Great article

"Like water-boarding Navy Seals to show how tough they are, the Congressmen knew they weren’t going to drown in debt."

You make many excellent points, and this was the best. There's no comparison between those experiments and knowing that your real experience may be a life (or death) sentence.

It's also easy to say people should know better if one isn't in the position of having to stretch every paycheck in order to keep a roof over one's head and food on the table.

I see predatory lending and business practices as one of the worst five crimes against the poor in America. The others are the criminally low minimum wage, the lack of readily available health care, education, and housing. If we could solve those problems, and get every kid the individual attention he or she needs to become an imaginitive, self-empowered adult (along with their parents), poverty might become a thing of the past. Instead we seem to breed poverty, helplessness, apathy, and powerlessness.

Blaming the victims certainly doesn't help, and I hear a lot of that.

I also see the current $2 trillion war deficit as disgustingly similar to how funding was taken from the War Against Poverty in the 60s in order to fund the Vietnam War. Imagine what could be done here at home to help our own people with all that money. You don't see the government EVER willing to go into that kind of debt to help the poor, only to help the corporate war machine.

by SpiritBlooms (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments) on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at 1:56:30 PM
 

This is the most important post of the day!

The government only notices when the middle class (those with incomes of over $100,000 a year), starts hurting.  Meanwhile, the poor are saddled with things like Check Into Cash, Rent to Own, and the corner hock shop.  Poor kids start college on their Pell Grants and soon find themselves deluged by "no interest for six months" credit card applications offering to "make their lives better".  The easiest thing to get is a television set so that you can be barraged by all the commercials for all the stuff that you, too, can have "even if you have bad or no credit".

Further, most of the poor do not have the knowledge either to protect themselves or to fight back.  They had finally learned the meaning of the word "bankruptcy" when the law was tightened to close off their only way out.  Social Security will maintain your life only on the most basic level while disability checks pay even less.  And forget affordable health care.  The point of the whole exercise is to bleed your income from the necessities and encourage you to die off if you can't "compete"!

by Mary Pitt (66 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 190 comments) on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 11:16:05 AM
 

Over 100,000!

Is that middle class cutoff amount? Then the ranks of families who count in politics decreased dramatically. Especially if accounting for inflation.

The explanation you give, Mary, is so real life! The fellow who could loan 400 is fast getting to be an endangered species, because he needs to realize that his friends will have more needs. My experience is that first family members drive their combined resources into the ground. Then friends are approached. I understand these relationships.

And here is how I have come to react. The poverty most apparent is knowledge neediness. No use to commiserate by declaring that a high percentage rank with the person in need. They don't understand negative networth. If they did, they would have been watching impulse buying. No use to preach about conspicuous consumption. It was arduous, and hopeless, to preach to a young girl that temptation to buy another DVD might leave her with only fumes in her tank. When her high school diploma got her entry level work in a bank ready to dissolve the department where she worked, reality did set in. The employer she sought said she didn't know enough about Accounts Payable, and she came to me and asked what that meant. Two terms, payables and receivables, are the lifeline of business--and also of anyone else who wants a positive networth. She enrolled in school and I paid for the books. Never felt so rewarded in my whole life! After a long hot summer without a paycheck, she is now employed at a rate above minimum wage. Why I take heart is that she also had to learn the difference between long and short-term debt. When a person meets accrual accounting, impulse buying becomes controllable. However, what really counts for me is that she has loving, working family members who spent their life in the position of paycheck to paycheck. They were leery she made the right call, and now they are very glad she stuck it out. There is a ripple effect.

Do I believe everyone should be taught basic bookkeeping in High School? I certainly do. It's personal information which puts the lure of debit cards and fancy cell phones, let alone expensive cars and vacations, into perspective.

by Margaret Bassett (33 articles, 2017 quicklinks, 30 diaries, 1346 comments) on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 12:20:07 PM
 

Margaret, that's what my old daddy

called 'two nails on the wall,' one for what you got coming and one for what you owe.

The cost of things must be taught in school, else all other lessons become useless. The cost of having a place to live, the cost of a child, the cost of dropping out of school, the cost of credit.

No Child Left Behind merely dooms poor children to watching the bus pull away from where they live. You performed a great personal service. God bless you.

by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 53 quicklinks, 224 diaries, 386 comments) on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 1:09:38 PM
 

Re: Margaret's comment

"Do I believe everyone should be taught basic bookkeeping in High School? I certainly do."

I agree, but some form of it, as well as critical thinking, should be taught in every grade from kindergarten on up, just in case they don't get it in high school, or get as far as high school. Some kids are lost long before then.

I remember reading that back in the 60s one of the big cereal companies would offer to let kids take part in a study, and they made it seem like a boon for the kids so their parents readily agreed. Actually they were studying the kids' reaction to various advertising tactics. The Cap'n Crunch generation was indoctrinated based on that study.

But do we teach children at that age how to avoid being sucked in by advertising? No, instead parents and babysitters sit them in front of the TV to keep them out of "trouble". Their ability to think for themselves is stunted at an early age. We let kids be trained to be obedient credit and wage slaves.

by SpiritBlooms (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments) on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 1:36:12 PM
 

Some people are poor due to lack of money...

and not because they have bought luxuries at exhorbitant prices.  I have two disabled friends over 55 and they have no credit cards or long term debts.  Neither have I. We pay cash for everything, although are incomes are inadequate.  As a result, we couldn't get credit even if we wanted it.  I do get enough to eat, but neither of my friends do.  One lost her hair and her teeth due to poor nutrition.  The cheapest one bedroom apartment costs over $600 and a studio over $500, just about everywhere, certainly they do here. On top of that the tenant pays heat and hot water. No disabled person under 62 can get into low cost housing anymore unless they are in a wheelchair.  The average senior or disabled person gets about $900 per month for everything.  No matter how many bookeeping courses you have taken you can't cover all basic needs with that when a trip to the dentist is $250 not covered by medicare and eyeglasses cost $400. 

by memary (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 70 comments) on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 8:14:59 PM