given that the main cause of money-poverty is not working
Is that really true? I'm not sure if my girlfriend's family qualifies as truly poor, but they certainly don't have much money. Her dad has two jobs--line cook and hotel janitor--and her mom is also a line cook. They frequently have to go to check cashing places, they have only one car so her mom relies on taking the bus to work (which takes over an hour each way, and also requires walking to the bus stop), and they rarely if ever do things like run the AC in their house. They do live in a house as opposed to an apartment, but that's a relatively new development. The house is also in a somewhat sketchy area--for example, her brother was robbed at gunpoint walking through an adjacent neighborhood at 10PM.
I wanted this to be an edit to the original post, but it looks like that post is locked into stone for now.
I wanted to expand on the robbery incident and illustrate how something like that is potentially even worse than you'd expect.
The reason he was walking through the neighborhood is because he doesn't have (and can't afford) a car, and he was walking back from work.
They made the "mistake" of calling 911 to report the incident. He was mildly beaten up, and they were worried about potential injuries, so they sent an ambulance. It turns out he was completely okay, and they put on a few bandages and that was it. Then he was hit with a $3k bill.
Her brother works part time at a minimum wage job while going to school. A random $3k bill out of the blue is really not affordable to him, so now he's on a payment plan paying off that debt.
This is on top of the items that were actually stolen from him, like his phone, which he had to replace, and the general trauma of having been robbed.
You could be right that transit takes up a lot of time, but why rely on anecdote? Stats are available. I linked to them. And if it wasn't 1:30AM (in India) when I posted that, I'd probably have munged them myself.
Comments
Is that really true? I'm not sure if my girlfriend's family qualifies as truly poor, but they certainly don't have much money. Her dad has two jobs--line cook and hotel janitor--and her mom is also a line cook. They frequently have to go to check cashing places, they have only one car so her mom relies on taking the bus to work (which takes over an hour each way, and also requires walking to the bus stop), and they rarely if ever do things like run the AC in their house. They do live in a house as opposed to an apartment, but that's a relatively new development. The house is also in a somewhat sketchy area--for example, her brother was robbed at gunpoint walking through an adjacent neighborhood at 10PM.
I wanted this to be an edit to the original post, but it looks like that post is locked into stone for now.
I wanted to expand on the robbery incident and illustrate how something like that is potentially even worse than you'd expect.
The reason he was walking through the neighborhood is because he doesn't have (and can't afford) a car, and he was walking back from work.
They made the "mistake" of calling 911 to report the incident. He was mildly beaten up, and they were worried about potential injuries, so they sent an ambulance. It turns out he was completely okay, and they put on a few bandages and that was it. Then he was hit with a $3k bill.
Her brother works part time at a minimum wage job while going to school. A random $3k bill out of the blue is really not affordable to him, so now he's on a payment plan paying off that debt.
This is on top of the items that were actually stolen from him, like his phone, which he had to replace, and the general trauma of having been robbed.
As of a few years ago, 36% of poor adults work at least half the year and 25% work full time. Original sources cited here:
http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/why_the_poor_dont_wor...
You could be right that transit takes up a lot of time, but why rely on anecdote? Stats are available. I linked to them. And if it wasn't 1:30AM (in India) when I posted that, I'd probably have munged them myself.