Complicated Shoes

southpol:

Andrew Malcolm in the Los Angeles Times:

If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone? And if he is homeless, where do they send the cellphone bills?

Good catch Mr. Malcolm! It’s pretty obvious this is some kind of scam the guy is running. Sure he could afford to buy his own 3 squares, but it saves so much money to line up with 300 other people and have the government cheese dished out to you.

You might also run into him at a secondhand clothing store looking through the outerwear even though he’s wearing a perfectly nice coat or using food stamps to buy food when you can see perfectly legal tender peeking out of his wallet.

I’m so sick of all these pretend poor doing everything the easy way.

Not to detract from the actual homelessness issue, this does illustrate the broader point that what we consider poor in this country would be (for the most part) considered pretty well off in other countries with real poverty.  We have about 12% living below the poverty line here.  People in countries like Haiti, Liberia and Zambia (all above 80% below the poverty line) would kill for the opportunity to be poor in the United States.