to think that some people just don't get poverty?

[Ohsoworried]

I've seen a few posts recently where people earning a fair bit of money (think around 100k a year) are complaining that they're struggling with money, don't have enough etc. I DO understand that it is all relative but equally, for people like me on a low low wage, in insecure housing, wondering how I'm going to pay rent, having to stop paying in to my pension for the extra £30 a month etc it does make me cringe a little. Things are a little better for me at the moment but it has been hard and my secondment is up soon so back down to low pay. When I left my abusive ex I was living in poverty. And when I mean poverty I mean in a refuge, no job because I had to relocate, no money for a deposit to rent etc. It's the choice between being able to downsize your house, not go on holiday for a couple of years, make sacrifices but still live comfortably etc, compared with not knowing if you'll be able to afford your bills. Of course I'm generalising and I'm sure there are people out there who are genuinely on high wages but have high mortgage payments etc who are struggling. I do sympathise. But I don't always think this is the case...

By cutting the gardener you have made his life harder.

If you can afford to keep him why don't you?
You may feel less guilty then.

A very dear friend of mine really shocked me during the lockdowns.

We met up (outside as per regulations at the time...how foolish do I feel adhering to those rules now!??) and I was saying how hard I'd found some aspects of it.

I'd been trying to home school dc, was super busy in my voluntary work, trying to look after my mum who was too scared to leave her home for 6 months and was undergoing many hospital appointments for a potentially serious health issue...

She shrugged and said she was enjoying it, had saved loads of money, didn't see what the issue was with staying at home and completely dismissed my worries.

I'm not going to lie. It's changed my view of her as a person.

She lives in a very pleasant house in a lovely part of the UK. No health issues, no dc, no money worries, professional job.

And yet she doesn't have the emotional intelligence to feel empathy for others who are struggling (and tbh I had a fairly easy lockdown compared to many...)

Many many like her it seems

@vivainsomnia if its 20% of all people in the uk in poverty, it cannot just be down to poor choices. www.jrf.org.uk/data/overall-uk-poverty-rates#:~:text=More%20than%20one%20in%20five,in%20poverty%E2%80%93%2014.5%20million%20people.

There is a systemic problem.

Ah but if you’d had it easier do you think you’d understand?

it takes a huge amount of effort to truly understand the point of view of an experience completely alien to your own. You have to invest time and effort or you have to have experienced some/part/all of it yourself.

I grew up in poverty. We only had flour and porridge in the house at times. It was grim. So I never understand why people would vote Tory because, as far as I’m concerned, it was their government who allowed this to happen.

however, people do vote Tory so I’ve spent time and effort to get into why they have - including reading up on the founding principles of the party. It was uncomfortable at first but I came out of it thinking I didn’t agree with it but I understood.

the phrase “walk a mile in my shoes” really is true.

we are lucky in the uk that we have free education and relatively good opportunities for everyone. It’s not perfect but I was able to go from a state school and council estate to being a wealthy professional. There was a lot of hard work involved!

I completely disagree about good opportunities for all.

I have a similar pathway - but I don’t for one second believe that it was anything other than luck and some good judgement along the way that got me here.

It isn’t a normal story for people to go from a poor background to a wealthy one - it’s unusual. So while it feels nice to tell yourself that you did it all by yourself, ask yourself why so many can’t?

Is it because you’re special or because the system is fucked!

My Mother (who I have no contact with due to abuse) is wealthy and gets away with hogging it all to herself while spouting shit about having worked hard and been frugal.

She didn't earn any of it, she is a practising Catholic but never gives money to charity and resents tipping in restaurants and she saw us go hungry as kids.

She even made me pay for my family's food at a burial event for my Dad.

I lost my job three years ago when I became a full time carer for my disabled son. We can't manage on one wage and we are loosing our house and moving to a flat.

My card regularly is refused at the till and my kids are painfully aware that we don't have enough money (which is the very worst bit of it all).

But we will soon be able to pay off debts with the sale of our house and get a small mortgage on our next place.

So we are lucky because we have options and I never forget that.

I suppose I thought that - as friends of over 20 years standing - she would care I was finding sone things hard?

I was wrong.

And tbh if friends or family don't care, then we are all in trouble.

Lots of people don’t understand poverty. And more than that, they don’t understand the fact that they don’t understand it. I’d have a lot more respect for someone better off than me saying “I can’t relate because I’ve never been in theatre situation but it sounds hard” than I do for all the waffle about hard work and pulling yourself up and not so subtle questions implying that if you’re poor it’s your fault.

That situation not theatre situation. Stupid phone. 😂

Absolutely untrue

Social mobility in this country is woeful

As a school governor I see clearly the results of decades of political interference in education and the results of austerity since 2010.

FSM up
Safeguarding referrals up 200%
Whole cohorts who are serial non attenders
Racist, xenophobic and homophobic incidents rising
Prevent referrals rising

It must be nice to think that we all have a level playing field. Shame it's fucking rubbish, eh?

Yes, isn't social mobility lower now than it has ever been?

The types of people arguing down and patronising the OP, believe they are superior to those who have less and thus those who have less should not be heard or recognised.

It is not enough to be recognised amongst their peers for their achievements and elevated social status. No no no. They must know thy place.

Advocating for the highly resourced yet over leveraged to have the same level of strife as the truly poor, is gas lighting. Full stop.

But that said, I do like controversy with my Kale. So do continue.

Yep
Added to that the worst cost of living crisis since the 1950s

👏👏👏👏

I experienced a year or two of 'frugal living' when I was 22, when I first married my DH and we were living in Berlin. We were fresh out of university and DH was still doing his masters degree. We did have help from family to help pay the rent but our grocery budget for the week was 20 euros. We ate a lot of curry but we did live in a lovely studio flat (44 sq m) and did not worry much about heating (as German homes are of a higher quality and better insulated). I actually think that studio flat was of a higher spec than the spruced up 1930s 2 bed apartment that I bought years later (and currently live in), even though our finances are better. We did not have a washing machine as we were going to return to london soon and did not want to invest the money so we had to go to to the laundromat but it was no real hardship for a young healthy couple wit no kids.

So yes even though our incomes at that time would place us in the 'poverty' definition, I don't think I know what it is to be poor... as that was the poorest time of our life but i did not find it that difficult. Mainly because we knew things would improve and we also had a support network and did not suffer from poor housing conditions.

This kind of proves my point - someone coming on and talking about their hard work, I have no doubt that financial security/success does require hard work, my point though was that hard work does not automatically equal financial security or success and that people tend to respond to that point with more talk about hard work - which is exactly what you've done.

Does it make you feel uncomfortable to think that someone could have worked just as hard, or is working just as hard, but not achieve what you have? Why do you feel the need to 'defend' your hard work in relation to what you have achieved when I say that hard work doesn't automatically equal success?

And also, did you do that in complete isolation? Because even in a low paid, non professional job, I can't do it in complete isolation. I have relied and still do, upon other people to earn my living, those who provide the transport I use, those who looked after my child, both childcare and all the staff involved in the school she attended, those who clean my workplace, if I had elderly/imfirm relatives I'd be relying on the people who look after them to be able to go to work myself, the list goes on.
I value all of those people too, because without them I wouldn't be able to do what I do and I don't assume they work any harder or any less than I do, regardless of what they earn.

True. There's a lot to be said for people who know they don't understand an issue and don't pretend otherwise.

I grew up poor in a rich area. I went to school with staggeringly rich people. When I told a friend that home was too noisy and I couldn't concentrate on my homework, she asked "You have a little place in Cornwall or Devon? Go there for the weekend." She was surprised that we only had the one house (and it was council). Also, her family's "little place" in Cornwall was a 5 or 6 bed home with gardens - plural - and an ocean view.

I agree that some people don't understand what real poverty is. I've seen families living in a refuse dump with a one room shack for a home and no hope of education or a better life for their children. Poverty is relative, and as someone else said, it's difficult to understand unless you have either witnessed or experienced it.
OP, I hope things improve for you but I fear that many more of us will be worrying about the rising cost of living.

I’ve been in situations where 60-80% of my earnings were going on rent and so it was really hard to make ends meet. But I do have parents who are comfortable so I always had a safety net that lots don’t have.

I’m in a much better looking situation now thankfully but I do feel for people caught in the poverty trap.

People who talk about social mobility being possible or using their own situation as example, do you not realise not everyone can do what you did for a functioning society. People have to clean, serve food, drive buses, work in care etc. If we all tried to retrain IT society would collapse.

It is cringey when people with high earnings think they can identify with people who have nothing and seem to think they are both in the same boat.

“Struggling”,but having choices to make your situation more how you would like it, is very different to actual struggling and having no choices.

As the late, great Spike Milligan said 'Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery'!

Isn't one of the main differences between the 80s and now that there are lots of certain jobs available, but the conditions and the pay are absolute shit? Things cost so much that people in full time work are still struggling with absolute basics.

I saw a job advert for something on the Isles of Scilly this morning. 30 hours a week working at the hospital, £21,000 pro rata. How far is that going to go in one of Britain's most remote communities where the cost of living is sky high? Nowhere.

Yes I was talking about this on another thread with a lot of Tory voters. A poster said her father was from a pit mining town and became very rich because of hard work and grit and now votes Tory. my DH went from free school meals to being a higher rate tax payer, but he also lived in London where he could live at home while he worked at a few entry level jobs in the City/tehc; could live at home while going to a RG university. All things a young person in a deprived area in the north can't do. also the argument was that said young person could do plumbing/be an electrician and earn a good wage... well if everyone became plumbers and electricians, wouldn't that be an oversupply and wages would go down? Also how easy is it to get an apprenticeship as opposed to getting into university and getting into a graduate scheme with a big employer in London (there are many).

Some people really don't get it. I'm in a better position now, however a few years ago I had to manage what food I was buying and make sure I had food I could eat that didn't require me to have gas as I couldn't afford it