Last week I was reading an article posted from RealClearPolitics.com entitled, “Slumdog Millionaire.” The title was intriguing so I had to read the article. You can go read it for yourself, but the author talks about a movie which details poverty in Mumbai, India. This is the part of the article that made me want to blog about it:
“Overall,” writes Heritage, “the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. While this individual’s life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.”
“Nearly three-quarters of poor U.S. households own a car,” says the study, “31 percent own two or more cars. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception. Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.”
In these times of economic hardship, it makes you wonder how desperate some of our fellow Americans really are… Hey, if someone can afford a microwave, stereo, car, color television, and some type of DVD or VCR player, then they can certainly afford to pay the rent or mortgage each month, right?
When read statistics like these, it just makes you wonder how “bad off” we really are during this recession.
