>“Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars."
So he makes $38 per month...where is that other money going? As a cowboy, he is spending that on whiskey and prostitutes. We've all seen the movies. These days, it is the exact same thing where people spend their excess money on crap - big screen tv's, and that kind of stuff, even if they are very poor.
People do not do comparison shopping to get the right price. People wait to the bitter end before they fill up their car with gasoline, and do it at the gas station that costs $.50 cents more per gallon, but they travel past a station that is less expensive all the time, they are just not near it when they absolutely need gas at that second - they could fill up their tank when it is 1/4 tank left at the cheap gas station - people don't plan ahead.
It's pretty easy to lift oneself out of poverty in many (not all) cases, but people are ruled by emotions and what they want at this second. People don't plan. They don't comparison shop. When they get a little extra cash to buy in bulk quantities on some kind of thing like a great toilet paper sale - they spent the money on a dinner at a restaurant instead, because "they deserve it".
I'm not saying this is the same with all poor people - if you are a single mother with 2 young children, well, that's tough if you have nobody to help you out.
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Furthermore, that cowboy in the example could go out and try to get a side hustle. Make enough extra to get more basics.
And the "food deserts" are complete bullshit, in reality. Yes, there are places that don't have large grocery stores, for sure. BUT, when I looked at a map in Chicago, for instance, there are Costcos and all kinds of stores that are 5 miles away. There's no desert, unless you mean that there's no grocery stores within a block. But one of my relatives lived in a remote area and traveled 1 hour to get to Costco to make big purchases of living staples. So if a poor person doesn't have a car, well, they need to work - find someone who has a car that can drive you there and split expenses. Find a church that has a van to travel there. Yes, you have to work at it a little bit, I personally am not going to life someone up and carry them piggyback for 5 miles because they don't want to work at finding someone to help them.
I'm looking at ALL this stuff in the article and it's almost all bullshit...but one does have to try to figure it out. It is not super easy, but it isn't super hard either.
The main problem, though, is that people just don't want to what is necessary.