Emmanuel Luna
Professor Kaci McCourt
English 1302
09 February 2015

Why are you so Poor? I am only 19 and I feel like I have heard about the very broad topic of poverty a million different times in those 19 years. What really caught my attention when I would hear about it, was when people would blame the cause of poverty solely on pure laziness. The phrase that I remember hearing most often was “Poor people are poor because they are lazy.” Which really irritates me because I’ve lived in poverty and it has nothing to do with laziness. I truly believe that poverty is caused by uncontrollable circumstances, as well as those cases where the individuals who are willing to get a job but not get a higher level education so they can receive a higher salary are stuck in this rut of poverty. The specific issue of laziness, as well as uncontrollable circumstances and their relationship to poverty intrigues me because I have a direct link to the issue. I believe that I can do a semester long examination and sustained research on my selected issue because as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I have a direct link to said issue. When I was the young age of 10, my father died unexpectedly in a car accident. As in many households where the father works the most and makes the larger portion in the family’s annual income, my father was the primary breadwinner in our home. So when he passed, nobody in the household was working due to the fact that they didn’t have to because my dad would buy us whatever we needed or wanted. Nothing was the same for us after the death of my father because we had to make complete lifestyle changes for the worse. My brothers were still in high school, my little sister and I were in elementary school and my mother, well she dropped out of high school to become a stay at home mother. At the time, it was okay I guess because my dad had his own concrete company and was doing well enough that my mom didn’t have to work. As you might be able to infer, we were very spoiled as we were brought up as children. Our dad would buy us whatever we needed or wanted without raising question. Not saying we were rich but we were doing fine. That was until his passing and money wasn’t coming wasn’t coming in much. My mom and one of my brothers had to start working low wage jobs, and that was barely enough for the mortgage, bills and groceries. So as soon my dad died, the household annual income decreased dramatically, below the poverty line. Yeah, the definition of poverty can go beyond just living under the poverty line such as living under poor, unsanitary living arrangements, no water, food, shelter or clothing, unemployed and a low standard of living. Thank god we were just living under the poverty line and not any others. The question may arise of the purpose behind informing the class of this issue, the reason behind this issue being prevalent to us is the fact that we will be facing a deeper level of the “real world” soon once we graduate and completely become self-dependent. There has been studies on the cause of poverty and some of the things I have found by reading various articles in high school was the fact that some occurrences correlated to abuse of alcohol, drugs, and gambling. The studies stated that people’s genetics gave them the capability of becoming more addicted to things in an easier fashion. The majority of us are freshman but once we grow older and plan on life after we graduate, we must accept the fact that there are certain things we can control in life and things we just have no control over. An example of someone having control is that person going to job interviews and being hired, that person had complete control of him becoming poor or not. An example of someone not having control would be someone getting laid off due to the economy turning upside down causing companies to make pay cuts and unfortunately job cuts. As I am aware, I do not know everything that there is to know about