I have often thought that poverty is something that is often out of the hands of the poverty stricken person. However, I have recently come to believe that most people who live in poverty are there because they want to be there.
Some choose to be in poverty by the kinds of friends they keep. If all your friends are hicks, trash, or bone idle how can you be anything but those things?
Some choose to be in poverty because they have an attitude of entitlement. They believe that anyone who challenges their behavior is "startin' shit with me", or is just nagging.
Some choose to be in poverty because they refuse to work. Sure, from time to time they will hold down a job for a month. Then...BAM, unemployed again. Rather than look for work, these lazy bums "hang out" with looser friends, and participate in "easy money" schemes. When they are being evicted or foreclosed on because of their laziness, they blow up your phone and email with requests for money.
Mostly, these people blame everyone else in the world except themselves. They cannot possibly be responsible for their own poverty, so it must be someone else's fault. Obviously, it must be that asshole of a brother who won't help for the millionth time to pay the rent.
I think these poor people give the rest a bad name.
Where are the poor that are struggling, working, saving, doing anything they can to survive in an honest way?
Where are these people? If they exist, I want to help them. I'd rather give them the money than have it go into enabling a lazy person to destroy her life.
