| To be sure, "poor" today is not what it was 100 years ago. Today's poor enjoy things like car ownership, home ownership/rental, cable TV, electricity, water, enough to buy food, etc.
We were never a rich family by any means (even before my parents split, our average income yearly was about $60,000 before taxes), but we always managed to get buy with two cars, a nice house in suburban Maryland, cable, and bountiful Christmas'.
This is not to say poverty's not a problem, merely that it's not the problem it's often made out to be. This reminds me of how a friend of mine who is a college admissions counselor told me that at least 75% of the people requesting financial aid had wealthy parents who never set aside a dime for their education, and complain that the government doesn't do enough. |