I strongly suspect most people living on $10k/year are enjoying a life of leisure.
Not working for someone else is not the same thing as enjoying leisure, at all - you've built a castle of logic on a deeply flawed assumption.
Look, if you only have $10k a year you can not buy a lot of stuff. That's just about enough to supply yourself with an adequate amount of food, clothing, and similar basic necessities if you are in some low-rent area - in short, for a single person to keep body and soul together. It's not enough to go out to restaurants or purchase more than necessities unless you enjoy some sort of additional subsidy from parents, spouse or wherever. You'll be cooking your own meals, carting your groceries around on foot, doing the same with your laundry (or washing it in the bathtub) because you can't afford a washing machine, and so on and so forth. You won't starve, but you'll have to work at things that other people pay to have done for them. This is, believe it or not, time-consuming, and effort-consuming too. It's not too bad for a single individual who's educated enough to have a meaningful inner life, but for a lot of people it means both boredom and a significant exclusion from social activity, and for an awful lot of other people (the sort you think chose to have vaginal sex instead of giving you a blowjob), it can mean dealing with children, which is extremely time-consuming.
I think you mean well Chris, but you seem almost comically ignorant about the difficulties faced by other people who didn't have the good fortune to be you.
As for cooking, carrying groceries and doing laundry, I do all those thing sfor myself.
Incidentally, your mental picture of the poor is a bit off.
As for owning things like washing machines, the gap is far smaller than you think. 65% of poor households have one, compared to 80% of the US (see table 2-4, pg 52).
I think terminology is confusing you. You hear words like "poverty" and assume a certain lifestyle. But the word "poverty" doesn't correspond very well to the lifestyle you are visualizing.
[1] It's been pointed out to me that at least some people in poverty are business owners who took a loss. I don't know to what extent this is the case, but it messes up all the numbers if it's a big factor.
Not being eligible for any government benefits and having had some very lean years, I don't need to visualize or assume a certain lifestyle, I just need to consult my own experience.
I invite you to try the SNAP challenge (http://site.foodshare.org/site/PageServer?pagename=programs_...) and see how long you can go on a $4/day allowance. I was lucky to get sufficient education about nutrition and cooking in school to be able to eat healthily on a budget like this when I've had to, sometimes for a few months at a time. But if you screw up and spoil a meal or some of the food goes bad, then tough luck, you don't get to eat anything.
Not working for someone else is not the same thing as enjoying leisure, at all - you've built a castle of logic on a deeply flawed assumption.
Look, if you only have $10k a year you can not buy a lot of stuff. That's just about enough to supply yourself with an adequate amount of food, clothing, and similar basic necessities if you are in some low-rent area - in short, for a single person to keep body and soul together. It's not enough to go out to restaurants or purchase more than necessities unless you enjoy some sort of additional subsidy from parents, spouse or wherever. You'll be cooking your own meals, carting your groceries around on foot, doing the same with your laundry (or washing it in the bathtub) because you can't afford a washing machine, and so on and so forth. You won't starve, but you'll have to work at things that other people pay to have done for them. This is, believe it or not, time-consuming, and effort-consuming too. It's not too bad for a single individual who's educated enough to have a meaningful inner life, but for a lot of people it means both boredom and a significant exclusion from social activity, and for an awful lot of other people (the sort you think chose to have vaginal sex instead of giving you a blowjob), it can mean dealing with children, which is extremely time-consuming.
I think you mean well Chris, but you seem almost comically ignorant about the difficulties faced by other people who didn't have the good fortune to be you.