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Could people with cars be poor?

Could people with cars be poor?

  • Yes

    Votes: 45 93.8%

  • No

    Votes: 3 6.3%

  • Idk

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    48
Cardinal said:
With a small handful of notable urban exceptions, not having a car in the United States is the equivalent of not being able to work, so it's not fair to equate owning a car with a higher class status anymore than owning pants or shoes.

It's a circular problem for poor people: if you don't own a car you can't work, and if you do own a car then the insurance, registration, gas and, god forbid, the maintenance costs will kill you. And let's be 100% honest here: if you're poor, your car sucks and you're blowing thousands of dollars a year on repairs.
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And to make matters worse you can't fix many things yourself any longer. When I was a poor college kid I did most of my maintenance and repair work myself. If the car needed to be off the ground there was a place nearby that rented lift time. But my old 66 and 78 Chryslers were mostly mechanical beasts that didn't require lots of expensive or specialized tools. Most modern cars have so much electronics anything beyond oil, light bulbs and brakes is probably beyond most owners.
 
we are car poor with 4 and no kids at home
 
CanadaJohn said:
A car seems far more a necessity to me.
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Yeah but you could always take the bus, train, bicycle, walk, etc. Not to mention that gas is just one expense. Maintenance is the big money-guzzler, especially if you have an old car which "poor" people presumably have. Taxes, insurance and so on.
Now I get it that it could be a little hard in Canada to walk long distances or at -30 ºC but you grandpa didn't have a warm car too, did he? :cool:
 
Canell said:
Yeah but you could always take the bus, train, bicycle, walk, etc. Not to mention that gas is just one expense. Maintenance is the big money-guzzler, especially if you have an old car which "poor" people presumably have. Taxes, insurance and so on.
Now I get it that it could be a little hard in Canada to walk long distances or at -30 ºC but you grandpa didn't have a warm car too, did he? :cool:
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No, my grandpa didn't have a warm car, but then my grandpa didn't live in a metropolitan area of about 4 million people like I do. There are many poor people in Toronto who have cars because getting to and from work on public transit may take them 2 or 3 hours each way and that's with pretty good transit.

I won't belabour the point - we disagree - nothing wrong with that.
 
Muhammed said:
Could you translate that into English?
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we are car poor like some people are insurance poor, we have too much money tied up in them
 
I taught in an inner city HS for a decade. I saw plenty of "poor" kids that had nicer clothes, drove newer cars, had cellphones, etc than what I could afford to give my own kids. I guess I was "poor" and just didn't know it.
 
The term "Poor" seems to cover a vast range of economic situations these days. From someone who is homeless and has no money, to someone who has a house with air conditioning, TV, probably a game system or two and a computer, a car, and plenty to eat.

Part of this is, I think, the level of debt people have - you can have a bunch of stuff yet not really own it - since you borrowed the money to purchase that house/car/tv/hat, it really belongs to whomever loaned you the money.
 
In the USA poor means not middle class. People confuse "poor" with actual poverty.
 
joko104 said:
In the USA poor means not middle class. People confuse "poor" with actual poverty.
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Personally, I think what, precisely, the term "middle class" means is quite vague...
 
OscarB63 said:
I taught in an inner city HS for a decade. I saw plenty of "poor" kids that had nicer clothes, drove newer cars, had cellphones, etc than what I could afford to give my own kids.
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Thank god we've got the federal government subsidizing the black market through drug prohibition, eh?
 
RabidAlpaca said:
So by your well thought out definition, Donald Trump and Mitt Romney are poor?
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I suspect he meant "less than middle class", or some such.
 
Canell said:
Hi fellas,

I recall one film ("Pay it forward") where an old woman was a bum and at the same time was driving some gas-guzzler* around.

So, if one has money for car and gas, should s/he be considered poor? Should s/he receive welfare, food stamps and such? Please, discuss. :)
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They should.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
Probably. I'm just unimpressed with his usual low quality contributions. That's a ridiculously weak definition. "People who are poor are those who are poor."
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Not really. He was actually saying "in the USA, we call people "poor" if they are less than middle class, yet our poor have a lifestyle many countries middle class could never dream of."
 
instagramsci said:
They should.
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Why is that? If you can maintain a car (which is not cheap at all), you ain't poor, imho. :peace For example, I spent over $500 on my 16 years old car on maintenance last year. That doesn't even include the gas.
But I guess the definition of "poor" has greatly changes over the years. ;)
 
It all entirely depends on whether you are talking about relative poverty or absolute poverty. I don't think absolute poverty exists very much in the western world, but relative poverty certainly does. The bottom 5% of earners in a western country may have access to goods and services that are simply unavailable to almost everyone in a less developed nation. Working in rural Cambodia just 10 years ago, the wealthiest people in a village had none of the things a poor family in Europe or NA would think were essentials, such as a phone line, a car (roads virtually unusable except by 4x4 in the dry season), air conditioning, and yet were still considered rich.

I think ideas of poverty (i.e. relative poverty) are incredibly culturally specific. For example, here in rural Spain, people will not judge a neighbour's wealth by the things they have so much as by how they display their wealth during collective occasions. The wealthiest farmer will drive around in a battered furgoneta (the ubiquitous mini-vans that are to southern Europe what the pick-up is to NA), and wear tatty old clothes that make him indistinguishable from his band of day workers, but when his son or daughter takes their first communion, or gets married, there will be 500 guests entertained entirely at the family's expense for a day or two. That's the family showing and having their wealth assessed by the rest of the community.

Many, many poor people here will have some form of transport, often a dumper truck, a 20-year-old mini-van or moped, but without any motorised transport you're pretty much stuck in your village, most of which will have one or two service buses per day, usually departing for Granada at daybreak and returning at nightfall.

So, of course you can own a car and still be relatively poor by the standards of your neighbours and compatriots. I just don't think you can be poor in an absolute sense (i.e. the inability to secure food, water, shelter and basic services) and own a car.
 
Canell said:
Why is that? If you can maintain a car (which is not cheap at all), you ain't poor, imho. :peace For example, I spent over $500 on my 16 years old car on maintenance last year. That doesn't even include the gas.
But I guess the definition of "poor" has greatly changes over the years. ;)
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A lot of poorer people don't maintain their cars as well as they'd like to. Which would explain all the worn down, screechy brakes in my neighborhood.
 
instagramsci said:
A lot of poorer people don't maintain their cars as well as they'd like to. Which would explain all the worn down, screechy brakes in my neighborhood.
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Poor people. :mrgreen:

 
Canell said:
Poor people. :mrgreen:

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That food one really gets to me.

If only capitalism didn't get in the way of feeding people. :(
 
Canell said:
Hi fellas,

I recall one film ("Pay it forward") where an old woman was a bum and at the same time was driving some gas-guzzler* around.

So, if one has money for car and gas, should s/he be considered poor? Should s/he receive welfare, food stamps and such? Please, discuss. :)


* (well, at least from European perspective :wink: )
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I don’t know. In our society one can be considered poor, own a car, own a 52 inch TV, wear the latest fashions, have a cell phone etc. But because they make below a certain amount of money, they are poor. But poor by our definition is not poor by quite a lot of other countries, especially in the third world. I have lived in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, believe their poor are poor. They view our poor as millionaires when considering the living conditions their poor live in. Well at least middle class if not lower upper class when comparing countries. So the question is, are we comparing apples to oranges when we compare who is poor and their living conditions between us and other countries? I would guess we take care of our poor a lot better than most countries in the world, the exceptions may be in Europe and not having studied or researched it, I really can’t say one way or the other.

But we are an affluent society; shouldn’t our poor have a higher standard of living than those of most other countries? Is it wrong for our poor to be ranked as middle class or above in other countries? Do we really want our poor to live like the poor do in some of the countries of Southeast Asia?

So was the woman you described really poor? Not by probably most of the countries outside of Europe and North America. But she definitely could be considered poor by western standards. I think that is because with us, being poor is based on the amount of money one makes or has coming in. Not on their living conditions or what assets they have or own. I guess poor is subjective.
 
Canell said:
Hi fellas,

I recall one film ("Pay it forward") where an old woman was a bum and at the same time was driving some gas-guzzler* around.

So, if one has money for car and gas, should s/he be considered poor? Should s/he receive welfare, food stamps and such? Please, discuss. :)


* (well, at least from European perspective :wink: )
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Well...in the US public transportation in a lot of places suck/is no available and people live pretty far from where they have to work. It's pretty impossible in moth areas to work without owning a vehicle. When you start talking about rural areas without a vehicles you're ****ed.
 
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