"Anyone who has ever experienced poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."
This paradoxical idea befuddles me. How can it be expensive to be poor? I think it can be expensive because i takes away so much: opportunities, food, shelter, education. Perhaps poverty is expensive because it takes away more than one can, wants, or is willing to give. Meanwhile, the wealthy live a life of frivolity, never really and truly worried about when their endless supply of money, luxury, and decadence will cease.
Poverty can also be expensive because when one has nothing to give, everything one desires or needs is that much more valuable and harder to attain--more expensive. As for me, I've never experienced poverty, yet, that is something my Cuban grandparents would be very happy to hear. My grandfather was a diplomat for the UN by the age of 25, and represented Cuba. A man who was friends with Pablo Neruda, lived near Winston Churchill, and voted on the creation of Israel, was reduced to cutting down sugar cane in order to have the luxury to leave his corrupted homeland. I think he would be glad to hear how far we've come. But then again, money is cheap.
Kelsey Garcia
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