Reply to Paycheck to Paycheck HBO Documentary

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[quote=Anonymous]My sister is a high-school teacher and conducting her students through a project on homelessness, hunger, and poverty.  She spoke of a man who came and spoke to her students about how he ended up homeless.  He wasn't a lazy irresponsible idiot.  He wasn't an alcoholic or drug addicted loser.  He wasn't uneducated or mentally ill either.  He was a guy like any other.  He had a job a house a wife but he lost them all one by one because unfortunately the circumstances of life itself got the better of him.
Sadly the circumstances of life get the better of many people.  Not everyone who is poor is pathetic.  Not everyone who is on welfare is worthless.  People lose jobs.  People fall on hard times and unfortunately people don't always have family to lean on.  Many times as was the case with this man, while he had friends he didn't want to be a burden on them by continuing to sleep on their couches so he ended up homeless.

You know we often look at a collective group like poor people and are so quick to make presumptions about them - all of them.  In our rush to judgement we often fail to remember that while our overall assessments and appraisals of the group as whole may be in many ways accurate, that still doesn't discount the fact that the group is comprised of individuals.  Living, breathing, loving, feeling, talented, hopeful human beings not unlike ourselves each with their own individual stories and their own individual struggles that separate them from the stereotypes and generalizations we rely on so much to make sense of their situations.

Until we fully understand that these are people and consciously keep in mind that these are individuals all the government programs and services in the world won't ease their suffering or aid their struggle because being impoverished is one thing - being imperceptible is another kind of hell altogether.[/quote]

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