[joeysteele]

Originally Posted by DemolitionRed

I've not read all the responses as its been a long day so forgive me if I repeat something someone's already said.

I think modern poverty is very different to the poverty of old. Back then survival for the poor was their only purpose in life. So long as they could put bread on the table and have a suit to pawn to get them through to pay day, they just buckled down and got on with life.

Today we are driven by our aspirations and those aspirations go much further than putting bread on the table and a roof over our heads. We all engage with it, we are surrounded by it; our life is full of material things we think we need.

If you're poor in the modern world you can still have a wide screen tv. Modern poverty can come and go because a lot of people, including the hard working ones, can't manage to sustain comfortability for long. With minimum salaries that haven't kept up with inflation, zero contract hours that give unpredictable earnings and a position of never being able to save because whatever they earn is swallowed up by the cost of living; there are many people in Britain that are okay today but may not be okay tomorrow.

Poverty is subjective. I would consider someone living on baked beans and fears turning the heating up poor. I would consider someone who doesn't own property, has no savings and becomes unemployed poor and I would consider a homeless person to be extremely poor.

Wow, amazing post, well said and even if I was looking to, which I am not,I could not be able to find a thing to disagree on as to it.

Your last paragraph totally spot on and a really fair presentation of the issue.