The preterite and The Protestant Ethic

[Ian Livingston]

Sounds Hindu. It's their karma, man. But, when I was young and
homeless, I worked wherever I could find work. That's not so easy
since the banks have put the skids on allowing homeless people to cash
checks for day labor. I suspect most folks would work if they could
get paid for their labor, but the banking industry wants people to pay
them for hording their money for them and for taking care of the
business of spending it irresponsibly as well. That is, banks want
people in debt, not just getting paid enough to live on. And an even
bigger problem is that we think that it is okay for banks to refuse to
cash checks unless you owe them money. Now, if we all refused to
support banks that refuse to cash checks for the homeless and
unindebted, we might get somewhere in reducing homeless beggars, who
really are outcasts of the system, not on moral grounds, but economic
ones.

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 7:32 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From a review of a book on homelessness;
> This emphasis on sickness and sin has roots in the religious approach to
> poverty. The Protestant moral construction of poverty and transiency influenced
> the American management of homelessness. Poverty relief seems to have been
> always constructed as relief from the poor, not for the poor.
>
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-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."