Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free...

Were they mocking us?

I've never really experienced abject poverty.

When you think about poverty - a lot of it is relative. Poverty in Peru is grossly different than poverty in the United States. This country talks a great deal about paying a "living wage" these days - discussing raising the minimum wage & access to health care for citizens on the whole. And I believe that everyone should have life's basic necessities and should be able to provide them for their family, but what is that? When do we cross the basic necessity line? Is owning a car a basic necessity? Are cell phones, televisions, and DVD players necessities? It is a difficult comparison - in fact you can't really analogize the poverty that my father describes seeing in Singapore while he was in the navy (shanty towns built out of sheet metal and cardboard) and the poverty that we see in the United States. It seems like 2 different monsters. We consume SO MUCH in this country and our culture of consumption & affluence knows know class boundaries. Certainly you don't have those living on welfare buying planes, but the perception of necessity is totally skewed.

And I feel guilty to a certain extent - expressing my thoughts on the subject because it's NEVER BEEN ME. I've never had to worry about feeding my children - only briefly having to worry for a time after college where my own next meal was going to come from. I was in dire straights - but I made it through that. I still had a roof over my head. But then I look around me and wonder WHY women are having children when they can't even feed themselves. The Supreme Court has held reproduction to be a fundamental human right - but should it really be? If you can't feed yourself because you live in a state of abject poverty - why is it socially responsible to allow you to have children? I've chosen NOT to EVER have children - and I certainly will be able to provide for a child. But it's a CHOICE.

So where does poverty stem from? To whom to I feel that lending a hand is merit & who do I continue to shake my head because it's more a looooong series of BAD life choices. I suppose that we are all one really bad day away from that - so I shouldn't speak. The next day it could be me. I certainly have enough student loan debt to land me in the poor house - or the clink. Actually, if it ever came down to that, the clink might be preferrable.

And then I start thinking about women's rights in conjunction with poverty...I should take poverty law too. **Sigh** Where did THAT come from?

So, this is rambling...but my mind goes there.