The High Cost of Poverty

[Broomstick]

He puts back the liter of soda.

And you are buying soda why? That is a luxury item. Buy fruit concentrate if water is so distasteful, it's still something like a tenth the price of soda per litre.

I can get soda for $0.99 for a 2 liter bottle, but fruit juice - even in concentrate form - is more expensive. And people wonder why in the US we have problems with nutrition...

Then the most awesome part is that the nearest DMV is three miles from the nearest bus stop.

Oh noes three whole miles! Why that's nearly as much as I used to walk to work every day! What are you, chronically obese?

Americans have forgotten how to walk, what can I say? My current Federal job requires me to walk 4-8 hours a day, quite a bit more than 3 miles. Now, sometimes you have obstacles to cross between the bus stop and your destination like a freeway, but it can be done.

However, many neighborhoods regard anyone on foot as suspicious. I know this from experience - while working for the Census I've had people call the cops to report the "suspicious" activity in the neighborhood - said activity being walking instead of driving around the place.

Re; washers, can't you just get one from a second-hand store for $100 or so and give your buddy with the beat-up pickup truck a six-pack of beer for helping you get it home?

It helps if your residence has the means to hook up such a washer. Most apartments I've lived in do not. I can't imagine the average landlord would be happy if I did my own installation of such.

Dryers are another unnecessary luxury, use a bloody drying rack, worked for me for eight years.

Back in my first run of poverty I'd string clothesline through my apartment and dry my clothes that way. Worked pretty good, too, except during a really humid period of time like August in Chicago (I lived right by Lake Michigan. It was... moist at times). I think we should promote clotheslines in the backyards or, in cities, in the alleys, but many communities have banned people drying their clothes outside.

Re; learning skills, this is annecdotal, but in my industry you can learn everything except hardware and a few proprietary packages using a beat-up second hand PC ($200 at a store) and tools and material downloaded for free off the Internet (you don't even need your own Internet connection, take a USB stick to your local library).

My local library will not allow you to use use a USB stick, floppy disk, memory card, CD, or any other form of memory media on their computers. They'll print stuff off for you, but apparently there was a problem with deliberate loading of malware onto their computers awhile back so they've gotten a little paranoid since. This has nothing to do with it being a poor neighborhood - because it's not - but because some jackasses have to fuck with community resources and this is why we can't have nice things.

[Darth Wong]

I can get soda for $0.99 for a 2 liter bottle, but fruit juice - even in concentrate form - is more expensive. And people wonder why in the US we have problems with nutrition...

Interesting. Coca-Cola in a 2L bottle costs me $2.19, and the US:CDN exchange rate is around 0.85. It appears that this crap costs you much less than it costs me. What does a kilogram of apples cost there?

[Broomstick]

No one is more than 30 minutes' walk from a supermarket in the US, either, but the costs of buying goods really are higher in bad neighborhoods because the company's costs are so much higher.

Bullshit. It would take me at least an hour to walk to my nearest grocery store. NOT my nearest "convenience store", but it would take that long to walk to an actual store that sold food other than junk food.

[Broomstick]

Shit, these days it extends to food: The cheapest calories are the most unhealthy.

Nonsense. The most convenient calories are the most unhealthy ones. You can buy a LOT of rice for the price of a Big Mac (almost a pound, in fact, for a buck).

Bullshit - I can buy at least 2 lbs of brown rice for the price of a big mac. 5 lbs of white rice for that. Of course, the catch is that I have to have a means to get to the store...

My bicycle still has the cargo rack over the back tire - I could use it to transport myself to the grocery store and the food back home, but such set ups are rare these days. I bought my bike - one sturdy enough for that sort of work - 30 years ago and the cargo rack about 20 years ago. Of course, biking to the store in January around here would suck - assuming I wasn't trying to ride though meter deep snow, which I doubt I could do.

[Starglider]

He puts back the liter of soda.

And you are buying soda why? That is a luxury item. Buy fruit concentrate if water is so distasteful, it's still something like a tenth the price of soda per litre.

I can get soda for $0.99 for a 2 liter bottle, but fruit juice - even in concentrate form - is more expensive.

Supermarket-brand fruit cordial is about $1/litre here, but one litre of that stuff makes about ten litres of flavored drink. I drink a lot of it, partly because I've finally admitted that cola is bad for you.

However, many neighborhoods regard anyone on foot as suspicious. I know this from experience - while working for the Census I've had people call the cops to report the "suspicious" activity in the neighborhood - said activity being walking instead of driving around the place.

That is very sad. I could understand it in Texas though. It's horribly hot and there seem to be no pavements in many suburbs.

My local library will not allow you to use use a USB stick, floppy disk, memory card, CD, or any other form of memory media on their computers. They'll print stuff off for you, but apparently there was a problem with deliberate loading of malware onto their computers awhile back so they've gotten a little paranoid since.

I suspect that if you're in there often enough that the librarians get to know you, they'll be prepared to copy some stuff to a USB stick for you. Pretty much all the librarians I've known have gone out of there way to help people genuinely trying to learn.

Coca-Cola in a 2L bottle costs me $2.19

Coca-Cola is two to four times more expensive than supermarket brand stuff pretty much anywhere. Of course the absolute cheapest supermarket stuff (Asda-Wal-Mart does 'value cola' for the equivalent of for 20c/litre here) is undrinkable dishwater, but someone is clearly still buying it.

[Imperial Overlord]

Interesting. Coca-Cola in a 2L bottle costs me $2.19, and the US:CDN exchange rate is around 0.85. It appears that this crap costs you much less than it costs me. What does a kilogram of apples cost there?

If you buy store brand pop instead of Coke or Pepsi it's a lot cheaper. I've seen it at around $1 for 2L in Vancouver.

[Darth Wong]

Fair enough: I forgot that some people actually buy that no-name crap. I never buy it, but I treat sodas as a special treat, not an everyday drink, so I buy very little of it (we actually have a rule in our house: zero sodas on weekdays; they're strictly for weekends and holidays). When I do buy it, I want the good stuff, not no-name dishwater.

[Broomstick]

How much do welfare recipients actually get?

Best Case Scenario: 900 for a family of four(300 for a single person), and 500(200 for single) in food stamps.

$200/month per person for food stamps? Wow - in Indiana you only get $100/month per able bodied person, with the disabled able to get "up" to $120/month.

With a garden (which I have) and freezing vegees I could probably swing it, but if I didn't have room for a garden...? I'm not sure I could come up with a truly healthy diet for that amount.

[Cairber]

It's all going to depend on where you live and what you have access to I guess. We spend 350$ a month on groceries for a family of 5- though Ruby is a young toddler and eats half portions usually though sometimes she can consume as much as me in a meal! But we also have access to a place to buy meats in bulk and a wonderful produce stand nearby that let's us get deals like 2$ for 10 navel oranges or 2$ for 2 melons.

Another big thing is time. I have the luxury of time that lets me make baby food, juices, bread; I can make meals ahead of time and freeze them so that we don't resort to eating out on nights we don't feel like cooking.

Also the point about the large bulk sums of money on hand made me think about how we saved lots of money by using cloth diapers, but the start up cost was very high. It cost us about 300$ for everything but we have saved thousands in the long run; however, that lump sum might be difficult for a family with a new baby or baby on the way to get ahold of.

[Broomstick]

I can get soda for $0.99 for a 2 liter bottle, but fruit juice - even in concentrate form - is more expensive. And people wonder why in the US we have problems with nutrition...

Interesting. Coca-Cola in a 2L bottle costs me $2.19, and the US:CDN exchange rate is around 0.85. It appears that this crap costs you much less than it costs me.

Didn't say Coca-cola - that's usually about what you pay, more or less. What I was referring to was no-name or house brand soda.

Personally, I'm a tea drinker - that can be done for less than either soda or juice (you can also get very expensive tea, as I'm sure most of us know, but I'm not indulging like that when I'm poor). I also have no problem with drinking water. I do have the expensive of Brita filters for our tap water (it's a bit... orange just out of the tap due to mineral content in the well) but even with those water out of my faucet is still cheaper than anything I buy at the store.

What does a kilogram of apples cost there?

Um... well, we don't sell by the kg here, of course, usually it's a 3 lb bag. Let me go get the converter calculator....

If I recall 1.4 kg of apples (3lbs) was going for $2.46 USD last weekend. We do live near an apple-producing area (Michigan) so that may be a lower cost than an area that is farther away. On the other hand, there are apples there from places like New Zealand, though they do cost a bit more.

In the inner city in Chicago, though, apples would be sold individually, not in a bag. Back when I was still in the city a lot, apples were typically $0.80 each, but 2 for $1.00 wasn't an unusual deal, either. Apples, oranges, and bananas are available in Chicago in the El station convenience stores, among other places. Granted, the quality isn't always the highest but they are certainly edible. Part of the problem is that there must be a certain level of turn over for a store to stock produce. El stations are great because they are high traffic so you only need a minority of passers-by to purchase fruit to make it worthwhile to sell it. Train stations get more traffic than corner stores, I'd imagine, especially a system like Chicago's which is used by everyone and not just the poor. Even so, those individually priced fruits are certainly more expensive than buying fruit in a grocery store. This is sometimes exploited by the homeless or other very poor in that they will sometimes buy fruit at a store in bulk then re-sell it on the street. Very enterprising. Of course, they don't have a business license, health inspections, etc.... doing that is breaking the law and they can be arrested for it (more typically, told to stop and move on, but arrests do happen sometimes)

[Broomstick]

My local library will not allow you to use use a USB stick, floppy disk, memory card, CD, or any other form of memory media on their computers. They'll print stuff off for you, but apparently there was a problem with deliberate loading of malware onto their computers awhile back so they've gotten a little paranoid since.

I suspect that if you're in there often enough that the librarians get to know you, they'll be prepared to copy some stuff to a USB stick for you. Pretty much all the librarians I've known have gone out of there way to help people genuinely trying to learn.

No, they won't.

Not sure exactly what all happened, but it was Bad Thing and the policy is iron clad at this point.

[Broomstick]

Fair enough: I forgot that some people actually buy that no-name crap. I never buy it, but I treat sodas as a special treat, not an everyday drink, so I buy very little of it (we actually have a rule in our house: zero sodas on weekdays; they're strictly for weekends and holidays). When I do buy it, I want the good stuff, not no-name dishwater.

My husband's favorite soda is one of our few luxuries - we do work it into our budget most of the time though arguably it's a frill, but we're willing to scrimp other places to manage it. Even then, he rations himself and when things get really tight he'll switch to tea.

Which brings me back to budgeting - the Other Half and I have sat down and carefully discussed budget and priorities, and continue to revisit it on a regular basis. We've already decided at what point we can afford luxury A or at what point we give up luxury B until things get better. But this requires mature adults capable of rational decisions and self-control.

[TrailerParkJawa]

- I'm not sure what apples cost right now, but a pound of cherries at Safeway is going for $4. However if you are near S.F. or Oakland Chinatown you can pick up them for a $1 a pound.
- Typically the Asian Supermarkets like Ranch 99 or Lion have much cheaper produce.
- As for being a 30 minute walk to a Supermarket, nope not in my part of San Jose.
- It would take about an hour to walk to the Safeway in Santa Clara and 45 minutes to the Ranch 99 in Milpitas.
- There used to be a mini-mark 5 minutes away but they closed cause it wasnt viable.

[TimothyC]

Interesting. Coca-Cola in a 2L bottle costs me $2.19, and the US:CDN exchange rate is around 0.85. It appears that this crap costs you much less than it costs me. What does a kilogram of apples cost there?

I just purchased apples last night and I paid $1.48 a pound, or about $3.25 a kilo. So about $3.80 Canadian per kilo.

[Questor]

I suspect that if you're in there often enough that the librarians get to know you, they'll be prepared to copy some stuff to a USB stick for you. Pretty much all the librarians I've known have gone out of there way to help people genuinely trying to learn.

No, they won't.

Not sure exactly what all happened, but it was Bad Thing and the policy is iron clad at this point.

Most of the librarians I know will go quite a way out of their way to help someone out, but not in the way Starglider implied.

I've know librarians who would work extra hours on a special request, but still not allow their own siblings to bend the rules.

The explanation is that "Libraries are community facilities, the rules are in place to make sure that everyone can continue to use the facilities."

The next step, if you don't take no for an answer, is "Why shouldn't the rule apply to you? If the rule wasn't around, you might not have any access to the resource you need."

As an example, try convincing a librarian to let you check out a reference book, just because you're friends.

[Kon_El]

Don't have a washer or dryer. Try Craigslist. I got my currant washing machine for $50

Can't cash your check at a bank because you lost your ID. Get a new one. You could buy 5 new ID's for what it costs to cash one check at a check cashing place.

Costs a bunch of money to have your bills paid for you. Buy some damn stamps.

Food costs too much. Get the savings card they just offered you and buy less prepackaged food.

Can't get credit? Instead of blowing the money saved above or spending your tax return on stupid shit put it into a savings account for bigger purchases or for when something goes wrong.

Rent too high where you live. Move to somewhere where it is cheaper and commute.

Can't afford a nice car? Buy a shitty one. The money and time saved by having a car that lasts for just 1 year can help you save for one that will last longer. The key is to keep looking for that opportunity to get a car for little money.

Car broke down? Fix it. Repair manuals cost less than $10 and can show you how to fix almost anything for far less than it costs to pay a mechanic.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

By my own best estimates I don't see how it would be possible to maintain a family of 4 for less than 1,600 USD a month after taxes without government support; minimum wage in Washington State yields 1,368 USD a month before taxes, so you'd really need one full and one half-time minimum wage earner each to maintain such a household (no income tax in Washington State). This of course assumes one of the rather cheap parts of the state like Clark County where it would be possible to get a two bedroom apartment for $575 a month with W/S/G included. It would be easier in the rural areas, and much, much harder in the Seattle Metropolitan. This however assumes access to a car, and a Costco membership so that bulk savings can be realized, though a reliance on public transportation for regular work. Without a car I can only imagine that the food costs would be close to doubled if we're talking about living out of mini-marts here, and that would force full time employment on the part of both parents.

[Edi]

Re; washers, can't you just get one from a second-hand store for $100 or so and give your buddy with the beat-up pickup truck a six-pack of beer for helping you get it home?

It helps if your residence has the means to hook up such a washer. Most apartments I've lived in do not.

The fuck? Out of all the things in this thread, this takes the cake from my point of view. Here, you would have to scour the entire country and would have a hard time finding an apartment of any sort that didn't have a washer hookup in the bathroom or somewhere else. It's built as standard everywhere and hookups have been installed in practically every place that was built before washers became common (such as the building where I grew up, which was built in 1912 and all the other buildings in that part of town and elsewhere too).

I knew US healthcare was fucked up, but that basic utilities like this are lacking in significant numbers, makes it look like - nevermind...

[Drooling Iguana]

I've never lived in an apartment with a washing machine hookup, however every apartment I've ever had that was in an actual apartment building rather than renting out the basement in someone's house has had its own laundry room full of coin-operated machines.

[Xon]

Re; washers, can't you just get one from a second-hand store for $100 or so and give your buddy with the beat-up pickup truck a six-pack of beer for helping you get it home? Dryers are another unnecessary luxury, use a bloody drying rack, worked for me for eight years.

These simply don't scale unless you have an unreasonable amount of room to play with and can get away with washing weekly(or more often!) to keep loadsizes down. In an apartment sharing with people, you simply aren't going to have enough space to dry cloths and actually live in the place.

That is if the weather even permits the stuff to air dry in an reasonable timspan.

[Edi]

I've never lived in an apartment with a washing machine hookup, however every apartment I've ever had that was in an actual apartment building rather than renting out the basement in someone's house has had its own laundry room full of coin-operated machines.

You guys live in the fucking Dark Ages.

[Surlethe]

I don't see why anyone thinks these businesses are "preying" on the poor. Obviously, there's a demand for their business; if poor people didn't value those businesses, they wouldn't patronize them, so clearly poor people are better-off with those businesses than without them. It's just simple market economics at work - when DC imposed a cap on interest rates, a bunch of payday loan stores went out of business, and I'll bet there were lines at the ones that didn't. Passing that law must have decreased the welfare of poor people in DC.

Simply because a single person, or a community of class patronizes an establishment or purchases a product and consents to that transaction does not mean making it difficult or impossible for them to continue to do so reduces their welfare. Your reasoning could be applied in principle that if one could deny cigarettes to addicts through magic fiat, they'd still be worse off because they wanted them.

Well, right. That peoples' wants match up exactly with their welfare is a classic libertarian assumption (it's where the definition of consumer surplus comes from, after all) - I was applying it to the situation with perhaps a tad bit of sarcasm.

[Broomstick]

Don't have a washer or dryer. Try Craigslist. I got my currant washing machine for $50

That only works if you have a place in your residence to hook them up.

Food costs too much. Get the savings card they just offered you and buy less prepackaged food.

Funny - I've yet to see a "savings card" that offers a break on fresh fruits and vegetables, or such basics as flour and beans. The "savings" always seem to be on pre-packaged or processed items. Of course, they can be a way to save on those items, but I question if they are always worth the bother.

Can't get credit? Instead of blowing the money saved above or spending your tax return on stupid shit put it into a savings account for bigger purchases or for when something goes wrong.

Of course, we can just ignore the fact that for the past year and half about 1/3 of the time I didn't make enough money to cover even my basic bills no matter how frugal I was (there were some months I had no income at all) - yet I could not qualify for most forms of aid. If I had not had the foresight and the ability to save several thousand dollars before I became poor I would have lost my current residence and almost everything I own.

Rent too high where you live. Move to somewhere where it is cheaper and commute.

In the area I live in you can not cover monthly rent on a minimum wage job without a subsidy like Section 8. The waiting list for Section 8 in Chicago and Northwest Indiana is several years long. I have no clue what you're supposed to do in the meanwhile. Also, several communities have put limits on how many adults can live in one unit, which limits how many roommates you can acquire to help pay the bills. The further away you live from Chicago the lower the rents, of course, but then the commutes are longer and more expensive.

Can't afford a nice car? Buy a shitty one. The money and time saved by having a car that lasts for just 1 year can help you save for one that will last longer. The key is to keep looking for that opportunity to get a car for little money.

What if you don't even have the money for a shitty car?

Car broke down? Fix it. Repair manuals cost less than $10 and can show you how to fix almost anything for far less than it costs to pay a mechanic.

Most apartment complexes around here forbid car repairs on their properties. You can't even change your own oil. So a repair manual and tools would do you no good in that situation. Unless you know of a place, probably a friend's house, where you can do the actual work.

It's easy to toss out solutions of this nature, but you're still coming at it from the perspective of the middle class and having some resources.

[Edi]

Re; washers, can't you just get one from a second-hand store for $100 or so and give your buddy with the beat-up pickup truck a six-pack of beer for helping you get it home? Dryers are another unnecessary luxury, use a bloody drying rack, worked for me for eight years.

These simply don't scale unless you have an unreasonable amount of room to play with and can get away with washing weekly(or more often!) to keep loadsizes down. In an apartment sharing with people, you simply aren't going to have enough space to dry cloths and actually live in the place.

That is if the weather even permits the stuff to air dry in an reasonable timspan.

You make several assumptions that don't necessarily hold everywhere. Bathroom size is one big determinant, unless you have just a closet with the toilet seat and a shower space, this is true to an extent. The new apartment I'll be moving to within a couple of weeks has a roughly 2x2 meters bathroom, yet it's large enough to fit a washer, toilet, shower corner and will have room enough for the cat litter box too. No room to hang laundry there, but a folding laundry rack in the living room will allow half of a 5 kg washer load to dry at a time, and shirts can be hung from hangers placed on top of doors and any available protrusions. It's not hard at all. Do laundry every two days and it will stay manageable. It's the bedsheets that are the only problem item here, though rigging something on the balcony will probably be an option.

In my current apartment the bathroom is 1.8m by 2.5m or so, with five clotheslines running the long axis of the room, so even the sheets are no problem. Thicker cloth is, because that apartment has abysmal ventilation.

[The Spartan]

I've never lived in an apartment with a washing machine hookup, however every apartment I've ever had that was in an actual apartment building rather than renting out the basement in someone's house has had its own laundry room full of coin-operated machines.

You guys live in the fucking Dark Ages.

For what it's worth, my experience has been that you need to rent at least a two bedroom apartment before you can hope to get a washer/dryer hookup and that's in relatively new apartment complexes. And even then there's no guarantee that the area set aside will be compatible with the ones you may own or can find. Roughly half the apartments I've seen that have the hookup only have enough space for an over/under, one-unit style setup rather than the far more common (around here anyways) of having a seperate washer and dryer that sits side by side.