An article to ponder on as you sit in your (presumably) warm house, surfing your interwebs, after you've had a good meal and a warm shower. Poor people can't just "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" without help and/or luck. Read on.
I grew up very poor. We had no central heat, only a small-ish propane heater in the kitchen/dining room. The pipes froze every single winter because we also had no underpinning (or tie-downs). We didn't have sewage or a septic tank (let that one percolate for a bit). We lived in a trailer that was 12 feet wide but at least we had a place to call home. We took a bath in the same water. If I was lucky, I got to take the second bath instead of the third.
It was the best my parents could do. Neither had even a high school diploma. My daddy was disabled and got less than $600 a month in Social Security. My mother made a pittance working her fingers to the bone at the glove mill--she left there after 20 years making $6.25 an hour and with no retirement. None at all. She got a whopping $600 a month in disability. Not enough to buy her medicine (she took a pill every other day so she'd have enough for the month) but too much to get food stamps for herself.
There was absolutely no opportunity for my parents to save any money. They did what they could but they weren't lucky and we didn't have anywhere to turn for help.
At 23 years old, I was separated from my husband, I had no car, and I had a toddler to support with no job. I got $200 in AFDC and $187 food stamps for my mother, my child, and myself for a short while (try figuring out how to make that work) but I didn't have a car to get there for my appointments so I got terminated from the rolls and finally booted off. I had to ask friends to take me to get milk. I eventually had to file bankruptcy, primarily because I had co-signed for a car but didn't get to keep it and that person let it get repossessed. When the sheriff served me with the papers, I went downtown and filed Chapter 7. I didn't have any choice.
In the end, I was one of the lucky ones. At least I had a mother with a place for me to stay. I lucked into applying at a temp agency at the right time and ended up getting a foot in the door at the place which has become my career. Things could have been much worse for us. I'm eternally grateful for the blessings in our lives.
Now, I'd love for some of you folks out there who think that poor people deserve to be poor to proselytize on how folks who are poor are supposed to fix their problems without help. I'd love for you to tell me what church or charity is going to take care of families like those in our situation. I can promise you, no man of the cloth came to help us nor did any of our relatives who were somewhat (or much) better positioned in life. Those of us who work in the community in this town know that the resources are few and the need is great, perhaps even moreso today than ever. Our safety net programs aren't perfect and they aren't without fraud but they are so needed to help raise folks out of poverty and give them a chance to share in the "good life."
No child in this country deserves to be hungry, cold, or without health care. Or to take the second or third bath.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/linda-tirado-on-the-realities-of-living-in-bootstrap-america-daily-annoyances-for-most-people-are-catastrophic-for-poor-people.html?fbclid=IwAR1jNqipVU_XbKdT0UEZZKukw7BXuuNKLknZ35ia3tv59t4suJRCEAmI89M
