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Factories closed. Towns fell. You know what saved a lot of small towns? Prisons. Small towns began competing to become the home of a new prison. (One reason decriminalization arguments don’t land is because crimes are prisons are jobs.)
Whenever you talk about poverty, people jump in to remind you it’s worse elsewhere. Why? Because poverty isn’t something we’re supposed to notice in America. It’s the forbidden topic.
Hello the unroll you asked for: Thread by @Cernovich: "People who grew up working class have more stories than a canned line like, "My mom scrubbed toilets." I'll tell ya what […]" https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1078833298426585088.html …
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I know your not looking for an applause but damn. Well written. Spoke to me. I sort of get it now (without experiencing it) and it makes sense. We need more of this style on Twitter. I feel I learned something today. Thank you.
Coming home from school to a house where the lights are out, or the phone was dead because it's a choice between food and gas for beater so mom could get to work, or sitting in the dark. Dark won. Doing laundry in the sink with cold water. Mom never took welfare. God Bless her.
Both her daughters got college educations on our own dime. One a CPA one an attorney. Mom's lights stay on now. Poor was a challenge not a hardship.
I imagine the question of why somebody donates to Africa or maybe Haiti is followed by a question: "Why not donate to the poor in our own country instead?" And I think the general feeling is that a dollar goes further elsewhere.
I have 4 siblings; dad made $8 per hour (after working there 20 years); we lived in a trailer house; mom and dad were devout Christians. Everything you wrote here was spot on. Very nicely done.
What an amazing read. Thank You for sharing.
Because we would have to address the reason for it.
It’s also because there is nowhere else in the world where poverty can be overcome to the extent that it can in the U.S. I’m not saying it’s easy to do so, but our system at least allows it. My family did it in a generation, which would have been impossible in most of the world.
I think it’s partly a phenomenon of our left-hemisphere (Lh) dominant culture. The Lh is irrationally optimistic and the right-hemisphere (Rh) is more realistically pessimistic. As we lose Rh function we become obsessed with “positivity.” I think @divided_brain discusses it well
Well said mike. As a fellow person who grew up poor. I had a lot of the same experiences as you. My whole fight in life is to never return to that. I wish you the best. Happy new year
Two bedroom house with 8 children and generally 2 dogs, 1 bathroom. One car that wasn’t in great shape. A teacher once gave me a new pair of tennis shoes because mine had holes and it was winter! We learned to help others
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I too was very poor. My mom never learned how to drive so we had to walk, take the bus or ask for a ride. She made me promise to learn how to drive because she didn’t like the feeling of people saying no when she really needed a ride. I was so scared, but I did it 
Great tweets
Thank you for this. Intact marriages help too. We were 12 kids. My parents were in it together. I was at my dads college graduation.
Nah @Cernovich . It's only 'forbidden' in certain rarefied circles.
The rest of us know the score.
The conditions of many large cities in this country are shocking. But we tell ourselves “liberals run it” or some other BS so we can snark at places fellow Americans live. People need to open their eyes to urban and rural America & ask how we’re helping our brothers and sisters.
Well also because a person in poverty in the US would be considered rich in a lot of the world
Thats true. But since it is relative, we compare ourselves to our classmates and peers. As children, we only know that we have less and are often looked upon as less. If everyone had no electricity, there would be a struggle, but no shame. It is the poverty status that is painful
There’s always gonna be haves and have nots. This thread is ridiculous. It’s like the authors expect the world to be totally uniform
It seems like the thread resonates with a lot of people and many find it interesting. A lot of people grow up in extreme poverty and it affects them their whole lives (beyond just not having). Living without many basic needs affects us socially and mentally as well.
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