Was Malthus ever poor?

[Phillip V]

I was poor growing up (received free lunch at school; parents worked minimum wage type jobs), but now I am middle class as an adult. America is beautiful.

[CountDeMoney]

I think you're conflating poor choice of friends college off-campus living with poverty.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It's certainly possible for a child of upper-class parents to be poor, but we'd have to dig deeper to know. On one hand you have Mitt Romney's story about how him and Ann lived in a small one bedroom apartment where they ate their meals on an ironing board that folded out of the wall. They were certainly not living glamorously, but why were they living that way, and how far removed was Romney from the support of his father's vast wealth whenever he needed it? That's what I view as the core question in the Malthus situation, it's not enough to just live poor, if you genuinely had no ability to receive support from your parents then in essence their wealth was immaterial and you were legitimately poor. If financial assistance was a phone call (that you chose not to make) away, then you were not poor.

I'm not particularly concerned with statistical definitions, while DGuller is horrible and I'd love to see him buried up to his neck in dirt and watch people hurl car batteries at him til he was dead, he has a point--statistical definitions generally fail to be that important when talking about the "marginal cases" (the term I would use over corner cases.) Definitions of professional statisticians need not be what defines our conversations here. I often point out in conversations about urban v. rural matters that the U.S. Census defines any place that is a Census Designated Place with over 2,500 people to be urban. But when most people say "urban" they don't intend it to include some bumfuck town in Virginia with 3,000 people and no stop lights. They would think of that as a rural area or something neither urban nor rural, but they wouldn't think of it as "real urban." Same thing with being poor, there is obviously a statistical definition and in the United States at least it's based on income. If you fell below that level you could call yourself "poor" in that sense, but if you had access to untapped resources that easily could have dramatically enhanced your life then at best you were "living poor" you were never truly poor.

[garbon]

Garbon was poor once.  He considered going to Columbia.

No actually that's not true. I'm actually confused as to why I never applied to Columbia given that I had wanted to live in a big city at the time.

[DGuller]

I'm not particularly concerned with statistical definitions, while DGuller is horrible and I'd love to see him buried up to his neck in dirt and watch people hurl car batteries at him til he was dead

That's not nice. 

[The Brain]

Valmy says that OvB is banned.

[Admiral Yi]

Why car batteries?  Not a natural choice.

Malthus has never claimed that if he were dying of starvation or on the verge of having his power cut off his parents wouldn't have helped him out.  I don't think that's a fair test of "poor."  If I understand him correctly, his parents made it clear they were not going to subsidize his living expenses.  So he was to all intents and purposes living the life of a poor person.  He earned little income and lived modestly.

I was joking about slumming.  I was joking because Malthus gave no indication that he had bountiful other employment opportunities that would have paid much more, but which he declined because he wanted to keep it real or whatever.  I got the sense that he got out of college with an anthropology degree, and he did the best he could, which was a shit job working at a pottery shop.

[CountDeMoney]

Why car batteries?  Not a natural choice.

They have handles.  You could whip those fuckers at him like the hammer throw in the Olympics.

[Admiral Yi]

They have handles.  You could whip those fuckers at him like the hammer throw in the Olympics.

They also weigh six tons.  You could throw one about a foot and a half.  Plus one hit and he's in dead Jew storage.  For a successful stoning you want it to take a while.  You want an eyeball dangling out for 20 minutes while he sobs for mercy.

[CountDeMoney]

Maybe just use those volleyballs from gym, the ones with the open seam you could whip like a motherfucker in dodgeball, and just induce concussions that will fuck him up 20 years later.

Maybe use a croquet mallet, step on his head and use it as a striker to score through the wicket.  That'll work.

[Iormlund]

Garbon was poor once.  He considered going to Columbia.

What's wrong with Columbia?

[The Brain]

Garbon was poor once.  He considered going to Columbia.

What's wrong with Columbia?

Er, what isn't wrong with it?

[viper37]

As I pointed out in the other thread, it is surprisingly difficult for even the experts to agree on what constitutes poverty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Canada

http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/licos.htm

According to the above, the cut-off in the 1990s was around $18K, though not an "official" measure. I can't remember how much I earned, but I'm pretty sure it was less than that.

Of course, if CC is right, income-based measures are pointless because one isn't "really" poor unless one takes into account what one's parents make.   

Perhaps, CC, you ought to contact Statistics Canada and tell them what being poor "really" means - it evidently has nothing to do with how much you earn per year, but must also take into account one's family circumstances; all those 20 and 30 year olds complaining about the fact that there are no jobs for college graduates are not really "poor" at all, because look - they are educated. Even if they are making minimum wage washing dishes, that doesn't count. 

Were you ever in a situation where there was no legitimate way for you to meet your basic needs?

I may be wrong, but the way I see it is that you still had your parents supporting you for basic needs, and your excess cash was spent on drugs.  That does not qualify as poor when you have money for extras.

[MadImmortalMan]

Same thing with being poor, there is obviously a statistical definition and in the United States at least it's based on income. If you fell below that level you could call yourself "poor" in that sense, but if you had access to untapped resources that easily could have dramatically enhanced your life then at best you were "living poor" you were never truly poor.

Which is why income is a bad way to define poor. You can have a high income and still make yourself poor through bad management of it. Or pull down a really small income while owning millions of dollars worth of assets. I would venture to guess that both of those conditions are too common to be called outliers too. Luckily, it is taken into account for some forms of government stuff, but basing a statistical analysis or some kind of policymaking on income alone is dangerous.

[Ed Anger]

Ooooo! Poor stories....

I sold most of my 1st wargame collection to make a 400/mo house payment while eating bologna sandwiches as my main meal of the day. My car was a t-bird that only ran because my dad fixed it for me. And I did car repo because my friend took pity on me and made me a driver.

I miss my t-bird. And my copy of Battlefleet Mars.