Leonard - If I read this right Leigh is saying it not the poor who are cruel.  All through we do treat others cruelly when we blame those with less, for our pain.

Most often its the People near the top, who think the poor can just take our belts in another notch whose actions are cruel.

It is the workers who are the backbone of America. Until employees pay our cherished workers the amount they need to survive-we live in a savage world.  I whole heartedly agree with Leigh, that the crueltystems from the top.  If that is what she is saying.

And when we can teach those at the top we are just like them Then the brutality they unwittingly inflict upon us. And that we hand down to others below us, will end.

At first I thought she was saying the poor are cruel. I do not think so after reading the article, more than once.

I've seen two things, quite often, thanks to repeatedly living where there are great extremes in income (like 95% or so of the town's income and assets in the hands of 5% or so of its people).  The first being that those at the top have absolutely no clue whatsoever what it's like for anyone outside their little group to try to survive.  None.  Think Marie Antoinette and "let them eat cake" when the problem was no bread because of no bread flour.  Or stupid platitudes about "self-sufficiency" as if enough work would always fix everything and no one ever needs any assistance from anyone for anything; "opportunities" that don't exist or aren't accessible if you don't have money for things like equipment, start up fees and education; and "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" when you most likely can't afford boots and may not even be able to put on boots if you had them thanks to disabilities.  The other being that SOME of the poor - often groups like the ones Leigh hinted at - start hunting for scapegoats to blame for their suffering.  Whose fault is the banking mess? Whose fault is it that interest is so high?  Whose fault is it that pay is low, jobs are being shipped overseas and the "good people of America" can't get any of the "good jobs" that remain here?  Then they look for followers that they can taint with their thoughts and use to spread their suffering and cruelty (as if there weren't already enough) - all because when things get bad enough, it's kind of natural to look for someone to blame...  White Supremacists and other groups of their ilk are really good at this...and really dangerous because many aren't afraid to move from rhetoric and perhaps graffiti to violence.

I had hoped Leigh would have said what she intended with this article. But guess she wants us to figure that out.

 140 million voices can bring about Improvement.

Dannette, There has never been a host of "good jobs" in Amercia. Except if you are a CEO. Otherwise employers pay workers enough to survive so workers can continue doing their jobs. But employers do not want competition so they do not pay employers enough to thrive. 

Coffee Shop managers are paid enough to pay must of lifes bills, but not enough the also buy adequate food. This is still poverty. Studies says roughly 70% of workers are not paid the cost of living. That means 70% of all workers can not pay their monhtly life sustaining bills-they are in real poverty.

Obama will not correct this by increasing the minimum wage to $9.40 an hour, when the average state costs of living is $19.95 an hour for 40 hours.

America has to move to a resource based system where everyone is fed and everyone has a bed.  Poverty has to be redefined as not being able to pay the bills which makes life tolerable, as rent, repairs, health care, clothes, transportation, Utilities, gifts, and food. 

Minor repairs have major effect upon those without enough to cover lives basics.  As buying tires, should not place you in hock for 3 months.

Obama Alone, will not be able to change this. We will need Volunteers to Speak out and tell our stories, on how we the poor do not exploit people, by paying LESS Than It Cost to  Live.  
      "With our voices, Obama Can end poverty by 2011."

Companies find a living wage attract better workers with less turn over http://www.universallivingwage.org/docsupport.htm#HRExecArticle

Even through their figures are low, check out http://www.universallivingwage.org/ They have a myths and facts section. And much more. Here in Maine the Livable wage was determined in 2007, to be $17.60 an hour for 40 hours a week. Believe the think tank which did that formula did not include much more than rent.

But you need not be a wiz at math to see $9.40 is NOT going to get people out  of poverty. Our mean brothers and sisters just need to be educated, so they look differently at their brutality of underpaying 70% of all workers.

We need a different means to lift ourselves out of real poverty. There are at least 120 million working Americans, who are underpaid.   People on SSI and Tanf, also in some states are not paid the cost of a fair market value rent

How do we out this news? We tell funders to pay for us to speak out. We use Change.org. We write to president Obama at www.WhiteHouse.gov.  Be Brave, Tell him YOUR reality. Us email and snail mail both. 140 million voices can bring about Improvement.

What I meant was that when people live in unequal societies, where we're RELATIVELY well-off or desperate, then cruel behavior can be found at the bottom and top of the economic hierarchy.

It's why you see poor women as the first source of other poor women sold into human trafficking, for example, or why CEOs can rob their companies and shareholders and tax players blind.  Inequality creates a psychological and physical distance - think being unable to relate to the people who clean your house in your gated community, or thinking of them as less than you.  It also creates desperation and alienation, so that selling drugs or children or women comes to seem like a feasible or reasonable option economically.

This is crudely put, but that's what I was getting at.

You're right, there never has been an abundence of "good" jobs.  However, when things start getting openly BAD - be it a local problem (like that 95% in the hands of 5% thing) or a bad recession to depression (like we're in now) - many do start looking for "answers" and are happy to accept "blame" and "excuses" as "good enough" for their "answers".  Historically, look how often anyone "different" (typically an ethnic group) has been blamed for economic problems or at least stresses.  Jews are some of the most often targeted (and bore the brunt of the most infamous example) but many other groups are targeted - off the top of my head, I can think of examples using Germans, Irish, Italians, Hispanics and Native Americans all off the top of my head.  Often because "those" people either "control" businesses and banks or they're "stealing" the "good" jobs or even "all" the jobs.  Both of which are nothing more than misdirected anger and hysteric propaganda. Though there might be one small bit of twisted truth about the jobs - if new immigrants, they might not be familiar enough with standards of labor conditions and base pay to know what to expect and as a result they may work for less than the going (or even minimum) wage and will let the employer break labor laws.  But that's not honestly or entirely the immigrant's fault now is it?  This would much more accurately be stated as an abuse of immigrants by employers. Banks, at least in my lifetime and where I've lived, have been run by people of every background (though they will take advantage of anyone who'll let them do so - particularly in the field of credit).  Still, I don't see how this is an ethnic or immigrant thing.

I do however write to anyone who'll listen.  I write to my state's Senators and my local Congressperson regularly.  I write President Obama.  I write to newspapers, etc.  There are many topics about which people - and our leaders - need to be informed so that they can understand how desperately the CORRECT reforms are needed and what those reforms are. 

Thanks for answering. I think well said. Lets see if pop-culture has another comment.I would like to see how the answer is more complex. To me that is complex enough. But we all have our own opinions.

Those of us at the bottom are often aware of our own exploitation by those at the top.  We often feel a job is like a prison sentence from which we will never be freed.

But we tend to forget we are busy blaming those with less for our pain. They got food stamps-We cannot afford food but still must go on.  In that case we are among life's Hidden poor. When we face that fact, we cann correct it.

Classism is a bad thing either way, whether its by those who are up on the economic scale or down. It makes us see people as caricatures, rather than human.

I know you write, I write too. In fact Obama's Staff must thinkof me as a wing nut nearly every week I email something or snail mail something.  Right now my keyboard is sticking and I some times miss a word clumped together. I cannot afford anew keyboard until next month, if then.

Here in Maine we have another Human right in our State constitution, but the newspapers still refuse to print the truth-even in editorials. Before 2009 ends, I will sue the newspapers for my right not to be censored.  

But it is going to take you and I speaking out, and debunking myths,  as well as  another 130,998 other people joining us.
I am wondering how many Change.org members wants to join us in speaking out with letters to US and State Senators, the president, fund-raising organizations, and of course, letters to the editors? 

How many Change.org  members, just want to write what they feel about cruelty and poverty here?  By respectfully exchanging ideas we start to end poverty. How many our willing to recruit people to join? I cannot figure out how to work the recruitment

For those who do not know me, I am not just an advocate of poverty. I a 59 year old women who has lived 54 years in the recognized 1/3 of poverty.

I just  got off the phone with a woman who lives in a small Maine town, who has terminal cancer, and bills up the whaazoo. The trailer she is in  with vents to the outside cost $700., a monthto heat. $400 for utilities and $550. amonth for rent.

If towns refuses to aid people in their last day, ora woman who just buried her husband or a 9+1/2 month pregant mother of two; Now 3.  They will refuse to help anyone.
 
She wanted to know about Rental Assistance. She will be long gone, before that kicks in.  But there is General Assistance it can pay her rent today.  Or it can alledgedly illegally say you quit your job without cause.  And if power and casework is not asserted, the woman can die out in the streets- This is Supreme Unthinkable Curelty.

But I have heard it happened to a father of 5 with six months to live. His town told him because, SSI denied him they would also deny him.  Knowing that the kids would be eligible for survivors benefits, a week after the winter holiday of Christmas-he shoot himself.

I hear these unbelievable stories daily. Often my heart is broken with inhumanity of it. But cruelty is a way of life. 

Members please speak out, and help change this. Please listen and help change this. Send an email  letter to comments@whitehouse.gov