re: Why do poor people litter?

They are exhibiting the care less behavior that is responsible for their poor status.

Took a group of coworkers to lunch one time. Professional white collar folks. One of them was from California originally and was Hispanic. We stop at an intersection, and the little bastard rolls down the window and throws some paper cup or something out. I said WTF are you doing? Get out and pick it up!
He looked at me like I was crazy, but he got out and picked it up.

I would like to be able to know where they are going when they do that. I feel like stopping, gathering the trash (probably fast food restaurant bag full of stuff), and stuffing it back into their car in that little opening under the hood near the windshield.

quote:

---

I mean it’s also a generational thing. Remember the Mad Men scene where Draper threw all the picnic trash into the woods. I was raised in an upper middle class household, and back in the early 80’s, we didn’t think twice about tossing a glass bottle out the window into the ditch. Unless my mom was in the car. But my dad and I would just fling shite out the window back then. Obviously, it’s a different time some 40 years (okay 35ish year’s) later, but littering wasn’t always considered as trashy as it is now. Pun intended.

---

In the 60's it was common to throw your trash out of your car window as you drove down the highway. That PSA with Iron Eyes Cody wasn't a joke. Rivers and highways really looked like that.

When I was a kid we'd go fishing and my dad and his friends would hold their empty beer cans underwater so that they would sink. They thought that was being responsible... sinking your garbage instead of letting it float.

Dennis Miller is right. We have improved in some ways. Our country used to look a lot worse. The assholes who dump trash in public aren't the norm anymore.

quote:

---

They think that they are poor because the world is against them, so “frick the world”.

---

I think there's a lot of truth to this

Love these posts where people act like the poorest and least advantaged of us are the problem with our society.

The difference between litter rates between the poor and everyone else are negligible. The real difference is the ability to get services to clean up after littering has happened. Wealthier neighborhoods suck up government services so that their neighborhoods are cleaned because they influence politicians that are supposed to represent the entirety of their constituency. But you need money to get elected, and money talks, and money wants you to blame the poor and look down on them so that you'll stay in your lane...whatever lane that may be.

The only difference between you and the poor is luck and the economic ability to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Be better people, ethically and morally, don't just think that you're better because of your wealth or your personal bias.

quote:

---

Why do poor people litter?

---

While I agree it's sad, it's a pretty good indicator of marking an area where I don't want to be.

Case in point: I used to go to Wal-Mart. Then I started seeing used diapers and McDonalds bags in the parking lot.

Result: Now I go to Target.

I dont have a spreadsheet of data but a whole lot I mean a whole lot of these littering assholes live in BR. God forbid they wait until they get home or put it in an actual garbage can.