Can You Afford To Be Poor?
Sep 4th, 2006 at 8:13 pm by Susie
Barbara Ehrenreich on being working poor:
There are other tolls along the road well-traveled by the working poor. If your credit is lousy, which it is likely to be, you’ll pay a higher deposit for a phone. If you don’t have health insurance, you may end taking that feverish child to an emergency room, and please don’t think of ER’s as socialized medicine for the poor. The average cost of a visit is over $1000, which is over ten times more than what a clinic pediatrician would charge. Or you neglect that hypertension, diabetes or mystery lump until you end up with a $100,000 problem on your hands.
So let’s have a little less talk about how the poor should learn to manage their money, and a little more attention to all the ways that money is being systematically siphoned off. Yes, certain kinds of advice would be helpful: skip the pay-day loans and rent-to-pay furniture, for example. But we need laws in more states to stop predatory practices like $50 charges for check-cashing. Also, think what some micro-credit could do to move families from motels and shelters to apartments. And did I mention a living wage?
If you’re rich, you might want to stay that way. It’s a whole lot cheaper than being poor.
It’s depressing, for sure. Just the way the Bush Class wanted it.