Editor, Daily Nexus,

I would like to address the article written by Courtney Stevens (“Poor Aren’t Poorer,” Daily Nexus, April 24). Stevens did a decent job of trying to hide the “nonexistent” problem of the United States’ skewed economy. She argues that the top 20 percent of U.S. households perform a full 33 percent of all labor, and pay 80 percent of all taxes, while the “poor” people exhaust the welfare benefits and services offered to them by the government. Her main point is that the rich are only prosperous because they work harder and pay more into the economy than the “poorer” 80 percent of the remaining households. You see, Stevens, wealth, in most cases, is not immediately gained and it takes generations to accumulate. Visit the United Fair Economy website or take any diversity class and find out why the “poor” soak up $24.5 billion of housing subsidies, while the upper middle class people receive over $70 billion in home mortgage interest deductions from the government. The government provides welfare support for all, especially those in the upper 20 percent of our economy.

So the next time you stop and think that the people receiving food stamps and Section 8 housing assistance are just hustling the U.S. government for money, you’re better off taking time to find solutions to their problems, such as how to decrease temporary jobs and add more full-time jobs with benefits so that the “poor” people don’t have a necessity to hold two-, three- or four-income households while struggling to pay rent and put food on the table and clothes on their children’s backs? The “poor” people work their asses off everyday, arguably more so than their counterparts, and still get treated like second-class citizens, although I wouldn’t expect you to understand, since you have probably never felt “unprivileged.” Unfortunately, the length offered to respond to your column isn’t enough, though I am sure I managed to negate your misinformed arguments.