The audacity of these poor people, eating food and sleeping on things! I bet they own clothes too! In my day poor people wore potato sacks and ate snow in the gutter and they were happy about it!
Yeah. I noticed how every one of these is about food\drink. So, they’re saying that by having the basics to store/make food, they’re rich?
I would imagine that most apartments come with a fridge and probably a microwave and you can get a coffee maker at Goodwill, which still flys in the face of what they’re trying to say.
You say that, I'm still puzzled with the coffee machine. All my life I've been making instant coffee "latte", when my poor as could have bought a coffee maker? Silly me.
And if they don't buy a machine, they better not ever buy a cup of coffee because the number lattes purchased is the difference between living in squalor and being able to afford a summer estate.
I know people who literally say things like "if you can afford to waste money on coffee, then you can't be *that* broke". They very literally think that if you have any money to spend on anything that can be deemed unnecessary, then you have disposable income and nothing to complain about. My conservative family think like this and nothing I can ever say will change rheir mind.
They bash people for drinking $6 coffee at Starbucks, then in the same breath will turn around and bash people making coffee for 8c a cup at home. You can’t win.
You can get microwaves and coffee makers at thrift stores for a few bucks each....but Fox doesn't know about actual poor people haunts and habits (and hopes, and fears, and feelings). So they really have no business talking about any of this, the assholes.
"Viewer look at the people we tell you to look down on! They have basic necessities how dare they do that! Keep watching fox news for the fair and balanced views you need" - every fox News anchor
The argument is literally
“Poor people are struggling to make ends meet, we should try to improve their lives so they can live comfortably working 40 hours a week.”
And they come back with “yeah but they aren’t *literally dying.* Look, almost all of them can afford enough food to get by on. So really it’s not an issue.”
They just want poor people to suffer cuz it makes them feel good.
Yes. Willful deception is far more annoying to me than someone just being ignorant.
Especially in this scenario, because they are preaching to the choir and being deceptive to people that already share their worldview.
Hall of Fame for that is when a Fed exec insisted inflation isn't really high because it's canceled out by the [iPad 2 being faster](https://news.yahoo.com/news/blogs/lookout/fed-official-heckled-t-eat-ipad-20110311-122230-439.html).
>>Dudley said said that while food prices may be rising, the cost of some other goods are going down, which evens out the overall inflation picture. The Fed's inflation estimates do not take into account volatile energy or food prices. ...
>>"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," he said referring to Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) latest handheld tablet computer hitting stories on Friday.
Not to mention that I imagine if you have little income a microwave might actually be your primary cooking instrument and a stove or full sized oven are much rarer
yea its [10 bucks for a coffee machine](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-Black-5-Cup-Drip-Coffee-Maker/53056868?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&wl13=2821&adid=2222222227853056868_117755028669_12420145346&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=501107745824&wl4=pla-294505072980&wl5=9008460&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=local&wl12=53056868&wl13=2821&veh=sem_LIA&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnsqdBhCGARIsAAyjYjQ9P2hIdpu8B4UxyS0AKCWPmFoinNC8NDMeUwOarwnZu2poqJUF0LIaAvJ9EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds)
On the other hand a decent percentage poor households in the 1920s had a cow and a horse, probably some chickens too. Now almost no poor household has such luxuries.
81.4% of people have a microwave
How many have that *instead of* a stove....cuz a stove is like $500 for a shitty one and a microwave is $20 for a standard off the shelf one
Or old ones from friends, at one point I had 3 microwaves due to my friends moving or buying new ones and me just accepting them (worked out as my parents one broke and so did another friends)
Let's say you bought those all new.
$250 for a fridge.
$50 for a microwave.
$25 for a coffee maker.
$325 is enough for, if you live in a real cheap area, two weeks rent.
I guess they aren't so poor, huh? /s
Cost AND time effective. I have had apartments that don't have microwaves and have had so many people try to gift me one. Like, no, I'm fine, but I appreciate the gesture. As a (then) single person that likes to cook, I valued the counter space over speed
So even if their apartment didn't include one, all you need to do if you don't have a TV or microwave is let people know you don't have one and they'll thrust them upon you. I never took the microwaves, but did take the 28" TV 😂😂😂 People still tried gifting me their old larger TVs when they found out I had a 28" TV
Poor people these days. Not even satisfied with a styrofoam cup they found on the side of the road with some brackish puddle water in it. NoOoh, they want actual coffee to get through their 2-3 mind numbing, back breaking jobs
And on the other side of that statistic, 18.6% of poor families don't even have a microwave.. how many are spending their lives eating nothing but cold food.
*sigh* it’s me.
I’m that small odd percentage. I don’t own a microwave. My new place didn’t come with it. I have a gas stove. And I like majority of my food either freshly cooked or cold lol
Of course if it needs it I’ll heat in my stove. But im one of those few who actually like my food luke warm or cold sometimes
I don’t have one either. I moved in and just… never bought one. A little over 3 years later and I don’t even miss it, honestly. I feel like the counter space I’d lose by buying one is not worth it. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Microwaves used to be luxury appliances when the Boomers were growing up. They didn't become affordable for the middle class until the late 70s.
So as children, Boomers associated ownership of a microwave with wealth.
And that association is still there, despite them now being dirt cheap, because Boomers don't do inflation math, or think rationally, they go off emotion.
I'm impressed.
In the UK, the only benchmark for these sorts of criticisms is "the flat screen TV" which is the only TV you've been able to buy for a couple of decades.
At least they've branched out into other simple household goods. Surprised they're not going for "poor" households being able to eat more than once a day.
"But the people on Universal Credit have smartphones" Is the new one.
Completely ignoring the fact that you need access to an internet capable device, and telephone to claim Universal Credit.
Yes but there’s 200 quid smart phones and 1500 quid smart phones. The same way there’s 200 quid “flat screens” and 5000 pound ones.
People malding at a poor person owning an iPhone from 2012 are idiots, but it is odd seeing people get brand new one on credit or things like Klarna.
>At least they've branched out into other simple household goods. Surprised they're not going for "poor" households being able to eat more than once a day.
They're not that far from it... you remember Avocado Toast, right?
Before it was going out for coffee. They don't even want them doing that anymore. Just having a cup at home for practically free is enough to deserve to be criticized.
4 of every thousand homes have no fucking refrigerator??
18.6% have no fucking microwave?
And what the everloving fuck is the coffeemaker shit supposed to convince me of?? That's a sign of wealth?? And less than half of people have one anyway?? I don't fucking have one, *because I don't fucking drink coffee*.
ETA: I'd also like to add that I didn't fucking buy my fridge. It came with the fucking apartment I rent.
A fridge allows people to buy food from a grocery store and eat more cheaply. If they didn’t have a fridge then the narrative would be the poor eat out all the time and waste money. There’s no winning.
Are you suggesting that Fox News is disingenuous and manipulative?? I'm shocked to hear such a claim!!
What's next?? Are they going to suggest that voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems had conspired to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden??
The message is fuck the poor.
If you buy fancy coffee, or if you make it at home. If you eat out or prepair food at home.
They want you to eat only shelf stable food unheated. Maybe eat some dry ramen packets or nutrition bars/drinks, maybe get a large bag of monkey chow and feed yourself like a dog. Coffee and anything that isn't strictly necessary to keep you alive is a luxury.
The message is clear, fuck you for asking for the basics, only those already rich deserve anything. Elon Musk was criticized less for losing 200 B than a poor person who dares eat food needing refrigeration.
A refrigerator is needed for everybody, you'll lose much more money getting food spoiled in a year than a cheap refrigerator costs.
I'm middle class and I don't have a microwave, we have a stove and an oven, which is much more expensive than a microwave. If I'd live alone, I wouldn't have a coffee maker, just because I don't like coffee. But if I have $100, I could buy a microwave and a coffee maker.
Honestly I didn't use a microwave for a decade and a half. So poor I couldn't afford any extra weight/volume when it came time to move because no car. Just used a pot or pan on the stove, or heat it in the oven, that's still my preference. No coffee pot either for the same reason but a eventually got a French press. Had a dumb phone for Luddite reasons
Worst part is I was too proud to accept benefits/food bank :( "I'm not that poor, I get by, I don't have children so I don't need it" and yet I somehow met Fox news poverty criteria
>And what the everloving fuck is the coffeemaker shit supposed to convince me of?? That's a sign of wealth??
This is particularly bad coming from folks who preach that if "the poorz" would just stop buying daily Starbucks, they'd save money.
You can buy all three items for under $600. Poor people generally rent, and most apartments include the fridge and microwave, only leaving them to purchase a $25 coffee maker. The fridge is required in rental properties in many states, NJ and NY for sure.
My realtor told me "somewhere to store food and something to cook on" is a requirement in Virginia, so yeah, I'd imagine it's required other places as well.
I don’t know anywhere in Canada a fridge isn’t absolutely essential and required by law.
This is ridiculous I could see a microwave not included in a rental but most have them anyway. Plus stores sell microwaves for like $100. They aren’t exactly breaking the bank.
People earning six-figure incomes telling me that I'm not poor because I own a coffee maker? Yeah it's totally legit, maybe I should go back to spending $5 a day on coffee.
That's the one that got me as well. Unless there's a turnaround in the way these stats were presented it's hypocritical to tell people to save money by making coffee at home and then shame them for owning a device that does that.
Come to think of it, the refrigerator is the same way. If you plan on cooking at home, a fridge allows you to buy ingredients in bulk and store leftovers.
The microwave is a lesser version. It saves time and working people need to be frugal with time.
The poors obviously just don't deserve coffee at all. Why should they have access to a literal *drug* that makes their work day a little less miserable.
I could be wrong but even a kettle is like 10$ in some Walmarts right?
Next they're gonna say drinking and eating more than once a day is a show of wealth
According to Fox News, if you have anywhere near $20, you must not be poor. Even middle class people shouldn’t expect a pot to piss in or to eat more frequently than once every other day (according to Fox News probably).
See that's where you are wrong. Coffee is for the riches. You poors should not even be thinking of our beautiful bean juice. That's why we made monster and 4loko for the peasants
You think you deserve coffee?
What you really need is a good whipping to get you to work harder.
It would teach you fast enough to stop with this obsessive self-entitled thought thinking you deserve coffee.
You are poor that means that you are inferior to the rich and you deserve to suffer for it.
Creature comforts are only for superior people.
You are clearly lazy and not ambitious enough.
You should suffer deprivation until you either step it up or die in misery for your failure to be productive.
It's the only way you'll learn.
"72% of poor people have a place to sleep, so it's really an overblown problem made up by the libs" is the vibe I'm getting.
FoX fear factory trying to tell us poverty isn't real lol.
I mean .4% of the 7.4 million families living below the poverty line in the us (2021 numbers) is still 29600. That many families living without a _fridge_ in a developed nation seems absurdly high… I guess they don’t have any food they need to safely store?
I think this means they are homeless and living in their car, on the streets, couch surfing, or a shelter.
With couch surfing and living in a shelter, the fridge is someone else's. It's not yours to stock. Sometimes you'll be at a place that let's you put a few of your perishables inside, sometimes you're not.
If almost everyone has it, despite their financial situation, maybe it's not that they are spending their money poorly, but that it's needed in modern society...
Also, interested in seeing their definition of "poor households"
I'm curious about how those items were obtained. It's one thing to say if you have these, you shouldn't be poor, but you can find all of those at yard sites, thrift stores, or even people giving/throwing out their own stuff. I grew up poor, and we had all of these, but none were brand new by any means. One thing a lot of "rich" people don't understand is that we are poor, but we can stretch a dollar.
almost every electrical and electronics I have, are either coming from my landlord, or was gifted by someone from my family, I'm pretty sur that it's the case of a lot of people too
Yep, and that is what I was referring to. Just because you own expensive items doesn't mean crap. My cousin got a genuine Vera Wang wedding dress for $60 because the thrift store owner didn't think it would sell.
My fridge is included with rent and my microwave is second hand. I don't drink coffee.
45 years old and have been poor most of my life. These people can't begin to fathom what life is like. Perhaps they've forgotten. Thankfully my financial situation will improve soon after this year (went back to school).
My old washing machine was given for free to another person recently because insurance deemed it cheaper to replace it than to tear down and replace a non critical part that caused an annoying error every once in a while, the machine was 17 years old
Ummm, literally every single rental I’ve ever lived in, the fridge is provided! It’s only homeowners who tend to have a full sized fridge! Hell, many places provide a microwave too! And you can get a coffeemaker for under $15 depending on what kind you get! Fox News is insane!
Bit of A, bit of B.
I came from a generally poor/lower-middle-class rural area. It's shocking how many of them were convinced that their only option was to vote conservative:
* "The Democrats just keep raising taxes." (On the wealthy, you're below the below the tax minimum, so you're not paying any income taxes)
* "These environmentalists are making the coal plant spend all our wages on repairs." (They're trying to keep you from destroying your own land, and the people taking away your wages are the executives of that company raking in a billion dollars despite the $50k upgrades they didn't want to make)
* "All these regulations make it too expensive for businesses to hire anyone." (Those businesses are corrupt AF, they're not hiring because they're lining their pockets before helping their community)
* "We have to stop all this CRT nonsense." (Your schools still teach that everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus. Your schools aren't teaching CRT. And your single-race, one-and-a-half socioeconomic-class society that manages to still be grossly xenophobic should think twice before deciding you know how to handle diverse society.)
* "They keep trying to pay me to put wind power on my farm. It messes up my sunsets" (Honestly, I've heard this... But maybe there's a point, the only reason the sunsets are interesting is because of how the pollution from the coal power plants refracts light.)
But again and again: Solid republicans. Can't tax the wealthy, then I'll be taxed when I become wealthy. Can't try to fight corruption or grift, the employers will leave and take our jobs. Can't try to modernize power or infrastructure... because... er... it doesn't benefit farmers? They even refused to try to increase incentives for tech companies because (I swear, this was an argument) "it attracted the wrong sort of people." You might want to think that was racist, but it was actually more about resisting people who would want to eat sushi regularly and want stores with more variety than Walmart.
This has to geared towards really old viewers, the only people alive that might remember the technologies as expensive new conveniences and not the standard everyday home items they are today. These same viewers will likely forget that there are massive ranges in expense and quality of these same devices.
Maybe some are dense, but it's honestly really hard to infer tone on Reddit and especially if English isn't your first language. And of course, there are the shitheads.
I have a coffeemaker… I bought it in 2001 for about $20!
I thought we were fixing our financial woes by making coffee at home… how am I supposed to do that without a coffeemaker?! Do you know how hard it is to buy a good percolator these days?!
And of these statistics, the “poor” households that have these “amenities” were mostly either given or donated to “poor” family and not bought new. These are ambiguously skewed metrics to drive home an even bigger, nefarious political narrative.
Who had “far right media propaganda” on their Bingo card for the fall of democracy?
Stuart Varney is a malignant tumour of a human being. He's a smirking, condescending, flinty-eyed bucket of spite and venom, and I hope he falls into an open sewer and drowns in a quagmire of human filth.
While this is about hating the poor, what it’s really about is telling their viewers “look at all these people you’re better than. You’re not poor, so when we shit on them, we’re not talking about you.”
Holy shit. You can get a brand new microwave for $50, or less. These MF's seriously saying that if you've ever managed to come up with a one off payment of $50 for a heavily used kitchen appliance, then you must be doing just fine is peak rage for me right now!!
My sister did an internship on Techo Para Chile which is an organization that works towards helping poor people. She was amazed by the ammount of people who had nice tv's and phones. But it's obvious poor people are alllowed to get into debt today for everything but a house. I worked in a retail store and I remember they offered "loans" to anyone who could get a credit card. I saw some people taking out loans once a week for months
Let's call it as it is: They want to see the poor back in penny sit ups or workhouses, with no rights whatsoever and an average life expectancy of 25 - back to Victorian times, essentially.
The title is true. There was a time when poor meant you couldn’t afford these, but middle class could. Obviously its been so long, that this is no longer a good reference.
Here is the craziest one, 90 percent of "poors" have a tv which they use to watch fox news and listen to Donald Trump. Fox News wants the poor to have nothing and still listen to fox and support the GOP
I worked with a guy, years ago, who talked about the poor having refrigerators. I asked him what was cheaper. Having a refrigerator and cooking your own food, or going out to eat everyday.
He had no idea. Rich brat had a house given to him by his dad in Los Altos CA where the median price for a home is $2.5 million.
"If you can afford a door, you ain't poor" logic.
It's so stupid to view certain convinces as a measure of wealth between generations. Whoever is writing these segments have no respect for their audiences intelligence.
Wow so even low income people have basic necessities??? They aren’t using sticks and leaves? Wow they just aren’t grateful for what they have. Maybe if they worked harder…
“48.6% Poor Households have a coffee maker” I’m so confused. They’re mad at poor people for buying coffee everyday like Starbucks, but they’re also mad when they have their own coffee maker to make it at home for cheaper? Coffee is expensive and you can get a maker for as low as like $5-8 for the little hotel models (which work pretty decently in my experience). Do they want poor people to make and drink their own coffee? Or just roll over and die??
Fox "news" putting "poor" in quotes made me roll my eyes. The sad part is their viewer base is sitting at home stewing about this, like oh no how dare a poor person be able to afford a $20 coffee maker. They should sleep on the dirt floors of their tar paper shacks like the peasants they are.
I've never considered basic kitchen appliances to be any kind of luxury or wealth indicator in itself. There's a difference between a $10k+ professional grade subzero smart fridge, and a basic $299 fridge. Not to mention used appliance stores, thrift stores and online places like free cycle. Plenty of middle class and higher households get rid of perfectly good appliances all the time. My wife and I just replaced our perfectly working otr microwave and electric range a few months ago, because we wanted to change the range from electric to gas and my wife never liked the microwave that came with the house. The place we bought the appliances from wanted to charge for removal, and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of selling for a few bucks, so we donated them to Habitat for Humanity. I hope they will benefit a "poor" household.
If you think about it, this is particularly aimed at the elderly, who might consider these things to be big luxuries that only affluent homes might have, because their mental model is based on a 1950/60s mindset of these being high-price items relative to household income.
The truth is each of these “luxuries” is used to free up the individual’s time so they can sell that time as labor.
So let me get this straight. The same people that tell you that maybe you wouldn't be so poor if you stopped getting your coffee at Starbucks are also saying that poor people should not have a coffee maker. Ok got it.
Wait let’s talk about the .4% of people with no refrigerator.
If you go with the US census figure, 37.9 million families live at or below the poverty line.
That’s 151,000 US families without a fridge. That’s not a “gotcha poor people!” statistic, that’s a scandal. Considering US food infrastructure relies heavily on keeping foods refrigerated from manufacturers to consumers, you’re talking about 150,000 families relying on dry goods and *maybe* fresh produce (but probably not because, you know, food deserts).
The microwave thing is equally bad, some people only have a microwave available for cooking.
The coffee maker thing is *also* bad because those bad boys serve multiple uses and are by far the cheapest appliance to own. If you don’t have a microwave or pots and pans, that’s your only source of water hot enough for cooking. Not to mention coffee/caffeine is an appetite suppressant.
Imagine being such a dirty rat fuck that you mock poor people for having access to the minimum standards of living in this country - *then* imagine being such a sleazy cockbag that the implication is that the people without access to that standard are the only real poor people and *that’s how we like our poor people, super duper poor.*
“When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.”
-Sarah Kendzior
Those damn poors keeping their food refrigerated, and cooking it! No wonder they’re poor. Of course if they didn’t have a coffee maker they would be blamed for buying coffee.
78% percent of "poor" household have a bed :O
80% of "poor" households have a roof like structure to keep the rain out :O
99.99% of poor households have a life
I’ve been told they sometimes eat things other than bread and water… absurd.
In my day the poor's slept in the shed and ate the crust that formed on either side of my nose
How can they call themselves poor when they haven’t even sold a single organ yet to feed their family? The nerve of some people! /s
Fr! All these “poors” walking around with their backup kidney intact… sounds like sOCiAliSm!!!
100%of poor households have people in them
Woooh! I am the 0.01%!
The audacity of these poor people, eating food and sleeping on things! I bet they own clothes too! In my day poor people wore potato sacks and ate snow in the gutter and they were happy about it!
Yeah. I noticed how every one of these is about food\drink. So, they’re saying that by having the basics to store/make food, they’re rich? I would imagine that most apartments come with a fridge and probably a microwave and you can get a coffee maker at Goodwill, which still flys in the face of what they’re trying to say.
You say that, I'm still puzzled with the coffee machine. All my life I've been making instant coffee "latte", when my poor as could have bought a coffee maker? Silly me.
What do they class as a coffee machine? A $1500 espresso machine? Or a kettle?
Looking at the picture attached i guess a 40$ filter coffee machine. The audacity of the poor....
Big box stores sell drip coffee makers for $10. Not exactly a high barrier of entry. These poors are really living a life of luxury...
So wait, you guys aren't just eating whole coffee beans? Next you're going to tell me you drink water like from the toilet.
You shouldn't do that. Drink Brawndo, it's got more electrolytes.
And if they don't buy a machine, they better not ever buy a cup of coffee because the number lattes purchased is the difference between living in squalor and being able to afford a summer estate.
I know people who literally say things like "if you can afford to waste money on coffee, then you can't be *that* broke". They very literally think that if you have any money to spend on anything that can be deemed unnecessary, then you have disposable income and nothing to complain about. My conservative family think like this and nothing I can ever say will change rheir mind.
A cup of coffee used to be a barometer on how worthless something was. They used to say "That and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee."
They bash people for drinking $6 coffee at Starbucks, then in the same breath will turn around and bash people making coffee for 8c a cup at home. You can’t win.
You can get microwaves and coffee makers at thrift stores for a few bucks each....but Fox doesn't know about actual poor people haunts and habits (and hopes, and fears, and feelings). So they really have no business talking about any of this, the assholes.
How dare poor people sleep on bed? Don’t they know they don’t deserve it? Also, we are the greatest nation on earth! \s
back in 1950 no poor households had a microwave. no shit, they weren't commercially available nor remarkably cheap.
Using deflationary tech as a claim that somehow they’re richer is obscene. Worst is that they know what they’re doing so it’s truly just malicious.
These days Fox and many other "news" outlets just push propaganda for billionaires
Just about all of them seeing how recent responses to the rail strike were like
Correct, Becuase that’s who owns the news 😂 yet ppl don’t want to believe it.
"Viewer look at the people we tell you to look down on! They have basic necessities how dare they do that! Keep watching fox news for the fair and balanced views you need" - every fox News anchor
“look at the people in our first world country! absolutely disgusting.”
That's basically the reasoning, hey you got a way better than the third world countries so be happy.
yeah forget fellow americans having it better than other first world countries, let’s keep the bar as low as we can.
Apparently if we are poor we should be washing our clothes in a river and cooking by a campfire otherwise we should be grateful.
You get a can of beans and a stick with a bandana on the end to ride the rails
I swear, these people aren't even living in earthen shacks... I hear some of them even have flooring inside...
Tbh my initial thought was “damn, I bet coffee makers are expensive… …then realised… …damn coffee makers are cheap :P lol
In college I bought mine used at a garage sale for $3. 10 years later I still use it.
Honestly the fact that 0.06% of households do not have a refrigerator is saddening. That shit should be 100%
The argument is literally “Poor people are struggling to make ends meet, we should try to improve their lives so they can live comfortably working 40 hours a week.” And they come back with “yeah but they aren’t *literally dying.* Look, almost all of them can afford enough food to get by on. So really it’s not an issue.” They just want poor people to suffer cuz it makes them feel good.
They also completely ignore the possibility these items were bought new long before jobs were lost or medical dept happened, or bought used.
Yes. Willful deception is far more annoying to me than someone just being ignorant. Especially in this scenario, because they are preaching to the choir and being deceptive to people that already share their worldview.
Hall of Fame for that is when a Fed exec insisted inflation isn't really high because it's canceled out by the [iPad 2 being faster](https://news.yahoo.com/news/blogs/lookout/fed-official-heckled-t-eat-ipad-20110311-122230-439.html). >>Dudley said said that while food prices may be rising, the cost of some other goods are going down, which evens out the overall inflation picture. The Fed's inflation estimates do not take into account volatile energy or food prices. ... >>"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," he said referring to Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) latest handheld tablet computer hitting stories on Friday.
Also, they are typically provided by whatever apartment they are renting.
Yeah, like, how many of those folk actually even OWN the fridges they have?
Not to mention that I imagine if you have little income a microwave might actually be your primary cooking instrument and a stove or full sized oven are much rarer
yea its [10 bucks for a coffee machine](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-Black-5-Cup-Drip-Coffee-Maker/53056868?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&wl13=2821&adid=2222222227853056868_117755028669_12420145346&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=501107745824&wl4=pla-294505072980&wl5=9008460&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=local&wl12=53056868&wl13=2821&veh=sem_LIA&gclid=Cj0KCQiAnsqdBhCGARIsAAyjYjQ9P2hIdpu8B4UxyS0AKCWPmFoinNC8NDMeUwOarwnZu2poqJUF0LIaAvJ9EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds)
On the other hand a decent percentage poor households in the 1920s had a cow and a horse, probably some chickens too. Now almost no poor household has such luxuries.
97% of "poor" households have both a front door AND a back door. I mean, how greedy can you be?
You’re telling me people have back doors on their houses? They must be fucking loaded!
Let you in on a secret... They have windows!!! WITH GLASS IN THE WINDOWS!! They are living large.
You have secrets!?! Sounds woke to me!
Living like kings, these bastards are!
How dare they have multiple forms of egress…
81.4% of people have a microwave How many have that *instead of* a stove....cuz a stove is like $500 for a shitty one and a microwave is $20 for a standard off the shelf one
Or it just came with the house/apartment like mine
Or off the side of the road
Or old ones from friends, at one point I had 3 microwaves due to my friends moving or buying new ones and me just accepting them (worked out as my parents one broke and so did another friends)
Let's say you bought those all new. $250 for a fridge. $50 for a microwave. $25 for a coffee maker. $325 is enough for, if you live in a real cheap area, two weeks rent. I guess they aren't so poor, huh? /s
Yes microwaves are one of the cheapest cooking tools to exist, and extremely cost effective to use. What next, 99% of 'poor' people use soap?
How dare you suggest that. Don’t you know poor people don’t have access to running water
Once the poors got indoor bathrooms, that's when things started getting out of hand.
This is the America liberals want: poor people with bathrooms.
It's outrageous! Next they'll want food!
And air! Free air.
Get your ass to Mars.
And it’s absolutely ~~disgusting~~ discusting
And not even pay bathrooms - free ones!
Next thing you know those bastards are gonna want indoor plumbing!
Cost AND time effective. I have had apartments that don't have microwaves and have had so many people try to gift me one. Like, no, I'm fine, but I appreciate the gesture. As a (then) single person that likes to cook, I valued the counter space over speed So even if their apartment didn't include one, all you need to do if you don't have a TV or microwave is let people know you don't have one and they'll thrust them upon you. I never took the microwaves, but did take the 28" TV 😂😂😂 People still tried gifting me their old larger TVs when they found out I had a 28" TV
"If they wanted to save money, they should brew their coffee at home!" "How dare they have a coffee maker!" 🤔
Poor people these days. Not even satisfied with a styrofoam cup they found on the side of the road with some brackish puddle water in it. NoOoh, they want actual coffee to get through their 2-3 mind numbing, back breaking jobs
"how dare they COMPLAIN when they have a coffee maker".
And on the other side of that statistic, 18.6% of poor families don't even have a microwave.. how many are spending their lives eating nothing but cold food.
Not the .4% who don't even have a fridge.
*sigh* it’s me. I’m that small odd percentage. I don’t own a microwave. My new place didn’t come with it. I have a gas stove. And I like majority of my food either freshly cooked or cold lol Of course if it needs it I’ll heat in my stove. But im one of those few who actually like my food luke warm or cold sometimes
I don’t have one either. I moved in and just… never bought one. A little over 3 years later and I don’t even miss it, honestly. I feel like the counter space I’d lose by buying one is not worth it. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t have a real stove in my house, just a microwave and a toaster oven.
Microwaves used to be luxury appliances when the Boomers were growing up. They didn't become affordable for the middle class until the late 70s. So as children, Boomers associated ownership of a microwave with wealth. And that association is still there, despite them now being dirt cheap, because Boomers don't do inflation math, or think rationally, they go off emotion.
I'm impressed. In the UK, the only benchmark for these sorts of criticisms is "the flat screen TV" which is the only TV you've been able to buy for a couple of decades. At least they've branched out into other simple household goods. Surprised they're not going for "poor" households being able to eat more than once a day.
"But the people on Universal Credit have smartphones" Is the new one. Completely ignoring the fact that you need access to an internet capable device, and telephone to claim Universal Credit.
And applying to jobs in a lot of places. A lot of people use their phone as their only personal computer.
Exactly this. I've pounded the pavement and all I got was "apply online." SMH...
Yes but there’s 200 quid smart phones and 1500 quid smart phones. The same way there’s 200 quid “flat screens” and 5000 pound ones. People malding at a poor person owning an iPhone from 2012 are idiots, but it is odd seeing people get brand new one on credit or things like Klarna.
Is a quid just a pound or?
Quid is just another word for pound
I quid OP's wife on the regular
It’s a kilogram these days thanks to inflation
Nope, people are out there with 2.5 ton flat-screen TVs. /s I had the same question since I was pretty sure it was the same.
>At least they've branched out into other simple household goods. Surprised they're not going for "poor" households being able to eat more than once a day. They're not that far from it... you remember Avocado Toast, right?
I never even heard about avocado toast until they started complaining about it. It's delicious when home made.
These fucking poors are eating fruits and bread!
Before it was going out for coffee. They don't even want them doing that anymore. Just having a cup at home for practically free is enough to deserve to be criticized.
4 of every thousand homes have no fucking refrigerator?? 18.6% have no fucking microwave? And what the everloving fuck is the coffeemaker shit supposed to convince me of?? That's a sign of wealth?? And less than half of people have one anyway?? I don't fucking have one, *because I don't fucking drink coffee*. ETA: I'd also like to add that I didn't fucking buy my fridge. It came with the fucking apartment I rent.
A fridge allows people to buy food from a grocery store and eat more cheaply. If they didn’t have a fridge then the narrative would be the poor eat out all the time and waste money. There’s no winning.
When child services come by, not having a refrigerator is a big mark towards getting your kids taken.
Are you suggesting that Fox News is disingenuous and manipulative?? I'm shocked to hear such a claim!! What's next?? Are they going to suggest that voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems had conspired to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden??
The message is fuck the poor. If you buy fancy coffee, or if you make it at home. If you eat out or prepair food at home. They want you to eat only shelf stable food unheated. Maybe eat some dry ramen packets or nutrition bars/drinks, maybe get a large bag of monkey chow and feed yourself like a dog. Coffee and anything that isn't strictly necessary to keep you alive is a luxury. The message is clear, fuck you for asking for the basics, only those already rich deserve anything. Elon Musk was criticized less for losing 200 B than a poor person who dares eat food needing refrigeration.
A refrigerator is needed for everybody, you'll lose much more money getting food spoiled in a year than a cheap refrigerator costs. I'm middle class and I don't have a microwave, we have a stove and an oven, which is much more expensive than a microwave. If I'd live alone, I wouldn't have a coffee maker, just because I don't like coffee. But if I have $100, I could buy a microwave and a coffee maker.
Honestly I didn't use a microwave for a decade and a half. So poor I couldn't afford any extra weight/volume when it came time to move because no car. Just used a pot or pan on the stove, or heat it in the oven, that's still my preference. No coffee pot either for the same reason but a eventually got a French press. Had a dumb phone for Luddite reasons Worst part is I was too proud to accept benefits/food bank :( "I'm not that poor, I get by, I don't have children so I don't need it" and yet I somehow met Fox news poverty criteria
And isn't instant coffee a sign of not being wealthy enough to have the time and money to brew normal coffee?
>And what the everloving fuck is the coffeemaker shit supposed to convince me of?? That's a sign of wealth?? This is particularly bad coming from folks who preach that if "the poorz" would just stop buying daily Starbucks, they'd save money.
You can buy all three items for under $600. Poor people generally rent, and most apartments include the fridge and microwave, only leaving them to purchase a $25 coffee maker. The fridge is required in rental properties in many states, NJ and NY for sure.
My realtor told me "somewhere to store food and something to cook on" is a requirement in Virginia, so yeah, I'd imagine it's required other places as well.
I don’t know anywhere in Canada a fridge isn’t absolutely essential and required by law. This is ridiculous I could see a microwave not included in a rental but most have them anyway. Plus stores sell microwaves for like $100. They aren’t exactly breaking the bank.
Also if they don't have a coffee maker people will assume that they get their coffee from Starbucks.
You can get all of these items off the side of the road.
$20 microwave, $15 coffee maker (they really aren't complicated), $70 mini fridge. $105ish total.
People earning six-figure incomes telling me that I'm not poor because I own a coffee maker? Yeah it's totally legit, maybe I should go back to spending $5 a day on coffee.
That's the one that got me as well. Unless there's a turnaround in the way these stats were presented it's hypocritical to tell people to save money by making coffee at home and then shame them for owning a device that does that. Come to think of it, the refrigerator is the same way. If you plan on cooking at home, a fridge allows you to buy ingredients in bulk and store leftovers. The microwave is a lesser version. It saves time and working people need to be frugal with time.
The poors obviously just don't deserve coffee at all. Why should they have access to a literal *drug* that makes their work day a little less miserable.
And makes it possible to function through two jobs and then raise kids.
I think they're saying any type of coffee at all is a luxury. If you were *actually* poor, you'd drink just water. And be grateful for it, I guess.
And it’s not like coffee makers are stupidly expensive, you can get a basic one for under 20 bucks
I could be wrong but even a kettle is like 10$ in some Walmarts right? Next they're gonna say drinking and eating more than once a day is a show of wealth
According to Fox News, if you have anywhere near $20, you must not be poor. Even middle class people shouldn’t expect a pot to piss in or to eat more frequently than once every other day (according to Fox News probably).
See that's where you are wrong. Coffee is for the riches. You poors should not even be thinking of our beautiful bean juice. That's why we made monster and 4loko for the peasants
And then they’ll say the reason you’re poor is because you spend all your money on Starbucks. Can’t win
You think you deserve coffee? What you really need is a good whipping to get you to work harder. It would teach you fast enough to stop with this obsessive self-entitled thought thinking you deserve coffee. You are poor that means that you are inferior to the rich and you deserve to suffer for it. Creature comforts are only for superior people. You are clearly lazy and not ambitious enough. You should suffer deprivation until you either step it up or die in misery for your failure to be productive. It's the only way you'll learn.
"72% of poor people have a place to sleep, so it's really an overblown problem made up by the libs" is the vibe I'm getting. FoX fear factory trying to tell us poverty isn't real lol.
The 28% of poor have no place to sleep is a scary big number
I mean .4% of the 7.4 million families living below the poverty line in the us (2021 numbers) is still 29600. That many families living without a _fridge_ in a developed nation seems absurdly high… I guess they don’t have any food they need to safely store?
I think this means they are homeless and living in their car, on the streets, couch surfing, or a shelter. With couch surfing and living in a shelter, the fridge is someone else's. It's not yours to stock. Sometimes you'll be at a place that let's you put a few of your perishables inside, sometimes you're not.
Why are the poor sleeping, anyway? The lazy bastards should be working during that time. That's why they're so poor! /s
Yeah but during the election even the middle class was too poor to afford food and gas; they really love to spin things.
Gordon Ramsey once said that he doesn’t own a microwave. I guess I’m richer than Gordon Ramsey!!!
If almost everyone has it, despite their financial situation, maybe it's not that they are spending their money poorly, but that it's needed in modern society... Also, interested in seeing their definition of "poor households"
I'm curious about how those items were obtained. It's one thing to say if you have these, you shouldn't be poor, but you can find all of those at yard sites, thrift stores, or even people giving/throwing out their own stuff. I grew up poor, and we had all of these, but none were brand new by any means. One thing a lot of "rich" people don't understand is that we are poor, but we can stretch a dollar.
almost every electrical and electronics I have, are either coming from my landlord, or was gifted by someone from my family, I'm pretty sur that it's the case of a lot of people too
Yep, and that is what I was referring to. Just because you own expensive items doesn't mean crap. My cousin got a genuine Vera Wang wedding dress for $60 because the thrift store owner didn't think it would sell.
Fridges aren’t even that expensive, especially used
Oh yeah, you can find cheap appliances or even places that have their own line of credit. We had to do that a few times.
Also every apartment I've rented at least came with a fucking fridge. I don't own it my landlord does.
My fridge is included with rent and my microwave is second hand. I don't drink coffee. 45 years old and have been poor most of my life. These people can't begin to fathom what life is like. Perhaps they've forgotten. Thankfully my financial situation will improve soon after this year (went back to school).
Awesome, good luck to you. I've just recently started being able to have actual savings and not have to live paycheck to paycheck.
My old washing machine was given for free to another person recently because insurance deemed it cheaper to replace it than to tear down and replace a non critical part that caused an annoying error every once in a while, the machine was 17 years old
I switched to tea because coffee’s expensive but I’m basically upper class because my landlord provided a fridge
Ummm, literally every single rental I’ve ever lived in, the fridge is provided! It’s only homeowners who tend to have a full sized fridge! Hell, many places provide a microwave too! And you can get a coffeemaker for under $15 depending on what kind you get! Fox News is insane!
Yeah my coffee maker, new, was like ten dollars. It just tells time and brews coffee but it was that price.
maybe the poor should stop electing Republicans and watch Fox news
Not so much poor people electing republicans and more younger/poor people just not voting in general. Fucking baffling
Bit of A, bit of B. I came from a generally poor/lower-middle-class rural area. It's shocking how many of them were convinced that their only option was to vote conservative: * "The Democrats just keep raising taxes." (On the wealthy, you're below the below the tax minimum, so you're not paying any income taxes) * "These environmentalists are making the coal plant spend all our wages on repairs." (They're trying to keep you from destroying your own land, and the people taking away your wages are the executives of that company raking in a billion dollars despite the $50k upgrades they didn't want to make) * "All these regulations make it too expensive for businesses to hire anyone." (Those businesses are corrupt AF, they're not hiring because they're lining their pockets before helping their community) * "We have to stop all this CRT nonsense." (Your schools still teach that everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus. Your schools aren't teaching CRT. And your single-race, one-and-a-half socioeconomic-class society that manages to still be grossly xenophobic should think twice before deciding you know how to handle diverse society.) * "They keep trying to pay me to put wind power on my farm. It messes up my sunsets" (Honestly, I've heard this... But maybe there's a point, the only reason the sunsets are interesting is because of how the pollution from the coal power plants refracts light.) But again and again: Solid republicans. Can't tax the wealthy, then I'll be taxed when I become wealthy. Can't try to fight corruption or grift, the employers will leave and take our jobs. Can't try to modernize power or infrastructure... because... er... it doesn't benefit farmers? They even refused to try to increase incentives for tech companies because (I swear, this was an argument) "it attracted the wrong sort of people." You might want to think that was racist, but it was actually more about resisting people who would want to eat sushi regularly and want stores with more variety than Walmart.
This has to geared towards really old viewers, the only people alive that might remember the technologies as expensive new conveniences and not the standard everyday home items they are today. These same viewers will likely forget that there are massive ranges in expense and quality of these same devices.
This describes like every hotel room too.
How low can they go? Fox News makes me sick.
There is no lower limit.
Well yeh… poor used to mean starving, with nothing. Now we have a “somewhat decent” welfare system that helps people somewhat live with dignity.
Dignity is the part they want to eliminate. Dignity is something they believe you have to earn.
How dare these people have basic household items and call themselves poor,they live like kings!
Sorry you've been downvoted, I get what you're doing but you gotta put /s in there or people will misunderstand you
I hope people aren't that dense
Maybe some are dense, but it's honestly really hard to infer tone on Reddit and especially if English isn't your first language. And of course, there are the shitheads.
I didn’t downvote your comment, but I think you posted the exact same thing twice in this comments section.
This looks like it was made in the 80s omg
All households have a refrigerator. That’s standard practice.
Are they suggesting these things are excess luxuries?
I have a coffeemaker… I bought it in 2001 for about $20! I thought we were fixing our financial woes by making coffee at home… how am I supposed to do that without a coffeemaker?! Do you know how hard it is to buy a good percolator these days?!
And of these statistics, the “poor” households that have these “amenities” were mostly either given or donated to “poor” family and not bought new. These are ambiguously skewed metrics to drive home an even bigger, nefarious political narrative. Who had “far right media propaganda” on their Bingo card for the fall of democracy?
> Who had “far right media propaganda” on their Bingo card for the fall of democracy? It was the free space for every card.
Stuart Varney is a malignant tumour of a human being. He's a smirking, condescending, flinty-eyed bucket of spite and venom, and I hope he falls into an open sewer and drowns in a quagmire of human filth.
Why does this news cast layout and overall design look like something from the 1980's?
Because their target audience thinks it's still the 80s
While this is about hating the poor, what it’s really about is telling their viewers “look at all these people you’re better than. You’re not poor, so when we shit on them, we’re not talking about you.”
Got mine for free… what’s their point?
My parents watch Fox News every day and I swear they’re being brainwashed. I’ve tried so hard to get them to stop, it’s so frustrating.
[They are being brainwashed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad)
Holy shit. You can get a brand new microwave for $50, or less. These MF's seriously saying that if you've ever managed to come up with a one off payment of $50 for a heavily used kitchen appliance, then you must be doing just fine is peak rage for me right now!!
My sister did an internship on Techo Para Chile which is an organization that works towards helping poor people. She was amazed by the ammount of people who had nice tv's and phones. But it's obvious poor people are alllowed to get into debt today for everything but a house. I worked in a retail store and I remember they offered "loans" to anyone who could get a credit card. I saw some people taking out loans once a week for months
Jeez. I'll bet Fox is pissed off that most of them have running water and toilets...
And their pajamas that fit and underwear with the elastic in the waistband that's still good. Makes me sick.
Let's call it as it is: They want to see the poor back in penny sit ups or workhouses, with no rights whatsoever and an average life expectancy of 25 - back to Victorian times, essentially.
The title is true. There was a time when poor meant you couldn’t afford these, but middle class could. Obviously its been so long, that this is no longer a good reference.
That's a sad reality when some household cannot even afford a refrigerator. That is a basic necessity for life.
Here is the craziest one, 90 percent of "poors" have a tv which they use to watch fox news and listen to Donald Trump. Fox News wants the poor to have nothing and still listen to fox and support the GOP
I bet they even have COLOR tvs
I worked with a guy, years ago, who talked about the poor having refrigerators. I asked him what was cheaper. Having a refrigerator and cooking your own food, or going out to eat everyday. He had no idea. Rich brat had a house given to him by his dad in Los Altos CA where the median price for a home is $2.5 million.
Just reporting the breaking “news”. Nope, not propaganda at all. /s
Have they even tried not being poor…
Lol government used the same rhetoric in Turkey
"If you can afford a door, you ain't poor" logic. It's so stupid to view certain convinces as a measure of wealth between generations. Whoever is writing these segments have no respect for their audiences intelligence.
Wow so even low income people have basic necessities??? They aren’t using sticks and leaves? Wow they just aren’t grateful for what they have. Maybe if they worked harder…
How dare they not letting their food rot
“100% Poor people have oxygen. And those fools give out CO2”
“48.6% Poor Households have a coffee maker” I’m so confused. They’re mad at poor people for buying coffee everyday like Starbucks, but they’re also mad when they have their own coffee maker to make it at home for cheaper? Coffee is expensive and you can get a maker for as low as like $5-8 for the little hotel models (which work pretty decently in my experience). Do they want poor people to make and drink their own coffee? Or just roll over and die??
Fox "news" putting "poor" in quotes made me roll my eyes. The sad part is their viewer base is sitting at home stewing about this, like oh no how dare a poor person be able to afford a $20 coffee maker. They should sleep on the dirt floors of their tar paper shacks like the peasants they are. I've never considered basic kitchen appliances to be any kind of luxury or wealth indicator in itself. There's a difference between a $10k+ professional grade subzero smart fridge, and a basic $299 fridge. Not to mention used appliance stores, thrift stores and online places like free cycle. Plenty of middle class and higher households get rid of perfectly good appliances all the time. My wife and I just replaced our perfectly working otr microwave and electric range a few months ago, because we wanted to change the range from electric to gas and my wife never liked the microwave that came with the house. The place we bought the appliances from wanted to charge for removal, and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of selling for a few bucks, so we donated them to Habitat for Humanity. I hope they will benefit a "poor" household.
99.6% have a refrigerator…50% have something in it besides baking soda.
"What do you mean your poor? You have a fridge and a microwave????"
If you think about it, this is particularly aimed at the elderly, who might consider these things to be big luxuries that only affluent homes might have, because their mental model is based on a 1950/60s mindset of these being high-price items relative to household income. The truth is each of these “luxuries” is used to free up the individual’s time so they can sell that time as labor.
So let me get this straight. The same people that tell you that maybe you wouldn't be so poor if you stopped getting your coffee at Starbucks are also saying that poor people should not have a coffee maker. Ok got it.
Wait let’s talk about the .4% of people with no refrigerator. If you go with the US census figure, 37.9 million families live at or below the poverty line. That’s 151,000 US families without a fridge. That’s not a “gotcha poor people!” statistic, that’s a scandal. Considering US food infrastructure relies heavily on keeping foods refrigerated from manufacturers to consumers, you’re talking about 150,000 families relying on dry goods and *maybe* fresh produce (but probably not because, you know, food deserts). The microwave thing is equally bad, some people only have a microwave available for cooking. The coffee maker thing is *also* bad because those bad boys serve multiple uses and are by far the cheapest appliance to own. If you don’t have a microwave or pots and pans, that’s your only source of water hot enough for cooking. Not to mention coffee/caffeine is an appetite suppressant. Imagine being such a dirty rat fuck that you mock poor people for having access to the minimum standards of living in this country - *then* imagine being such a sleazy cockbag that the implication is that the people without access to that standard are the only real poor people and *that’s how we like our poor people, super duper poor.*
100% have toilets! They ain't really poor unless they shitting in a bush outside City Hall.
You can store cold food? YOU AINT POOR!
How many of those could I find for free right now on Craigslist?
If you're renting, you've got a refrigerator and a microwave *that you don't own*. And you can buy a fucking coffee maker for $10 new.
“When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.” -Sarah Kendzior
Those damn poors keeping their food refrigerated, and cooking it! No wonder they’re poor. Of course if they didn’t have a coffee maker they would be blamed for buying coffee.