Why The Poor Don't Work, According To The Poor{image warning}

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-poor-dont-work-according-to-the-poor-2013-9


Katie Busker, who receives food stamps and is unemployed due to a disability, stays home and watches the kids while her sister and brother-in-law are at work.

***SNIP



As you might expect, the are some big differences between the genders on this front. Women are far more likely than men to cite family. Men are more likely to cite their inability to find a job.



***SNIP

Americans 18 to 64 who lived under the poverty line in 2012 and did not work during the year, by reason for not working (U.S. Census, in thousands)

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/why-the-poor-dont-work-according-to-the-poor/279900/#ixzz2g0D5R3jv

***when addressing poverty -- i am a huge proponent of going directly to the community and finding what they need and getting what they need to them.
instead of talking ABOUT the poor -- let the poor talk for them selves.

[treestar]

1. Home or Family reasons

seems biggest, so that's interesting, in that "cannot find work" is the most sympathetic. I would actually not want to send this to right wingers in that they will jump on that. (According to them, there is always a job out there, and so it's a choice.)

[CTyankee]

2. My guess is that the job doesn't pay enough to cover child care expenses.

If there were affordable child care, like the Europeans have, more people WOULD work.

[treestar]

4. Good point.

And either parent - righties will assume it's the mother, of course.

Another of their inconsistencies is that they insist mothers should stay home with children. Unless they are poor. Then they should go find work. Child care doesn't enter their heads.

[adirondacker]

5. Exactly. Same goes for elder care. You can't pay someone $14.00 an hour to go and work for the same.

[gopiscrap]

8. yup

[BelgianMadCow]

13. on affordable childcare in Europe: recently, in Germany, many moms have to stay home

Just saw a docu about the problems with childcare in Germany. It would seem that in many German cities, daycare can cost as much as 1000 euro per month, and is hard to come by on top. As a consequence, many moms especially have to choose to stay at home, because it's not doable financially.

Here in Belgium, childcare price is largely coupled to income, and it would typically be from 300 to 400 euro / month.

Nonetheless, that has kept me from taking a part time job in the past, because it would have been a big net negative if you include the transport, clothing and other costs associated with having a job.

What I think, is that we should call taking care of your children a job as well, and pay it say 1500 euro / month. Isn't it worth that?

[CTyankee]

19. I was thinking about day care centers ("creches") in France when I was posting...

If France can do this, I don't understand why Belgium and Germany can't...

[canuckledragger]

15. Childcare or not...

I call call it sustainable work.

If you take a hit by taking a minimum wage job that doesn't provide enough hours, It's not sustainable as a real source of income (one reason being you sacrifice the time for it that could better be used elsewhere)

And if all there's available is minimum wage, low-hour jobs that's not exactly sustainable in the long run for anybody, is it?

[Warpy]

3. Yet they're the first to jump down a woman's throat

if her kids get into trouble because she's working multiple jobs to support them. How dare she? Doesn't she know her kids deserve a full time parent?

Don't forget also that family concerns also cover the "sandwich generation," with kids at home and elderly parents with health issues that must be tended to or someone in the family with a severe disability requiring full time care.

"Home and family" issues cover a hell of a lot and are fully deserving of sympathy. In many ways, they're more compelling than "can't find work" because they're permanent issues that only resolve when kids leave home and dependent people die.

Since women are expected to be caregivers, that's the reason it's so disproportionately female.

[treestar]

6. Which is exactly what right wingers think women should be doing.

The man should be making enough to fund it all. Which proves again they are hypocrites. Not every man can make that much - the righties just want someone to feel superior to.

[gopiscrap]

9. I don't see why woman would vote republican

[jwirr]

12. I fit into that catagory most of my adult life until I started getting social security. My oldest

daughter is severely disabled - totally dependent on the care of another person for all life situations. She does not talk, walk and is in diapers. Has seizures almost daily. The alternative back then was for us was keeping her home or place her into an institution. My ex opted to leave us and become one of those productive workers. He has had a good life. I opted to take care of her for 45 years. We lived on welfare and what little I could make in later years cleaning houses etc. In the early years there were no jobs that would have allowed me to be at home when she needed me.

So I have lived as one of the poor all those years and because I did not "work" I get a minimum social security and SSI. Still poor and I will die poor but I would take care of her anyhow. The thing that most people hearing my story do not realize is that The cost of care for her while I cared for her was much less than it would have been in either an institution or a foster home. We never had more than $700 a month income and today she is in a foster home and they get $3000+ a month. My ex never paid more than $20 a month child support.

I fit in that catagory and I am proud of what I did. All those ignorant rethugs can stick it.

[treestar]

17. They certainly can

It doesn't happen to them, they got theirs, and they sit there in smug judgmental-ness.

[Hydra]

18. Good job

And many people don't understand how much it costs to take care of people when it involves an institution or such. IMO, it's much better for the person to be taken care of by their family(if they are doing it properly), but we have this obsession with making everyone work to "prove their worth."

I hope you can manage going forward, but you made the same choice I currently am, and I think it was the right one.

[jwirr]

21. You will be okay and in the end you will not regret it. I know my worth even if the rethugs do not.

[Hydra]

22. I don't regret it

I'm taking care of a disabled parent. It was not a hard choice about me doing it or allowing them to become a ward of the state. Some days are hard, and it's certainly difficult with the world seeing them as some sort of useless eater, but we have a values gap in the US right now, and I refuse to adopt that lack of values.

Solidarity!

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. So long as "cannot find work" is a nonzero number...

... then addressing the family barriers won't improve overall employment.

Shifting the reasons for not working doesn't really help very much.

FWIW, caring for children is a legitimate reason to not work. It isn't a problem to be solved.

[sammytko]

7. Why is there an image warning? nt

[xchrom]

10. sothat people who don't have fast connections don't open the thread.

i've been asked multiple times to post a warning in the header if there are lots of images.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. Look at that dip in retirees around the 2008 recession bomb.

Those people that otherwise would have retired ended up more or less economic slaves right there. AND their jobs, instead of becoming vacant as they would have otherwise retired, remained filled, so you have some upward pressure there on the people who couldn't find work, because there are fewer vacant jobs for them to pursue.

This is the devastation BushCo wrought on our economy... Human suffering writ large.

Edit: AND the dip in ill/disabled. Again, perfect mirror image. People who probably should not have been working, forcing themselves to slog on through.

[fasttense]

16. Many of those reasons overlap.

It's not that I don't work because I'm retired. I retired because there was NO GOOD JOB for me.

I bet a lot of those "for family reasons" disappear if you dig into what kind of job would fit into their family life or if those jobs paid enough to cover the family problem.

The truth is if good paying jobs were out there, people would be working them.

But instead we are pouring money all over corporations and the uber rich who are creating NO MORE GOOD JOBS and are NOT PAYING TAXES. So corporations and the uber rich are parasites feeding off the rest of us. Trickle down is STILL NOT working.

[Hydra]

20. +1000

Also, they don't WANT to make more jobs. They love this "competitive" environment where they can pay less, demand more and say no strings on their side.

IMO, I don't know what our obsession with having everyone work is anyway. Our planet can't handle unlimited growth, and having a throwaway society is in whose best interest? We're more productive than ever with less people...but still we demand everyone slave away?