Poverty Stinks

Poverty Stinks: 21st Century Poverty in America
by
Robin Hall

I sit here daily in my small apartment and experience the 21st century version of poverty. My total income is $3000 less than the federal poverty guidelines. Other guidelines say I am $600 above some other guideline.

There is NO safety net or margin for error. There are no IRAs, pensions, railroad retirement, 401Ks, rich relatives to inherit from. There is no other money than the Social Security Disability Income I was awarded from the 72 jobs I tried to do or the small VA pension, which should have been a VA disability income from 38 years ago but was not. I got screwed on that one.

I wonder: what will happen when I am somewhat less able, what will happen if I am totally incapable of tending to my most basic needs or what will happen and how I will afford food if the steady decline in my current income's buying power from inflation is reduced much further? I wonder and enter sweepstakes with the insane hope of an addict, that poverty will end soon with the BIG ONE, the BIG WIN. My life should be amusing but it is not.

Comparisons to the even less fortunate do not help, do not offer comfort. I KNOW that my stipend in dozens of countries would place me solidly in the middle income levels. I KNOW that in the USA there are homeless, completely hopeless, people with no TVs, VCRs, computers, slow Internet connections, apartments, electricity, heat, cooling etc. I do not think of them much, other than to KNOW that I could easily BE one of them if something went wrong: red tape, loss of current benefits, loss of current abilities.

Things have gone slightly wrong at times too. When my building experiences there is no heat in the winter, no fans and A/C in the summer. One month I did not get my SSDI check. I checked my wallet and bank account. I went to the local feed store, bought 50 pound sacks of horse oats and wheat bran. I pressure cooked these to fill my belly. I survived the month, shaken in the realization of just how tenous my existence was. Imagine that!

However, I am not homeless. There is usually electricity, fresh air, heat and air conditioning, food. My quarters are relatively quiet most of the time. I work hard to keep my apartment vermin free as well.

A case could be made I am not so bad off after all, but is this not relative? I have never been well enough to earn a better life and cannot actually miss it but I cannot say I am happy, content, not afraid of the future, do not have nightmares of worse conditions, do not resent the present or do not wish for better.

I wonder what the homeless in Calcutta would say of my situation? I wonder what the average Russian citizen would say? How do these people survive their daily grinds, struggling for scraps of food, waiting in endless lines for bread, having no safe water? Yes, I wonder and this does not improve my life or even make it tolerable.

Poverty stinks. It may stink more elsewhere but I am not there. I am in the richest country in history and my income is $3000 under the current poverty line.