I love an article by Alyssa Katharine Ritz Battistoni about American poverty. In it she makes a lot of great points poverty in the United States. One point that especially stuck out follows:
It’s much easier to dismiss poor people as undeserving, unsavory, crackheads, welfare queens–not like respectable middle-class Americans–than to acknowledge the enormous problems that continue to plague our society. What it really comes down to is not morality or work ethic but that some of us have sufficient resources to cushion us from our mistakes and others do not. For millions of Americans, one fluke event can turn a delicate balancing act into financial free-fall. And when the government doesn’t provide an adequate safety net, it’s a long way down to the bottom.
I agree! Perhaps to avoid guilt and excuse inaction, many people brush poverty off as a self-inflicted phenomenon. These people claim that poor people make themselves poor through laziness, bad decision-making, and other self-destructive behavior. While all of us–both poor and not–often make lazy, short-sighted, and self-destructive decisions, we must realize we do NOT live in a meritocracy. Many people do not receive the same opportunities, and instead get thrown extra obstacles, and this results in poverty. Take for example, the poor child born into an innercity ghetto without a father; the child must grow up around violence and drugs, and go to a substandard school; this child will most likely remain in poverty for the rest of his or her life.
We can fight poverty, not by giving free hand-outs to undeserving people, but by providing fair opportunity to those who have not received it.
Remember, millions of college graduates are poor in the United States, and millions of employed people are poor in the United States.