i wish all affluent people who are in college and make nonstop jokes about being poor a very understand that poverty is not a temporary condition
if you are poor for four years and know the exact date at which it will end, you have not experienced poverty.
this is the same reason that “politicians should have to live a month on minimum wage to see what it’s like” doesn’t work. poverty is a lack of resources beyond monetary ones. it’s not having family members you can borrow money from. it’s not having a place to stay if you were outdoors for a bit. it’s not having the nice kitchen equipement with which you could make food more cheaply. it’s having to buy cheaper things which will break sooner because you can’t afford the better ones.
the bit about knowing the end date is not a semantic point to make me feel better. if you know you’ll be out of this soon, it enables you to make choices you otherwise couldn’t. you can splurge on pizza delivery or spend half your paycheck on good shoes because it isn’t real. if a crisis comes, the irreality of this situation allows you to deal with it. you can ask your parents for money, you can stay with someone for a while. impoverished people can’t.
i think a lot of times otherwise progressive people come out of college more classist because they think they know what it’s like to be poor now, and they made the right choices, so why doesn’t everyone else? you weren’t, and you didn’t. poverty is more than that.