WOW, I'm stunned reading this.
You want to know why some can't pull themselves out of their "poor situation"? They've already been beaten to death by the time they realize that there even exists an out (no light at the end of the tunnel). Poverty produces very few fighters & survivors, mostly corpses & skeletons. There is no "war on poverty" there were only a few battles & they all ended by the 70's. Along with any fights like for higher education & health reforms & the push to rid the homeless from the streets. All these issues tie into one another. There's a reason there's no real "war on drugs " or a war on any other front that will eat up the social services dollar. The pie is getting smaller, the slices are becoming thinner & the poor are very easy scapegoats & become easy prey to any other program looking to steal a buck. Who'd want to be a social worker at what their paid or for that matter a teacher or work in the field of day care services. All these occupations pay little though they are probably the most important to the healthy, moral future of the children who'll be our next generation of "deciders", it's only done for love & humanity & that doesn't help those that are in need very much. We don't think much about what's a priority & we reflect it in their pay scales, that's a social problem. Without a decent education, decent health, a good family network & a decent home life & social programs that will offer at least a drop of hope, most won't do well never mind having the disadvantage of being poor which means most of the resources Janie mentioned above are out of their grasp.

Growing up for me was a fight. In school, after school, in the neighborhood, in stores, trying to get around. Getting a haircut, wearing clean & decent clothes, even having keeping good teeth. Instead of going to museums we played on their roofs, in burned out buildings, no matter what we were doing it was a fight, to stay dry, to stay warm to stay fed & it's always a struggle. I never realized it then & I didn't realize it was the same for the adults too. No wonder there were so many faimlies fighting, drinking, gambling, on drugs. The stress levels without those pressure relief valves had to be explosive. Then add to that the hoplessness & pain of not being able to see an end & the heartbreak knowing that your kid is doomed to the same. Taking painkiller's would be just what the health department would order. I can't tell you how many kids I grew up with became hookers, junkies, bank robbers, killers. I don't know of anyone that's alive now, I'm sure there are some & I'm sure they've all moved as far from there roots as possible too. Just think of how many people you know that still know of a few childhood friends or how many you yourself might know? When you grow up poor & surivive it & you look back & you can't find one person alive from your teenage days back to your childhood you have to look at those percentages with a very sad heart & ask what's wrong here. I haven't heard of one person in over 20 yrs. No wonder I feel rich having a few good close friends. It's funny when when someone says just do this or just do that it might make things a bit easier. They have no idea. After having the life beat out of you day after day it's hard to have a disire. Almost like a drowing person reaching for a rope that drifting farther & farther away. They say that once you give up drowing it's a peaceful way to go, after a while so go the poor.

As for Bobert's mention about a reversal on the poverty programs, that's only the tip of the berg. The poor & middle class subsidize this nation & the middle class are only an acident away from joining their less fortunate poorer class these days. When a blue collar worker pays more in taxes than many corporations what else can you call it but a subsidy. A CEO can make 2-20 million for banckrupting a company & stealing the employees retirements & life savings, then refuse to pay the employees wages, the taxes & the fines, & then gets the same amount of time that a poor person without a high priced lawyer gets for stealing neccessities, what else can it be called. When Exxon kills a way of life, steals the living from a seacoast of industries, eterminates a host of natural resources & makes the public pay for the restoration & cleanup of the disaster it caused, then costs the public to then bring them to account for their ways & when called to justice won't pay up even after 15yrs. & still it pays less in taxes than some mom & pop outfit, why is it, is it because the poor are draining them. These companies are making billions off OUR land, from OUR government, off the backs of OUR people & we're subsidizing them? We should have a national health plan, a fair welfair system that works for those that can't, a NATIONAL PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM that's decent for all instead of a system that's not worthy of a 3rd world nation & they should be footing at least a part of the bill.

You want to help the poor, stop the rich from helping themselves.
Spend money at home instead of billions on wars that only the rich benifit from & the poor die in. Bring back the social reforms of the 60's & the money to fund them instead of pissing the dollars into porkbarrel politics. Stop sending jobs overseas along with crates of greenbacks. Kill offshore accounts for multinational corporations that are bleeding us dry of our resources & then milking us with their tax benifits. Like I said there is no war, it's called RAPE!

Barry