America's poor actually live pretty durn well

[haele]

84. Ah, so people aren't poor unless they're corrupt government third world country poor.

Yes, I've spent time in several poor countries. But I expect better in my "first world" United States of America. I expect that my society has a economic "floor" that everyone can land on without falling through, no matter how poor their luck is or "how bad" their choices are.

I also don't expect to have two working families living in lean-tos and tents in the canyon behind my rental home in the middle of one of our major cities and borrowing potable water every day from my back yard spigot, and the back-yard "outdoor bathroom" a neighbor down the street for four years. But yet, in our "Chamber of Commerce" run city with all sorts of "Good, Christian Community Leaders", these families are told they're poor because they aren't working hard enough or need to take their punishment for making "poor life choices". The guy who collected garbage and recycling, worked day-labor, and camped with his wife and four-year-old under the pepper tree behind our chicken-wire back fence for two years was just shy of his Master's degree in Sociology (you want fries with that?) when he got injured and had to take a couple months off, lost his job, lost his student aid and his wife came up pregnant.

I don't expect nor should I tolerate the incidences of families in the US who live like shanty-town families or subsistence farm families in Honduras. And I'm tired of the fellow US citizens who go about bloviating about living in "the greatest country in the world", and yet think it is just to "punish slackers and moochers" with homelessness or establish a permanent underclass of disposable people.

Haele