This is a difficult read... Depressing as hell.

[busterbrown]

"Why Poor People Make Bad Decisions"................Even though most of us here are not where she is.. It is easy to contemplate how one can fall into this abyss very easily..Very well written..

Not particularly perhaps because of life style choices, but rather a serious medical condition or a disastrous financial decision/situation etc. could get us there very easily..

There is a pitch at the end... But desperation is desperation...I will chip in..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-tirado/why-poor-peoples-bad-decisions-make-perfect-sense_b_4326233.html

[lapfog_1]

1. It's a great demonstration of something I've been saying for years now

It's very expensive to be poor in America.

The check cashing charges, the per night hotel charges for a dump of a room, the inability to cook good food to eat and feed yourselves because you literally cannot store fresh vegetables or meats, the expense of not having a bank account.

[busterbrown]

2. Yup and many of us here could end up in such a situation..n/t

[lapfog_1]

3. i have been there already, and even though I've been employed again for 4 years

at a decent salary... I still can't get a credit card and other things.

[tina tron]

15. Tell me about it.

I won't ever get hotel rooms when I'm traveling, from now on I will just rent a car and sleep in the car. Even in "nice" hotels that look clean I wake up the next day with bed bug bites. 90 dollars for 6 hours of sleep and horrible welts all over my neck and body. Then there is the paranoia that the bed bugs got into my luggage and I've transported them into my house where they are near impossible to get rid of. Just not worth it anymore.

[TwilightGardener]

4. Oh fer chrissakes. "Give me money and I'll write a book. Because broccoli

is intimidating and middle-classish, and cooking = cockroaches, and I like to spend my money on cigarettes instead of healthy food and I'm in college but still soooo downtrodden." Give me a fucking break.

[seveneyes]

5. She is well above $30,000 and has to keep raising the limit to make room for more

There have been many a dry time when a few extra hundred in charity would have made things a lot better, but I never imagined tens of thousands suddenly showing up. She is very fortunate to have the kindness of others pitching in such large sums.

[TwilightGardener]

6. They're suckers. But, fools and their money, yada yada.

There are tons of people I feel sorry for. This whiner/scam-artist isn't one of them. She reminds me of the parking-lot vultures that follow me to my car with a sob story about needing gas money or bus money, every time I walk out of the Safeway ro WalMart, except that she's far more educated and probably not on drugs.

[Warpy]

9. And how many paychecks away from homelessness are you?

Most people who hit the streets do so because of an illness, a job loss, a divorce, or other catastrophe they had no control over.

You think she's a whiner. I've been where she is, minus the kid and the smoking habit. She hit the nail on the head.

[TwilightGardener]

12. Yep, she's a well-educated, literate whiner. Who apparently doesn't fucking know

how to use a fucking sponge and some Pine Sol and wipe up after herself when she cooks--'cause she's just all poor and shit, and poor people just don't have the skills to not be filthy. You know who I feel bad for? Genuinely poor people who are that way because they either don't have the IQ or circumstances to do better, or they're older and have the rug yanked out from under them. Doesn't sound like this gal to me.

[TeeYiYi]

11. My favorite...

...was the girl who approached me in the store parking lot asking for money to pay for her grandma's prescription because grandma was in the hospital and she needs it.

I gave her $5 and told her to quit lying to people. Hospitals don't allow outside meds.

TYY

[TwilightGardener]

14. That's creative. 80% of the time for me it's the "out of gas" story, often complete

with plastic gas can (yesterday at WalMart). Many more women doing it now, too--and in the 'burbs. When I was a kid, the panhandlers were all in the city, almost all men, no cover stories, just wanted spare change. They're all wasting their time with me because even though I might be inclined sometimes to give them a buck, I just don't carry cash anymore.

[tina tron]

17. The "my car broke down and I can't use my credit card" is what I've gotten

And 9 times out of ten they are wearing a suit and tie.

[caraher]

19. It's usually a lie, but not always

I once had a guy approach me for a few bucks at a gas station, wanting enough gas to make it home. I told him to get the car and pull it up to the pump, saw the gas gauge on E. I swiped my card and gave him a few gallons.

[TwilightGardener]

21. Makes more sense when at a gas station--or on the side of the road.

And there's an actual car present.

[sabrina 1]

13. I generally give something to those 'whiners with a sob story' in the parking lots of Super Markets.

I prefer to err on the side of 'they are hungry, they need to eat' than on the side of 'I'm being scammed by a whiner and con artist'. It won't matter to me either way.

'For it is in giving that we receive'.

Not to mention that millions of Americans ARE starving and hopefully one of the homeless veterans, (one third of the homeless ARE veterans) I have given something to, was able to eat for another day. If not, that is on them, not on me.

[TwilightGardener]

16. You are a nice person. I don't like being followed in parking lots for money.

[blackspade]

24. With you 100%

If I have the cash, I give.
Having panhandled in my youth for food, I have a lot of sympathy for the poor.
I'm lucky in the current economic game of Russian roulette.
Tomorrow I might not be so lucky.

The woman in the OP deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Just because she is poor does not make her a scam artist.

[busterbrown]

7. I wonder what you think of addicts and alcoholics.

Not a disease right? Personal Choice.... Pull yourself up by your own boot straps..Love that Ayn Rand.

[jehop61]

8. Thank you fellow skepics

I was feeling so bad about myself because I really couldn't work up the sympathy for this woman as I thought a good progressive should. Now I know there are some of you just like me out there. The martinis, cigarettes and walking around the streets with $1000 in her pocket just didn't ring true to me. I felt she was making up excuses for everything that pulled her down and rejected any solutions. Her appearance and her apparent writing skills belied the words.

Looks like she is probably a scam artist after all.

[Warpy]

10. She still articulated it well

It's the combination of hopelessness, humiliation, and boredom from few choices that drive poor folks into making choices rich folks think are bad ones.

[bluestate10]

18. When a person doesn't have money, every small issue for more fortunate people is

a crisis for the person or people that don't have money. I am fortunate now, but I grew up poor. For my parents often, even five dollars was often beyond their reach. My parents lived most of their lives struggling until me and some siblings finished college and got jobs so that we could help them financially.

The constant feeling of insecurity and desperation that a person that is poor have causes the poor person to make choses that often blow up in their faces and cost them even more money. A recent example is the woman that was involved in the New Mexico state trooper shooting and violence incident. The incident started with her being written up for two simple moving violations, speeding and an expired inspection sticker. The cop that stopped her was initially reasonable, offering to ignore the inspection sticker violation, something which many police agencies allow their cops to do because people often forget about the sticker and aren't purposely not getting the car inspected. The women was given a $135 speeding ticket for going around 15-20 mph over the speed limit, in some states such a ticket is the norm. But $135 for a single mom who has five kids is a huge amount of money and the woman understandably wasn't happy to sign up for paying the ticket. To make a long story short, the woman's hesitancy to led to increasing hostility and ultimately to a situation tat could have cost her or her children their lives and allowed cops to unleash unconstitutional and disproportionate rage against her and her family. Now, the woman has legal problems that could potentially cost her jail time and thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, adding to her economic insecurity.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. I used to be a hardnose about giving money, but then I went to volunteer

in Mississippi after Katrina, and the Episcopal priest who ran it said something that changed my mind.

He said, "You can either judge people or serve them. You don't know why they do what they do."

He said that volunteers sometimes complained about hurricane victims taking "more food than they were entitled to" and that "they were probably selling it."

The priest's explanation was this: Some people have taken in large numbers of friends and relatives who lost their homes, but they can't afford to feed them on their meager incomes. Others indeed sell the food, because most of the businesses in the area have been destroyed, and they have no other source of cash income. Others are suffering from PTSD and can't feel safe unless they have extra food on hand. But just looking at a random stranger, we can't tell what their true situation is.

I thought of all the people I've known who seemed fine on the surface but whose dreadful problems became apparent when you got to know them.

My attitude now is that it's none of my business what a person does with the money I give them. If they buy food, fine. If they're stressed out beyond their ability to tolerate it, and drugs or booze or cigarettes will calm them, fine. If they buy a lottery ticket and win $5, fine. If they're tired of being sick and tired and they buy something trivial, fine. If they buy a bus ticket to go to the day labor office, fine.

It won't make them rich or me poor, but it's a change from the treatment they usually get, which is to be insulted, cursed, and worse, even assaulted and murdered.

That, at least, was something I learned from working with street kids. Our training emphasized that we should always treat street people with respect and courtesy, even if we did refuse them money.

In the Episcopal baptismal vows, one of the promises is "to respect the dignity of every human being."

Even people whose lives we don't approve of.

[Demo_Chris]

25. Exceptional post! nt

[Prism]

26. Perfectly stated

I just don't know why they're asking. And, I'll be honest, I get a slight charge from giving money to someone. It's a little happiness to know not everyone is judging or looking down upon you, that there is, for a brief moment, a connection and understanding that life is not easy.

If I can help, in any small way, and give that tiny sliver of relief, if only momentary, I'm happy to do so.

I gave a dollar to a guy in the Safeway parking lot this evening. Not much at all, just what was in my wallet. Less than nothing. But he was so freakin happy about it. It was bittersweet. How messed up that someone is thrilled by a dollar.

[Art_from_Ark]

27. This^^^^

[OldEurope]

30. Thank you for sharing! nft

[Curmudgeoness]

22. If you want a better glimpse into being poor,

Demo Chris wrote an awesome answer hidden in another thread. This should have been an OP. You will not regret reading it.

Every month, month after month, forever, you are in frantic game of whack a mole with the little bastards coming faster and faster. Next month is next month, you'll figure something out then or lose the game.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4064139

[CFLDem]

28. :shiver:

What a nightmare.

Makes me appreciate my job when I wouldn't normally appreciate it.

[Curmudgeoness]

29. Appreciate my job,

my life, my luck. I do realize all the things that pull poor people down, but hearing it stated so well is haunting.