1998-12-16
Thirty percent of Americans earn less than $8.00 an hour. That is roughly $320.00 a week, about $1333.00 a month or $16,000.00 a year.
This is where the welfare mothers go. Remember the welfare mothers? They all got kicked off welfare, didn't they? One of Bill Clinton's little moral compromises.
So while Congress spends tens of millions of dollars and all their waking consumptive hours contemplating impeaching the twerp for consensual groping, the welfare mothers and working poor continue to lead their desperate little lives wondering if the Kraft dinner might be on sale tonight, or if the kindly clerk at the Quickie mart will zap the hot dog for them.
Where do these people live? To rent a decent apartment.... well, no-- to rent a grubby little pathetical hole in the wall somewhere, you need about $500 a month minimum. You also need first and last month's rent. So they live in broken down trailer parks or dingy hovels or their cars. Health care? Out of reach. Dental care? You must be joking. But they smoke and they drink and they have parties. And the weirdest thing of all: these people, who have nothing, share with each other. They help each other out.
I experienced this first-hand when I was in college. I ran about $500 short one semester. I went to a number of people to ask if they could lend me some money. Who lent me money? Fellow students. An underpaid professor. An unemployed friend. Who refused? A car dealer. A friend who had all his money tied up in mutual funds. Someone else had to put a new liner in her pool.
It is one of the saddest statements on the morality of our civilization that the poor give a higher percentage of their incomes to charity than the rich do.
The latest Houghton Mifflin 5th Grade History books devotes a grand total of 332 words to the Depression. It devotes 339 words to the career of Cal Ripken Jr..
Copyright © 1998 Bill Van Dyk All rights reserved.