I'm a little tired, mostly because I had to get up around 7:40 to register for classes and I went to bed at 2 last night, so this will be short. Basically, we had a really fascinating discussion for Modern Political Thought yesterday, predicated on the following question: What challenges do low-income families have to face in the United States? We were split into small groups representing families, and then had to follow certain scenarios; my "family" was made up of an older woman, her twentysomething daughter, and the daughter's three-year-old son. The daughter worked as a nurse's assistant for $20k a year while the grandmother provided childcare. Our challenge? What would happen to the family if the grandmother had a stroke, leaving her in need of medical care and her grandson without a babysitter? Things got pretty dire pretty fast, because our TA had us draw further scenarios, so our family had to deal with identity theft, a lawsuit, and unplanned pregnancy. We were in over our heads very quickly, and we discovered that even with government assistance we would be struggling.
This is why I get so angry when I hear people say that the poor are lazy or unwilling to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." Poverty is a cycle in this country, and there are many institutional barriers to face if you try to escape it.
