Here is the line that I was re-acting to:
" OMG you mean we are making poor people should work for a living and go to school like rich people do????"
I have seen comments like this repeatedly in conservative forums directed against the poor. They imply that the poor DO NOT work as hard (or harder) than the rich. I have seen a lot of hatred directed against the poor in conservative forums. Maybe that's not what this poster meant, but that's the way this particular line sounds. Most of the poor and lower middle classes work very hard indeed and they (and the middle class) have been losing ground in salaries over the past 30 years. I think this needs to be recognized. Perhaps I over-reacted but as someone who came from a background of dire poverty and has been fighting my way out of it all my life (without public assistance) I am very sensitive to these implications that the poor don't work, and that the rich somehow "deserve" all their money. Frequently the rich don't work and inherit their money. Just ask Paris Hilton. I don't begrudge them this, but I am sick of seeing the poor get slammed by conservatives, and I have seen too much of that.
I came from a background of poverty too. I grew up in a single parent household and my mother was a waitress in a deli and made 40 dollars a week to feed 4 kids in the 70's. It wasn't until we got older and got our own jobs that she was able to finally not worry about us. Welfare at the time would not accept her unless she did not work and because she was White they figured she didn't need it so they told her and I quote "EAT BEANS". She was absolutely humiliated when she asked for food stamps to help feed us. But that was the attitude in the 70's. I was not making fun of the poor. Who said the poor don't work? I was making fun of Kerry and his way of thinking. Don't read more into my sentence please.
That makes sense. I was thinking your response was more along the lines of a typical liberal "the poor are honorable and the wealthy are evil," but now I see that your response was to a thoughtless "the poor are poor because they don't work, and the rich are rich because they slave away."
Of course, there are hardworking wealthy people, and hardworking poor people.
Frankly, I discounted the comment you responded to simply because it started with the taking-the-Lord's-name-in-vain triteness "OMG"....