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Comment by Eleison23 | Hacker News Reader

Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently.

There are myriad social safety nets out there for people if they'd only take advantage of them. Yet there are people roaming the streets and picking out of trash cans. Why? Because they've lost their families, they've lost their minds, they struggle with addictions and mental health, so they don't really fit in anywhere.

So you really only manage to be poor by becoming an utter social outcast first. If you can hold down the fort and navigate a bureaucracy, you can get on SNAP, Section 8, Voc. Rehab. and all sorts of programs that will get you back on your feet, courtesy of Uncle Sam, and that's not even counting the faith-based charities you could avail yourself of.

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Was talking with a homeless guy yesterday. He has been given free housing multiple times, but he always leaves and goes back to living on the streets. He isn't kicked out, he just leaves. He is a very nice guy, but isn't looking for housing. Is he poor? Yes, but, as you say, there are safety net programs out there for him if he wants them.

Our town has clothes available for people who need it and (in some circumstances) housing. When people go to clean out the houses afterwards they find lots of dirty clothing. Instead of washing the clothes (in a machine or by hand), they go back and get more clothes.

On one hand we could say they should know better, but really they probably don't. All of us have blind spots and people in poverty in the US typically have lots of blind spots about how they could live differently.

>> Poverty is hard to come by in these United States. If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently.

You have a lot to learn. Start by reading the article, and understand that the effects of growing up that way are hard to overcome - psychologically. The author has a Ph.D and still suffers from it.

You may also want to look around at low cost of subsidized housing. It's often closer and more common than we think.

I know a person living it, and I can look at the situation and think about how I might handle things better. But that ignores a huge part of the reality of what it's like to be that person, or live that life.

> You have a lot to learn. Start by reading the article, and understand that the effects of growing up that way are hard to overcome - psychologically. The author has a Ph.D and still suffers from it.

The author grew up poor and has a Phd? Sounds like all the arguments here about how it is impossible to escape poverty are at odds with that fact.

-- someone who grew up poor

I have an advanced degree (not PhD, Master's) and I ended up poor again.

Disability! If you grow up poor, you can make it out as long as nothing goes wrong. You have no grace. The clock's ticking.

Oh, and you'd best be prepared to leave your family, friends, and anyone who has helped you to drown.

> Disability! If you grow up poor, you can make it out as long as nothing goes wrong. You have no grace. The clock's ticking.

Hyperbole. As long as nothing major goes wrong. Lot's of things go wrong. As long as:

1. There is shelter,

2. There is rice and beans,

3. There is school,

The outcome looks good.

> Oh, and you'd best be prepared to leave your family, friends, and anyone who has helped you to drown.

Of course - if your family and friends cannot come with you to university, you should immediately give back the scholarship money and reject the acceptance letter! /s

Honestly, you come off slightly illogical (Is your MS in the humanities by any chance?). Your argument, taken to its logical conclusion, i.e. that you must not go to university unless all your family and friends can do so to, is frankly stupid.

My point is that education is not a guaranteed get out of poverty free card because it still requires you never needing a break, never having any health issues, never having to stop to support family or loved ones, etc. You also have less support for loans you took out, less of a network, etc. so you have way less grace when it comes to career decisions.

'Leaving your loved ones to drown' wasn't about not going to school. It's about the economic feasibility of dragging oneself into the middle class/PMC and how often the most economically 'responsible' actions mean watching your loved ones suffer. For example, my financial situation is terrible in part because I'm responsible for my mentally ill sister, who can't work. Or I have a friend whose mother has Parkinson's right after her father had early onset Alzheimer's. THAT'S what I meant by 'leaving your loved ones to drown': Having to make the choice between being economically stable/ensuring your future and helping your loved ones. Which is a pretty common poverty problem.

I was flippant, not illogical, and I don't have an MS. Different Master's degree.

How many people who grew poor reached PhD?

0.000x%? 0.x%? 1%?

It raises bar

I'm not arguing that poverty doesn't raise the bar, I'm saying that the arguments being presented in this thread are that poverty is impossible to escape.

Those of use that have escaped it know that you have to work harder for the same result, but this constant argument about poverty being inescapable is now tired and worn.

I think it is better to "advertise" poverty and its problems as very difficult to escape than saying something like "just get good" because it is kinda refocusing this problem on the person living in poverty

I agree on this. Poverty, in this sense has, more to do with being than with having.

A friend of me recommended to me on this subject the book: Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_at_the_Bottom).

What version of the US are you talking about? Perhaps the shame that the author discusses makes a sizeable amount of poverty not visible.

The one that exists in libertarian's minds when arguing about capitalism. Just for one thing, Section 8 housing is not nearly as easy to get as that comment makes out, getting off the waiting list famously can take decades. SNAP also famously punishes you for making too much. https://sablan.house.gov/snap-benefits-cliff Famous is somewhat facetious because the poster is unaware of what they are talking about.

> If you're starving, or homeless, or unemployed, you've worked yourself into a corner fairly diligently.

raises an eyebrow in disabled

Hey I used to agree with you but then I realized that I'm smart, industrious, and not ugly which puts me just miles ahead of the average person, which is still the middle-of-the-pack. Actual dumb people still need to be fed, housed, and given meaningful existences right? So what to do>

Engineers and other techy people that peruse HN probably don't spend a lot of time around less-than-average folks on a routine basis, I figure.

What's important in understanding falsehoods like the above post is the work they do.

It's patently clear to any of us who have experienced poverty that Eleison23 hasn't actually looked into any of this. Ignore that part for now, and instead ask:

Why does he need to believe & say these things? What fear does this false view assuage? What feelings, what thoughts, are throttled?

It's really hard being alive during a collapse.

Well, you know, I've been homeless and poor. I've spent most of my adult life unemployed. I lost everything I owned.

I had to learn adulting under duress. Many poor people don't know (or they fear) basic things like how to prepare meals, wash clothes, pay bills, clean the house. Many people choose the freedom of homelessness over the burdens of operating a household.

SNAP is a supplement, of course, and totally unnecessary even if you're dirt-poor. You can get by on food boxes and other donated food, free meals in parks and at churches, etc. SNAP does have a lot of hurdles in place.

Once again, there's no poverty in these United States for those who are determined and not overly impaired. Perhaps we're into "No True Scotsman" territory but I wouldn't even label as poverty someone's life in a shelter, where they can access 3 squares a day and comfortable hygienic bathroom facilities and usually a spot to try and land a job and increase their opportunity.

I've seen poor people living in garbage, like literally they scour garbage pits and they live among them. Poor people with children who have distended bellies and they're stretching bowls full of rice with dirty water because there's just nothing else to be had. Abject poverty such as that is just unheard of in our borders, because there's too much subsidy and programs and infrastructure that exists.

There are 12 million people under 65 living on social security benefits due to being disabled. ~38 million people are in poverty in the US right now. You can't just dismiss almost a third of people in poverty to make your argument work. And that's just the people too disabled to work at all. Plenty of people can only work part time.

And elderly poverty is also a thing.

Well, I've been homeless and poor as well, and I've spent significant chunks of time down. I too have had the experience you describe, of losing everything owned.

Then, I got a job at a big tech company and got to see how the other half lived.

I had a very different experience than you describe, and I think that your definitions of poverty are still doing work for you -- perhaps different work than I suspected, at first, but you are still rationalizing the horror.

There are many degrees of poverty -- by minimizing all but the most abject cases, you're moving the goalposts.

I also strongly suspect you're still in your twenties, but that's another matter.

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