In an attempt to become more educated about the world around me, I starting reading the news during my lunch break at work. Last week I read an article about how economic times are so hard, some American families are not able to buy presents for their children this Christmas. The story on CNN.com featured an American family in particular. Feeling sympathetic, I clicked to read the full story. The mother of the family explained that last year, she had spent $600 on presents for their three-year-old daughter. This year, they can't afford to do that.
So by "not being able to buy presents," what they really meant is that they are no longer able to spend $600 on presents for their daughter who was three the previous year. (Do three-year olds even covet material goods, or equate love with hefty price tags, the way some adults do? And if not, is it not alarming that their parents are trying to teach them to covet and equate that way?)
The story reminded me of another one I had read two days before I read that one. The other story was about economic hardships in Haiti. Times are so hard in Haiti that Haitian mothers often have to choose which of their children will live and which will die by deciding which will get to eat and which won't.
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