"noting that the main reason notions of the “undeserving poor” brokedown during the Great Depression was that so many people saw theirfriends and neighbors becoming suddenly impoverished. “So much of largeaudience journalism is produced by people who are not working-class andtend not to know working-class, let alone poor people,”

he says. “Thesubtext now is that this is something we need to pay attention to,because ‘good, decent people’ are being affected.”

The problem with looking at the only poor that were recently middleclass as deserving is that given the same oppertunities many people canmake it and be "middle class"