Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Garbage and gifts (2)

Am I saying that there is no excuse for being poor in our society? No, I am not. What I am saying is that people who give rarely have much understanding of the plight of the people they are giving to. And that plight has changed significantly as our society has gotten richer. That old sweatshirt you gave away? they wouldn't wear it because they can easily get something better.

I'll give you an example. I have a friend who volunteers a good portion of every week to cook free dinners for people on the street. In fact, none of her clientele are street people. And anyone who wanted to determine this could just sit down at the table and ask them. They'll cheerfully tell you about the apartment they live in and the support payments they get. They'll also tell you about how these free meals allow them to save some money because they can use support payments they receive for food on something else. They treat clothing donations the same way: if it is as good or better than something they could buy, they'll take it.

That is the face of poverty in an extremely wealth society like ours. There are worse cases but these are almost entirely made up of drug addicts and people who are mentally ill. Give a drug addict money and you are just giving it to the drug dealer. In any case, poverty is not even remotely like the material needs problem that we keep telling ourselves it is. Do these people have real problems? You bet they do. Most of them spend their days doing little more than existing. That is a life you wouldn't wish an anyone.

No comments:

Post a Comment