I agree, meself. And I think many of mg's ideas are very helpful, especially for young people who already have a few eggs in their baskets of resources. And whose life experience has not already killed hope and maimed the psyche or personality.

AND it is alll being done and is has been done. However, what we as a society mostly offer is false hope. Why? Because we consistently provide too little to get the job done, and even that is usually offered too late.

As dianavan said, there are a number of people who experience poverty as a terrible but temporary time in their lives. These are the people who may go through a terrible patch of not having financial resources-but like dianavan, they had important other resources on which to draw that were also a necessary component of making it out of that state of financial poverty.

It is true that there was a time when anyone who wanted to go to college could problaby find the financial aid in grants and loans to do so. But that is a thing of the past. I can't remember the numbers now, but I recently read an article and was myself shocked to realize how post high school vocational and college aid have shrunk under the auspices of the shrub administration. It was either by 25 or 50%. Either number is huge.   

Suppose you do get the financial aid pulled together. Lets say you are a divorced mother of two. Chances are excellent you are going to be on a waiting list for help with child care costs. Or a child gets sick and you have to miss a week of classes, and then you can never get caught up because you also work at the local convenience store. Swap child care? With whom? Your Mom's a crackhead so you sure aren't going to leave the kids with her, and all the other women you know are at work or at school when you are. And then the timing chain breaks on your 20 year old car.

There are hundreds of thousands of really, really destitute people living in these United States. When they try to borrow or barter with one another, more times than not they end up preying on each other. We are talking desparate straits here.

As a society, we have allowed people to get so far down in a hole that there really is no light to be seen. If we happen to notice them down in that hole, we throw peanuts down the hole. Or we drop down a rope and pull them halfway up then leave them dangling till the rope rots and they drop back down again.

Money talks. IT. TAKES. MONEY. Whether it is a program that provides services, training or education, child care, car repare or bus tickets, or direct financial aid.

IT. TAKES. MONEY.

And the richest country the world has ever known won't fork over.

I am weary down to the depths of my soul of being in this battle. This not an interesting discussion to me. This is the work of my life. And I step back to see what I have accomplished in concert with many others on a number of fronts.

What I look for the results of the fruits my labor, I see that I have been a failure.

Just think how much more weary and soul sick are the men, women and children whose lives we are discussing here.

I think I need to bow out of this conversation for awhile.

Janie