[sheltgor]

That, unfortunately, kind of comes with the territory of a site where most users likely don't face those issues on a daily basis.

I, fortunately, can say that I'm privilaged enough to have not faced the scenario described in the article, though through work over the years I've gotten to know a number of people in a very similar situation.

You get a minimum wage job, say at a grocery store, because, well, you literally have no other options. You couldn't focus in high school, maybe you dealt with drug issues, had ADHD, got pregnant in a family that wouldn't permit abortion (or in one of the many states where you have to drive hundreds of miles, have multiple appointments on separate days, and jump through a variety of other hoops). By the time you're in your 20s, you have no high school education and even if you want to turn your life around you need to put in extensive effort to, say, get a GED, go to community college, etc. All while working full time in order to just have food on the table and, if you're lucky enough to have moved away from your parents, a roof over your head.

With the job itself it becomes tough. Say you make $400 a week before taxes working $10 bucks an hour at a grocery store. A fair chunk of that is going to go towards food, and frankly that's not going to be very healthy food for the amount of money you're able to spend and the time you have to prepare it. You've then got to spend 10% of that every couple weeks so you have enough gas to get to work, probably payments on a cheap used car (and numerous repairs that will likely have to come on credit), rent, cigarettes (its an addiction, keep that in mind) and god knows what random medical or accidental expenses come up will eat up pretty much the rest. IF you're lucky you might be able to put a few bucks in a savings account, but chances are when you have those accidental expenses you'll want to use some of those savings just so you don't have to put it all on credit and add more to your reoccurring expenses.

To make matters worse, you have very little control over when you actually work. Most minimum wage employers give you a two week schedule at most, sometimes just a one week, often determine how many hours you have with that short of notice, and have wildly different hours. Working at a Safeway recently I dealt with, say, 35 hours during the week, some late night shifts from 3:00pm-11:30, but then eight hours later being called back in to help open at 7:30 (yes, they can do that). Further, that store only did one week scheduling, so you wouldn't even know until Thursday if you were working THAT UPCOMING SUNDAY. And furthermore they frequently took advantage of loopholes in the contract to have their employees working six, seven, eight, sometimes even ten days straight with such irregular hours. The ability to sign up for classes, make it a regular routine to, say, learn some new skill, becomes winnowed down to nothing.

To make matters worse, you have little opportunity to move somewhere where there might be better opportunities. There's a reason wealthier people are much more likely to move away. You need a deposit plus first and last months rent anywhere new you're moving, but with how little you're able to save that's a huge burden to come up with. Furthermore, the sheer cost of moving, usually in the order of thousands of dollars, is even greater. Plus, if you do chose to do that, you're leaving the only real support network you may be lucky enough to have: your family.

So before those in this comment thread disdain them for making the choice, however illogical, to try and have some sense of normalcy in their lives (or at least the normalcy projected ad nauseum by the American media and in the ad campaigns of the very places they're working), consider the sort of stress they're already under.

[mandalar12]

Thank you for saying that.

I would add that you need not to have ADHD, drug problems or gotten pregnant as a disadvantage: you might just come from a social/family background that encourages you to take a job as soon as you finish high school and you get stuck at you minimum wage job.

Then when your life becomes what sheltgor described, you don't have any perspective in your job, you can't afford moving or holidays. At that point you are used to not having much but you still want to spend it as you wish. Anyway what is the point of giving much into savings if you can't enjoy your life ? That's when the spending might get irrational (paying more for less, smoking, etc.).

[sheltgor]

Thanks for pointing that out; I didn't mean to imply that only people with serious advantages get left behind

"you might just come from a social/family background that encourages you to take a job as soon as you finish high school and you get stuck at you minimum wage job."

Not only that, but before finishing high school as well. A lot of people forget that 15% or so of adults (25 or older, I believe) don't have a high school diploma or GED.

[Meekro]

I agree with you about ADHD, but we were warned many times in school about the dangers of drugs and teenage pregnancy -- remember those DARE officers? I took those warnings seriously. I feel precisely zero sympathy for people who were warned many times, responded by pointing and laughing at the person warning them, and then got burned.

But even if you do dig yourself into that hole, why would you then go out and buy a $1500 couch combo? I grew up fairly poor (though admittedly not as poor as the scenario you describe), and buying something that expensive would have been considered criminally reckless by my parents. By shopping at going-out-of-business sales and whatnot, you can snag decent new furniture for a tiny fraction of that. By never (and I mean literally never) eating out, out food budget was maybe $100 per month per person. Most people would be shocked at how cheaply you can live, without compromising on the essentials, if you're smart about it.

[sheltgor]

DARE and a lot of programs like it have been shows, time and again, to be fairly ineffective. Hell, the DARE program was, in 2001 (curriculum may have changed since then, I don't know), placed on the list of Ineffective Primary Prevention Programs by the Surgeon General. Our current model for drug programs simply doesn't work. And consider too that in many, MANY areas sexual education is limited to abstinence only, which has been demonstrated to be radically ineffective the world over. I would imagine too that many of those areas are also in ones with a very low coverage of abortion clinics. So while you may have taken those warnings to heart, consider that such programs usually just don't work.

And I do agree with you that there are much cheaper ways to, say get a couch, but I do take issue with your food budget. You're making that out to be a low cost, when in reality $100 bucks per person per month is HUGE. If you've got yourself and a kid to support, that's say $200 (with very careful budgeting and probably fairly low quality nutrition) on an after tax monthly income of maybe $1200 bucks. That's an enormous chunk of change, particularly when coupled with other recurring costs like rent and gas money. Also, regarding the couch, as some in this thread have pointed out the idea that everyone thinks logically is unfortunately false. Someone's already under enormous stress from an erratic work schedule and barely eking buy, perhaps has other issues to deal with like health problems, and they want the sense of having one thing that 'normal people' do. It's a very, very powerful motivation especially when the store oh so enticingly packages it as being a few dozen bucks a month.

[dragonwriter]

> DARE and a lot of programs like it have been shows, time and again, to be fairly ineffective.

IIRC, DARE has been shown time and time again to be effective -- at modifying the attitudes of people subjected to it to be more positive and receptive to law enforcement.

Its also, true, been shown to be completely ineffective at its notional purpose (reducing drug abuse in its target population.)

[Meekro]

It certainly was ineffective -- I conceded as much in my previous post when I talked about how most people either ignored it or laughed at it. But I'd call that the kids' fault, not DARE's fault. The message was certainly sound, and they had the option of heeding the warning, right?

[pmichaud]

My guideline is that when something is failing for most people, it's not the peoples' fault, it's the thing's fault.

The information in DARE is, in fact, not sound, which is a big part of why it's not only ineffective, but anti-effective. When kids figure out that they won't die when they have a beer or joint (or whatever the scare tactic du jour is) they realize all at once that they have been lied to. The tendency is for the kids to throw the baby out with the bathwater, ie. they make a perfectly human mistake of realizing (correctly) that the DARE program is an unreliable source of information, and therefore they come to the (incorrect) conclusion that it contains zero valuable information, or worse that the opposite of the information is actually true. In other words, they say to themselves: it turns out taking a puff of weed isn't dangerous and in fact is fun, therefore drugs must be pretty great under most circumstances.

We all see ourselves as the hero of our own story, so I don't begrudge you interpreting your own history as you being prudent and responsible with valuable information that DARE provided you. I'm inviting you to consider that another plausible interpretation is that you're gullible, and lack the curiosity to discover things for yourself because you're too afraid to take risks. I'm not saying it's true, but I am saying it's possible. Back in high school all it would've taken is one slightly pushy friend and one positive experience with drugs, and your life could have turned out radically different, not because you were dumb or irresponsible, but because the experience you arbitrarily happened to have was different.

[Meekro]

I tried googling for lies told by DARE, but it's hard to find anything more substantial than third-hand accounts on Yahoo answers or something (that cop said if you smoke a joint, you might DIE, dude!!!) What little I did find [1] makes me think that the information they gave was substantially true, or at least probably true. For example, there's the strong connection between drug abuse and crime, something any policeman or apartment landlord could confirm for you. You can probably dig up some example of a lie they did tell, but all I'm saying is that, by-and-large, it was true.

"One positive experience" with drugs could, indeed, have wrecked my life, but that one experience would never happen and could never happen. The reason is that I wouldn't have done it, pushy friend or no, because I believed what the adults in my life were telling me. Parents, teachers, and DARE officers all said substantially the same thing, and when only idiot kids were telling me different, weighing the relative trustworthiness of those groups was not especially difficult.

There's nothing arbitrary about this. It's called sound reasoning, and part of it is not taking reckless risks. There's a common myth that kids are incapable of it, but I suspect that the truth is closer to them choosing not to practice it.

[1] http://mic.com/articles/92675/the-5-big-lies-that-d-a-r-e-to...

[pluma]

What's worse, we're talking about people who are frequently so far off-par when it comes to education, relevant job experience and so on that even if they make an effort they still will be off-par enough to look bad.

You dropped out of high school and now spent several years getting your high school diploma while flipping burgers to make a living? Great, but you're now in your mid-to-late-20s and you should have finished college or have several years of relevant job experience by now.

[monksy]

So are you trying to make a claim that bad decisions should have no consequence? You're basically giving them a free pass to pass the blame on.

I'm getting the feeling that your view of wealth is that it is never earned, that it's given. That is certainly possible but the financial downturn should have taught you something. People that have wealth didn't get there by making poor business decisions.