1. If Kaus gets fired and can't afford a place to stay, he will feel homeless. More to the point, his children will have to change schools, they will be separated from their friends, they will observe the stress in the family and they will struggle in ways similar to children who experience more severe forms of homelessness.

2. Kaus isn't, as far as I know, qualified to define homelessness although he has empowered himself to do so. He may know what he thinks, and he may be right in suggesting that most people don't think about "homelessness" in the operationalized and quite specific terms that sociologists and other researchers use. But to say, "X doesn't fit my notion of Y, therefore X isn't Y," is pretty arrogant, and transparently partisan.

This is important because one aspect of power is the ability to define things. If conservatives like Kaus get to define homelessness, it won't be much of a problem, and we won't have to address it. If homeless advocates get to define it, it will appear a bigger problem, but at least there will be a specific definition that we can use.

This is a version of the conservative meme, "Most poor people own dvd players!!! How poor can they be?"

"This is a version of the conservative meme, "Most poor people own dvd players!!! How poor can they be?"

You could also count the outrage at the fact someone on soup line had a phone camera while First Lady Obama was helping out at a shelter.

does seem like so called "poor" people can afford or justify things that I find rather luxurious.

They always seem to be able to afford cigs, beer, the best cell phones with redicoulous plans costing upwards to 80 a month.

Cigs and beer I never buy, and my cell phone plan is 20 bucks every 3 months.

Poor people are poor because they try to live like they think rich people do.

I assume that bigfeet lives the right way. And thus, if his assumptions about the way the economy works are true, he must be rich.

If he's not, based on his assumptions about the way the economy works, he must either be a no talent, or lazy, or both.

I don't buy it, of course. But he clearly thinks he's better than poor people. (By the way, so does Kaus.) But if he isn't rich, and he believes that money follows virtue, how does he explain the disparity?