How the term 'poverty' has changed

[Deeperthantheocean]

Just this really.

Poverty in my grandparents' age was 'be rich, a gangster, work hard or you die'.

This was so true, whole different era and real poverty from their times being born in the 1910s and the aftermath. Sadly my GF died so GM was alone bringing up 2 children and then adopting another as that's what what you did when members of the family were being abused. No benefits, only a council where you to practically beg for help and it was so looked down upon and gossip then was brutal.

So, a little 2 bedroom house, outhouse toilet, coal fire, no electricity. My GM worked all day and night... cleaning, making clothes and took in 2 male lodgers in the downstairs 'parlour', made breakfast and evening meals for them.

The 3 girls shared a double bed, GM got up at 4am every morning to bring in coal and make the fire before everyone else got up to go to work/ school. Then she went to work, physical cleaning work to the rich and snooty. The sad thing is she was she was so intelligent, gifted at creativity and music (she played the church organ with music she learnt from heart voluntarily) and sowed the most beautiful dresses. Also cakes.

Having rambled on a bit because this is deep to my heart hearing the stories, poverty was a case of just being able to survive, eat and have a roof. The DC were incredibly intelligent but had to to go to work aged 15 cand over all their wages for the family fund.

Poverty now has a different criteria, which of course it should as society has progressed. However aibu to compare the claim to poverty now to then? There is help, UC, recognition of SEN with DLa etc.

Sorry, but now those claiming poverty now wouldn't consider letting out a room, working all day and night, making clothes and baking just to survive.

Am I right? I wouldn't either as there has been so much to eradicate these hard times but I truly respect the hardship and feel so grateful for what we have now. Xx

We're going to round in circles now.

This is so ridiculous. This was the time when you could die from a preventable disease even when super wealthy, and when people thought nothing of using child labour, abuse single mothers, or someone who had a child out of wedlock. the times were brutal. We live in a civilised country, with a high standard of life in general, we are wealthy enough to support people who have less than - and yet, you seem to think this is "too much". Everything is relative. Poor in the UK is different to poor in India - would you like it to be the same? Shame on you.

Yes, they clearly would like poverty here to be like poverty in India. The poors deserve it for not having a spare room to let out and being too lazy to bake their own bread.

Of course, the Indian poor of today have it pretty sweet compared to the Indian poor of 200 years ago.

They don’t know they’re born, the pampered wasters.

I remember in Wales seeing hollowed out spaces in the hillside where families used to live while the father worked in the tin mines. That was poverty like we do not currently have. And I do not want to exist either.

The point you make is extremely relevant to today though. There are plenty of anti vaxxers nowadays, but when I walk round my local cemetery end see how many headstones refer to “their children who died in infancy”, or how many headstones there are for children under 5 - I’d bet my bottom dollar that those parents would have sacrificed an actual limb for a vaccine.

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. We should absolutely be making comparisons to appreciate the progress we have made if we want to retain that progress.

These are interesting and important questions.

That’s an entirely different issue - anti-vaxxers shouldn’t be treated like reasonable or grateful humans.

It’s exactly the same issue as “100 years ago people died from bugs that we’d now spend maybe a day in bed for”.

That fact from the past that you cite as irrelevant and doesn’t have any bearing on what we do now is the primary rationale for vaccines. If I look at vaccines and ignore the time that everyone died of those diseases, I absolutely would not be getting vaccinated.

How many children die now because they don’t have a vaccine?

The drop in child deaths is vastly down to improvement in healthcare and innovation and better living conditions

Clean water is important, but if all vaccines suddenly stopped working, child deaths would sky-rocket. This idea that vaccines aren't instrumental in preventing child deaths is a lie spread by anti - vaxxers.

In the UK, very very few I'd imagine, virtually nil perhaps....that's because vast majority are vaccinated and therefore there is herd immunity. Those who don't vaccinate are benefitting from the fact that most people do.

I don't think JandamiHash is getting the main point people are making, that past and present are connected.
She keeps getting distracted by the individual examples.

I keep forgetting that it costs money to turn the cooker on. Does it really cost that much? How do you know how much it costs?

There is a vast difference between true poverty and "not having every creature comfort one wants."

Tbh I googled it and found a bunch of people on moneysavingexpert discussing it. But I found similar prices quoted on several sites and it doesn’t seem far off.

Either way baking and selling bread is unlikely to stop someone being broke. You'd have to actually know enough people who'd be willing to pay decent money for a loaf (which is about 70p in a supermarket) I don't know anyone who would buy bread from me if I started baking tomorrow haha. Even my friend with hens has to give her excess eggs away for free because no one is willing to pay for them.
Plus the idea about renting out a spare room was equally hilarious how many broke people do you know with a spare room? I know whole families that live in one room what are they supposed to rent out a corner of their one room? What kind of responsible parents would want a random stranger living in the same house as their children anyway.

The ops money saving ideas are just as terrible as telling someone to start an onlyfans selling feet pics. The feet pic market is saturated and no one really wants to see your feet that much anyway

I think poverty today is less visible than 100 years ago. But it's still there: malnourishment, unheated homes, thin clothes, overcrowding, mould and damp, cultural deprivation, chronic stress.

I did laugh, though, at the suggested solutions of lodgers, home baking and sewing. I'm not poor and I don't have my own bedroom, let alone have spare for a lodger. And baking bread and sewing are bourgeois hobbies these days, not routes out of poverty. We're getting a bit 'let them eat cake' here.

I was raised poor, I know what it is. And I've had hard times, my kids had FSM. But I also know the difference between my own occasional troubles and the grinding intergenerational poverty that results in people in poorer boroughs dying on average several years younger than people in richer boroughs in London. The welfare state provides a safety net and that's a great thing, but capitalism has been really savage to those on the bottom. Lucky you if you don't see it.

Precisely! Priorities are completely wrong these days. A smartphone is not an "essential item"

I remember our elderly neighbour (over 40 years ago) telling me that when I had an apple! Seems bizarre now, doesn’t it? Makes me so cross to see kids apparently living in poverty and being so wasteful, throwing food and rubbish as they walk along to school 😢

Well I work in a job in east London that requires me going into peoples houses and I can assure you that there are many many families of 5 or more living in HMO in a single room the size of my bathroom, mattresses on the floor for the kids to sleep on, mould on the walls. Nowhere for the kids to play, sharing bathrooms with multiple strangers. Life is still unbelievably hard for many many families in the U.K.

Have to say I'm a bit irritated by people upthread going on about people unprepared to forgo luxuries.

I live in a humble two bedder, part of a pub that's been split into flats. The front door goes straight into the living room, which is also where I sleep and work. There is damp bubbling through the walls, nasty peeling laminate floor, right on the main road: it's shabby. I'm not saying poor me (I love living here) but most Mnetters wouldn't dream of it.

Dd2 has a lot of friends who are poor, a number of them are in care. When they come in here they always go 'ooh' and often say how posh it is. They think we're really rich. I ask them if they've eaten and they say not since yesterday, so I feed them. If they're all going out I'll give my daughter enough cash to get everyone a snack and they all tell me how kind I am.

But my dd1's friends, who are all very middle class and nice girls, say thanks but they're not awed by my 'generosity' because it is NORMAL for them to have adults feed them and give them treats (as it should be!). There is a HUGE difference - but you wouldn't know it out on the street, where they all look the same.

It really really is. If not a smart phone then a laptop or other way to get online. A smartphone is the most convenient of all the options.

I’ve just had a new boiler fitted which has an app. I can now see how much my heating costs on a daily basis and how much my daily shower or bath costs.
Decent deep relaxing bath 67p and a shower 10mins 18p.
It’s easy to forget just how much it costs every time we switch something on.

Currently the heating costs just under £3 a day but it is cold here at the moment. We have the heating set at 19deg during the day and 10deg at night. Not all the radiators are on. The house is warm and well insulated.
I’m becoming a little obsessed with monitoring the cost, the novelty will wear off but it is interesting how much more it costs as the temp goes down.

We are lucky that we can afford to heat the house but it has given me an insight into just how much it costs from day to day. If we were on a limited budget then I can imagine that we would be rationing the heating a lot more.

Yes. There’s a (small!) two-bedroom HMO flat in my building that has two unrelated families, both with children, renting it. That’s poverty. I don’t know whether they have smartphones or not, but what does it matter when they’re living like that?

For those who think the modern-day British poor have things too easy, there is NO-ONE who would meet their standards for “true” poverty.

They’ll always find someone worse off - conveniently either abroad or in history so it’s not something they have to worry about - and say that’s the only kind of poverty that counts.

I was born in south London and shared a single bed with two siblings in a tiny flat in the 90s, u would be surprised what people are going through even now