20 Things the Poor Do Every Day That the Rich Never Have to Worry About

http://www.alternet.org/20-things-poor-do-every-day-rich-never-have-worry-about

By Benjamin Irwin
December 5, 2013

1. Search for affordable housing. Especially in urban areas, the waiting list for affordable housing can be a year or more. During that time, poor families either have to make do with substandard or dangerous housing, depend on the hospitality of relatives, or go homeless.
[Or they scrape up enough money to move into a rental, stay until they are evicted because they can't pay the rent.]

2. Try to make $133 worth of food last a whole month. That’s how much the average food stamp recipient gets each month. •••

3. Subsist on poor quality food. Not because they want to, but because they can’t afford high-quality, nutritious food. They’re trapped in a food system that subsidizes processed foods, making them artificially cheaper than natural food sources. •••

4. Skip a meal. One in six Americans are food insecure. Which means (among other things) that they’re sometimes forced to go without eating. •••

5. Work longer and harder than most of us. While it’s popular to think people are poor because they’re lazy , the poor actually work longer and harder than the rest of us. More than 80 percent of impoverished children have at least one parent who works; 60 percent have at least one parent who works full-time. Overall, the poor work longer hours than the so-called “job creators.”

6. Go to bed 3 hours before their first job starts. ... because they’re more likely to work multiple jobs, in which case job #1 means they’re probably just getting to bed three hours before job #2 starts.

7. Try to avoid getting beat up by someone they love. According to some estimates, half of all homeless women in America ran away to escape domestic violence.

8. Put themselves in harm’s way, only to be kicked to the streets afterward. How else do you explain 63,000 homeless veterans?

9. Pay more than their fair share of taxes. Some conservative pundits and politicians like to think the poor don’t pay their fair share, that they are merely “takers.” While it’s true the poor don’t pay as much in federal income tax — usually because they don’t earn enough to qualify — they do pay sales tax, payroll tax, etc. In fact, the bottom 20% of earners pay twice as much in taxes (as a share of their income) as do the top 1%.

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14. Live with chronic pain. Those earning less than $12,000 a year are twice as likely to report feeling physical pain on any given day.

15. Live shorter lives. There is a 10-14 year gap in life expectancy between the rich and the poor. In recent years, poor people’s life expectancy has actually declined — in America, the wealthiest nation on the planet.

16. Use drugs and alcohol pretty much the same as (or less than) everyone else. Despite the common picture of inner city crack houses, drug use is pretty evenly spread across income groups. And rich people actually abuse alcohol more than the poor.

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18. Get themselves off welfare as soon as possible. Despite the odds, the vast majority of beneficiaries leave the welfare rolls within five years. Even in the absence of official welfare-to-work programming, most welfare recipients enroll in some form of vocational training. Why? Because they’re desperate to get off welfare.

19. Have about the same number of children as everyone else. •••

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