Your thoughts on poverty.

In country with our level of wealth, poverty almost seems conceptual. Perhaps we first define it as not being able to continuously procure food, shelter and/or clothing through non-governmental assistance. The grumpy dad conservatism in me thinks we just need to minimize drug use, maximize education and training opportunities, and; as a hedge against that last one, start making sure people learn foreign languages.

If we could have also restructured our original low-income housing programs in a way that convinced all real estate developers and homeowners to accept a small portion of Section-8 type residents in their neighborhoods, I think it would have hedged against a clustering of poverty-prone values or long-term priorities.

 

I think the more important question is the definition of poverty. IMO, having the bare essential is the defining factor.

There will always be a range between low and upper class. Unfortunately, many believe we can eliminate the lower class, which really makes no sense. All that ends up happening is that money stripped from the "upper" class ends up to them eventually. Its the middle class that is eventually destroyed.

Poverty is a nurtured condition. There are many things that money can't buy, such as ambition. If playing video games, watching TV, and partying is more important than opening the books, then there is no amount of money going to fix it. Family values is important to me simply because its much more difficult to encourage and help children better themselves when mom is working 60 hours a week and dad is working two jobs to pay for the child support.

The best thing against poverty is to keep the roads wide open for those who truly want to do what it takes to get out. Instead of expecting the government to take care of this problem, individuals should take it upon themselves to volunteer their time to help and encourage kids to do better.

I don't think shoving a trailer in between every 5th half a million dollar per home neighborhood is the answer.

And most people really don't care who their neighbors are, as long as they take care of business on their own property.

 

Lack of education.

Lack of responsibility.

Lack of sound decision making.

Not all at the same time, and in no particular order, is the problem. Having 6 kids when you can only afford 2 seems like about obvious mistake, but what do I know, I have no kids because I chose not to have them.

 

Part of the reason I stated my scenario in past tense was to acknowledge that it probably wasn't realistic or doable now; but your first sentence above is an absurdist extrapolation of my idea that actually undercuts the claim in your second statement, and fails to acknowledge that at one time there was far smaller distinction between classes that was deliberately exacerbated by coordinated government, commercial and majority populace discrimination.

This will never happen on a large or effective enough scale and you know it. Unfortunately I think lots of others who advocate this and feel the same way, are simply trying to congratulate themselves for and imply more social significance towards their own individual charity or community work. Far worse considering lots of that stuff is only done for tax savings and networking.

Most children harbor these skewed priorities whatever their home situation. The real distinction between groups happens in their teenage years when they're defining their social and economic position, and take steps to further fit in to whatever group they identify with. At that point having cash for college, SAT tutoring, long-term vocational training or having relatives in management positions comes into play, so unfortunately money is a factor.

 

Of course. Who and why would anyone want section 8 housing in a 200k+ neighborhood? It would be completely inefficient and a waste. For 200k, you could give four families 50k housing. The fact remains, if someone doesn't own the property, whether its rental housing, car rental or anything else, regardless of class, they will not take care of it properly. Its absurd to consider subsidizing housing that will cost a lot of money to maintain.

It won't happen with this mentality. Im not sure why an individual should not feel proud of themselves for trying to help others. There is absolutely nothing wrong with helping out less fortunate, even if it benefits you, as long as a person is not abusing the individuals. Even if someone should get a tax credit for helping someone (im not even sure how this is possible) and they actually make a difference, im all for it.

Further, for every "rags to riches" story, the poor person will always have a "hero" in their life that helped them and made the difference. Nobody does it alone.

I will tell you now that you're wrong. Take a course in Psychology 101. The first few years in a childs life is the most impacting. Poverty is generational. In times past, poor people had more children to help around the house and forced to drop out of school to work the family business. Now the TV and video games are the modern day babysitter. Sure, well off families have the advantage as they can pay others to help educate their kids, but the difference isn't the money, its having someone to encourage them to do something else besides play video games and "stay in school".

 

it sucks.

Spoiler

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lack of education
lack of effort to a certain extent
geographic location; most of the 1st world countries in northern hemisphere and above some line (tropic of capricorn?)
the cultural views on what is poverty

 

B-bob: still a tool

 

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i think lack of money is the cause of poverty.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action#Collective_action_problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

 

^THIS

 

with more money

 

Poverty is a relative term. What we should be concerned about are questions like "do the poor stay poor (is there upward mobility)?" and "are the poor getting poorer or richer (are poor people better off now than poor people previously)?".

That some people are poorer than others is not necessarily a bad thing. We make different choices in life that lead to different results. In fact the more choices we have, the decision tree expands and we see more divergent outcomes.

If the wealth disparity is a result of theft or oppression, that is a bad thing.

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The way to get people out of poverty is economic freedom.

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Charts and graphs are awesome when you are hungry.