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Comment by criticaljudge | Hacker News Reader

Well arguably they are not really poor, compared to those cases of poverty in the 19th century.

They're days to weeks away from starvation, in some cases begging in the streets to survive, in others working themselves literally to death to avoid that fate for themselves and their families, while suffering from a variety of physical and mental ailments that they are unable to afford treatment for and struggling to keep the heat, power, and on.

If that's not the face of "really poor" in the modern age, nothing is. Just because the details don't look exactly the same as those of 19th century Irish poverty does not mean it's "not real."

Well you have read the description of the poor in the 19th century, so I'd say it still doesn't compare. Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness. But then the comparison would also be silly, as their problem would not primarily "being poor", but having a mental illness. Of course you can always find somebody who is worse off than somebody else. Those starving people begging in the streets have it really well compared to somebody who is about to die from a terminal disease within the next 24 hours.

And if there is such a huge amount of people with mental illness, as I said elsewhere, I suspect the real problem is drug addiction and not "the economy" or "rich people".

> Nobody starves in the west, unless they have a serious mental illness.

I'm sorry, but that's just flat-out not true.

Families from my home state would use EBT/food stamps while struggling during the last recession. Under these social programs they always had enough money to buy basic needs from the grocery store. There is a cultural issue in the U.S. where a lot of people refuse to accept any help from those kinds of programs but never to the point where they would actually starve to death.

the problem with these programs in the US is that you gotta jump through hoops with beaurocracy and not every person has the mental stability to do that. same with healthcare. i need to register somewhere and meet some income quota to get free healthcare. to me that's ridiculous and not the case in many other countries. I personally experienced German healthcare without showing any paperwork when I had fallen on hard times in my life and it was very refreshing.

I personally know a poor guy in the States that was waiting to get to the psychiatrist for 4 months with his bipolar disorder episode because he simply wasn't able to get on the Medicare due to his anxiety. The task was too taxing for him at that time.

Who is starving, and why? I think if you can point to some starving children and make a public call, you would get lots of donations. If you are aware of such cases, please point them out, or contact the appropriate charities.

Googling brought up this, which seems to confirm my hunch. People do know hunger, though. https://www.quora.com/How-many-Americans-starve-to-death-eac...

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