Tapsearch Com EditorRich Man - Poor Man
By Ray Tapajna - Browse the world of Tapsearcher
Many want to win the lottery to help the poor - Very few want to be the poor
Who is Doing the Walk instead of the Talk
I was challenged down to my soul, by the impoverished and homeless back in the late 1970s when downtown Cleveland, Ohio, was still congested - when our city still had many international corporate headquarters left and the region was a center for high technology. The street and walking traffic was very heavy.
One day I parked in a very busy parking lot to make a business call. When I came out and I had to back out of the parking lot into very busy traffic. As I was waiting for a chance to get out of the lot, a pandhandler start walking towards my car. He came over to my car and bent over looking right at me in the car. He asked for some help, but I my wallet was in my back pocket and I would have to get out of the car which was halfway in the street to get a dollar or two for him. I usually gave everyone a dollar who asked for money.
I did this not only to avoid the situation but I was never sure who needed it and who didn't. Once, a friend and I took on someone like this and it ended up our spending the whole afternoon, driving around trying to find help for him during the business day. We took him to a church luncheon to get a meal for him and we were immediately ushered out of the church cafeteria. And so I avoided this happening again by just giving everyone a dollar knowing some of the panhandlers really need immediate help.
This time not being able to get to my wallet, I told my new friend that I would pray for him as a jotted into the street. I had the window still rolled down and my new friend just stood there on the sidewalk, shouting out - that's right you do the praying and I will do the walk. He kept repeating it over and over again as I slowly went down the street contained by slow moving traffic.
I realized then that many of us want to serve the poor but very few us want to be the poor. We will even cut corners in our business activities for the sake of economic survival and money and then think we are doing something good when we perform some charity. One CEO of a major merchandising empire, serves dinner in a food bank every weekend but only pays his workers minimum wages. I always wondered about this contradiction. Once when a corporation I was working for sold out to a new owner, we all knew it was only a matter of time before we would lose our jobs. Being a high paid job, everyone was trying to last as long as they could. Some took promotions where they were put in place to fire their former fellow workers. I laughed when one of them, called me in for a evaluation that they knew was ridiculous.
When I watch some super sports star who is getting paid millions of dollars by Nike, I wonder how they feel knowing that they are living off the thousands of impoverished workers and the underclass while the newspaper reports about some charity work they are doing.
Many others will do most anything to survive and do things that are wrong while thinking they are doing something good, serving the poor in some capacity. If we need the poor to do something good, something is very wrong .
Many of us think about winning the lottery to get money to serve the needy but hang on any way to survive ourselves.
We want to be rich to serve the poor - as in If I was a rich man - but very few us are willing to stay the moral course and lose everything in the process.
And perhaps many are not proud of what they do to make money or realize how they are living off the working poor and the underclass.
We make sure we add to our 401 pension funds with a selection of good stocks, but we avoid talking about how many people are losing their jobs for the sake of the stock market. The stock market news channels tell us when the economy is going up by what the stock market is doing. Today they reported the economy is doing better inspite of the jobless rate. This does not make any sense but who is into common sense these days.
Many say the poor will always be among us and leave it at that.
Many want to win the lottery to help the poor - Very few want to be the poor
Who is Doing the Walk instead of the Talk
I was challenged down to my soul, by the impoverished and homeless back in the late 1970s when downtown Cleveland, Ohio, was still congested - when our city still had many international corporate headquarters left and the region was a center for high technology. The street and walking traffic was very heavy.
One day I parked in a very busy parking lot to make a business call. When I came out and I had to back out of the parking lot into very busy traffic. As I was waiting for a chance to get out of the lot, a pandhandler start walking towards my car. He came over to my car and bent over looking right at me in the car. He asked for some help, but I my wallet was in my back pocket and I would have to get out of the car which was halfway in the street to get a dollar or two for him. I usually gave everyone a dollar who asked for money.
I did this not only to avoid the situation but I was never sure who needed it and who didn't. Once, a friend and I took on someone like this and it ended up our spending the whole afternoon, driving around trying to find help for him during the business day. We took him to a church luncheon to get a meal for him and we were immediately ushered out of the church cafeteria. And so I avoided this happening again by just giving everyone a dollar knowing some of the panhandlers really need immediate help.
This time not being able to get to my wallet, I told my new friend that I would pray for him as a jotted into the street. I had the window still rolled down and my new friend just stood there on the sidewalk, shouting out - that's right you do the praying and I will do the walk. He kept repeating it over and over again as I slowly went down the street contained by slow moving traffic.
I realized then that many of us want to serve the poor but very few us want to be the poor. We will even cut corners in our business activities for the sake of economic survival and money and then think we are doing something good when we perform some charity. One CEO of a major merchandising empire, serves dinner in a food bank every weekend but only pays his workers minimum wages. I always wondered about this contradiction. Once when a corporation I was working for sold out to a new owner, we all knew it was only a matter of time before we would lose our jobs. Being a high paid job, everyone was trying to last as long as they could. Some took promotions where they were put in place to fire their former fellow workers. I laughed when one of them, called me in for a evaluation that they knew was ridiculous.
When I watch some super sports star who is getting paid millions of dollars by Nike, I wonder how they feel knowing that they are living off the thousands of impoverished workers and the underclass while the newspaper reports about some charity work they are doing.
Many others will do most anything to survive and do things that are wrong while thinking they are doing something good, serving the poor in some capacity. If we need the poor to do something good, something is very wrong .
Many of us think about winning the lottery to get money to serve the needy but hang on any way to survive ourselves.
We want to be rich to serve the poor - as in If I was a rich man - but very few us are willing to stay the moral course and lose everything in the process.
And perhaps many are not proud of what they do to make money or realize how they are living off the working poor and the underclass.
We make sure we add to our 401 pension funds with a selection of good stocks, but we avoid talking about how many people are losing their jobs for the sake of the stock market. The stock market news channels tell us when the economy is going up by what the stock market is doing. Today they reported the economy is doing better inspite of the jobless rate. This does not make any sense but who is into common sense these days.
Many say the poor will always be among us and leave it at that.
President Obama bails out the financial community but ignores the working poor and jobless- It's a trickle down economy coming down from big government
