In a weak economy, the poor - not the rich - can set the best examples

Can a weak economy be hazardous to your health - particularly your mental health?

Depends where you are.

If you worked for Bear Stearns, you probably found another job not too long after the company hit the skids. Having an education has benefits, certainly - even for those who are doomed to fail.

If you're working for AIG, you'll have a stimulus bill and $100 million bonuses to tide you over.

Then there's the Social Security offices around the country, the same places where the elderly and the poor pick up their benefits. They sit in lines for hours, their heads in their hands, waiting to be waited on.

Many of those I saw in New Brunswick, N.J. the other day, while doing classwork for Columbia University, looked like they were too old, too sick or too weak to work. With cutbacks in service jobs, they may never get another paycheck from somebody other than the government again.

Mostly, however, they had a certain strength about them that impressed me. They sat there, biding their time, not worrying about waiting and just trying to make the best of it.

They were getting government help, yes. But there were no complaints that it was not enough. There were no cries of panic that their lives would crumble if the government didn't up the ante.

Many of them were old - one of whom spoke to a younger man about growing up during the 1950s and 1960s, during the civil rights era. He and others had a sense of self-reliance and resiliency that they probably learned long ago, when they couldn't get jobs because of the color of their skin.

I sat there with my laptop, jotting down what one man was saying while talking to somebody who seemed about half his age:

"I played baseball - I remember, growing up, my mother couldn’t afford for me to buy a pair of spikes."

"We ate corn meal mush for dinner and lunch."

"In that era if you quit school, you had to go through a whole year and a half before you could be reinstated."

Before he went to the government for help, he said, he got a job. He didn't care how low-level or low-paying it was. It was work, and even though it made him sweat and curse, he went home with a sense of accomplishment. He felt empowered and emboldened.

"Somebody had to step up to the plate...I had to do what I had to do."