Poverty doesn't build character.

We all grew up with stories of Abe Lincoln moving from his humble log cabin to the White House, but he was an exception, the rare person who overcomes poverty to explode onto the national scene and go on to be a great success.

Most of us who grow up poor stay poor and suffer the consequences. Poverty -- not having enough to eat, not having change in your pocket, not wearing new clothes -- diminishes most of us. It's not character-building: it's character-destroying.

Here's how:

1) Being poor makes you desperate. You want to feed your family but don't have the money to do so, even if if you're working at a job and your spouse is, too. You count your money at the end of the month and have to choose between paying for your electricity and water, not to mention your rent, and being able to buy your kids new shoes. It almost makes you want to let your kids walk out of a Wal-Mart with those new shoes you didn't pay for. You might get away with it, but what does that do for you or teach your kids? Still . . .

2) Being poor makes you feel like you're a second-class citizen. Jeez, we're all Americans, right?
Shouldn't we all be doing okay? But you're not, so that must mean that you're not okay, not a good American. You vote, you pay your taxes, you do everything other people do. So why can't you make a decent living? Is it because you're Hispanic? You start to wonder . . .

3) Being poor makes you start to doubt yourself. Let's say you're a good student in school, or an athlete, and you're hoping for a scholarship to a good university. You don't get it, for whatever reason. And there's no money in the family to send you there. Now you have to think about applying to lesser schools or even to community colleges. You know that if your family had enough money, you could have gotten into wherever you deserved. But you start to doubt yourself: Maybe I'm not that good. Maybe I should lower my standards. Maybe I should just skip college and go to work. That job at McDonald's . . .

4) Being poor can actually make you violent. When you've put your ambitions on hold for too long, it's almost natural to strike out, and this often means against your spouse and even your children, sometimes against the society that seems to be keeping you down. Not enough has been written about how frustrating it can be to be denied your life dreams, how strong the impulse is to assault not those responsible but those at hand. It's a sad and sick thing, but it happens. And it happens because of poverty, of being poor, not having enough money.

5) Being poor begets being poor. My parents had nothing, and neither will I. It's a psychosis that infects whole families. My dad picked onions in the field, while my mom had kid after kid, so I guess that's what I'm going to be doing the rest of my life: picking onions and having kids.

I could go on and on about the dangers -- to our souls -- of poverty, but the real danger is to our society. Why don't we, as a people, as a nation, realize that it's not in our best interest to have a sub-culture of people who are just scraping by?

Where do we think crime comes from? Duh. From people who aren't respected, who are desperate, who see no future for themselves or their kids, who have nothing left to lose.

Think about the parts of your city where you feel comfortable to walk at night, alone. Probably nicer neighborhoods, with lots of streetlights and well-to-do homes. What about the parts you wouldn't walk through on a dare? Not so well-lighted and filled with less well-do-do homes, right? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the connection.

When we demean people, we reduce them to their worst instincts: survival, even crime. When we lift them up, economically -- giving them jobs and/or assistance as they look for jobs -- we offer them at least a shot at a better life, which means more education, better nutrition, less impulse toward stealing from us or even killing us for a few bucks.

Aren't we, the middle/upper class, with our comfortable lives, better off not having a desperate under-class who craves what we have and might risk life and family to get it from us?

It seems to me that any society should be judged by how many or how few people we have living below what is accepted, statistically, as the "poverty level". If we have too many, we need to do something to bring them up to at least a subsistence level, meaning that they don't have to beg or steal just to stay alive. And while charities do what they can -- and they do a lot -- it's probably up to government -- local or state or national -- to really make it work.

Yes, this post may sound political, but I think of it as practical. Whether we're Democrat or Republican -- or something else entirely -- why have desperate people in our communities or, worse, on our streets, when we can avoid it? Common sense dictates that we do something, don't you think? For all our sakes, let's try to eliminate poverty. Let's make us all whole.

Here's the gold standard: You can walk through ANY part of your town at night, by yourself.