This morning I spotted a homeless man in a wheelchair, doubled over in pain, throwing up into a gutter in front of a boutique store on Haywood Road.

A block further, on Lexington Avenue, a woman threw a half-eaten bagel into a trash can; not ten seconds passed before two homeless men started scuffling over who was going to eat it.

A quarter-mile west of these pathetic scenes, there is a homeless shelter and soup kitchen. So the obvious questions are:

Why weren't these people at the shelter? Why don't they improve their lives when there are charities available to help?

I have a theory.

As someone who has gone through a period of poverty, I can say from personal experience our society does not reward the poor for hard work. To the contrary, the economic system encourages depression in those who are working hardest. It also tends to push people who are mentally ill to start with, into full-fledged psychosis.

Imagine you can't find a job which pays a sustainable wage. --> Inevitably, your electricity is going to get turned off because you can't pay the bill. --> In order to get the electric turned back on, you have to come up with a re-connection fee. --> By the time you come up with the money to pay the electric and late fees, you need to register a whole new account since Progress Energy will close it after six weeks of non-payment. This means you have to wait a few weeks longer in order to save up money for the deposit.

During this time, there is no way to store food or cook it; so forget about saving money by eating at home, your diet now consists of McDonald's and Taco Bell.

By the time power comes back on... the water bill is overdue, and gets shut off.

To understand what it feels like to work so hard for something as basic as electricity, only to lose water service the following day; imagine being tied to the ground, and the person you despise most starts peeing in your eyes. Frustration, rage and angst washes over your soul, non-stop, wave after wave.

If you feel the mental image is too graphic: Trust me, it's not nearly descriptive enough.

This is but one scenario on the plight of the working poor in our culture. No matter how hard they work, they end up empty. Eventually depression takes over and many stop moving.

Depressed people make poor choices. Giving up on employment is a coping mechanism for them; after all, why labor all day if the end result is the same as not working at all?

And that, ladies and gentleman, is why we have people vomiting in a gutter or fighting over a discarded bagel - rather than seeking help from a shelter less than five blocks away.

Read counterpoint here.

Tags: Poverty - Living Wage - Homeless - Labor