How is someone stuck in the poverty cycle different than a serf? Read about how difficult it is to break the $40,000/year barrier if you have children due to th

How is someone stuck in the poverty cycle different than a serf? Read about how difficult it is to break the $40,000/year barrier if you have children due to the escalation of taxes and scaling back of tax and other incentives. How is someone with the good luck of having parents who are attorneys or accountants different than a minor noble in 16th century France? My father worked in public housing projects, and I used to go along with him to block parties and sometimes hang out with him at work in the summertime when I was young. I'd play with the kids hanging around who were 8 or 10 years old. You know what? They were all the same as my friends at home -- just kids. I didn't understand then that they were poor and I wasn't. Those same kids a few years later would have a harsher introduction to the world than I would. It's amazing to me that you'd equate my perspective to an infomercial, than proceed to castigate people who dare to have a cheap telephone or complain about their miserable condition because they have water and foodstamps. I'm not a proponent of the welfare state. I drive around my city past the idle factories and dilapidated relics of the prosperity of ages long past and get angry. Then I drive outside the city, away from the "welfare state" and past the new prosperity: sprawl shopping centers and subdivisions -- all artifacts of tax policy, loan guarantees and subsidy of infrastructure and get angry. (You probably wouldn't call that "welfare" though.)