The Poverty Lie

Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield at The Heritage Foundation:

As scholar James Q. Wilson has stated, “The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.”[3] In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation.[4] In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.

Another quality piece of objective research from the folks at the Heritage Foundation. I think it’s worth noting that many of the things today’s supposed impoverished families have are amenities that I did not grow up with. We did not have an air conditioner when I was young. I also recall bugging my parents for a Super Nintendo (man, am I that old already?). I was told we couldn’t afford it. Some of that was probably just a convenient excuse for the fact that my mom did not want me to play any more video games than I already was at friends’ houses, but we were by no means rich when I was young.

I never thought of us as being poor, though. We just lived within our means. My parents were young and did not have a lot of money. That’s how most people’s lives go. When you’re young you don’t have much. As you grow you save, advance your career, and you typically have more disposable income in your later years.

I think today a lot of people have access to large amounts of credit and many of them don’t know what it means to live within their means. This leads to a situation where people have a 50" HDTV, X-BOX, cable service, cell phone, etc, and they think they can’t afford health insurance. When really they simply don’t prioritize health insurance because it’s a very expensive thing and you don’t get any benefit from it unless something bad happens to you.

I’m reminded of a time a couple of years ago when I helped a friend of mine take care of a squirrel problem. He owns a four family apartment building and we had to go through one of the apartments to get to the attic where the squirrels were causing problems. I remember moving about seven different versions of Monopoly game sets out of the closet and thinking to myself “who needs this many editions of Monopoly?”. Also while we were there the current tenants proudly showed us their new Nintendo Wii hooked to a nice flat-screen TV.

Later that night my landlord friend told me he was wrestling with the option of terminating their lease because they were about four months behind on their rent payment. It really hit me, those tenants have no idea how to prioritize their finances. I’m sure they could afford to pay their rent, they just decided to buy things instead.