silveradept | (Reply)

From:

I've had all the same outcomes as someone born into poverty; I guess what I'm trying to understand (but have basically given up on trying to figure out) is why, given I didn't come from a poor family (simply someone who suddenly became and remained so) is why I had those outcomes. It never occurred to me until recently that poverty could hurt the immediate/first products of it unless it was part of a multi-generational, repeat pattern (which in my family it wasn't; even my mom spent half her life better off than I spent most of my own - nobody on either side of my family was ever even close to being poor, afaik). I guess I always believed not coming from multi-generational poverty might confer some kind of advantage (and maybe for some people it does) regardless of present circumstances. It's kind of a shock to think just one generation (I guess that's my own) sinking into poverty is enough to erase perhaps hundreds of years of wealth forever. It's just a lot to have to absorb.

Of course, wealth can sometimes be built back up after a family has lost it but there was how my dad wasn't paying for my college unless I promised not to study law (that's a longish story), there's a house I can't inherit what would work out to one-half its current value because the state owns that half, there's three other inheritances I was denied over the years (my grandfather's, my fathers, my grandmother's - all longish stories) and I don't know...lots of other twists and turns along the way, along with how I don't tend to get involved with anyone who makes much more than me (since I guess that should be figured in).

I'd say truth is stranger than fiction but since multi-generational poverty doesn't seem to be referenced in the charts and graphs maybe not; maybe if you're poor, it doesn't matter if that's a recent occurrence for your family or not; maybe its more of a rigid fate than I ever thought possible, in which life cheats its victims immediately and forever in more ways than anyone can chart or graph. I still have a hard time believing that, though, in spite of sort of maybe walking around being living proof.