[Doc Faustus]

A lot of poor people are tricked into bad mortgages, browbeaten by banks, discriminated against by local employers. refused business loans, unable to pay back student loans on time, struggling artists, writers and musicians, disabled, living in poor areas but unable to afford relocating without work, laid off from higher paying jobs and forced to take unskilled work to provide for children. My mother is an ex-marine with culinary arts training who cannot find work as a chef. My stepfather has a commercial arts degree and does contracting, but because of a deceitful realtor and lawyer and discussions with local contractors was led to believe there was a glut of work in the town in Pennsylvania they moved to. It wasn't true. They both work at a supermarket to support my three siblings because work in commercial arts and culinary arts is scarce in the town and they need to be able to be with the children whenever possible. My girlfriend's father has a doctorate in physics but couldn't find work in the university system or high schools and has had to go back to Mexico. Poverty is not just about stupidity. That's a very Republican and ignorant thing to say. "If you're so smart why aren't you poor?" is more like it nowadays. An education doesn't always mean more money unless you go to law school or become a doctor. Is everybody supposed to be a doctor? What about the people who go to school for the arts? Are they all just stupid? Is every writer forced to wait tables dumber than the blueblooded corporate daddy's boys who inherit companies? I know at least twenty people with BA's from a school whose faculty was rated third best in dealing with material by the Princeton review who aren't making ends meet. Grad students are unemployed. People with BAs are unemployed. There are just as many poor geniuses are poor idiots and it's not just because the poor are beerswilling Nascar watching inbreds.