Was Malthus ever poor?

[Malthus]

What it doesn't include, is exclusions based on extended family circumstances. Your typical liberal-arts-degree-young-adult-dishwasher-from-middle class-family is still defined as "poor" if he or she falls below that line, in spite of the fact that causes CC and DG conniptions, and in spite of the fact he or she lives like unto a god compared with your average Calcutta scavenger. 

Would you consider yourself typical?

I was then, other than my oddball occupation of potter's assistant.

I'm not now, as my income is easily in the top percentile in Canada.

[Malthus]

First world poverty is defined in relative terms.  People should not confuse that concept of poverty with absolute poverty.

Yes, but the problem with relative poverty is where are the lines to be drawn?

In the UK it is defined as having a household income of less than 60% of the median household income. When incomes fell in the recession the rate of poverty also fell because so many benefit-dependent households crept above that 60% line. Interestingly my household counts as "in poverty" as the two houses, capital gains from my sharedealing, undistributed profits from my wife's business and cash savings are immaterial for the purposes of the definition 

Which is why I voted "Yes" to the poll question. In a hopelessly subjective area he said he was poor for a few years. I believe him, if he felt he was poor then he was, who are we to quibble? After all, it drove him into training as a blood-sucking lawyer 

Hey, I resemble that remark. 

I don't think, myself, that the issue is "hopelessly subjective", so much as it is difficult to define in a society that has a resonably socialist safety net. Obviously, the number of people *actually* starving to death, dead of exposure, etc. in Canadian society is very limited - usually the mentally ill or hopelessly addicted who more or less deliberately avoid social services - so in absolute terms, we don't have "poverty" like that (with the usual disclaimer about the native situation).

What we are left with is a term that is relative to be sure, but it is not wholly subjective, either - it acknowleges that there are folks earning less than would allow for what the people making the term would account as a decent life in our society, for purposes of establishing taxation, adjusting the social safety net, etc.

My point is that I've seen what that was like, or at least, what I myself believe to be an income too low to live a decent life - and my opinion is backed up with that of various policymakers whose job it is to make that determination, whose links I have posted above. I don't claim, and never have, to have grown up as poor as CC's family, or to have lived like Meri's family - let alone like a Calcutta scavenger.

That experience has, in turn, made me (I think) rather more liberal on those matters than I otherwise would be, in supporting stuff like higer taxation on people like I myself am now - higher income earners. As well as a determination to, well, earn money as a blood-sucking lawyer ... 

[crazy canuck]

Ah, now we begin the phase wherein people compete to see how offended they can be because others don't agree with them!

*pops popcorn*

I am waiting for the phase when Grumbler contributes something worthwhile.

We can't all have his lifespan.

[merithyn]

I'm sceptical about the extent of claimed poverty in first-world countries. In the UK it is claimed that there are millions, but the overwhelming majority of these people have homes, access to clean water, electricity and enough cheap food to make them fat.

Now these people do have my sympathy, apart from anything else it can be rather boring being broke and being excluded from the various activities most of us do without a thought. But it is simply not in the same league as living in a Nairobi shanty town or Calcutta slum.

I can tell you that there were many days that my family went hungry. We didn't qualify for food stamps because my mother made too much money, by roughly $50/month. We had a house because my dad's cousin sold it to us for dirt cheap. Our mortgage was $120/month, iirc, but the electricty, water, and phone weren't a certainty. (We had to have a phone because my dad was very ill; otherwise, we would have done without.) On top of that, due to Dad's illness, most of my mother's paycheck went to pay his medical bills.

There's a reason that I lived with another family when I was very young.

No, not Calcutta slum poverty, but I think you're mistaken in thinking that first-world poverty isn't painful. One must qualify for assistance, and if one doesn't quite qualify, then one suffers with minimal assistance at all from the government.

[crazy canuck]

What it doesn't include, is exclusions based on extended family circumstances. Your typical liberal-arts-degree-young-adult-dishwasher-from-middle class-family is still defined as "poor" if he or she falls below that line, in spite of the fact that causes CC and DG conniptions, and in spite of the fact he or she lives like unto a god compared with your average Calcutta scavenger. 

Would you consider yourself typical?

I was then, other than my oddball occupation of potter's assistant.

I'm not now, as my income is easily in the top percentile in Canada.

Malthus, a statistical anomaly put your income, for a brief period of your life, into the category of poor. Do you really believe that it is typical for someone to get a free undergraduate education?

Your argument that you briefly joined the ranks of the poor completely misses the point that you didnt have to pay a dime for your degree and that gave you the freedom to spend those few years doing whatever the hell you wanted.  In other words you were rich enough to play at being poor for a time.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm sceptical about the extent of claimed poverty in first-world countries. In the UK it is claimed that there are millions, but the overwhelming majority of these people have homes, access to clean water, electricity and enough cheap food to make them fat.

Now these people do have my sympathy, apart from anything else it can be rather boring being broke and being excluded from the various activities most of us do without a thought. But it is simply not in the same league as living in a Nairobi shanty town or Calcutta slum.

I can tell you that there were many days that my family went hungry. We didn't qualify for food stamps because my mother made too much money, by roughly $50/month. We had a house because my dad's cousin sold it to us for dirt cheap. Our mortgage was $120/month, iirc, but the electricty, water, and phone weren't a certainty. (We had to have a phone because my dad was very ill; otherwise, we would have done without.) On top of that, due to Dad's illness, most of my mother's paycheck went to pay his medical bills.

There's a reason that I lived with another family when I was very young.

No, not Calcutta slum poverty, but I think you're mistaken in thinking that first-world poverty isn't painful. One must qualify for assistance, and if one doesn't quite qualify, then one suffers with minimal assistance at all from the government.

Point taken about the medical bills, something which we never have to worry about here so often forget in these discussions.

[crazy canuck]

Point taken about the medical bills, something which we never have to worry about here so often forget in these discussions.

Even when living in a country with medical coverage being poor is no picnic.  Whether one lives in the First World or Third World I suspect a person feels the effects of hunger and homelessness in similar ways.

Its just that in a rich First World country there is more opportunity to recieve assistance from neighbours and the community who have the resources to help.  Which is what occurred in my family's case.

[Malthus]

What it doesn't include, is exclusions based on extended family circumstances. Your typical liberal-arts-degree-young-adult-dishwasher-from-middle class-family is still defined as "poor" if he or she falls below that line, in spite of the fact that causes CC and DG conniptions, and in spite of the fact he or she lives like unto a god compared with your average Calcutta scavenger. 

Would you consider yourself typical?

I was then, other than my oddball occupation of potter's assistant.

I'm not now, as my income is easily in the top percentile in Canada.

Malthus, a statistical anomaly put your income, for a brief period of your life, into the category of poor. Do you really believe that it is typical for someone to get a free undergraduate education?

Your argument that you briefly joined the ranks of the poor completely misses the point that you didnt have to pay a dime for your degree and that gave you the freedom to spend those few years doing whatever the hell you wanted.  In other words you were rich enough to play at being poor for a time.

The undergrad cost was a blip at the time - it was only around $1500 a year, because undergrad was (still is) pretty highly subsidized. I dunno why you are making such a deal about that. The significant fact was that, on graduating, I was unable to secure employment above the menial, because the degree, while fun, was worthless in terms of employability.

That's why, after seeing how things were going, I decided to go back to school and try over.

The situation would have been no different if I had a debt because of tuition - I still would have had no better employment. An absence of tuition debt doesn't make anyone "rich".

[Malthus]

I'm sceptical about the extent of claimed poverty in first-world countries. In the UK it is claimed that there are millions, but the overwhelming majority of these people have homes, access to clean water, electricity and enough cheap food to make them fat.

Now these people do have my sympathy, apart from anything else it can be rather boring being broke and being excluded from the various activities most of us do without a thought. But it is simply not in the same league as living in a Nairobi shanty town or Calcutta slum.

I can tell you that there were many days that my family went hungry. We didn't qualify for food stamps because my mother made too much money, by roughly $50/month. We had a house because my dad's cousin sold it to us for dirt cheap. Our mortgage was $120/month, iirc, but the electricty, water, and phone weren't a certainty. (We had to have a phone because my dad was very ill; otherwise, we would have done without.) On top of that, due to Dad's illness, most of my mother's paycheck went to pay his medical bills.

There's a reason that I lived with another family when I was very young.

No, not Calcutta slum poverty, but I think you're mistaken in thinking that first-world poverty isn't painful. One must qualify for assistance, and if one doesn't quite qualify, then one suffers with minimal assistance at all from the government.

Point taken about the medical bills, something which we never have to worry about here so often forget in these discussions.

The US may well have "real poverty" in ways that the rest of the first world doesn't.

[CountDeMoney]

If any of you saw that jpeg, yeah I fucked up. 

[crazy canuck]

The undergrad cost was a blip at the time - it was only around $1500 a year, because undergrad was (still is) pretty highly subsidized. I dunno why you are making such a deal about that. The significant fact was that, on graduating, I was unable to secure employment above the menial, because the degree, while fun, was worthless in terms of employability.

That's why, after seeing how things were going, I decided to go back to school and try over.

The situation would have been no different if I had a debt because of tuition - I still would have had no better employment. An absence of tuition debt doesn't make anyone "rich".

An absence of debt certainly provides more flexibility of choice in what you are willing to do.  If you had debt you may have tried harder to find a better paying job - even if that job was not anywhere near what you wanted.  You also would likely have worked more than one job as many students finishing their degrees with debt did and continue to do.

You also probably would have taken less time to make the decision you needed more training to find a better paying job to help pay off your debt.

Your priviledged position gave you an opportunity to live on less than you otherwise could have done.  True that does not make one rich.  But having come from a rich background gave you that opportunity.

[Jacob]

Personally, I think the differences that I've observed between the "real poor" and the "well off youth experiencing an episode of being low income" comes down to a number of fairly ephemeral but nonetheless real qualities; many of them fairly neatly encapsulated in the concept of class.

I'm talking about things like approach to various risks in making life decision, money management skills, ways to social network, approach to education, and general confidence.

My experience is much closer to Malthus' in general trajectory. When I was 17 - in my last year of high school - I moved in with two of my friends from school. For my part, my step-father - a diplomat - got posted overseas again and took the family with him; I had some choices, but in the end I said "fuck it" and decided to stay and finish high school where I was. I got a few hundred bucks a month on the side from my mom (which was not enough to cover rent, much less live on), but otherwise was on my own.

At the same time, one of my roomies - and my best friend at the time - moved out from living with his (single, welfare collecting) mom in a half-way house for recovering drug-addicts where he'd lived for years.

We both had decent jobs for our situation - working part time as sales clerks at Eaton's. I got those jobs for us through the mother of a friend who happened to be an HR lady at the department store there, using my social network in a way that was perfectly natural (but inaccessible to my friend).

In terms of Canadian living standards, we were fairly poor - we lived in a shitty part of town and 10 kg bags of rice with soy sauce formed the staple of our diet. The difference was that for me (and the third room mate, who was rebelling against his somewhat strict military father), the dip in living standard was the result of us separating from our families, while for my other friend it was a continuation of what he'd always known growing up.

A year later, I applied for university in BC and went. I didn't have much of a plan - and less guidance than most middle class kids because my parents were not there - but is what you did, and I did it, and I went (after visiting my family in Europe over the summer, because while they weren't paying for me living on my own in high school of course they wanted to see me).

My buddy - very bright, and an effortless A student - did not apply to university at all; he had no relatives who'd gone to university, the cost seemed prohibitive - even as he stayed in town. He wanted to move to BC, but it took him a year to figure out a plan and save the money he felt he needed to to do so.

This kind of thing played out a number of times. I got into the gaming industry back when it was still desperate for people - I spent a year in a program and took on some student debt to do so. He was interested, but the idea of not working for that long and taking on debt was too risky for him.

The point is that our shared period of not-having-money - we weren't well off in Vancouver either - is that for him it represented the best anyone in his immediate family and family-social circle had done, and he had a good view (and close experience) of how far down you could go from there if you messed up; for me it represented a temporary lowering of life-style level as I figured out exactly how I'd get to the middle class life style I always subconsciously expected to live.

So yeah - like Malthus I have a experienced what it's like to live on a tiny budget for years, and in one way you can definitely call that  being poor. But I agree with CC and Merithyn that it's very different from growing up poor; carrying with you the skills, attitudes, assumptions, and benefits you get from coming from a family of academics, civil servants, and generally comfortably middle class people puts you in a very different place from someone who grew up in poverty even if you are sharing the same standard of living at a particular point in time.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, I think that puts it nicely Jacob.  To go to university at all was, at the time, a big risk.  My father was dead set against it because of the cost and I had to give up my job (a low wage but still working).  No one in my family had gone to university before me.

Ultimately the main reason I finally went was because of basketball and my coach convinced my dad it would be a good idea.  Still, at the time,  it seemed like a huge crap shoot.  If it had not been for basketball there is no way I would have gone.  I would have continued on in my job because it was the most secure thing going.  When one is poor it is difficult to take risks.

The point I am having trouble articulating to Malthus is that the only "risk" he took was having the kind of poor employment prospects after undergrad which I had to live with all my life before I went to University.  Once in university I saw a whole new world of opportunity open up.  Something that Malthus and kids of his "class" knew all their lives.

[OttoVonBismarck]

No. Parents did not support basic needs. They existed, and surely if I was in serious trouble they would have helped out.

Someone with a get out of jail free card / life jacket isn't really poor, sorry. I'm sure part of your self-narrative is enriched by convincing yourself you were poor once. You never were. Thread over.

I would frame your wilderness years as a "poor use of your time and abilities", but not a period when you were poor. They are a teachable moment to your children that you need to plan your career when you pick a degree, but not really anything about being poor.

[Admiral Yi]

CC and Biscuit: did either of you test the job market after receiving your bachelors'?  I suspect not.  In Biscuit's case, obviously not.