Very intersting observations by many folks here and which I can find little to disagree with...

I've had kinda two working lives in my life, each lasting about 20 years... My second career, if you can call it that, continues on and has little to do with the discussion... My first 20 years, however, had me teaching GED in the Richmond City jail, working at a half wat house with recovering drug addicts and rounded out as a social worker in "adult services" for the Richmond Welfare Department...

So, my observations are based on what I experienced during 20 years in the trenches...

First of all, there are one heck of a lot of poor people who most people never see... Poor people tend to not be visable... Oh sure, folks see homeless folks and, like in Washington, D.C., folks livin' in cardborad boxes on steam grates but what we see isn't even the tip of the iceburg...

For years,I have driven to a barber shop in N.E. Washington to play blues and have driven thru some areas that, unless one lives there, the average person will never see... Block after block of slum and poor people and this in the nation's capitol...

When I was a social worker, there were about 10 housing projects and the poor people were kept in those projects as if the were prisoners... Yeah, they were outta sight and outta mind for most people... We social workers knew different... These projects housed (ha) tens upon thousand of people who had one thing in common... They were poor...

When it comes to numbers, it isn't an exact science since many folks just fall thru the cracks... Throw in the high cost to live in many areas and the ***defined*** poverty thresholds can be thrown out the window...

Take for example Washington, D.C... Rents for a 2 bedroom apartment average $1300 a month... Sure, some might argue that this is an average but I'd point out middle wage earners don't have to rent... They own... So if one takes the rent and multiplies it by 12 and factors in the amount of gross income it takes to afford to live in the "average" 2 bedroom apartment, that amount in itself exceeds the federal povery income levels to be consider poor and all this money is doing is paying rent...

I'll kind leave this for now as I realize that long posts somethimes don't get read but over the coming days I would like to add to some of the things that mg has allreeady brought to the discussion, especially education...

Bobert