The Poor Get Poorer: 3 Character Traits That Undermine Prosperity
Sense of Entitlement
In today’s (North) America, there is little financial incentive to better oneself anyway, thanks to “entitlements” that are (involuntarily) paid for by harder-working, more responsible citizens.
Behold: according to the graph above, a “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.”
Part of the reason America is so divided is that even when we use simple, commonplace words, those words have very different meanings, depending upon who is using them.
When rich people talk about “taxes,” they’re adding up all the money they’ve honestly earned and are now forced to pay to the state.
But when “poor” people talk about “taxes,” they’re making a list of all the new crap they’re going to buy when they get their refund check.
According to one source, “30 percent of tax units” — that is, households and individuals — “actually made money off the income tax system for the 2009 tax year.”
Gluttonous, slothful, irresponsible
yeah, you won’t find those character traits among the wealthy… :: ))
Do you think you’re more likely to find “gluttonous, slothful, [and] irresponsible” behavior in a person who has earned their wealth, or one who has inherited it?
I awarded myself a billion bonus and paid it into my wife’s offshore account to avoid tax
Also I had a decadent birthday hobnobbing with lazy rich celebrities
All this while sacking lots of people to cut costs and paying the rest minimum wage
I’m a wealth creator and that means creating wealth only for me and my family
Nonsense, what you morons don’t seem to get is we don’t have indentured servants or slaves anymore. Anyone can quit anytime they want to. Enough people quit businesses go out of business. Free markets work.
Nonsense. What you morons don’t get is that we have neither slaves, nor indentured servants anymore. A boss like that would quickly find himself no longer a boss of anything, after all his employees quit. In fact since you mention minimum wage, that is a large portion of the problem. Free markets work. Stop making up nonsense, you just look foolish.
Dear Phil, How nice that you are creating wealth for JUST your family. Because you will be in the cross hairs of the political vipers when the debt crisis hits. Me? you say? Me? Who else. Washington is out of money and when the proverbial sh_t hits the fan, it is going to hit everyone who doesn’t have a private plane to flee the country.
Before worrying about the unfairness of the US economy, take a look at what you have to lose. Like a 401K, savings, pension money you “don’t need”. Just wait, when the debt tsunami hits, the politicians will bray they need YOU and everyone else to forfeit whatever you put aside for old age.
“New Debt” in America
$103 Billion – Average monthly “new debt” during 112th Congress
$143 Billion – Average monthly “new debt” during 111th Congress
$63 Billion – Average monthly “new debt” during 110th Congress
$45 Billion – Average monthly “new debt” during 109th Congress
$48 Billion – Average monthly “new debt” during 108th Congress
$23 Billion – Average monthly “new debt” during 107th Congress.
Source: US Treasury Debt to the Penny”
Philip: you said it brother! You’re a man after my own heart! I’ll 2nd your position with a TRUE story about a guy I know, who’ll we’ll call “Bob”. Bob worked seven days a week, I swear. Never a day off. Some find that industrious, but I find it ignorant. Where’s the enjoyment in working seven days a week/ Evidently, Bob started a business, worked 7 days a week for several years and accumulated a bunch of money. You can tell, because he bought a big house in town and drives a Mercedes. Word has it he also bought a boat. Now, I hear Bob takes Sundays off, BUT HAS PEOPLE WHO HE PAYS A MEAGER $15 AN HOUR WORKING THOSE SUNDAYS. Only Gaia knows how much Bob earns off those slaves! Bob is now a millionaire and he exploits people so he can drive his fancy boat around on Sundays. The only way to deal with the Bobs of the world are to tax them at 90% and give the money to his workers…let them take a boat ride! That’s what we should do…right Philip? Right Philip? RIGHT!!?? That’s how we should handle those greedy, industrious, hard-working fools?!
Ah! Lovely and his satire!
That Philip and his stupidity hits pretty close to home,though, don’t it?
Me too, Bro’. Me too.
I’ve worked myself to a worn out ol’ frazzle. All my old employees have more than I do. I’ve paid all the taxes, but I will never, ever be able to pay the penalties and interest that accrued because my customers didn’t pay me. Sometimes, I never got paid. That doesn’t ever matter, though.
But, I guess it’s isn’t illegal to enslave employers, only to ask employees to not show up late, drunk, or just lazy. If they break $50,000 of equipment because they were drunk (and you are not, by law, ever allowed to even insinuate that they ARE drunk), tough luck. I always see TV shows where the boss “takes it out of their pay”. In what universe? He could go to jail in America! Even if the employee commits a felony, you still owe him his pay for that time. With interest. And penalties. And more interest.
And those penalty and interest debts can never be expunged. They accrue to you personally. Also, OSHA can fine you tens of thousands because you didn’t keep a folder with Material data sheets (which noone can ever understand, not even the OSHA idiots themselves, not even Phd’s. ).
Don’t worry. You’re missing fifty sheets at a thousand bucks a sheet? Not to worry. We’ll cut that to just $20,000. Which comes out of your hide. Don’t you feel blessed? We really want to be fair at OSHA! Oh! You haven’t turned a profit in ten years? We’ll just put it on a payment plan!
I thought Lincoln freed the slaves. Guess not.
Meanwhile, they’re shoving money that you made with the sweat of your brow, to lazy bums who have no intention of ever having a real job. They just drive cabs and sell drugs for cash. Now they even get a free cellphone, along with their food stamps. Paid for by you. To run their scams more efficiently. Nice.
They’ll pay him almost a million dollars over his life while hounding you for that last $4,000, which has now grown to $237,340 through penalties and interest. His is free, but you MUST pay. No matter what.
So. Tell me again why noone is getting hired any more? Especially since the schools now turn out completely unemployable jerks who can’t put down their government issued cellphones long enough to actually do any work?
Don’t worry, Bro. We can certainly live without them. They can’t change their own diapers without us. I can run a nuclear power plant, if I have the manuals.
Go Galt.
Jealousy is a mental disorder easily caught and hard to cure.
yes i agree
you sound like the Obama’s
the Obama’s what? The Obama’s pony? The Obama’s pet robot? The suspense is killing me!
That would probably depend on how they were raised. If they were taught to respect money, then they may turn out to be frugal whether they are good at business or not, and can live on the inheritance. If they were spoiled and pampered, then they may be more likely to blow all the cash.
I’ve seen both, though admittedly more of the latter than the former. I’ve seen some people inherit a business and maybe keep it going or sell it and take care with the money and live a decent middle class lifestyle. I’ve also seen others get a pile of money (directly or selling inherited assets) and blow it in less than a year. People who inherited something to live normally on for the rest of their lives or better if they keep working, would go through it all in no time and end up in worse straits than they were before the inheritance.
It’s kind of like most lottery winners, pro athletes and other stars. Most end up flat broke because they live high for a very short time and get themselves in a very deep hole.
Ozzy,
As a matter of fact, if the wealth is “inherited”, there is VERY high probability these characteristics will be observed. That’s a big reason that inter-generational wealth transfer is such a tough thing to do,(apart from ridiculous tax policy). As a long time money manager who consistently works with this demographic, those who make the money, (the hard workers, who are NOT lazy) worry a great deal about how to pass on their accumulated wealth to their kids, and grandkids. And no, those who make their millions are generally NOT lazy or gluttoness. They have a lifestyle of hard working habits that include 50-60 hour weeks, and very few vacations. We have been raised to believe that anyone who makes a lot of money is “lucky”. There may be some of that, but not year after year. This is a great article and for my “money” right on target.
I’ve always liked my Mom’s concept: make sure that the kids have a good education, help with the grand-kids as necessary, then spend the inheritance on yourself. My sibs and I will get the knick-knacks and a few bucks, but not much more.
Ozzy,
As a matter of fact, if the wealth is “inherited”, there is VERY high probability these characteristics will be observed. That’s a big reason that inter-generational wealth transfer is such a tough thing to do,(apart from ridiculous tax policy). As a long time money manager who consistently works with this demographic, I see that those who make the money, (the hard workers, who are NOT lazy) worry a great deal about how to pass on their accumulated wealth to their kids, and grandkids. And no, those who make their millions are generally NOT lazy or gluttonous. They have a lifestyle of hard working habits that include 50-60 hour weeks, and very few vacations. We have been raised to believe that anyone who makes a lot of money is “lucky”. There may be some of that, but not year after year. This is a great article and for my “money” right on target.
Not really, all the rich people I know and have met are people that work their tails off. They are determined people, that’s why they rise to the top. Even the top 15% (over $150k) are almost always the hardest working people in their position.
The only exceptions are people in unions that have gamed the system. Some people are not that have found a scheme, but it never lasts long.
You’re missing the point: The rich aren’t asking us to fund their lives. They pay for it themselves.
Plus…eating candy bars may be bad, but there is a huge difference between a buff gym rat eating one, and an obese 400-pounder doing it. If you can’t see that, you’re a fool.
My mother worked as an “Eligibility Worker” for the welfare department. These are the people who are tasked with reviewing the financial status of welfare applicants, and determining legibility. Or not. OR, who are tasked with follow up of ongoing cases, somewhat like a social worker (who gets paid more than an EW) is supposed to (but rarely does) follow up on social issues with their cases.
I also spent many years working with a Christian group trying to make a difference in the lives of people living on “welfare row” in a particular southern California city. A few blocks of apartments where virtually all of the residents were on welfare of some sort, and which accounted for 90% of that city’s crime. Yeah, 90%.
I have lived, and now live where there are a lot of “working poor”. They are my neighbors.
I’ve been poor myself – poor enough to be losing weight through lack of food. Not that I needed to lose weight – I was just starving because there was no money to buy food. How would you like to survive for a week or two on one tortilla a day (with ketchup, of course!), and tap water to wash it down? I have.
I’ve also spent a lot of years supporting my family through periods of unemployment and underemployment, burdened with medical bills, and making do at a lifestyle that many would consider poor.
I know a lot about poor.
The “poverty problem” in America is really very simple. Most of the poor in this country are poor because of their values.
Their values drive the choices they make. Mostly, they make really bad choices.
No, they are not poor because they lack opportunity. They are not poor because somebody is oppressing them.
They are poor because they have poor values.
It’s that simple.
Amen to that. My brother-in-law’s family is a good exhibit for what you’re talking about. He’s a good guy. My sister had the sense to find the cream of the crop in that family, but his family is a classic example of poor choices. Type 2 diabetics who refuse to manage their disease, a drug addict who’s alaso alcoholic and a type 2 diabetic who refuses to manage his disease … People who think of their government checks as their “pay checks.” People who think nothing of forgetting a $50 pair of shoes because “$50 isn’t that much.” They have no concept of the value or worth of money and what it takes to really earn it and how to manage it when they have it.
That’s a statistical fact. Have children after 21 with a mother and father in the home, finish high school, get any job, don’t take drugs or abuse alcohol, and don’t commit crimes and the likelihood of you being poor are very slim. Also the likely hood of your children becoming criminals, getting pregnant as teens, etc. are very slim.
It has almost nothing to do with race. Control for those factors and it explains a lot.
Amen to that. Persistently poor people keep doing things that prolong their condition. Typically, they make short-term decisions or maximize short-term pleasure or relief over long-term improvements. I’ve also found poor people often harshly criticize those in the group trying to make improvements. Whether the people we are discussing are the well-tanned in The Community or just plain white trash, speak clearly using real words, rather than the mush-mouth jumble of slang, and you will be accused of “acting white” or “putting on airs.”
Think about the people with no bank account and renting-to-own wheels for their pimped out car. Much easier to claim “they’re keeping me down” than to stop wasting money on beer, cigs, and lottery.
The PC version of poverty is some modest family gets hit with a piece of bad luck. That bad luck happens to everybody. Poor people just stop trying and work to get more comfortable in their current circumstance.
A double amen to this thread. Agreed. The values of the high-on-the-hog poor lack responsibility, accountability, desire to get ahead, and result in entitlement mentality and a gimme-gimme attitude. Blame accrues on everyone but themselves, and I, for one, am sick of the supporters of such sloth. Our president comes prominently to mind on that point. I am a participant in the 53% of people who pay their own way and proud of it.
I live overseas on a small island with people who are really poor no welfare.
I am always amazed by their positive attitude and there imagination in finding ways to earn money.
The one thing that has started to creep into this is the ideas that some people have too much money and owe others. This is a negative incentive destroyer.
Next week we will have a town party and i will feed groups of people roast pig, beef, barbecued fish, and many other types of food. We will offer to give extra food for people to take home.
Surprisingly some will refuse this extra food as they do not feel conformable.
I deeply respect the honesty and integrity of these friends of mine no matter what color or how poor.
I recently lost my wallet with money in it. I was returned by a teenage neighbor in tact nothing missing.
We assist with child emergency’s and other financial difficulties on a regular basis we have always been payed back no matter how long it took.
Some people who have been successful meet every Wednesday to assist their neighbors with projects.
I feel rich or poor attitude is the key.
I will vote Romney for this reason.
Ant.
Grasshopper.
Story as old as time, folks.
When it comes to debates on welfare (how much and under what conditions), social security (why does it exist?), abortion, obamacare, etc., we need a politician who will grip the podium on both sides, stare right into the camera and say, “There’s a huge portion of humanity that simply cannot get their sh!t together. MOST of government is set up to try and deal with them in one way or another. Let’s admit that this is the ONE BIG PROBLEM, and let’s deal with it like that’s what it is: a problem. It’s not ‘human nature’; it’s the nature of CERTAIN humans, and they are losers. Now… what are we going to do about them?”
This. BTW, Aesop’s story still says it all – especially in the way it often gets changed when told to current generations. Too many people can’t stand to tell children a story without a “happy ending” (leave aside those of us who think this particular story DOES have a happy ending of sorts). I’ve seen beautifully illustrated recent versions in which the ants in their warm, stocked winter home are bored and thus very unhappy. They see the starving, freezing grasshopper, take pity on him, and invite him inside to live with them. He entertains them through the winter with his singing and dancing, and everyone lives happily ever after! The new moral of the story is that EVERYONE has a useful place in society. Need I tell you how wrong that can be on many levels?
Yes, for while there is room for entertainers in a wealthy society, there is not in one that is barely surviving. The ants might say to the grasshopper, “Go away, for we have barely enough for ourselves. We have nothing to give you.”
Ant and the Grasshopper for modern readers: What the grasshoppers have learned is that IT IS EASIER TO GET FORGIVENESS THAN IT IS TO GET PERMISSION. So.. the grasshopper shows up shivering at the door of the prosperous ants. The ants come to the door and tell the grasshopper to get lost; that he made his own situation and it is his own fault so long yada yada. The grasshopper just says, “Yeah, I am a worthless nothing, but, look at all my baby grasshoppers. They are all starving through no fault of their own” So the ants take the grasshoppers in, and then the little grasshoppers begin to beat up the little ants and making a mess of the place and we wind up with modern America.
RKae – It occurred to me months ago that the donkey and elephant symbols for Dem and Repub would be better represented by the grasshopper and ant characters.
Way back when we were first married, my wife and I had the occasion to be talking with her grandmother about how poor we were (both of us were teachers).
She responded, “You’re not poor, you don’t lack for anything.”
Boom. Never get in a ‘poor’ fight with someone who was married at 12 and spend the 30′s living on the top floor of a house boat on the Mississippi…
To be fair to the people of New Orleans, most sea ports are at or below sea-level, my own home tome of London is, for example.
For some reason, still undetermined, sea ports built on the tops of mountain ranges just don’t take off.
sea ports built on the tops of mountain ranges
[channeling Barack Obama]
Now THAT’S a shovel-ready project!
Probably true about the seaports. However, Ms. Shaidle was referring to people who buy, rent, or build the places they live below sea level, and then expect the rest of the world to bail their dumb lazy asses out when it floods.
In the US we have a federally administered flood insurance program. It is the only form of property insurance in the US where the insurers are not only allowed but required to spread their risk across the entire country as a rate base. That is why people who build in risky places are able to get federally subsidized flood insurance at a fraction of what the cost should be.
I’m sick and tired of my insurance and tax dollars subsidizing people who choose to live in risky places and then don’t even have enough common sense or personal responsibility to be prepared when disaster inevitably strikes. Not one tax doallar should ever be spent rebuilding homes or businesses in a place that sits in hurricane alley 6 feet below freaking sea level.
I’ve been to New Orleans and toured their flood control infrastructure. They have pumps that push ground water out of the city proper. Those pumps, even in the middle of a dry summer, are throwing millions of gallons per minute just to keep the lower parts of the city from floating away. Would you choose to make a home for your family in a place like that? I sure would not.
The reason that is done, foolish or not, is to keep the port areas populated with a significant labor pool. If the real costs weren’t subsidized, those port areas would become too expensive for anyone but illegals (dozens to a shanty) or the rich. This would have a big impact on the labor portion of shippings costs and the reliability of labor.
In time as more port work becomes automated (presuming we can wrest folks away from the subsidy anyway) we can get rid of that.
Now as for the topic at hand, the stability of character people want costs a lot of money. TANSTAAFL , there ain’t no such thing as s a free lunch
we are kind of used to a more religious society where churches and other private institutions handle that for us on the cheap and because of the nature of work people built a robust local culture and could apply social pressure as a control .
The society that fostered those conditions is gone and we are not a static mostly Christian mono-culture now. This means if we want stability and prosperity we must pay for it either by creating jobs (harder than you think with computers) that are steady and pay well for folks in the middle of the bell curve or through handouts
The challenge is inding a way to create a stable path up so that people who do play by the rules will win, sending people across the country chasing the Grapes of Wrath so they can find, some job any job no matter how menial , uprooting families, children just for Big-Co can make one more $ does not foster a Conservative culture. Being able to stay for generations in one local, work there, grow there, be there does.
As for money management among the poor almost no one in any class save he very rich can handle a big windfall. Lotto winners, Stars like M.C. Hammer, Athletes and sometimes businessmen go broke when they get a sudden influx. Its not the amount but the difference. $2k is huge to someone who make 600 a month and never has a penny to spend on anything
Even in the notoriously labor stingy South, I can’t imagine much port labor being low-skill, low-wage or even there being much manual labor at all. You can load and unload a tanker with a handful of guys, likewise a bulk carrier, and all it takes to unload a container ship is somebody managing trim and ballast, a crane operator, and a truck driver. In highly unionized environments, there’s a lot of featherbedding so there are linehandlers and such, but those guys ain’t living in poor areas.
There must be a good amount of docks and harbors labor but that too is pretty skilled, often union, and the publicly funded parts are usually at Davis-Bacon wages.
And then, of course, there is the value of the stealing privileges inherent in dock work. The reason the West Coast longshorement fought so hard to keep the dock clerk instead of letting it be a management employee or, better yet, let the work be comuterized is that the dock clerk is the only one who knows which container is worth stealing.
The original city of New Orleans was built on the highest ground in the area. That’s why it saw little flooding in Katrina. The problem was that a lot of the new development was built on lower ground. The infamous 5th ward was a case in point. The area chosen for that land was actually under 10 to 15 feet of water. Warnings at the time were that building on that swamp would be disaster. Still, somehow the city granted permission for it anyway.
Somethings else is going on there, too. A lot of people don’t know but pumps are running all the time to keep the lower areas from flooding. Water is still seeping up through the ground. The problem is that the more water they pump out, the more the soil compacts. The more is compacts, the more it sinks. In other words, the bowl inside the levees keeps getting deeper. This also has the effect of lowering the levees a bit making them less able to do their jobs.
If they had any sense, the 5th Ward was be stripped of all metals and other recyclable materials and toxic things, burn the rest then break the levees. The residents could be moved about 10 miles away to high ground. The result would be less levee for the city to maintain and the remaining ones could be bulked up, and lot of people would be more out of harm’s way. It would almost certainly be cheaper to build new buildings to a stronger code and run a bus line from there to the city than keep up the levees and bail out the next disaster.
London is 24 meters ABOVE sea level. No part of London is below sea level.
New Orleans is officially 3.3 meters above sea level, but in fact, much of it is actually BELOW sea level.
Actually, the seaports tend to built AT sea-level, unless your talking about ports on in-land lakes and rivers. Those tend to be above sea-level.
Ports that are below sea-level tend to be referred to as “ancient ruins”.
As a second job I deliver pizza a couple nights a week (It allows my wife to stay home with the kids). We don’t have a TV, but when we did we had a 32″ tube TV, not HD or anything.
When I go to houses of people to deliver a pizza I have noticed two things:
1. People in trailers and apartments always have a better TV than I do. Now HD TVs have become ubiquitous, but you’d expect someone who cannot afford a house or a decent car to be unable to afford a TV. And not just the TV. The stereo, the blueray and cable or satellite.
2. Poor people get delivery way more often. If I had the math skills I’m sure I could find a formulae that predicted who would order pizza regularily. The poorer you are the more likely you are to order pizza. All the regulars are either guys from the rigs or poor people.
Priorities make people poor.
I have nothing against somebody who chooses to live in a trailer if he doesn’t complain about it. If he’d rather have an HDTV and a great satellite package than a house and basic cable, that’s his decision.
For a twenty-something couple buying a trailer is a far better option than paying rent because even trailers build up some equity, in some markets quite a bit. In my experience, any decent trailer park is a FAR better neighborhood than any apartment complex with any Section 8 occupants. If you’re still living in a trailer after ten years, you’ve probably made some bad choices.
When I first came to Anchorage in the mid-’70s single family homes were horrendously expensive and the supply was very limited. You had to be securely well-off to buy a home and we weren’t either that well-off or that secure but we didn’t want to send somebody else’s kid to college by paying rent. Financing of trailers was much easier, remember these were the days of 15% mortgages and real down payments, and could be done through a credit union. We bought a low-line 14 x 60 new, sold it in a couple of years for as much as we paid for it to a young couple just like we’d been a couple of years before. Bought a fancy 14 x 70 with a tip out with a good-sized cash down. By then we were at the top of the early-’80s oil boom. Sold that one for more than we paid for it and bought a house. Haven’t been a renter since except for the first few months after we moved to Juneau while we were getting settled and looking and again since we sold the house there and have moved back to ANC. Gotta buy a house somewhere soon because if I’m going to support a family or two with my taxes, I’d like them to at least come over and rake my leaves or shovel snow or something; need that mortgage deduction!
Well, how about that! You made money on housing during the biggest housing bubble in history! Aren’t you special! Say, what’s your secret, all the young kids in this here depression would sure like to know! Is it, go back to 1970 and buy some housing stuff?
You don’t mention how many of these people are obese. I am always interested to see what kind of groceries people using “Food Stamps” (actually it looks like a credit card these days) buy with my tax dollars. My conclusions: They LOVE processed foods. They have no clue how to comparison shop. They do not buy in bulk. And they don’t seem to like vegetables much (fresh, canned or frozen.) I could shop for their families for a fraction of what they spend and they would eat better too. Also, although we have always had a comfortable living, we stopped using delivery pizza as the default “kids’ friends are over and they are hungry” meal when it got very expensive. We just boil up a mess of pasta now instead. Only people on the dole can afford to shop badly or to eat a lot of pizza. Then when they get too fat, they order up a FREE ride-em chair courtesy of the taspayer…. Something very wrong with this picture.
Most poor people are lazy. Processed foods are lazy foods.
I broke my heel last year and was in a cast/boot and on crutches for six moths or so. I learned to really, really dislike all the fat people who hog all the handicap parking spaces and carts. And I don’t give a damn what they say about diseases and genes and such crap; for it to wind up on your butt, you have to put it in your mouth!
You do realize, the least expensive food is all carbs and high in fat. Often times, the poor in the US suffer both obesity and malnutrition. It was a rhetorical question because I know you don’t realize that. But I’ll bet it felt good to be so superior, albeit entirely ignorant and wrong.
The “poor” in America suffer mostly from being ignorant/stupid and voting for communists, er, excuse me, Democrats.
Yes! We still have one, small, old style TV. We shop on a limited grocery budget and buy mostly fresh foods for ourselves and our son that we have to mostly cook up from scratch. My husband has a BlackBerry only because his company pays for him to have it. Otherwise, we don’t even have cell phones. Yet, we have a distinct income tax liability, and while I am overweight (not by much, less than 30) and so is he, neither of us is obese and our son is in fighting trim and never had much baby fat at all.
I am constantly amazed at the number of obese people who dress in better clothing, have cell phones, carts brimming with all the name brand food who whip out their EBT cards to pay for it all at the grocery store and then load up in a new looking car while we load up our 10-year old, paid-for Pontiac.
Yeah. That doesn’t happen. I love the hardship circle jerk going around here, but none of you are the pious poor because there is no such thing, just as there’s no such thing as a self-made millionaire who got to where they are without help. As if the taxpayer funded infrastructure, government-subsidized agricultural market, anti-trust laws, fat government contracts, etc, don’t exist. Please.
Are there poor people who make consistently dumb choices? No doubt. But not 100% of the poor do. To all these people here who are talking about how virtuously poor they are, I ask are YOU making consistently stupid choices about your finances? Surely you must not be because your self-reported sacrifices are great indeed! And yet … you’re still struggling. Your taxes are the lowest they’ve been in decades, your favorite sons are in power in House of Representatives and in many state legislature … and yet you’re still struggling.
Meanwhile, you’ve bought into this fantasy world where getting on public assistance is the easiest thing in the world and SNAP benefits are grossly overfunded. Maybe you should read about the mayor of Phoenix’s foray into living off of SNAP’s $29 a week benefit (that he self-budgeted with his own money; he didn’t apply for and receive food stamps before you drown out the moral of the story in unwarranted hysterics).
I forgot the part in the Bible where Jesus bade us to judge the poor and then refrain from helping them as we feel smugly superior to them. Can anyone help me find that part of the Bible? It has to be a red letter verse and yet I can’t find it! Is it because I have a Catholic Bible?!
The scripture you can’t find is the verse where Jesus tells his followers to give their money to the state, so that that state can decide who is poor, who isn’t, who gets what, and how much.
If you’ve read your bible as you imply, you know that the encouragement to give to those who need it is a personal command.
How would we know that? Did Jesus say, “That’s a personal command, folks!”. Cause, I missed that.
Did Jesus also say, “Now, no fair using a Republican form of government to make things better for the poor, don’t you go doing that!”. Missed that one too.
The people with the tvs are not making economic choices – deciding to spend less on their trailer so they can have a nice tv. It’s more likely the Rent-to-Own truck delivered that nice big tv and couch. You don’t have to worry about total cost when you are getting a neverending check from the gov’t every two weeks.
Perhaps, the smartest comment in the thread. It is the future.
This thing that you folks are so smug and superoir about, that thing you call a “job”? IT’S GONE.
Say hi to your new employment competitor, the intelligent robot! Who does everything you do, but better, and never gets sick, or throws itself off of a factory roof (which it also does better than you).
You don’t realize it now, but it’s the POOR who are ahead of the game in this sense. They already KNOW how to live without any possibility of work!. You guys are gonna get get hit by the future, like a baseball bat upside the head! It ain’t gonna be pretty. Say goodbye to that stupid, vacuous, sense of smug self worth! Without a job to define your life for you, the cocaine habit awaits.
Your wailing & gnashing of teeth over a future of no jobs reminds me of how people panicked over the changes brought on by the industrial revolution. Job opportunities evolve. There will always be work out there that needs to be done. There will also always be people out there who don’t really want to work; the fact that the US relies so much on illegals to do much of the type of work others refuse to do is a testimonial to that point.
You need to get off your high horse.
Loved the Walter Williams/Nick Gillespie clip. I finally understand why Rush Limbaugh has Williams as a frequent guest host. A Libertarian hero. Well worth 29 minutes.
Liberals – and faux conservatives like David Brooks – would explain that we are finding out that more and more of personality is inherited. Shouldn’t someone take care of me if I got unlucky in the genetic lottery? Maybe I’m not intelligent enough to acquire skills to get me out of poverty, or to realize that I have to control my behavior for my long term benefit. And what’s going to make it worse and worse for me in the near future is that simple stuff I might be able to learn to do will all be done by machines. Who’s going to look out for me? Our society generates tons of excess wealth. I should get some.
That’s a load of crap, of course, and I think liberals know it. They just prefer to have people dependent so they can feel smarter than everyone else.
Liberals want people dependent on them so that they will vote to keep their socialist party in power. This applies both in the US and elsewhere.
In addition, the more people are dependent, the more liberals have cushy jobs supposedly “helping” them.
Not all poverty is the result of bad choices.
Hey, I’m one of the working poor (cashier). I spent many years in IT, was laid off when the market dried up in ’08, got retraining in newer skills, but still couldn’t get a job in my field because I was competing with people who already had 5 years experience with the new stuff. The only job I’ve been offered in over 4 years is in retail – and I’m still there. So much for the Obamaconomy.
Yes, we live very frugally. I have never had a manicure and the last time I went to a hairdresser was something like 7 years ago. I buy clothes at thrift shops. Ramen noodles and pasta (with homemade sauce) frequently appear on our menu. We don’t have any entertainment other than basic cable and a very unreliable Internet connection. We have put off repairs on our vehicles, as well as medical care that we need.
I keep applying for better jobs; this time I’m looking for a better-paying sales job. I haven’t had any offers.
As long as the grabberment (at ALL levels) is draining so much out of the economy, and as long as the “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax increases continues to loom ahead, there’s no hope, and that’s that.
UNDERemployment and the Greater Depression of 2007-12 and counting…
You probably need to move to a State that has a booming economy like Texas, or ND
As the poster aboves said, moving is a good option; there’s plenty of work here in Alaska if you can pee in a bottle and pass a background check.
Or, since the house is burning, you can keep warm and go to work for government. Entry-level government pays about the same as retail but usually has better benefits. The turnover in entry-level clerical/technical/administrative jobs is very high. Many people just entering the workforce haven’t a clue what having a job means and stuff like showing up and doing what they’re told eludes them so they quit or get fired. Anybody with good sense and good work habits gets promoted fairly quickly. The key is that you have to start at the bottom in the jobs that a HS diploma/GED or a general BA will give you the minimum qualifications for; government really discriminates against private sector experience generally, so even if you have a long, successful private sector career, unless you’re very specialized, you’re right in there with the kids right out of high school.
Alaska is a great state. I’d consider working there if I were young, single & looking for a job opportunity.
If the poor habits are genetic, then the obvious solution to the problem long term is to stop enabling them. They will have a hard time just surviving and less time to reproduce, and hence passing on the weak genes. A little survival of the fittest will go a long way towards ending poverty.
So Ms, Shaidle, when you started to write this essay did you intend to outline the reasons why Democrats were so damn terrified of Sarah Palin? After all, she was not born with that silver spoon. She worked her way through college. She worked on the family fishing boat. And she came from a State with the nickname “The Last Frontier”, signifying the mythical resourcefulness/resilience of the American pioneer.
How dare that “myth” be personified! And if SHE could do it…
OH YEAH! When anyone asked me back in 2008 (seems so long ago!) how I could support Sarah Palin so enthusiastically, my standard answer was, “She’s the only prominent female politician in America who is not the wife, widow, or daughter of a powerful man.” No one ever had an answer to that.
So, you supported her because her husband was a loser? (I kid!) But seriously, what was it about that characteristic which made her qualified, or would have led to better policy outcomes?
Not necessarily THE reason I supported her; I had several of them. But it was the one that caught self-styled “liberal feminists” (who generally are neither)with their pants down (skirts up?) every damn time. Fun!
Palin has a “good gut”. She has the right instincts. Means more than a dozen college degrees.
That’s very easy to answer. Could it be her:
Education? No, not really. Nothing exceptional there.
Experience? Well, no. Not on the national stage. Nothing at all in international affairs.
Political history? Yes, to some degree. Cleaning up corruption is always a good indicator. She’s done that.
Values?
Bingo.
Values.
Sarah Palin would have been a much better choice than John McCain or Barack Obama or anybody in the race this time around because of her VALUES.
They are American values. REAL American values. CONSERVATIVE American values.
And that trumps all else.
And I’m not even a Sarah Palin fan.
Which shows how little you know about Alaska. Having two parents with fulltime, year-round public sector jobs in Alaska in the ’70s made you just one cut below royalty. The only thing better was having a daddy who struck it rich in the Gold Rush and sent you to Hahvud Law; then you could be a Democrat politician and really make out well. To the extent that the family, her mom and dad, hunted and fished and heated with wood, it was a lifestyle choice, not a necessity. Her husband has just enough Alaska Native blood to get Indian preference for “subsistence” fishing and that too is a lifestyle and probably tax advantage choice, not a necessity. And his supervisory level job on the North Slope paid about as much as any wage-earner in America can earn, and Indian Preference probably didn’t hurt him in getting that job either. To the extent that Palin has ever lacked for anything, she lacked for the same stuff that pretty much anybody who made the choice to live in a remote area had to do without or obtain only at very high cost. Once she became Governor, she sure didn’t like staying in remote Juneau with its rather more sparse amenities than were available in suburban Anchorage, which is what Wasilla really was by the late-’80s, not the remote town in the wilderness it is often portrayed to be.
Hmmmm, where to begin? I think the sheer know-nothingness of this post is what makes it so memorable. There are probably as many reasons for people living in poverty as there are people living in poverty, but NO, Shaidle KNOWS that there is only one. Laziness. Please explain where, in this scheme, do the homeless vets fit? I bet they are just being lazy and not growing new limbs.
Look you probably mean well, but do a bit of research, investigate the reasons for poverty and suggest some real and concrete ways for people to escape the poverty trap. because it is a trap and not everyone is educated enough to see it.
Just yelling at people and calling them lazy doesn’t have a great track record of helping people. Surely that’s what you want to do?
“Please explain where, in this scheme, do the homeless vets fit?”
I find it amusing that you cannot defend the behaviour of the “poor” at large, and have to resort to using one tiny, unrepresentative group of them. Can you not find any examples of the 99.9+% of the rest of the “poor”, who you don’t blame for their predicament? (I know the answer is no; I just want it on the record that I asked.) Veterans actually do better than the general population, when demographics are taken into account, FWIW.
Besides, the homeless problem is more one of mental health problems than of lazy poor people. The mid 1970s saw the beginning of the emptying of residential care for the mentally ill. They didn’t go into productive lives. They became a huge proportion of the homeless. The homeless problem is completely irrelevent to the question of the “poor”.
Most “poor” people, given strong moral codes, less immigration, less corporatism and an expectation that they’ll care for themselves and their families, are capable of supporting themselves. Those who are genuinely incapable of looking after themselves are not included in this. I do, however, love that you are so disillusioned with the behaviour of the capable poor that you have to look at homeless vets to find an example of poverty that’s not, at root, a result of feckless behaviour.
Oh, there are divisions in the original post? It seems to not make any divisions at all, just rags on “the poor”. And yet there actually are many different kinds of poor people and I was merely asking for a judgement on the reason that vets might be poor, since the only explanation given is laziness.
So you’re saying that there are differences between some sectors of the poor? I agree thus each of the sectors need to be examined and I would guess that they would need different solutions to their problems, that being told that they are lazy would not work for many, if any, of those sectors
Where did I say that I was ” disillusioned with the behaviour of the capable poor”? Most poor people do very well to struggle on and some live lives of great sacrifice and hardship which a comfortable middle-class person like me finds hard to comprehend. I think this last group might not react well to being described as lazy.
I think some classifications are required here, some means of dealing with real problems to result in better lives, which is why the post was written, surely?
It’s a blog post not a graduate thesis. Of course there are exceptions, health, random stuff, etc. And yes, a great many of Americans go in and out of different “classes”. A lot of poor are not poor at all, they are elderly living quite nicely on a fixed income (it’s just low). Others are business people who start businesses and aren’t making money with it yet.
But, there is a large class of people that are poor because of a culture of poverty. My mother grew up in a small Kansas town in the Depression, her Dad died when she was 13, they didn’t get a thing (maybe a small amount from is military service) but they got through it in spite of the situation. All 9 (yes 9) kids were successful to varying degrees and contribute to society. Why them (end everyone else around them) and not some others?
“And yes, a great many of Americans go in and out of different “classes”. ”
Well, actually, no, they don’t. Look it up. America is one of the least class mobile societies on the planet.
Ah yes, those millions of imaginary “homeless vets” of song and story:
http://fumento.com/military/homeless.html
http://www.prattontexas.com/_disc1/00000431.htm
If people are “living paycheck to paycheck” it is because they are in debt, usually carrying heavy consumer debt loads. Those people aren’t necessarily poor either.
I’m not convinced by the way that anyone really “cares about the poor” so much as they care about their own self image as “compassionate” people.
I actually DON’T care about “the Poor” – like all sane, normal people, I can about my friends and family first. Real people, not an abstraction based mostly on mythology and ideology.
It’s too bad so many liberals are embittered losers who resent those of us who’ve made something of ourselves. And who aren’t ashamed of writing stuff under our own names rather than hiding behind cowardly pseudonyms.
You are the only commenter (so far) with their “real name”, and that’s among the total population of detractors and supporters of your position. By your statement, everyone on here but you is “ashamed of writing stuff under [their own name]“, instead choosing to hide behind “cowardly pseudonyms,” not just the scary liberals.
Are you still unaware of how this whole Internetty thingamajig works? Or still waiting for that manual to arrive in the afternoon post?
That’s very amusing Kathy.
Someone is anonymous on the internet? Call the intercops!!
Interesting that you don’t care about anyone who you don’t know. I guess that having some sense of a community might be seen as Communism in some circles.
The homeless vets are an example of a sector amongst the poor. Nothing more and nothing less. You characterised all poor people as lazy thus you either include them or change what you said.
Are you for real? I am. It amazes me how awful the conservative mindset has gotten. Tell 47% of everybody they are lazy worthless moochers. American exceptionalism? right……….
Wild and Kiwi, does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy pontificating?
Now down to brass tacks. A good person takes care of their family and friends, in that order. If they are conservative they give a good percentage of money to charities carefully chosen to not waste that money.
If they are a liberal they give little or none to charities and demand that the government give their family and friends and everyone else in the country money in the most wasteful manner possible.
Any money not earned is charity, including government money. Charity is a necessary thing at times but it is corrosive. Many people have been terribly maimed in spirit by this and may never recover to become a happy competent person. That is a terrible thing to wish on anyone.
“And who aren’t ashamed of writing stuff under our own names rather than hiding behind cowardly pseudonyms.”
I’ll tell Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, those two cowards ears will certainly turn red!
There are a million reasons to be so “cowardly” on the internet. Like losing your job. Or being stalked by a loony. Or being blackmailed for political reasons in the future.
You have SUCH a generous nature.
A truly disabled vet has very generous benefits; s/he won’t be well-off but won’t be poor either. The “homeless vet” that is the pestilence of the Blue cities is likely not to have been a vet at all or if a vet not a combat vet and is homeless because he spends every dime he can beg, borrow, or steal on drugs and/or alcohol.
Satire is dead.
I have never seen so much stupid in one place.
Poor people are poor because they don’t have money and there is no feasible way for them to get money. That’s it.
Insulting them is not the answer. Blaming them is not the answer. The Right, I suppose, would prefer that they all drop dead immediately. Such problems are not as simple as you would like to believe.
Interesting. The so called poor people were each given a $2,000 debit card after hurricane Katrina to help them get back on their feet. Now, $2,000 isn’t going to replace everything you lose in a disaster like that, but a smart person can replace quite a bit of their day-to-day necessities if they know how to stretch their dollar. You shop at dollar stores and Goodwill and places like that and you can replenish your clothing and toiletries and maybe have a bit left over. But how did some of these poor people spend their pay days? They bought Gucci bags and went on spending jags at strip clubs. Clearly, simply getting money will not ever be the answer for these people to not be poor because as soon as they had the money, they lost it all again.
And let’s look at the idea of no feasible way of getting any money. Well, who’s fault is that? If you live in a society where you have access to a free, public education and you fail to take advantage of that … what choices have you made in your life that led you to be unable to take advantage of the money-making opportunities our society does have?
Statistics show that there are three simple determinants for avoiding a life of poverty in this country:
1. Graduate high school
2. Hold down a full-time job, any job
3. Avoid having kids until you are married
People who manage all three of those have a less than 10% of living in poverty in this country. You have to make good life choices in order to make it, and simply avoiding poverty doesn’t guarantee that you will be rich or even middle class. Some people do have a mine field to navigate to achieve these because their lives are literally chock full of bad examples, but no one lives their lives but themselves.
I was unaware that ALL of the people given assistance spent the money on strip clubs.
Perhaps that is overstating the case.
I was unaware that the VAST MAJORITY of the people given assistance spent the money on strip clubs.
Perhaps that is overstating the case.
I was unaware that MOST of the people given assistance spent the money on strip clubs.
Perhaps that is overstating the case.
I was unaware that A PLURALITY of the people given assistance spent the money on strip clubs.
Perhaps that is overstating the case.
I was unaware that SOME of the people given assistance spent the money on strip clubs.
Perhaps that is overstating the case.
I was unaware that a few of the people given assistance spent the money on strip clubs.
But I understand your point. A righteous Christian will disdain all poor people because a few will only spend any assistance given to them on strip clubs.
Who Would Jesus Sneer At? The poor, obviously. They are lazy, shiftless moochers. Always have been. Always will be.
Thank God we have Righteous People to remind us of those simple facts.
As you say, you are unaware.
Whether it’s strip clubs or booze or cigarettes or drugs or whatever, MOST poor people in America are poor because of poor choices.
That’s easily documented by anyone who wants to find the truth, and has been, over and over.
Their poor choices are reinforced by idiots who think that just giving and giving and giving money is helpful.
In fact, it is terribly destructive. Again, this is easily documented by anyone who wants to find the truth, and has been, over and over.
Liberals are the most hateful people in America, if we judge by the actual RESULTS of their actions.
What other way counts?
WIDTAP,
Jesus did not sneer at the poor, but he did sneer at hypocrites. These were normally the Pharisees, who had the power to dictate to everyone else how to live, yet did not have their hearts in the right place.
Matthew 26:11 “The poor you will always have with you…” (NIV)
You may also want to read Matthew 25:14-30 I suspect you will be surprised.
RalphCrown — clearly you did not grow up poor or amidst the poor. I did. I knew at a very early age that there was a clear path out of money woes. I started working at age 14 with the goal of saving $ to attend college. I think this article is right on with “… poor people make bad decisions,” thesis. Several of my family members still live hand to mouth… and they make very bad decisions at nearly every level. They don’t eat right, don’t exercise, watch trash tv, buy stupid stuff, and in general… have noticeable inability to improve themselves or implement any plan for self-improvement. We could get into discussions about why that is… but ultimately it is lack of will. I have much compassion… they seem incapable of any risk-taking, of managing even low levels of stress… lengthy discussion. But the author’s main point is dead-on. And until we openly discuss this as a nation, we only perpetuate the misery that is the nanny state lifestyle for these people.
That’s one of the most profoundly stupid commments I’ve ever seen on this subject, but it perfectly captures the simplistic (not simple) mindset of the majority of Democrats.
“Oh, they don’t have money? Give them money. Problem solved. I’m a good person.”
But as you say (but apparently don’t recognize) it’s not nearly that simple.
There are poor people who are poor through no fault of their own. There are far, far more who are poor because they do stupid things, they choose to live stupid lives.
No, you are NOT a good person because you advocate giving money to these people, any more than you would be a good person to advocate giving clean needles to addicts. You are HARMING them by doing so.
Oh, wait. You people already do that.
This post is just ugly, and I can’t believe you would write such stuff.
As someone recently wrote, the right wing has to define the poor this way so that they can justify the way the poor are treated.
The anecdotal history cited in other comments do nothing to provide reasons for poverty, they simply illustrate personal experience.
For decades, the right wing in America have disdained “the common good”. With a post like this it is easy to see why.
You stated: “For decades, the right wing in America have disdained ‘the common good’.”
I love that phrase, “…the common good.” It’s a blanket statement with no meaning. Who defines the common good and how is it disdained? Seeing how a majority of the “Right Wingers” are paying for the 47% of Americans on government entitlements, yeah, they might have an axe to grind. I guess property owners (not renters) whose taxes pay for schools aren’t putting in “for the common good.”
I guess the right wing’s “disdain” is why they give more money (proportionally) to charitable groups than “left wingers.” Just look at the diparity of money given between Al Gore versus Mitt Romney or the Kennedys versus Rush Limbaugh.
Yeah, we could nit-pick each other until eternity, but I have seen, and have studied how all sorts of depravity, murder and mayhem stem from the idiology of “the common good.” The road to H*ll is paved with good intentions.
The common good means sharing. This may no longer be taught in kindergarten. It has a meaning and the meaning is that there are things that can’t be owned in a civil society.
It means clean water, for example. Perhaps, if you’re poor, it’s all you deserve to live downstream of a polluter who business model clearly demonstrates that it’s cheaper to pay fines and hire lawyers than to clean up the dump evolving in people’s yards. Stupid people, living in depreciating houses, and under water in a couple of senses of the term.
The common good means sharing? And can’t be taught in kindergarten” Whay nation are you living in?
There are numerous stories over the last few years where kindergarten’s confiscate ALL the supplies kids come to school with, then distribute them FAIRLY amongst all the kids. Can’t have one kid with 64 Crayolas while another ones parents only got him the 18 pack. After all- that wouldn’t be fair.
Sharing in that form is-and had always been- Communism. Forcible sharing is not the common good. Never has been, never will be. It’s theft by government.
Isn’t it strange that people can come to our countries (Canada and the United States) even now with nothing but the clothes on their backs, plus language barriers in a number of cases, and somehow still manage to succeed, where others who were born here, with free public education, all kinds of social supports, and no language barriers do not?
The fact is that the world is a very unfair place. Those who recognize this and work with what they have (be it intelligence, athleticism, aesthetics (i.e. looks), talent) can manage to make pretty good lives for themselves. Those who regularly examine their lives, decide where they want to be, make an effort to understand how their current actions are helping or inhibiting the realization of those goals, and act accordingly have better outcomes.
Why should pointing this out be considered to be hateful or ugly? Because someone’s feelings are going to get hurt? No one will disagree that there are those in any society who genuinely do require assistance, however those numbers are much smaller than what is on the current welfare rolls. What was conceived as a safety net has become a hammock for far too many people. Virtues like thrift, delayed gratification, and personal responsibilty have been minimized and derrided for years, and we’re seeing the results.
And for those who want to get on their high horse about this, I have been in a position where money was tight, no one was working in the household on a steady basis, and it was a recession to boot. We worked odd jobs, temp jobs, two or three at a time rather than go on welfare. They weren’t dream jobs, and they certainly weren’t ones that you would expect university graduates to be taking, but it’s what we needed to do to get by. We felt, and still do, that welfare should only be for cases where you are unable to support yourself due to a severe physical or mental disability that renders you unable to do any type of work at all.
Well said.
As a working class guy who just began a new career after getting downsized from my mom and pop retail job of nineteen years, I’ve seen plenty of poor people. I’ve worked side by side with them. People struggling to get by, living paycheck by paycheck, always worried about making the rent, or putting food on the table. I had a friend who lived with a toothache for a month because his little boy needed new shoes for school, so he couldn’t afford a trip to the dentist.
Where are all these lazy poor people with no moral values that I keep hearing about? I sure as hell don’t know any. The poor folks I know are working themselves ragged, trying to keep their heads above water in a system that casts you aside the second you fail to measure up as a cog in the machine.
Conservatives despise the poor. Period, paragraph, end of sentence. This editorial (along with hundreds of other similarly inclined screeds) and the majority of the comments make that much clear.
I’ve already seen right-wing articles speaking favorably of bringing back public flogging, putting miscreants in stocks and child labor. Wonder how long it will be until some blue-eyed Republican boy makes his name by calling for restoration of debtor’s prison and indentured servitude? Any day now, I’ll wager.
Flogging? Debtors’ prison? That’s your response to this? Your reaction is not unlike the Central Park swell who declared she couldn’t understand how Nixon was elected because “I don’t know anyone who voted for him”. We’ve had a war on poverty for about half a century now.Entitlement dependency is increasing, not decreasing. Our Europeans betters, whom we’ve been told to emulate, or going bankrupt with their far more comprehensive entitlement programs. Your solution? People who disagree with me are evil. Thanks.
“some blue-eyed Republican boy”
If I were a liberal I would call you a racist.
Conservatives do not despise the poor. What they despise is having the government take their money and give it away, sometimes indiscriminately to people who may be poor, but who may also have found a way to game the system. What they despise are those who stand by the side of the road asking for donations rather than looking for work. Take a real look at Romney’s taxes without your msnbc-colored glasses and you will see how conservatives view the poor. He gave vast amounts of money to charity. My wife and I do the same as do many other people that we know. We are happy to contribute to charities and organizations that work on a local and national level to help those who really need it. These groups are better able to determine when there is legitimate need and to meet that need more efficiently than any centralized government agency. We care about the poor. We actually care about them more than do a lot of liberals because we only care about seeing them get the help they truly need rather than needing to keep them dependent so that they can be our ‘majority coalition’.
Because we’re not talking about those people. Some of us are those people. We’re atalking about the ones who sit on their butts at home and do nothing but take their government payouts and look for nothing better in life and complain that it isn’t enough and that the rich people (some of the same ones you are working with who are struggling to keep their heads above water, btw) are too greedy.
“I had a friend who lived with a toothache for a month because his little boy needed new shoes for school, so he couldn’t afford a trip to the dentist.”
Ok, that’s enough. I’ve had it with this phony claptrap. And how much would that trip to the dentist cost to get a cavity filled if spread out over a year? $5 a week at most. I don’t want to hear about this crap of how people can’t afford $5 a week or less for a year to get a cavity filled because they need a suitcase full of $100 bills to pay for it. It’s a load of garbage. I don’t want to hear any more sob stories about a little boy and his shoes either. I work in a professional white collar job and bought shoes for $10 at Payless for work twice. They lasted more than a year each. I buy prefectly good hiking boots and walking shoes for $50-70 that last more than a year each. That’s less than $1 A WEEK!
Hey, he’s seen “some right-wing articles” too.
What’s next, a video trailer or something?
Shoes for school. Next, dad’s a teacher at a coal mine while mom’s a firefighter at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.
Snort.
Don’t you realize that, according to the chart Kathy posted above, you and your hardworking poor friends are EXACTLY the people who should be the MOST upset about all of this? Of course you don’t know any of the “lazy poor people with no moral values.” You’re the poor people WITH moral values who get kicked in the teeth for trying to take care of yourselves, and there’s no way you’re going to associate with the likes of them. Good for you.
But your hard work is getting you nowhere, while your neighbors who are on the dole not only have more leisure time, they have more disposable income to boot. Doesn’t that piss you off? It should. Maybe if the people higher up the food chain weren’t taxed to pay for those folks’ freebies they’d be able to expand their businesses and pay you more. But as a society, we’ve incentivized laziness, not hard work.
Concern troll is concerned.
“I actually DON’T care about “the Poor” – like all sane, normal people, I can about my friends and family first. Real people, not an abstraction based mostly on mythology and ideology.”
I actually DON’T care about “the Jesus”–like all sane, normal people, I can [sic, you know] about my friends an family first. Real people, not an abstraction based mostly on mythology and ideology.
Plus, that whole Sermon on the Mount thing was pretty Commie, when you get down to it. Shudder.
If you think the Sermon on the Mount was an endorsement of Communism, you missed the point entirely.
Ah the Sermon on the Mount. It’s commie? Really? You mean the sermon where Jesus tells people to do all of their giving to the poor in private so only God knows what thy are doing and can judge properly? That commie sermon? Matt 6:1
Or the same sermon where Jesus tells the crowd not to worry about what they would eat or wear because God knows they need these things and will provide them if they obey God, and not worship government? The government would be “treasures on earth”) Matt 6:25 That commie sermon?
The Biblical Jesus would, and does, hate communism and all forms of socialism because these forms of government result in the worship of government and not God.
It only sounds communist. The important missing component is that there would be no government compelling it. Yes, a perfect Christian society would be one where everyone would work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labors like a capitalist society, but one of the greatest joys of those who had more would be to help those who had less by giving. And, they would do that giving freely and joyfully, not through any outside compulsion or feeling of duty. There would be no regrets to the giving, and in return, when you needed help yourself, others would freely and joyfully give to you. And, those who were in need would not be those who would simply live in sloth and beg for their next handout, they would either be those who truly could not do for themselves or those who simply had hard luck and needed a simple hand up.
In this world, human nature makes this kind of society more or less impossible.
The fact is, the real solution for poverty in USA is not to coddle them, but cut them off. They will get jobs and back to work fast if no more gravy train is making them lazy, also take away there cable tv. They are dependents who are useless eaters to USA. Also there health care is a waste, shy spend a dime on people who are a drain on Freedom? Let them die, starve, whatever — the real survivers will strive themselfs out, the producers will be unburdend and best of all liberalis will be descredeted forever.
CELL PHONES AND BIG SCREEN TVS?
O, for the days when the poor invoked Dickensian charms in their sooty hovels! How dare they not be selling their ten year old sisters in the street for a crust of bread. The arrogance!
In their defence, the bread back then, was like, BEST EVER.
This is very sad. The big picture is that it is sincerely believed by the authors that full time work is available to anyone willing to do it. The economy that exists todays is not the economy your mother supported you on with a full time minimum wage salary years ago.
Today there are more people competing for fewer low wage jobs, and with the destruction to middle class jobs, those competing for minimum wage jobs today include people with advanced degrees and managerial job experience. If you have no degree and no High school diploma, you are almost unemployable.
And employers today regularly refuse to pay benefits, this translates into almost all jobs being part time jobs. And as someone that works, I promise you that two or more part time jobs means doing all your jobs poorly and upsetting management as your jobs demand conflicting schedules. So one job you MUST be late to or another job, you must call out on, if you mean to KEEP your other job.
And the statistics you cite are misleading, many low wage workers live with family and pool resources rather than use social services. Many people with mental illness are not capable of navigating social services. Many people with just a part time minimum wage job will go hungry and refuse social services from pride, and in this category fall many American Veterans.
Amenities such as a ‘big screen tv’ are not being considered rationally: a function of priorities,and if you make a point of looking – prosperous families regularly throw away or give away big screen TVs when the upgrade to a bigger TV, and many businesses sell used and refurbished big screen tvs for a steep discount. A TV need only be bought once, and if adult children are staying home with parents – it’s many small incomes collectively allowing that one time purchase.
And there is no welfare, it is now work-fare and has been so since Bill Clinton signed the change to welfare. To get welfare, a Mother MUST hold a job – no matter if it means they must leave their babies home alone or pay for child support, a cost often leaving them poorer with welfare than they were without it.
People on social services.. are getting social security disability benefit. Some of these benefits are to people completely helpless in their illness or disability. Some of these benefits are to people that may NOT be as helpless in their disability. And in the latter case,if you are being helped for a disability and you get BETTER, you lose the benefits. So there is a problem, but more than half the problem is the lack of opportunity.
Because a full time job, even at minimum wage, is better than social services. But apart time job is worse. And either job may seem impossible to get when your competition for the job, they not only have high school degrees, they may have graduate school degrees and a job history of positions ofd responsibility.
And so the problem isn’t even poor people or that some people work the system and use their drug addiction as a disability. It’s that smart, educated and highly skilled workers have no middle class jobs available to them. And for that reason, poor people have no jobs available to them, not if they are not as skilled and educated as the former middle class they must compete with to get jobs.
Myself, not long ago I commanded a $30/hour pay rate. Now I’m Lucky, I have a job that offers me 16 hours a week at $11/hour. I don’t have a second job, I’m trying to start some businesses. I don’t use Federal social services, locally there is a very generous food bank and I can just barely make ends meet with that support (and because I can cook).
I agree that good work is hard to come by. That you are working and earning money means you are not the kind of taker which the author was referring to. You are temporarily stuck, and when the government gets out of the way of the economy hard working people like you will rebound.
Others will not. They will stay stuck.
You wrote “And there is no welfare, it is now work-fare and has been so since Bill Clinton signed the change to welfare” You missed the recent Executive Order signed by Emperesident Obama, eliminating the work requirement. (Oh wait, I forgot, attending yoga class qualifies as “work”)
It is a fact that alcoholics and drug addicts are eligible for, and receive, disability. Yes, I know that is not technically “welfare”, but it all falls under the nanny state concept of giving away to those who have made their own poor choices. Even worse, it disincentivizes them to make better choices.
“my mother (…) wasn’t a boozer or a crackhead who spent her off hours in nightclubs picking up and bringing home strange dudes.”
And, kids, that’s the story of how I met your mother.
thanks for the truth. it hurts, especially many of the “caring” people commenting here.
i have a simple question based on some documented facts:
today we have at least half the population defined as poor (that is “rich”) and unable to support themselves, thus requiring government assistance.
by contrast in 1920 (from the US census) we had about 27M people working outside the home of which atleast 25M were married with wives working in the home. this out of a population of about 120M where the average per capita income was about 700 dollars a year. this group of americans generated a productive, wealth creating boom never before seen in world history.
there was no entitlements, no welfare, nada, nothing. leftism was still in it’s infancy but the utopian myth was fast gaining purchase (thanks to imports from europe and the nut-job academic wilson). the bulk of these folks supported themselves or supported the folks who couldn’t cope through private charity and in-family support. about equally split between farm and industry.
so, to summarize, no government welfare or dependency, prosperity to generate a booming economy and population growth (sure sign’s of wealth creation), all on 700 dollars a month. all different ethnic groups and races, many migrant families just off the boats.
so by today’s standards, these generally prosperous, self-sufficient americans of the 1920′s were far poorer than todays’ so called “poor.” yet they were substatially free and independent of their government for their livelyhoods.
so to all the apologists and those who deeply “care” for today’s “poor.” what gives? did we get some bad genes spliced in between 1920 and 2000? the xfiles effect?
has the basic human model changed in 80 years? no you say. so something else caused this disaster. if you’re wise, you’ll start educating yourself on why and how this happened? or you can just continue to “care” deeply about the plight of today’s mysterious poor and continue to rob our children and grandchildren to pay for your big screens and cell phones.
There was a whole lot less government regulation back then too. We also had nice high tariffs so that the American worker didn’t have to “compete” with a worker earning a tenth the wages. The products you purchased in a “Main Street” store were “Made in the USA”. Rents compared to wages were lower too. Plus, there wasn’t a premium on education. Factory jobs were available to anyone who could follow orders even if they couldn’t read or write. My grandfather back in the late 19th Century started working at the age of 13 after leaving the 5th Grade. When he retired, he had been plant foreman for a large local foundry. He was also self taught to a great degree and could do auto mechanic work, electric work, built boats, and most anything he set himself to do. My grandmother did the financial part of things because his math wasn’t very good. Today he’d be “unemployable”. One reason is that we import so much from other countries. And the sort of jobs “that most anyone could do” have been “exported” in return to countries where people work for about a dollar an hour or less. Pretty darn hard to compete with that! Plus a growing population means higher cost of living. When I started working in 1959 I earned $1 an hour. Rent was $40 a month and utilities were included. Gasoline was $.25 a gallon. Didn’t have a TV. Did have a radio. Read books from the public library for free. Looking at the want ads in the local newspaper, I’ve never so few ads for ordinary workers. Most of the ads are for truck drivers, medical people, people with bachelor or better college degrees. And there aren’t a lot of these either…
I recently saw a study on time preferences. It measured the tendency of different cultures to either save for the the future or go for immediate gratification. At the two extremes, there were Northern Europeans and Americans who readily saved for the future, while at the other extreme were the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa who preferred instant gratification. Add these inherent traits to the mess we created with entitlements and its no wonder we have a disaster on our hands.
I saw this up close one day on a simple thing. A local auto parts store was offering rebates on oil filters. After the rebate, the $5 filter was free! I bought the limit. Next to me was a guy whose ancestors are from the other extreme. I gave him an extra coupon I had. He looked at it and said: “4 – 6 weeks?” … “Forget it”
Mainly, its a symptom of Libealism, Single parent families are 4X more likely to be poor, combine that with the continuous attack on stable married families for decades by the Left.
2nd…..look on things such as the minimum wage laws—-prevents employers from taking a shot on a employee at a wage level where its worth the time and investment of training, combine that with the myriad of govt regs layed on as punishment for being in business by the left……
……and you have a recipie for “poor”……just add class envy and covetting to top it off well.
Actually the minimum wage is lower today than it was when Richard Nixon was President. If the minimum wage was same now (in constant value dollars) it would be at least $10 an hour. So why were employers more willing to “try someone out” back then than now? The problem isn’t the minimum wage. The problem is that we simply don’t “need” as many workers today as we did in the past. Are there any shortages of manufactured goods today? Walmart seems to keep the shelves filled. If any “cuts” have been made, it’s in the checkouts. The productivity of American labor has never been higher. We’re simply producing everything we need with fewer workers. Then of course we’re importing so much that probably it would take ten million American workers to produce the stuff that we import from outside the US. We simply no longer “need” as many workers as we had before…
Jerome,
I do not agree that we “need” less workers. Yes, productivity is up. We need fewer workers in certain areas, but companies still need people in order to dream up, design, create, finance, manufacture, market, distribute, transport and sell products.
Talk to a Human Resources Director. Find out how many laws cover the hiring and firing of workers. Every act of hiring, and firing, is a potential lawsuit. Ever wonder why job advertisements/listings are so intimidating and long and formal? It is because those job listing are potential exhibits in a court case.
Then ask the HR Director what happens if one random mid-level manager says something stupid, or even something innocent. A manager who told a _contract worker_ “we will find a position for you” provided sufficient basis for her lawsuit against the company when she was not hired. After taking a graduate level HR management class, I am stunned that companies hire employees at all.
Overly restrictive hiring and firing labor laws are absolutely killing our economy, as businesses only hire when they absolutely must out of fear of these laws and the associated lawsuits.
“Instead, today’s poor are often petulant, entitled, irresponsible, and ungrateful, caught up in a culture of crime and cheap thrills.”
It’s the whole “victim” mentality that has been created and clutivated by the liberals and the Democratic Party. By keeping this stupid mentality alive for so many years, they have created a culture of dependency that has literally destroyed millions of lives. Just look at what it has done to the Black community. Ever since the “Great Society” was created back in the mid-1960s, literally trillions of dollars have been pumped into welfare and other social programs, not to mention “education.” And what do we have to show for it? A good case can be made that the black community is worse off now than it was before the “Great Society” was created, especially in terms of employment.
We need A LOT less of Lyndon Johnson and A LOT more of Ayn Rand taught in our schools. And the best way to achieve true “social justice” in this country is by getting everybody a job. Work raises all boats, dependency only kills the human spirit to achieve great things.
Outstanding work, Ms. Shaidle. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
One of the main points of the article was that a person’s income strata changes over a lifetime. I was in the bottom 20% for 7 years, reached the top 3% for 10 and at 72 I’m in the bottom 20%. I have never been poor. I lived in a 55+ community where 80% of the resident’s net worth was over a million. Upon questioning many of my neighbors almost no one was worth over $35,000 at the age of 30 including surgeons. We have the opportunity to be upwardly mobile, but only if you have learned the art of delayed gratification. People who haven’t had the fortitude to finish HS do not have my sympathy. Poor choices equal poor results.
As a Christian and a college teacher(yes, one can put them together), I’m with you, Kathy. Brilliantly argued. And kudos to the the commenters debunking the lie of the socialistic Jesus. Jesus did not say, help the poor. He said: BE poor. Wealth and power have nothing to do with moral well being. It doesn’t matter whether you’re poor or rich.
Poverty has become a career choice for many in America.
Work-fare? Not in my state. All one needs is a valid address. Pretty soon, we’ll accept P.O. boxes, just so nobody can claim discrimination against trans-state welfare funding, for those who want Florida winters, but Minnesota’s hand-outs.
Unfortunately, that is already happening. Think about the remailing services in most cities.
It isn’t an irrational choice. Way back when we were just trying to figure out “Welfare to Work” and how it could work in a unionized public workforce we did a study on the value of our welfare benefits versus our wages and benefits. Turned out that a single woman with one child had about the same purchasing power as our mid-level technical/administrative positions and would be foolish to quit welfare and come to work for us in the kinds of entry-level positions most would meet the minimum quals for. Plus, there’d be the hassle of staying straight and having to get out of your bathrobe before evening.
Kathy Shaidle
Reread your post, and reevaluate this comment, especially the part referring to your mother’s intelligence’ “Like I said: I grew up below the poverty line but have had the same account with the same bank since I was 8 years old, because my mother (who, once again, was NOT a genius) took me downtown and signed me up for one.” Strength of character comes from strength of mind. Allow me to start your reevaluation, your mother had the brilliance to recognize Welfare for the trap it was and is. Many did not and still do not.
As a reminder education and intelligence are not the same thing.
Progressives only ever manage to “progress” from fear to greed, and liberals never liberate anybody else – they only ever endlessly take liberties!
Both liberals and their moslem brethren believe that Giving Up is a holy virtue, and so Submit to their own fears of pains, rather than investigate the mistakes and problems which cause those pains in the first place. So, having no hope for the future, they “seize the day” and party for today while maybe (hopefully have someone else) pay for it all tomorrow, if tomorrow ever comes!
Emocrats find it easier to sell victimology and blame others than to take personal self-reliant responsibility for them selves!
Contrast that with conservatives, who DO have hope in faith in the future, and so will work to pay for tomorrow today!
I’ll tell you how to not only fix the problem of the poor, but also ensure that the US remains strong…
See the problem is motivation. How many times have we heard again and again, that some people cannot bring themselves to take certain jobs? Say what you will about illegals, they do good work and they don’t complain that certain work is beneath them. So if I was in charge, citizenship would require employment. Yeah you heard me right folks. You don’t want to work and its been two years since you have…better learn to network in another language. You get replaced by a highly educated and/or skill worker who gets your place in America.
Not only have I just fix the poor problem, boom…I just restarted the economy that the Socialist in Chief has run into the ground.
You can thank me later.
Sorry Ms. Shaidle, you lost me when you advocated “nuke ‘em” as a solution to the troubles in Libya. Your credibility on every other issue was lost then.
And yet you keep coming back.
After what happened at the U.S. embassy, I think nuking Libya would be more trouble than it would be worth. Carpet-bombing would do the trick.
You have to mention that many of the poor are very proud of what they have accomplished for their families and by the work they do.
Since we are no longer Christian, we forget that tenet: the value of an act or a life is not the money that accrues to it.
When I was a Hopkins, which I have often described with disdain, most of the people never had the chance to know anyone not exactly like themselves. They had money, but not top dollar, and were spoiled. They judged others by their standards, and found any life unlike theirs not worth living.
When I was there I dated a Bernie Lown sprog, a nice well-mannered person who has spent her life in social service. I am afraid that she felt that one’s life were blighted if one did not have her vacations, however.
Liberals are drawn from the stock I describe, and view other with contempt, see themselves as the only cure, for the material lack in the lives of others.
As Thomas Sowell and many others like to point out, our “poor” enjoy luxuries the Sun King could only dream of: cell phones (or three), cars (or two), PlayStations, and big screen TVs.
As smarter people have pointed out, you can’t eat TV shows. And sneering at people for owning a “luxury” that 1)costs less than the wrapper it came in to make or 2)is a practical necessity simply to COMPETE in 21st century western civilization is disingenuous at best. It’s not a luxury if you starve to death without it.
You might have noticed that today’s “poor” aren’t exactly the humble, wholesome, good-hearted types Charles Dickens championed, either.
And neither were the poor in Charles Dickens’ time. CD was a maudlin sentimentalist twit with an audience who got their rocks off on bewailing the fate of saintly, martyr-like and utterly fictional characters while they’d travel miles out of their way just to avoid the much more real and much more appalling poor in their own neighborhoods. The poor never have been, and never will be, the beautiful people.
(Back when “living” conditions in Victorian London were unspeakably appalling, Jack the Ripper was practically doing those women a favor…)
The living conditions in Victorian London were unspeakably appalling largely BECAUSE of the women Jack the Ripper killed. Whores do not a noble community make.
Boy, am I bothered to have to admit you’re correct…especially “whores do not a noble community make…” think Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee…we have prettied up our language to make such destructive behavior palatable for the taxpayers who fund it all.
This, it seems to me, is pretty much the basis for the problems in urban/inner city America, what amounts to ‘whoredom.’ Singles fornicating furiously with anything that will lay still, birthing children to bring in a ‘pay’check, or wanting a living baby ‘doll’ to love them (until the kid becomes a terrible toddler and an unmanageable brat) then take out on the child the anger and depression over being ‘stuck’ home with a smelly kid(s), while life and carefree youth passes by.
Likely, the boyfriend will bail, meaning another has to be found (and quick) to assuage the emptiness that serial sex brings on. Desperate, the lonely mother will take all comers; maybe one of the losers will stick around beyond breakfast.
Back to the child; too soon a sulking teenager having an attitude and looking to get even with the world. Join a gang, commit crime, impregnate any available girl, drink, drug and become unemployable. Move in with the new baby momma, stick around until someone prettier or younger needs a new boyfriend, bail on the mother of his child(ren), produce more offspring with the new baby mommy. Wash, rinse, repeat.
What a great idea it was to fund “Whoredom,” uh, I mean “Great Society.”
Well said. My mom was 1 of 8 & grew up in the boonies in PA. My grandfather was a coal miner who drank most of his salary. If it wasn’t for a store up the road they surely would have gone hungry. But my grandmother kept track of every penny of credit the man issued and when the kids picked berries & sold them, some money went to the grocer. As the kids got older and worked at real jobs, they sent money to my grandmother, she kept track of who sent what each month and then on to the grocer. It took alot of years but those kids paid back every dime plus interest. Today you declare bankruptcy and say tough luck to the people that tried to keep you afloat.
My daughter had to do service hrs both to graduate & for the national honor society. She was working at a soup kitchen and after her first day when we were talking about what she did, she said, ” mom I don’t understand why these people are here. She said they had gel manicures, the newest cell phone, and the latest fashions. They all had their hair done in intricate styles & carried designer bags & had okay cars. They weren’t living like the Beverly hillbillies before Jed struck oil,”. She was why don’t they give up all the junk and buy food. I had no answer for her.
Finally when we were saving for a down payment for a house, we lived poor. We canceled magazine subscriptions, going out to eat & movies (movie rental was our friend) mooched meals from our parents, wore suit a few more times before going for dry cleaning & did the unthinkable, we brought our lunch to work instead of going out. All of this enabled us to but 20% down
Fantastic article! You captured the truth about poor. I too grew up below the poverty level and now am way above it. I attribute that to my parents and grandparents who worked like crazy to ensure we had everything we needed and in the process taught me a WORK ETHIC. That is how I have been able to climb the corporate ladder without a college degree and now I am the boss. Was it easy, no, but if you are willing to do what it takes you will succeed. NO ONE is too good to do any job that is necessary to provide for yourself and your family.
My sister was married for years to a drunken man who made good money, but wasted much of it. He’s dead now. She works two jobs, makes lower middle class money, but lives frugally, owns her own home and does not act irresponsibly. The only sword hanging over her head is that she has no health insurance, but there is always urgent care for her minor illnesses, and I am sure her children would pitch in if, God Forbid, anything happened to her.
She is not rich and will never be, but she is self supporting and lives an honorable life
For those so inclined, William G. Sumner’s “The Rich are Good-Natured” is a good essay, and you can also find Edward Banfield’s “The Unheavenly City” in free pdf form on the internet. Sumner’s is from the late 1800′s and Banfield’s the 1970′s. Both are food for thought on this topic. Banfield hits the delayed gratification issue of defining classes of people (contrary to the Mark Levin’s denial that there are classes in America). Banfield stated that school is a setting for failure of the lower class, for it requires delayed gratification; that instead of proposing more and longer, perhaps we should shorten it and move them into the work force sooner. I think it was him who said low skilled jobs would not disappear, which I think is true. We still live in a physical world which requires real work (Mike Rowe) and it should be honorable.
You are the worst person alive
Really? Women who were stabbed to death with their genitals ripped out by Jack the Ripper were better off?
This might be the single worst article in the history of the internet. I really wish that karma brings the hammer down on you someday, because you sure have it comin’. Shame on your filthy and disgusting world view. This is the exact polar opposite of anything remotely Christian, moral or responsible. This must have been written for the outrage factor. I can’t imagine someone with your brain and complete lack of rationality, facts or understanding is alive today.
This has to be a joke or for view counts, no human being is this messed up. Creepy! Good luck with your next article about how witch burning was actually pretty awesome, you psychopath.
This is — and I’m not trying to be hyperbolic here, but it beggars belief — the sickest, most evil garbage I’ve ever read.
You cannot worship Mammon and claim to worship Jesus.
The resentment and self-loathing that ooze from this piece are understandable, but you must forgive the people you came from.
I’m praying for you, Kathy.
“I’m praying for you, Kathy.”
She’s fine. Try praying for those you are supposedly concerned about. Make it personal– open your wallet.
How DARE this woman speak for Christ. Who is she to say what he would think… But we ALL know he would not judge others. Shame on her for perverting the words of Christ.
Christ Jesus would not judge others? Really?
“[12]And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, [13] And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” — Matthew 21:12-13
Interesting that those who agree with Kathy came from poor backgrounds and know what it means. I also came from a poor background, my family of seven living under the poverty line for my first 12 years of life. When Dad’s earnings finally took off, it was a wonderful thing, but my folks never forgot their frugal habits. It had taken hard work, commitment, and sacrifice. I remember years when it was a big deal to have a meat loaf; most of the time we had homemade potato soup or cottage cheese with stewed spinach. Our main form of recreation was playing ball games in the street. Sometimes, if Dad had a little extra gas, he would take us for a drive.
In the latter half of the 1960s, we lived in a working-class neighborhood that was about a mile — across an expressway — from a public housing development. My mother and a neighborhood friend of hers did some research, and discovered that the public-housing residents on average had more disposable income than we did. We were below the poverty line then. Our parents worked, paid taxes, had mortgages or paid rent, and couldn’t afford the booze and drugs that infested the public-housing development.
We had very little in terms of material things, but I remain in awe of what our parents did for us. They learned it from their parents, of course. Thomas Sowell has presented extensive research showing that black families prior to the 1960s had a significantly higher marriage rate and showed economic upward mobility. It was when the Great Society hit that fatherlessness and multigenerational welfare dependence became such a demographic trend — one that has made inroads throughout the entire population. The people who developed those pathologies in the 1960s were the ones in the public-housing developments, who actually had more to spend than the people a mile away in the working-class neighborhood. What they DIDN’T have mattered much, much more.
I did my time in hell. In the kind of efffing places you feel so morally superior to. I don’t believe your morally superior fanny would have made it out. I don’t. don’t believe you did or you wouldn’t need the safety of thinking its just bad morals that cause trouble.
Note to self stop reading this ladys columns they tweak me off too easily.
So, john, explain why the federal government should subsidize hell. Don’t you get it? The hell of public housing neihgborhoods exists because of government policy.
What amazes me most about this amazing article is you seem to honestly believe you just stumbled on this fabulous new idea: that the wealthy are so wealthy because they are inherently better and of stronger character than the poor. In reality, you and your kind have always thought this way. You might as well walk outside and ‘discover’ grass.
As is the case with any complex problem, both sides are to some degree correct.
I’m not jumping in here, I know people who are not doing as well as they should be. Some of the reasons are due to their own behaviors. However, an unemployed steel worker with a bad back isn’t going to become a brain surgeon either. Sometimes you can’t just pack it in and move to where the jobs are – know any widowers with small children living in an area where he has family, but employment prospects are poor? I do. I also know people who would honestly be described as lazy and shiftless.
How many fall into each category? Are our policies making things better, or worse? What do we do differently? Who do we let fend for themselves.
The rich lady who goes into a drug rehab facility is a courageous example to us all, doing what she has to to solve her problem! God bless her!!
The poor lady on drugs, at the same rehab? Skeezy crack ho.
No double standard there!
Well now, obviously nobody should ‘be on drugs,’ since they’re illegal and destructive, however…*thinking*…the rich lady spent HER OWN money for drugs.
The poor lady spent TAXPAYER money for drugs.
The rich lady goes to rehab on HER OWN dime…the poor lady goes on my dime…
Nope. No double standard as I sees it, sorry to disappoint you.