In response to a response...

Let me say up front that I do personally read and review every comment made on here. I seldom respond to them directly for several reasons...one of those being I appreciate the comments and, in my own egomaniacal way, want more...and if I am seen as being negative towards them or anything along that line, I might not get the occasional comment from people passing by...another reason being I don't want anyone to feel insulted or slighted. I respect every view point that contributes and look forward to seeing more.
Occasionally, however, a response will either bring up something else I want to comment on or illustrate I did not make my point clearly enough and need to clarify what I was saying. Here is a case in point. A week or two ago I referenced an article that caught my eye on poverty and mentioned why I believed it was not an overcomable condition. One response caught my eye:


"I've never met anyone who wants to sleep on the street. I can't believe you think we can't end poverty because poor people want to be poor!"

Re-reading my initial post I can see how that might have been extrapolated, so I will try to restate my case more clearly.
Life is a system of choices. We choose whether we would rather get out of bed in the morning when the alarm goes off...or if we would rather turn off the alarm and go to bed. We decide whether we want the convenience and flavor of a sugar and preservative-laden cereal or the healthy, nutritional alternative of a fruit breakfast, for example. We choose whether to show up at work, do our job, and go home...or skip work. There are a lot of other choices.
Sometimes there are things we want to do but the opportunity cost is simply too high. I, for example, enjoy Portland Winterhawk games a great deal. However, attending the games requires a committment of time and money. Currently my time is at a premium where I do not have enough time to even visit my friends, family, or, for that matter, fiance nearly as much as I would like to. As such, when I have free time, I am highly unlikely to go to the game unless some or all of those people are there. Time with friends/family/fiance > time watching people I do not know play a game that doesn't matter.
If I were a little more self centered I would make the opposite choice. And sometimes in life people do make those choices. My older sister is one example.
People have tried to help her out. She has chosen poorly. She lives homeless because she wants to live in California. She has been offered homes in both Oregon and Washington, but she would rather live on the streets and out of cars in California than live in a house in Oregon or Washington. It has cost her her health, her relationship with her daughter, and virtually any chance of a decent finish to her life. And she lives there by choice because for Sue, living in California is her priority; it is more important to her than anything else.
The same is true for the vast majority of the homeless. No, they don't WANT to be homeless...but there is something they want more than they want to do what it takes to be not homeless. For some it is drugs or alcohol...their desire for another drink is greater than their desire to maintain a schedule, work at the drudgery of a job, stay clean and sober. For others, it is simply their desire to do their own thing.
I remember when I was working at TVBS in Scappoose. There was a guy there who desperately needed the money to take care of he and his live-in girlfriend's newborn. He was making pretty good money for the area and it was the only thing keeping him afloat. He had a problem, though. Every week or two he just...would'nt show up. And when he did show up he would be late...anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours.
He was warned about it. He would get all upset and say how much the job meant to him and how he would do better. He didn't do better. He was sent home a couple of days when he showed up late. He still showed up late so he was suspended. Again he talked about how it was a wake-up call and how much he needed the job to save his family and his place. It would have been easier to believe if he had not been late every day that week after he was reinstated...except for the day he no-call, no-showed. There was another no in there for him...no more job.
He did, in fact, lose his girlfriend and his parental rights. Last time I saw him he had no job and was on the edge of dropping out. In his case, whatever it was he was doing that made it impossible for him to get to work on time or every time he was scheduled was more important to him than his family and home. He made that choice. He knew the importance, he himself stated the importance of showing up on time and every time. He had a cell phone, there was no excuse for not even calling when he chose to skip work...but he still made those choices.
It may not be true every time, but it is my contention that in most cases, the poverty stricken people are there because of choices they have made. Not necessarily choices recently:
It could be the choice to not study in school and as a result condemn themselves to a life of working in gas stations or fast food as they had no skills for the workplace, but an unwillingness to restrict their spending to the lifestyle that provided. It could be a choice to partake of mind-altering substances, whether the politically acceptable alcohol, the young person popular marijuana, or the virtually universally condemned "harder drugs" at the cost of any possible career. There are a lot of things one can choose.
I have to say, some mornings it is very hard to get out of my nice warm bed, jump into the initially cold shower, scrape my grill with a kinfe blade to clean off some of the hair, fight traffic for 30 or 40 minutes to get to a job that, well...let's admit it, is NOT what I dreamed of doing when growing up, only to have tasteless food for lunch and a longer drive home that leaves me drained. But every day I make the choice to do it because it keeps a roof over my head and food in my belly. With just a little less motivation I could be the guy with the cardboard sign at the end of the on-ramp.
It is not hard in this country to raise yourself to a level of basic subsistence by making slightly different choices. But there are a lot of people not willing to make those choices because there are things they want more.
And as long as there are things people want more than they want a roof over there head and food in their belly, there will be poverty. They may not have set out to choose poverty...but their choices made it inevitable.