I came to a depressing conclusion about the source of my disillusionment: An economy fueled by grant funding for poverty-related issues will likely gravitate toward the institutionalization of poverty rather than poverty’s end. My first, beloved job was a fluke. I could not exist in most non-profit environments, not without compromising my ethics (or quitting and/or getting fired every nine months). Even if I’d wanted to go back to my lovely fluke, I couldn’t. The weight of educational loans, both mine and my wife’s, made it impossible for me to carry the family on a public interest salary. My dream of working in the public interest sector for the rest of my life died upon that realization.