The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16037798

by eftpotrm • 15 years ago

97 126 15 years ago

bbc.co.uk

He says he finds it cheaper to buy drums of water from a petrol station and pay a sanitation company about $14 a month to remove waste from his "porta-potty" than pay the combined sewer and water rate bill, which some months can reach $300.

What really happens at the very end after all of the brouhaha about derivatives, crooked politics, and mortgage disasters? The people go back to using outhouses. Pardon the pun: Shit just got real.

mahyarm2• 15 years ago

More like the market made something that should be more expensive cheaper due to crony behavior.

electromagnetic4• 15 years ago

Ironically the creditors are going to force the city to face FTA potentially 10-25% yearly increases in sewer rates, they'll never make their money back because the portable toilet distributor is going to start selling water by the drum too.

Once people see their neighbour doing it, they'll do it. Especially when it's potentially saving them hundreds of dollars. So then the creditors will want hikes of 50-100% annually.

It's an awful mess of crooks and greed. I don't get why the creditors decided to fight these people in court and add in legal expenses when they could have just said "we'll cut the interest rate if you pay over a longer term".

I'm sorry but my business mind tells me that some money is better than no money.

buff-a• 15 years ago

The market made something that should be cheaper more expensive. Making that other thing that is also expensive now the cheapest option. Nothing got "cheaper" here.

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

So, corrupt banks corrupted some politicians. Again.

And, now I read that Goldman Sachs is literally hoarding aluminum in gigantic warehouses to manipulate the market.

I wonder when people start to realize that concentrating money like this is not a good idea.

Cushman• 15 years ago

The same system has capture of the media... so don't wait on it.

scottkduncan• 15 years ago

Sometimes, even GS finds itself on the wrong side of a bet. This certainly doesn't invalidate your point, but might give you the tiniest bit of solace.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-14/aluminum-glut-at...

"Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Aluminum stockpiles rose to a record and orders to withdraw metal from warehouses fell to a 15-month low amid speculation traders are adding to bets the commodity will extend its biggest slump since the global recession."

ImprovedSilence2• 15 years ago

Maybe that's just what GS wants you to think. I'd be surprised if their thinking is that short term on their own bets. This is perfect for them, as it takes the heat off of them for stockpiling, but once AL does bounce back, BOOM, they own it all.

Not sayin this is fact, or a deeply thought out theory, or that I know too too much about the subject, but I wouldn't say that current price of AL gives me much solace just yet....

ericdykstra• 15 years ago

You say the banks "corrupted" politicians, like those politicians were clean and just hung around with the 'bad banking' crowd one afternoon.

rbanffy• 15 years ago

It's still true that had the banks not bribeed them, they wouldn't have made this specifc decison that caused this specific mess.

politician• 15 years ago

Money is highly corrosive to one's morals, and banks have a lot of money. The relationship seems simple enough.

UrbanPat9• 15 years ago

You have a point - corruption is endemic to Jefferson County politicians.

JWLong3• 15 years ago

At the risk of being accused of trolling:

Am I the only one here that believes that running water is a luxury, not a right?

I've been in some pretty shitty situations myself, though none as tough as this. That much I freely admit. But the overall tone of the article seems to be one of horror that people might not have a ceramic toilet which flushes the waste away to a sewage treatment plant. Also, an attitude of "This is a first world country; this shouldn't be happening to anyone". (Yes, I noticed the sidebar on "corruption")

Does everybody else think that running water/sewage is a right?

iopuy• 15 years ago

"...been in some pretty shitty situations myself..."

I see what you did there.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

I do. This isn't 1511, it's 2011. We can make all kinds of appeals to the "noble savage" who survived just fine without porcelain bowls, but that would be disingenuous.

Even disregarding the sanitation, hygiene, and emotional impact of cutting people off from modern sewage, there are efficiency issues. The more time people spend digging latrines and putting up outhouses the less time they have to improve their own lot.

Imagine if we took away roads, and it took you two hours each way to get to the general store!

Infrastructure, luxury or not, are key to pulling this country out of the shit-pit (no pun intended) it's found itself in. Cutting people off from these essential services certainly won't help matters.

Sitting around debating whether or not people are crybabies for demanding modern sewage services, also doesn't help.

mquander2• 15 years ago

"Right" is a word made for arguing about. Let's forget the word "right".

Clean water and sanitation are pretty much the two things which most enable us to maintain population-dense cities. Lack of modern sanitation repeatedly led to horrific pandemics in the Middle Ages in Europe, culminating in the Black Death. I don't have any statistics handy, but one would expect the presence of sanitation to be as big a contribution to personal health as diet, and what's more, poor sanitation is sure to harm other people through disease transmission.

So yes, I believe that clean water and sanitation are very important to human life at scale; important enough that we should pay a sufficient tax, so that we can give them to people who can't afford to pay.

CWuestefeld• 15 years ago

important enough that we should pay a sufficient tax, so that we can give them to people who can't afford to pay.

The solution, then, is to bail out the corrupt and wasteful government?

I'm not seeing any meaningful way in which this differs from bailing out banks or auto manufacturers. I'm assuming that you agree that those gifts to corporate America were immoral. If you agree about the corporate bailouts, how would this governmental bailout differ?

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

Of course its a luxury, but its a cheap and easy one. It can and should be considered a "solved problem" in the "developed" world that this luxury can be extended to all. Letting go of this luxury has health implications to society far beyond the poor it directly effects.

When we have no problem spending billions on foreign wars with dubious moral justifications but can't provide clean water to citizens we have serious priority issues. Its the first really dangerous symptom of what might be a truly horrifying underlying disease.

mikeash• 15 years ago

Sanitation and sewers are a public good. My health is directly affected by my neighbors' access to these things. Thus, it is in all of our interests to ensure that we all have access. Whether you call it a "right" or not doesn't much matter, I think. Bottom line is that it's something we ought to have, and cutting some people off from it will harm us all.

shallowwater3• 15 years ago

It is incredibly callus to suggest that poor (mostly black) people do not deserve such basic necessities as drinkable water and sanitary disposal of their own excrement.

So yes, you are trolling.

cobrausn2• 15 years ago

Please don't muddy the waters with an insinuation of racism. He never once mentioned race, just asked whether or not something was a right or a luxury and gave his opinion. You can argue against it effectively without once ever bringing up race, because race makes no difference on the issue of whether or not cheap access to sanitation services is a right or a privilege.

scrod• 15 years ago

To call him a troll could brush aside a few things worth our attention. Disturbingly enough, a statistically significant number of people in the U.S. actually hold viewpoints like these, and unfortunately a few of them occasionally comment on this site. So to call it trolling would be to ignore the depth of the ignorance and repugnance of these peoples' viewpoints, and the menace it poses to society. It's important to recognize these people and bring into the light their extreme right-wing philosophy at every opportunity. You judge a society by how it treats its least — not most — fortunate members.

cobrausn2• 15 years ago

I'll upvote because I don't think you should be downvoted for expressing an unpopular opinion in a civil manner, and genuinely asking for input on it. But I don't agree.

It's not like we are talking about a small, rural town in middle-of-nowhere Alabama being cut off from cheap sewer access (we might expect this considering infrastructure costs of getting it all set up out that far away from cities). This is Jefferson County, which is the most populated county in Alabama. We've moved past expecting the bare minimum once we get into cities, and we expect a bit more competence from our local governments when it comes to dealing with these pretty basic issues. Without basic sanitation, we don't get large cities.

eigenvector• 15 years ago

Remoteness isn't really a factor in how difficult it is to provide water & sanitation services, as long as it's not a fly-in only area. Unless you find yourself in a desert (or tundra), pretty well everywhere has usable groundwater, and as long as there is access by road or water to get building materials on site it shouldn't be prohibitively expensive to transport materials.

I've been to a lot of hole-in-the-wall towns with populations of less than 1,000 in rural California, Ontario and B.C. and I've never once seen a latrine.

Now fly-in Native reserves in northern Canada - that's another story.

maxxxxx• 15 years ago

It's a necessity for a civilized country.

MaxGabriel• 15 years ago

Certainly from a libertarian perspective, water and sewage are not. For philosophers like Rothbard, humans have a natural right to not being aggressed against--but not a right to, say, health. Similarly so for authors like Hoppe and Nozick.

All of them believing in libertarianism for consequentialist reasons as well, they would probably view this story as testament to the failures of government, and what happens when it is coopted by businesses.

Edit: I also want to disagree with the other commenters that issues of 'rights' don't matter. Sure, if you're only judging things by their consequences, then that discussion is moot. But having a moral position against the coercion of government (I'm going to take your money to build sewers, roads, engage in multiple wars, etc) is a legitimate stance--even if you disagree with it.

rayiner3• 15 years ago

> humans have a natural right to not being aggressed against

In pastafarianism, humans have a natural right to linguine on Tuesdays. So what?

dp12342• 15 years ago

I would imagine that there are restrictions preventing the residents from installing septic tanks so their only option was the sewer system run by the city. The libertarian perspective would allow them to install their own sewage handling system as long as it didn't adversely affect others.

scarmig5• 15 years ago

Well, you can draw further distinctions between Rothbard and Nozick (don't know too much about Hoppe). Nozick would support a minimal state whose sole job was to protect property and was financed by government coercion.

Rothbard would go further, though, and say even that minimal state is too much, as it is still coercing people to fund government activity (police protection of property). Even as that end of property enforcement is just, it's still using an immoral means to achieve it.

Which just goes to show that one man's right that deserves government protection is another's coercion. I respect Rothbard's consistency, because it's quite problematic for the run-of-the-mill libertarian to argue for some forms of positive liberty (the right to government provision of property enforcement) while saying that other forms of positive liberty are categorically unjust (such as, say, the right to government provision of running water).

eibrahim2• 15 years ago

Interesting thought. I lived in Zambia for 6 years without running water and we got used to it. Fortunately for us, we had a gardner that spent half his day filling up our water drums...

My point is: I have been there and at the time didn't think much of it. But after living in the USA for 16+ years now, I can't even imagine being without running water.

So, is it a right or a luxury? I don't know... 17 years ago, I would have said luxury but now, my answer would be it's a right...

marquis• 15 years ago

>gardner that spent half his day filling up our water drums

Would you not consider this a luxury? I expect your gardner did not have someone filling up his drums waiting at home for him. I've been in natural disaster areas where water and power weren't available, we made do but it also became what we spent 1/3 of the day managing around (hauling water, getting things done before nightfall etc).

freehunter• 15 years ago

Right vs luxury I think is a false dichotomy. There exists a third classification: public utility. According to my apartment complex, incoming water is a public utility, and as long as you pay property taxes they have no right to shut it off. In my state (or area, I don't know), it's illegal to charge for incoming water. They can charge for outgoing because sewage access is not a public utility.

This only goes for places where it is illegal to drill a well.

JWLong3• 15 years ago

Most people can hardly imagine life without their iPhone... but that hardly makes cell-service a right.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. We had a well, no central heat-and-air, and a septic system in our back yard. This worked just fine. We had the same quality of life (aside from freezing in the cold winters) that everyone in large cities had.

The difference is that we owned the equipment to take care of ourselves, instead of the local government.

rayiner3• 15 years ago

"Right" is a term of art. If you are denied a right, you can sue to get that right vindicated. So in that sense running water is not a right.

But what do "rights" have to do with this discussion? Running water may or may not be a right, but it's a basic feature of first world civilization. It is an embarrassment to the nation when a major county in the U.S. can't provide its citizens with running water, because of the greed and corruption of some politicians and some banks.

I was born in Bangladesh (where running water is indeed a luxury for most people), and my dad has spent his life working in public health (not running water, but vaccine programs and the like). These are problems to be dealt with in places like Uganda, not in the United States.

barrkel• 15 years ago

A right to reasonable access to sanitation, yes; the alternative is disease, and that's no good for anyone. That doesn't mean it should be free, of course.

shirro• 15 years ago

I don't think it is a right but a public health necessity. This should never happen in a developed country. Sewerage pricing here (.au) is linked to property value so the poor pay less. Water is charged by the kL and while it may be expensive for large manicured gardens is quite affordable for basic hygiene.

estevez• 15 years ago

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta --Brian Aldiss

ezy• 15 years ago

False dichotomy. Access to running water is not a luxury. I think that word is too loaded to use technically here.

In the context of a country where running water is ubiquitous, it is a horror that people have no infrastructure providing running water. It's not a "right" in the platonic sense, but I think I can say fairly objectively that it comes close to that status. That's really all that matters.

What can you really do with the information that water should be a "luxury" in the technical sense? Leave everyone t their own devices?

vacri• 15 years ago

If you're going to get that philosophical about "what is a right", you may as well just end up and state that only might makes right. It doesn't really add anything of real value to the conversation.

I mean, what rights aren't luxuries in some form or another? Voting? Luxury. Not being a slave? Luxury. You can still live, breathe, and procreate without access to either of those things.

JWLong3• 15 years ago

Okay... thanks guys. I guess I got my answer.

I'm kind of new-ish to HN, so I was wondering how you guys lean (if at all).

Also, it bothers me that there is usually no competition amongst utility providers. Where I live, we have one choice for electricity (short of generating your own), one choice for sewage (there _are_ other options, such as personal sewage systems), and one choice for garbage removal.

I think that if we could find ways to create more options, we could create a better situation for the folks in referenced in the article (and elsewhere).

Also, how do you guys define troll?

Newgy• 15 years ago

The real scandal is the long pattern of corrupt political leadership of Birmingham.

Birmingham was once an industrial capital, and in the middle of the last century was bigger than Atlanta, and in many ways better positioned economically to lead the south east. High taxes and a corrupt political culture drove Birmingham into the dirt. A couple generations later, Atlanta has one of the busiest airports in America, world-class universities, and hosted the Olympics, while Birmingham can't provide running water.

Elections matter.

dp12342• 15 years ago

And this is why instead of a large city of Birmingham, you have a large amount of spun off mini-cities in the area each with their own schools and municipal infrastructure (Hoover, Mountain Brook, etc). Of the many friends I know that live in Birmingham, none of them actually technically live in the city of Birmingham.

_delirium2• 15 years ago

The separate school districts of Birmingham suburbs aren't exactly due to corruption... many of them emerged in the 1950s-70s as a way of evading desegregation.

UrbanPat9• 15 years ago

Elections DO matter. A major difference between Birmingham and Atlanta is that Birmingham became the poster city for racism because of the way Bull Conner responded to civil rights protesters in 1963. Atlanta, on the other hand, became known as "The City too Busy to Hate", and ever since the two cities have had drastically different fortunes.

absconditus• 15 years ago

I was watching a video of some Alabama state legislators discussing changes to the state's alcohol laws and came to the conclusion that Alabama is going to remain poor for a long time to come. Alvin Holmes in particular seems like an idiot. I do not write this just to be vulgar and insulting; the man honestly seems dumb and foolish. Several of his colleagues seemed to be almost as bad.

leoh• 15 years ago

Does this remind anyone else of "Brave New World?"

splat• 15 years ago

It's admittedly been a while since I've read Brave New World, but I don't see the connection at all. Care to elaborate?

eibrahim2• 15 years ago

what a disgrace!!! the richest country in the world can't provide running water to its citizens... what a shame!!!

Stormbringer2• 15 years ago

That was my initial reaction too. But then I saw that the real problem is that they were gambling on derivatives to fund critical infrastructure projects. The obvious solution is more bailouts. The libertarian solution would be to let them 'stew in their own juices'. I suspect there is no 'right' answer because the people who created this disaster. can never repay the money, even if they wanted to.

ebiester• 15 years ago

The problem is that the people making the bad decisions and the people suffering for those decisions are not the same people.

bdunbar3• 15 years ago

Did you notice that in the article

- There was 'a' person who self-reported he could not afford the water bill?

- That there were no data at all about who could or could not afford the bill?

- That the number of people now using outhouses in that county was said to be rising but no numbers were given?

It's called propaganda. You fell for it, hook, line, sinker, and part of the dock.

hmottestad• 15 years ago

So I wonder...should I point and laugh or sit down and cry. It's not my country, and I would never want to live in the US. How a country treats it's least fortunate says a lot about the country in general.

I don't think lowering the standard of living is going to get us very far in this world. What we desperately need is for everyone to contribute to society. This is usually done by having healthy citizens with a high level of education so we can find better ways of solving today's problems.

But sure...two steps back, one step forward.

electromagnetic4• 15 years ago

> But sure...two steps back, one step forward.

Two steps back (lack of affordable clean water and lack of affordable sewage), hopefully the one step forward is going to be lack of government.

The leading problem in the western world is that the free market doesn't extend to government. I want to choose my politicians based on lowest expense and highest reward, because the electoral system seems to keep giving me the highest expense and the lowest rewards.

bandushrew2• 15 years ago

The leading problem in the western world is that the free market does extend to government.

I get the politicians I am willing to pay for.

Unfortunately corporations have more money, and can afford to pay more than I can.

That is the free market at work.

forrestthewoods• 15 years ago

This isn't a matter of how the country treats it's least fortunate. The issue is biggest county bankruptcy in the history of the country. And the issue that caused that is a level of fraud of massive proportions. The county has $4.1 billion dollars of debt.

Unfortunately services provided by private companies are not a right. You can call access to water a "right" and that's a reasonable claim. Now what does that actually mean. Do I have the right to demand free water from a private company riddled with debt? Do I have the right to demand free water from you personally? Or for you to pay my bill? Or for my bill to be reduced to zero? Or for someone to work at a utility company for free so that the utility company can provide a free service? Does that then mean that the utility company has a right to demand free parts from local supplies companies so that the can provide a free service?

Maybe the utility companies should be nationalized and all citizens can contribute tax dollars to the service. It wouldn't surprise me if that's how it's done in a lot of Eurozone countries? I'm not sure. I don't even really understand how the fraud occured and who is on the hook for the bill. It is however fair to say that it's way more complicated than "how a country treat's it's least fortunate".

UrbanPat9• 15 years ago

I'm confused - are you suggesting the sewer is provided by a private company? The sewer system in Jefferson County is publicly run.

And maybe that's part of the problem. Presumably a private sewer company could declare bankruptcy, sell its infrastructure, and let someone else provide the service. But with a public utility, we're stuck.

bdunbar3• 15 years ago

You did notice that this was bout 'a' county, in 'a' state. And that there was no data in the article about how many people this problem affects.

Thinking this is representative of the country as a whole would be a big mistake.

The article was long on emotion, short on facts.

ck2• 15 years ago

Didn't Alabama just export virtually all of it's migrant workers recently too?

Some crazy decisions going on there.

Let's see if people keep voting against themselves.

donaldc• 15 years ago

But the bill soared to $3.1bn after construction problems and a series of bond and derivatives deals that went sour in the financial meltdown of 2008.

Investment bank JP Morgan Securities and two of its former directors have been fined for offering bribes to Jefferson County workers and politicians to win business financing the sewer upgrade.

Fined? That level of punishment seems insufficient.

scarmig5• 15 years ago

One thing that you can almost admire about China: the bribers would as likely as not have been executed for this.

(Assuming they weren't well-connected to the upper ranks of the Party elite...)

bmunro• 15 years ago

I don't really think that that is something to admire.

waterlesscloud3• 15 years ago

People have gone to prison over this scandal

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/09/five_men_convicted_in_je...

waterlesscloud3• 15 years ago

Including commissioner Chris McNair, whose daughter was one of the four little girls killed in that KKK church bombing.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

One wonders if the 'fine' for this sort of behavior could be 'JP Morgan will provide the city of Birmingham the infrastructure to provide sewer and water service to the town, once complete they will transfer all titles and interest over to the town at no charge.'

The current consequence of 'pay some fines' doesn't serve the public, nor does it discourage the abuse. Restitution here is that the city doesn't have a sewer and water system. By having JP Morgan fund the building and provisioning of such a system and then handing it over debt/bond free to the city, the city is made whole (they have their sewer system), JP Morgan is punished (they paid for it), and hopefully they are discouraged from future attempts at bribing folks.

yummyfajitas8• 15 years ago

It's pretty clear from the article that JP Morgan is not the sole cause of these problems:

"But the bill soared to $3.1bn after construction problems and a series of bond and derivatives deals that went sour in the financial meltdown of 2008...[the county] faces a budget shortfall next year of $40m after a local tax was declared illegal."

Clearly, someone involved with the construction is partially at fault, as are politicians for basing their budget on an illegal tax.

So it would certainly be excessive and unfair for JP Morgan to foot the bill for the entire sewer and water system.

UrbanPat9• 15 years ago

I live in Birmingham, so I need to correct a couple things. First, the "illegal" tax has been around a long time. In this particular case, it was overturned on a technicality [1]. However, because the state government is hostile to Birmingham, it has been impossible to replace the lost revenue. However, that's relatively unimportant, because the sewer budget is separate, and funded only by sewer system revenues.

Secondly, the construction problems, common among massive public projects, really weren't the problem. The problem is that County Commissioners were BRIBED by bankers into taking out unwise interest rate swaps in 2003. I believe all five commissioners from that period have been convicted of corruption, particularly Larry Langford, commission president. [2]

The reason for the bankruptcy is less that interest rates rose, but primarily the freezing of the market for municipal bonds during the 2008-2009 recession. Bloomberg explains, "After some bond insurers incurred losses on subprime- related securities, threatening the credit ratings they used to guarantee other Jefferson debts, investors in 2008 dumped the sewer securities on banks that had agreed to act as buyers of last resort. That triggered contractual requirements for the county to pay off $850 million of the debt in four years instead of the 30 or 40 under the original agreements, according to government records." [3]

So it is clear that BOTH bankers and our local politicians are at fault for this problem. Both acted illegally. Our politicians are in jail, but the guilty bankers are not. So, yes, I think JP Morgan should pay a substantial penalty for this.

1: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/03/alabama_supreme_court_ru... 2: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/case/jp-morgan-investment... 3: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/alabama-s-jefferson...

qas1981• 15 years ago

I suffered in Birmingham for almost 3yrs of my life. I realized the error in my ways and moved. The closet thing to a real politician was forced out a few years ago. Everyone else is bought

UrbanPat9• 15 years ago

What politician are you referring to?

And just for the record, I really like Birmingham. It's a good city. It has had some really terrible politicians, but despite that, it's a really nice place to live. (Though, I must confess, I don't have to pay a water bill).

jamgraham• 15 years ago

Larry Langford For Life!! http://www.bhamweekly.com/birmingham/article-1190-the-life-a...

grannyg00se• 15 years ago

There are people who form groups that voluntarily get off of the grid to seek independence. No city water, no city sewage, no grocery shopping.

It seems to me that if most of these people are on welfare in an area with a pretty good climate and what appears to be (from the photos) low population density, this would lend itself very nicely to getting off of the grid.

Instead of relying on the government to support them, they could farm. Instead of worrying about running water and sewage, they could irrigate and fertilize. Instead of worrying about hydro bills for lighting they could use small scale solar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

bdunbar3• 15 years ago

How a country treats it's least fortunate says a lot about the country in general.

what a disgrace!!! the richest country in the world can't provide running water to its citizens... what a shame!!!

Did anyone else notice that the linked article doesn't come right out and tell us how many people are using outhouses instead of the city sewer? One lady who may cut off service, one guy who has. The number of guys like this is said to be growing.

Outrage is fine and dandy.

But shouldn't you find dig around so you know what you're outraged about?

lftl• 15 years ago

I'm a resident of Jefferson County and a ratepayer for the sewer system, and as such I can confirm that while the portion of this article dealing with the political history and issues was fine, the opening personal part was quite misleading.

If you have a $300 water/sewer bill you're doing something absurd. We're a family of 6, and I am by no means conservative with my showers, wife takes a bath every night, 4 kids bathing regularly, and our bill has never been more than $100 for a month.

Having the sewer portion of the bill be the same as the water portion is bad, and there's no doubt it's a screwed up situation, but this is a typical case of a reporter seeking out outliers and presenting them as commonplace.

kamaal7• 15 years ago

This might be a cultural difference. I'm from India.

But 'poor' people have cars in America(From the photos)? You guys get $600 per month for doing nothing(Social security)? Don't pay taxes and yet infrastructure benefits must reach you?

I don't really know what more the country can do for you guys. I mean paying individuals $600 per month for doing nothing, with which they can afford home, cars, food and clothing all this when the individual isn't even working.

I mean if this isn't sufficient, what is?

You really must come out of US and check the definition of 'poor' in other countries.

Here is a reason why you guys can never beat China. Because there people tend to be happy with ever little they get. But here in this case you have people complaining for stuff which is offered to them free at the first place.

P.S : I am software engineer here, who can barely afford a motorcycle and fuel. Let alone a car.

yummyfajitas8• 15 years ago

But 'poor' people have cars in America(From the photos)?

About 70% of them. 25% actually have two or more cars.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

Forget learning what poor is in India, most Americans should come to India and see how the top 5-10% lives. Someone on welfare in the US probably has a nicer house than most people in Bandra or Koregoan Park. Sad but true.

kamaal7• 15 years ago

Someone on welfare in the US probably has a nicer house than most people in Bandra or Koregoan Park. Sad but true.

I always think about this. That life in India and countries alike is so difficult, merely meeting the ends meet and getting yourself food, clothing and shelter requires you fight daily battles.

I mean with farmers committing suicide, crores of people below poverty line. Hunger and Malnutrition in one part of country. Children starving to death. And middle class earning barely enough to survive. We still consider ourselves fortunate if we can get the basic stuff right.

Now here some one is giving you $600 for doing nothing in a wonderful residence, food, clothing and shelter with a car to drive. And all the time in the world to spare.

And people are complaining?

I agree there is some corruption and scam going on in here, but really if you can buy a car you are anything but poor.

mkr-hn6• 15 years ago

Social security is paid for by payroll taxes (making it closer to insurance than a handout). And those cars are old and not worth much. You could buy one after a few weeks of donating blood. Sewers and water are usually paid for by a fee or taxes.

I could go and dispel more misconceptions for you, but I think you've read enough to know that you have a few things wrong and will wisely avoid judging the entirety of a nation's poor based on a single photograph.

ETA: Most poor people have cars because most poor neighborhoods don't have any reasonably priced grocery store. It's cheaper to own a car (with all the potential it brings) than to shop locally.

kamaal7• 15 years ago

I don't know much about America, but if you could afford a car by doing as simple a thing you mentioned than my friend you are in heaven. You have no clue how bad this part of the world is.

Just come to Mumbai or any urban metro in India and see for yourself how people travel. Majority of them are herded like sheep in busy trains and buses.

That is why I said, it might be just a cultural thing. Here too, we need to pay for water and sewers.

But I understand that your barrier for entry when it comes to measuring poverty is very different than ours. By your definition 95% of whole India may fall into poverty.

The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water

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