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[KaelGotDwarves]

Hahahahaha, you think poor people have $500-1000.

Try one of my friends, who is saddled with student loans and medical hitting $70k USD since being hit by a car and unable to finish school.

Or another that recently moved back in with her psychotic mother struggling to get through community college while a couple thousand in credit card debt and payments to her school and previous debtors.

Or the millions of grads graduating this year and finding absolutely no work in their fields because everything is being outsourced, while they have $40k+ debt in student loans.

In this economy, if you're above zero you're swimming above water. Most are drowning.

[GlyphGryph]

And you can shower and get clothes at almost any truck stop for free, provided you look pitiful enough.

Assuming, of course, a homeless person had absolutely any knowledge that this might be the case, and the social abilities to pull it off (I can guarantee not everyone would). And that if they did, as a general rule, that it wouldn't quickly stop becoming the case.

But yeah,

You can accomplish a lot without much money if you find yourself out of options.

is definitely true to a certain extent, but once you've gone through that last dollar, it can be very hard to get to that point.

Of course, 500 dollars would be a step up for me right now, and I'm not exactly struggling like some people I know - if I wound up homeless at the moment, I'd have 36 dollars to my name, and 45k in debt. Pawning stuff, I could probably get up to 150. And, homeless, that would probably last me.... three, four months before it ran out, I'd imagine. Assuming I wasn't robbed, or didn't lose the money, and didn't get into an accident or manage to get some sort of injury, of course. And since I've already been looking for a job, any job, for 5 (with resources), I doubt being hopeless would hurry that along. So I'd probably have to relocate to somewhere new and try again there, maybe a city where jobs are easier to get. But of course, that's a risk - cities bring their own problems, and the travel costs would eat up a good deal of that 150 unless I walked. And walking has its own risks when its a week to walk to where you're going.

You can live pretty well on 500 dollars for quite a long time - if you know what you're doing, if you're good with people, if you're lucky.

[Fenrir]

In this economy, if you're above zero you're swimming above water. Most are drowning.

That is a generalization that you have failed to support with any kind of evidence.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Oh gee, maybe the fact that our country is in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Does that need any other sort of evidence?

EDIT: But since you're wondering:

Approximately 74.9 percent of the U.S. families surveyed in 2004 had credit cards, and 58 percent of those families carried a balance. In 2001, 76.2 percent of families had credit cards, and 55 percent of those families carried a balance.

Read more: http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php#ixzz1Q9lB5kee

AARP polling 2009

70: Percentage of American consumers in debt
73: Percentage of American consumers between 18-49 in debt
60: Percentage of those over 50 years old in debt
30: Percentage who have credit card balances not paid in full every month
40: Percentage of those in debt with monthly obligations greater than half their monthly income
10: Percentage of consumers who have filed, or at least considering filing, for bankruptcy

Almost a quarter of Americans have no retirement, emergency savings, anything

24 Percent Of American Consumers Have No Emergency Savings

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/america-financial-insecurity-emergency-savings_n_880378.html
1000 polled - margin of error, 4%

[Montague]

Hahahahaha, you think poor people have $500-1000.

Try one of my friends, who is saddled with student loans and medical hitting $70k USD since being hit by a car and unable to finish school.

Or another that recently moved back in with her psychotic mother struggling to get through community college while a couple thousand in credit card debt and payments to her school and previous debtors.

Or the millions of grads graduating this year and finding absolutely no work in their fields because everything is being outsourced, while they have $40k+ debt in student loans.

In this economy, if you're above zero you're swimming above water. Most are drowning.

"credit"... if you are homeless, who gives a shit about your credit rating or how much debt you have? I'm not talking about being a debt-free and prosperous middle-class American. I'm talking about survival, and surviving without ending up in prison or getting killed or starving to death in a gutter somewhere.

Without a house, bills, expenses, a couple of weeks pay at the local day-labor can cover your expenses for months if you are smart about it. Are you going to spend your last 500$ on survival, or paying off a bill, rent or a debt? 500$ isn't a difficult amount to come by and its money well spent if it will ensure your continued survival. Bleeding yourself dry to keep a credit score in order is basically the anti-thesis to survival.

[KaelGotDwarves]

"credit"... if you are homeless, who gives a shit about your credit rating or how much debt you have? I'm not talking about being a debt-free and prosperous middle-class American. I'm talking about survival, and surviving without ending up in prison or getting killed or starving to death in a gutter somewhere.

Without a house, bills, expenses, a couple of weeks pay at the local day-labor can cover your expenses for months if you are smart about it. Are you going to spend your last 500$ on survival, or paying off a bill, rent or a debt? 500$ isn't a difficult amount to come by and its money well spent if it will ensure your continued survival. Bleeding yourself dry to keep a credit score in order is basically the anti-thesis to survival.

If you're already poor, there's about a snowballs chance in hell that you'd be able to get $500 easily without resorting to crime.

If you could come by $500, then you wouldn't be poor in the first place.

Telling the poor to scrounge up $500 and then be able to survive is just idiotic. Try dollars a day begging with most of that going towards food.

[Fenrir]

Oh gee, maybe the fact that our country is in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Does that need any other sort of evidence?

That assertion would also require sources to support it, but it would yet be insufficent, as "the worst since the Great Depression" would not be enough to imply that "most are drowning". You would still need to demonstrate it with something. If things have never gotten this bad since the Great Depression, it is still comparing this economy to previous economies. You are saying "oh, this is the WORST", but that is relative, so you need to provide sources for SOMETHING before we can take such an assertion seriously.

[KaelGotDwarves]

See sources above, most Americans are in debt. With a good percentage facing bankruptcy and about a quarter with no savings.

70% of Americans in debt - 40% are paying off more than half their monthly income JUST to pay off those debts. 10% have filed or need to file bankruptcy, and that was 2009.

As of 2011, about a quarter of us have no savings whatsoever.

70% in 2009 were already in the NEGATIVE.

I'd say that's not swimming above water.

[Neonivek]

I will also say that the quality of life for a homeless person highly depends on where you live.

While some cities host a wide variety of programs to aid the homeless... others are outright antagonistic.

[Fenrir]

Yes, most Americans have debt. Is that "drowning"? Having a morgage counts as debt, but I would not automatically suppose that a man with a morgage to pay was "drowning". Those 70% of Americans probably have a morgage. "Drowning" may be open to interpretation, but I presumed that you meant that they could not pay off their debt in reasonable time.

A quarter with no savings is not "most drowning".

EDIT: Jesus, enough with the Ninja Sources already.

[KaelGotDwarves]

You did not pay attention to the second number, which was 40% of Americans spending over half their paycheck just to pay back into their debt, that is not mentioning new spending.

These are not just people who are in debt, but people who can barely pay off the interest.

Couple that with the mortgage crisis, and relative statistics, do you want me to get those too?

But it's fairly safe to say that more have been affected than haven't.\

EDIT: So where are your "sources" that most Americans are financially secure?

[Vector]

. . .

I don't believe that 70% of the people in this country have mortgages.  Sorry.  No way, no how.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Yeah, a statement that 70% of Americans "own" their property through mortgages is ludicrous - I want to look that up now.

[Fenrir]

You did not pay attention to the second number, which was 40% of Americans spending over half their paycheck just to pay back into their debt, that is not mentioning new spending.

40% is not most, and whether spending over half your income on debt would constitute "drowning" would depend upon how much they make and what their cost of living is.

But it's fairly safe to say that more have been affected than haven't.\

Affected? Yes. "Drowning"? I do not know.

EDIT: So where are your "sources" that most Americans are financially secure?

I never stated that Americans are financially secure. I am asking you to support your assertion that they are not.

Yeah, a statement that 70% of American "own" their property through mortgages is ludicrous - I want to look that up now.

I said "probably", but there are other kinds of loans as well.

[Montague]

Yeah, like I said "debt" doesn't equal real poverty.

Debt can really be safely ignored, because the only thing debt can do is ruin your credit rating, eg, ruin your ability to accumulate more debt. You don't get jailed, hanged or anything because you owe some land lord or creditor money. You know how the homeless get medical care? They walk into the ER, are treated, released and simply never pay the bill.

Credit and willingly throwing yourself into debt is idiotic. You go into 100K worth of debt getting a worthless degree in woman's studies? Who's fault is that? You mortgage a house outside of your ability to pay, who's fault is that?

I've been broke, I've been down to where I've sold everything worth money and I've worked at the readi-labor because nobody else would hire, but I've never allowed myself to collect more then 200$ worth of debt.

Generally speaking, people right now do not suddenly find themselves with no money, no friends, no family, no credit, no nothing and are thrust into the world to eak out survival. True poverty in the USA comes at a steady decline. You lose your job, you spend your savings, your network of friends and family cannot help you, you sell things to make ends meet and finally you end up living in your car or in the streets without ever finding a job. Its a depression, a decline.

If a person reaches the point where they have nothing, cannot be helped, can only beg for change to survive, are unable or unwilling to work at the day-labor, they are that way by choice or their own critical flaws and they are not worth discussing here.

Anybody that doesn't quite reach that point and thinks they should rob people "to survive" needs to just die in a hole.