Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Wisdom from the trenches

Comments have been lively on the Alternate Opinion post. When this comment came through, it floored me because it so beautifully sums up the premise of my Simplicity book, namely MAKING GOOD CHOICES.

Here is what Anonymous 4:13 wrote (with some emphasis added). Marvel at these words of wisdom from someone who's been there, done that:

I have seen poverty up close and have been there myself ,at least what I concidered poverty, only a few worn sets of clothing one set of underware no money for heat, Thank God for a fireplace and a few trees , unbranded mac and cheese or "cherrios" for meals for months, I would dream of an apple or orange ,driving a $200. car with a broken frame to work barely having money for the gas to get there and back. constantly having the electric shut off ,no phone or tv. What I see is drugs, drinking, poor choices and single parenthood.I didn't blame the government or anyone else and when I decided to stop making poor choices life got very much better quickly .My relatives all blame "big brother" or the " rich people " for keeping them in poverty, even though they constantly make stupid choices . after 30 plus years poor choices just become stupidity.None of them can seem to keep a marriage together or see any point in encouraging a father child connection or doing anything much about parenting than providing all the latest electronic toys (this is poverty?) I really do not have a lot of compassion for the poor in general except the truely widowed and orphaned . This problem could be cured in the homes in this country but we have such low standards for everything because we want not to offend anyones stupid choices. Sounds like I went off on a rant....

If I tried for a hundred years, I couldn't have said it any better. Anon 4:13, thank you for your story.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, that was a zinger, and spot on, too! So happy for you, anonymous commenter, that you recognized what you needed to do, and DID IT. Your insights are valuable.

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  2. anon...i applaud your honesty.

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  3. Have you read about Agenda 21, Presidential Executive Order for Rural Areas? Please research, perhaps you could write about it?

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  4. I have seen what your commenter is talking about first hand.

    Without looking it up, I am guessing that divorce and medical problems are the two biggest single-cause reasons for people going into poverty. A change in income has probably (and erosion through inflation counts) has probably crept up closer to those two.

    But low (or no) pay is the probably the biggest reason people are in poverty: drugs, drinking, lack of family connection, etc. are pretty common within what is left of our middle class. The reason they are not poor is because they have enough money coming in to pay for their mistakes.

    The reason the middle class has very little in the way of assets/wealth (which is different than being poor) is all of the above and adding the (not unrelated) refusal to set any of their income aside/investing for future spending.

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