It remains staggering how many people, both intentionally & unintentionally, propagate this idea that the reason some people live in poverty is simply because they don't work hard enough.
Having millions of people living in poverty is not an inevitability, it's a choice this country has made. People aren't poor because they don't work hard, it's in large part because we live in a society with policies that often exacerbate the harsh realities of poverty rather than alleviate them. The fact that we live in a society in which a single person--literally just 1--can have a net worth of $140 billion while 13 million children go to bed hungry every night is a moral indictment of our society and the political and economic system within which it operates.
I have read how countries with strong social safety nets are helping their citizens get through this time while in the US the GOP and its allies keep trying to convince everyone that helping people is a bad idea, keeping taxes low for the rich is better and how ungrateful we are for expecting more.
A 1.5 trillion dollar corporate giveaway does not mean squat if you don't protect your people from diseases, and this whole COVID-19 debacle has shone a light on how broken our way of doing things is.
Having millions of people living in poverty is not an inevitability, it's a choice this country has made. People aren't poor because they don't work hard, it's in large part because we live in a society with policies that often exacerbate the harsh realities of poverty rather than alleviate them. The fact that we live in a society in which a single person--literally just 1--can have a net worth of $140 billion while 13 million children go to bed hungry every night is a moral indictment of our society and the political and economic system within which it operates.
I have read how countries with strong social safety nets are helping their citizens get through this time while in the US the GOP and its allies keep trying to convince everyone that helping people is a bad idea, keeping taxes low for the rich is better and how ungrateful we are for expecting more.
A 1.5 trillion dollar corporate giveaway does not mean squat if you don't protect your people from diseases, and this whole COVID-19 debacle has shone a light on how broken our way of doing things is.
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”
— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg