Belated Comment on "Did Stigma of Poverty Drive This Couple to Suicide"

[daredtowork]

15. Interestingly they were also escaping a country

where many nobles were living off the largesse of the court - and looking down on the people who worked for a living.

I don't think people should have to beg. It's ingrained into the American psyche to humiliate the beggar. If it's possible to make the beggar "work" or at least "engage with services" in exchange for services 20x the amount provided will be exacted in return: call this "beggar's interest rate".

The "beggar's interest rate" is exacted on the streets through the way we treat people and throughout government and all poverty bureaucracies by what we make people go through in return for resources. Ironically, it profoundly undercuts the ability of a poor person to recover from an illness, get a job, and/or move forward with their lives because the "beggar's interest rate" sucks up all their time and interest rate. A poor person is too busy meeting everyone's demands and expectations to get their own stuff done.

The need for personal autonomy and choice is overwhelming: especially after a few years of this situation. As the last line of my OP explains, I think that's what "asking the Internet" is all about - at least that's what has tempted me, though I haven't yet crossed that line myself. Obtaining no-strings-attached cash allows you to live like a human being: you choose your priorities, allocate the money how YOU think it should be allocated, and put some in the cookie jar to buy something frivolous for yourself. You get to do stuff most other people take for granted but it's what actually constructs them as human beings in modern society.