buy toys at the dollar store too
and like you can pay a lady 10 dollars in cash to do your nails professionally
but you really cannot scrimp, at least not anymore (maybe decades ago you could) to buy yourself a house or to invest in stocks or other things that guarantee financial protection
poor people are liquid- thats why they may have material goods including nice cell phones but they broke ass will always be broke
hell, even banks and financiers EXPLOIT the liquidity of poor people; cash advance places in the hood and the proven empirical facts that cash deposits from banks in low-income neighborhood go towards major investments and are used as liquid assets by big businesses
keeping poor people in cash and banks in poor neighborhoods are major transfers of wealth in this economy
so please spare me your policing of some lady who decided to get some shoes
Basically, the working poor can afford small pleasures but cannot afford massive shifts in their situations (like moving out your old neighborhood) cus the cost would cripple them.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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