Has poverty changed over the years?

[Pb]

When reading about poverty from a conservative point of view, there tends to be two relatively opposing opinions I have encountered:

1) Poor people are much better off materially now than they were decades ago (say the 1950's)- they have lots of food, housing, cars, etc... these folks may say the war on poverty has been "won" to some extent or another.  The "victory" may be caused by expanding economic growth, technlogy, or welfare etc.

or

2) The number of poor people is staying the same or growing, and everything done by the government to "fight poverty" has been a waste.

Or perhaps you have a view different from these... what do you think?

[charby]

I think basic needs are met for the poor if they don't squander the resources granted to them by Uncle Sugar.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

its changed  today you can be poor and still have an xbox a flat screen and a smart phone.

[Nick1911]

Can one be financed out of poverty?

Like the lottery winners that end up worse off then when they started.

Or a guy I know who makes 90k and still has no savings and still occasionally runs out of money.

I think poverty is a more complex topic then just a persons income.

[Tallpine]

Yes, it has changed IMO.

Years/decades ago you could be poor, proud, hardworking and responsible.

And you could live in a relatively safe neighboorhood of other poor, proud, hardworking and responsible people.

[zxcvbob]

Yes, it has changed IMO.

Years/decades ago you could be poor, proud, hardworking and responsible.

And you could live in a relatively safe neighboorhood of other poor, proud, hardworking and responsible people.

We were poor, but not impoverished.

[griz]

If you look at some of the depression and dustbowl photos, you can see actual poverty.  Today you can have a family that owns two cars, is buying their own home, all of them are overweight, and they are still classified as poor.  I believe it's a matter of definition.  We define poverty as "X" income, and pay people who earn less.  But we don't count those payments as income, so they are still classified as poor.  I know that for whatever reasons, we do have people in this country who are genuinely poor, but subsidizing low income is a trap that's difficult to escape.

[Scout26]

When I think of poverty, I think of my dad walking home from school each day along the railroad tracks looking for chunks of coal so they could heat their house.

I think of my mom selling fresh eggs door to door before school and selling vegetables from their garrden in the afternoons and giving that money to her dad.  


We don't have poverty today.  We have the richest poor people in the world.  They don't have to go and try to scratch out a living from farming or livestock.  They sit around watching big screen TV's when they are not riding around in new cars talking to their friends on the latest Iphone.  

Neither of my parents families had a phone when they were growing up.  It wasn't until after WWII when my uncle bought a used car that my families had transport other then shoe leather or a horse (used for plowing).   Dad only got a car after he graduated from pharmacy school after WWII.  

Poverty was defeated long ago.   And the thing is, neither of my parents ever thought they were "poor".  As long as they could work, they could eat.

[RoadKingLarry]

its changed  today you can be poor and still have an xbox a flat screen and a smart phone.

And 2 cars.

[bedlamite]

And 2 cars.

with 22" spinners.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

with 22" spinners.

that you rent

and you can use cash from your ebt card to pay the rent and buy a tat and a couple 40's

[Ned Hamford]

Let us not forget poor has generally meant no money.  Now we get to complicate things that much more with Debt.

[Stand_watie]

Can one be financed out of poverty?

Like the lottery winners that end up worse off then when they started.

Or a guy I know who makes 90k and still has no savings and still occasionally runs out of money.

I think poverty is a more complex topic then just a persons income.

by: Ned Hamford
Let us not forget poor has generally meant no money.  Now we get to complicate things that much more with Debt.

This is VERY common, probably applies to people making more than 90k, too.  Wish I'd figured it out ten years sooner than I did.

[zahc]

It seems to me that poor people worked long hours, while having time for leisure was a sign of a comfortable middle-class income. Now, partly due to smart phones and laptops, it seems to be those with "good jobs" who are harried and worn thin, while having time to relax is associated with being poor or lazy.

[Monkeyleg]

When I think of poverty, I think of my dad walking home from school each day along the railroad tracks looking for chunks of coal so they could heat their house.

I think of my mom selling fresh eggs door to door before school and selling vegetables from their garrden in the afternoons and giving that money to her dad.  


We don't have poverty today.  We have the richest poor people in the world.  They don't have to go and try to scratch out a living from farming or livestock.  They sit around watching big screen TV's when they are not riding around in new cars talking to their friends on the latest Iphone.  

Neither of my parents families had a phone when they were growing up.  It wasn't until after WWII when my uncle bought a used car that my families had transport other then shoe leather or a horse (used for plowing).   Dad only got a car after he graduated from pharmacy school after WWII.  

Poverty was defeated long ago.   And the thing is, neither of my parents ever thought they were "poor".  As long as they could work, they could eat.

That pretty much echoes my parents' experience. Even when my dad was starting to work as an engineer, we lived very frugally. Mom sewed patches on our jeans, darned our socks, and when we went to the movies she made a bag of popcorn and we brought our own bottles of soda, because they couldn't afford to buy it at the theater. My dad had an old used car that he kept running with baling wire and the grace of God. Mom had a very large vegetable garden, and she canned vegetables that we ate year round.

And that's all I'm going to say.

[zxcvbob]

That pretty much echoes my parents' experience. Even when my dad was starting to work as an engineer, we lived very frugally. Mom sewed patches on our jeans, darned our socks, and when we went to the movies she made a bag of popcorn and we brought our own bottles of soda, because they couldn't afford to buy it at the theater. My dad had an old used car that he kept running with baling wire and the grace of God. Mom had a very large vegetable garden, and she canned vegetables that we ate year round.

And that's all I'm going to say.

"♪ Had an old dog that was trained to attack. Sometimes."
"Coal-burnin' stove, no natural gas... ♫"

[Monkeyleg]

"♪ Had an old dog that was trained to attack. Sometimes."
"Coal-burnin' stove, no natural gas... ♫"

Don't know that song, but my dad often told me about his mother, who died when he was 12. They had a wood burning stove, and she'd spend her days chopping wood and feeding the fire in the stove. She'd do laundry by boiling water in big pots on that stove, and take all day to do just a small bunch of clothes. My dad said the floor was black from soot.

Strange, but my ex spent the first few years of her life in a house in Milwaukee that didn't have an indoor bathroom. Just an outhouse. In a big city.

[zxcvbob]

They're not consecutive lines in the song, I just really like the one about the dog "trained to attack, sometimes" :D  And I had to cut the "coal-burnin' stove" line short to not give it away.

"If That Ain't Country" by David Allan Coe.  It could have been written about the people in my home town in East Texas -- exaggerated a bit.

[RoadKingLarry]

I'm not yet 52 but I remember visiting my grandparents before they had running water and indoor plumbing. The old outhouse was still there when granddad passed in '99 and the farm was sold. Probably one giant wasp nest inside and pretty much completely covered in honeysuckle vines by then. Dad is 77, by today's standards they were "poverty stricken". No plumbing, heated with wood or coal and carried water up a hill from the spring. He worked a team of mules on the farm from the time he was big enough to do it till he joined the Air Force in 1954. There wasn't a tractor on the place till just before I was born. No welfare, no food stamps but granddad and grandma raised 4 kids and kept them healthy, clothed, fed and educated. Granddad used to say they never had much money but they damned sure weren't poor.

[Pb]

My father's family were tenant farmers while he was small.  They didn't have electricity or plumbing until he was a teenager.  My dad remembered his father earning only $20 in profit after an entire year of farming once.  Then, his father became a farm manager, and they moved into a house with both electricity and plumbing, which made my grandmother very happy. 

My father told me before they moved they were "as poor as white people got" though they didn't really think about it. He said the difference between then and now is that they didn't expect other people to provide for them.  My grandfather had a hard life.

[tokugawa]

Define it as a percentage and it can never be gotten rid of.
Define it as a standard of living-it is gone.

[vaskidmark]

I'm pretty sure the survey and the notions behind it are flawed, as it seems to be aimed at, or at least the responses seem to be aimed at, recipients of public largesses.

1 - the .gov defines poverty as an income of less than X for a family of four (4) and then extrapolates (badly) for units of two (2) and one (1).
2 - the .gov does not count public largess as income

stay safe.

[RevDisk]

Define it as a percentage and it can never be gotten rid of.
Define it as a standard of living-it is gone.

In general, yes. But as a rule, no. Chronic illness, mental illness, et al can be pathways to a very low standard of living. Deinstitutionalization is multifaceted with good and bad aspects. But one 'bad' aspect is non-functional mentally ill homeless are kicked to the curb rather than housed in a psychiatric hospitals. Due to the tying of employee benefits to healthcare coverage, chronic illness can also be a direct ticket to poverty with few alternatives.

[HankB]

The biggest difference in poverty "then vs. now" is that since the advent of LBJ's "Great Society" we've spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000,000,000,000.00 fighting it, a figure that's nearly $3,000,000,000,000.00 larger than our current national debt.

Chew on the implications of that for a while.   

[Sergeant Bob]

When I was a little kid, we had an outhouse and had to tote water into the house from a hand pump outside. Didn't even know we were poor.