Sometimes we choose our own fates, sometimes we're born into them. The American Dream is little more than overcoming fate, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Maybe it never was. Bad circumstances do not exist in a vacuum, but bring with them a mindset that allows us to deal with a situation and assimilates us into it. Being born poor is not like being poor in your twenties. It's not like the burst of poverty after you overextend your financial resources or take on additional fiscal reponsibilities.

Imagine never knowing anything else. Imagine being raised on potatoes (Top Ramen and other prepared foods are too expensive and unhealthy to eat every day). Imagine that all your friends, the ones you can relate to, will never go to college, never have a job that is anything but menial, never stop paying rent, never own a car purchased new. They'll be pregnant and/or married before they're 25, they'll know several alcoholic and abusive fathers, mothers, husbands or wives. They'll watch too much TV, their bodies will be tired and broken by 40, and they'll resign themselves to living a life of grief and pain and not much to offset it.

Living paycheck to paycheck, working 60 or more hours a week for minimum wage and not being able to picture yourself in a situation any better is no way to live. And people don't deserve it. They aren't unintelligent or untalented or merely lazy. They are confined. Confined by public schools that, lacking rich benefactors, can offer little more than a basic and flawed education. Confined by seeing none of their peers succeed. Confined by the inability to control their lives for more than a second, never having the chance to get back on their feet, being eternally at someone else's mercy as they become increasingly in debt and out of hope.

It's too bad everyone doesn't have to experience growing up in these circumstances, seeing the worst of life in America and being powerless to do anything more than hold their parents' hands or accept their beatings. People grow insensitive. They blame the poor for their poverty and blindly believe that with a little effort the unwashed masses could conquer all the demons they inherited.

Know this: flawed though the system may be, the system is the only way any of these people will have any opportunity to change their lives. The welfare system? Maybe. The college financial aid system? The public school infrastructure? Definitely. We understand that it is better to teach a man to fish. But when those with money, safe in their white homes and grey sedans, cheat on their taxes or their FAFSAs, they injure the system. The system doesn't work because no one supports it. And for a lot of people, the system is the only dream of a way out.

Yay! Let's install a wealth cap (Kingfish style), take all the money away from not just the ultra-rich, but also the masses of middle class and upper middle class people out there and give it to the poor. That's right, they worked to get on the right side of the gap, and now you want to take their rewards away from them. For what? Some obscure sense of sympathy for these people? Look, I have just as much sympathy as you do for the poor people who work hours and hours at minimum wage to support themselves. But maybe you should realize not all poor people want to work their way out of their situation.

Don't even think about telling me about how I'm a "rich snob". My father grew up in the slums of Hong Kong. He worked his way out to a scholarship in Canada. After fair successes in the corporate ladder, he got fired for reverse discrimination in Australia. And while the unemployed masses sit there and collect welfare checks, because they earn just as much sitting there than working anyways, we were living in a three bedroom apartment for a family of 6 while my dad looked for a new job. When he found one, it required that he move to China. I saw my father four times in those two years before we all packed up and moved to Shanghai. Yeah right, I'm privileged. Working in McDonald's after school trying to make money while all the fat slobs, sitting there drinking Foster's beer laugh and collect unemployment, sucking tax dollars out of the system. We collected welfare as well, but I never bitched about the amount.

Because I was working. I was working for minimum wage, and so was my older sister. We were not even 15 years old. We were trying to get out of our situation. And that's Australia, a country that isn't even that rich. America is by far the richest nation on Earth, and I am sure if those people wanted jobs, they can get them. I don't care if it is minimum wage. I worked minimum wages for 5 years, and I am only 19. Go to community college. Go learn. I don't care. Anything but sitting in front of the TV using welfare money. Don't like Taco Bell? Deal.

We were on the wrong side of the gap. Vicious cycle? We broke the cycle. I swear, all those suburbanite upper middle class popular liberals, always talking about how corporations are evil and the poor are suffering and how money is evil, they have never worked. And that is exactly the problem. Once they start working, their tone will change very quickly. It is my money, and I'll be damned if that drunken beggar is going to get any of it because he is too lazy to work. Welfare should always exist, but never to the degree to which those socialists in government (read Democrats) would want to give out. It is plain stupidity.

Now, in China, we have money to spend. We're not rich, but we get by fine. I'll be damned if those same people want to take my money away to redistribute it amongst the poor (many of whom are just lazy) because they feel sorry for them. Please, realize that many of these sods actually feel good about unemployment and collecting welfare. And that is what is wrecking the social welfare system. It is abused in Australia, it is abused in Canada, it is abused in the UK, and if it wasn't for the Republicans, it would be abused in the United States as well.

It makes me sick how some people always try to paint the poor as victims and the rich as oppressive despots. Poor? Go and work. It's my money, and you're not getting your fingers on any of it. Go talk to Uberfetus, another "privileged Ivy Leaguer". I'm sure he feels the same way. Now excuse me, I'm going back to work. For a profit, I might add.

"they'll know several alcoholic and abusive fathers, mothers, husbands or wives"

I take exception to this sentence. Abuse is not limited to poor families, and one of the things that allows it to go on is the conviction that "Oh, that only happens in slums!" It isn't true that people with money can't have a drinking problem, or beat up or otherwise abuse those close to them and/or in their power.

dman collected welfare? and he turned out okay. just like two of my friends who were on welfare as kids, they've been totally self-supporting ever since. you can break teh cycle. welfare can be a good thing. sometimes good people need a safety net. now that dman doesn't need it any more he wants to take it away from everybody else. well i pay a lot more taxes than he does (maybe less than he will in ten years, but hes complaining right now) adn i don't mind welfare at all so deal with it.

segnbora-t is right. my dad is abusive, alcoholic, and upper middle class. i dont know if its more or less common with poor people, but it happens everywhere.

The interesting thing about this scenario (that people who grow up poor are just hopelessly screwed and have little hope of ever doing anything about it) is that it's so obviously incorrect, yet people still believe it.

If the premise were correct how did Bill Clinton grow up to be president? What about Jesse Jackson?

Lots and lots of extremely sucessful people started out dirt poor. Many of them come from abusive backgrounds. How can this be if the premise is true?

Every person I've known who made something of themselves starting from the bottom has said the same thing, "well, I just worked a little harder than the rest of them".

Evidently, this competing premise doesn't seem as attractive as, "oh well, why work at it, we're screwed from the start and may as well take it easy".