Reply #167: A Few More Points, About Phony "Personality" Issue [View All]

To make a point here, and just to elaborate a little, dispelling the "lazy poor" attitude: the number 1 reason why people go into bankruptcy, is a medical emergency, with resultant huge, immediate bills. The number 2 reason is loss of a job/layoff, or divorce which results with a loss of an income. These two situations account for almost all personal bankruptcies; I think it is like 75% or so. Also, one-fourth, 25%, of all full-time minimum wage workers, 40 hours a week, are homeless; they do not earn enough money ALTHOUGH THEY WORK ALL THE TIME, to pay for a place to live, because the entire housing/rental market has been turned over to deregulated profiteering.

Also, when you are so poor that you have no car/vehicle, no new clothes for work, bad dental care and possible constant pain, multiple home repairs, plumbing, heat, etc., needing thousands of dollars worth of work you can't afford, then someone "helping" you with a "rebate," "tax cut" etc., of a couple of hundred dollars, solves absolutely nothing. You have all the same problems you had before, unsolved. It is extremely hard to overcome poverty, and huge numbers of resources are needed; many of them need to be free, as you would never be able to repay them, and putting on another debt only crushed you even further. Anybody who has ever had extended periods of unemployment lasting months--as I'm sure everyone has--knows how frighteningly quickly any savings you once had, go. Then you are really poor, and have nothing to fall back on.

As for the silly argument made by a few on this thread (just to jump around a little bit here), that poor people are "neurotic," "have no social skills," "no work skills," are not "intelligent," etc., just notice the cases of the rich white, (and worthless), males, Dan Quayle, George Bush, and Rush Limbaugh, and explain how they "deserved" their current lives (if anyone cares to). Dan Quayle was a college-educated (or, college-graduated, anyway) lawyer, who could not spell the word "potato," then blamed the teacher doing the spelling bee, for it. George Bush, (talk about the "exceptional rich" not being dependant, unlike the poor), has never done anything alone, and never had anything turn out as anything but a disaster, and yet gets bailed out every time. Rush Limbaugh is a drug addict who had lawyers handle it all, until there is no law, and many, many times divorced. All were draft dodgers, as was Cheney, many times. (Cheney, of course, got drunk and shot somebody in the face, refused to cooperate with police, and was never going to report the crime, but then--poof!--it all went away.) If you think they have the charmed lives they have because of their "superior" personality traits or family backgrounds (the Bush family?!?), then you just do not pay attention at all. They have the unfair resources of rich people, and get bailed out where others suffer consequences.

There are many reasons for poverty, and some have to do with extreme rural remoteness, others with ignored, decaying cities; some with disability, others with an actual complete lack of jobs in an area. Most of the poor are women, and that still, never gets referred to. They never call it sexism, even when it is. By the way, for the one series of posts on this thread--I have known many people during my life, who were aware enough to thank Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson--and it they were really smart, Sargeant Shriver--for their ability to go on living a life, with any measure of comfort and health at all.