Just how poor are the poor in America? Sometimes you can hear horror stories but how widespread poverty actually is...

Just how poor are the poor in America? Sometimes you can hear horror stories but how widespread poverty actually is? What conditions do they live in? Is it worse or better compared to similar nations?

Other urls found in this thread:

al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/12/un_poverty_official_touring_al.html
ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533
usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/11/18/a-foolish-take-heres-how-much-debt-the-average-us-household-owes/107651700/
detroit.curbed.com/2017/11/15/16651078/detroit-urban-agrihood
theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/15/america-extreme-poverty-un-special-rapporteur
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Well it can range anywhere from having trouble with paying their bills all the way to living on the side of the street with no pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Poor is poor, no matter where you're from.

I talk with a woman online who is working two jobs, and still can't pay the debts that she wouldn't have had in the first place if she lived in Europe.
From what she tells me life is still nice, she still gets to enjoy luxuries like seeing movies or playing games, but being indebted really drains your spirit and it's evident when you speak to her.

Not an american, but i believe it's not as much poverty itself as the lack of any kind of social net for even basic needs in the usa.

al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/12/un_poverty_official_touring_al.html

It depends somewhat on where you're looking. Being a poorfag in Mississippi is different from being a poorfag in New York.

But by and large the US is a third world hellhole outside of tiny islands of first world enclaves where rich people live or own property. "Poverty" in the US is also fucked by definition.The "poverty line" starts at $12,000, and there are lots of programs that you can't get access to if you make less than that. When the Affordable Care Act rolled out, so did income-based subsidies and a lower income threshold for medicare access. However, access to those programs were contingent on the state you live in, and whether or not the state legislature agreed to expanding the medicare program. So, access to health care in states like North Carolina doesn't start until you're making $12k+, and if you have no job or don't make that much then you're fucked.


A coworker has to pay exorbitant sums for her seizure medication, without which she'll die. There's no generic and even with insurance it's still in the hundreds of dollars a month, so the product of one job goes straight to paying for the medicine she needs to live.

that's fucked up. what's even more fucked up is that your coworker still isn't class conscious most likely

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you scoff but plenty of people would claim these are evidence that America is actually fine, they'll be like "well in the USSR they didn't have (insert random brand shit here)" or something to that effect.

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Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights*

Washington, December 15, 2017

ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533


That whole report is worth a read if you're interested.

If you trust in these tabloids, you would think the US population actually lives poorer than the norks.

inb4 the US population actually lives poorer than the norks

Unfortunately that seems to be the case at the moment, but that's been changing.


Bear in mind that in the US anything poor people have that isn't strictly necessary for them to live–like telephones, refrigerators, health care–is considered a luxury.

They do

It really wouldn't surprise me. I can't speak with absolute certainty about the entire US, but I've done a lot of traveling by car up and down the east coast and anything that isn't in or around a major city or along a highway is severely fucked. You have Mayberry-esque town centers that look like a bomb hit them. Numerous suburban commuter towns that sprang up in the 20th century are now practically abandoned. There are decaying industrial relics everywhere–abandoned plants, rotting rail lines, abandoned homes, farms, and businesses. What few places that weren't entirely abandoned seemed to be kept afloat entirely by chain stores (also in serious states of decay) and whatever assistance the inhabitants can wring from the government. There are whole counties in Georgia for example where the chief source of income for people is disability because there are no fucking jobs for anyone and no means of getting the training they need for new ones.

Through that context the opioid epidemic takes on a dimension of human misery that is beyond astonishing in its scope. They've made a desolation and called it prosperity.

And all that, that describes the lucky areas. Regions like West Virginia are so beyond fucked that they beggar description. Not only do they have to deal with the immiseration created by the complete vacuum of economy, but they're serfs of the corporations that run their state in all but name. They drink poisoned water (if they're even that lucky) and breath poisoned air and the only way out is either the army or a .45 caliber pill.

Well, it speaks more of the state of this board than anything.

I know, /liberty/ does it every other day: >>>/liberty/74249

What the fuck is a nork? Do you mean Northern Europe?

North Korean

This one is especially true even in the first world urban enclaves. When the whole flint thing happened people forgot it pretty quickly, especially the reports that Flint's water situation was fairly normal if you started looking at other major US cities

This is going to get even worse as the economy shifts to being far more digital focused. As a side note, even the chain stores are starting to die en masse, with big movers and shakers like Walmart starting to take insane measures to even keep their lunches from being amazon'd

The homeless in New York literally rely on living in communal shacks underground, in abandoned subway and railway tunnels that sometimes connect to storm drains and the sewers. They're called "Mole People", by the public. Although the phenomenon isn't as prevalent as it once was, there's still a gigantic number of homeless people forced underground because the surface isn't safe.

And even then, they often get murdered by the NYPD. It sounds like some kind of urban myth, but it's true. Historically, and currently.

Detroit in certainly a shithole.

First generation of my family to have running water and a bathroom. Appalachia can be pretty bad. I never lived in those conditions but my parents talked about it all the time.
I spend about 40% of my pay on medication for gout. I'm "only" 30.
I don't live in a favela, and I don't starve. I do pretty much survive because others help me do so though (food banks, community health clinic when they have room, people who give out free coats. etc.).
I'm not a child soldier, and I don't have to worry about my house being bombed, but this is hardly "living".

Your average lifestyle of an american

this continues for months on end with no stopping until you either have a mental break down and get fired, or your boss lays you off

My dude this is spot-fucking-on.

Burgeranon here who drove from a rich east cost enclave to the west coast and back.
It's really pretty fucked. Talkin' Mississippi, Texas, Colorado. The metropolitan areas are for the wealthy like Denver, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle. Didn't drive through the most impoverished areas since I was on the highways, but you would sure be fucked to be born in a small town on the great plains like in Wyoming or Idaho.


true life of Ameriburgers

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This is literally true.

I spent over a month where I had not left my home for anything whatsoever except work.

Land of the Free™.

Add more crying.

leaving my house would mean dealing with Americans, fuck that.

Most people repeat what everyone else repeats from others with no idea if it's true. Love the us

Living in the US, you're told constantly that you're the most lucky person alive and you need to be thankful for living in it. But it starts to get pretty confusing when your friends stay small and wiry their whole lives because they didn't get a good diet, and when people actively refuse to call 9-11 for an ambulance because the copay is multiple fucking thousands of dollars and it'll fuck your insurance rates up to the point where infirm people are driving to local clinics instead of hospitals. Homeless people are missing fingers and toes cause they get frostbite in the winter. Frostbite isn't like what you hear on the TV, when your skin red and numb from the cold, it's when your cells are black and have been killed because the water in them froze. But you're in the greatest country in the world, of course, so that can't possibly matter.

and what do you do? you vote for trump lmao

by you i dont mean you personally of course

Hope you get better fam

Most people in the US aren't educated because they didn't want to be uneducated. They aren't educated, and don't make wise political choices, because America isn't designed to give everyone an education. Only increasingly so each decade

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I truly feel sorry for you dudes. Our welfare states may be rapidly collapsing, but it's not this fucking bad. I would like to see a study of comparative indebtness in US and second world countries, actually.

I sleep on yoga mat.
That's all you need to know.

Isn’t that the avrege income of Romania?

Well that explains Iraq

show me a source I should believe in then

I've read before that the average net-worth for people under something like age 45 in the states is something around -$37,000.


-usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2017/11/18/a-foolish-take-heres-how-much-debt-the-average-us-household-owes/107651700/

A lot of this is underrepresented as well because a lot of people declare bankruptcy due to illnesses and the associated medical debt.

Detroit looks more like a group of feudal farm villages than a city. Both ascetically and economically. Seriously when you have to rely on agriculture to keep your economy alive and a few decades ago you used to be one of the world’s most industrialized cities you’re in real shit. detroit.curbed.com/2017/11/15/16651078/detroit-urban-agrihood

Wrong on all accounts unless AMERICA to you only includes urban centers and the coast, If that's y'all's views on the rest of America you might need to Branch out of your city's a little more.

My family got evicted out of our house because my brother got hit by a car and our families insurance couldn't cover all the costs so as collateral the bank seized our house,my family split up right after and we haven't all been together in the same place since and that was 6 years ago

So sorry that this happened to you.

fuck this thread is depressing

Just wait until you try to talk to an American about Socialism and then the pretense of American exceptionalism completely dissipates.
It isn't as bad as it could be, Medicare stops this shit from being destroyed.

theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/15/america-extreme-poverty-un-special-rapporteur
reminds me of the woman in this

>>>/liberty/74344

more like 180$ laptop

possibly, but im not convinced

on linux you can play pretty much any game made before 2004, which is a lot.

I guess you're right. This seems to apply to windows to some extent. I'd say games are possibly playable until they are 6-8 years old or newer.

I live in a rural area and it's pretty much a shithole. The 'richest' people are the ones who either sell pills or are lucky enough to know someone that has a job in the natural gas industry. The local hospital and school face possible shutdown every year, and many of the houses look like they're falling apart. They sure as hell hate 'MUH SOCIALISM' despite all of it.

There was just a proposal to expand rent control in California, but it failed to advance because of the fucking landlords, and the fact it would “discouraging new construction”, in other words, no housing/apartments unless it’s pic related which the poor can’t afford in the first place. It’s pretty fare to say within my lifetime I’ll never actually see socialism.

It's largely about how you carry it. Some poor people slide into a cycle of degeneration and despair while others keep working towards a better life and as such I can't overstate the importance of willpower enough. My best friends grew up well below the poverty line (living, as my family did, in the poorest county in the state) but had a strong family support net and their mother is a wonderful person who made sure they bettered themselves and now they both have degrees and one of them is a welder making a damn good living and the other is roaming around Europe.


The greatest tragedy of the poor in America, in my opinion, is that they've forgotten how to live with grace. I'm not saying that they should be content with their lot - the opposite, in fact - but chasing rainbows because you feel obligated to do so instead of making the best of the rain leaves you with nothing in the end except fatigue. The degree of dehumanization in our soulless, degenerated society is enough to make you weep and then fill your heart to the brim with cold anger. The current excuse for a system in place in the US is a abomination and needs to be destroyed. Raze it to the ground from root to branch.

Shouldn't rent control do the exact opposite?

Welcome to capitalism, where the economics are made up and the rules don't matter.

opinion discarded

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no one wants to build anything except luxury condos they'll make bank on, so if there's rent control they'll just go build luxury condos they'll make bank on somewhere without rent control

willpower has been scientifically proven to be a limited resource actively damaged by many factors that the poor are stuck with in the first place

Never been there but my uncle was horrified how much poverty and homeless people there were. He made a roadtrip from San Francisco to LA with a cadillac.

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Try despooking them.

>>>/liberty/74374
>>>/liberty/74370

Luxuries in the sense that they're not necessities, and there's a lot of people saying that being poor is your own fault if you spend money on entertainment.

Most americans weren't educated because they don't know what education is. They believe it's just all them numbers and big book words the teacher makes you know, and they got that in that there learnasium, so of course they's all edumucated-like.

This idea is omnipresent in society, and Americans are constantly, constantly told that what they learned in school was "education," while any kind of actual education or learning is disparaged as elitism. Those ivory tower faggots in the university just try and trick you with their big fancy words, but you don't NEED education, because your natural American intuition is all you REALLY need.

And because most of their thinking is done for them from sun up to sun down this view is never even noticed, much less questioned.

What scum.

Visit America, then visit rural Nork.

All you need to know.

That's not true at all.

You must be this poor to be in poverty.

It's Holla Forums, America is basically hell on Earth, Nork though, utopia of advanced science.

It's crazy town here.

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this or they end up a druggie, mentally ill and on welfare, in prison, or some combination of those
t. live in a pretty poor area

How would you make it more accurate?

Gee, that's only 80% of the fucking country, you bumfuck rube.

Your story is anecdotal, dumbass.

first, this is not a source nor it answer the question.

second, which part of america?

All solidarity with American comrades, but this. It's comparatively nice here.

You're wrong.

I used to work at a major charity in the U.S. and I can say unequivocally that being "poor" in the U.S. means having a higher standard of living than more than half of the people on this planet. Anyone (literally) who came to our charity was given tokens worth around $400 for our affiliated thrift stores (who also give out tokens) to spend on furniture and clothing and house supplies. We also operated shelters and helped people get signed up for government assisted housing. If you're just down on your luck, the amount of support that exists from private charities alone is really incredible.
The ones who did the worst and who suffered the most were the drug addicts and people with mental health issues.

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as opposed to what? some government funded study?

Yes, you fucking dipshit. You stupid fucking retard. You incredible imbecile. Your "first hand experience" is as worthless as you are.

I'm from a deep south red state and a medium-sized town and I can tell you that the experience that poster listed is pretty common across the country.

read

No, I'm not.

Wrong, again.

Nothing about that discredits what I said

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Look another functionally illiterate American.

Do you know who you're replying too?

wow, if I even made that working an entire year 39.99 hrs a week it would even make sense to do it out of my car, with no social support, completely alienated, with no prospects for advancement, and with no possibility to rent a simple private room or go to school. But no, my bootlicker soulless CEO is doing his part for The Company. Don't you ever think about what it takes to keep this machine well oiled?

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