Try and go on unemployment and see how much they check up on you. My state rides people pretty hard to get a job or they cut off benefits pretty quick.

What pissed me off about saving for college is that both myself and my Mom did that ever since I was young, then when it came time to ask for financial aid…they held that & the fact that my Mom had almost paid off our house against us. None of our savings amounted to squat either. There were no scholarships for me…I’m glad you at least got one. I’m lucky that I had parents that valued an education above pretty much anything else…it’s the most important thing someone can get I think. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be a poor, black, female child though in this country. It’s not like someone can’t overcome all those strikes, but it’s going to be waaay harder than I went through almost for sure.

One if my first “real” jobs was at a rate of, I think, $3.85/hour, which was the minimum wage back then. I couldn’t even afford to drive to work…I had to take my bike. I understand then why the minimum wage needs to be set at a level so it’s not completely pointless for someone to have a job where they can pay absolutely none of their essential needs just to get by.

The American Dream is supposed to be about making a better life for yourself than your parents were able to…it’s not about inertia.

I worked while attending college, too. In fact, I got my first work permit when I was fourteen, and worked after school and every summer through high school, saving almost all of my money for college. Luckily, I also earned a National Merit Scholarship, because all my savings didn’t amount to half of one year’s tuition. I’m not competing with you for “poor” credentials. My family was not poor. My father’s a minister. Ministers don’t make much but, while I never had the luxuries my friends enjoyed, that was at least as much due to my parents’ values as it was to our financial situation.

I admire your perseverence and the fact that you did, in fact, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, proving that it can be done by those who have the will to do so. BTW, as I’m sure you know, the Salvation Army is a private charity, not a government program…

“People are born in this country all the time with multiple strikes against them that they can do little to nothing about.”

Everybody is dealt a different hand. People born into the middle class mostly end up at about the same level where they started out. The same is true for people who are born into the ghetto. It’s harder to change than to stay the same, no matter where you start out. And, of course, it’s harder to climb up than to slide down. No matter where they start out, most people just roll along the tracks that are laid out for them, and don’t bother to take control of their own lives. But, as you so clearly demonstrated, it can be done.

Are we gonna “out poor” one another now? I grew up a mile away (in two separate directions of course) from the richest part of town and the cheapest place to buy pot on the East coast. My home city’s nickname is “the Bucket”. A lot of my friends used drugs when I was growing up. We went to the Salvation Army to get clothes and used food stamps for food sometimes. I had little to no money while I put myself through college. I’m not crying over any of it either. A whole year in a tenement huh? Wow…

Everyone has a certain amount of control over their own lives, but it’s a little hard to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” when you don’t have any in the first place. People are born in this country all the time with multiple strikes against them that they can do little to nothing about. To not acknowledge that is to deny the truth.

The homeless are a very small percentage of the poor in this country. Interestingly, the homeless are better served by charities than by the government, because you need an address to get government subsidies, which, obviously, the homeless don’t have. Charities aren’t bound by the bureaucratic restrictions of government programs and are able to offer food, shelter, and clothing for those who will accept it.

“Ever been to a real housing project or a low-income, private rental unit and looked at the living conditions?”

Why, yes, actually, I lived in a tenement in a ghetto in NYC for a year, in my early twenties, when I couldn’t afford anything else. I wonder if you’ve had as much first hand experience as I have with poverty and those who make a lifestyle of it. You seem to have an idealized vision of the poor, living in squalor over which they have no control. I know better. I lived in the middle of it.

I was quite naive at the time, and tried to make friends with all my neighbors. At first, they were wary of me, but I went out of my way to be open-minded and non-judgemental, and took a free-market laissez-faire attitude toward all the various “enterprises” in which they engaged.

Gradually, they got used to me, and no longer bothered concealing things and using code words in my presence. I wouldn’t exactly say they “trusted” me, but at least they grew convinced that I was harmless. (Of course, once I convinced them I was harmless, some of them started to view me as prey.) I have to admit, the rest of my life pales in comparison with the vividness of that year, but I sure did learn a lot about where government entitlements go…

This, of course, is ridiculous nonsense. Ever hear of the homeless? Ever been to a real housing project or a low-income, private rental unit and looked at the living conditions? You’ve never worked “under the table” before?

Blame the poor for their own plight…sounds like the same Republican nonsense that I’ve heard oh-so-many times before.

Most of the world is beset by poverty because there are no opportunities. Many of them subsist on what they can grow and are subject to drought and famine. The poor in this country are rich by the standards of most of the rest of the world, and they have free education, of which many don’t even bother to take advantage because they don’t value it. The differences are not just in terms of living conditions, but of opportunity.

There are almost unlimited opportunities for employment here, but many of the jobs for unskilled labor are hard, dirty, boring, and don’t pay all that well, by American standards. So many people opt for entitlements instead, often subsidized by “unreported income.” People in many parts of the world would feel fortunate to have the opportunity to take those jobs for much less than the wages and benefits mandated by our government, and that’s why we have so many illegal aliens willing to come here and do the jobs at which Americans turn up their noses.

Freedom without responsibility is anarchy. I’m a conservative, not an anarchist.