2.00 a Day

[tylerrr]

Have you read this one?

https://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living- ... 54481195X/

[EdithKeeler]

I have. It was a very sobering look at poverty in America and what people do to get by. One of the things they talk about is how little cash people who receive benefits have, and that basically, you can't live without cash in one form or another, and what people do in order to get cash to do things like pay for kids' school fees, whatever. Not a perfect book, but it gave me a lot to think about.

[tylerrr]

I have. It was a very sobering look at poverty in America and what people do to get by. One of the things they talk about is how little cash people who receive benefits have, and that basically, you can't live without cash in one form or another, and what people do in order to get cash to do things like pay for kids' school fees, whatever. Not a perfect book, but it gave me a lot to think about.

thanks

[BRUTE]

Scratch Beginnings is another interesting one about living in poverty. it's a middle-class college grad pretending to be non-middle class and non-college educated for a year or so, starting from scratch - in a homeless shelter. he gets a manual labor job, starts saving, and so on. after a year, he's got a car and some cash in the bank.

somewhat illustrative of it being in part an environmental/mindset thing.

[jacob]

Before reading it, I figured this was about how to live on $2/day. Not quite.

Draw two circles with an overlap like a Venn diagram. On the one side we have the cash economy. On the other side, we have the welfare economy with TANF, SNAP, Sec 8. The $2/day refers to the overlap between the two and how the poor on these programs have very little access to cash-money and how this makes things harder than they otherwise have to be.

A point made is that handing out money for work (even if it's make-work) is more compatible with American values. Compare to standing in line/spending a huge amount of time most of which is futile to get approved for vouchers, get rejected for jobs, etc. Not to mention various illegal schemes to turn these vouchers or loopholes into cash (e.g. people selling the SSN of relatives to higher-income people who use them to get tax exemptions).

In ERE terms, I would describe poverty as a cultural problem that translates into "negative" capital or liabilities. This is often related to family members who provide a net-negative contribution in most cases (violence, rape ... or simply taking care of several children ... in one case dozens)... but also sometimes personal habits. For example, a few people seem to miss a lot if not all their teeth. Is that simply bad oral hygiene or meth? We don't know. Richer families could simply pay to make these problems go away e.g. the proverbial Hollywood star who goes into rehab or gets a full set of dental impants cf. dealing with the crazy uncle who stays up all night shouting and smashing things and not being able to afford dentures.

There are some bad-management decisions as well. For example, in one house, the budget list in order of priority is rent, water+sewage, cigarettes ... and the same house pays for cable ... that's before fixing the electric outlets (only two functional ones, so lots of extension cords) or broken water pipes (apparently the bucket system is common). However, liabilities as per above seem to outweigh mismanagement. Aside from this house example, money management seems no better nor worse than the average consumer, e.g. $25/month cellphones, etc.

Both of these are essentially cultural problems and not so much a cash or $2/day problem. This is also why your average middle-class college grad or personal finance guru would not find it hard to live in $2/day (given free rent and free food) because they aren't dealing with all the other baggage ... and if they did, they'd probably be willing to wash their hands off the situation and get out of town. Also see Hillbilly Elegy.

To compare and contrast hard-mode and easy-mode with medium-mode, consider a part-time min-wage person w/o family liabilities and maybe even a bit of support (e.g. being able to borrow $50 from mom) but standard [stupid] consumer habits, e.g. they spend $100/month on their smartphone+cable or $100 for pet bills, but often go hungry because they ran out of money for food. Their problem could be fixed by taking Dave Ramsey seriously. The poverty (hard-mode) problem needs substantially more fixing.

[BRUTE]

good analysis. the poverty seems cultural. there are certain subcultures/tribes that are so socially segregated from the middle class, yet financed by it through welfare schemes, that they've developed a culture of living that cannot support them. brute thinks mixing up culture/removing segregation would probably help, but is not sure how that could be achieved.

[vexed87]

brute thinks mixing up culture/removing segregation would probably help, but is not sure how that could be achieved.

By striving for equality in opportunity, not outcomes.

[BRUTE]

that's a bit vague. does that mean free child care? standardized education? health care?