Janie:

You used the word mitigate. Prevent has a completely different meaning. I am not trying to impugn your knowledge or efforts or professionalism or Bobert's either.

What I am trying to say is the causes of poverty must be addressed. Evidently they are not being addressed because the problem is growing larger. More people needing more and more help.

You say "If you would only work 4 jobs instead of three, dear, and eat dogfood instead of spam," What causes a person to be in this situation? I realize that they are usualy born into a bad situation but how did that situation come about? One bad situation leads to a worse situation. Reverse engineer the problem and go back to when the problem first began.

"One can not learn to differentiate between a good and bad choice"

Where did that come from? I have not heard it before. I know I can learn, I think you can. Rats can learn. There may be some mentally disabled people who cannot learn. People can be influenced to make bad choices (by the garbage I spoke of) but they still know it is bad.

To say that people can't learn something is to declare them mentally incompetent. Sounds bigoted to me. Like saying "Hey, you people are so dumb you can't make the right choices so just go ahead and make bad choices and we will mitigate the problems later. It here is not enough money we will bitch, moan and find someone to blame."