Non-technical chit chat.

you should mention it. I'm COMPLETELY broke right now. :)

Okay, even though I am cash poor right now, we are far from poverty stricken.

And yes, I grew up in poverty. We had a house to live in because my mother's aunt let us live there for free. But as bad off as we were, there were people in my neighborhood that were in worse shape. I had a friend who lived in a house without a front door. They just tacked up a blanket when it got cold out.

All in all? I'm not sorry. I definitely learned how to take care of myself. And I appreciate what I have.

BTW, my mother in law tongue plant is growing like a weed. :)

As I recall, ABC didn't even notice our poverty...

I'm glad that I came up broke. Came into this life with nothing; can't take anything with me when I leave it.

The world revolves around me.

Not you.

Bring her back immediately this is completely unacceptable that you a Male has Kidnapped and are currently Impersonation Boxy. :_|

Only a male would say something like that and we all know that Boxy is a Female. :p

So who are you and what have you done with Boxy? Much more importantly did you actually expect to get away with such a Heinous Crime as what you have perpetrated here? :0

Really Boxy would never make an admission like this

[i]I didn't realize it bugs you.

[b]I'll stop.[/i][/b]

Now you have blown an otherwise almost perfect crime by being stupid. Don't you realize that [b]No[/b] Female Alive on this Plant [b]Ever[/b] would admit to not knowing something? And then compound the admission that they are not the Know Alls that they tell everyone that they are by claiming [i]I'll stop.[/i]

A poor excuse of a Criminal who didn't think out or research their crime and attempt to get away with it. :-q

Females are always correct and know everything worth knowing. They will tell you so themselves and the sensible males let them continue to believe that we believe them when they say things like that by not rolling around the floor laughing our heads off.

Yes Dear I know it's a Lovely Day outside I'll just go and let Hurricane Katerina in to pay you a visit. ]:)

See my point here? Say are you insane there is a Hurricane outside and they will tear into you with a vengeance unriveled in the History of our Species. But offer to let the Hurricane in to join them and they will stop you immediately and say that they must have been looking out the wrong window or something equally ridiculous. ;)

Col 0:-)

At these poor times in the past, was it still a good life?

I grew up in a very poor house, but we were happy and appreciated everything we had.

So much of todays "poor" still have multiple cars, cable tv with multiple tv's, and everyone has a cell phone.

Put that in perspective of 30 years ago and more how "poor" people lived, and you see a lot of people have created their own problems because of poor spending habits.

I anticipate making about 22k this year thanks to the layoffs, but hardly consider myself poor and still do not live paycheck to paycheck. (not bad for not working for 5 months) Not going for fast food and not using a credit card helps a lot.

The only real lifestyle change going on right now is drinking Canadian whisky instead of scotch more and more.... $13 a bottle is much more my speed right now.

I'm pretty sure my Grandparents would have defined it differently than today's generation, or ABC for that matter.

Growing up, financially we were poor, we had a lot of kids (5), didn't have a lot of money, didn't travel etc. But we had a roof over our heads, cloths and food.

We didn't get an allowance, but we did get money for things if we needed (as opposed to wanted). I inherited most of my clothes from older brothers. Same with bikes and skates. I earned a little working for neighbouring farmers. We also planted our own garden, raised chickens, occasionally pigs, ducks, whatever.

I managed to go to university on student loans - my parents were supposed to contribute some big amount according to the formula, but in fact, I got a few hundred dollars a year. I managed by working weekends, and living frugally.

Things were tight when I was laid off in 2002. After the severence ran out and I had to pay the mortgage and other bills on $400 a week (wife can't work), but we survived the months until I got some contract work. When your housing costs are over half of your income, thats scary.

I'm pretty good at the moment, wracked up a little debt, but my house is getting paid down. I can pay and do continue to pay down my debt.

James

Have I ever lived in it? Yeah. Mom was in and out of the hospital for months, Dad was the only income. I was an 18 year old fielding phonecalls for debt collectors and banks and all.

Plus, I lived on $20 for a month. How do you do that?

12 for $1 ramen noodles
4 for $1 packs of hot dogs and hot dog buns
lots of water
staying with friends who lived near the college so i didn't waste gas.

i went home a few times a week to check the mail and stuff, and make sure no one broke in or to call dad.

Did I live that way all of my life? No. I was lucky.

Now compare that to my father, who grew up living in a tiny house in urban Iowa with his mother and 7 siblings while his father worked away in Chicago for the railroad.

My father was delivering newspapers in the 1940s before he learned how to do multiplication.

And then, there was my mother who before she even went to school, she was washing other peoples' clothes and helping feather and butcher chickens because her mother was a single parent in the 1940s.

Neither of my parents or their families took a hand-out. They always worked for what they got.

Something that's been lost amongst many in society today.

Without going into too many details (I'll share if asked...not embarrassed....just don't like to sound like a whiner is all), I lived in poverty for much of my youth.

Bear in mind, when the media talks about 'poverty', they are talking about an arbitrary income number assigned to a given family situation. Here is a chart I found:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml

I'd say that people that are living even up to $10K above these amounts are probably still struggling mightily.

But next year my oldest starts college. Despite having decent joint income, there's no way we will be able to pay what's expected. And our savings for it, which weren't nearly enough to begin with, got killed a year ago. Then there are 2 more, each a couple of years behind her.

I didn't come a well-to-do family, but we weren't poor. When I look at what's ahead, I think poverty is right around the corner.

But isn't that what all parents work for anyway? To spend money on our kids' futures? Hell, my grandparents crossed half a continent and an ocean to better their kids' lives. I just wish they invested in IBM in the 50's!

It's a category which presumes that every person has exactly the same needs.

While I have lived with less money than the government thinks I need. I have never been impoverished.

I'm just low maintenance :)

Wash the foliage with a mild concoction of dish soap and water. It won't hurt if a little bit of the concoction gets into the soil.
If that doesn't work, it's not mildew. A pic would help, in that case.

Our income when I was growing up was VA and Social Security survivors' benefits. I believe even back then that such income put a family of five below the poverty line.

Did we always have what we needed? Yes. Did we ever go hungry? No. Did we always eat what we wanted? No. Leftovers from Friday, Saturday and Sunday dinners were usually casserole for Monday through Thursday.

There's abject poverty, and then there's relative poverty.

Abject poverty - the lacking of basic human needs, such as food, water, and shelter - is practically nonexistent in the United States. Anyone in such a dire state of existence in the United States has any number of options available from which those basic human needs can and will be met; thus, abject poverty in the United States is nonexistent.

Poverty, as often (or always) cited in such stories, is based soley on personal income as reported to the IRS and/or by the Census Bureau statistics. This is relative poverty. I've often wondered if it included people who might have little or no income, live in a home that's paid for, and live comfortably off of savings or tax-free investments. I admit, I don't know; I haven't bothered to look that far into it, but my guess is yes. Or does it include those who actually choose to live the simplest lifestyle possible? Again, probably yes.

Moreover, those relative poverty percentages as often cited don't include any aid provided (federal, state, or local aid, or aid provided by private charity or personal help.) A family of 4 might have an income of only X (X = whatever the poverty number of the day happens to be - $14,000 per year, for example), but they live in subsidized housing, receive food stamps, etc. Their actual living conditions are head and shoulders above the [i]image of poverty[/i] most people conjure up when hearing the stories such as you cited.

Conclusion: Any [i]poverty[/i] statistics cited should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt - or seen in relative terms.

Have I ever lived in abject poverty? No, because there is no reason for anyone in the USA today to suffer under such conditions.

Have I ever lived in relative poverty? Sure I have. I've been so broke that I couldn't pay attention. I've had annual income in my life that fell well under the poverty threshold of the day.

Is living in relative poverty always a bad thing? I suppose it depends on the state of one's own mind. If [i]other people[/i] are [i]expected[/i] to improve one's own standard of living, then a such a person is probably forever destined to live under any defined poverty threshold (since it's a monetary number always on the rise). On the other hand, it's facing such personal circumstances that should be the impetus for a person to reach deep within one's self to improve one's own standard of living. Necessity is not only the mother of invention, but also an extremely strong motivator.

How do you do that?

When I grew up, our family didn't have much, but we had a house and food. I came from a big family, so we lived very frugally and at times were just scraping buy. We had only 1 car and my father needed that for work, so mom and the kids walked everywhere.

It wasn't poverty, but it was a very simple, no-frills life. I'm thankful for that today because it taught me the value of things and to appreciate what I have.

I'm not surprised that the poverty rate is more than they thought. There are a lot of people out of work. Just in my family, there are 4 people out of work, living on severance or unemployment.

AV

Given the background that only I and some few others know about you, deputy, you say nothing to them.

Confronted, you are already behind the curve. When they start pulling your fingernails, which is before they start chopping off segments of your fingers, beginning with your littlest, don't bother looking for the door.

You ain't never leaving the room.

That's what I call impoverished.

You got nothing.

Over the course of years - and thousands of words and dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of messages, I've formed an opinion and image of jck - just like you've (and he's) formed an opinion and image of me.

Have you (or has he) done a study of me?

Your answer to my question could probably be my answer to yours.

Have a nice day.

https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=319455&messageID=3186129

Otherwise, your question is moot.

I'm over 40. Of course I have been there, done that. I expect I will again at some point- possibly soon- in my life.

As long as I can still divide a can of cat food between me and the girls and we all come away feeling fed, who am I to complain?

Poverty in America will continue to be a problem until we figure out that insisting on living by arbitrary and often idiotic standards should define who needs what is stupid in the extreme. I had my greatest sense of peace when I had the least.

Personally, I wonder how ABC is defining poverty.

I should read the thread now, shouldn't I?

At least that's how Mom explained it us kids back in the 60s. We did have a car, TV, radio, & washing machine. The washing machine was one of those older ones that had a "ringer", two counter rolling bars that pressed the liquid out. Caught my arm in that when I was young.

We ate meat a couple of times a week. Lived on beans, potatos, and veggies the rest of the week. We lived near the railroad tracks and were never so poor that Mom couldn't give some beans & potatos to the occasional hobo (they weren't homeless then).

I don't remember the times as being that bad, but do remember Mom crying herself to sleep sometimes. Some of that was because Dad was only home two or three nights a week. He was a truck driver.

It's my way of putting the proverbial size 12 boot into my own @ss when I need a little motivation.

I am with you, though, on not owing anyone anything; except my wife and kids, of course. I owe them everything I have to make sure they never know what any of that was like.

The worst thing that I have done for lack of money (as a starving college student, so not really in poverty at the time):

In order to cut my meal bill, I was kitchen manager at a fraternity house. After the traditional grilled cheese lunch on Friday, the cook dumped the leftover sandwiches in the trash. Later when I came in to clean up, and knowing that I had no money for food over the weekend, I pulled 6 of those sandwiches out of the garbage and ate them all weekend.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I did have about $5.00, but I needed that for beer for the weekend.

I don't want to make light of peoples' real suffering, but this memory is actually kind of funny to me now. Do others have any "happy" memories of when they were broke?

your absolute statement at the end:

[i]Anyone in such a dire state of existence in the United States has any number of options available from which those basic human needs can and will be met; thus, abject poverty in the United States is nonexistent.[/i]

That's why I said what I said..."anyone" can't always get to those "options" you say make abject poverty non-existent.

Sorry, but I can find you some damn impoverished people who can't walk or bike or skateboard or steal a horse to go to the local food stamp office, can't call, and don't have a neighbor who can help.

If a person wants to quit smoking, he would do better by avoiding those who smoke.

If a person wants to quit drinking, he would do better by avoiding the bars.

If a person wants to maintain a positive mental outlook on life, he would do better by avoiding those who drip with negativity.

If a person wants to overcome personal obstacles and hardships, he would be better to avoid those who say it can't be done.

If a person wants to be a victim, he would do better by avoiding me - because I will maintain there's absolutely no good reason for it.

What's that old saying about birds of a feather?

You can't see the difference in two statements you made.

Typical.

A person in a state of abject poverty, and the state of a country being abjectly impoverished are two wholly distinct, seperate things.

A person can be in "abject poverty" in a wealthy country, such as impoverished families in rural America who live in sheds with no doors, no power, no water, etc.

A country can have total abject poverty for its population and still have wealth. Look at some of the countries in Africa, where the dictator/leader is a millionaire yet the people are all starving.

But, your first topic statement was absolutely off.

Your follow-up was of delineating the state of the whole nation being in abject poverty (which we obviously are not), rather than what you asserted in your prior post which was that "anyone" within the USA being able to get away from their abject poverty (which is not always the case) and that makes it non-existent (which it isn't).

I never said our whole country was, or even compared in its state to 3rd world countries.

I just said it's BS that anyone can get out of abject poverty here.

That's just not the case.