Too bad for any parent who has become accustomed to ruling by force, because at some point the kids just get too big to slap around.
Sometimes we need to heed our fears and negative thoughts, and at all times we need to be alert to the world outside ourselves, even when that includes absorbing bad news and entertaining the views of “negative” people.
In fact, if you’re not prepared to die when you’re almost sixty, then I would say you’ve been falling down on your philosophical responsibilities as a grown-up human being.
If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
An asteroid could hit us at any moment. This is not – and also, the most successful kind of life on this planet is not us, it’s microbes. They’re the ones who greatly outnumber us, and may eventually destroy us.
Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest.
To be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals.”
To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.
The psychological trauma of losing a job can be as great as the trauma of a divorce. It creates a lot of anger and emotional hardship. People may become quite depressed.
No one should be incarcerated for debt or squeezed for money they have no chance of getting their hands on.
Frankly, I adore your catchy slogan, “Adoption, not Abortion,” although no one has been able to figure out, even with expert counseling, how to use adoption as a method of birth control, or at what time of the month it is most effective.
Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.
Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that’s when you get into selling the house.
The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.
Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.