This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense

[Ben Kenobi]

My mistake- I thought that was how you transferred human remains, erm, bloody meat, to and from your vehicle.

Yeah, I rarely get fresh meat. I do have a few bags in there, and I have an old sheet to keep spills and whatnot off the rest of the car. Comes in handy.

And you discovered you were descended from the Donners and Benders. Yes we see.

Well, like I said, my grandfather sat me down and showed me some things that until then, weren't pertinent and things that he never intended to show me (as my father had known about them, and he expected my father to show me).

Three years before the Gold Rush, 87 pioneers took a shortcut westward to California, only to get caught in the snows of the Sierra Nevada. The emigrants' fateful journey culminated in death and cannibalism.

I'm not quite sure how a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere burning down is the same as the Donners.

The Benders were a family of serial killers living in Kansas in the 1870s where they ran a general store and restaurant out of their home. While travelers were eating their meals, the Bender men would hit them from behind with sledgehammers. The bodies were stripped of all valuables then shoved down a trapdoor into the basement for later burial in the yard. They abandoned the house before their acts were discovered, leaving behind the bodies of ten victims

It was just a farmhouse, nothing very special about it - but my grandfather just confirmed what we had suspected before. So we just leave the area alone.

Kind of explains why you prefer cheap food too.

Because I grew up on the farm and don't have fine city dining tastes?

[notyoueither]

This is the chick that scammed people on the internet out of 60K, right?

I'm not sure she scammed anyone. Leaning towards not.

[DinoDoc]

I'm not sure she scammed anyone. Leaning towards not.

She's described herself as “comfortably working-class” in later information we've been given, contradicting her self-presentation in “Poverty Thoughts.”

[notyoueither]

She's described herself as “comfortably working-class” in later information we've been given

Where was that? From what I've read she and her family are lower income. She works her low end jobs, while it's not clear what her husband does except they apparently slipped through some cracks when he tried to go to school (and their finances got ****ed up).

contradicting her self-presentation in “Poverty Thoughts.”

Again, it wasn't clear that she was referring to herself in the original piece.

"random observations that might help explain the mental processes"

"it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of"

""Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there."

"Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one."

"I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it helps make sense of it."

and now from the updates,
" I am making a few things clear: not all of this piece is about me. That is why I said that they were observations. And this piece is not all of me: that is why I said that they were random observations rather than complete ones."

It wasn't entirely about her, and it wasn't entirely her current circumstances. That was clear from details and voice. She doesn't have 4 kids. She's in school and has access to free condoms, but others aren't and don't. She went from I to we and from present to past tenses and back many times.

I know that there are attempts (poor ones, I feel) to discredit her, but I'm not seeing much that is convincing. I am seeing a lot of what looks like misplaced rage. The very idea that people could be poor and that may not be a reflection of their inherent value as people seems to be scaring the hell out of a lot of folks.

The funding is for her to be able to quit one of her jobs and write a book, btw. I don't see how that's a scam as she is a good writer and obviously has some insights on the topic.

[notyoueither]

Oh, and she was offered the support for a book by people at a community she is a member of. They seem pretty positive about her and continue to be so. They probably have a better idea about her than people who've read a blog or two about her in the past month.

[DinoDoc]

If the essay wasn't about her, why was it entitled "Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts"? Stop being willfully stupid, nye. If she had written the essay describing the plight of poor people not her and been honest about that up front, she'd have gotten $0 in donations and you know it.

[notyoueither]

If the essay wasn't about her, why was it entitled "Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts"? Stop being willfully stupid, nye. If she had written the essay describing the plight of poor people not her and been honest about that up front, she'd have gotten $0 in donations and you know it.

I know nothing of the sort, and it seems to me that people who could not recognise that she wasn't writing entirely autobiographically and insist that she pretended to are the willfully stupid in this. It was clear to me on first reading.

It remains that people started fundraising for her to write a book so she could quit a job, not because she is currently experiencing the worst poverty of her life.

[notyoueither]

BTW, DD. Do you have the source for the “comfortably working-class” quote?

Is it like the "she owns a house, mortgage free" info I've run across that link to things that say nothing about a house or a mortgage?

Whatever else you can say, it seems like the lady has kicked over a hornet's nest. Many people seem severely distressed at the idea that poverty could be a cause of many ****ed up people rather than ****ed up people being the cause of all poverty. Why is that?

[DinoDoc]

A Woman Raised $60000 on GoFundMe by Claiming She's Poor. Is She? Spoiler alert. Not really.

(Note to the children of America: Next time Mom or Dad catches you in a tall tale, try, “I wasn’t exaggerating; I was making an observation.”)

[notyoueither]

Uhmm, I'm not seeing a direct quote in there.

I'm seeing another 'OMG, let's beat her down' bit of BS.

[notyoueither]

To wit,

She later described herself as “comfortably working-class,” contradicting her self-presentation in “Poverty Thoughts.”

Where did she describe herself as such?

[notyoueither]

But this actually says a lot:

It’s a decent bet, however, that Tirado’s story is largely true, thanks to reporting by The Nation’s Michelle Goldberg, who interviewed Tirado and one of her former employers, Ryan Clayton (who attested both to Tirado’s diligence and her damaged teeth). And plenty of fair-minded people, including her GoFundMe benefactors, could readily accept the idea that Tirado—despite the house her parents helped her get, despite the advantages of social class and cultural capital that secure you a spot at Cranbrook or on the homepage of a Gawker Media site—believes herself to be “a poor person,” a thinker of “poverty thoughts.” But the fact is that Linda Tirado, the woman who explained poverty to the nation, is almost certainly not one of the 50 million Americans now living in poverty. “Broke” or “downwardly mobile,” maybe, but not poor. And that says less about Tirado’s credibility than it does about our stringent standards for defining poverty in America.

So, it's largely true. She is a good employee, but has bad teeth. Oops, but there's the unsubstantiated house again, damnit! Oh, and then the benefits of her youth that she surely should have been able to ride to... STARDOM! or some such...

The load of crap is not what Linda Tirado wrote. The load of crap is what the... wtf do you call their motivations?... people are writing about Linda Tirado.

[notyoueither]

Even with just two low-wage jobs and her husband’s veteran benefits to get by, Tirado’s household income likely well outstrips the 2013 federal poverty guidelines, which top out at $23,550 for a family of four like Tirado’s. That may seem shockingly low, yet 16 percent of Americans still meet the federal definition of poor according to the Census Bureau’s supplemental measure of poverty (which takes into account tax breaks, necessary expenses, and geographic differences across states). And if you were to double that tiny family-of-four figure, you’d be only a few grand short of the median household income in the U.S., which is also lower than many might assume: just over $51,000 in 2012. Pointing out these grim numbers doesn’t belittle the challenges faced by any hard-working family trying to pay for a home, child care, health insurance, taxes, and so much else even at $51k per year. But it does put the circumstances of the tens of millions with so much less in sharper relief.

I love the she works two low wage jobs so she can't be poor angle, it fits so well with the current 'this is what it means to be free and an American!' blurb I read a bit about.

OTOH, I can see why this threatens the narrative...

[notyoueither]

Meanwhile. DD, do you have a direct quote by her herself that she is “comfortably working-class?”

[Ben Kenobi]

What are you trying to convince us of, NYE? That she's not a liar who scammed people to the tune of 60k?