Hi again, Tim. I'm SO behind on this thread now.
Of course poverty is relative. Take, even, hunger, which we have in this country. Remember when somebody a few years back got the idea to check out how much dog food was sold near some big housing project for the poor? It seemed a whole lot was, which was odd, because... no dogs were allowed in that housing project! Turned out old people were eating it.
That makes Americans' skins crawl, but there's somebody lying in the gutter in Calcutta right now who'd trade a finger for a can of dogfood because he knows he'll be dead by tomorrow if he doesn't get something to eat.
A lot of things enter into the picture. I'm sure books have been written on this philosophical/sociological/economic question. Statistics of various sorts, indices, ratios, percentages... and there's the consideration that might be called by some "spiritual." What feels right to the citizens? What feels just?
That might be called the visceral index.
Many things would go into forming what people feel, viscerally, is right about this. I'll say one thing I think is going into this national mindset currently.
But I'll say it in the next post or this will be too long.... |
