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Same with being disabled, growing up I thought disabled people just got helped by everyone in society with everything. Turns out most of the time it’s “do what you were doing before except harder.”
Waiting for buses and other public transport especially. In college I had no car and continued working a part time job that I previously borrowed my parents’ car to commute to. My options were: spending an hour and a half to commute taking a bus with a reasonable schedule but I’d have to walk over a mile alongside a busy road to my job, or spend three hours to commute due to how two route schedules matched up to drop me off at the entrance to the shopping center.
Each of those options was one way, and this was before smart phones. I wasn’t getting anything done in that time besides listening to music and maybe reading a book while on the bus itself.
And then I learned that on Saturdays, over half the time the bus just didn’t fucking show up at the stop where I got on, and the support phone line would just fucking lie about it.
Plus, if I had a vehicle, the commute would have been only 20 minutes in bad traffic.
Will say, the regular distance power walking helped keep me in great shape though.
I had a job 2.5 miles from my apartment. There is a bus stop on the corner of my apartment, there is a bus stop next to the job. According to the website it was 3 hours to commute by bus to get there…
I wouldn’t be surprised if that bus included connections to other lines on top of it all.
I had to commute by bus for a while. The transfer is where my anxiety peaked. Being miles away from home and hoping not to miss a second bus just to make it to work on time meant my brain was on high alert the whole time.
Bus transfers are the worst… In my city, we have a pretty good network of busses … IF your goal is the city center. All the routes just do a spiderweb towards the center. You’re on your own if you needed to go between neighborhoods.
Waiting for busses isn’t a poverty problem, it’s a policy problem.
It’s a poverty problem because you don’t have a choice but to rely on policy. That’s what all of those listed things are illustrating.
Hunting for cheaper insurance instead of getting the best coverage, waiting an hour for a bus instead of calling an Uber, searching multiple flyers for the best grocery prices and coupons instead of ordering takeout. These are all “frugal” when you have the money to do otherwise.
It’s poverty when you need to do those things or you just can’t afford to do them.
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So destroy more forest to grow food for one person? May I suggest an alternative. We protect the little forest that remains and instead relax zoning laws to allow people to grow food on the countless acres of grassy yard space/land we already have. Grass is an outdated non native crop originally grown by rich assholes as a staus symbol to say “I have so much I do not need to use my land for anything productive.”
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Waiting for buses is not poverty. Being in traffic jams and stuck to using a car is, however.
Besides the point. Having no choice but to wait for the hourly bus could be one of the many time stealers if your poor.
… buses don’t come hourly there. They come far more often. When they don’t come often, the cause is petro-oligarchs and car lobbyists trying to defund public transit by bribing politicians.
A car steals more time and money; having to look for a parking spot, having to focus constantly in traffic, literally indebting yourself to car subscriptions, and so on. Cars and anti-human, stroad-focused infrastructure are a cause of poverty.
Better living is brought about by better technology, not having more money
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