Being poor changes your thinking about everything

Except, oh wait no, that's actually the opposite of what we want.

However, if you are reacting to past associations with rewards and punishments, you are not being response-able. Being responsible doesn't mean, "I am going to be a responsible adult," as in, "I am fulfilling this socially-conditioned image of an 'adult'." Responsibility means being able to make choices (whether they are informed, or not, wise or foolish, it does not matter; there is no such thing as a "responsible choice"), then accepting all the consequences of each choice. It's only when you accept what is, is, are you able to respond with more choices and actions. People tend to want to make choices, yet avoid accepting the unexpected or undesirable outcomes of those choice. By avoiding or deluding themselves into thinking the undesirable did not happen, they compound avoidance with more avoidance until they are paralyzed, unable to act. They are unable to respond.

Sometimes, to avoid a trap, you have to let things go. You let go of what seems to be urgent, accept the consequence of letting go of the urgent, in order to make room to climb out of the trap. Or to use a more concrete metaphor: if your foot is caught in a bear trap, and the bear is coming after you, and you don't want to be eaten, then chop off your foot. (That or just sit down and die with dignity).

Yes. It sucks. Yes, it will hurt. Yes, you might still die of infections, bleeding out, or get chased down by the bear. Or maybe the bear gets distracted by the newly chopped-off foot and you're able to hobble away. What is, is. You choose, you accept.

So most people who think of themselves as responsible adults are not actually responsible. They are simply re-enacting behaviors and emotional patterns of a child with a parent; the parental figure often being society and other authority figures. This re-enactment happens whether someone grows up in an environment of scarcity or abundance. In face of situations that really suck, these folk regress into the helpless child, hoping someone else will make the hard choices for them or magically make things better. Or lament that, they've done all the right things, it's not fair that things suck.

People who think of "responsibility" this way tends to use paternalistic language -- something, I think, that your word usage suggests.

Meh. The recession wasn't caused by a financial crisis. The recession and the financial crisis both had the same cause - a real estate bubble. And I don't see any indication wealthy people have come out ahead here except for a handful of people who managed to cash in during the bubble. But that's not a question of how the law is structured - that happens in every bubble.

>Dismantling of welfare programs in order to cut costs in order to lower taxes on the rich stops critical services to the poor and keeps them trapped in poverty.

That's an odd view of the situation. For one thing, services to the poor have been greatly expanded in recent years. Disability, SNAP, WIC... all that stuff has been expanded. Also, existing programs like Medicaid have maintained the same level of service even as costs spiral out of control.

The only thing I can think of that's actually been cut is AFDC, if you consider a time limit on benefits to be a cut. And that's perfectly reasonable - it's supposed to be a net, not a hammock.

Also, if you really wanted to trap people in poverty you couldn't do better than to hand them money for being poor. Lots of people are on benefits for a few years and then they pull themselves out of poverty. But there's a significant percentage who'll stay on benefits because that's the path of least resistance.

> Tax liens sold to rich investors lets them practically steal homes (or get them at bargain prices) and evict the owners in order to flip them off what are sometimes ridiculously small amounts of debt compared to the home value owed by the not-well-off (but not ridiculously small compared to their financial situation).

I'm not sure you understand how this works. When you have a lien against your house and you don't pay it, the lien holder can force the sale of the property. But the homeowner gets the money from the sale after the lien has been satisfied.

Nobody's getting screwed here. People who end up with no money 1) didn't pay their taxes and 2) don't have any equity in the house.

If you didn't have a system where the city/county could take your house for back taxes nobody would pay taxes.

With people like you around, even the Singularity wouldn't get rid of capitalism.