6 ms·

If you can't afford transportation you're limited to what you can walk to. In the area I live you cannot bring more than one bag with you on public transportat

If you can't afford transportation you're limited to what you can walk to. In the area I live you cannot bring more than one bag with you on public transportation and it takes almost an hour to get across town on the bus. It would be cheaper to buy marked up food from a gas station or drugstore than pay for a taxi ride or waste half a day riding the bus. Edit: essentially, a lot of the time it is expensive to be poor.

joezydeco 7y ago
I can confirm that. I live near a block of apartment homes that are populated by lower income residents. There's a CVS and a gas station/cstore within walking distance, but the grocery stores and department stores (Target, Walmart) are all more than 2+ miles away. The buses are infrequent and expensive.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Anecdata: I have money and property and plentiful transportation (three vehicles for the two of us). Live miles from town. I drive to one or more grocery stores infrequently to get what I want. Buy quality food and freeze/store it in my large house. Garden provides some more. Waste is composted and feeds the gardens. Meals cost me a buck or two to prepare from my plentiful stock. All because I can afford to. Food is a negligible fraction of my budget.
- ARandomerDude 7y ago
  You're also handsome, charming, and incredibly humble.
  - kombucha11 7y ago
    Whether or not he meant to his comment illustrates the problem perfectly: those with the means to do so can eat healthy food and absorb the cost/time/distance inherent in that, those that cannot will suffer and chose whatever they can get. Good healthy food at a sustainable price is hard to come by in the US. There are food deserts everywhere. Good food is treated clearly as a lifestyle luxury. Let them eat cake indeed.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      My point exactly
  - matt4077 7y ago
    I get where your comment is coming from, but I think they acknowledged that their situation is somewhat privileged. Quote: "All because I can afford to." It's the old adage about it being expensive to be poor, only in reverse.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Yes, actually. But I didn't want to bring it up.
- thrower123 7y ago
  You don't have to be wealthy to do that, but you do have to have the storage space and to shift your mindset in a more long-term direction. It's also a lot of work. I grew up relatively poor, but in a rural area, so we had enough land to put in a garden, and we slaved away all summer and fall picking and processing food that got stacked up in the basement cold-cellar and in the freezer. We also bought meat in bulk, either a half or a whole beef from a local farmer, so you had to plan for that lump sum expense and, again, have the freezer space ready to take hundreds of pounds of meat when it went to the slaughter house. We'd also try to shoot a deer or two each year to supplement that, and catch a mess of trout that we'd can up. Then there were the trips to the pick-your-own berry fields, where you'd pick a hundred pounds of strawberries, and then have to freeze them or turn them into jam, and the trips to the orchards where you could pick grain sacks full of the dropped apples for a dollar apiece; then you had to go home and sort out the bad ones. My aunt had a Sam's Club membership, so a couple times a year we'd go with her and load up on staples - again, you've got to save up for it, and then you have to have the storage. You can do that kind of thing when you are relatively settled and have roots and connections in a community, and the know-how to do all that home-making. We didn't have any money, but we were rich in a lot of other ways. If you are isolated and precarious, living reactively day-to-day, it makes something that is already hard nigh on impossible.
hedora 7y ago
Also, “proper” grocery chains are often much more expensive (with lower quality items) in poor areas where residents can’t afford transportation. In those areas, CVS might not a terrible choice. Kroger used to be so bad in our neighborhood that we drove 30 minutes (past upscale krogers) because their business model of abusing stranded populations was abhorrent.
mc32 7y ago
Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t get a bus ticket. All it means is you are deliberate in your shopping and planning. You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone. Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless. Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to I made do.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  There’s a weird misconception about poor people here. I’m willing to bet the vast amount of people on SNAP have a car and a job. Being poor doesn’t require an abject state.
  - throwayEngineer 7y ago
    Plan for the worst of poverty. Not the best.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  > Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan Chronic stress (such as from financial stress and working multiple jobs) actually does severely impact your executive function and decision-making ability. It's hard to make dispassionate decisions when you're exhausted and scared. There's been studies about it. Obviously it's possible to overcome that, and some people are better at it than others. But the burden is real. When you're coming off a double shift, it's really hard to make the decision to spend an extra 45 minutes walking round-trip, or two hours hopping on and off buses, when you could just hit the Walgreen's near your apartment and get home to your family.
- ionised 7y ago
  > Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t it kinda does though. The effects of financial stress on your mental wellbeing are pretty well documented and can manifest in ways such as inability to focus/concentrate, chronic fatigue, spotty memory from stress etc.
- samayylmao 7y ago

joezydeco 7y ago

I can confirm that. I live near a block of apartment homes that are populated by lower income residents. There's a CVS and a gas station/cstore within walking distance, but the grocery stores and department stores (Target, Walmart) are all more than 2+ miles away. The buses are infrequent and expensive.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Anecdata: I have money and property and plentiful transportation (three vehicles for the two of us). Live miles from town. I drive to one or more grocery stores infrequently to get what I want. Buy quality food and freeze/store it in my large house. Garden provides some more. Waste is composted and feeds the gardens. Meals cost me a buck or two to prepare from my plentiful stock. All because I can afford to. Food is a negligible fraction of my budget.

ARandomerDude 7y ago
You're also handsome, charming, and incredibly humble.
- kombucha11 7y ago
  Whether or not he meant to his comment illustrates the problem perfectly: those with the means to do so can eat healthy food and absorb the cost/time/distance inherent in that, those that cannot will suffer and chose whatever they can get. Good healthy food at a sustainable price is hard to come by in the US. There are food deserts everywhere. Good food is treated clearly as a lifestyle luxury. Let them eat cake indeed.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    My point exactly
- matt4077 7y ago
  I get where your comment is coming from, but I think they acknowledged that their situation is somewhat privileged. Quote: "All because I can afford to." It's the old adage about it being expensive to be poor, only in reverse.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Yes, actually. But I didn't want to bring it up.
thrower123 7y ago
You don't have to be wealthy to do that, but you do have to have the storage space and to shift your mindset in a more long-term direction. It's also a lot of work. I grew up relatively poor, but in a rural area, so we had enough land to put in a garden, and we slaved away all summer and fall picking and processing food that got stacked up in the basement cold-cellar and in the freezer. We also bought meat in bulk, either a half or a whole beef from a local farmer, so you had to plan for that lump sum expense and, again, have the freezer space ready to take hundreds of pounds of meat when it went to the slaughter house. We'd also try to shoot a deer or two each year to supplement that, and catch a mess of trout that we'd can up. Then there were the trips to the pick-your-own berry fields, where you'd pick a hundred pounds of strawberries, and then have to freeze them or turn them into jam, and the trips to the orchards where you could pick grain sacks full of the dropped apples for a dollar apiece; then you had to go home and sort out the bad ones. My aunt had a Sam's Club membership, so a couple times a year we'd go with her and load up on staples - again, you've got to save up for it, and then you have to have the storage. You can do that kind of thing when you are relatively settled and have roots and connections in a community, and the know-how to do all that home-making. We didn't have any money, but we were rich in a lot of other ways. If you are isolated and precarious, living reactively day-to-day, it makes something that is already hard nigh on impossible.

hedora 7y ago

Also, “proper” grocery chains are often much more expensive (with lower quality items) in poor areas where residents can’t afford transportation. In those areas, CVS might not a terrible choice. Kroger used to be so bad in our neighborhood that we drove 30 minutes (past upscale krogers) because their business model of abusing stranded populations was abhorrent.

mc32 7y ago

Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t get a bus ticket. All it means is you are deliberate in your shopping and planning. You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone. Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless. Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to I made do.

dev_dull 7y ago
There’s a weird misconception about poor people here. I’m willing to bet the vast amount of people on SNAP have a car and a job. Being poor doesn’t require an abject state.
- throwayEngineer 7y ago
  Plan for the worst of poverty. Not the best.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan Chronic stress (such as from financial stress and working multiple jobs) actually does severely impact your executive function and decision-making ability. It's hard to make dispassionate decisions when you're exhausted and scared. There's been studies about it. Obviously it's possible to overcome that, and some people are better at it than others. But the burden is real. When you're coming off a double shift, it's really hard to make the decision to spend an extra 45 minutes walking round-trip, or two hours hopping on and off buses, when you could just hit the Walgreen's near your apartment and get home to your family.
ionised 7y ago
> Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t it kinda does though. The effects of financial stress on your mental wellbeing are pretty well documented and can manifest in ways such as inability to focus/concentrate, chronic fatigue, spotty memory from stress etc.
samayylmao 7y ago