Why do we have to "Work so Hard" to make a living?

[glowing]

83. I live very simply now because I've never had a pot to piss in.. and this is after

putting myself thru college and buying a small 2 bedroom/ 1 bath home with less than 1000 ft that includes the garage. I live very simply. I prefer simple. Less to dust. What I don't like is having my time so limited to enjoy or to have enough to save up so that I can take a trip back to Europe at some point.

I was blessed to have parents who were more medium middle class... They were able to help me out with items like college a little bit and they saved up to send me to Italy for my graduation gift from college.

I'm originally from VT, I'm a Vermonter and they are too. Simple living is what we do and where we come from. But even there, they too, are now being worked to death to make ends meet... My Uncle lost his family milk farm eventually to competition from bigger producers and the costs that continued up each and every year... So, one more loss of a dairy farmer who treated his animals like a small family farmer does, to the factory farms which do "farming" in un-healthy ways and only seek a profit.

It is hard to find the line between equality that makes us drones and individuality that makes us creative... I think a moderate mix of sharing resources that one's country has, free access to education (which is becoming more and more an aspect of one's bank account whether its a private, charter, or zip code that allows for better resources to the college/ university model today which literally is making young adults barely starting out in life mortgage their futures), access to health care, and the ability to live in a clean environment ALONG with the ability to be productive and creative to "work" in a manner that allows for society to reap the best of its people...

If a child is growing up in poverty and has more to worry about in making it back and forth safely to their small, roach infested apt where the lights aren't on or the water isn't running this month along with being tired and hungry from lack of adequate nutrition in the home, then we are losing those children to a future of potential. That child sitting at home in his/her dark, cold apartment going to bed hungry could potentially be the one who finds the cure to cancer or discovers some modern miracle or goes beyond the vision of what Steve Jobs could ever imagine having created, but the way the system is set up now, we would probably never know... That child is more likely to end up repeating the cycle of poverty OR end up on the streets using drugs, selling drugs, or worse, selling their bodies.

And I realize everything is rather situational depending on where one is born. It can be so much worse living in a 3rd world impoverished setting. But its a global world and we are all connected. So, the type of world we wish to see and live in has to look beyond the squiggly lines drawn on a map by man and encompass compassion and a future which allows for all people's to enjoy more equitable living conditions, while still allowing people to be individuals with the ability to give back to the world what is the best that is inside of them, and also allow them time to just enjoy being free with their own thoughts and their own time.