Thursday, August 6, 2009

Poor People Everywhere “Waste” Money

Only now he's off to collect their unemployment benefits, electronically delivered to their bank accounts by the state of Indiana: $268 for Kelly, $390 for him.
"Payday," he says, driving to an ATM.

He withdraws $700, which he tucks into a front pocket of his jeans. He buys a Pepsi, four packs of Marlboro Lights and $20 in gas.


From this article in the Washington Post follows a family of four in Indiana struggling in the current recession. We might be quick to judge that Scott the dad of the family in the story is wasting money on cigarettes and Pepsi, later we read he spends an afternoon at a bar. It made me think of some work on developing countries where people who make less than $1 a day still save money for parties instead of eating (previous post here).

In some ways the similarities between the family living off of $1 a day and the one profiled by the Post are closer than we might think



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