From experience, when you are poor, it is the biggest problem you have and it blots all other problems more or less out of existence. You spend your entire day focused on trying to get more money and food, sometimes clothes and shelter as well.

Few people starve to death anymore in this country, but some are chronically malnourished. The free lunch and often other meals at the public schools helps alot with child malnourishment. TANF and SNAP help alot as well. Some still fall through the cracks.

The myth is that poor folks are lazy. Actually being poor and finding food to eat is quite complex. Having a job is far easier.

How does a homeless person with no clean clothes, no money, and needing food just to survive, find a job? Yes, he can find temporary labor that will pay a few bucks but he can never save enough to get ahead or even to afford a room, in many cases. Poverty is a hole that is very difficult to climb out of.

Not many communities have a extensive public transportation. Denver does, & I read one woman's story a few years ago. It was heartbreaking!

Using RTD, she was able to get her kids to daycare, herself to work, then back to daycare to get the kids & then home. Sounds good, huh? Here's the catch. They would leave at 5:30am & get home at 7:30pm. How many middle class families, with two SUVs spend 14 hours of their day just going to work & back home? How many even care what this woman goes through daily, when they vote against raising taxes for public transportation?

Public transportation is just not very efficient if you have kids to drop of to daycare, school, etc. I freakin' have a car, and I have to get myself up at 5:30 to get my 2 younger kids ready and drive them to 2 separate daycares (one is a friend who is doing before/after school care in exchange for me to drive her daughter to work) to get to school by 8 am. Luckily I'm done class by 1 pm. I can't even imagine how freakin early I'd have to get up if I had to use public transportation (not an option where I live anyway).

Also, a tangent - how is a woman who gets home at 7:30pm expected to cook a healthy dinner for kids who probably have to be in bed by 8 or 9? There simply isn't time. Society pays for this in the long run.

Leisure time is going to be for the rich only. We will all be working three $8 an hour jobs to make it. At least that's what they want.

I use public transportation & I love it, but I don't have kids to drop off at daycare. Even so, it easily adds an hour to my day, especially since they cut back service in January & now I have to transfer. Our society is so hard on the poor, but women & women with children are especially harmed by our lack of compassion & our punitive attitudes.

Personally, I think daycare is one of those services that the state should provide to all people at no cost. I would also include healthcare, elder care, education, & three hots & a cot. Why the fuck do we pay into a community chest so we can finance wars to make the rich richer? When are the People going to wake up?

People in this country are so worried some poor person will get something they don't deserve, all the while the rich are robbing us blind. It unfuckingbelievable.

and have done so for 20 years. Being poor is much harder than the RW imagines it to be. Most of the poor folks I work with would love a job, because having one would make life so much easier. That was my point.

I work at a shelter that is well connected and helps the folks find jobs. Not particularly good jobs or well paid, but even those are an improvement and make life easier for them.

Greedy, heartless bastards. (How many lobbyist expense account lunches does it take to pay for a hot lunch program?)

You state, "...when you are poor, it is the biggest problem you have and it blots all other problems more or less out of existence." I have never been homeless, but we went through a very rough patch where we scrambled to keep a roof over our heads & food in the fridge. What you said is so spot on. You can't know how basic survival consumes you until you face it yourself. And just when you think you might get out of the hole, something else happens to drag you back down. People have no idea how hard it is to get out once you fall in.

I hope you're in a better place, now, quaker bill.

I honestly think they do it to us on purpose. They know every day we spend trying to keep food on the family is another day too busy to pay attention to what they're doing. Or Not doing, or lying about...

I do put volunteer time in every month to feed and help those I can and have for 20 years now. I know first hand where these folks are coming from.

for even just the basics-housing, utilities and food. Or you're just scraping by and you get sick and incur a huge medical bill (because you have no insurance) or your old junker of a car breaks down and it's going to cost the sum of two paychecks to fix it.
But of course, if you happen to have internet, a cell phone or even a working refrigerator you're considered to be doing well according to Fox News...

I guess i'm seeing things...

for a long time I bought simple old and cheap cars that I knew how to fix if they broke. I have rebuilt starter motors, carbs, did my own brake jobs, I have even rebuilt a couple of motors, and installed junk yarded transmissions. When you select a car because you know how cheap and easy the repair parts are to purchase, not the style or price, then you are beginning to get to the right frame of mind.

they are, in fact, nobody's problem but their own

impoverished before it gets any better. That's the basic theory--wages here will not rise until they are averaged against China, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, etc.

So look at the level of poverty in places like that, and that's our future.