Posted on 07/30/2018 8:04:54 AM PDT by rktman
At one point in my life I thought about participating in our parish St. Vincent de Paul Society. One of the members described what I would see in people’s homes. Huge TVs, junk food, cigarettes etc. I was told that I could not be judgemental.
That’s not me. I just couldn’t do it.
Living high on the hog!
“ Define poverty“
EXACTLYLY. The left let’s you think Dickens when they discuss. In reality, they have a precise definition and standard in mind and in law when it comes to implementation of government programs. The welfare qualifications are set as % to average incomes still that by definition the poverty income level is at least static or increasing service that a significant number are always below the level.
-PJ
I survived a few years of poverty, and I did it without becoming morbidly obese like so many of our poor.
Being poor long-term is often the result of one’s own choices.
Finding a way to shuffle slowly forward is the essence of humanity - not to take from others, but to provide something that makes others want to give you value in return.
I gotta ax the question (didn’t see the answer in the article)....
How long will this magnificent Community Poverty Simulation last?
An hour?
The daylight hours of one day?
A whole day?
A week?
A month?
A year?
The rest of the participants’s lives?
Or maybe...one person doing it for 24 hours and then “passing” the simulation off to the next person so they can simulate it for the next 24 hours. Kinda like the famous & oh so wise actors did recently to protest PDJT’s immigrating policies?
Also gotta ax...will these kind folks be stimulating giving away their wealth and possessions? Will the receivers of said wealth and possessions simulate giving them back? What if the receiver simulates refusing to give back their goodies?
Then the parishioners can practice poverty in real-time.
How fitting.
Been there.
Done that.
Didn’t like it.
Trying to avoid it in the future.
Big Government is not helping that effort ...
Surviving your upbringing requires character and probably builds character. Destitution is a different order entirely.
anybody remember taking a spoon and eating shortening right from the can?...maybe I was the only one in the world to do that...
point being, is we didn't have a lot of food laying around...if we were hungry, we made due...
Great list, but add one more item...
Honor your debts; never walk away from one.
Reminiscent of Martin Sheen kicking a homeless guy off his steam grate to spend a night as a homeless guy.
Knock. Knock.
Hello ma’am (or sir) I will mow your lawn, using your equipment, for $5.
Suddenly there are prospects.
We did something similar in my 8th grade health class. We were divided into “families”, received the poverty level amount of money per person, walked to the small town grocery store to buy a meal with all 4 food groups, then cooked it over coffee can fires in the school parking lot. I think it backfired because most of us were able to do it and had some money left over. IIRC we were all excited because it wasn’t going to be hard to feed ourselves as adults.
Far better to educate kids, teach them about personal finances and how to live responsibility so that they never end up poor rather then force empathy for those who typically are in poverty due to poor choices.
LOL. I think most people have “lived” poverty (not a simulation) at one point or another. That usually is strong motivation to get them earning money so they never would have to “live” poverty again.
But then there are these faux simulations. My favorite example, which I witnessed first hand, was when Martin Sheen decided to sleep in a subway entrance in the winter in Washington DC in the 1980s. He made a big production of it and had the news crews there. He talked about how the homeless were freezing to death in Washington because the government didn’t provide adequate shelters. He slept in a warm sleeping bag for an hour or two and then, when the cameras were gone, he left. That was my introduction to liberal hypocrisy.
I never even knew we were poor growing up as a kid.
I think my first realization as to how poor we were as a family didn’t occur until well after I was out on my own earning my own money.
We had lots of poverty when we were newlyweds. We ate lentils most days and our food budget wss $15 a week. He could never find a permanent job and we drove junkers. He tried going to college but we were living with his mother and she decided to raise our rent. It was frightening but we eventually rose above it.
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