Are you serious? You're dismissing statistics because you believe your anecdotal evidence holds more weight? You're now an expert on poor people because of the things you have "seen" and someone else has "seen"?
Please quit it with the BS. You're not poor. You're not around poor people. Stop describing how poor people live.
I am dismissing his statistics because they do not have bearing on the question that we were discussing, which is whether or not Scalzi was describing poverty in the US. Scalzi is definitely an expert on what he has seen. I'm an expert on what I have seen. As are the hundreds of other contributors to that discussion.
I am definitely not poor now. But we were poor when I was a kid, and only made it through via the help of family and government programs. I am still in regular contact with people who are not as lucky as I was. So enough with your baseless assertions, ok?
Please quit it with the BS. You're not poor. You're not around poor people. Stop describing how poor people live.