'Gee, I wish I were poor'...

...is a statement I have never heard anyone seriously make, yet the impoverished person is often persecuted multiple times, once by poverty and then by the acrimony of others, leading to a psychology of victimization--the having of which ALSO seems for some a call for persecution--over and over. Why do some want to punish others for the mere condition of being poor?

Poverty is complicated and there are many subsistence levels within it, from people on total government subsidy to the working poor receiving little or nothing in assistance. Disability (inlcuding the invisible ones like mental health), family catastrophe and economics play a fundamental role in poverty. All or some of those factors in combination on the wrong day at the wrong time can lead to a single outcome or pattern of making the best decisions possible that still lead to a deepening poverty.

To an ousider decisions of the already-poor may look selfish or otherwise 'wrong' (take abortion for example) when in fact such a decision may be responsible. Maybe even going on a 'drinking bender'--a form of self-medication for an addict (seen as nothing but irresponsible in the eyes of a moralizer)--may be the only medication available for a man or woman with no health care and possibly no idea that addiction is an issue of mental health, not character.

In a cursory search for recent articles on just one of the intersections of poverty's effect on human life (health) I didn't find anything to answer my question but found this instead; it goes to the economic mechanism of poverty through the current event, Katrina, that has put poverty back on the table for discussion. We need to keep it (and our compassion) on the table for as long as it takes:

The Other America:

"The primary economic problem is not unemployment but low wages for workers of all races. With unions weakened and a minimum-wage increase not on the GOP agenda, wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, except at the top. (In 1965, CEOs made 24 times as much as the average worker; by 2003, they earned 185 times as much.) Since 2001, the United States has lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs. New Orleans's good jobs left much earlier, replaced by employment in the restaurant and tourism industry, which pays less and usually carries no health benefits. Medicaid covers poor children but few poor adults, who put off seeing the doctor, cranking up the cost. For the poor, the idea of low-wage jobs' covering the basic expenses of living has become a cruel joke."