Thursday, September 22, 2011

Living in poverty

Dang. The morning greeted me with this over at the NY Times:


One in Five New York City Residents Living in Poverty



My knee-jerk reaction is that there are still folks - middle class, educated, conservative - who don't see this as a sign that the income inequality we are experiencing right now, the joblessness/underemployment and the weak economy are hurting those most vulnerable. Those people are going to continue to believe that the impoverished just aren't working hard enough, they aren't making the best financial decisions*, and they are busy using luxury items like refrigerators. Where is the compassion? Why aren't we doing more to help?

*The best financial decision appears to be to make enough money not classified as income to qualify for that spiffy lower tax rate the super rich get.

1 comment:

Abcdpdx said...

as a social worker with immediate family members now "living in poverty," don't even get me started.

today's "think out loud" had a great discussion about the realities of getting OUT of poverty, especially in this economy.