Is there no Sympathy Left in the World?
Apr 1st, 2009 by Carlos
The other day I was walking around the city and I noticed something that happens every day: people don’t seem to like each other very much. We cut each other off in our cars, we push each other around on the bus, we give each other dirty looks when we think someone is “out to get us”—we just don’t seem to get along very well.
Why is that?
It got me thinking about poverty for some reason, and how heartless so many of us are when we talk about people that don’t have enough money to make it through the day.
Politicians (and citizens) pound their fists and bellow out that giving handouts is wrong. TV personalities call poor people lazy and tell them they should just “get a job already!”
Many of them have two jobs, and it’s just not enough. There are people out there doing the very best they can—some are working harder than many of us have eve worked—and still there just isn’t enough money at the end of the day.
Then we excoriate them for using their credit cards and getting into debt. What else are they supposed to do? If college-educated people fall into the debt trap all the time, why would we be so harsh on people who barely finished high school and fall into these traps too?
Wealthy people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars (sometimes millions) complain that they’re being taxed more than poor people and that it’s not fair. Why should they be punished for making more money? Why don’t poor people just work harder, like they did?
Why can’t we put ourselves in their shoes for a minute to see how terrible and hopeless it must feel to not see a light at the end of the tunnel?
Where has all the sympathy gone?
Image by free parking
So why stop there. Where has all the sympathy gone? If you bring attention to the issue, are there websites you can share to give those who are struggling? In this way your readers can get the scoop and spread the news if their heart is inclined to help in small ways. Or does it stop there, with sympathy I mean?
I am the new poor. Living in pretty well high standards at one time, lost a job due to illness, now I’m on three years of no work and no health care, my 200k savings is gone due to market crashes and needing money to survive. It’s not always the homeless, indigent poor we must help, even though they would be first on the list. It’s people , the boomers, my age who are getting attacked from every angle who will end up like the indigent and who are and living in tents. That is my future today as I type from my laptop in my home, that hasn’t foreclosed…yet!
The blight of the poor and sinking middle class and hard working individuals who paid taxes and owned homes, is being completely denied attention in the news in a proper way.
When Obama was asked what he plans to do for people who are living in tents, he had no answer. Does he even know how bad it is? I wonder.
You have a great site, keep it going. You are a great writer.
I blog for a site that is dear to my heart for children with special needs, but I wish I could find a way to make a living on the web that would feed me and provide housing or at least keep this house from being taken from me.
VG