I'm Poor---but it doesn't make me a bad person!

From Merriam Dictionary:

poverty

noun, pov·er·ty often attributive \ˈpä-vər-tē\

: the state of being poor

: a lack of something

Full Definition of POVERTY

1

a :  the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions

b :  renunciation as a member of a religious order of the right as an individual to own property

2

:  scarcity, dearth

3

a :  debility due to malnutrition

b :  lack of fertility

Examples of POVERTY

1. He was born in poverty.
2. There is a poverty of information about the disease. 

Origin of POVERTY

Middle English poverte, from Anglo-French poverté, from Latin paupertat-, paupertas, from pauper poor — more at poor

First Known Use: 12th century

Related to POVERTY

Synonyms

beggary, destituteness, destitution, impecuniosity, impecuniousness, impoverishment, indigence, necessity, need, neediness, pauperism, penuriousness, penury, poorness, want

Antonyms

affluence, opulence, richness, wealth, wealthiness

Synonym Discussion of POVERTY

poverty, indigence, penury, want, destitution mean the state of one with insufficient resources. poverty may cover a range from extreme want of necessities to an absence of material comforts <the extreme poverty of the slum dwellers>. indigence implies seriously straitened circumstances <the indigence of her years as a graduate student>. penury suggests a cramping or oppressive lack of money <a catastrophic illness that condemned them to years of penury>. want and destitution imply extreme poverty that threatens life itself through starvation or exposure <lived in a perpetual state of want> <the widespread destitution in countries beset by famine>.

Medical Definition of POVERTY

:  debility due to malnutrition <evidence of poverty in calves>
 http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/07/how-we-ignore-poverty-and-blame-poor-people/

Right now, today, on any station or channel, in any workplace or church, you can hear people discussing poor people.  It is never discussed from the "I am a poor person" position.  It is always about "those poor people" and no one is saying it like it is funny or they are so cute.  Poor people do not have the same effect on us that pictures of kittens do.

We blame poor people for stuff--lots of stuff.  Poor people lower property values, make the urban areas look less attractive, clutter up their yards, rent in slums, drive clunkers, wear old and frequently stained or even dirty/smelly clothes--especially when they are coming home from work. (what? what?)  They wear cheap shoes.  If their state will let them, they use SNAP--used to be food stamps, but that is low tech, and have subsidized housing where they get help with that $1000/month rent in the place-well, I wouldn't live there, or pay that for it, but they are living in high rent places--for poor people.  All that raises my taxes because everyone knows that my taxes are all going to the poor people entitlement programs.  They cause high crime rates where ever they go because they are immoral and ungodly.  They make all kinds of money selling drugs and sex, and individual cigerettes.

Now, lets flip that pictures, because most of the above paragraph was obviously not quite right.

Poverty affects about 16% of the United States population.  It is not equal everywhere.  New Hampshire has a less than 8% rate of people living below the poverty level.  Mississippi has more than 21 % living in poverty.  The poverty level in the contiguous states is $11,770/year per single person with an additional $4160 allowed for each additional person that lives in that house.  There are programs that help with buying a house (working poor) and programs that subsidize rent (section 8) and frankly finding any information about those online is impossible.  I have talked to people that received assistance and it is a complicated and demeaning process and they have to go through it multiple times a year.  In our state, if you don't have a mental illness or a physical disability/chronic illness that prevents work, you must have a dependent child.  Homeless people, who frequently have medicare or a SSDI check are homeless due to inability to get rent and food and medications with what they qualify for.

Poverty is not genetic, but if you are raised in poverty, your chances of continuing in poverty are good, and getting better every year we blame poor people for being poor.  

To get out of poverty, and that is the first link a poor family must break, a person needs 4 things: 

• Adequate nutrition to ensure that they make it to their full genetically determined height and optimum brain development.  (currently childhood hunger and malnutrition--which can be present even in the presence of obesity--fat is not healthy--we need some of the good kind, but it is not all we need)
• Good education programs from early childhood education through higher level (graduate school) so people can fully utilize those well-nourished brains)  Currently, education in those areas with the poorest people are the lowest achieving--and no--that is neither the teachers' or the poor children's fault, it is past time to fix a system we have known didn't work for more than 20% of the population since the 1940"s.
• Role-models--this is not a slam at poor adults but a reality check.  I cook like my mother; have work ethics like my father and fashion sense like my father; my neighbors showed me what other kind of routines people had, my relatives hammered me with a sense of right and wrong, and all the choices I made before 20 were based on what I saw in my little world.   I think that is how most of us learned as children, that is how the world works until we are able to get an older and more experienced perspective..
• Last but far from least--opportunity.  The opportunity to accomplish our dreams.  The opportunity to become anything we want.  If I take my well nourished brain in its perfectly made body with its great education and a working knowledge of how a successful individual from a successful family in a successful neighborhood does things, and then find that I still can only get a job paying minimum wage because I am not "the right person", skin color, gender, religion, accent, whatever, how long am I going to keep plugging away in an upright and appropriate manner.

Humans love to say they are for the underdog, but in truth, we demonize people that are  "not like us" and we love to blame the victim.  If you have a very hard life, no breaks, no success, then unless you are saint-like, you deserve everything you get.  We all want forgiveness for our frailties, but don't want to forgive.  We are competitive, we like to be better than someone, to beat them.  We jockey for position and don't want to lose any advantage we might have.  We need poor people, and unlucky people and helpless and powerless and uneducated people so we are not the ones being looked down upon. Poor is a comparative term, not an absolute.  It is all perspective.

So, could we eliminate poverty completely?  There will always be people with less fortune than others.  but we can break the poverty cycle.  Reality is, if every single person in the USA made the same amount, we would all make about $44,000 per year.  That is a four times more than poverty level and a good sign no one needs to be there.  And that is per person, not household.  The people in this country are very productive.  But while I can not give a single example of a nation in which everyone shares equally in the national adjusted net income, I do think that we could easily stop people from being hungry, homeless, without access to good education or good healthcare and the last two, which are the hardest, require nothing more than the people with advantages, share.  Be a role model.  Look in the mirror and examine your own prejudices and fears, your own beliefs about people that are different, that look different, believe in a different version of god or in no god, that speak differently, that do not fit your version of "professional" or "educated" or "socially acceptable" are treated around you are not given the hand up, the break to a better job, the offer of more power, because they are not like the other people already in those positions. Our prisons are full of somebody's babies.  They didn't hope that for them?  And if they are there for drugs or stealing food or not being able to find a better role model than the local drug dealer, which is the successful person in a neighborhood without hope or opportunity, if they are there for prostitution or shop lifting or check kiting, well, maybe our modern jail is just a new version of "poorhouse".  Those are definitely the petty crimes of the poor and desperate--and angry.  What teen or twenty-something has never been angry when they realize that those things on TV, on the "reality" shows, on the sitcoms, in the malls will never be theirs.  First we believe the hype about "The Land of Opportunity", then we get angry because we believed.  We hoped.  We dreamed.  But those were never supposed to be our reality.

They could be.  

Our nations biggest goal should be to end poverty this generation.  Clean it up, make it fair, stop the hate, stop the greed, stop the "crab in a bucket mentality", stop the "whack a mole" mentality.

We can all have plenty.  It's not a competition.

 



http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/07/how-we-ignore-poverty-and-blame-poor-people/