Here's an extract from a book written in the UK in 1938 (Ruined City, Neville Shute) which I think explains pretty well both the lack of privilege of being on a subsistence income and how some of you are so scathing about what the poor spend money on, for something written for entertainment nearly 80 years ago.
""It's like this. There's really nothing wrong with the rates of relief. If you are careful, and wise, and prudent, you can live on that amount of money fairly well. And you've got to be intelligent, and well educated too, and rather selfish. If you were like that, you'd get along all right - but you wouldn't have a penny to spare. [...] But if you were human - well, you'd be for it. If you got bored stiff with doing nothing so that you went and blued fourpence on going to the pictures - you just wouldn't have enough to eat that week. Or if you couldn't cook very well, and spoiled the food a bit, you'd go hungry. You'd go hungry if your wife had a birthday and you wanted to give her a little present costing a bob - you'd only get eighty per cent of your food that week. And of course, if your wife gets ill and you want to buy her little fancy bits of things ...". She shrugged her shoulders. "You've seen it up there."
He was silent for a minute. [...] At last he said "That's terrible. Because it's so difficult to change. You can't expect people in work to pay for people who are idle going to the pictures, or giving presents to their wives. We haven't reached that stage of Socialism yet. And that means there must always be starvation, in a small degree. Because people are human, and a little foolish sometimes."
She faced him bitterly. "There's only one cure for starvation - work! If only we could get some work back here! That's the only thing that allows you to be human and foolish, as you've got to be.""
So what if you don't have the education to get work, or the right papers? If you don't have the money or resources to leave your poor and workless neighbourhood? If the work you can get pays below minimum wage or less than 30 hours a week, so your employer doesn't have to be health insurance or a pension? If you don't have family to fall back on, or all your friends are as poor as you are? Are you not allowed to be human?
Every truly and seemingly-permanently poor (American) person I have ever known well has made incredibly bad decisions, over and over again. Not little "human" errors of judgment from time to time, but almost inhuman feats of fuck-upery.
Eddie, who I worked alongside with at a Greet restaurant. Eddie lived in a bad neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio and drove a beat up old car. He saved up for weeks to buy nice wheels and tires for his car, which he parked on the street in front of the house he shared with 5 other guys. The wheels were stolen and the car left on cinderblocks. Now his car had no wheels. He had no insurance, so no pay-out to replace them. He had to beg rides to work, missing some shifts here and there for weeks. Somehow he didn't get fired. He bought the same exact wheels, which were promptly stolen again, starting the cycle over. Eventually he saved up some money and bought normal crappy looking steel wheels with hubcaps for his car, and they were not stolen again. I know exactly how much money he made (because we got paid the same) and I know that this must have wrecked his whole year financially.
My cousin, who I was visiting after not seeing him for many years. He explained to me he had gotten out of jail recently and was on probation. He had a drug test the next morning, could I believe that bullshit? Later that evening he lit up a joint, took a drag, and offered it to me. I refused, asking "Don't you have a drug test tomorrow?" He looked at me like I was stupid and said "Yeah, so?" Back to jail he went, for longer this time.
Another co-worker at a corporate job who made good money. This guy was single and made $50k+ a year but was effectively poor. In the time that I knew him, he had multiple cars repoed, was evicted once, and more. Every day he bought at least 3 Monster energy drinks from the vending machine at work for $3 each. I explained to him that he could order a case of Monsters on Amazon for $1.50 each with free shipping. He could even set it up so they would send him a case a week, so he wouldn't forget. I showed him how this would save him over $1000 a year. He acknowledged that I was right, and he should do it. He never did. I offered to include Monsters in my amazon pantry refill list and bring them to him at work, and he could pay me for them at my cost. He refused.
Another extended family member who had a promising upbringing but ended up chronically poor and semi-homeless. She lived in Detroit and had very few options available to her, and was surrounded by bad influences. My parents (this was when I was a teenager) offered to pay for her to fly to Houston and live with us and help her get on her feet. She did. We used our connections to set her up with a job, and she had no bills. This lasted for 3 weeks until she met a guy at a night club and decided to move in with him. He turned out to be a rather unsavory character- I remember my parents paying her/his rent twice before they were evicted and she ended up on the streets, and eventually back in Detroit. She lived in poverty until she died young last month.
A friend from high school who I ran into last year. She never really "launched" after high school and has been living in poverty ever since. She was unemployed. I made some calls and got her a server job at a place I used to work, where you can make really good money if you are decent at waiting tables. A few weeks later I found out she was no longer working there. I called her and asked her what happened. She explained that she quit because the job was boring and she didn't like having to be polite to customers.
I could go on and on. Dozens of people living in poverty that I have observed and tried to help or advise to some extent or another. Almost all of them refused to make simple changes to help themselves, even when those changes were pointed out to them, or pushed on them. Poor Americans aren't poor because they spoil a dinner or buy flowers for their wife while on a shoestring budget. That is laughable.
