Poverty

In class this week we focused on poverty. I didn't really understand what being in poverty meant. I always thought poverty, was almost like being 'homeless'. I learned that 24% of Americans are in poverty. I work a minimum wage job and cannot even imagine supporting my family off of that.

When we watched the documentary 30 days on poverty, it really saddened me. I felt awful for those who had to live on minimum wage. I make 8.50 an hour, which is a quarter above minimum wage. Over the summer for three weeks, I worked for forty hours and made about 300 bucks a week. I however, spent it rather quickly. As times are changing, the amount of money for items increases. I think about the cost of something so simple as candy. Just in my time, the cost of a cadbury chocolate bar went from 1.00 to 2.39. My mom also lived on top of a candy store when she was younger. All the candy, was a penny. Now, if you go to the candy store it is 6.99 a pound.

This just shows that people cannot live on minimum wage any longer. The fact that the couple on 30 days was able to get a apartment and have food, amazes me. There happiness levels seemed to drop dramatically. I thought that they went from being happy and optimistic about the project to utterly regretting it and wishing they had stayed where they were.

Personally, I don't think I could have done their experiment. The hardest part in my opinion, would be to support not only yourself but a family. I think you could potentially support yourself with minimum wage, if you were very conservative with your money. I think you would need to save a lot in order to get yourself some in your savings and work off of that, but even that would be very difficult.