General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Poor People Stay Poor [View all]jtuck004
(15,882 posts)did park half of their bumper into the handicap space and it's a $450 ticket...
...then it was someone else's mistake. The lines were or were not painted or badly, the sun was in their eyes, there was a cart in the way...
standard stuff, excuses that exclude them even being in the universe of blame.
Really good book:
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
Book by Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/522525.Mistakes_Were_Made_But_Not_by_Me_
I read a book about poverty not too long ago. The author showed that, in my rough memory, people who live on less than $40K a year pay an additional $3500 or so in fees that people who make more simply are not charged in a variety of ways. If they weren't charged those things they would be better off, and in some cases laws were changed to make it possible to screw them - usury laws that were deleted so credit cards could charge higher interest and payday loan folks could do more business.
According to an Oxfam report, the 85 richest people's assets are increasing by $500,000 a minute. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why people don't see THEM as the problem. Maybe it's because they don't live next door, but how hard can it be to see that THEY are the ones making your choices hard, not that single mom trying to get her car out of hock on her no-cost government phone.