Comment Re:419 Scams (Score 1) 808
I spent about a decade in the restaurant business, doing everything from cook to store manager. The conception of poverty by people who went to college and got a decent job afterward is skewed. Most of us simply do not realize the margins that some people live on. They can't buy that song they heard on the radio because they can't splurge $15 this week on a cd, and don't have internet access to download the song for $.99. They buy more thread than socks.
They work two jobs because they are in debt for the full price of the last visit to the ER. They plan their day around the bus schedule. Weekends don't mean anything to them except that they have to now find a babysitter for the entire day, and the bus schedule is different. Holidays mean lost pay.
The easy retort is that these people chose their life, and that they could improve it if they wished; but it's not as easy as that, and repeating it ever more loudly won't make it true. Many of these people work every minute of the day to maintain their meager living.
They are often intelligent people who by happenstance, or societal conditioning, tragedy, or accident of birth never got many of the little opportunities that allow us who are maybe not rich but live comfortably to achieve the lifestyle we have.
I've been fortunate (or unfortunate, depending upon how you look at it) to spend time with very rich people and some very poor people. Trying to equate IQ with either station is a fool's exercise. Trying to generalize poor people as unmotivated, entitled, profligate spenders is no better.