While I agree he was being more than a little dismissive, I think this is an important thing to understand: "Poor" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.
When you grow up in the suburbs and your friends get brand new clothes every month when they get taken shopping, and you're lucky to get 2 new sets of clothes at the start of the school year, you feel poor. And the kid who grew up in a homeless shelter thinks you both sound rich.
Poor does different things to different people because poor is always relative. I was "poor" in NJ working in restaurants in my 20's and I never cooked at home because I worked 12-14 hour days. I still paid my rent, put gas in my car, and had money to buy drugs after it all. If I told someone who couldn't feed their kids what I was doing, they'd have looked at me like I was the biggest wastrel in the world. But when all I could see was the rich people rolling into the dining room day after day, I couldn't help but feel like I was at the very bottom of everything.
What you went through sounds terrible. And saying that it's just because you're lazy or stupid or "weren't being poor right" doesn't fix anything but just acts as a way to explain someone else's feelings/opinions. I wish you luck fellow human, because none of this is easy.
> And saying that it's just because you're lazy or stupid or "weren't being poor right" doesn't fix anything but just acts as a way to explain someone else's feelings/opinions.
Indeed! My dismissiveness comes from repeated encounters with well-meaning, well-off liberals who seemingly cannot find a single behavior they aren't willing to excuse on the basis of poverty, until they've by degrees whittled the poor down to automaton-like slugs in their minds, useless dependents, capable of nothing, completely lacking in agency.
I've been poor. I could make rice.
If the person I'm responding to's experience was different, I take them at their word.
People are making bad choices. How do you get them to make better choices, or do you just put your hands in your pockets and tell them it's their fault?
One might start by recognizing that poor people are, first of all, just people, which means there are lazy ones and hard-working ones and smart ones and dumb ones and some who've had bad luck and some who have brought all their problems on themselves -- and every possibility in between.
It isn't empathetic or helpful to treat a group of people as though they have no control over their own lives.
When you grow up in the suburbs and your friends get brand new clothes every month when they get taken shopping, and you're lucky to get 2 new sets of clothes at the start of the school year, you feel poor. And the kid who grew up in a homeless shelter thinks you both sound rich.
Poor does different things to different people because poor is always relative. I was "poor" in NJ working in restaurants in my 20's and I never cooked at home because I worked 12-14 hour days. I still paid my rent, put gas in my car, and had money to buy drugs after it all. If I told someone who couldn't feed their kids what I was doing, they'd have looked at me like I was the biggest wastrel in the world. But when all I could see was the rich people rolling into the dining room day after day, I couldn't help but feel like I was at the very bottom of everything.
What you went through sounds terrible. And saying that it's just because you're lazy or stupid or "weren't being poor right" doesn't fix anything but just acts as a way to explain someone else's feelings/opinions. I wish you luck fellow human, because none of this is easy.