Reply #19: What is "Poor" anyway? What is "middle class"?

[murray hill farm]

It depends on your point of reference. If poor is living in a two room house..and you do..then you are poor. If middle class means that you live you live in a gated community and have two cars..and you do...then you are middle class. It depends on what ruler you use to define an economic class. Now if you live in that gated community of four bedrooms and three baths..and your yards are vacuumed clean..and god forbid anyone ever would actually hang out clothes on a line..forbidden, of course...too "poor" looking..then outside of your perceived view of "middle class" picture will look like poor to you. If you come to Mexico....u will be amazed at the "poverty" that you encounter...and you will define the two bedroom house...and those who live in it as "everyone living in poverty"..everywhere you look. And if middle class is defined also as owning a car or two or three....then all of us Mexicans are living in poverty....ha! You all should take a lesson from us down here...we live the real American dream here...not the dream that is the totally dependent on vehicles to even get to a store to buy food...or the need to live in huge compounds of gated subdivisions in order to feel that we are doing OK in the world..ok personally and emotionally and economically..whenever i do visit the USA, it is now so uncomfortable for me...that life race, that rush to just stay where one is and to keep from the terror of loosing an inch of status when it comes to that life of the middle class status. In every country there are the poor...and in the USA and every other country there are people so poor and without jobs and without even the basics of life..or the hope of life getting better..and these people we should do everything in our power to help in any way we can..this is real...we need to look hard at it..and do whatever it takes to end this kind of poverty in the world..and in our home countries. But "poor" is not always what it appears to be when you measure it by the yardstick of your own countries standard...and by the way...u gated community folks are missing a lot...what a wonderful thing it is to hang out your clothes to dry..to see it..so pretty to see...so clean and smell so good when you take them down..no one has a dryer....but hey...poverty, you know! hahahahaha!!