>You obviously haven't spent much time in southeastern Washington DC or in
>some of the Appalachian mountains.

Try again.  :-)  I have been to that area of D.C. a few times, and have had
friends living in communities quite a bit poorer than any part of D.C.  I
also have friends who grew up in the Appalachian mountains or in conditions
of similar poverty to the Appalachias in other parts of the country--1-room
dirt-floor shacks with families of 10 or more living in them and eating
only what they can hunt or get from the church a few dozen miles away.
I've also, by the way, lived for a while on welfare, and came from your
basic white trash roots.

As for five or six people living in a one-bedroom apartment: again,
compared to the living conditions of most humans throughout recorded
history, including most humans in other parts of the world, this would
hardly qualify as poor. Abraham Lincoln grew up in far worst conditions.
Nor do I accept that a majority of the poor lack medical care; jospital
emergency rooms are required by law to treat anyone who comes in with an
infectious disease or traumatic injury or in labor. Although the poor won't
get the best treatment, for those things that have killed most humans
throughout most of recorded history, they have access to far better medical
care than would have been available to anyone only 100 years ago (and far
better than anyting available to anyone living in most of the rest of the
world today).

The problem we suffer from in discussions about poverty and "class
struggle" in nations like Canada and America is that almost no one in these
countries has any idea anymore what real poverty is, or even looks like. We
measure "poverty" not in absolute terms but rather by comparison to others.
There is some validity to this way of looking at things (the system can
always be improved) but a lot of discussions are way off base due to a
complete lack of historical perspective.

 -=-=-

Once in a while you get shown the light/
 In the strangest of places if you look at it right   ---Robert Hunter

http://www.syndicomm.com/esmay