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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

How do you explain this? Please do.[/quote]
You keep harping on this $600 a month rent in a great school boundary, so let's do some math together.

Our hypothetical family is a single mom and her two children, ages 2 and 6. Mom works 50 hours per week making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour (you said you're in the south so I'm going to assume that your state doesn't have a higher minimum wage). She makes $362/week, pre-tax (for the purposes of our exercise we won't worry about taxes). She works 52 weeks a year since she doesn't have any time off, so she makes an untaxed $18,850 per year. Her $600 rent is $7200 per year. Daycare for her youngest is $100/week since you are in a low COL area, or $5200/year. She's spending $12,400/year on rent and daycare. That leaves $6,450 left. That breaks down to $537/month to cover food, all bills, transportation, insurance (her minimum wage job obviously isn't providing insurance), before and aftercare, and everything else that she might need for her family to survive.

So no, that $600 a month rent in the best school boundary no longer seems so affordable. It's all relative. [/quote]

I assume you are trying to argue that this hypothetical mom can't possibly be expected to volunteer at her kids' schools or do the things that more affluent parents say they do to help with school readiness and success?

Agreed. Where is the child support? One kid is a dumb "accident" but two is just stupidity. Assuming mom was always a minimum wage earner so why did she have a second kid?  Honestly, if you dig deep enough it almost always goes back to bad choices. I worked in social services for one year and left when I realized that hands down, the biggest obstacle to getting out of pvoerty is having kids.  Until cities/feds bascially hand out free birthcontrol at walk in locations all over the city this will not change.  Ever. The War on poverty has failed because no one wants to restrict people having as many kids as they want.

I will get flamed for saying this, but I would argue that part of the problem is the single mother with two kids (ages 2 and 6) who cannot get (or keep) a job that pays more than minimum wage.  She likely has made a serious of less than ideal choices that got her to this place.  Why is she old enough to have a six year old but stuck in a $7.25 an hour job?  Why is there no one else contributing to the household income?  Why did she have the second child if she could not afford the first?  [/quote][/quote]

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