If you're poor it's basically your own fault, isn't it?

[ReputableBiscuit]

I'm so sick of this attitude, in society in general and on MN specifically. Some people just don't seem to have the imagination to realise that poverty is a complex thing and fucking hard to escape. 'Why don't you try budgeting?', 'how can you call yourself poor when you have a big TV?', 'give up smoking then you won't be poor'. 'Cook from scratch.' It's just not as simple as that. Unemployment, disability, mental health problems, social disadvantage, debt, benefits stoppages... none of these are magically undone by somebody writing a list of their outgoings or learning to cook a hearty potato soup.

You aren't ever considered in society if your a middle runner. You prop up the economy, pay the "poor" peoples welfare in taxes and nod and agree to the rich. Your a sitting duck until your shelved in either direction.

It is derogatory though isn't it? "oh dear, I know your hungry and so are your kids, here's a high-vis jacket and a litter picker, see you in a few hours, you may need a coat as it's pissing it down out there, we'll ensure your minimum wage is paid next week some time"

I don't believe it's derogatory at all. Plenty of people make an honest living out of cleaning toilets and other people's mess.

There's far more respect to be had by someone doing an honest days work than by someone who believes those jobs to be beneath them.

But they will do that honest days work, and they will still be poor. The poor are being kept poor through lack of opportunity, opportunity nowadays is controlled by government and local councils, too many people telling people what they can and can't do. Your comments echo this attitude perfectly.

Wag that dog! This strategy is working so well, really, from this thread alone.

The man who got the job on the cruise ship was probably lucky to meet a person in the right moment who told him about the job. Although yes you can give information and advice to 2 young people and they will receive it and use it differently.
Perhaps your dh was also a strong person emotionally. Great and really good for him (i am not sarcastic, i really wish him and you all the best) but another person in hisshoes could have a nervous breakdown. Some people are not super strong, some are shy, not confident, have not endless stamina, have physical or mental problems that limit them. They are screwed today.
Sometimes i am thinking that unless my children will be able to work 80hrs a week, and be super confident and ruthless they wont survive.
See i remember people who weren't ambitious and made a good living. Like the old man in my street who was repairing shoes and brought up 6 kids. Like my aunt who worked all her life in a secure job in the same supermarket. Like my mil who made a good living by using her sewing machine and she bought her house with that dressmaking job. You can not make a good living with those jobs anymore and you cannot buy a London house on those jobs. It seems like only the super strong and super ambitious will survive.

Yes, of course there are poor people who do not command respect, but the treatment of the poor and disabled is awful- There was an article a few months ago about how the disabled are getting scared to leave their houses because people treat them as scroungers and the lowest of the low.
Unfortunately many people do not realise that there but for the grace of god go they...

Think for capitalism to work and for some to be rich - you need to have some who are poor. It's a balance and deemed acceptable that some are sacrificed (the north as they are uppity bastards and long way from London)

A lot of life is luck. You'll have a handful of key decisions (again, if you're lucky) in life and if you choose the right one, you may end up wealthy or destitute. My brother ran 2 companies into the ground and then Apple bought his 3rd (2 tech guys doing great things but had no business sense) so now he's a millionaire living in California. He deserves it because he's a bloody genius and took a lot of risk doing his own thing for years but the third company wasn't doing great so just lucky Apple had been tracking them and decided to move in.

It's the same for me too (not the millionaire thing unfortunately :) ). About 2 years ago I moved job and, to cut a long story short, I was lucky to turn down a big job offer as I received a far better job a few weeks later. The original offer would have had me earning decent money but living in hotels still and generally having a unhealthy lifestyle. Now I get even more money, have a fixed home, healthy lifestyle (lost 5 stone!) and basically doing well (touch wood).

Coming from what I guess most people would perceive as a 'poor' background I think a lot of the problem is generalisation. I have had similar comments from colleges who have never ever ever had to budget food and think the family holiday is a right not a luxury. It is very depressing to constantly be told that you are not good enough to have things that everyone else has and that you do not have the right to succeed so why try? I can see why people would get disgruntled if all they see of the 'poor' are documentaries and articles which love to focus on the big screen TV's the iPhones and so on but do not tell the whole story, then again isn't that what the media does, present a single view point, not all the facts of the matter? Completely agree with original post, poverty is complex and not as simple as giving up the fags.

There was a time when it was possible to make a decent living doing low-status, unskilled work. It isn't, really, now, and part of this is down to the housing 'boom' and the whole buy-to-let business, which means that just having somewhere to live costs a far, far higher proportion of your earnings than it used to. Another major factor is the way in which unskilled work has become so agency-driven - the agencies cream off a chunk of the money paid by the client (eg the corporation that needs its offices cleaned) hold down the wages of the staff in order to increase profits and treat the employees as disposable. A lot of essential jobs (cleaning, basic care work, catering) are horrendously badly paid, but they have to be done and they can't be outsourced to the developing world where it's OK to pay staff 30p a day, so they are outsourced to agencies and, soon, will be outsourced to workfare.

ReputableBiscuit agree with you 100%. The working class snobbery alongside the middle class snobbery regarding people who are poorer and (how dare they!) claim benefits is just sickening at times. So judgmental. If workhouses were brought back into play they'd be the 1st to vote to fling the poor in there. Worse still when they start the picking 'well theyve got a council house/flat & I havent, I work they don't (as obviously, those on benefits have never worked)...nose over the fence begrudging who has what, whilst the government busily shit on all.

At least it tends to be somewhat balanced by those who are able to see the bigger picture and don't immediately and automatically assume benefits claimants are the scourge of society, to be scorned. Even focusing on the smoking is an example of narrowmindedness and not having the vision to see - its not that all poor/benefits claimants smoke. The ones that do are the ones given publicity because thats what the government and the media WANT you to see. For the media it fuels the fire/ratings, for the government its the usual 'look at these bad people you are paying taxes for' scapegoating, to deflect from the amount they nick from taxpayers themselves. Its so transparent Im always surprised when people just don't see it.

I liked the post about things being harder outside London/ se. Erm.... Have you actually looked at the child poverty figures in London? ???

Like everything else the issue here is housing and the shortage of it. You need to earn a lot to be entirely self sufficient these days. This situation is worse in the se.

Getting a job doesn't get you out of poverty whatever people think. Therefore the stereotyping of deserving and undeserving poor is somewhat irrelevant.

Ledare...I know at least 2 people like that.
:(
Just because you don't doesn't mean they don't exist.
One of them has 5 dc and has just been moved by the council into a bigger house across the road from her dc school....she is still unable to get them there for 8.50 start :(
Her old house (near my mother) is still being sorted out by the LA as it's in a pretty awful state so can't be offered to anyone on the waiting list til repairs/deep cleaning is done.
I went to school with girls who got pg at 15/16, went on to have 3/4 dc and have not worked since. In fact some of them are now grandmothers themselves.
It does happen.
And it's tragic.
I grew up poor. But my parents both worked - we were the typical "working poor." They also valued education and encouraged us. My sister and I are both now sahms (maybe because our mother couldn't be?....) and my brother works for a large retail company.
I still see these girls I went to school with - they all look like they have had a hard life. The idea that a Life on benefits is "easy" is not hard to laugh at when you see these women....they are scruffy, they have health problems, they look tired.
It's not something to aspire to, but it's all many children know :(

Spinner...yes. I know what you mean.
When I was growing up we never did the whole "what did you do on your summer holiday" thing that kids seem to do now when they go back to school in September....simply because only a tiny handful of kids went on holiday.
Until I was an adult the only "holiday" I had ever had was a 1 day trip to Skegness each year.
It has left me
A) wondering how we had got to a stage where a holiday is deemed a necessity not a luxury and
B) with a lifelong hatred of Skegness!

Well budgeting, giving up smoking and cooking from scratch certainly does help.

You need a certain amount of money to budget. If you have prepayment meters your options to shop around are only slighter than nil.

Yes smoking is expensive, it is also addictive and stops you being as hungry.

Cooking from scratch involves having the means to cook, simple things like a cooker, pans and preferably a fridge.

And also requires you to not be disabled.

WorraLiberty

Try this, stick one hand into your pocket and do not remove it for the day. Try cooking from scratch - not that easy. Try opening a tin - virtually impossible.

Then try to make a meal from scratch for one using only ingredients from your local shop without a cooker or electricity.

And your meal must just be for one person and no left overs because you can't keep the leftovers cold.

Then come back and tell us all how easy it was.

No, I don't think anyone chooses to be poor, but I do think many have the power to improve their finances and choose not to.

Yes people can reduce expenditure and budget better to make more effective use of the money they have and many don't do as much as they could. Many could also increase income by seeking extra employment etc. No, of course that's not everybody.

Yes, people can start their own business or go self employed and shouldn't expect this to be an immediate success or even the main wage. I do understand that it takes a certain personality type to do this though and it wouldn't occur to everybody to try or know how.

Yes, DH and I were poorly off when we started out. He was on an apprenticeship at £55 pw and I was initially unemployed (having just relocated) and then got a minimum wage factory job. We have done a combination of education, over time, extra jobs, not increasing expenditure (on holidays or food/clothes etc) to be able to save and then invest those savings.

I'm sure people looking in would assume we are well off and don't understand what it's like to be poor. Yes we've had good luck but we've been able to make the best of any luck because of our attitudes and controlling the things we can control.

Some people are financially poor but have valuable life skills
Others have no life skills and poor education, they are not going to manage budgeting or cooking from scratch or organising themselves
We need more intervention early on to give people skills

This is where parents should come into it though. If people didn't have children before they could pass on the skills to cope with the basics in life, then it wouldn't be a problem.

And considering we have access to free contraception in this country, society shouldn't encourage people to have children until they are able to provide the basics. But as it is, society encourages the cycles of deprivation to continue by making it so easy for people to have children they can't provide for emotionally as well as financially.

"This is where parents should come into it though. If people didn't have children before they could pass on the skills to cope with the basics in life, then it wouldn't be a problem.

And considering we have access to free contraception in this country, society shouldn't encourage people to have children until they are able to provide the basics. But as it is, society encourages the cycles of deprivation to continue by making it so easy for people to have children they can't provide for emotionally as well as financially."

Spot on. People see it as their right to have a child or as many as they want giving to thought as to how they will provide for that child both at the time and should things change in the future.

If we stopped throwing money at people and abolished all child relaed benefits and just had subsidised childcare then people would have to stop and think of finances etc before proceeding.

Lots of people could work or work more but have a million of reasons why they dont. They dont want to pay childcare, they dont want to leave their child so would rather let tax payers do the supporting, they cant possibly be expected to work anything other than a few hours a day term time etc.

People control their own lives for the most part and are in control of their decisions. Yes bad luck can strike anyone but lots make poor choices and blame others - usually the government.

But if they are without basic planning skills they will be less likely to use contraception or recognise the skills needed to be a parent
They will be less able to find work and having children can be a way out of a situation
I know several women who were unloved as children and saw having children as a way to get love
They need education, hope and life skills
A massive reduction in class sizes would be a start and a more holistic approach to education

Far too many girls become parents before they've stopped being children themselves.

I don't think you can underestimate the appeal of having a child when your own childhood has been so unutterably shit; when you've been subject to neglect or abuse or poverty or all three and more; when you've been exposed to drug taking as the norm and your education has been minimal, either because your school is failing or because there's just no expectation in your environment that education is relevant, important or necessary. To those girls, having a baby of their own who they think will love them unconditionally, unlike everyone else they've encountered in their lives to date - and on a practical level, will be the means to a place of their own - is seen as their passport out of their crap childhood. They don't understand it's just perpetuating the cycle, because in reality all they've got around them by means of support is only what they've always had.

And yet some people expect these child-women to somehow, through sheer force of will/character/internal strength, to step up and break the cycle single-handedly for the sake of their child solely because they've now become parents.

There needs to be fewer "they shoulds" and a lot more "why does it happen and what can we do to change it?"s.

Then send the basic message that if don't work because you don't have the basic skills needed to hold down a job, then it's likely that you also don't have the basic skills needed to be a parent.

There needs to be fewer "they shoulds" and a lot more "why does it happen and what can we do to change it?"s.

I agree, but the thing that's needed to change it will be so unpopular that it will never happen. If people weren't given money and a place of their own for having children, then they would be less inclined to do it.

Even the most uneducated would be able to see that having a baby that you cant house or feed or clothe is not going to add anything to their lives.

I want to address the issue of 'being lucky' raised earlier as in you choose a path based on your parents. I didn't. One of my parents was dead by the time I was 18, neither finished school. We were bought up in real poverty. Moving around, 5 different primary schools, 2 secondary schools, council house, benefits, temporary accommodation, family in prison, addicted to drugs, no holidays. To be honest I look back and think about the amount of money my mum spent on fags and do sometimes think, we could have had an annual holiday for that, but I understand it's an addiction.

People assume I am from one of those 'lucky' backgrounds based on how I present myself and the work that I do but both parents left school at 15, worked in low skilled jobs until my mum became a single parent when we were raised on benefits. I worked hard to get 10 good GCSES, 3 As at A Level, a first in my degree, a masters (with the offer of a funded PhD but I decided not to take it up) and a successful career. I have tons of savings in the bank too and bought my first house very young and now own another. I have friends from privileged backgrounds tell me how lucky i am!

I had/am having my kids at a point in life when I can afford it and am proud of the fact that I have never as an adult claimed benefits. I have been frugal and saved to cover times out of work, which fortunately have been few due to making myself employable.

I have worked bloody hard for this (full time shift work through full time uni) and battled against adversity so resent the 'lucky' comments.

There are choices but those choices are being made harder now. We now have a 'working poor' who are treated with contempt by the government and a housing crisis. Going to uni will no longer help with social mobility with even middle class graduates struggling to get a job.

Many people really don't choose to be poor but I agree with posters who say it isn't black and white. Some people don't help themselves or take up offers of education and support to get out of their predicament.