Mike,
I agree with most of your comments above except for the fact that the poor are lazy. I grew up poor, my friends were poor and I see poor people every day. There really are several different kinds of poor people. Where I come from, people are poor because they simply have dead end factory jobs that pay $25 to $30K a year or now not even that job.
My dad worked hard every day as a Tool and Die guy and then came home every night and continued to work around the farm. He made $28K a year and then made additional income from the farm and we were poor. I know many poor people who work every day collecting scrap metal, working odd jobs and hustling to survive. They work just as hard as you and I, but are stuck in that existence and do not know how to get out. You have to have the opportunity to sometimes change this pattern and the opportunity just is not there.
As I said before, in my part of Ohio, we have been in a depression since the late 80's when the steel mills closed down. Now with the rest of the world crashing, what low paying factory jobs that did exist are now gone too. I am watching my neighbors and friends go from living on a $100K a year auto plant job to go living off unemployment and there is nothing for them to turn to. These folks don't know how to survive on nothing like the poor people that I grew up with. It's a scary time in my community.
Then as you said, I also see the poor people who sit on their front porch all day drinking beer, living on Section 8 and Welfare with multiple kids and have no desire to even attempt to get a job or make their own money. Those people are the roaches of our society.
