Ok, so please explain to me what the "poverty level" is.  What does one
do and have that earns $7,547 per year?  I know an individual that made
$14,000 per year.  He lived in a very inexpensive apartment, owned an
old car that his father sold to him really cheap (more for the
responsibility than the money), didn't go anywhere that required an
expenditure of money, didn't do anything that wasn't free, didn't have
cable, spent time after work reading book that he owned an had read
several times before or riding his bicycle with friends.  And at the end
of the month, after all of the bills were paid, had about $20 for
groceries which consisted of bread, milk, and macaroni and cheese.  That
sounds pretty impoverished to me.  When you cannot affort a healthy diet
because you have to pay for the roof over your head, transportation to
work to pay for everything, heat, electric, and water, I think is pretty
impoverished.
So how does one survive on half that, I'm curious.  This individual
lived on almost twice the poverty level and had nothing and did nothing
that was not necessary to fulfill the basic needs of food, shelter, and
clothing (an transportation to work to pay for those things).  What do
cut back when you have nothing?

>
>Poverty level in the United States according to U.S. Bureau of the
Census
>in 1996 is $7,547 for an individual, $15,141 for a family of four. A
point
>of reference.
>
>Best,
>
>Paul Apodaca
>


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