Hat tip to Kent Pitman. What follows is an answer to the White House posted on Facebook by my High School best friend, Sandi, who despite growing up strone-cold poor earned her Master's degree and has a good job at a well regarded university. She is, however, also raising two of her younger sister's children in the Chicago area and still tries to help her desperately poor elderly parents and extended family downstate. 

• That's a lot of generic-brand groceries for someone ineligible for any form of assistance, yet trying to provide for kids or parents (mind you, $50k earned is more like $35k or less brought home). 
• A prescription or 2 or a doctor's visit, assuming the person has decent health insurance, which may no longer be true. 
• It's more that cannot be used to pay for gas or electric for such inconsequential things as heat in the winter or lights or a working refrigerator.
• It's a few round trips to work (even fewer now if one takes the Metra, which is raising it's rates while the pre-tax limit on transit is being slashed). 
• It's being able to put a growing child into a new pair of cheap shoes when the old ones finally fall apart and can no longer be glued back together. 
• It's basic hygiene products, detergent, shampoo, etc. so one can still have some sort of personal dignity. 
• It's the amount that has to be saved many times over to make a repair to a car that is a lifeline to school, stores, and doctors, especially in most of the country where mass transit is not in place. 
• It's the amount spent on a phone bill - not for texting and surfing the web, but basic phone usage to be able to call for help, check on family, be able to be contacted by an employer.
• It's many times more than what a person in that situation often prays to be able to come up with in the days before the next payday.
• It's what one hopes will be pieced together after bills to be able to buy a present or two for a child to shelter him or her just one more year from the reality that there really is no Santa Claus and those grossing $50k/yr don't qualify for holiday programs. 
• It's also just part of the amount that same person is likely to donate to others less fortunate because, at that level, one is keenly aware of how much worse it could be and thanks God often that it isn't--at least not yet.
• It's what someone born into less precarious circumstances and sheltered can't even imagine as being important, let alone critical. 
• Even worse, it's what vile creatures in power are willing to steal to serve their own selfish, gluttonous, evil interests.