WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) - Nutrition officials hope a new poverty demonstration will show Indiana community leaders and healthcare providers what it's like to be poor.
In the "Reality of Poverty" simulation, participants assume the roles of families facing poverty. They are challenged to provide for basic needs such as food and shelter on a limited budget for four "weeks," each of which lasts 15 minutes during the simulation.
In the first place, a "simulation" won't give these "leaders" the first idea about what it means to be poor. To really understand the condition, you need the terrifying uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring, not the knowledge that when the exercise is over you get to go back to your comfortable middle class lifestyle.
And in the second place, all they need to know about poverty is that it sucks, which is why people try to escape it. And, hell, I could have
Comments
Leo:
This is just TOO darn funny...
If anyone wants to see "simulated poverty", come on down to MY neighborhood...and watch all the "food stamp recipients" driving around in BRAND NEW vehicles...with $5+K in stereo gear...and $3+K rims...and $2K in tires!
(rent a HUD house, cry the blues to FWHA..and the FEDS, and pull the wool over everyone's eyes...works for them...and darn well, too)
Laughing ALL the way to the liquor store they are.
Can't get any MORE "simulated" than that, can you?
"Common People" lyrics come to mind:
But still you'll never get it right; 'cause when you're laid in bed at night; watching roaches climb the wall; if you call your Dad, he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people. You'll never do what common people do. You'll never fail like common people. You'll never watch your life slide out of view, and dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do.