Charles Blow: How Expensive It Is To Be Poor

[grasswire]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/charles-blow-how-expensive-it-is-to-be-poor.html?src=me&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most+Emailed&pgtype=article&_r=0


Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center released a study that found that most wealthy Americans believed “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

This is an infuriatingly obtuse view of what it means to be poor in this country — the soul-rending omnipresence of worry and fear, of weariness and fatigue. This can be the view only of those who have not known — or have long forgotten — what poverty truly means.

“Easy” is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard — the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. “Easy” is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!

[grasswire]

2. comments section especially enlightening...

...if you take some time to read.

[WillyT]

3. Thanks For The Heads-Up !!!

[butterfly77]

4. Kick,kick,kicked&Recommended!

[woo me with science]

5. K&R

[Scuba]

6. Kick.

[Octafish]

7. The Have-Mores fear turning into the Haves.

So, to keep a grip on what they got, they lose their Empathy instead.

Thank you for the heads-up, grasswire. Charles Blow is spot on.

[annabanana]

8. Being poor in America is very very hard work.

Anyone who thinks otherwise has CLEARLY never been in that position.