SD Realtor- I agree with you that there are many families who already scrimp, save and still barely scrape by and have 0 to little modern luxuries. There ALWAYS will be folks who live marginally, inflation or not, they are folks who works 2 or 3 jobs, to feed their children, and often their extended families. However, there are a LOT of these marginal families who need to make better choices, but often lack the skills needed to do so.
You are wrong about the middle class having worst eating habits, not that the middle class doesn’t overeat or choose very poorly. The poorest in this country are the most obese, from the NYT article referenced below: “Seven of the 10 states with the highest poverty levels are also among the 10 states with the highest obesity rates.”
There are hundreds if not thousands of other articles if you just google poverty and obesity.
You said you DONT know these poor people yourself, what are you doing to help them? I find it ironic you are calling other people elitist on this board.
There are a lot of other trends that come with those who are poor, disadvantaged that leads them to mismanage what money they do have. Many of these poor families lack education, do not understand nutrition, they do not value education for their children, do not value exercise, and they do not know how to manage finances. This cycle repeats itself generation after generation.
I DO know these poor people, I volunteer to help children and families in these situations and the trends I presented above are not anecdotal, there are many many statistics to back this up. In MH, just a few houses down from us, the original home that never got rebuilt/remodeled has housed the same family, many generations of Mexicans for over 30 years. There are12 people living in 800 sq ft. 2 grandparents in their 50s, their 3 kids (2 daughters, 1 son). The 2 daughters have 2 small children + their husbands who had just gotten out of jail. Plus one kid they took in off the streets. The 2 parents work, the 2 daughters do not, and their husbands had temporary work ( whatever they could pick up). The 2 young men work in odd jobs or in minimum wage jobs when they can find it or get hired, but in this economy, they have been let go or had hours cut. The 2 young men both graduated from HS but were not literate – they could not fill out a job application without someone’s help. These men are underemployed but also lack skills to find jobs. They do not know how to use computers or the internet proficiently, nor have one at home. They barely speak English fluently.
The daughters /husband/2kids each received welfare benefits.
The 1 son who we befriended and would ask us for advice, help, guidance, would often tell us how they barely scraped by to buy food. Here is what we observed:
–They All had cell phones
–They also pay for a home phone- I asked the son why they had a home phone? Answer: we’ve always had it, but I should ask my parents.
–They buy alcohol – we would see recycling bags filled with beer cans/ liquor bottles
–They pay for cable TV
–They have nice clothes / sneakers
–They have high fat diets- a lot of Mexican food, a lot of pizza, a lot of prepackaged food. The 3 woman of the house are obese
Another family we know – when they are making money working in construction, they SPEND it, they do not save. Now they are unemployed. They have 2 PS3s and loads of games – 1 for the adults, 1 for the kids. They have iPhones, they have cable TV, they drive 30k gas guzzling cars that get 8mpg and then cannot afford to put gas in these cars. They are on welfare. They are obese
These are just 2 families, but I observe these same things firsthand repeated over and over.
We have a friend who is an economics teacher in a poor farming community in Northern CA. He tries to teach his kids about diet, exercise and money. They are kids who are POOR, but have ipods, Xbox’s or PS3s and their families buy cable. Their families have no value for exercise, or necessarily education, they just want their kids working so they have one less mouth to feed. We live in a world now where if kids, even very poor ones don’t have some of these toys, its like they are being abused.
What we need is a better WELFARE system in providing aid that obligates them to go to classes on parenting, diet, budgeting/credit cards/ finances.
